"No, thanks; I'm straight"
Tomorrow, T___'s father's company is going to the beach, and T___ and I have been invited. T___ doesn't have a bathing suit, so yesterday evening we decided to go to the Old Quarter to find one. T___'s grandmother, "ba noi," was kind enough to accompany us and do all the bargaining.*
We walked to the bus stop, caught bus #9, which took us through Ba Dinh (near to where T___'s old house is located). We meandered into the Old Quarter once again and stopped at Hoan Kiem Lake stop. From Hoan Kiem, we walked to an entire street that sold many varieties of clothing. This street had been "blocked off" to all non-pedestrian traffic, but despite this many motorbikes rode through. The store owners were in the process of bringing their merchandise out into the middle of the road under collapsable tents for the night market, which began shortly. We walked slowly up the street, looking into stores on either side of the roadway, which had their fronts opened entirely so that all the merchandise could be easily seen. The set-up was extremely intelligent: from any side of the street a potential buyer could nearly glimpse an store's entire inventory, since the stores were very narrow, and if a it had to display a large amount of inventory, it would often spill it out onto the sidewalks. We bought nothing, however; It seemed as though we were just sizing up the place for good deals.
We decided to have dinner after walking the length of the streets, past what the French used to call "les Halles" during the colonial years, but which now is referred to as "Dong Xuan" Market, or "Cho'. Do^\ng Xua^n". Here is what the building looked like during the colonial years:
A photo of Cho Dong Xuan, taken from a colonial-era post-card (this photo may not always appear):
Another photo of Cho Dong Xuan, taken recently:
We walked around to the side of the building, where we saw a great variety of street-food sellers, who charged at us, smiling and holding menus; our fearless leader, however, passed them all and turned down all their initial offers; she then stopped with us slightly beyond the very last seller. I think the effect of this was a lower price. She didn't cling to tightly to any one offer, and finally decided on one; I wasn't in a capacity to really understand the difference between the sellers beyond the prices they offered, since at first glance they were all very similar: they all operated under the same large tent in the middle of the street; they all used small, plastic furniture that was inevitably too small; all operated informally out of movable steel iceboxes and propane grills.
I had pigeon and beer. It was great, and you could watch from your table as they grabbed an entire bird with its feathers removed from the metal storage box, prepared it and grilled it whole, then cut it up with scissors and brought it out on a plate. It was inspiring - as I watched, I thought mostly about the plague that pigeons were to the streets of Paris, and decided that some ingenious soul could significantly alter the way that pigeons are incorporated in everyday Parisian life. Imagine if Brasserie de la Mairie du 8e did something creative with the pigeons on its terrace - something to the tune of "Pigeon & Fries" (which admittedly is not very creative at all), but you get the idea. (If not in the name of short-run profits, perhaps in the name of public service...)
So afterwards, we retraced our path to the clothes shops. We went from shop to shop, occasionally bargaining for something that seemed worth while; ba noi was very careful about what she bought. After a while, we made our purchases and headed towards the bus stop; the air had become cool and it seemed that it would rain soon.
I should say here that I've gotten used to stares from people; it is somewhat disorienting, but not that bad overall. For example, at the swimming pool in Tay Ho District, of all the staring faces, it is always the children who are the most forthcoming with their hello's and hi's. They approach very cautiously with large smiles, whisper to each other and then call out "hello" a number of times, usually while laughing. They then giggle and splash away. There have been a few elderly individuals who have stopped and made kind gestures to me - one man, who was speaking with the bike lot attendant, smiled and kindly patted my back as I went to grab my bike. Others have stopped to ask, "where from?"; overall, I have learned to treat these experiences as part of a much broader process of cultural learning, which is just another way of saying that I am careful before reacting harshly to new experiences that seem soemwhat disorienting.
But, needless to say, there is a time for everything - even (perhaps especially?) harsh reactions. Still in the mindset of cultural learning, I encountered a young man at the Hoan Kiem lake bus stop that evening after our experience in the Old Quarter. I looked at him, smiled, then looked away at the lake. Moments later, as I glanced around, I noticed that he was still staring at me, smiling, and occasionally laughing. Trying to appear natural, I laughed, too. We then got on the bus.
T___ sat with her grandmother and I sat by myself in a two-person seat behind them. This young man boarded and took the seat next to me, which was very small and tight. He then began asking general questions about my origins, about what I was here for - questions I could mostly understand and partially respond to. I asked if he was a student, and T___ helped translate his answer, as well as his other questions - where did I go to school, how long was I to stay in Ha Noi, etc. He told me that he was twenty; "to' cung hai muoi," I responded, which hopefully meant, "I am also twenty."
