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Mobiles so popular that mediums call the dead
By Andrew Lam |
January 14, 2013, Monday
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Print Edition
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A COUPLE years ago in the outskirts of Hanoi, I watched as a well-dressed, middle-aged woman burned paper offerings to her dead husband.
Along with traditional mock gold bars and horses, one item stood out: a paper cell phone.
I couldn't help myself. "Why are you burning a paper mobile?" I asked.
"So that in the spirit world he can have everything that we have now," she answered matter-of-factly.
A car and a laptop are the lyrical symbols of the American Dream, but for the majority of Vietnamese they remain luxury items. Not the mobile.
In Vietnam, as in elsewhere in Asia, mobile phones are so plentiful that vendors sell them on sidewalks. Teenagers have them.
On motorcycles, Vietnamese chat with one hand on the handlebars and weave dangerously.
In cafes, they have a rude habit of talking to you while checking and sending messages on their mobiles. They don't even turn them off in movie theaters.
Or try this classic, modern-day image of Saigon: a husband and wife riding on a motorcycle down a tree-lined boulevard on a Sunday morning. He's in a black suit, driving while talking on his mobile; she, in a traditional ao dai dress, holds onto his waist with one arm and chats on her mobile with the other.
According to Techniasia, there are 140 mobile phones for every 100 Vietnamese. "For a country whose population is just over 90 million, that amounts to more than 130 million mobile phones," notes Techniasia. By contrast, only 74 percent of Chinese have access to mobile phones, with one billion mobile users in 2012, according to Forbes magazine.
These days, the insidious mobile has invaded even the most sacred space in Vietnam - the Buddhist temple.
I went to one such temple to immerse myself in quiet meditation and incense smoke when, suddenly, the muffled theme of "Star Wars" chimed from a nearby monk's saffron robe. Buddha smiled down benevolently on us all, but the scowling abbot wasn't too pleased.
Status symbol
Vietnam came out of the Cold War and ran smack into the Information Age. To own the latest communication technology, therefore, is a must, a status symbol that many urbanized Vietnamese can't do without. Internet cafes in every city are full, fax machines twitter in every office, and the ringing of mobile phones never seems to stop.
Before the US embargo was lifted in 1994 and travel was allowed between the United States and Vietnam, a letter or care package sent from America would take up to six months to arrive in Vietnam.
Back then, my mother and I would roll US$20 bills into tight, compact sticks smaller than cigarettes and hide them in tubes of tooth paste, which we would then send home along with other goods to help our relatives survive.
Middle class
No more. These days, Vietnam has a 7 percent annual growth rate and a growing middle class. Vietnamese can shop in newly built supermarkets, money is easily wired and e-mails zip back and forth as if the ocean doesn't exist. Now it's the world of Facebook, Skype, and mobiles.
While I was in Vietnam, a cousin in Hanoi insisted that I rent a mobile phone. For about a dollar, he said, we could be in contact every day. Never mind that we hadn't been in touch for almost a decade. Now that I was here, somehow we needed to stay within texting mode daily.
For Vietnamese, the mobile phone is ultimately more than a status symbol.
Vietnamese are clannish, and for many, the family and extended family are all the social network they will ever have. Connecting to one another is more than just a fad - it's a cultural imperative. Bonds are never to be broken and relationships are to be built upon continuously. The mobile phone facilitates that task quite well.
I read in a newspaper in Hanoi about a popular young medium who talks to the dead. How does she reach them?
You guessed it - she calls the dead on her mobile. No one else hears the ghosts but her, of course.
If her phone really does connect with the spirit world, I must say I find it regrettable. After all the stresses they suffered in life, the dead deserve some peace and quiet.
With the new technology and the Vietnamese impulse to stay connected, however, they may be out of luck.
New America Media editor, Andrew Lam is the author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora" (Heyday Books, 2005), which recently won a Pen American "Beyond the Margins" award and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres," from which the piece above was excerpted. His next book, "Birds of Paradise Lost" is due out in 2013. He has lectured and read his work widely at many universities. Follow Andrew on Twitter https://twitter.com/andrewqlam
Along with traditional mock gold bars and horses, one item stood out: a paper cell phone.
