I last saw Vietnam in 2001. Back then,
Saigon had no American fast food joints save a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Long-term
foreign residents were few, and mostly confined to the Phạm Ngũ Lão area. There were no foreign stars in the
just-established professional soccer league.
Now in Saigon, there are 20 KFCs, eight
Burger Kings and six McDonald’s, with one across the street from where I used
to live, five miles from downtown.
In December of 2007, an Afro-Brazilian
soccer player, Fábio dos Santos, changed his name to Phan Văn Santos and became Vietnamese. This,
in a country where millions had risked death or imprisonment trying to get out
not too long before. In 2008, Santos was on Vietnam’s national team in a
friendly match against, um, Brazil! Santos on his new status:
I am very happy to become Vietnamese. The
new citizenship will help me greatly in my career and maybe help the national
team as well. I have been living and working in Vietnam for six years. I think
my decision was the right one, even though it was very difficult. To my
surprise, my parents support my decision. When I return to Brazil in the
future, I will be a guest, not a citizen… Sometimes I felt sad because I had to
give up my Brazilian citizenship. But my becoming Vietnamese is God’s idea.
Since 2003, the leading scorer in the
V.League each year has been foreign, with Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil and the
Republic of Congo all represented. Nigeria-born Hoàng Vũ Samson became a naturalized
Vietnamese in 2013, the year he won his first scoring title. Samson still has
very intimate ties to his homeland, however. In a 2016 article, Thanh Niên
[Youth] relates:
A surprising thing about Hoàng Vũ Samson is
that he has two wives, one Nigerian and one Vietnamese (living in Ho Chi Minh
City). Fortunately, both of his wives get along. Many times, his Nigerian wife
has come for a visit, and Samson takes both of his wives, plus his many
children, out. They all eat and drink happily to together.
Netherlands-born Danny van Bakel is now Nguyễn Van Bakel.
Serendipitously, “Van” is a common middle name in both Vietnam and Holland. The
star defender for Thanh Hoá has just one wife, a Vietnamese.
Nigeria-born Maxwell Eyerakpo has become
Đinh Hoàng Max, thus instantly heaping sporting glories onto the mostly
slow-footed, muscle-deprived and vertical-leap-challenged Đinh clan. Thanks a
lot, bro! Max made headlines recently for apparently abandoning his Vietnamese wife and their three
children.
Vietnamese-language proficiency is clearly
not required for citizenship, for neither Hoàng Vũ Samson nor Đinh Hoàng Max
can speak Vietnamese. Palestinian Saleem Hammad, however, can handle the
language almost like a native, with a solid Hanoi accent. Arriving in 2011 on a
university scholarship, Hammad has become a familiar face on television, having
co-hosted several episodes of S Việt Nam,
a popular domestic travel show. Viet Nam News quotes Hammad:
Việt Nam was a strange country for me at that time. After my family knew that
I would have an opportunity to study here, everybody encouraged me. They told
me that it was a country where its inhabitants worked very hard and they were
very courageous. They had won against invaders to bring independence to their
country. It is also the dream of the people of Palestine.
Handsome and tall, Hammad has also found
regular work as a model. Foreign models are huge there. Though white skin and
blonde hair are especially in demand, Yeannie Maya Aitkins of Sierra Leone has also landed a few
gigs.
On TV and in advertising, then, the foreign
has become a regular feature. In 2014, an overweight and listless Kelly
Clarkson waddled through “A Moment Like This” to an indifferent audience at the
Miss Vietnam pageant. Many Vietnam Idol contestants sing in English. South
Korean soap operas and K-Pop have been popular since 2000.
Saigon now has a budding black
neighborhood. On December 31st, 2015, Vietnam Express reported that in Gò Vấp, there’s an apartment complex with many Africans, up to
ten in a room. A handful of restaurants were frequented by Africans, and
there’s a nightclub that had become notorious for loud music late into the
night, with fights erupting sporadically. Natives of Ghana, Algeria, Nigeria
and Cameroon, etc., many Africans in Saigon were illegals. Most were poor.
Vietnam Express quoted a Vietnamese waiter:
I’ve worked here for three months already.
They spend very modestly. I’ve never been tipped anything by these foreigners.
Even with change of 1,000-2,000 dong [4-8 U.S. cents], they won’t leave it.
Mostly poor, ignorant of the language and
without many social contacts, how do non-soccer playing Africans survive in
Vietnam? Some buy factory rejected, irregular clothing to sell back home. A few
marry locals and open businesses. An allAfrica article from 2009 reveals
another mean of survival:
Government of the Eastern Asia Socialist
Republic of Vietnam has embarked on a serious crack down of Nigerians resident
in the country following a wave of anti-social and criminal activities
reportedly being perpetrated by Nigerian immigrants.
