Goals for Vietnam

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. *ponders deeply*

To be frank, I came to Viet Nam not really having any concrete goals. I expected to have fun, eat lots of food, visit lots of places, make lots of friends, learn lots of things about the country, and return to america with stories and lessons obtained.

I grew up with this globe that my parents bought for me (in Taiwan, so it was all in Chinese), and with which I would spend hours in any given day just looking at it and learning all the names of the different countries and cities. To me, for most of my life, Viet Nam (or Yueh Nan in Mandarin) was a narrow strip of pastel-colored shape that occupied the space below Ta Lu (the term I use for China). Later in high school, my knowledge of the country grew a little, all in the context of that big war. Viet Nam became associated with fantastic images of guns, helicopters, tanks, blood, gore, death, bodies, Agent Orange, refugees, and boats. It was also then that I began paying attention to what my parents said, whether among themselves, to their friends, or to me (before I was so set on defying their authoritarian rule over my life that I just didn't care what they said). To my parents, Viet Nam was merely another backward, third world, dangerous, and underdeveloped replica of China that had been unfortunately wracked by war and conflict. Then as time went on, Viet Nam became yet another replica of China in another way, in the notion of a source of cheaper labor that could no longer be found in China (in the words of my parents and their friends, as they discover my interest in Viet Nam, "oh Viet Nam is a good place to study! You know, they're all saying now that Viet Nam is the next China because labor there is cheap also. So it's good that you're going and learning Vietnamese, that way you can really take advantage of the country in the future!")

Also around this time, a surge in Southeast Asian migrant domestic workers in Taiwan was occurring, and Vietnamese migrant workers were one of the larger groups. In fact, my Lao Lao (maternal grandmother) had a Vietnamese domestic worker for about 2 years before she ran away (my uncles chipped in money to get a domestic worker for Lao Lao since her physical health had been degenerating since my Wai Kung died). There is also a trend in Taiwan now for men to marry Southeast Asian migrant women. As Taiwanese women are more educated and "liberated" (in the western sense) now, fewer are seeking marriage, leaving a disproportionate number of bachelors without mates. Southeast Asian women thus became the option. In the savior-saved paradigm, Taiwanese men become the saviors of the poor, malnourished, brown (read: peasant, uneducated), and oppressed third-world feminine body, thus justifying the use of brown feminine bodies for furthering the ends of privileged, first-world male desire. Around Taiwan now, there are agencies established with the sole purpose of helping new Southeast Asian brides "adjust" to Taiwanese life and "fit in" to the local communities. Whether this "adjustment" is actually more appropriately labeled "assimilation" deserves further observation.

I want to re-observe and re-analyze these pre-established notions of Southeast Asia that had been ingrained in my mind for all these years. To my parents (and their friends as well), I am here to plant seeds for future exploitation of the people for the economic benefit of myself. I wish to challenge this image here. I am not here to "give" voice to the people or "raise" the visibility of their condition for my parents and the world. Rather, I hope the people will give ME the voice to speak up.