Homeland

Vietnam was an incredibly emotionally intense experience. It was my first time visiting the land where my parents were born and grew up, a place I had heard so many stories of, but which had never taken on reality for me, like a fantasy land. My sister and I as children pictured this land in sepia and white, the tones of the old photographs we had seen.

We docked in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) on 9/27 and I wandered around with a friend on the first day. I got measured for an ao dai (traditional Vietnamese dress) and we explored Ben Thanh Market, which had everything from bolts of silk in every shade and hot pho (Vietnamese rice noodle soup) to live fish (gutted in front of your eyes when you purchase them for dinner) and animal organs on trays for sale. We then took cyclos (small carriages for one person which is peddled by the driver) in search of the house where my mother grew up. It took about an hour and involved a lot of backtracking and asking directions, but eventually we settled on a location and got out. As we sipped coffee at the café across the street, stories poured into my mind, of the everyday and the lifechanging moments, stories I had not thought about for a long time.

The second and third days I went to the Mekong Delta with an SAS trip. We took sampans through the maze of interlocking canals to see a floating produce market, coconut candy factory, & brick factory, and walk around in a farmer’s fields. On the fourth day I met up with relatives in Saigon, and on the last day I went to the Cu Chi tunnels, the famous extensive underground network of the Viet Cong.

I didn’t know what to expect when I met up with my relatives. My other experience with distant extended family (in southern California) was awkward, with little to talk about, compounded by my sister’s and my broken Cantonese. It had been a relief to leave that house. This time, I waited outside the gates of the port, scanning the flow of traffic for someone to make themselves apparent. Four people broke away from the crowd on motorcycles and came and greeted me with grins, tossing me on the back of one of the bikes and zooming back into traffic. Over the course of the next couple of hours I was introduced to a bewildering number of people, and even my relatives themselves argued over how exactly they were related to me (Chinese kinship is very complicated). What I managed to eventually sort out was that the 4 middle-aged women who spent the most time with me were sisters; they are my father’s cousins (my second aunts once removed? I don’t really know the American system either). Their mother (my grandfather’s sister) was also there, and a couple other people who’s relationship to me I didn’t ever quite put my finger on. Regardless of how the formal relationship actually works, all of these people were incredibly warm and welcoming. I didn’t feel like a guest at all; I wasn’t fussed over or scrutinized, just swept into the conversation flow. There was good-natured teasing all around and my aunts acknowledged etiquette I might be expected to abide by (such as pouring tea for my elders), only to waive such tradition. As a consequence, I didn’t feel pressured to figure out what I was supposed to do next, and could just enjoy their company. One elderly woman fussed over me, taking my hand when we crossed the street and nagging me to get home safely (and early). I’m not sure exactly how she’s related to me, but she made me think about my grandmothers, neither of whom I ever knew because they both passed away before I was born, never having left Vietnam. The whole experience gave me a glimpse of the warmth and security of an extended family, which I have never experienced before (I have one cousin in the States; our family gatherings at Thanksgiving and Christmas are never more than 8 people). Coming out of a culture where family is so important, it was a huge sacrifice for my dad to leave this network, striking out on his own in pursuit of the possibility of freedom and a better life. I wonder how different he would be if he stayed in the same city as his cousins, aunts and uncles.

During these past three months, I’ve sometimes been tired and lonely, missing my friends and family at home. My parents left Vietnam knowing they might not ever see their friends and family again. When they missed them, it was across oceans, without relief in sight. What fortitude it must have taken to face each day, in a completely foreign country, surrounded by strange sounds, smells, foods, and a foreign language. When they headed off it was into great uncertainty, with no idea what it would be like or where they’d end up. And people say I’m brave for going to Ecuador with fellow students for two months.

Every time I interacted with a young woman in Vietnam, I looked at her and thought, “I could have been her”. For every person who successfully got out of Vietnam, many others never made it out or perished in the attempt. I felt uncomfortable being waited on and called “madam”; so easily the tables could have been turned and I would have serving the privileged foreign girl her drink or helping her buy silk. One of my aunts told me that she and her family had planned to flee the country as well, and were supposed to go a week after my dad and uncle left. The government cracked down during that intervening week: my dad and uncle got out and my aunt is still there.

