Hồ Chí Minh's Name

胡志明

I'm deliriously elated. I just recognized all the characters in Hồ Chí Minh's name as it's written in chữ Nôm. I realized this as I'm sitting in a principal's office, taking a break between classes. I'm here working part time teaching English to 12-year-olds. It's also one of the first times I've ever been in a principal's office without having been sent there by a frustrated teacher who's had it up to here with my shenanigans.

I'm staring at a plaque that hangs above the window overlooking the school's courtyard. The plaque bears the smiling face of Uncle Hồ, as he's affectionately called by many here in Vietnam. The plaque depicts his name in the traditional Vietnamese script, which is essentially Chinese characters that were borrowed and adapted. These characters on the plaque appear exactly the same in Chinese as they do in chữ Nôm.

胡
I recognize the first character from early this summer, when I had started to learn about the the Chinese two-stringed violin. In Chinese, the instrument is called èrhú, or 二胡. The name of this instrument in Vietnamese is đàn hồ. Đàn is Vietnamese for stringed instrument, and hồ is borrowed from the Chinese word hú. It's also the same hồ as in Uncle Hồ.

On this plaque bearing Uncle Hồ's picture, I saw the character for hú. The Vietnamese word hồ has a different meaning than its Chinese root word. In modern Chinese, hú means barbarian, foreigner, or wild, and it could mean recklessly or foolishly. And what's more, it's paradoxically both a common Chinese surname, and a term for someone from beyond China's borders. In chữ Nôm, the character 胡 has two pronunciations: hồ and hò. Hò means to sing, or to acclaim, and the only meaning of hồ is a surname.

志明
The other two characters on the plaque are Chí and Minh, and these are Uncle Hồ's given name. I didn't recognize how to say chí, or what it meant. But I recognized the two characters that chí is made of. The top one means scholar or officer. The bottom one means heart, mind, and soul. Poetic, I know: the mind of the scholar, the heart of the soldier. In chữ Nôm, the character chí means to have will power, or to be pious. Minh is one of the coolest words. The two characters that make up minh are the sun and the moon. In Chinese, this character is means bright, in the sense of light. However, in Vietnamese the word describes someone who is insightful and wise.

I suppose it's worth a mention, in a post about Hồ Chí Minh's name, that this was a name he chose for himself. It's also worth a mention that he held many names. When he was born, he was called Nguyễn Sinh Cung, and was given a new first name, Tất Thành, when he turned 10. In his twenties, he took the name Văn Ba. By the time he reached his thirties, he called himself Nguyễn Ái Quốc. He held this name for most of his adult life, aside from two visits to China in which he went by Lý Thụy and Hồ Quang respectively, a stay in Siam (now known as Thailand) when he was known as Thầu Chín, a period in Hong Kong when he was known as Tống Văn Sơ, and a visit to Moscow, when he called himself Lin. When he returned to Vietnam, he went by Già Thu before finally calling himself Hồ Chí Minh. Today, people call him Uncle Hồ.

Mind you, it wasn't me who imposed an archaic representation of Uncle Hồ's name upon him. I'm only reporting on the plaque hanging in the principal's office. Someone in charge of deciding what should be displayed in this institution of higher learning felt that the chữ Nôm version of Uncle Hồ's name would enrich the students' education. The decision might have been in deference to Uncle Hồ's early career, when he taught chữ Hán, or Chinese script, at a school in Phan Thiết.

I am not under any illusion that this plaque will have any impact on its intended audience. Not a single kid at that school, in all 50 classes with 45 students each, not a single one of them will notice or care. But maybe a fraction of a percent of the nerdy kids will develop an interest after they grow up to become part-time historians, language hobbyists, or all-around renaissance men and women. They could find themselves here someday, in the principals office--maybe to pick up their own child from school, or to start a new job. Here, they will see Uncle Hồ's name in a way that begs to be understood. And they'll begin to wonder. Maybe that's why Uncle Hồ is smiling like he does. Or, not.

Tết Trung Thu - Mid-Autumn Festival

Today's full moon marks the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. This moon marks a major holiday in many Asian cultures. In Vietnam, the holiday is called Tết Trung Thu.

I used to think that Tết meant the lunar new year. Actually, the new year is called Tết Nguyên Đán. I found out that there are four traditional holidays in Vietnam called Tết. The others are the lantern festival on the full moon of the first month, and the mid-year festival on the fifth day of the fifth month, called Tết Nguyên Tiêu and Tết Đoan ngọ respectively.

In Vietnam, the mid-autumn festival is a celebration of children. In the evening, parents fawn over their kids, give them presents, and feed them rich and savory sweets. They eat square mooncakes filled with seeds, dried fruits and dried meats. Together, families bring tea, wine or mooncakes to relatives, then venture outside to sing, light lanterns, watch lion dances, and admire the full harvest moon. In the moon, people say they can see a person who, according to folklore, was carried there tangled in the roots of a sacred banyan tree. Whether this person was a man or a woman is unclear to me.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

Hồ Tây - West Lake

After he had slain the monster fish Ngư Tinh, the Dragon Lord of Lac ventured to Long Biên, on the western bank of Sông Hồng, the Red River. There, he confronted another demon, a nine-tailed fox a thousand years old that had been devouring maidens by taking the form of a handsome man and enticing them into his lair. The dragon lord called upon a great deluge of water, assaulted the demon fox with the water, and vanquished it. In the wake of the battle, a vast swath of land along the Red River's western bank had been destroyed, and in its place was a lake.

It's the last week of August, and today is the first day of the eighth lunar month. This evening, people all over Hanoi are in the streets and burning offerings of wealth like hell money and paper representations of luxuries like gold, cars, new clothes, and even smartphones. The eighth month welcomes the season of the harvest. In fifteen days, the full moon with be large and luminous, and all over Asia people will admire its beauty, feast on mooncakes, light lanterns, and contemplate the change of season.

Throughout tonight, however, the moon will stay hidden below the horizon. And today the sun was still summer strong, and beat down on Mike and I as we took a walk around Hanoi's west lake. The walk was meditative. We felt the change of day like the turn of season. The journey took several hours. The sun meandered from its zenith and disappeared in the smoggy evening haze by the time we finally finished the entire circuit.

