The Factory Worlds

Yes, it should be "the factory worlds" instead of "a factory world" because there are actually completely different worlds in different factories with (of course) different life-stories of factory workers. That's what I learned from the field trips to Hanosimex- a State-owned sewing company in Linh Nam and Yamaha- a Japanese motorbike company in Noi Bai.

First off, Hanosimex brought me the feeling of a "very Vietnamese" company, which warmly welcomed us with water bottle on the long table and a sort of long speech made by a company leader in the meeting hall, decorated with red curtains, yellow stars, slogans, Uncle Ho statue...The first machinery workshop was so noisy with loud sewing machines and a little polluted with fibre and  cotton-wool flying on the air. Although I found that area was really interesting with modern machines, soft cotton made every minutes, it is still considered as uncomfortable working place for me that reminding me how hard the workers have to suffer to produce a small amount of cotton in the factory.

The second sewing workshop, where people sew cloths, warp T-shirts, cut the wasted stuffs out of the jeans..., surprised me with the music entertaining for all workers. Loudly sounds and smooth music- such a distinction ! The workers in Hanosimex don't wear uniform, making the whole factory colorful and lively- at least, personally I think so :P. People seem to be close to each other, enjoy their job and really hard working folks. In general, it's still there- the feeling of a "very Vietnamese" company, where workers don't need to hurry, wear their own "random" clothes, stay together in the dormitory of the company, just a few walking distance far from the working area... They have time to chat, discuss, rest and even... catch the fish in the water basin (along with Emily :) )

The second factory- Yamaha impressed me firstly by the bright, large and white meeting hall, which strongly reminded me of "Resident Evil" :P.

 The factory is very well organized, professional with a lot of assembly machines, workers in uniform, the electronic watch counting productivity and target achievement, the board with bad products... Yamaha differently brought me a real picture of capitalist factory, highly specialized labor force, strict regulations... The fact that Yamaha only signs the contract for worker around 1 year and sign another year contract to them if they perform well at work may cause the competition among workers encouraging them to work as much as they can. Walking in Yamaha (without taking any picture) for a while and seeing people working so fast near the assembly lines, I understand why they say: "Money never sleeps"

"The Art of not being governed" & The Art of governing

Stuffs on my mind...

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Reading the article of Nguyen Van Chinh about "Swedden/ Shifting cultivation and Sedentarization/ Fixed farming, settlement", I found it very interesting to figure out the distinction between Vietnamese and foreign anthropologists attitudes towards Sedentarization policy of Vietnamese Government. While national anthropologists consider the policy as the effort to improve economic condition and quality of environment in mountainous areas as well as the rightness of Government to change the "backward" economic activities; the foreign ones point out that Government has used the policy as a method to control the ethnic minority people and as assimilate ethnic culture. That point was even analysed deeper in the class today along with the ideas of "The Art of not being governed" (James Scott). 

The thing striking my mind is that how come foreigners are always doubtful about the freedom and control level of Socialist country like Vietnam? Is it because of the prejudice started from the past of lacking human rights, freedom, democracy in Communist bloc? 


And most important, we already know about "The art of not being governed" but how about the 'art of governing"?

Of course, we all agree that every small changes in economic field can affect the culture, tradition and custom of local people, especially ethnic minority groups and they themselves also don't want to be governed by keeping moving and hiding around. However, it's undeniable that shifting cultivation is a sort of "backward" agricultural form leading to many other social problems such as children cant go to school frequently, daily life becomes unstable, low educated and isolated... As a result, the government can't help these minority groups when they're in damage or emergency, for example flood, uncontrollable burned forest, famine ... because authorities don't know where these people are located and how to contact to them. So, "controlling" or "governing" is really necessary for ethnic minority people's own seeks. 


The question is how much governing/ controlling is enough and appropriate.


It reminds me a lot about the controversial 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for a Chinese citizen named Liu Xiaobo, who actually is serving 11 year jail sentence due to opposing the Chinese politics, strongly criticizing Communist Party of China's core principles and establish so-called "Chapter 8", which provides some changes in the Chinese politics in order to give the full freedom and democracy back to Chinese people. Reacting immediately to the Nobel Peace Prize, China angrily criticized Norway for violating the Nobel Prize's spirit by honoring Liu- a "criminal".   Whereas, Norway said that they had already expected the controversy and still kept their opinion of Liu -" non-violated way of fighting for peace, freedom and democracy of Chinese people". Significantly, 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was such a "slap on Chinese face". 

