I love/hate Vietnam

>> It\'s a family affair

I love Vietnam, I hate Vietnam, I feel indifferent about Vietnam. I love London, I hate London, I feel indifferent about London. Now I’ve got that off my chest perhaps we can go beyond the ‘this is Vietnam, you can’t express an opinion about it’, ‘keep your foreign views, this is Vietnam’, I express opinions about lots of things, and expressing ideas isn\'t a threat, it\'s a compliment, it shows that at least I care about where I live.

If we accepted that we could only express an opinion about what we liked, then we’d hardly be able to comment on anything, and debate would grind to a halt.

I didn’t need to live in South Africa during the Apartheid era to know that racial discrimination was wrong, even if white South African people argued that their racist laws were legitimate, it didn’t change my views that laws based on discrimination aren’t valid morally.

No, in this interconnected world, with its increasing trend towards globalisation, there is an increasingly rapid exchange of views, debates, concepts and ideas, some good, some bad, some indifferent. As sixteenth century English poet John Donne said ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…because I am involved in mankind’. And in today’s world, no country is a metaphorical island either.

Culture changes, mutates over periods of time, through domestic evolution and international historical and economic processes and interactions.

These thoughts were triggered by a reader’s response to my comments on "Family Day in Vietnam". The reader disagreed with me about my thoughts on increasing divorce rates in Vietnam. His reaction I had no problem with, as everyone is entitled to their view. But what concerned me most was the almost inevitable ‘but your comments are not right because we are in Vietnam, living in Vietnamese culture and Vietnamese culture is family, family, family. Don’t bring your Western culture to comment on "Family Day in Vietnam”’ (apologies for paraphrasing through Google translate).

I hate that argument. It says ‘here ends the debate, you have nothing of value to contribute’.

In response, I defend myself by saying it wasn’t me as a Westerner who decided to encourage these young people to get divorced, and it wasn’t me as a Westerner who passed the legislation through the National Assembly that enshrined the right for Vietnamese people to get divorced. It is not something contrary to Vietnamese tradition; times change and so do cultures. Instead people should be asking what the root causes for the increasing numbers of people getting divorced. Could it be perhaps that Vietnamese culture (much like cultures throughout the world) is changing as society develops, and changes in cultural attitudes and values often follow and lag behind economic development, leading to moral uncertainty, outrage and the often-seen disappointment in the actions of the younger generation?

I remember six years ago talking with my work colleagues as we sat drinking ice tea on Hang Trong Street when a Vietnamese teenager with dyed blond hair walked past. Our all-male group watched her sashay, and then after she’d passed ear-shot, my colleague piped up ‘you know, a blond haired girl makes a good girlfriend, but a terrible wife!’ Having seen the multitude of colouring and textures young Vietnamese women are using in their hair styles today, I’d say that social attitudes to girls with hair colouring being sassy or ‘easy’ have changed in a very short space of time.

I also think there are some strange ideas floating about in regards to \'Western\' (ha! as though we\'re all the same!) family values, with probably the script writers in Hollywood are largely to blame. Believe it or not, we do actually cherish our families and the values that they inculcate us with. There isn’t a ‘cult of individualism’ to the extent that perhaps Vietnamese people would like to caricature. Families in the West can be as tight as any Vietnamese family, or perhaps, as in my case, the bonds can be looser, but please don’t misunderstand this as being due to a lack of love or affection.

However, you could argue that Western families indulge in ‘tough love’. I left home at 18 when I went to university (and believe me, large numbers of young people deliberately choose to study in a city anywhere else but in their home town!). I never lived with my parents again. In the meantime I socialised with people from a variety of different social, economic and racial backgrounds, learnt how to cook for myself and through trial and error, eventually was able to even look after my money responsibly. I am glad for the opportunity this gave me to grow as a responsible adult. I of course made mistakes along the way, but my family was my foundation. Yet they gave me a great gift, a \'moral\' upbringing and the liberty to learn my own lessons in life.

I don’t want Vietnam to become a copy of the West, what would be the point of that? Vietnam has a proud, several millennia-long history, but like the rest of the world, concepts and ideas all change with time, Vietnam is no different.

Yes, I do love Vietnam, in case you’re asking, but what was the question?