I again browsed the website of the National Library of Vietnam, and here’s one more post on humor under colonialism.
The following comic strip is from another Hanoi weekly in the 1930s. It isn’t satirical in the manner of the piece from Vịt Đực [Male Duck] described in my last post. Nor is it political. But it pokes fun at the colonial tax system while drawing (literally) the growing petit bourgeois mindset among Vietnamese during the late colonial period.
Browsing a Vietnamese periodical published during late colonialism, I came upon an amusing article about the Paracel Islands. “After France, Japan, and China,” states the headline, “It is our turn to demand the Paracels.”
By a coincidence, I read Alex-Thai Vo‘s article in the Journal of Vietnamese Studies a couple of days before my Great Books classes met to discuss the first half of The Prince. The article is titled Nguyễn Thị Năm and the Land Reform in North Vietnam, 1953, and I browsed over it when it came out last spring, only to “save” it for later because it is quite long. Funny, but last week I was merely looking at several JVS articles for examples of formatting and mechanics, not anything specifically in the content. But I got hooked quickly and read the article in entirety. It was one of those happy distractions and, possibly, fruitful later too.
Thanks to a coincidence of spring break and Super Tuesday, I read more election news and analysis this week than any week in my life. Apolitical in most ways, I think that we are living in interesting times for only the third time in the last three decades. There was Tiananmen Square in the summer of 1989 and September 11 twelve years later. Now, this wild and bewildering campaign season. “What is going on, America?” asked my former dissertation advisor at the end of his Christmas letter. And it was only early January when he wrote it.
It is not easy to find a redeeming feature about driving to work in metro Los Angeles. But there is one thing that I like about my commute: reaching the end of Interstate 10 and turning into the Pacific Coast Highway, known locally as PCH. Not only there is less traffic in the morning, but the sight and sound of the ocean emerge pleasantly – and, sometimes, the smell. Even when dark or cold or foggy, the remaining fifteen miles of the commute have helped to lower heartbeats, lessen blood pressure, relax the mind, and, on occasions, conjure up visions and possibilities before attending to the specific and quotidian that make up the bulk of the work day.
Continue reading “History of American immigration & ethnicity in Vietnamese”
Here is part one.
“As nearly the same time as the discovery of alcohol,” writes Fernand Braudel in the first of his three-volume work on capitalism from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century,
Europe, at the centre of the innovations of the world, discovered three new drinks, stimulants, and tonics: coffee, tea, and chocolate. All three came from abroad: coffee was Arab (originally Ethiopian); tea, Chinese; chocolate, Mexican.
There are fifteen weeks of classes at Pepperdine this semester, and today is the exact mid-point. There have been some lovely moments and experiences in my Great Books and American history classes. The following was the loveliest of all.
My history survey course includes weekly quizzes, and two weeks ago the quiz was about nineteenth-century immigration. There were questions about German and Irish immigrants, and I also threw in the following extra-credit bit about Scandinavians.
Imagine that Ben Carson and Bernie Sanders were running for the White House in the 19th century. Which one would most Norwegian immigrants have voted for? Why?
Upon reaching the EC, one of the students looked up and asked aloud in complete innocence, “Who are Ben Carson and Bernie Sanders?”
BÀI GIỚI THIỆU: HỒI TƯỞNG CỦA NHỮNG NGƯỜI ĐÓNG GÓP XÂY DỰNG NỀN ĐỆ NHỊ CỘNG HÒA CỦA MIỀN NAM VIỆT NAM (1967-1975)
We have the first guest blog post, of a sort. Tuong Vu asks to post his Vietnamese translation of the introduction to the recent volume Voices from the Second Republic of South Vietnam (1967-1975), and I am most happy to oblige.
tuannyriver 
You must be logged in to post a comment.