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When consumers worship at the altar of the shopping mall
By Andrew Lam |
March 27, 2013, Wednesday
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IN Vietnam there's a new horde of consumers with dispensable income and a penchant for luxury goods and real estates overseas.
Small but growing in number, they travel the world as shop-til-you-drop-tourists.
They have Gucci, Shiseido, Nokia and iPods, and some with luxury condos on their minds. And Hai, a friend I met some years ago, has become one of them.
Though he spent four days in San Francisco, he did not want to see the Golden Gate Bridge, did not visit Chinatown, nor was he curious about Fisherman's Wharf. The ocean or park didn't thrill him, either, nor the ride on the famous cable car.
And when I pointed Russian Hill's shimmering skyline at dusk, he felt obliged to take a picture. Otherwise he was bored.
All he wanted to do was shop and eat at the best restaurants and have me take photos of him doing so. Otherwise, he was on the Internet or on his cell phone to talk, yes, what else? shopping.
He checked out real estate prices, took pictures and sent them back to his friends and business partners in Vietnam.
And he also had a list of luxury goods he "needed to buy," and since he spoke very little English, I was, besides driver and host and photographer, his interpreter.
Fast and furious
Until earlier this year, the Vietnamese economy had been growing fast and furious.
Since the cold war ended, and especially since the US normalized relations with its former enemy in 1997, Vietnam's economy has been on a steady rise.
The GDP average growth had hovered somewhere between 7 to 8 percent annually for nearly a decade. It has slowed down in the last few years but the wealth remains palpable among a certain class. Indeed, Vietnam's heart throbs with commerce.
Vietnam is rushing toward consumerist society at a breakneck speed without so much as a backward glance.
If religion was once the opiate of the masses, and ideology the cause of revolution, then money has replaced both and converted almost everyone, young and old, to worship at the brand new altar of Vietnam called the shopping mall.
In that world, to be able to spend US$200 dollars on a bottle of wine or US$300 dollar on a Gucci shirt is to be the envy of all.
It's a world of one-upmanship where at dinner among friends, the first thing one does is to leave his new cell phone on the table to show that he'd acquired the latest technology.
Showing off
To be rich in Vietnam is indeed glorious. And to be rich requires showing off - and lately, by traveling and shopping overseas.
After all, Vietnam has its first billionaire recently confirmed by Forbes, who is suspected of being the anonymous buyer of the most expensive house ever sold in Miami - US$47 million.
This new revolution comes with its own vocabulary:
Di quay: To go wild, to get drunk, to stir up trouble.
Song voi: To live fast, to hurry life and spend it away.
Dua doi: To be competitive, to be greedy, to keep up with the Joneses.
Van hoa toc do: Speed culture; culture that moves along at high speed.
Lo Co: Borrowed from "local," a term too describe someone who's backward, a yokel, or cheap goods that are made in Vietnam. None of Hai's friends, he would tell you, is Lo Co. He prefers Viet Kieu like me, Vietnamese who return from overseas.
Si-tret: Stress. Vietnamese have appropriated this word to describe the upwardly mobile. One is si-tret, for instance, while text messaging in one's cell phone while talking on another about one business deal.
Andrew Lam is New America editor and the author of "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres" and "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora." His book of short stories, "Birds of Paradise Lost," has just come out. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.
Small but growing in number, they travel the world as shop-til-you-drop-tourists.
They have Gucci, Shiseido, Nokia and iPods, and some with luxury condos on their minds. And Hai, a friend I met some years ago, has become one of them.
Though he spent four days in San Francisco, he did not want to see the Golden Gate Bridge, did not visit Chinatown, nor was he curious about Fisherman's Wharf. The ocean or park didn't thrill him, either, nor the ride on the famous cable car.
And when I pointed Russian Hill's shimmering skyline at dusk, he felt obliged to take a picture. Otherwise he was bored.
All he wanted to do was shop and eat at the best restaurants and have me take photos of him doing so. Otherwise, he was on the Internet or on his cell phone to talk, yes, what else? shopping.
He checked out real estate prices, took pictures and sent them back to his friends and business partners in Vietnam.
And he also had a list of luxury goods he "needed to buy," and since he spoke very little English, I was, besides driver and host and photographer, his interpreter.
Fast and furious
Until earlier this year, the Vietnamese economy had been growing fast and furious.
Since the cold war ended, and especially since the US normalized relations with its former enemy in 1997, Vietnam's economy has been on a steady rise.
The GDP average growth had hovered somewhere between 7 to 8 percent annually for nearly a decade. It has slowed down in the last few years but the wealth remains palpable among a certain class. Indeed, Vietnam's heart throbs with commerce.
Vietnam is rushing toward consumerist society at a breakneck speed without so much as a backward glance.
If religion was once the opiate of the masses, and ideology the cause of revolution, then money has replaced both and converted almost everyone, young and old, to worship at the brand new altar of Vietnam called the shopping mall.
In that world, to be able to spend US$200 dollars on a bottle of wine or US$300 dollar on a Gucci shirt is to be the envy of all.
It's a world of one-upmanship where at dinner among friends, the first thing one does is to leave his new cell phone on the table to show that he'd acquired the latest technology.
Showing off
To be rich in Vietnam is indeed glorious. And to be rich requires showing off - and lately, by traveling and shopping overseas.
After all, Vietnam has its first billionaire recently confirmed by Forbes, who is suspected of being the anonymous buyer of the most expensive house ever sold in Miami - US$47 million.
This new revolution comes with its own vocabulary:
Di quay: To go wild, to get drunk, to stir up trouble.
Song voi: To live fast, to hurry life and spend it away.
Dua doi: To be competitive, to be greedy, to keep up with the Joneses.
Van hoa toc do: Speed culture; culture that moves along at high speed.
Lo Co: Borrowed from "local," a term too describe someone who's backward, a yokel, or cheap goods that are made in Vietnam. None of Hai's friends, he would tell you, is Lo Co. He prefers Viet Kieu like me, Vietnamese who return from overseas.
Si-tret: Stress. Vietnamese have appropriated this word to describe the upwardly mobile. One is si-tret, for instance, while text messaging in one's cell phone while talking on another about one business deal.
Andrew Lam is New America editor and the author of "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres" and "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora." His book of short stories, "Birds of Paradise Lost," has just come out. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.
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