Understanding Vietnamese Life Partner

[Sha_Gua75]

Originally Posted by zichuan

Yes, anyway i have been that done that. Happily married with my wife and our 4mth old son.

u have done that succesfully doesnt mean everyone will success there is pple who failed as their ROM date is not nearer enough

[Sha_Gua75]

Originally Posted by KangTuo

confuse by what ROM said

you need to make a statutory declaration 1st then u can get married legally (ROM). If they found out later then u make a false statutory declaration then they will proceed charge. If not where in the world they have so much time to check everyone

[Sha_Gua75]

Originally Posted by VietnamLover

How about ROM with a woman in Singapore first and then have customary wedding with another woman in Vietnam? Will this be considered bigamy?

It is I think

[Hurricane88]

Originally Posted by Sha_Gua75

It is I think

Confirmed liao...the story in the paper said the Sin gahmen prosecuted the person for bigamy...

[SureScore]

Originally Posted by Hurricane88

Confirmed liao...the story in the paper said the Sin gahmen prosecuted the person for bigamy...

You sure expert in this topic. That's why leave to you to answer.

[retsoor]

Here's an interesting study for those who wish to understand vietnamese concepts of virginity and pre-marital sex:

http://iussp2005.princeton.edu/downl...issionId=51310

Again, I must say...vietnamese are still *very* confucian and chinese (although they don't like to hear the latter).

The findings in the above article will come as no surprise for the majority of those here who are of chinese heritage.

Personally, I was never very interested in virgins, and I honestly don't understand all the fuzz about this. I mean, would any of you buy a car that you have never driven before?! Or worse, a car that no one has tested before? A car which might potentially never start, never work properly? A Mercedes is usually not a bad car, yet with a new car you never know. Lee Kuan Yew switched to Lexus because his brand new model, top-of-the-line Mercedes had a lot of problems. It would suddenly stop, for no apparent reason (eg software bugs). I don't think a Lexus is better than a Mercedes, but since I know a little bit about marketing and engineering practices, I would *never* buy any brand new technology product which has just been pushed into the market. Brand new models are always beta models. V 0.9, if you want. There will always be flaws. If you're willing to be a beta tester, and stupid enough to pay a premium for working out the flaws, go for it...But it'd rather have a car that works, and a girl who knows what she does...I'm not the beta-tester kind of guy.

Just my personal opinion. I respect all those who admire virgins, although I think they consequently shouldn't have sex themselves before marrriage either, if they really value this concept^^

Enough said...time to go out and enjoy some proven, thoroughly tested...ahem...cars. I also know there's a lot of good folks here, who believe in love rather than virginity

[zichuan]

Originally Posted by retsoor

Here's an interesting study for those who wish to understand vietnamese concepts of virginity and pre-marital sex:

http://iussp2005.princeton.edu/downl...issionId=51310

Again, I must say...vietnamese are still *very* confucian and chinese (although they don't like to hear the latter).

The findings in the above article will come as no surprise for the majority of those here who are of chinese heritage.

Personally, I was never very interested in virgins, and I honestly don't understand all the fuzz about this. I mean, would any of you buy a car that you have never driven before?! Or worse, a car that no one has tested before? A car which might potentially never start, never work properly? A Mercedes is usually not a bad car, yet with a new car you never know. Lee Kuan Yew switched to Lexus because his brand new model, top-of-the-line Mercedes had a lot of problems. It would suddenly stop, for no apparent reason (eg software bugs). I don't think a Lexus is better than a Mercedes, but since I know a little bit about marketing and engineering practices, I would *never* buy any brand new technology product which has just been pushed into the market. Brand new models are always beta models. V 0.9, if you want. There will always be flaws. If you're willing to be a beta tester, and stupid enough to pay a premium for working out the flaws, go for it...But it'd rather have a car that works, and a girl who knows what she does...I'm not the beta-tester kind of guy.

Just my personal opinion. I respect all those who admire virgins, although I think they consequently shouldn't have sex themselves before marrriage either, if they really value this concept^^

Enough said...time to go out and enjoy some proven, thoroughly tested...ahem...cars. I also know there's a lot of good folks here, who believe in love rather than virginity

biet roi.. choi choi..