A lotus pond shack and little boats taken when collecting flowers and seed cups.

The journey was a laundry list of sights that ranged from offensive to inspirational. We walked with the lake on our right. The faint hot breeze carried the sick mucky stench of rot. In the lake, we saw a floating restaurant called the Potomac, sprawling acres of lotus ponds, bloated and bobbing corpses of countless fish, acrobatic dragonflies and bats, rowboats, an aquatic golf driving range, bubbles of gas that rose from the lake bottom, and ripples from schools of small fish.

Around the lake, trees lined the shore. In their shade, men fished with line wrapped around half-cans of baby formula and hauled catches of carp, crappies, and catfish. Old aunties and young children chattered and swung in green net hammocks, and ravaged-looking roosters crowed and shook their featherless heads. On our left, we passed foreign embassies, dilapidated French-colonial estates, empty upscale cafes, graffiti-covered walls, and several austere temples. Off in the distance, an enormous ferris wheel and about a dozen construction cranes loomed on the smoggy horizon.

Looking at it from far away, the lake was quite attractive. It was enormous and the still surface reflected the blue sky. But close up, the lake was a disturbing sight. The opaque green water seemed nearly putrid. Trash and litter floated everywhere. Pipe outlets dumped runoff and sludge into the water. My first glance at the lake revealed about two dozen dead fish rotting at the surface, all within a few yards of the shore.

However, the locals don't share my sensibilities regarding water quality. We saw many people fishing, by hook or by net, and keeping their catches. On the northwestern side, we saw someone swimming in the mucky green water. And toward the end of our journey, we watched a man wash his clothes in it. The people who use the lake don't seem to be fretful regarding its health.

As we walked, I realized I had seen other details that complicated my opinion of the lake's quality. During the day, I saw dozens of brilliantly colored dragonflies that darted across the surface and fought with each other midflight; to the victors went perches on semi-submerged sticks and the advantage of good breeding territory. In the evening, the dusky sky was full of bats that flitted overhead and stripped the air of gnats by the swarm. Animals like dragonflies and bats give a sense of an ecosystem's health. It seems the bats and dragonflies are in great abundance at Hanoi's west lake. I think I've seen fewer of them in what would be considered more "natural" areas.

Boatmen scoop golf balls from the net spanning the aquatic driving range.
Photo by Mike Cadette

I've started to rethink the way I look at environmental spaces within urban landscapes. My initial impression, that the lake is filthy and ecologically at risk, might not be right. Maybe the reason for so many dead fish is not pollution. So many dead fish could result from overpopulation due to an overabundance of food, perhaps extensive algae growth caused by nutrient-rich affluence from sewage. An abundance of fish would fit with the abundance of dragonflies and bats, which seem to be thriving here on the west lake. The success of these airborne species is bewildering, and a little bit heartening.

As Mike and I finished our lap, the sun vanished in the smoggy haze on the horizon. The air cooled, and the rotten stench, which had risen from the sun-warmed water during the day, had faded. As darkness fell, more and more people filled the shore, to spend their evening outdoors with friends, while in their homes, their televisions sat blank and idle. Vendors peddled icecream and balloons. Incense and the sound of bells emanated from glowing temples dispersed around the lake. And bats, more than one could count, cartwheeled and somersaulted through the air over Hồ Tây.

Tastes of Hanoi

There's only one thing on the menu at this iconic restaurant: it's grilled fish piled high with dill and green onion.

 
 

Phở could be considered to be Vietnam's flagship dish. North Vietnam's style of this beef noodle dish is simple and straightforward, with a few cuts of beef, a couple pinches of green onion and cilantro, and a big clump of fresh flat noodles.

 
 

Although we wouldn't know it in the states, but phở happens to be a versatile noodle. Here they are fried, as phở xào.

 
 

Another variant is called phở cuốn. It's a cold roll of beef and herbs, wrapped up in a noodle sheet and dipped in nước chấm.

 
 

If there's any Vietnamese food I'll miss most of all when we leave Hanoi, it's cốm, a dish of roasted young rice. Tender and nutty, cốm's green hue comes from the natural color of the immature rice. Unfortunately, it's a regional specialty. We can't even find it in Saigon.

 
 

Another reason the cốm has become a favorite: it makes a great ice cream.

30 Years After the War

The other day, Mike and I were walking through Hanoi when he made an interesting observation.

It's been thirty years since the war. The American War is what they call it here, and the Americans incontestably lost. Here we were, two Americans strolling around Hanoi, and we had this surreal feeling, like we were Japanese tourists in 1965 on a stroll through Washington D.C.

But there's a major difference between the imagined experience of the Japanese tourist and our own. Here in Vietnam, there's a strange esteem of American branding. The Japanese tourist in 1965 would never find products labeled "Super Japanese," step over images of Japanese cash lying on the streets, or see the national flag waving from restored Japanese military jeeps. Yet the promotion of American goods seems widespread here.
 

A US Army Jeep. See the US flag posted on the driver's side?

Hell money for the dead bears images of American cash.

The mirror in our hotel bathroom is etched with a pro-American sounding phrase...

...and the toilet bears a similar mark.

Hồ Hoàn Kiếm - Lake of the Returned Sword

Hồ Hoàn Kiếm, also known as Hồ Gươm, or Sword Lake

 
A brief legend of history:

At this lake in Hanoi's historic center, the gods handed emperor Lê Lợi a sword that he wielded to expel the Chinese from Vietnam in the 15th century C.E. With sovereignty restored, Lê Lợi went back to the lake and returned the sword to the gods. There was a turtle involved.

Morning martial arts

In the present, the lake is a morning spectacle. Martial artists with swords and staves pantomime fights with invisible opponents, with complex choreographed steps. Old timers tip-toe at the water's edge, face the water, and slap their bodies with open palms from head to foot. Walkers and joggers make laps around the lake as the sunrise lights up the green water. People welcome the morning with exercise. Everywhere you look, they stretch, do pull-ups, hang from posts, wave their arms. Hardly any of them are younger than forty. Most of them are at or beyond the age of retirement. But growing old does not mean slowing down for them.

