The West is from Mars, the East is from Venus

In preparation for my upcoming trip to Vietnam, I've been reading a lot of blogs written by Vietnamese and expats living/working in Vietnam and I have to say, it's getting pretty addictive. My most recent favorite blog author is Preya, whose blog is called Dreaming of Hanoi [http://preya.blogspot.com/]. Preya is now in the US, but one of her posts (March19) is so wise and thoughtful that I would like to present it to you in its integrality:

The Exit Sign

Anyone would know from reading my blog that I love everything about Hanoi. Everything about it holds some special place in my heart; every place beckons some distant memory to the forefront of my mind. If anyone would hate to see it destroyed or altered beyond recognition, I would. Already, I have seen it change drastically.

You would think, then, that I would nod my head in agreement when hearing people talk of "preserving cultures." After all, McDonald’s still hasn’t arrived in Hanoi (or Saigon for that matter) and I’ll be happy if it never does. But, in reality, I find it extremely condescending coming out of the mouths of people who hail from the "civilized" world, who go home to 24-hour convenience stores, drive-through fast food, city-sized shopping malls, and every other hallmark of "civilization" one can think of. They hate it all of course and take every opportunity to complain about corporations and all of the other "evil forces of globalization" that are "taking over the world." They flinch every time another McDonald’s opens in what used to be a pristine patch of rainforest. Every time another gaggle of brown-skinned school children starts speaking English and wearing blue jeans. No matter that they themselves take advantage of whatever benefits their culture, and their being members of it, offers. Being members of a culture that already has everything it needs and wants, it's easy for them to scream and yell and cry every time another "innocent" culture is corrupted.

While on the surface this attitude might seem harmless, I find it be to somewhat racist. People have the sovereign right to evolve (or devolve!) in any manner they choose, whether or not it fits someone else’s version of the "right way." It might disgust you, but to many developing nations, the symbols of globalization that you find so evil are symbols of wealth and success. Who are you to say that they can’t have those things? How incredibly patronizing to think that you are somehow more fit to choose the fates of others. Take fast food in America for example: Burgeoning waist lines and the ever-increasing number of fast food restaurants all around country in the last decade spurred another movement: the health food craze, which, some would say, has begun to curb the excess of the 90's. The point is that societies, as a whole, change and evolve; they make mistakes, learn from some and not from others. Who are we to stop that process from occurring in developing nations? It’s one thing to try to preserve aspects of cultures that contribute to the diversity of the planet, but it’s another to treat people as if they exist for some other purpose than the one they determine for themselves.

I can’t stand foreigners who visit Hanoi and complain about the new restaurants that serve non-Vietnamese food (I have heard it too often lately). Excuse me? People have a right to eat whatever they want. A growing number of Vietnamese can afford to eat out and you think it’s your right to decide that they should stick to traditional Vietnamese dishes because an upscale Italian restaurant ruins your idea of what Vietnam "should be," doesn’t quite meet up to those "exotic" standards you were expecting? I am equally annoyed by foreigners who claim to "love" Hanoi and insist that anyone who enjoys the modernities of life there–-restaurants, bars, hotels, and swimming pools, is not truly "experiencing" the country, or is somehow being immoral. I think it’s the opposite. To the locals and those who call it home, Hanoi is all of the things that now constitute it; it’s constantly growing and changing. Ironically, it is the distinguishing characteristic of the type of expat/tourist I talk of to want to have the "authentic" experience, while avoiding anything they feel might "ruin" it, like seeing the neon exit sign at the end of an engrossing museum exhibit. They fail to see how close-minded they are being; after all, to get the "authentic" experience you need to experience as much as possible, including the aspects that make up modern Hanoi. They go to Asia to find the simplicity and serenity that they feel has been lost at home, so they get angry when others there live a modern lifestyle.

To them I say: If you really feel like "preserving" something, by all means, work on stopping the evils of globalization in your own town. Work on returning it to the 19th century and see how people feel. Renounce your own creature comforts, but don’t be so condescending as to say that others should not have or want them. People exist and live and grow and strive for their own sake, not for yours. Do not go overseas and treat the places you see and the people you meet as if their only purpose in life is to "spice up" your world and make your travels more interesting, or provide you with a place to unwind, discover yourself, etc. While nearly all of the people who say these things do so with good intentions, I would argue that it’s ultimately no different from what Chinua Achebe, referring to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, said about how the West perceives (or once perceived) Africa:

For reasons which can certainly use close psychological inquiry the West seems to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance by comparison with Africa. If Europe, advancing in civilization, could cast a backward glance periodically at Africa trapped in primordial barbarity it could say with faith and feeling: There go I but for the grace of God. Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray -- a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate.

So, Asia, to many expats and tourists today, is both a place to escape and find simplicity and a place to see and experience new things; the underlying sentiment is the same: Anything that is not Western is the "other"–a receptacle for all that is good, or bad about humanity. For Achebe, it was the bad. Africa was portrayed as savage, the dark part of the white man’s consciousness. The new attitude is equally disturbing; it treats "the other" as both spa and museum, meant to "preserve" the innocence and simplicity of life that you can no longer find at home, for your viewing pleasure. In both instances, the "other" does not exist for its own sake, but as a means to some end of the Western world.

Preya's analysis reminds me of David Henry Hwang's multi-award winning play «M. Butterfly», later made into a film by David Cronenberg [http://tinyurl.com/enb4g]. I saw the play a long time ago on Broadway. It's based on real events and tells the strange tale of a French diplomat, René Gallimard, who carried on a 20 year relationship with a Chinese opera star, Song Liling, never realizing that she was really a man [http://tinyurl.com/k7n4e]. Hwang's play is a masterful study of the willful desire of certain people to see the world as they imagine it and not as it actually is. Towards the end of the play, Song tells Gallimard that, in his mind, she represents the submissive Orient while he sees himself as a symbol of the aggressive Western civilization. And the real reason why he is so upset and distraught by the revelation that she is a spy for China and a man to boot, is because she refuses to conform to his image of her. Her betrayal is all the more biting because she won't entertain his illusions about her and about the Orient.