[anathem]

Originally Posted by retsoor

Again, I must say...vietnamese are still *very* confucian and chinese (although they don't like to hear the latter).

Ethnic or cultural identities, stereotypes and categorizations are never as simple or black and white as a world punctured by that malignant discourse of nationalism would want you to believe. What you talk about is a complicated terrain of competing and contested meanings, divergently interpreted histories and ultimately, a question of how arbitrary, contextually sited constructs are assumed to be iron-wrought truths and become endlessly reproduced as accepted everyday "reality".

Heh, I'd really like to see how a Vietnamese nationalist would react to your assertions. The Confucian bit may well be true to a certain extent (though one could say, for want of generalizing and for fear of participating in a totalizing, nationalistic, waste-of-time sort of manner of looking at things, that this little nugget is even more applicable to South Koreans; and they definitely aren't very "Chinese", or are they?) but that follow up was definitely a bit unnecessary and insensitive. Well, if our Vietnamese friends were that "Chinese" (if you assume such labels to be the simplest, most fundamental way of defining a person), they probably wouldn not be protesting so vehemently over the PRC's rather shameless and imperialistic land-grabs in the South China Sea, now would they? Would they not be glad to let Mother China bare its fangs and start asserting the bare beginnings of its imperial pretensions if there's a hidden "Chinese" in each and every Vietnamese? But of course, Vietnam also happens to have troops stationed on the greatest number of reefs and islets in the disputed area somehow, hahaha. I am definitely not supporting Vietnam's claim to the Paracels and Spratlys or that of any other state's. Accepting the "reality" of a world of nation-states, the legitimacy of each claimant's case still deserves to be heard in a higher court of law and despite the complexity of this very example, perhaps a peaceful and civilized way of resolving such territorial questions can still be found, without the need to resort to the unilateral use of violence. Well, which also happens to explain why a national(ist) (to simplify things, read racist and militarist) way of looking at the world is also so toxic, illogical and moronic, right?

There is indeed a lot of commonality between what we unthinkingly call "Chinese culture" and "Vietnamese culture" (or "Korean culture", "Japanese culture" or "Taiwanese culture" for that matter). And there are also a lot of differences as well, which are magnified by the division of the world into nation states and an overarching ideology of international nationalism that generally assumes that such differences are innate, natural and forever static. An entirely fallacious proposition, without doubt and demonstrably so. And of course, there is no one monolithic, unchanging configuration of either "Chinese" or "Vietnamese" civilization or culture either. History is messy, full of potholes and never follows the convenient trajectories of nationalist narratives and myths. Culture is similarly fractured (and yet contiguous). This argument ought to be carried through to its logical conclusion but it is just inappropriate for a forum like this. All I am saying is not to be racist, chauvinistic or xenophobic. There is no need to only look at the world through the tinted glasses of one's "culture". And in this globalized world, which global citizen can claim to inhabit one and only one easily delineated cultural sphere? In this case, I'd just say let's not be too Sino-centric. It is inappropriate and rather odious. However much Vietnamese nationalism might include fictitious elements, it is certainly no more or less a fabrication than say, Chinese nationalism. Recognizing the differences and commonalities between individual and collectivities alike is just a way of acknowledging the wonderful diversity of the human species. Identity is a slippery beast. And at the end of the day, it is one's individual story and the interpersonal, intercultural contacts that he or she has built up over life that counts, and not some stupid label with a clear description of what its characteristics are supposed to be, that is imposed from the outside. There is truly much we can learn from each other. Don't just draw lines when it's convenient. Don't just think about the world in terms of casually invoked cultural blocs that really don't say or mean anything. Are we so different from a Chow Ang Moh, for example? Many of us would be a whole lot more at home and less culture-shocked in London or Berlin than in Beijing or Hanoi. Does that not say something already? Vicarious pride derived from nationalist and racist beliefs is just so yesterday. Or put simply, it is just so SHINGZ.