At night, the lake glows with blue, red, green, and yellow lanterns. The surrounding buildings are brilliantly lit as well. And the lake captures all the light, reflects it, and doubles the festive appearance. Around the lake, couples spoon on concrete benches, hawkers peddle fried dough, and bats flit in the lamplight for dinner on the wing.

Lake Hoàn Kiếm is lovely. It's not without a dark side. Foul street runoff, litter, and acid rain threatens to destroy the very symbol of Vietnam's independence. Giant softshell turtles that once thrived in the lake are now nearly extinct, despite attempts to breed them in captivity.

The pagoda on the lake's island is called Tortoise Tower. It's named for the god of legend--a turtle--that lent the emperor the sword that liberated Vietnam. It seems the turtle is an important figure to Vietnam's cultural identity, and it would be a shame if the species in this lake disappeared forever--not just for the turtle's sake, or for the balance of the lake's ecology, but for the pride of the Vietnamese. Today, the people who come down to the lake for their morning exercise or evening festivities seem to believe that turtles still paddle about in the green water. I hope they are always right.

Saigon Funnies

Open Late
They sure don't close early.

 

Electricians
The wires are a cobweb, but I'm not sure if the people are like the spiders, or the flies.

 

Offensive Cream
The fact that it probably reeks of menthol would explain the name.

 

Press
The button to flush this toilet is the size of the lid itself.

 

"Pork" Bun
It's so cute. I want to eat it, but I don't.

 

Bún Thịt Nướng

We had just pulled up plastic stools to the folding metal table. The lady who ran the place assembled our orders of bún thịt nướng. She set out green plastic soup bowls, lined the bottoms with handfuls of cripsy lettuce and fragrant basil, dropped heaping mounds of white, tender vermicelli noodles on top, then sprinkled pinches of green onion, toasted peanuts, and smoky grilled beef over the lot.

The lady who made our food was a serious sort who had had short hair, dyed to a black hue she might have had when she was 30 years younger. When she put the bowls in front of us, I was ready to make short work of it. Bún is ome of my favorite foods.

The way to eat bún is this. Pour a bowlful of garlicy-spicy-salty-sour nước mắm over the the pile. Mix the noodles, greens and meat like a tossed salad to coat with the sauce. Direct big bite-sized pinches towards mouth. Repeat.

I have on occasion seen people hold a chopstick in either hand when tossing a bowl of bún or other mixed foods. This way makes sense, because two utensils are quick to toss up a salad. So I decided to give the two-handed technique a whirl.

The lady who ran the place saw me with one chopstick in either hand. She pointed at my hands and asked a sharp question. Lu responded brightly, laughed a little, and told me the lady had asked if I knew how to use chopsticks.

This misunderstanding amused me. Feeling little devilish, I brought one of the chopsticks closeer to my eyes and scrutinized it, as if trying to find the power button.

The lady barked again. Lữ answered, almost apologetically, and the lady muttered something as she walked away. I looked up from my bowl, which I had been mixing with chopsticks in one hand, the proper way, I suppose. Lữ relayed the conversation.

"She said, are you sure he knows how to use those? I said yes, he does, he's just playing.

"And she said, if he's playing, I'm going to pull his ear."

An American idiom for fooling around is to pull someone's leg. For pulling the shopkeeper's leg, I nearly got my ear pulled in return. I guess that's only fair.

The Mystery of the Kee Continues

During my wanderings, I often come across a particular Chinese character on the signs hanging above shops and markets. When written in English, the character is spelled kee. Usually the character is the second or third in the name of shops and markets. For example, some noodle shops in Hong Kong:

• 池記雲呑麵家 - Chee Kee Won Ton Min, Causeway Bay
• 權記雲呑麵 - Kuen Kee Won Ton Min, Central
• 劉森記 - Lau Sham Kee, Sham Shui Po
• 麥文記麵家 - Mak Man Kee Min, Tsim Sha Tsui
• 六記 - Luk Kee, Macau (not actually HK, but nearby)

Imagine you're in Macau, and hoping to score some noodles at Luk Kee. Imagine you flag down a local and query, where is Luk Kee? Imagine confusion, shifty eyes, and the local's glaringly obvious desire to make immediate distance between you both. No Cantonese speaker would understand Luk Kee. You could be standing in front of the restaurant, and behind you is a flashing yellow sign with the name of the shop in big bold red letters--in both Chinese and English--but if you ask for Luk Kee, there will be blank stares and awkwardness.

Had you instead pronounced the store name as luk-gei, the way the locals say it, you'd be chowing down on delicious noodles and dace meatballs in no time. Instead, you're stuck in language limbo, because the English spelling of kee is wrong. Why on earth would we deliberately spell a character so it's always mispronounced?

Hưng Ký Mì Gia, a Saigon noodle shop

I want to know where the spelling of kee comes from. The history of language tells no tales, but perhaps a clue can be found in Vietnam. The Vietnamese word ký is the same as the Chinese word. It means designation or record, as in the signature one would put on a document or work. And like the Chinese character, ký also means shop, and it commonly takes the same position as the second or third word in storefront signs.

More than half of Vietnamese vocabulary was borrowed from the Chinese language over the ages. Early Vietnamese literature was written in Chinese characters starting in the 6th century. Therefore, Vietnamese pronunciation of Chinese words likely reflects Middle Chinese phonetic conventions. In China, the spoken languages radiated and were influenced by external factors. These changes would have had little to no bearing on Vietnamese pronunciation.

It's possible that the Vietnamese pronunciation ký reflects the Middle Chinese pronunciation of the character. But, who knows? Even if the Vietnamese pronunciation reflects the Chinese language of antiquity, the connection doesn't explain the original question: why did the English speakers in Hong Kong take a Chinese character that was pronounced gei and spell it kee? The answer remains a mystery.

The Best Karaoke Gimmick Ever?

