Observation
Sitting in LAX waiting for the redeye to JFK. I haven’t experienced any delays because of increased security. Hanoi’s Noibai Airport was not crowded today and everything worked smoothly; Taipei was no problem, either, though they were doing random searches after clearing the gate and before getting on the plane. And LAX was all right, too, [...]
House of Nem
Gender Roles in Vietnam
My friend Hien and I were walking around Hanoi today and we stopped in a children’s clothing shop so she could look for a jacket for her nephew. While she was shopping I took the two photos below. As in the US, the training begins early, from infancy, really. [Click on the images for bigger [...]
Notes on the Hanoi Literature & Translation Conference
The main business of the conference concluded today and most of the delegates went off to Ha Long Bay, but since my flight out is early Monday morning, I didn’t accompany them. I hate group travel and probably would not have gone along in any case. There was a huge buffet dinner last night hosted [...]
Vietnam News Report on Translation Conference
The local press has been following the conference very closely and even I have been interviewed three times by journalists. Here is the only English language report I’ve found so far.
The Full Ceremonial Monte
Attended the opening ceremony of the translation conference this morning — hundreds of people in the new, monumental National Convention Center. There was dancing and singing and speech-making and then lunch. I met a lot of the writers — American and Vietnamese — that I’ve corresponded with over the years, or seen in passing on [...]
Translation Conference
Moved yesterday to the conference hotel, which is really more of a compound of freestanding “Villas” in a lovely landscape of topiary and tennis courts, one of which is right outside my window. The Vietnamese are great sportsmen and sportswomen — they start playing before six in the morning and don’t leave off until nearly [...]
Improving
My Vietnamese must be improving. Walking back to my hotel after dinner this evening, I watched as a big garbage truck picked up the Vietnamese version of dumpsters and without thinking about it read the motto on the side of the truck: Green — Clean — Beautiful. Civic uplift is the same everywhere, apparently. And [...]
More on “Framing” Vietnam
When I get back to campus on the 12th of January classes will have already begun. I have arranged for a colleague to show a film to my Understanding Vietnam class and pass out the syllabus. In working out that syllabus I followed chronology and convention in dividing up Vietnamese history, but also in the [...]
Blustery Evening
It’s a blustery evening in Hanoi. I’m sitting in a cafe near the cathedral drinking tea and watching the world go by. I’m much looser, less brittle, than on my last trip, who knows why? But I’m definitely living in calmer psychic weather, even as the leathery leaves of the trees along the street whip around and [...]
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