[Hurricane88]

Originally Posted by anathem

Ethnic or cultural identities, stereotypes and categorizations are never as simple or black and white as a world punctured by that malignant discourse of nationalism would want you to believe. What you talk about is a complicated terrain of competing and contested meanings, divergently interpreted histories and ultimately, a question of how arbitrary, contextually sited constructs are assumed to be iron-wrought truths and become endlessly reproduced as accepted everyday "reality".

Heh, I'd really like to see how a Vietnamese nationalist would react to your assertions. The Confucian bit may well be true to a certain extent (though one could say, for want of generalizing and for fear of participating in a totalizing, nationalistic, waste-of-time sort of manner of looking at things, that this little nugget is even more applicable to South Koreans; and they definitely aren't very "Chinese", or are they?) but that follow up was definitely a bit unnecessary and insensitive.

So Vn culture is rojak, neither here nor there...oso definitely not confucian according to your comments above?

Not sure what the moral of story is...care to coment in brief...

[SureScore]

Originally Posted by retsoor

Personally, I was never very interested in virgins, and I honestly don't understand all the fuzz about this.

Just some of them haven't tried before. Virgins are a painful experience. Not for those who want to have a good bonk.

[naemlo]

Originally Posted by Hurricane88

Not sure what the moral of story is...care to coment in brief...

Sibeh chim.... u very free... jump this thread n that thread.

[anathem]

Originally Posted by Hurricane88

So Vn culture is rojak, neither here nor there...oso definitely not confucian according to your comments above?

Not sure what the moral of story is...care to coment in brief...

Hi Bro. Will try to explain my argument simply and keep this short. Thanks to all for the points too.

All cultures are rojak to one extent or another. Our labels for this or that culture often gloss over and mask the complexity of history and processes of cultural formation as well as inter-cultural interaction. When does one "culture" or ethnicity end and the next one begin? Are the markers always as clear and obvious as the lines demarcated by the modern border posts and barbed wire fences of national boundaries? What is "Chinese" and "Vietnamese"? In a shorthanded everyday way, these names might seem very self-explanatory and self-evident but probe a bit deeper and they are themselves extremely problematic.

After all, there are Chinese (PRC) citizens of Vietnamese ethnicity called the Jīng (京族), which is the Mandarin Chinese rendering of the Vietnamese ethnonym Kinh. Across the border, one can also find a large population of người Hoa, who are the ethnic Chinese community of Vietnam. So are either of these folks Vietnamese or Chinese? Or both? Should we resort to using hyphens? And if so, which comes first? Or what? It gets better. The Vietnamese government recognizes 53 official minorities other than the Kinh majority. For the Chinese, the number is 54, in addition to the dominant Han (who are actually a culturally and linguistically diverse lot, whether in the PRC or elsewhere around the world). Who gets to be labelled a minority and to which label is one assigned in particular are also interesting questions, because the process of ethnic classification practiced by the modern nation-state is itself arbitrary and biased, one which obliterates the cultural diversity and complexity on the ground for the sake of administrative ease and bureaucratic conformity. And beyond that is where the confusion can get ridiculous. So when we talk about Chinese, for example, are we talking about Chinese nationality or Chinese ethnicity (which is usually a shorthand for members of the Han majority)? Both labels include and exclude strikingly different populations. Throw in even more interesting ingredients, such as the struggle to assert a separate Taiwanese identity in the territory known as the RoC and it gets even muddier. So would you call an ethnic Korean from Yanbian (or should that be Yeongbyeon?) who holds a PRC passport Chinese? What about a Kazakh from Xinjiang? Have you ever imagined how would someone like that self-identify or the problems that he or she might face with respect to the affiliation of his or her identity? I'd wager quite a few Tibetans and Uighurs (or Taiwanese) would bristle at the very suggestion that they are somehow "Chinese" in some way. The problematic nature of these examples just demonstrates the tenuous existence that people with a hybrid identity (especially if they are also socially or politically marginalized) face, in a world of nation-states that insist on an essentialized identity. Food for thought?

To cut a long story short, I think we should sometimes be a little more sensitive and thoughtful when throwing such labels about. I think it is hard to avoid the use of such totalizing and essentializing labels, especially in everyday usage but even when we use them, let us bear in mind that these are loaded terms with contested meanings after all. And that using them in a particular way may come across as racist, offensive or culturally imperialistic to certain individuals, that is all.

