The day began in layers of sound. First it was the rooster crowing, which technically started in the around 3 am, well before sunrise, and no one other than me and possibly other tourists, who were holed up next to this thing, heard it, because it doesn’t stop. Nothing came of the crowing. I wasn’t perturbed by this crowing, although if it were going on in my own neighborhood it would have been addressed in a litigious way long ago, but here I was wondering how the hell the myth of the rooster crowing at dawn holds any water? 3 am in the middle of the goddamn night, not dawn.
Around 6 am the purring of motorcycles echoed up from some narrow passageways that even Google maps had a difficulty locating, hence the sidetracking, literally sideways last night, to locate Hoang Yen Guesthouse. Phúc made four passes before seeing the little jetty away from the chaos (hỗn loạn) of bui vien street (Dướng bui vien) and he lives in HCMC.
Then the honking. There’s an intersection somewhere. The horns are a higher pitched than back home, sort of sound whine.
Vietnam is a country that starts the day early. I remember that from my first trip here a few years ago, with my father. Rush hour began at 7 am and with a vengeance. He was sleeping late at the time, he was yet to be diagnosed with liver cancer, and there was no hurry in that trip. The preface had been very similar to this trip with my siblings: father, son bonding. Now sibling bonding. Equally a script for a bad indie film.
My first trip to Vietnam was when I was 30. My father had returned almost annually since the 90s, but we weren’t on speaking terms during that period, nor most the period after that period, nor even much of the period during which we did converse. The trip with my father had came about in a rather hurried way: I was giving a lecture about my artwork at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle and he was in the audience. Literally, I had not spoken with him on principle for more than seven years and had broken that silence with a simple note, sent via post during the holidays, saying I would be present in Seattle for an exhibition and if he were interested we could have dinner during my visit. After the reception he mentioned he was traveling to Vietnam in a few weeks and wanted to know if I had any interest in joining him. It wasn’t clear whether he was saying that as a sincere invitation or in passing, or whether he framed it as ambiguous out of fear of being sincerely rejected or whether the plans really were only tentative, but I accepted without much hesitation. The invitation was formally extended to my brother and sister, but Ethan was devoted to the cynicism of his divorce proceedings and my sister was wrought with the principle of her own vow of silence toward our father, she being always the last of us to give up. So my estranged father and I, or the prodigal son, as he liked to think of it, spent a month without hurry in a country that wakes up to crowing roosters. After his funeral, my siblings had decided to make this trip together.
The sounds existed in layers and the voice of men came to try to dominate the noises. A loud speaker. The message repeated. It was either a traffic signal or a flash sale.
A few liberated song birds fluttered between the soundtracks. I saw them cooped up on a balcony. A freed partner danced on the exterior of the cage. I watched across the archipelago of balconies as a young man undressed the cages of his birds. Each one he methodically took down, placed on the balcony and then unwrap the fabric. His army of birds. And on both sides of the caged birds’ perch, those free, wild birds fluttered to the next cage before finally ejecting the scene.
Phúc, the son of my aunt’s child, met up with us in the afternoon. Last night he told me about his life in Ho Chi Minh city. He lives in District 4 and is a DJ of live music karaoke. He studied computer programming and wants to make online applications. In a direct question to me he asked if I thought that the Vietnamese hated the Americans. I answered ’no,’ it was the past, right?, basing my answer on the impression I had got from Hương, my Vietnamese language tutor, who had told me about the burgeoning U.S./Vietnamese relations. He said that I was right and actually the Vietnamese now hate the Chinese, or more precisely, the Chinese government. According to the New York Time’s article about Obama’s visit, Phúc’s information is reliable and his situation wasn’t unique. About 50% of the country is under 30 years old and increasingly ambitious to have a global experience and inclusion.
The welcomed American support and collaboration reignited the post-World War II reality of global superpowers. Russia and the U.S. and now China. Vietnam was befriending the U.S. as a call not only for economic development but a hope that the tensions over the Spratley Islands and South Asian Sea can be quelled, as China has laid claim to them recently.
Thành Phố Hồ Chị Mình (Ho Chi Minh City) was Sài Gòn until the Communist revolt against the French and later U.S. As the biggest city and economic engine of the country, its southern location makes its namesake sensitive. The city was the seat of southern resistance to the northern communist powers. The conquest of Saigon by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) makes the renaming a symbolic gesture. Both Phúc who’s a resident and Hương say that the city is still Sài Gòn.
The dynastic tradition of renaming or relocating the administrative capital, such as from Huế, the Nguyễn capital, being moved to Hà Nội gives the whole country notion a nomadic slant. The capital is not just a city, it’s a tool, like a sculptor’s blade, that can excise or recess a characteristic to emphasize one plane to overshadow another. But a rose by any other name still has thorns.
“As Obama heads to Vietnam, Current Events overshadow History,“
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/world/asia/as-obama-heads-to-vietnam-current-events-overshadow-history.html?_r=1