Reading & Writing » Hanoi

Vietnam News Report on Translation Conference

jd — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 07:02:33 +0000

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

jd — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:21:47 +0000

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 one of my trips. I’m not crazy about being stuck out at the West Lake compound, but I’ve been able to get off on my own enough to get some work done on the classes I will begin teaching next week. And I’ll spend the last couple of days of my trip back down town, so it’s all good. I feel energized and excited about developing some translation projects, work that will begin tomorrow when we begin doing small-scale workshops.

Improving

jd — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:42:25 +0000

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 during dinner I was able to tell in a rough way what the Vietnamese couple seated near me were talking about.

Blustery Evening

jd — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 10:22:42 +0000

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 tear loose, swirling through the neon dusk. Trees and lakes and a tragic history: this is a poet’s city.

Walked around the Old Quarter this afternoon, but didn’t take the camera — just wanted to stroll about and stare at things. I did find a market I want to get some pictures of, though, if only to demonstrate to my students the, let us say, catholic range of Vietnamese foodstuffs. Lots of eels and crabs and fish and frogs and all manner of fowl as well and all of them alive in basins, tubs, and cages: this is a cook’s city.

Hue Spring Rolls & Lotus Tea

jd — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 18:54:55 +0000

Cathedral

jd — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 18:36:35 +0000

I went into the cathedral here in Hanoi for the first time yesterday. I’ve photographed its exterior before, but was never drawn to go inside. It’s Gothic interior is restrained and there are large stained glass windows in the nave. Below is a picture from my first walk in the city on Christmas evening, then a shot of the interior taken the next day.

Cafe Nau Nong

jd — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 01:19:34 +0000

I am well and truly here, now that I have had my first cup of cafe nau nong–literally, hot brown coffee–at a cafe beside Hoan Kiem Lake. On my first morning in Hanoi, almost fourteen years ago now, I stumbled out of my hotel and found a small cafe, where I had my first taste of Vietnamese coffee and ever since then I have associated the taste of sweet strong coffee with this city. At home, I drink my coffee black, but here I have cafe nau nong, a small cup of black coffee which conceals a dollop of sweetened condensed milk on the bottom of the cup. Stirred up, the milk just barely changes the color of the coffee from black to dark brown. After my coffee and a croissant I strolled slowly around the familiar streets north of the lake, an old gentleman in a black fedora. From the side or back, I might have been mistaken for a Vietnamese grandfather taking his morning constitutional–well, if I had been wearing my belt up around my navel, that is.

Hanoi

jd — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 11:29:32 +0000

Arrived after a day and a half in transit, my back aching and my legs a little wobbly, but in good spirits. I’m staying in the same hotel as last spring and it feels as if I’ve hardly been away. On the drive in from the airport — through the Red river swamps and paddies and orchards — I no longer have the sense of having been dropped into an alien world. Photos from the new Nikon coming soon. Time to hit the sack and see if I can get my body onto local time.

On My Way

jd — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:30:50 +0000

I’m sitting in the Syracuse airport waiting to get on the plane to JFK and thence to Anchorage, Taipei, and then Hanoi on Christmas day. It’s snowing, but they are keeping the runways clear and the flights are running on time … Continue reading →

Christmas in Hanoi

jd — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:46:15 +0000

Sometimes the world hands you a gift. I just found out that I will be spending Christmas and the first ten days of the new year in Hanoi. I’ve been invited to participate in a conference on the translation of Vietnamese literature and its reception abroad, mostly in the English-speaking world. When I came back home from my trip to Vietnam last spring, I thought it would be at least a year before I returned, perhaps longer. I’d been a little disappointed in my failure to make more contacts and get more projects going during my spring trip, but apparently I was planting seeds that will now begin to germinate. I hope so.

I spent Christmas of 2000 in Hanoi, which is when I took the picture of the boy selling Santa Claus decorations. Christmas is not a holiday of central importance in Vietnamese culture except to the 10% of the population that is Catholic, but as in the West it has begun to be a commercial holiday even for non-believers. (In general, Catholics in Vietnam are probably more intensely religious that the followers of Tam Giao, or “triple religion,” the combination of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism that most Vietnamese at least nominally subscribe to and that overlies an even deeper level of animism.)

I am delighted to return to Vietnam, however briefly, and to meet others interested in the diffusion of Vietnamese literature around the world. And as soon as I return, still jet-lagged, I will begin teaching my course, Understanding Vietnam, at Clarkson. Though the course focuses on the history and culture of Vietnam, we use literature to illuminate and illustrate those subjects, so the conference discussions will certainly inform my teaching next semester.