Capturing the moment....
Feb. 24th, 2006 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranThe last time I was in Viet Nam, I went on a two day bus tour to the village of Mai Chau. It was one of those backpacker things to do - a packaged "ethnic minority" experience with a sleep over in a stilthouse (actually a specially converted tourist stilthouse with an outside amenities block with showers and toilets). I wasn't all that keen on going originally, but, at that particular time, my sister and I were getting sick of the noise and bustle of Hanoi and it seemed like a good way to take a break.
Mai Chau was a village of the White Tai people. They had originally been hill dwellers elsewhere in the highlands, and had been transplanted down to the relative luxury of a flat valley floor and wet rice cultivation. The tourists were restricted to a special tourist village, with custom built stilthouses serving as guesthouses and shops. Throughout the valley were other, smaller villages, where the Tai people were left to themselves, apart from the daily walking tours of the tourists. There was a school there and the children were taught Vietnamese there instead of their native language.
On our first day there, just as we were coming back from our first walk, I happened to come past two small boys playing by a water channel at the edge of a rice field. They had sticks in their hands and were using them to guide smaller sticks down the channel. I asked them (in Vietnamese) if they were playing at boats, and the nearest boy said yes. I asked him if I could take a photograph and his expression changed. No, he said, firmly, his jaw tight. It would have been a perfect shot. Two boys playing by a rice paddy with water buffalo and mountains in the background. But, it was also a poignant situation. These boys were in a disappearing world and in an environment that had already changed a lot. They were already speaking what would once have been a foreign language, living in a foreign place and having to deal with a world that was coming ever closer. I shrugged and nodded. I let them have their time alone.
One day, I'd like to write a story that those boys can understand. One that captures their imagination and passes the test of truth as they see it. One day, I'd like to be able to see the world as they really see it, and not just how others think they do.
A photo missed, but an image I'll never forget.
[Update: edited to put back all the missing words that I thought I typed the first time. I don't know what's happened to my brain these days]
Mai Chau was a village of the White Tai people. They had originally been hill dwellers elsewhere in the highlands, and had been transplanted down to the relative luxury of a flat valley floor and wet rice cultivation. The tourists were restricted to a special tourist village, with custom built stilthouses serving as guesthouses and shops. Throughout the valley were other, smaller villages, where the Tai people were left to themselves, apart from the daily walking tours of the tourists. There was a school there and the children were taught Vietnamese there instead of their native language.
On our first day there, just as we were coming back from our first walk, I happened to come past two small boys playing by a water channel at the edge of a rice field. They had sticks in their hands and were using them to guide smaller sticks down the channel. I asked them (in Vietnamese) if they were playing at boats, and the nearest boy said yes. I asked him if I could take a photograph and his expression changed. No, he said, firmly, his jaw tight. It would have been a perfect shot. Two boys playing by a rice paddy with water buffalo and mountains in the background. But, it was also a poignant situation. These boys were in a disappearing world and in an environment that had already changed a lot. They were already speaking what would once have been a foreign language, living in a foreign place and having to deal with a world that was coming ever closer. I shrugged and nodded. I let them have their time alone.
One day, I'd like to write a story that those boys can understand. One that captures their imagination and passes the test of truth as they see it. One day, I'd like to be able to see the world as they really see it, and not just how others think they do.
A photo missed, but an image I'll never forget.
[Update: edited to put back all the missing words that I thought I typed the first time. I don't know what's happened to my brain these days]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-02-24 12:46 pm (UTC)Language, culture and poetry are all so intertwined that losing the native tongue cuts off access to a lot of the past. It's a pity there isn't a policy of bilingualism, but the impetus would have to come from the people themselves.