I have never before identified as a daughter of this beautiful country. I grew up culturally Chinese, was sent to a Chinese school to learn Mandarin, was taught about Chinese history, celebrated Chinese festivals. I am ethnically Chinese, but coming to this country has showed me that I am also Vietnamese. My family history is intimately tied to Vietnam, its war, and its people. When Chinese people ask me what part of China my family is from, I say Guangzhou, a southern province, but I have no identity with that place. Many of my friends have been to China several times and have family there. My parents have never been to China. It used to make me feel rootless, like I was Chinese without a homeland. Now I realize that my homeland is Vietnam, where my parents grew up, were I still have family.

shipboard website

I’m on the website team for our Semester at Sea shipboard website. There’s a lag in updating because it has to be approved by the Powers that Be, but it’s pretty nifty.

http://www.semesteratsea.com/voyages/fall2006/fa2006_onboardwebsite.html

(by the way, we’re in Vietnam, which is turning out to be an amazing and mind-bending experience).

typhoon!

We left Japan in a hurry and are chugging along to Hong Kong at a rapid clip to avoid the typhoon that was supposed to hit the Japanese coastline the day after we left. We’re supposed to be the fastest passenger ship in the world, and the captain has assured us that we can outrun the storm, should it change course. We have changed our itinerary and are bypassing Qindao (China) entirely, going directly to Hong Kong. This unfortunately cuts 2 days that we were supposed to be in China, but for SAS field programs, like the Beijing university visit I’m signed up for, ISE (Institute for Shipboard Education, which runs SAS) will be shouldering the extra cost of changing our plane tickets, as well as giving us a 50% discount on our trips since they’re going to be shortened.

This gives us all an extra 2 days on ship without classes, which is good for catching up on sleep and work, but the ship is pitching and rolling and a lot of people are feeling seasick. I’m fine unless I try to do focused work, such as reading. Which is what I have to do. We’re skirting the worst of the storm – in the center, winds are over 100 nautical miles an hour, and the swell (waves) can get up to 13 meters. We’re staying where the swell is under 2 meters, but it’s windy enough that at times they’ve closed all the outside decks, and we’ve been told to secure everything in our cabins.

update 9.25.06: We made it to Hong Kong and have already left again; now we’re moving past a tropical cyclone en route to Vietnam. We only have two days between China & Vietnam, so I’ll be posting about China after we leave Ho Chi Minh City.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

At the last minute, I got a cheap ticket to Hiroshima and went off at 5 in the morning to see the Peace Memorial Museum. I will try to recount what I saw there, but I won’t be able to adequately convey the sense of chaos, destruction, and loss caused by the bomb, and its continuing legacy today in cancer victims.

When the bomb exploded just above Hiroshima, the heat of nuclear fission vaporized people and buildings, killing thousands instantly. A pressure wave of 19 tons per square meter swept out from the hypocenter, caused by the extreme expansion of superheated air. Nearly all buildings – wood, steel, stone – within a 1 km radius were completely flattened. Flying shards of glass from exploded windows knifed deep into walls and organs. People were burned beyond recognition, their skin flayed to the bone, hanging in shreds off their limbs, dripping blood. Everyone left alive struggled to get out of the city, seeking shelter and water to cool their burns. As they fled before the flames that swept through what was left of Hiroshima after the explosion, survivors begged forgiveness from those they left pinned under debris to burn alive, unable to free them before they were engulfed. Black rain poisoned the rivers with radiation.

The city has since been rebuilt, but the consequences of the atomic bomb are still harbored in the bodies of the hibakusha, the bomb survivors. Cancer continues to claim them, one by one. A whole generation of babies with microencephaly – brain damage due to radiation exposure in the womb – have grown up, and their aging relatives worry about who will take care of these victims of the radiation after they pass away.

To me, one of the most poignant moments was the realization of why there were bottles of water left along with flowers in front of the Cenotaph, the memorial containing the names of the victims. After the blast, people who were not killed instantly struggled to get medical attention, to flee from the raging fires, but most desperately they begged for water to quench thirst and bodies sucked dry by the intense heat. One little boy tried to suck the puss from the stubs of his fingers as he stumbled home. The water offerings are a request for forgiveness by survivors who could not provide that water to those victims.

Why is it that I had to come here to be concerned, really concerned, about war and violence? Yes, as a child I was taught that war is bad and I condemn violence, but I have never before acted to end it. What is it about our humanity that we must experience these horrors so closely in order to arouse the kind of passion that leads to action? I am reminded of the white moderates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. refers to in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail – the population Dr. King said posed the biggest obstacle to his mission, for while they agreed with him, their apathy was the inertia holding the social institutions firmly in place.

impressions of Japan

I’m back on the ship after 5 days of traveling around Japan. I had a great time wandering through this beautiful, peaceful country. Highlights: wandering through Kobe, visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, doing the Ritsumeikan University student exchange in Kyoto, and seeing the high tech district of Osaka. I’ve tried a bit of anything that looked remotely interesting, and had some delicious experiences (iced matcha tea, dried squid, and Japanese pancakes made with turnips) as well as some that I could barely finish after the first bite (raw squid). My philosophy when buying snacks in Japan was to always buy at least one item that was completely unidentifiable. I didn’t always feel in the mood to be adventurous, but I did it anyway, and had very interesting culinary experiences as a consequence. I’m going to stick by this practice in all the ports.