Liu Xiaobo

So, by honoring Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Prize, which actually is foreign actors criticize China for her over governing and controlling, even violating the human rights and rights of freedom. 


In quest of answering the question above, I remember the time I was in Tiananme Square- Beijing and first time heard about the horrible Massacre in Tiananme 1989, in which thousands of Chinese protesters were killed (the exact number has never been estimated and announced officially). It became a back day, a bloody day in the history of China and no Chinese people are willing to talk about that openly. Obviously, Tiananme event horribly violated the human rights, democracy of Chinese people- a terrible massacre. However, for a country with billion population like China, if the Government tanks hadn't came to clear protesters, they would have made China in chaos and the whole country security would have been in damage. Personally, I strongly oppose the way Chinese did in Tiananme but there is an undeniable fact that they "must" have the strong action to govern their citizens. 

Tiananme protesters

When I was in Taiwan, I discussed this topic again with a Taiwanese philosophy scholar and he told me that most of Chinese young people in the generation after Tiananme event were  educated to be nationalist and understand deeply the reason why Government made that decision for Tiananme protesters. He said, now, if we ask any young Chinese  about Tiananme event, they will act like we shouldn't talk about that because it may be harmful for the Chinese image and Chinese Government was right to make such massacre. 


Ironically, I think of Vietnam with "Vietnamese Liu Xiaobo" like Le Cong Dinh, Le Thi Cong Nhan, Nguyen Van Dai...who we call "phản động"- the dissidents. If Liu Xiaobo was already honored,  whether these Vietnamese people will be considered as "freedom protesters", too? The predicted conflicts between democracy and government's rightness to control citizens in order to maintain national security  soon will be occurred. And how about national sovereignty and Westphaila - "the non- intervention of foreign actors (normally states) to other sate's matters?  


Well, in the world of globalization, Westernization where people highly appreciate the democracy, human rights, freedom..., the Authority's controlling/ governing  is aggressively criticized although in some extents, it is extremely necessary. We again need to think of "The Art of governing" - how much government should control their citizens and what method they should use to balance the democracy and national administration.  


  

Scrap Iron - Nghề đồng nát (my second interview for KiemAn project)

"Đồng nát" - Scrap Iron is a job collecting almost everything that people don't want to use anymore such as used papers, empty bottle, broken radio, books, iron, steel....

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Such a hot afternoon !!

I have just finished the lunch with my dad, was holding a bunch of  watermelon peels outside and on my way to find "thùng nước gạo" ( a vessel containing  rotten food, vegetable, peel...for pig) to throw those peels. Accidental, I found her - my "cô đồng nát" :) was fanning herself with "nón" (traditional hat) , sitting in the shadow next to my house.

" Oh !! I need to sell you my stuffs!!!"- I shouted excitingly  - "Could you please wait, I will come back after throwing these peels".

She smiled brightly,quickly run to me and took all the watermelon peels - "Let me do it.. Let me do it..." - she said- "It doesn't matter... It's alright,,,".

She is such a very nice person!! Although her tired eyes and old cloths let you know that she has been having a very hard life, her face still brings you the feeling of happiness and honesty. She is also very shy, she kept hiding her face behind her "no'n" -" Ohh.. Please don't take picture of me !! I'm wearing ugly cloths and my stuffs (dong nat') are very messy. You can go out to take picture of pretty young girl carrying fresh fruits - That's considered pretty..not me!.."- She kept smiling and told me that.

She have been working as scrap iron dealer for 20 years (since 1989). Every time when the farming seasons are gone, she has nothing to earn money in her hometown ( Nam Dinh province, 100km far from Hanoi), she comes to Hanoi to work. Her job basically is to collect everything useless for normal families, carry them to the place gathering all scarp iron stuffs and category them into material group, paper group, electronic group... then sell all for the bigger dealers, who are in charge of sending categorized stuffs to different factories in order to recycle and reuse them. ( It is a very nice job contributing for recycling, saving and preserving resources, right? :D) 

Her job is not an easy one. She has to walk the whole day, suffer the hot, cold or rainy weather, carry heavy stuffs on her shoulder and sometimes no one sells anything for her at all...However, "I have very rare choices for my family", she claimed that, the profits gained from farming work is unstable because of the changing weather, harmful insects, bad seasons...and after harvesting the rice, she has no more work to do while the demand of money for her 2 children and her family is always there. Even though she has to move to the city far away from her children, rent a small shelter to live with other people in Hanoi and work very hard everyday, she is still happy that thanks to this job, she is able to send money back home for her family and does not need to worry about work's capital and loss so much.