Then there was a long pause, interrupted by a question he asked: "Ban co nguoi yeu chua?" I understood this question to mean "Do you have a girlfriend yet," while really the Vietnamese does not indicate whether it is a "boy-" or a "girl-friend" as the English translation does. "Nguoi yeu" means more literally "lover" - "nguoi" meaning "person" and "yeu" meaning "love." T___ had heard, and told me not to respond to this question. Feeling socially confident, however, I did not listen to her advice, and I pointed to T___. He understood and laughed. At that moment, T___'s grandmother waved good-bye and got off the bus.
He then jerked around, smiled, tugged my shirt out, and began pulling at my chest hair. I've noticed that the Vietnamese do not generally have chest hair, or if so have at most very little. I took this in mind and assumed that this was an acceptable way of emphasising this fact, and I laughed, as I could not really say anything else.
He then made a similar jerking motion and began sizing up my thighs by grabbing his own, then grabbing mine, emphasising with his hands how much larger mine were than his. (Throughout, I had left a careful hand placed over my cash-carrying pocket.) "Ah, yes," I thought to myself, "how rare this is in the United States. We are a society that is afraid of the human touch. This must be a sign of friendship" and YADA YADA YADA. Meanwhile, to my horror, as I was philosophizing about the differences between Vietnamese and American cultures, this young man had begun rubbing (EEK, AAH, GULP) my thigh, slowly and gently. It was only then (?!) that I realized that he was also tightly pressed up against my entire left-side in a very strange position.
I laughed what was probably the most nervous and awkward laugh of the entire trip, and smacked his hand away from my leg in a long-overdue unconscious reaction to the whole situation. I didn't want to hurt his feelings, so I tried to maintain a sense of composure throughout it all. Moments later, T___ said that we had reached our stop, and I fumbled out of the seat into the asile. Hoping to leave him with the impression that it had been nice talking to him, (which, up to a certain point, it had been) I waved good-bye and left. He waved as the bus drove away, and I stood there, smiling and waving as well.
In all reality, even then I didn't know what to think of it all. For conservative, Vietnamese society, would it really be common for a gay man to openly show affection in public, espeically to a stranger? I found this hard to believe. I wanted to politely say to him, "no, thanks; I'm straight," but how do you say that in Vietnamese? And was he even gay?
I'm still not entirely certain whether this man was gay; but if so, I then have to ask what it was about my demeanor that gave him the impression that I was as well, or whether it was all by accident. We'll see how things go in the future...
- - - - - - - - - - - -
* "Ba\ no^.i" is the title given to the father's mother: "ba" is how an elderly woman is respectfully addressed; "noi" means "within"; "ba" + "noi" refers to the grandmother who is within the family.
We walked to the bus stop, caught bus #9, which took us through Ba Dinh (near to where T___'s old house is located). We meandered into the Old Quarter once again and stopped at Hoan Kiem Lake stop. From Hoan Kiem, we walked to an entire street that sold many varieties of clothing. This street had been "blocked off" to all non-pedestrian traffic, but despite this many motorbikes rode through. The store owners were in the process of bringing their merchandise out into the middle of the road under collapsable tents for the night market, which began shortly. We walked slowly up the street, looking into stores on either side of the roadway, which had their fronts opened entirely so that all the merchandise could be easily seen. The set-up was extremely intelligent: from any side of the street a potential buyer could nearly glimpse an store's entire inventory, since the stores were very narrow, and if a it had to display a large amount of inventory, it would often spill it out onto the sidewalks. We bought nothing, however; It seemed as though we were just sizing up the place for good deals.
We decided to have dinner after walking the length of the streets, past what the French used to call "les Halles" during the colonial years, but which now is referred to as "Dong Xuan" Market, or "Cho'. Do^\ng Xua^n". Here is what the building looked like during the colonial years:
A photo of Cho Dong Xuan, taken from a colonial-era post-card (this photo may not always appear):
Another photo of Cho Dong Xuan, taken recently:
We walked around to the side of the building, where we saw a great variety of street-food sellers, who charged at us, smiling and holding menus; our fearless leader, however, passed them all and turned down all their initial offers; she then stopped with us slightly beyond the very last seller. I think the effect of this was a lower price. She didn't cling to tightly to any one offer, and finally decided on one; I wasn't in a capacity to really understand the difference between the sellers beyond the prices they offered, since at first glance they were all very similar: they all operated under the same large tent in the middle of the street; they all used small, plastic furniture that was inevitably too small; all operated informally out of movable steel iceboxes and propane grills.
I had pigeon and beer. It was great, and you could watch from your table as they grabbed an entire bird with its feathers removed from the metal storage box, prepared it and grilled it whole, then cut it up with scissors and brought it out on a plate. It was inspiring - as I watched, I thought mostly about the plague that pigeons were to the streets of Paris, and decided that some ingenious soul could significantly alter the way that pigeons are incorporated in everyday Parisian life. Imagine if Brasserie de la Mairie du 8e did something creative with the pigeons on its terrace - something to the tune of "Pigeon & Fries" (which admittedly is not very creative at all), but you get the idea. (If not in the name of short-run profits, perhaps in the name of public service...)
