In my most recent blog, I wrote about reconnecting with my childhood friend, Tư, now living in Calgary, Canada. In the short time since then, we've logged a lively stream of emails, catching up on our lost years. In the one I've just received, Tư mentioned that she had almost given up looking for me after she'd heard definitely from several people I was dead.
How reassuring! I didn't even know I was six feet under.
This brought to mind and confirmed my belief that the most quirky and annoying trait of the Vietnamese culture is our collective eagerness to convincingly pass along misinformation until it becomes the general consensus by sheer force of uncontradicted repetition. My dad had planted this belief in me and my siblings early on by recounting the Story of the Crow (summarized below) as a cautionary tale. Another highly common and equally despised Viet trait, according to my dad, is our unique irrationality. Of course, in his view more than 90% of the world's population is irrational anyway, and we Vietnamese just happen to be a specialized subset! At any rate, my dad is fond of this wildly unbelievable story that he uses often to illustrate the V. mentality that promotes passing on gossip with a dark twist and embellishing it with extraneous, incorrect details:
"A Vietnamese woman went to the hospital to give birth. Her baby was rather dark-skinned and her visitors indeed noticed and commented on the newborn's appearance, tactlessly comparing him to a crow (yet another illustration of the V. tendency to hyperbolize and be gloriously rude about it). By the time she was released from the hospital, it has become confirmed knowledge that this woman had given birth to a crow that immediately flew away, never to be seen again!"
Six years ago, when I first opened up about the early stage of my divorce to my best friend, she told me that a mutual acquaintance had “leaked” that my ex and I were faking our separation to head off financial troubles. How did one accomplish that, I’ve often wondered? To this day I have no idea as to who the original gossipmonger was or their motives for making something malicious out of thin air. The truth is the divorce itself happened to be the one and only source of our temporary financial strain, but who that has gone through a divorce themselves couldn't attest to that bit?
*****
Tư also shared with me her latest short story (I was proud to discover my friend is a published author), one that struck me as beautifully written, albeit rather tragic and dark, that had me chuckling in one particular paragraph where the (Vietnamese) protagonist was griping about his mother's unbearable nosiness. We were just discussing this the other day, when my brother Louie reminded me that as recently as 10 - 12 years ago… that is, more than 25 years after we've resettled in the States… the majority of our acquaintances and relatives had absolutely no qualms about being openly inquisitive about other people's incomes. In fact, the surefire question posed to any Vietnamese graduate lucky enough to have landed himself a job (and this question would be spit out directly without any subterfuge whatsoever) was, "How much is your salary?"
My uncle who’s started living half the year in Vietnam and the other half in the States admitted to being completely perturbed having to get used to his countrymen's prying ways again, now that he realized how “Americanized” he has become. Indeed, it was most bothersome to him that people he’d met in the elevator for the very first time would not hesitate to ask him point blank how much he made per year, especially after figuring out he had returned from America.
Good God!
How reassuring! I didn't even know I was six feet under.
This brought to mind and confirmed my belief that the most quirky and annoying trait of the Vietnamese culture is our collective eagerness to convincingly pass along misinformation until it becomes the general consensus by sheer force of uncontradicted repetition. My dad had planted this belief in me and my siblings early on by recounting the Story of the Crow (summarized below) as a cautionary tale. Another highly common and equally despised Viet trait, according to my dad, is our unique irrationality. Of course, in his view more than 90% of the world's population is irrational anyway, and we Vietnamese just happen to be a specialized subset! At any rate, my dad is fond of this wildly unbelievable story that he uses often to illustrate the V. mentality that promotes passing on gossip with a dark twist and embellishing it with extraneous, incorrect details:
"A Vietnamese woman went to the hospital to give birth. Her baby was rather dark-skinned and her visitors indeed noticed and commented on the newborn's appearance, tactlessly comparing him to a crow (yet another illustration of the V. tendency to hyperbolize and be gloriously rude about it). By the time she was released from the hospital, it has become confirmed knowledge that this woman had given birth to a crow that immediately flew away, never to be seen again!"
Six years ago, when I first opened up about the early stage of my divorce to my best friend, she told me that a mutual acquaintance had “leaked” that my ex and I were faking our separation to head off financial troubles. How did one accomplish that, I’ve often wondered? To this day I have no idea as to who the original gossipmonger was or their motives for making something malicious out of thin air. The truth is the divorce itself happened to be the one and only source of our temporary financial strain, but who that has gone through a divorce themselves couldn't attest to that bit?
*****
Tư also shared with me her latest short story (I was proud to discover my friend is a published author), one that struck me as beautifully written, albeit rather tragic and dark, that had me chuckling in one particular paragraph where the (Vietnamese) protagonist was griping about his mother's unbearable nosiness. We were just discussing this the other day, when my brother Louie reminded me that as recently as 10 - 12 years ago… that is, more than 25 years after we've resettled in the States… the majority of our acquaintances and relatives had absolutely no qualms about being openly inquisitive about other people's incomes. In fact, the surefire question posed to any Vietnamese graduate lucky enough to have landed himself a job (and this question would be spit out directly without any subterfuge whatsoever) was, "How much is your salary?"
My uncle who’s started living half the year in Vietnam and the other half in the States admitted to being completely perturbed having to get used to his countrymen's prying ways again, now that he realized how “Americanized” he has become. Indeed, it was most bothersome to him that people he’d met in the elevator for the very first time would not hesitate to ask him point blank how much he made per year, especially after figuring out he had returned from America.
Good God!
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