Of course Vietnamese culture is Confucian. To some extent. I don't think that can be denied. But is this Confucian influence ALL that defines "Vietnamese-ness"? And would having a Confucian cultural backbone make them anymore "Chinese"? That was just my original point. I don't think anyone can deny that what we take to be "Vietnamese culture" (ignoring for a moment what I mentioned in the prior paragraphs) has been influenced and enriched by "Chinese culture". But there are other strands involved as well. Don't forget that the current consensus in linguistic circles is that Vietnamese is undoubtedly an Austro-Asiatic (specifically Mon-Khmer) language and not related to any Sinitic language (which belong in the Sino-Tibetan family), despite a massive amount of borrowed vocabulary and other influences. Throw in centuries of interaction with (and the eventual assimilation of) much of Champa and the Chams, as well as a late veneer of colonial French influence and the underlying currents of the postcolonial Vietnamese cultural mix and experience gets even more interesting. Nonetheless, even while acknowledging their cultural debt to China, most ethnic Vietnamese will also treat the Chinese component (culturally at least) of their ancestry with a great deal of ambivalence. Whether or not their choice to be so narrowly nationalistic is right or not, a Vietnamese looking at the history of their interaction with China will also recall in their collective social repository, a number of invasions, long periods of harsh occupation and other acts of domination and violence. And multiple examples of Chinese (specifically, PRC) expansionism and imperialism (towards Vietnam) have not just been consigned to museums and history books, but actually unfolded in recent memory. It is a wound that hasn't quite completely healed. Thus I think many of them would find this characterization of 'Vietnam" as a "Little China" a particularly offensive affront and one designed to denigrate and obliterate the collective identity of their shared notion of the Vietnamese people. It is also symptomatic of a particularly Sino-centric way of looking at the world, an outlook that is rather xenophobic and racist. The moral of the story? I don't think there is any. I simply just believe that calling a Vietnamese (or Korean) "Chinese" just because of their Confucian heritage can be viewed as pretty hurtful, insulting and offensive if you happen to be on the receiving end. Not that I buy any of the exclusionary nationalist fictions that underpin such thoughts EITHER way, in any case.

I apologize if I haven't been able to articulate my position clearly and adequately. It seems to have been too long, yet too short. Anyway, it's kind of off-topic anyway and discussions of this nature are quite ill-suited to a forum of this nature so this will be my last comment on this issue. Thanks for your time.

[retsoor]

@ anathem: You write eloquently (surprisingly so for this forum ), you are taking a keen interest in this discussion, you have a lot of knowledge to share, and many valid points. I enjoyed your posts, yet I don't have much to add, as I agree with almost everything you write...so forgive me if my initial post came across as somewhat simplistic and essentialist, that's not my way of thinking at all. I may have (once more) underestimated this forum, I didn't expect to meet cultural critics like you here

I'll just pick one example here, a thought which has occured to me more than once:

Many of us would be a whole lot more at home and less culture-shocked in London or Berlin than in Beijing or Hanoi

Very true, and just as true for vietnamese. Most of my vietnamese friends in Saigon feel far more at home in New York or Paris than in a village on the countryside in Lao Cai province. So much for national labels. I'm smiling a little bit here; as I often found myself raising your points exactly in discussions with vietnamese friends.

[Hurricane88]

Originally Posted by anathem

The moral of the story? I don't think there is any. I simply just believe that calling a Vietnamese (or Korean) "Chinese" just because of their Confucian heritage can be viewed as pretty hurtful, insulting and offensive if you happen to be on the receiving end. Not that I buy any of the exclusionary nationalist fictions that underpin such thoughts EITHER way, in any case.

I apologize if I haven't been able to articulate my position clearly and adequately. It seems to have been too long, yet too short. Anyway, it's kind of off-topic anyway and discussions of this nature are quite ill-suited to a forum of this nature so this will be my last comment on this issue. Thanks for your time.

Thank you for sharing...

[SureScore]

Originally Posted by naemlo

Sibeh chim.... u very free... jump this thread n that thread.

You don't know that he read this forum a few times per day.