In contrast with my previous interview, which was happened in a very serious, quite and mysterious atmosphere, this time interview was very natural, comfortable and open with many smiles, laughs and share...Talking to people doing manual works like "cô đồng nát" makes me realize that whatever job you choose, you won't feel passionate and happy doing it unless you satisfy with it,deeply  understand that it's the best choice for yourself, your family and your kids.


Once you know how to satisfy, life will be much easier !! :)

What if your fate is written? (1st interview for Kiem An project)

Still remember?

My favorite movie - Slumdog Millionaire was started with 1 question: Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees. How did he do it?
A. He cheated
B. He is lucky
C. He is genius
D. It's destiny/ It's written

And the answer given at the end of the movie - the answer for Jamal's whole life is D- It's written !

.....................


My first interviewee for Kiem An Project- a Spiritual guy tried to tell me exact the same thing in a very scientific but also mysterious way of explanation.


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He is a small guy, around 40 years old, very polite and wide knowledge with the an official job at Museum of History in Hanoi and an "unofficial" job in spiritual field. But the thing impressed me most when I first saw him was his smile which mysteriously made the others feel like he know about everything.

He graduated from The Social Science University with History as main major. However, in the second year of university, he especially felt interested in spiritual stuffs after one time doing research in a pagoda near Hanoi. Passionately,  he focused on studying and analyzing Vietnamese culture of traditional religious and Chinese spiritual culture. After many years working on spiritual works, he becomes a master of predicting fortune, "Boc Mo" (tell death people's family whether they should dig the tomb, clean and replace the death body as a traditional Vietnamese culture), "Phong Thuy" (tell people where their house, their office should locate, how to decorate the room...in order to bring the spiritual support for them) ....

The first thing he tried to emphasize in the interview was that although people are used to considering that spiritual work is suspicious, it is a very scientific work requiring a wide knowledge, statistics and even high-tech softwares to predict and estimate the human's fates. Sounds interesting, huh? :)


He shared some real stories from his job:

"........ this one time, there was a sick man who needed surgery. The doctor gave the man a 50/50 chance of surviving the surgery or not. The family went to many other conveyances like me to look for answers. They all told them that their son will survive and to go ahead with the surgery. However, when they came to me, my three coins read that they should not have surgery. If they did, he will die. They trusted me and listened. The son eventually went on to live a successful life and even got a promotion in his work. For even successful cases such as these, I never accept money because my work involves a matter of life and death.


Another example is about a newborn baby boy. He was sick and the doctors wanted to send him to the cold room to die because he could no longer breathe. When the family went to see me, I read my coins (The Can Long 3 coins to tell fortune), and told them that their baby boy has a chance to live. So they made the doctor take the baby out of the room and to give him some oxygen. After two hours, the baby boy survived.

Another example about the power of my work is about a girl who went to study abroad. She was fatally sick. So the parents sought me out. After reading the coins, I told the dad that his daughter will die. He got very angry at me. He yelled at me and kicked me out of the house. However, I was not sad about this, because it is a normal and expected reaction. A few months later, his daughter died. He sent me a lot of money, but I did not accept it, because again, I do not accept money when the situation is a matter of life and death. But if it’s about personal gains and promotions, then of course I’d have to accept money......"

Did I successfully scare you by letting you read those stories? :)

For most of Vietnamese people, we believe in destiny, each person has their own fate and there is an underground world,  another world beside the earth- the world of people after death... But it doesn't mean that you cant do anything to change your destiny, of course you can !! That's why the spiritual works like my interviewee are still exist to let you know what you should do in order to change your future and warn you about the potential risks. This kind of job develops gradually and quietly beside the modern and normal world, becomes a very important part of Vietnamese culture and religious.

The interview lasted for 1 hour and was really interesting in a mysterious, quite and serious atmosphere :)). The first interview brought me lots of deep thoughts and unidentified questions about spiritual field and the world that we will never know ...  :)

"The truth is out there" (X-file)