TABLE
OF CONTENTS
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God and Cash in Saigon
By Jason Hart
Unlike the
skyscraper ridden world
city of Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City is very much a third
world
city. There are few tall buildings, but the city is not lacking
capitalist
enterprise in a third world nation. If capitalism is based on free
trade, Saigon is very much a
capitalist city. For example, I
don’t recall seeing a single beggar in the city. Instead, everyone
seems to be
selling something, from coconuts to sunglasses, from designer clothing
to
marijuana. Prices are not fixed, instead bartering is mainstream, and
one can
argue the price of any commodity.
Just
as could be seen in a global city, Saigon
has
a mixture of vernacular and transnational. Obviously, most commodities
are
culturally transnational. One can purchase DVDs of just about any
American film
ever released. The most recent releases are all bootlegged. There are
Gucci
wallets, Playstation video games, Marlboro cigarettes and Heineken beer
all for
sale. However, part of Vietnam’s
vernacular is that many of these transnational commodities are, in
actuality,
knockoffs. I purchased an authentic Zippo lighter. The Zippo engraving
on its
underside was deeper and it weighed more than the knockoffs that were
also for
sale at the same stand. I would probably not have been able to tell the
difference had I not read Elizabeth Van’s article, “The Limits in
Authentication in Vietnamese Consumer Markets”, which discussed these
particularities.
Much
of the commerce is also vernacular. For example, I purchased two
handcrafted
suits, fit to size, from a local boutique. The fabrics were definitely
imported, but the handiwork was a product of my good friend, the
seamstress,
Yun.
The
most transnational experience I had in Ho Chi Minh City was on the Jewish
holiday of Yom Kippur.
The night before I had met two Israelis at the “Go to Bar” (an
interesting
marketing gimmick) and they told me to meet them the next day and to go
to the
local Chabad house to celebrate the holiday. Chabad is the name of a
Chasidic
Jewish sect that has been mechanized by their late head rabbi into an
international religious outreach organization.
The
“Chabadniks” have opened up houses where Jewish people come to pray and
enact
religious ritual, free of charge, all over the world. This movement is
present
on nearly every major college campus in the United States,
and apparently in
many cities all over the world. inside I prayed alongside Chabadniks
who were
from Connecticut and Israel as well as vacationers from the United States, international
businessmen from Britain
and South Africa,
and former Israeli
soldiers on vacation, about 30 people altogether. It is incredible that
in a
city that is a permanent home of less than one hundred Jews, that such
a
transnational organization had been established and, from what I saw,
seemed to
be thriving, at least, on the holiest day of the year.
Commerce
is obviously a major aspect of Vietnamese culture, and transnational
culture as
well. As stated earlier the biggest aspect of the transnational I
witnessed in Vietnam
was the
western commodities sold in every shop and on the streets. But what I
learned
is that in this Global atmosphere aspects of the transnational do not
need to
be based solely in commerce. In Saigon,
the
presence of the non profit transnational organization Chabad proves
that there
are some aspects of culture and globalization that defy economic gain,
and instead
bring people together as a community, without a fleeting thought about
profit
margins.
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