My experience with karaoke in Asia has been limited to private, exclusive gatherings conducted in small rooms with drink service, which sounds shady, but really is not. Renting a private space in a karaoke club offers a lot of perks. The only people in the rotation are friends. And the shy don't have to muster impossible courage to sing in front of a room full of strangers. These private karaoke rooms are by no means limited to Asia. Two of the best birthday parties I've been to in ten years have been made possible by a reserved room in New York City, an endless playlist, and the caterwauling of close friends that only ended at closing time.

However, the private karaoke room is not the best karaoke gimmick ever. It is silk flowers, arranged in a haphazard bouquet at cafe tables in a dark room as waiters breeze by carrying drinks on trays atop three fingers--silk flowers, with 10,000 đồng notes rolled up and tucked inside--silk flowers, passed from audience member to singer in appreciation and admiration for a good voice, or a good attempt--then silk flowers, deposited in a basket at the foot of the stage and collected as tips for the incredible live band that accompanies the singers with a broad spectrum of Vietnamese tunes and western standards. Oh yeah, a live band. That's a nice touch for karaoke too.

But the silk flowers, they are the best karaoke gimmick ever, for sure.

Cúng Cô Hồn - Strengthening

All through the seventh lunar month, Vietnamese Buddhists pay homage to the spirits of the dead. They offer prayers, burn effigies of wealth, and present various cooked and raw dishes for hungry ghosts that haunt the night. It seems that ceremonies in the seventh month take on special significance. Today we watched the ceremonial opening of our friends' restaurant. Our friends made a special offering to make sure the opening would not disturb resident spirits. This offering is called cúng cô hồn.

The glass altar

Before dawn, many preparations were already in place. The glass altar, mounted to the mint colored wall at the back of the dining room, bore a small plate of fruit, smouldering incense, and cups of liquid--either water or a firey liqour--all set before a porcelain statue of a bodhisattva. This altar was one of two in the room. In the center of the dining area, one of the dark wooden tables was arranged with a much more elaborate spread of offerings with special significance to the ritual to appease the spirits.

The five-fruits tray and globe chrysanthemums

A large tray held a variety of fruits, each chosen for its symbolic meaning. These trays are called mâm ngũ quả, or five-fruit-tray. The number five is auspicious in Vietnamese culture--the hands and feet each have five digits, the body has four limbs and one torso, the elements are five in number, and the five directions are the cardinal points plus the center. The fruits are selected to represent five colors, five flavors, and five sounds. The contents of these trays vary from region to region, according to availability and regional specialty. In the north, it's common to see green bananas, yellow Buddha's hand, red pomegranate, white persimmon, and dark plum. The tray this morning represented the fruits common to the south--green mango, yellow papaya, red dragon-fruit, white coconut, and dark custard apple. Besides their colors, these fruits are also chosen for the auspicious words they rhyme with. When said aloud, the words sound almost like a phrase, something like: "pray prosperous enough to enjoy”. Trays are not limited to five fruits, and this one also contained grapes and an orange.

Besides the fruit on the table, there was a set of small glass cups, bowls of dry rice and coarse salt, a vase of yellow globe-shaped chrysanthemums, a plate of betelnut, and stacks of paper, decorated to look like cash and gold. This paper has many names in Vietnam, including tiền âm phủ (hell money), tiền địa phủ (government money), tiền vàng bạc (gold and silver), and tiền vàng mã (gold notes). The burning of hell money is an offering that ensures the prosperity and fortune of the spirits. The tray on the table held a veritable international bankroll, with various denominations of Euros, Chinese Yuan, and US hundred dollar bills. Other hell money paper, lined in foil, represented pure gold. These offerings of wealth were to be burned after the ceremony.

Lighting incense cones

The sun was not yet over the buildings across the street when a Buddhist monk in black robes arrived to begin the ritual. He passed through the restaurant, set his orange bag down on the table, and began making preparations for the ceremony. He lit three cones of incense and placed them in the ash-laden ceramic censer on the table. Next, he lit six incense sticks and placed three, side by side, in censers both on the wall mounted altar, and on the table. Opening his bag, he removed an orange robe, slipped it on, and began the ceremony.

Our friend stood behind the monk and copied his movements. Together, they lit twelve more incense sticks and held them vertically at eye level. When the monk bowed, our friend bowed as well. But only the monk touched his ring finger to his thumb of his right hand, and waved it in the smoky air as if writing unseen letters. Only his lips pursed and quivered in silent prayer. He was natural, unpretentious. A bracelet of thick orange beads with a golden yellow tassel hung over the left sleeve of his robe. His orange robe bore a patch from where a candle had burned a hole. His white socked toes poked out from plain sandals. He was quiet and serious. Our friend said he was well known.

Burning of hell money

Sunlight bounced off the street and splashed into the restaurant. The monk arranged the set of six glasses in a row, opened a plastic bottle of liquor, and poured six glasses. He brought three of them outside, and poured each one onto the sun-warmed sidewalk. He returned, and filled the empty cups with tea. He stacked the white bowls of rice and salt, raised it to his forehead three times, mixed them in a larger bowl, and carried the mixture outside to scatter on the sidewalk. Finally, he offered the tray of hell money, lifted it above his head, then carried it outside to be burned. The monk crouched, thumbed through the stacks of hell money with the speed of a bankteller, scrunched the notes, and lit a wad. Tossing the burning wad to the sidewalk, he added more scrunched paper until the tray was empty, and only ashes remained.

With the account of hell money exhausted, the monk returned inside, removed his orange robe, folded it, placed it in his bag, and departed. We cleared the table of the remainder of the offerings: the fruits, the flowers, the incense and censer. Our friend poured the three cups of liquor and three cups of tea onto the sidewalk. The ritual was complete. Rituals like this are how the reverent announce themselves to resident spirits, in the hopes that the offerings will create a strong, positive relationship between the new business and old ghosts. The scent of incense was still in the air when breakfast service started. Within an hour, our friend hosted more than two dozen customers, and her business was off to a prosperous start.

A Vietnamese Guy Walks Into a Bar...

This blog is a joke. Seriously. Tonight, Lữ told a knee-slapper, and I thought I'd share it. The joke reveals something about the Vietnamese culture, she said. What that something is, I can't say, so I'll leave it up to you.