I couldn't help myself. "Why are you burning a paper mobile?" I asked.
"So that in the spirit world he can have everything that we have now," she answered matter-of-factly.
A car and a laptop are the lyrical symbols of the American Dream, but for the majority of Vietnamese they remain luxury items. Not the mobile.
In Vietnam, as in elsewhere in Asia, mobile phones are so plentiful that vendors sell them on sidewalks. Teenagers have them.
On motorcycles, Vietnamese chat with one hand on the handlebars and weave dangerously.
In cafes, they have a rude habit of talking to you while checking and sending messages on their mobiles. They don't even turn them off in movie theaters.
Or try this classic, modern-day image of Saigon: a husband and wife riding on a motorcycle down a tree-lined boulevard on a Sunday morning. He's in a black suit, driving while talking on his mobile; she, in a traditional ao dai dress, holds onto his waist with one arm and chats on her mobile with the other.
According to Techniasia, there are 140 mobile phones for every 100 Vietnamese. "For a country whose population is just over 90 million, that amounts to more than 130 million mobile phones," notes Techniasia. By contrast, only 74 percent of Chinese have access to mobile phones, with one billion mobile users in 2012, according to Forbes magazine.
These days, the insidious mobile has invaded even the most sacred space in Vietnam - the Buddhist temple.
I went to one such temple to immerse myself in quiet meditation and incense smoke when, suddenly, the muffled theme of "Star Wars" chimed from a nearby monk's saffron robe. Buddha smiled down benevolently on us all, but the scowling abbot wasn't too pleased.
Status symbol
Vietnam came out of the Cold War and ran smack into the Information Age. To own the latest communication technology, therefore, is a must, a status symbol that many urbanized Vietnamese can't do without. Internet cafes in every city are full, fax machines twitter in every office, and the ringing of mobile phones never seems to stop.
Before the US embargo was lifted in 1994 and travel was allowed between the United States and Vietnam, a letter or care package sent from America would take up to six months to arrive in Vietnam.
Back then, my mother and I would roll US$20 bills into tight, compact sticks smaller than cigarettes and hide them in tubes of tooth paste, which we would then send home along with other goods to help our relatives survive.
Middle class
No more. These days, Vietnam has a 7 percent annual growth rate and a growing middle class. Vietnamese can shop in newly built supermarkets, money is easily wired and e-mails zip back and forth as if the ocean doesn't exist. Now it's the world of Facebook, Skype, and mobiles.
While I was in Vietnam, a cousin in Hanoi insisted that I rent a mobile phone. For about a dollar, he said, we could be in contact every day. Never mind that we hadn't been in touch for almost a decade. Now that I was here, somehow we needed to stay within texting mode daily.
For Vietnamese, the mobile phone is ultimately more than a status symbol.
Vietnamese are clannish, and for many, the family and extended family are all the social network they will ever have. Connecting to one another is more than just a fad - it's a cultural imperative. Bonds are never to be broken and relationships are to be built upon continuously. The mobile phone facilitates that task quite well.
I read in a newspaper in Hanoi about a popular young medium who talks to the dead. How does she reach them?
You guessed it - she calls the dead on her mobile. No one else hears the ghosts but her, of course.
If her phone really does connect with the spirit world, I must say I find it regrettable. After all the stresses they suffered in life, the dead deserve some peace and quiet.
With the new technology and the Vietnamese impulse to stay connected, however, they may be out of luck.
New America Media editor, Andrew Lam is the author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora" (Heyday Books, 2005), which recently won a Pen American "Beyond the Margins" award and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres," from which the piece above was excerpted. His next book, "Birds of Paradise Lost" is due out in 2013. He has lectured and read his work widely at many universities. Follow Andrew on Twitter https://twitter.com/andrewqlam
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