Japan is packed, with a population half the size of that of the US and a land area roughly equivalent to California (but only 15% of the land is arable due to the mountains, so all those people are mostly packed together in no space at all). However, I would never have guessed that Kyoto and Kobe each boast populations of 1.5 million. There is a lot of public space and even on the main streets the city is very quiet. The people are quiet; even the cars are quiet. The Japanese place a premium on tranquility. Most cities I’ve been in are the antithesis of tranquility, possibly with the exception of Seattle. There are much more stringent expectations on maintaining that tranquil atmosphere, too. When we were staying overnight at the Ritsumeikan University, we were warned that if we wanted to stay up we needed to draw the shades to prevent light from streaming out the window, or the university would get calls from the neighbors. I hear that Tokyo (which I didn’t make it to) is much more bustling and louder, being the largest metropolitan area in the world with a population of 25 million. I’m not sure how exactly that is measured; it must include a fairly large surrounding area outside the city proper, but it still gives you an idea of how incredibly packed that city must be.

In many ways Japan felt very comfortable and familiar. It was almost like I was in Japan Town in San Francisco. Signs were written in kanji (characters) and Japanese phonetics as well as Romanji (the Roman alphabet, aka what English is written in). In many cases there was also some English on signs, menus, etc. All Japanese students are required to study English for a number of years, starting in elementary school. The food didn’t feel very foreign to me, as I’ve been exposed to much of it growing up – red bean, black sesame, dried squid, sashimi, matcha, udon, mochi. Although I couldn’t read the Japanese phonetics (which I later learned from the university students is a syllabary system) I recognized a number of the kanji, characters which were borrowed from Chinese. This allowed me to make guesses at foods on menus, shop names, and a slew of other things that turned out to be very helpful.

The people themselves are also very courteous and helpful. In Ecuador when drivers see a pedestrian darting across the street, they floor the accelerator. Compare this to the time we were taking a group picture in Kyoto, with the photographer across the street from the group, and a car stopped to allow us to finish. At the open mic for reflections on Japan, many people had stories of how they were approached by strangers when they looked lost and walked to their destinations, or how someone returned their wallet or Rail Pass (a $250 value).

Japan is committed to accessibility. The train system is clean, freakishly punctual, and trains run very frequently. We noticed Braille on the lids of soda cans, and on all the streets there are raised bumps and grooves for the blind to follow and be able to find steps, bus stops, and street crossings. There are also vending machines everywhere, but that might reflect a capitalist mentality more than devotion to convenience.

Here’s one of my favorite Japanese cultural practices: when you enter many buildings you have to remove your shoes, including for some restaurants and shops, nearly all temples, hostels, and even the shower room of the university I visited. Inside the door there is a small space to remove your shoes, then a raised area (often covered in finely woven reed mats) indicates where you cannot walk in shoes. I like the connotation of respect this confers on the space you enter (often aided by the presence of banners hung over the entrance, which force you to duck your head as you walk in). It also feels more friendly and intimate, and cleaner.

There is a uniquely Japanese aesthetic that involves the contradictory combination of sober tones and a desire to be in harmony with nature juxtaposed with the hyper, brightly colored “cult of cute” phenomenon. People present themselves soberly: most dress in shades of black, grey, white, and tan, and cars come in the same colors. On the other hand, companies represent themselves in loud, bold colors. Many stores are decked out in neon colors (especially hot pink), and colorful, cutely rotund anthropomorphized animals and objects decorate everything. This isn’t to say that the Japanese dress conservatively or that there isn’t personal expression in dress – there are some really outrageous haircuts, and I think that guys’ haircuts are more varied than in the US. On girls, there were shirts with cutouts, ties, chains – the works. I think there was a higher percentage of flamboyance than in the US. Yet most of this expression was in the same neutral tones.

There is great attention to detail in Japan, which you can see in the careful, tasteful packaging of everything. In many shops, products are displayed on low tables or shelves, without large stocks set out – much in the way you see in high end stores in the US. Even though space is at a premium in Japan, the aesthetics of display supersede the desire to maximize the number of products displayed. This makes it very pleasant to walk into shops because they feel very open.

Five days in Japan was just long enough to get a taste of the country. I’m glad it wasn’t any longer, because I was getting tired, but I would love to go back and see Tokyo, taste tako yaki, (fried octopus balls), and learn some more Japanese.

