Logic in culture
A family in VN means all the people that somehow related to us, and sometimes, young people like us have no ideas of some family members. That is why the last time when I went back there, I wanted to take grandma back to where grandparents came from, a village not so far from Hanoi, but she was not in good health. Hopefully I could do so in a year.
Not even my uncles, aunt, or mom know anybody from that village, and nobody wants to go there. My grandmom said everybody in the village has chicken, and pigs that when my grandmom came back, every house in the village would invite her for dinner or lunch with their own vegetables, and animal (no dogs, don't worry ;-)). Things like that does that happen in big cities...
When I was younger, I never thought of going to the village of grandparents, maybe because I was afraid that the toilet would be so dirty that I could not use it or something? imagin some movie scene where they have toilet near the pigs...But that does not seem to bother me anymore, but the feeling of wanting to go back grows stronger every time I think about it, I guess for my grandma, there must be a lot of childhood memories, imagin your friends with whom you hang out, now are also as old as you ;-). For me, I will have to fly from one country to another to find my old friends, most of childhood friends are in US now.
My grandmother came from a rich family, btw, and she got married to my grandfather when he already had an older wife, and his family was not as healthy as hers but apparently he was very handsome ;-). How lucky (or unfortunate?) men were in the past, having several wives ;-). Well, in the past, many rich family that had son, they arrange the marriage for their son with an older girl (much older), so that girl could take care of the cooking, cleaning, washing, working on the rice field of the house. Yeah, very sad.
One of the funny and confusing thing is the addressing of family members, and this is very much followed in the north, people from Hanoi are much more old-fashion than those from the South ( no wonder why they could reserve old stuffs in the country), and those in the center are even more. Also because Hanoi is the politic center of VN, they call it the "heart of the country" ;-P
Not only the addressing is confusing, like "uncle" in Vnese has four words, two for older and younger brother of mom, and the other two are for older and younger brother of father, but the application of these words create much complications. One small example is my grandma had a brother who married a woman (I had to call her grandma, too;-), that lady had a son, and a girl. So, my mom had to call them brother, sister. That lady's girl (who is now a middle age lady) had two girls, and I call them sisters. The complication and funny is me and my sister (or even daughters of uncle in VN) are much younger than them, so of course when they got married and had kids, their kids had to call us aunty, but in fact they are just a little bit younger than us ;-). So, it's kinda weird. Maybe that how it makes the family bigger ;-)
Like when you are married, you should call your husband's parents, "mother and father", and vice versa. Even when you are dating, it is very impolite to call them with their names without adding uncle or aunt in the front...It took me sometime to not bow anymore when I say hi to some of my friends' parents here in Belgium, they don't have the habit of bowing in front of older people. I remember how many times, my grandfather told me that I should bow when I say hi to older people because of respect and politeness, I feel sort of being rude to not doing that...So, with uncle's Vnese friends I still have to do that.
Many Vnese kids that were born here had difficulties to understand these things, and to teach your kids how to respect older people here probably not easy...Maybe what they should do is to send their kids to VN for training hehehehe
Not even my uncles, aunt, or mom know anybody from that village, and nobody wants to go there. My grandmom said everybody in the village has chicken, and pigs that when my grandmom came back, every house in the village would invite her for dinner or lunch with their own vegetables, and animal (no dogs, don't worry ;-)). Things like that does that happen in big cities...
When I was younger, I never thought of going to the village of grandparents, maybe because I was afraid that the toilet would be so dirty that I could not use it or something? imagin some movie scene where they have toilet near the pigs...But that does not seem to bother me anymore, but the feeling of wanting to go back grows stronger every time I think about it, I guess for my grandma, there must be a lot of childhood memories, imagin your friends with whom you hang out, now are also as old as you ;-). For me, I will have to fly from one country to another to find my old friends, most of childhood friends are in US now.
My grandmother came from a rich family, btw, and she got married to my grandfather when he already had an older wife, and his family was not as healthy as hers but apparently he was very handsome ;-). How lucky (or unfortunate?) men were in the past, having several wives ;-). Well, in the past, many rich family that had son, they arrange the marriage for their son with an older girl (much older), so that girl could take care of the cooking, cleaning, washing, working on the rice field of the house. Yeah, very sad.
One of the funny and confusing thing is the addressing of family members, and this is very much followed in the north, people from Hanoi are much more old-fashion than those from the South ( no wonder why they could reserve old stuffs in the country), and those in the center are even more. Also because Hanoi is the politic center of VN, they call it the "heart of the country" ;-P
Not only the addressing is confusing, like "uncle" in Vnese has four words, two for older and younger brother of mom, and the other two are for older and younger brother of father, but the application of these words create much complications. One small example is my grandma had a brother who married a woman (I had to call her grandma, too;-), that lady had a son, and a girl. So, my mom had to call them brother, sister. That lady's girl (who is now a middle age lady) had two girls, and I call them sisters. The complication and funny is me and my sister (or even daughters of uncle in VN) are much younger than them, so of course when they got married and had kids, their kids had to call us aunty, but in fact they are just a little bit younger than us ;-). So, it's kinda weird. Maybe that how it makes the family bigger ;-)
Like when you are married, you should call your husband's parents, "mother and father", and vice versa. Even when you are dating, it is very impolite to call them with their names without adding uncle or aunt in the front...It took me sometime to not bow anymore when I say hi to some of my friends' parents here in Belgium, they don't have the habit of bowing in front of older people. I remember how many times, my grandfather told me that I should bow when I say hi to older people because of respect and politeness, I feel sort of being rude to not doing that...So, with uncle's Vnese friends I still have to do that.
Many Vnese kids that were born here had difficulties to understand these things, and to teach your kids how to respect older people here probably not easy...Maybe what they should do is to send their kids to VN for training hehehehe
posted by Vagabonder @ 10:17 AM
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