Week 13: Burnout (and a Treatise on the Nature of Vietnamese Capitalism)

Ok, so my "work hard, play hard" lifestyle is starting to grate on me. I am definitely not 19 anymore, when I could show up for a 9 AM lecture after going out until 7 AM. I remember once, when I was still at Northwestern, showing up for my French final hungover and still in the clothes I wore the previous night. Now, at the ripe old age of 27 and a week, it takes me at least a day, sometimes two, to recover from an evening of mild debauchery. I need to get out of Hanoi, at least for the weekend. Detox and nature hikes is just what I need to rejuvenate myself. I'm thinking of heading up to Cuc Phuong National Park, where the government has set up a primate reserve--I think hanging out with some monkeys will do me good.

Work is still going. I am really sick of digitizing, and am anxious to actually start reading some of the newspapers. Still not done with digitizing--Mr. Thang in the periodical office found two volumes of Ngay Nay that I thought was missing. While that is great news in the long run, I'm afraid it will force me to keep digitizing for at least another week. In an attempt to get away from this mindnumbing clerical work, I tried to get into the actual archives yesterday, and was told to provide a "plan de recherche" in French!!! My French is barely good enough to order a croissant, let alone describe my dissertation topic. How do you say, "The nature of northern Vietnamese Intellectualism in the 1930s and 40s, as seen in the journalistic writings on modernity and nascent nationalism, begs a refutation of its historiographical label of bourgeois romanticism and reckless individualism. " in French? Argh!!!

Getting pretty tight with the staff at the National Library, especially the women who work in the periodical room. We go out for lunch often, have coffee breaks, and talk skincare. Most of them are older, single working women. (Older meaning mid-twenties, remember?) The topic that occupies most of our discussions--dating. (Its kinda sad, I know, that single, self-sufficient women cannot find anything else to talk about.) They all want to know if I am married (no), do I have a boyfriend waiting for me in the US (no), if I like Vietnamese men (not really), and why or why not (patriarchy, fragile masculinities, feudal notions of gender roles, casual view of infidelity). They find me amusing, and I get to see all the original documents I want. I think its a good working relationship.

A drive in Hanoi's Old Quarter got me thinking about the nature of Vietnamese capitalism. The Old Quarter itself is made up of 36 streets, each named after a particular commodity that was once sold along it. Some of the streets include, Silver Street, Smoking Pipes Street, Flower Street, Bamboo Screen Street, Noodle Street, Fish Sauce Street, Tin Street, and Charcoal Street. Nowadays, the street names hardly reflect what is sold in the stalls: Smoking Pipes Street is now a slew of linen and bedsheet stores, and Flower Street is now where tourists go to buy chintzy silk and cheap lacquer. But the nature of Vietnamese capitalism remains--clusters of stores selling the same product along the same street. To anyone remotely versed in western economics--Adam Smith, laissez faire, competition, invisible hand, blah, blah, blah--Vietnamese-style capitalism makes absolutely no sense. It violates the principle of western economics about finding a market with high demand and scarcity of supply (these clusters of businesses seem to do the opposite--too much supply and little demand). How on earth do these shops manage to stay afloat with so much competition around them? Wouldn't the fierce price wars from the other shops create an economic darwinism, which weeds out the weak and champion the strong?

I think the answer lies in Vietnamese interpersonal networking and consumerism. In the States, we rely on our trusty weekly newspaper inserts for good deals on stuff, which impersonalizes shopping. In other words, it doesn't matter where we get the goods from, as long as we get the best price. It actually works against retailers when too many competitors are around (especially if the product is not unique). When Vietnamese have to buy something, they rely on their trusty friends and relatives, who point them towards a shop owned by a friend of a friend. When one trusts that they're getting a good deal because of a personal connection, one is less likely to shop around. And plus, if they don't buy from the recommended vendor, the person who referred the vendor will look bad. On the flip side, if people don't have a recommended vendor in particular, they can easily go to the street with an array of stalls to shop around for the best deal. So this creates a situation where the clusters of competitors are actually desirable--while the retailers are getting word-of-mouth business, they are also getting residual business from people who actually shop around.

So how do these clusters emerge? My theory has something to do with a strange sense of Vietnamese brand association. Clusters of competitors emerge around a previously-established, successful business, hoping to steal some of its customers and capitalize on its name. Its as if a bunch of fast-food joints opened up around a McDonald's. To illustrate, I will use a case study of a famous slew of escargot restaurants in Hanoi. Almost 20 years ago, a fantastic restaurant called "Ong Gia" (Old Man) opened on the northern shore of the West Lake. The restaurant boasted an amazing view of the lake and served all sorts of snails (steamed with lemon leaves, chinese herbal medicine, lemongrass, you name it). Rather than opening up "Old Man" style restaurants in other lakes of Hanoi, competitors did what Western capitalists would strongly discourage--opened an snail restaurant next door to the original. Not only did this copycat flourish, but restaurants serving the same dishes popped up in the vicinity. Interestingly enough, these newer restaurants capitalized on a brand association not their own for their success, without having to build a strong brand for themselves. Today, the original Old Man and its copycats exist in a strange economic symbiosis: the copycats rely on the Old Man brand association for their survival, while the Old Man needs the copycats to attract a greater magnitude of customers than by itself. Funny how that works...

Anyways, enough about Vietnamese economics. Have posted a picture of me on my 27th birthday. Not bad for a granny of 27, n'est-ce pas?

Alors, je m'en vais. Il faut que je fasse mon plan de recherche. J'ecrirai plus tard. Bisous!

(Sorry, had to practice my French a bit before I started on my Archive application.)