Look out for more posts in the new couple days on the Hiroshima Peace Museum, Ritsumeikan University student exchange, and the high tech district of Osaka.

reverse culture shock

Flying from Quito to San Diego was a huge mind trip. I watched dilapidated square concrete constructions recede as we ascended, containing the lives of an entire family in a single, dimly lit room with a tin roof and concrete floor. I flew into neatly gridded tract housing developments, with palm trees waving gently in sunlight that seemed sweeter, relaxed and carefree. Everything was clean, with sweeping open spaces, huge highways with hundreds of cars whizzing past. Life seemed taller somehow, less close to the ground, less focused on the immediate- the next step, the next fruit basket, the next morning. My mom met me at the airport and we spent the night at a hotel, repacking my bags for Semester at Sea. I was given a wealth of riches: swapping out the grubby, sparse wardrobe I’d worn for 8 weeks at the shelter for some different clothes she’d brought down, getting my laptop, packing some snacks my family sent down. The next morning I said goodbye to my mom again and got on a bus with a bunch of other rambunctious students, and set off for Semester at Sea.

From the first moment, I felt disconnected from everyone around me. I was unsettled the moment I walked on the bus and saw so many carefully made up girls in tight, attractive clothing looking back at me. A lot of the guys were in designer collared shirts. The predominant topic of conversation on the bus was drinking (though there was also some conversation about the ports). It was like they were speaking a foreign language; ironically, I felt a strong urge to find someone who spoke Spanish. Even the conversations about tourism struck me strangely. People were talking about how they would spend money in the ports, and I imagined them paying, having a good time, and leaving. I marveled at how easy it is to visit a place and learn nothing about the daily realities its people face. I had no idea how to articulate these thoughts and emotions, or who I could express them to. I was sure I’d find people on the trip who I could talk to, but at the moment I felt completely out of place.

We got to Ensenada and boarded the ship, and I met my roommate Liz. Thankfully she is much cooler than the people on the bus, and we get along very well. Liz is a Film and Radio major at Syracuse in Boston. At dinner I also met a really interesting guy, Evan. He says he is addicted to traveling and has been all over the world, including spending time in several Latin American countries. His stories over dinner about his experiences building houses with Habitat for Humanity in some of those countries were utterly gripping, not only for the vividness of his descriptions of communities that live in terrible conditions, but also because of the obvious intensity of the impact of the experience on him.

There are two other situations besides the people which are making this transition a bit unsettling. One is the rocking of the boat, combined with the extreme change in elevation (from 9,000 feet in Quito to, well, sea level on the ocean) combined with the lack of sleep (redeye flight) after a full day of work on Friday in Quito, leading to really bad headaches and vague motion sickness for the first 2 days at sea. The other situation is the luxury, opulence even of living on the ship. Waiters in the dining halls fill our glasses and take our plates when we finish. Ben, our cabin steward, makes our beds and cleans the bathroom every day. There’s carpeting, mirrors, and wood paneling everywhere, warm halogen lighting in our cabin and in all the public areas…everything is so sparklingly clean that if you dared me to lick the floor I just might do it (I’m serious about that- and as many of you know I’m rather OCD).

I sat with a group of adults (spouses of professors and adult travelers) at dinner last night, and heard that on a previous voyage there was a “10k club” of students who made it a goal to spend $1,000 in every port. This is sickening on so many levels – self-absorption, disrespect, and lack of concern for others, to start with. I really hope there aren’t any students on this voyage who are thinking of doing the same thing.

I find I have become a lot more skeptical and critical, and probably judgmental about people and the things they say. Particularly when people purport to say things about privilege, poverty, and social class. I certainly recognize that it is presumptuous to think that I know much about these topics, but I question whether they know what they’re talking about at all. I bristle when professors make broad, sweeping generalizations. I’ve also become more impatient and intolerant of chitchat on frivolous topics. All of these reactions are probably part of the “reverse culture shock” I was warned about – I have had my perspectives changed and reenter American society to find that it keeps going on as it has been, and every time I am reminded of that by what people say or what I see I twitch a little. This sensitization is already beginning to fade, which on one hand is a relief as I can socialize more easily, but on the other hand, part of me doesn’t want it to fade. I don’t want to slip back into complacency and forget the things I saw and experienced.

I see why many young adults can be so abrasive at times, as they wrestle with various issues and develop a social conscience.

from Ecuador to Semester at Sea

I’m flying out of Quito tonight (technically, very early tomorrow morning). We had the despedida (farewell) at the shelter today, and debriefing this evening with all of VILA. There’s a lot of things I want to mull over and write about, but I don’t have time to do it now because I still have a lot of things to do before I get to the airport.