A census taker goes to a small village, and he asks the first man he sees, excuse me sir, could you let me know what's the population of this village?

Under a thousand, the villager says.

The census taker says okay, but would you be more specific?

The villager replies, eleven.

Vu-Lan - Absolution for Wandering Souls

Today was one of four major lunar holidays in Vietnam. All month long, Buddhist Vietnamese have performed rituals for the sake of the ghosts from the underworld that have been set free to roam the land of the living. Through these rituals, the ghosts receive gifts like food and burned offerings, and, if the circumstances permit, are absolved from suffering for sins committed during life.

Praying at Chùa Vĩnh Nghiêm

On the first day, when the moon is new, Vietnamese families flock to temples and pray, and set copious amounts of food on shrines to feed the hungry spirits of their ancestors. They burn incense and paper representations of wealth that bring prosperity to the dead. Interesting note, it seems the paper "money" commonly burned here is the US $100 bill. The month closes with similar offerings, as the people bid farewell to the ghosts returning to the underworld.

When the moon is full during the month of roaming souls, this day is called Vu-lan, the period when spirits can receive absolution. The observance comes from a Buddhist directive to liberate deceased ancestors from suffering caused by bad karma during life. The day is also called Tết Trung Nguyên, or day of wandering souls. On this day, which was today, the lost and unforgiven spirits wander the streets in full force. They are exceptionally hungry, because they have no families of their own who would feed them.

To appease these wild spirits, people pray, both in temples and at home. At home, they set up shrines to their ancestors, according to Vietnam's Wiki page. On these shrines people place salt, gold, and paper representations of real items. These paper replicas include clothing, appliances, electronics, vehicles...I've heard even paper housekeepers are up for the offerings. These items, once reduced to ashes, bestow prosperity and comfort on the deceased.

Offerings for wandering hungry ghosts

While I didn't run across any devotionals for family ancestors today, I did come across curbside makeshift shrines that people made to offer hospitality for lonely, hungry ghosts that have no family of their own to feed them. As dusk approaches, the living place food offerings on the streets for the spirits of the dead to eat their fill. The people slip indoors after darkness falls to avoid running into any hungry ghosts. Woe be to those who neglect to feed these angry spirits. When ghosts go unfed, they go unpardoned, and the angry ghosts drag the spirits of the living down to the underworld out of spite.

We started the day at Chùa Vĩnh Nghiêm, a temple with a seven story pagoda, which is situated at the north end of our neighborhood. Traffic in front of the temple crawled to a halt as taxis dropped off worshippers, and dozens of scooters crowded the gate, inching their ways between pedestrians and around buses. In the courtyard, people burned bundles of incense and the smoke clung to the air. At the top of the stairs in front of the temple, a man sold sparrows from a wood and wire crate, which are released for good luck. Inside, the altars practically spilled over with food and money offerings. Pink lotus blossoms, with petals folded over to present the golden seed cup within, adorned altars and memorials.

Later on, I roamed around the Chợ Lớn section of Saigon, to compare Vietnam's Day of Wandering Souls to the Hungry Ghost Festival of China. I was in Hong Kong during the Hungry Ghost Festival in 2009. It was awesome. The night air had more incense than LA has smog. All night long, people burned paper money and paper gold ingots by the sackful. While the adults largely stayed indoors in reverence of the tradition, the younger generations wandered about the city excitedly, questing after hungry ghosts, elusive temples, and dramatic burn-piles. On one of the steep streets near my house, a green dumpster blazed with a fire that licked the sky and cast strange shadows on the city street. It was an unforgettable spectacle.

In Chợ Lớn tonight, the scene was much more laid back. Hardly more than a few visitors came to the temple to the east of Chợ Bình Tây, which is the district's iconic market and which also was largely abandoned and closed down by late afternoon. I passed by a scant handful of curbside offerings. And the streets were as crowded as I would expect on a Sunday evening, with a vegetable market full of shoppers picking up last minute items for dinner.

As I passed through, I saw a small crowd of about six people enthusiastically picking over something on the vegetable mat on the ground. I peeked through and saw a pile of red rambutans, which the lady said was priced at 12 cents a pound. I picked up two, and that was me, wandering through the streets of Saigon like a hungry ghost, and finding an offering of satisfying rambutans.

Ốc - They Carry Their Homes

I took a walk in the rain at the outskirts of town tonight, on roads that made me wonder, what was I thinking when I decided to take this walk? Through ankle-deep, murky curb runoff, over bridges with crowded oncoming scooters and no pedestrian walkway, across a tollbooth as uniformed guards with blinding flashlights harassed hapless truckdrivers. Tired of my taxing trek, I found a bus stop and waited for a bus, on the corner of a moonlit grassy field that once was natural flooded swamp, but has been drained to support commercial development. When the rains come, animals, which once called the swamp home, emerge under the cover of darkness. They hop and creep and crawl and splash, just like they used to before the land was drained.

From the bus stop, I saw three men skulking about in the vines and tall swampgrass. With dim flashlights, they probed the damp vegetation, and intermittently reached out to pluck something the size of a stone from the lush greenery. I snuck in to get a closer look at the bags, saw the form of a conical spiral pile, and realized that the plastic-sandaled men were hunting for snails. I gestured to a guy with a distended bag, smiled, and pointed at the bag with an open palm. He said ốc, ốc, ốc, ốc, rapidly as if he had just stubbed his toe. I think I made him nervous.

I pantomimed eating by drawing my five fingertips toward my mouth as if taking a bite of food. He nodded, which seemed to affirm my guess that he and his companions were gathering edible snails. I could be wrong, since he didn't say the word for yes, that's correct. But I'm pretty sure he was going to eat them. Or perhaps he was going to sell them to one of the numerous late-evening sidewalk cafes that specialize in snails, clams, and fertilized duck eggs, all served with bottles of beer. Finding enough snails to make a meal, or to sell for a decent profit, is a lot of work. Losing ground to development must make it even harder. It seems that the animals weren't the only ones that were left high and dry when the swamps were drained.