So afterwards, we retraced our path to the clothes shops. We went from shop to shop, occasionally bargaining for something that seemed worth while; ba noi was very careful about what she bought. After a while, we made our purchases and headed towards the bus stop; the air had become cool and it seemed that it would rain soon.
I should say here that I've gotten used to stares from people; it is somewhat disorienting, but not that bad overall. For example, at the swimming pool in Tay Ho District, of all the staring faces, it is always the children who are the most forthcoming with their hello's and hi's. They approach very cautiously with large smiles, whisper to each other and then call out "hello" a number of times, usually while laughing. They then giggle and splash away. There have been a few elderly individuals who have stopped and made kind gestures to me - one man, who was speaking with the bike lot attendant, smiled and kindly patted my back as I went to grab my bike. Others have stopped to ask, "where from?"; overall, I have learned to treat these experiences as part of a much broader process of cultural learning, which is just another way of saying that I am careful before reacting harshly to new experiences that seem soemwhat disorienting.
But, needless to say, there is a time for everything - even (perhaps especially?) harsh reactions. Still in the mindset of cultural learning, I encountered a young man at the Hoan Kiem lake bus stop that evening after our experience in the Old Quarter. I looked at him, smiled, then looked away at the lake. Moments later, as I glanced around, I noticed that he was still staring at me, smiling, and occasionally laughing. Trying to appear natural, I laughed, too. We then got on the bus.
T___ sat with her grandmother and I sat by myself in a two-person seat behind them. This young man boarded and took the seat next to me, which was very small and tight. He then began asking general questions about my origins, about what I was here for - questions I could mostly understand and partially respond to. I asked if he was a student, and T___ helped translate his answer, as well as his other questions - where did I go to school, how long was I to stay in Ha Noi, etc. He told me that he was twenty; "to' cung hai muoi," I responded, which hopefully meant, "I am also twenty."
Then there was a long pause, interrupted by a question he asked: "Ban co nguoi yeu chua?" I understood this question to mean "Do you have a girlfriend yet," while really the Vietnamese does not indicate whether it is a "boy-" or a "girl-friend" as the English translation does. "Nguoi yeu" means more literally "lover" - "nguoi" meaning "person" and "yeu" meaning "love." T___ had heard, and told me not to respond to this question. Feeling socially confident, however, I did not listen to her advice, and I pointed to T___. He understood and laughed. At that moment, T___'s grandmother waved good-bye and got off the bus.
He then jerked around, smiled, tugged my shirt out, and began pulling at my chest hair. I've noticed that the Vietnamese do not generally have chest hair, or if so have at most very little. I took this in mind and assumed that this was an acceptable way of emphasising this fact, and I laughed, as I could not really say anything else.
He then made a similar jerking motion and began sizing up my thighs by grabbing his own, then grabbing mine, emphasising with his hands how much larger mine were than his. (Throughout, I had left a careful hand placed over my cash-carrying pocket.) "Ah, yes," I thought to myself, "how rare this is in the United States. We are a society that is afraid of the human touch. This must be a sign of friendship" and YADA YADA YADA. Meanwhile, to my horror, as I was philosophizing about the differences between Vietnamese and American cultures, this young man had begun rubbing (EEK, AAH, GULP) my thigh, slowly and gently. It was only then (?!) that I realized that he was also tightly pressed up against my entire left-side in a very strange position.
I laughed what was probably the most nervous and awkward laugh of the entire trip, and smacked his hand away from my leg in a long-overdue unconscious reaction to the whole situation. I didn't want to hurt his feelings, so I tried to maintain a sense of composure throughout it all. Moments later, T___ said that we had reached our stop, and I fumbled out of the seat into the asile. Hoping to leave him with the impression that it had been nice talking to him, (which, up to a certain point, it had been) I waved good-bye and left. He waved as the bus drove away, and I stood there, smiling and waving as well.
In all reality, even then I didn't know what to think of it all. For conservative, Vietnamese society, would it really be common for a gay man to openly show affection in public, espeically to a stranger? I found this hard to believe. I wanted to politely say to him, "no, thanks; I'm straight," but how do you say that in Vietnamese? And was he even gay?
I'm still not entirely certain whether this man was gay; but if so, I then have to ask what it was about my demeanor that gave him the impression that I was as well, or whether it was all by accident. We'll see how things go in the future...
- - - - - - - - - - - -
* "Ba\ no^.i" is the title given to the father's mother: "ba" is how an elderly woman is respectfully addressed; "noi" means "within"; "ba" + "noi" refers to the grandmother who is within the family.
posted by Christopher Lovell at 10:02 AM
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