I will be writing my reflections on my whole VILA experience on the long flight home, and will post them when I get the chance. This may not be for a while, however, because I am going straight to Semester at Sea (study abroad program). I’m not even stopping at home before getting on board the ship in San Diego. Internet is exorbitantly expensive on the ship, so I won’t be posting my entry until I get to a cheap internet cafe – which might not be until after we cross the Pacific (2 weeks).

Thanks for reading; I hope you have enjoyed the entries and learned something about Ecuador and street/working children in this country. My blog won’t end here, though. I will be posting sporadically about my Semester at Sea (SAS) experiences whenever I get the chance, so check back every so often.

scroll down

I postdated one of new posts, so scroll down past Reglas de las Colonias Vaccacionales to find it (ChasquiNet).

reglas de las colonias vacacionales

Rules of the Summer Camp (Casa de la Ninez)

1. no pelear (don’t fight)
2. no decir malas palabras (don’t say bad words)
3. no coger las cosas de los companeros (don’t steal things from others)
4. usar la palabra magica por favor (use the magic word “please”)
5. no botar basura (don’t litter)
6. no aburrirse (don’t get bored)

ChasquiNet

8/20/2006: This post was written (by hand) several weeks ago, but I had not had the opportunity to type it up. Some of this information is dated, but it’s still interesting.

It´s probably become apparent that my work at Casa de la Niñez is frustrating and not entirely satisfying. It´s gotten much better after the rough start since we´ve gotten 12 new local volunteers (monitores) and the workshops are organized and have enough materials for all the children to participate. However, I still question what our role is here. We are acting as camp counselors to the kids, doing the same work as the monitores. Undoubtedly it is very valuable for many of these children to receive personal attention from us in the context of playing with others, since at home many of them spend all their time doing chores, looking after younger siblings, etc. It´s frustrating to me, however, that we don´t have the opportunity to teach the workshops we volunteers had done so much preparation for.

Driven by this frustration, I spent some time on the internet last week and found an organization named ChasquiNet (www.chasquinet.org . webpage is in Spanish). They do work in bringing access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) to underserved populations. Some of their projects include setting up telecenters, helping rural communities market their products internationally through the internet, and training teachers throughout Quito how to use technology to help them teach more effectively.

I´m really impressed with ChasquiNet´s philosophy of sustainability. Telecenters all over the world have been struggling to stay afloat, for various reasons. ChasquiNet emphasizes social, political, technical, and financial sustainability when they take on the task of setting up a telecenter, and they´re thorough – taking a year from start to finish. This holistic approach to adding a telecenter to a community means they are more likely to be successful in the long run and be a useful space for the community.

Before I go any further, I should probably explain what a telecenter is. A telecenter is a community space that provides information and communication technology services. It can have everything that an internet café has (internet, fax, phone booths) but in addition provides workshops to teach people how to use these services.

ChasquiNet just got involved in setting up a telecenter in a poor neighborhood in the north of Quito, which is called Colinas del Norte. The social sustainability aspect means that ChasquiNet trains local leaders to set up and run the telecenter, instead of coming in and doing all the work, then leaving (which has happened in many other telecenters that subsequently closed because no one understood why things were set up the way they were and couldn’t manage them effectively). So Marcelo, from ChasquiNet, is giving a workshop every day this week to train the future telecenter operators. He’s starting with the broad theme of “what is a telecenter” and progressing to what specific services and workshops this telecenter will provide, based on what the community needs and wants. I’ve been attending the workshops this whole week, and it’s been really cool to see the concept of this space, the telecenter, begin to coalesce, until by Friday they were discussing the fees they would charge for services to make the telecenter financially sustainable.

The telecenter already has 5 computers that the community bought for its community center 8 years ago, and next Monday they are getting an internet connection. By Thursday the computer cluster is supposed to be fully up and running, with the first workshops on basic computer skills begin given as well. The idea is that these workshops be based around the uses of technology (e.g. a communication workshop which teaches how to set up and check email) rather than being software-driven (e.g. how to use Word). I’m going to be splitting my time between the telecenter and Casa de la Niñez starting next week. When I work at the telecenter I’m going to be helping teach people how to use computers & the internet. I’m really excited about this work, which wil give me the opportunity to both observe the creation and growth of a telecenter from the very start, and also to work directly with teaching people how to use technology.

Update (8/20/06): I’ve actually switched over from working at the telecenter in Colinas del Norte to working at the ChasquiNet office. I’m doing research online to add resources to the Resource Center of the Latin American & Caribbean Telecenter Network, and also helping translate documents from Spanish into English.