The word for snail is ốc. This is confirmed by several people. Interestingly, the word ốc according to Google seems to mean "house," probably because the little guys appear to carry their houses around on their backs. I thought I'd double check with Lữ, but she's not convinced that ốc means house. Whether Google is right or not, snails certainly do carry their homes on their backs.

Either way, it was interesting to see people foraging for dinner in an urban greenspace, just a few feet from bustling trucks and honking scooters at a busy intersection. I don't think I'll have the same luck if I try to forage for dinner in Central Park. And, what would I eat, anyway?

Pl-ice-tic Skating

Skating on synthetic ice is kind of... nice

"Where else can you get bit by a mosquito when ice skating," Mike said, chuckling as he glided by me, a little wobblier than I'm used to seeing when he has skates laced to his feet, but skating nonetheless, on a giant sheet of white, slippery plastic.

We checked out the synthetic ice skating rink, on the third floor (what we would call the fourth floor) of the public sports and rec complex near our apartment. The rink is a jigsaw puzzle of white polymer tiles. Loud techno-pop and air conditioning turned way down greet you when you walk in. The place is full of local kids who go there to learn figure skating, play co-ed hockey, or hang out and flirt with each other. You have the odd adult who chooses to skate laps in a single lane like it was a pool and not a circular rink, who is more of a hazard than anything else. And you have Mike and I, who are perhaps the only people there who know what it's like to skate on real frozen water.

The ice is fake, but the skates are very real. The blades are sharpened metal. The hockey skates are just like the ones we'd use on ice. The figure skates have been slightly modified; the serrated toes are ground smooth so they don't tear up the plastic.

While I wouldn't say that the sensation of real ice is successfully replicated, the synthetic rink isn't bad. Two factors contribute to a reasonably similar skating experience. The rink is lubricated to reduce friction. I think they use some sort of silicone grease. It gets all over everything, and it's kind of gross to touch, but it's not smelly.

However, some friction is still necessary to create the illusion of real ice. The friction heats up the blade. Skate from one end to the other and the blades are too hot to touch. The hot blades literally melt the plastic, increasing the skate's grip. I lost grip and fell a couple times. I could blame my blades for not being hot enough, or blame the nasty grease on the rink, but instead, I'm just gonna say, if you're not falling, you're not trying hard enough.

We ran into a Vietnamese-American, who is somehow involved with either the activities at, or the development of the sports and rec complex. He told us that this is the only synthetic ice rink in Vietnam, until a new one opens at the Vincom Center in about 10 days. He also told us that a mat gets rolled out onto the plastic rink on Sundays, and the rink gets converted into an archery range. You know that's where we'll be.

Renew, Reuse, Recycle

Hand-made fine tuners

Lately I've been learning to play a traditional Vietnamese musical instrument, a two-stringed bowed instrument called đàn nhị. I like it, and I want one of my own. But finding a model like the one I've been learning on has been sort of a challenge. My teacher's fifty-year-old đàn nhị is heavily customized. It has different strings, a different base, and much different accessories than the ones in the stores.

The most significant difference is the fine tuners on my teacher's đàn nhị, which hang from ends of the two wooden tuning pegs. When I was in the music store, I asked the storekeeper if she sold any of the fine tuners. But she never even heard of them. So I went to my teacher to find out what they were called. And they don't have a name. Because they're unique. The guy who made them was a friend of my teacher, the same guy who bolted a piece of metal and wood to the base of the đàn nhị to give it more height and weight. Since the teacher's friend passed away, no one makes those tuners anymore.

People make things here. And they repair things when they get broken. For a place that has street sweepers on hand 20 hours a day to sweep up the styrofoam, plastic bags, and empty bottles from the sidewalks and streets, I'm not sure I'd call Vietnam a throw-away culture. People in a throw-away culture buy cheap things and use them until they break. They throw the broken things out and replace them with new things entombed in packaging and shipped from far, far away. In a throw-away culture, to be "green" and "environmentally friendly" is considered hip and trendy, yet it's more of a marketing gimmick than a lifestyle choice.

Coconut lacquer vase

On a walk through Saigon, I pass by cobblers with pants smeared in black glue, who tack new rubber soles onto piles of old shoes. In a market, vendors shovel crepe-mix and rice into bags using modified plastic bottles; the tops of the bottles are cut away at an angle, turning them into rather effective scoops. And coconuts are recycled, too. After the juice has been imbibed, the husks are dried and used as fire-fuel. And the hard shells are crafted into wine bottles or lacquerware.

I've been told that cars here do not depreciate in value like cars do in the states because the ones here aren't easily replaceable. An imported car has a 100 percent import tax tacked on the price tag, and to the best of my knowledge, Vietnam has no domestic car. So, instead of buying a new car every five years, people keep fixing their old ones.

One time, I saw a guy scraping hard white meat from a brown coconut into fine shreds. Considering the glut of coconuts we enjoyed a while back, it would have been nice if we had some alternative to spooning the meat out in clumsy chunks. We could have pressed the shreds to extract the coconut cream, or mixed them with black sesame to pile onto rice crêpes and roll into homemade bò bía ngọt. I thought of the held-held tool the guy used, and Lữ seemed to remember it too, so we began a hunt to find one and buy it.

When we made bánh tét last week, we learned the sticky rice is mixed with shredded coconut. There was a lot of sticky rice, and the pile of empty husks told us there was a lot of shredded coconut. Lữ asked her cousin how she shredded them all, and she showed us a tool, which was homemade, that far exceeded our needs. It was a cut and bent piece of iron the length of an arm. The tool had a serrated edge on one side and a tripod on the other that rests on the ground. The person places a bowl under the edge and sits on the tool. As the person rotates the coconut around the serrated edge, shreds drop into the bowl below. Lữ's cousin, as generous as she is a phenomenal cook, offered us her coconut shredder to take home. Her polite insistence made it hard to decline the offer, but the tool is as big as some garden equipment, and it far surpasses our needs.

So we went to the market and asked the vendor for the handheld variety. They didn't have one. In fact, they didn't even know what we were talking about. You would think in a country that makes so much use of coconut, that the vendors would know the tools, which would be available everywhere.

