Dear Family and Friends,

Apropos of nothing: a question.

Have you cooked gnocchi?

“Gnocchi?” you ask.

Gnocchi. The word means “little pillow” in Italian. To make gnocchi, one puts a large pot of water on the stove to boil. Then, one cooks potatoes, mashes them with a beaten egg, adds flour, gently spices with salt and a dash nutmeg before, on a floured board, one rolls the dough into thick snakes of dough. Next one slices the dough into pillows and pours the whole batch into a pot of boiling water. At first, the pillows sink. But the boiling water works them over, lowers their density, and causes the gnocchi to rise to the surface of the water. Served in tomato sauce, they are wonderful.

I ask, “have you cooked gnocchi?” not to hint that you should make gnocchi for me for dinner—not that I’d complain—but because I’ve returned to Asia, to Vietnam. I’ve not been to Vietnam before and yet, snippets of Asia have been bubbling up from deep within my memory.

We ended four flights and thirty hours of travel by touching down just after midnight in Ho Chi Minh City, better known as Saigon. If I hadn’t been with a group of twenty-five other people, arriving in Vietnam would’ve duplicated other Asian airport arrivals. We filled out paperwork, acquired Visas, collected passport stamps, and exited eagerly. Outside the airport, the first burst of humidity felt warm, welcome, but then it settled against my nose and mouth, necessitating a few deep breaths to adjust. I slid my suitcase into our tour bus’s luggage compartment and climbed into a seat, eager for our hotel.

At night, Saigon looks so very Asian. Here large signs and neon lights crowd together; some flash but most highlight street-level shops. Large panes of glass wrap around first and second floors creating shows of chic mannequins, coffee shop tables, sample kitchens. Saigon levels a city tax on the width of buildings and as a result, buildings here are especially thin and often top out at four stories tall. Large gaps between buildings are blocked off by corrugated fences and large buildings of concrete are abandoned with re-bar sprouting from unfinished pillars.

As we drove to the hotel rain slanted under street lights and reflections danced on puddles. Saigon flashed in front of me, but snippets of Daegu, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur flashed me across Asia, back in time. I remembered my Daegu-co-teacher Paul commenting, “Asian cities are most beautiful at night.” He was so right.

The morning after our arrival, we could be found a few hours South of Saigon, walking above the Viet Cong’s Củ Chi Tunnels. These Vietnamese tunnels are noteworthy in their own right but we began our tour by descending into a tunneled enclosure reminiscent of Korea’s DMZ and the startling secret tunnels that the North Korea dug into South Korea. Further in our Vietnamese tunnel tour, we passed a military tank. A Muslim Malaysian woman in a flowered shayla posed for a picture next to the tank while I crouched to look the gun in the face. The gun still has the power to intimate but also roused a memory of the deep rumble that I felt within my collarbone more than between my ears as I sat on a speeding South Korean military tank during a teacher’s field trip.

In point of fact, many memories that are bubbling within me are from South Korea, the country sets the bar for other experiences (for me.) Yesterday morning, our group drove into green mountains to visit a rural elementary school, which welcomed us with an “Opening Ceremony,” including a very long, gushing speech from a very important official man (who departed immediately after his speech). Rituals and behaviors that my years in Asia taught me to associate that behavior and that sort-of ritual with Confucianism.  Vietnamese sunlight warmed my hair while I remembered my first day in Daegu when I was welcomed with another hundred or so foreigners by being herded into an auditorium, seated, and talked at and talked at—in Korean, without translation—and talked at and talked at and talked at while my “guiding teacher,” beloved Mr. Son, pulled a fan from his back pocket to fan us both. My two years in Korea were punctuated with opening and closing ceremonies, which inevitably necessitated long periods of projecting interest while fighting the urge to stand up and scream. Perhaps I wanted to forget the officiousness of these “ceremonies,” but yesterday I sat, projecting interest, and would’ve given everything in my wallet to again sit next to Mr. Son.

I was also reminded of Mr. Son when we visited a Buddhist temple that towers over the city of Danang. At the temple in Danag the largest Buddha—lady Buddha?—statue I’ve ever seen watches the harbor, the temple appeared marvelous but lacked energy built from faith, over centuries. Mr. Son once said, “You will see a beautiful temple but you will not see the true beauty of Buddhism.” He, also, was oh-so-right.

The Vietnamese have a culture of men gathering and drinking together, as do the Koreans. The Koreans wrap certain foods within lettuce or herbs and dip into sauce with pointed chopsticks, as do the Vietnamese. A few nights ago, we ate at a seaside restaurant whose entrance was lined with quantities of still-living seafood, breathing in shallow plastic circular buckets, an assurance of quality equally Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese or Korean. We were served grapes and I wondered whether we should peel our grapes as if we were in Korea or China (no one did.) Here in Vietnam, when I meet anyone’s eyes, I bow, instinctively nodding to cultural mores that became a part of me while I lived in Korea.

While in Vietnam, I am not just remembering Korea. I’m typing this blog from Ho Anh, a 17^th century city visibly influenced by other cultures. In Ho Anh, rooflines reflect the best of Chinese architecture: at first, I subconsciously counted the animals on the corners – as I learned in China – searching for indications of royalty. Vietnam’s verdant greenery reminds me of Thailand and home ancestor altars resemble Thai spirit houses. Here in Vietnam, there is a layer of attitude similar to Egypt and its desperate “gouge tourists for as much money as possible” modus operandi. Colored rivers and country life here reminds me of India, hammocks are slung in cafes, and numbers of people take respite from afternoon heat by swimming in rivers, careless that there are jobs to do. So far, in Vietnam, poverty has not been nearly as bad as Cambodia but I go back and go back to a moment in Siem Reap when a beggar with a baby slung over her shoulder held an empty milk bottle aloft and chased me down the street, “Lady, help. Help!” Her faces, her poverty, has actually chased me for years around the world.

Anyway, these memories that are returning do not particularly reflect Vietnam but they do reflect connections. Connections between ascetics, architecture, post-war, late 20^th economic development, and how Confucianism actualizes in modern societies. Connections between the history and countries of East Asia: China, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Cambodia, Thailand, and even Malaysia.

Returning to Asia, visiting Vietnam is forcing memory after memory from the back and into the fore of my brain. My personal connections to people, places, and experiences, and my understanding of Asia has returned to the surface. And yes, this is all strange… and wonderful.   

With love,

Laura

Lady Buddha (above)
Fat Buddha (below)

Sunset over Hoi Ahn.