This echoes reports from neighboring
countries. In 2013, there was this Nigerian Monitor article, “[SHOCKING] 20% of Nigerians in
Thailand are in jail,” with most of the 400 locked up for drug offenses. In
2011, the head of the Nigerian Association of Cambodia, Okere Ugochukwu Emmanuel, was busted for drug
trafficking. On a more positive note, the head coach of the Cambodian national
basketball team is a Nigerian. Despite Austin Abayomi
Koledoye’s tireless and patient instructions, however, the double dribblers
from the Land of Angkor still rank among the worst in this galaxy. We’re not
all born to slam dunk.
With its American fast food joints, foreign
models, black star athletes and the beginning of black neighborhoods, Vietnam
is looking more multicultural and progressive (in the American sense) by the
day.
This transformation also includes annual
gay parades,
of course, with the first in 2012. The Atlantic, Guardian, Bloomberg,
Huffington Post, NBC, BBC and CNN have all praised Vietnam’s progress on the
LGBT front. A Hanoi photographer, Maika Elan (real name Nguyễn Thanh Hải),
won a World Press Photo Award for her series depicting gay couples at home, and a Saigon transgender bodybuilder, Kendy, was profiled by Narratively. Hanoi’s
Kênh14 now has an annual feature, “Ten Most Beautiful Homosexual Relationships of the
Year.”
When I left Saigon in 2001, rap music had no currency, but now there are dozens
of prominent rappers, with “Secret
Shows”
popping up suddenly on the streets, as organized through social media. During
those sinister days of hardcore Communism, there was no way the police would
have tolerated this.
In the South, soon after the communist
victory, the party officials and military commanders on the spot declared open
season on the previous regime’s culture. Gangs of young enthusiasts were
secretly ordered or incited to destroy as much of this culture as they could.
Early in May 1975, Communists burned every book in the libraries of the Saigon
University Faculty of Law and Faculty of Letters; the books, they said, came
from a “decadent culture.” Circulation of all other books, as well as art works
such as music tapes, records, films, and even paintings, was prohibited.
Communist youths went from door to door to search out and confiscated books and
materials considered antirevolutionary.
Among the banned cultural products was
“Golden Music,” love ballads, with lyrics often by well-known poets. Just for
listening to this stuff, you could be locked up. Consider the case of Hanoi’s Nguyễn Văn Lộc. After the Communist takeover in 1954, Lộc and a small group of friends would gather in private
homes to sing these ballads to each other. In 1968, this ballad-loving ring was
finally exposed, with the entire seven-member gang arrested. First kept in The
Furnace, better known to Americans as Hanoi Hilton, they were finally put on
trial in January of 1971, with three men slammed with sentences of 15, 12 and
ten years.
With “clemency,” Lộc served eight. Waiting patiently all this time, his
girlfriend married the stigmatized man when he finally got out. After decades
of struggle, Lộc now owns a café named Lộc Vàng [Golden Lộc] on the edge of Hanoi’s Western Lake. His friend Toán wasn’t so lucky.
Broken and destitute after prison, the man died homeless in 1994. Lộc:
I marvel at how bitter my life has been.
For doing nothing but loving music, I ended up in jail. Now, this kind of music
is revived, and these songs are sung on TV. When I hear other people sing them,
tears gather in my eyes.
Beneath this veneer of sidewalk hip hop
shows, gay parades, and transsexual bodybuilders, Vietnam is still very much a
totalitarian state, however, for many people, priests, monks, journalists and
bloggers, etc., are still imprisoned for thought crimes. Influential blogger Điếu Cày, for
example, was locked up for 6 ½ years on a trumped-up charge of tax evasion. He
was kept in filthy, dark, solitary cells and beaten up. In 2003, Phạm Hồng Sơn was slapped
with a 13-year-sentence for translating and disseminating “What is Democracy?”
an article he found online. Sơn
ended up serving 4 ½ years. Last May, dissident Father Nguyễn Văn Lý was
finally released after eight years in prison.
Wealth in Vietnam also flows straight to
the top, for its fattest cats are senior Communists. Gorging on graft, they own
the swankiest nightclubs, send their kids to American universities and jet around
at will to splurge on this world’s pleasures. With no free press or independent
judiciary, corruption can’t be checked, so cops shake you down, professors sell
grades, doctors demand tips before treatment and officials of all ranks sell
favors and extort.
But isn’t the United States itself an
oligarchy that’s seemingly free and superficially tolerant? Of course! Like
China, Vietnam has learned from the U.S. on how to run a 21st-century
totalitarian society. Instead of banning pop culture, they’ve realized it’s the
state’s best ally, for the more sexy, decadent or trivial this pop culture, the
more it’ll tranquilize people as the elites rob them blind. Drunk on protean
porn, the hip-gyrating plebes won’t even notice they’re being cornholed.
The United States has also been studying
the Communist playbook, for it’s now legal to jail or even kill a citizen on
the most nebulous charges. American laws are already totalitarian.
Linh Dinh [send him mail] novel Love Like Hate covers Vietnam in the 20th
century. His Postcards from the End of America has just
been released by Seven Stories Press. He maintains an active photo blog.