Well, they are available anywhere, in a sense. I just saw one tonight. It was a steel bar the length of a pen, with a bottlecap bolted on at one end. No one here would think of sell something that can be slapped together in minutes for free using scraps from a garage. Vietnam, while I wouldn't give it that trendy label of "green," can offer many lessons of how to make things last, and how turn trash into treasure. For now, though, I don't trust my instrument-making skills. So if I want a đàn nhị that doesn't sound like a cat in heat, I'll have to buy one. And, maybe one day, I'll make the fine tuners myself.

Loanwords from French... On Loan

We were ordering food at a restaurant, and I found a word on the menu that looked a little familiar. I think it was "Alcart." I asked what it meant. Mike laughed at me. "À la carte."

It had occurred to me that the Vietnamese language is full of various words from other languages. For example, the Vietnamese word for t.v. is tivi. Since I don't know French, I probably run across these loanwords all the time and don't even know it.

I thought it would be fun to browse through the internets and find some interesting Vietnamese loanwords. Thought it would make a good blog post. Then I stumbled on this blog on French loan-words. And I realized my post on loanwords would only stack up if I found another thousand words that weren't already posted. So that blog's prolific author is "loaning" us this list, as it were.

I don't know Chinese either, and I've heard, from a semi-reliable source, that Chinese words constitute about 60 percent of the Vietnamese vocabulary. A post on Chinese loanwords would be similarly interesting. Due to the variety of Chinese dialects, to include the ancient language of the first 1000 years or so of Chinese occupation, those loanwords are tremendously complex. For now, I'm thinking about a post on that subject sometime. But if I come across a source as comprehensive as the one on French loanwords, it might just loan us the information, too.

Wow, getting other people to write my posts is... kind of lazy. Hope this doesn't come back and bite me in the butt. Never a borrower be, quoth the bard.

Đám Giổ

Wikipedia, you've failed me, and you shall be punished. I came to you for information about the Vietnamese death anniversary. You told me the event is called giổ, and Wiki-cited compound words include: ngày giỗ, or day of the death; đám giỗ, or death anniversary ceremony; and bữa giỗ, or death anniversary feast. But you are wrong, Wiki. I just talked with Lữ, and she said the lone term giỗ means to console, not death anniversary, as you have so erroneously claimed. She said the term for the death anniversary is đám giổ, and Wiki is fail. That's okay, you reader-edited encyclopedia, you're not the only fail. The modern day omniscient oracle, Google, translated đám giổ to mean feast. Not death anniversary feast--just plain ol' piles-of-food feast. Google, go stand in the corner next to Wikipedia. Update: we just found out that the word for console is not giỗ, but dỗ, and the two words sound the same when spoken with a southern accent. The bottom line is: no one ever says giỗ for the death anniversary. Everyone says the words đám and giỗ together.

On Sunday morning, Lữ's cousins held a đám giổ at their house to honor the late mother of the husband. As far as the Wiki compound words go, the đám giổ truly was a celebration. More than sixty guests showed up. Ironically, I was told that it was a small gathering, and not a lot of people had been invited. And with a team of serious cooks working overtime to make a mountain of food, it truly was a feast.

Bánh bò nướng

On each table were plates that spilled over with golden, crispy bánh xèo crepes stuffed with clams, shrimp, and beansprouts; bowls of simmered chicken and curried beef with carrots cut like flowers; roasted pork with caramel-colored crackling skin; stacks of white, scissor-cut rice noodles; green leafy veggies and fragrant mint basil by the pile; loaves of sliced baquettes; wheels of red watermelon; leaf-wrapped rounds of yellow and maroon bánh tét slices; and one of my all time favorites: bánh bò nướng, a baked white sugar cake with a moist spongy texture and a fermented fruit flavor, which to Mike's and my surprise was supposed to be eaten with bites of roast pork. This repast of epic proportions was served at 10 a.m., just in time for second breakfast.

There is an order to service. The first to be served were the spirits of the ancestors. The cousin's husband placed the most attractive plates, one of each dish, onto the altar. Then he poured wine into cups and set them next to the dishes. And he lit incense. Whispy coils rose as it burned, and its smoke filled the breezy, sun-drenched room with a scent of reverence and remembrance. Meanwhile, Dì Tư's husband went through the tables, lighting more incense and pouring wine three times into a glass on each table. Ater the spirits were given enough time to eat their fill, the plates were taken down and placed on one of half a dozen tables.

Second to eat are (almost) everyone else. The tables filled in, hands cracked open cans of root beer and poured it over ice, and mouthfuls of glorious food traveled from serving dish to bowl to mouth, while occasionally making a brief stop at a dipping plate for a splash of soy sauce with garlic and chili, or for a dash of nước mắm. The men shouted and pointed and grabbed select bits of food and dropped them in Mike's and my bowls. In particular, the Vietnamese get a kick out of serving the steamed and dressed heads of chicken to folks like Mike and me. And Mike and I get a kick out of letting folks, like our tablemates, watch us eat chicken heads.

The middle age men at our table drank wine while they ate. The oldest men teetotaled, which may explain how they were able to live so long. During the meal, a man who wasn't exactly eating with us hovered over our table, cracked jokes, poured lots of unfiltered rice wine from a plastic pitcher, and passed the glasses around the table. The wine was served in the same shot-sized glasses in which tea was served before the meal. Nobody had their own glass--they were shared. The last person to have a drink passed the refilled glass off to the next person, who typically downed the wine in a gulp. Mike lifted a communal glass to eye level and said hey, alcohol kills germs, right?

After everyone else had eaten, the women who had made all the food in the first place finally sat down to put what was left of the food into their bellies. To me, Lữ's cousin seemed the lead cook in this whole affair. But she never even had a single bite of her own food. Nearly everything that came out of her kitchen, besides bread, noodles, or rice, had some sort of meat in it, and she's vegetarian this month. This happens to be the seventh month in the lunar calendar. In addition to the days when the moon is new or full, practicing Buddhists take the seventh month to eat vegetarian, an act which invests in good karma for the spirits of ancestors.

Which brings us back to the issue of not accepting whatever "fact" you read on the internet. In a post a couple days ago, I said we're currently in the sixth month. Sorry. I miscalculated and reported an error, based on a previous error from July. Now, Riffing Indochina is going to stand over there in the corner with Wikipedia and Google.

Real Cooks

There are two characteristics of real cooks.

Real cooks can do more with an open flame than grill meat. Anyone can soak a steak or chicken in a marinade and slap it over coals--real cooks can take a fire and cook anything.

Real cooks keep the food coming. Dish after dish, plate after plate. No matter how many guests, real cooks make sure there are always delicious leftovers.

Lữ's cousin is a real cook. (It still amazes me how she can cook rice over an open fire, in a metal pot no less.)

Bánh tét

I've been told that in Vietnamese culture, people might not know on what day they were born. In contrast, they hold an enormous celebration to observe the day of an ancestor's death. To prepare for these celebrations, family and friends gather and cook enough dishes to feed a hundred people.

One of these dishes is bánh tét, a glutinous rice and filling mixture wrapped in banana leaves and cooked for hours. It's usually served for new years, hence the name tét. To prepare this dish requires many skills: preparing the ingredients, wrapping and binding the rolls, and boiling them--in this case, the ability to cook over a fire is another crucial skill. We got the chance to try our hands at making these savory and sweet rolls during a return trip to Vĩnh Long, to observe an annual death anniversary for the mother of the husband of Lữ's cousin.

As before, we traveled into the Mekong Delta by bus, and arrived at the house of Lữ's aunt, Dì Tư, on Friday. As before, Dì Tư welcomed us outside, hustled us into the house, and cracked open a coconut for each of us before spreading a heap of food on the table for our dinner. She made sweet grilled pork with lemongrass, and a chicken soup with bamboo shoots and green onions. Bamboo shoots happen to be in season; for the best bamboo, you have to go to the farmer, because the stuff in the market could be a few days old. For dessert, Dì Tư sliced open some yellow Thai rambutans and the sweetest longyans I've ever had. Bellies stuffed, we washed and headed for bed early, to be up around dawn and on our way to the cousins' to help make bánh tét.

In the morning, we rode scooters to the cousins' beautiful newly built house, nestled between a south-flowing cocoa-colored river and an orchard teeming with pomelo, green skinned oranges, papaya, and limes. Lu's cousin and several ladies I hadn't met before sat by the kitchen door and spread bowlfuls of a glutinous rice mixture of dried coconut, salt, sugar and green onion onto squares of banana leaf. Outside, her husband shoveled dirt from a trench, which is where he later put the footing for a wall. He looked up, saw me, smiled, and waved. Lu's cousin offered us iced coffee. I said, if it's no trouble. Her husband put down his shovel, started the kettle, cracked the ice, and assembled four mugs of coffee the color of milk tea.

Making bánh tét is a social occassion, an event that draws many helpers. Every square inch of cooking space in the kitchen was occupied by someone assisting in the preparation. The immediate reasons for all the helpers is obvious--I would estimate that it takes a skilled person about 10 minutes to fill and wrap a single roll. The ladies made more than 50, which would have taken one person an entire day to prepare. But the purpose of gathering to make bánh tét is more than pragmatic. People get together to because a common purpose instills a sense of community. Lữ observed that sense is missing in Vietnamese-American households, remembering all the times her mom would make bánh tét alone.

We sat on the floor and watched the bánh tét-making process. The rice mixture is spread on a banana leaf, then a doughy yellow stick of mung bean paste or short sweet bananas in syrup is laid on the rice. The whole banana leaf-rice-filling package is rolled up tight, bound three times, then tied up like a roast. The cord comes from a pretty little plant with a green, grassy crown. Depending on the way each bánh tét is tied, there will be either one or two braids of grass hanging from one end of the roll, which tells you what's inside--one braid for banana, two for beans.

While Mike and Lữ tried their hands at tying the rolls of bánh tét, I watched one of the ladies to pick up techniques and listened to hear what challenges met Mike and Lữ in their attempts. Apparently, it's bad to tie the rolls too loosely. Keeping this pointer in mind, I put some muscle into the task when I started to tie one up. My first couple of ties were nice and tight, and the banana leaf bulged from between the wrappings, with evenly-spaced bindings. But as I got to the middle of the roll, thick mikly coconut-rice liquid seeped from the bottom of the roll. My hands slipped from the viscousy goo, and the cords broke as I tried extra hard to keep hold. What started out as a neatly tied roll began to turn into a mess, which did not go unnoticed. My misfit bánh tét sent the ladies into fits of laughter.

I felt my face flush in my embarrassment. My first chance to do something in front of all these new people, and I screwed it up. I know I'm not supposed to take getting laughed at too seriously. I also know that the laughter wasn't scornful or mocking. If anything, it was supposed to be supportive, in a weird and unfamiliar way. But I'm hardwired by childhood tragedies to see getting laughed at as anything but supportive. I still have demons of public failure and ridicule to overcome.

Not everyone took notice of my mess-up with the bánh tét. The slapping sound of small feet on tile announced the arrival of a four-year-old boy who sprinted into the kitchen. With a buzz cut and bright orange polo, he crouched to slurp a strawful of iced tea from a thermos bucket among the grasslike strands on the floor. The kid was naive and clumsy, which made him fun to watch. I have to admit--actually, I hate to admit it--but the joy I felt in watching this little plodding kid probably wasn't much different from the joy the ladies felt in watching my blundering with the bánh tét binding. And, it kind of helped to drive the lesson home, too.

All the rolls, both one-braided and two, went into a 50-gallon pot to boil over a fire. Eight or nine hours later, the bánh tét was cooked, hanging to cool, and ready for the death anniversary on the following day. We got a preview taste, and sliced open a banana one to find the sugars had carmelized to a rich maroon color, and the rice had taken on a hint of green. It was absolutely beautiful. And now, we'll be taking home the recipe to cook them ourselves. For me, however, my first order of business when I get back will be to post pictures first.