Love Like Hate

I’d like to thank my wife, Linky, and Hai-Dang, Matthew Sharpe, Leakthina Ollier, Noam Mor, Bob Malloy, Thuy Dinh and Phan Nhien Hao for enduring earlier versions of this novel. Their comments and suggestions were invaluable. I’d also like to thank the David K. Wong Fellowship, the University of East Anglia, the International Parliament of Writers, the Pew Foundation for their support, and my publisher and friend, Dan Simon.

1
REBIRTH

S
aigon lost its identity in 1975, but by the early nineties it had regained much of it back. A young metropolis with a raw energy, it is the least traditional of Vietnamese cities. Unlike Hanoi or Hue, it has never been the seat of an imperial court and therefore has no traditional monuments of any distinction. There are a handful of ornate Chinese temples on Nguyen Trai Street, but the city is still dominated by a French/Vietnamese hybrid architecture left over from colonial times. Now there’s even a smattering of skyscrapers to give downtown a veneer of postmodernity. But Saigon is, in fact, thoroughly postmodern. A hodgepodge of incoherence, Saigon thrives on pastiche. Sly, crass and frankly infatuated with all things foreign, it caricatures everyone yet proclaims itself an original. On Vo Thi Sau Street, there are vendors selling
empty
liquor bottles: Talisker, Hennessy, Teacher’s, Baileys … Picture a Saigonese sitting in a room gazing at an empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. When friends come by, he can boast, “I drank all that by myself!” Or picture him pouring moonshine into a fancy bottle. “This is imported from France!”

With economic reforms, Vietnam could more or less feed its own people by the early nineties. The worst thing about Communism is not that it stops you from thinking or writing poetry, the worst thing about it is that it can stop you from eating altogether. Now that hunger was no longer a threat for most of the population,
people’s taste buds were becoming more sophisticated. Many restaurants catering to the drinking crowd now advertised “a mouse with a pouch,” kangaroo meat imported from Australia. (It tastes just like beef.) In the suburb of Thu Duc, there was a restaurant, Hoa Ca, specializing in alligator meat. (It tastes just like chicken.) Several featured the meat of a “water dragon,” a cousin of the man-eating Komodo dragon of the Malay Archipelago. (It tastes just like dragon.) At Tri Ky on Nguyen Kiem Street, poisonous snakes were killed right at your table. Deep-fried crispy snakeskin was a popular dish, as was snake soup with lotus flowers. One of the owner’s sons actually died from a snakebite in 1997.

Some people looked west to revive their gustatory spirit. Trendy cafés advertised Italian ice cream, while spaghetti was available at most markets. On Pasteur Street, there was a restaurant called the Nutrition Center. Its blue exterior was painted with white slogans:
DIABETICS; NUTRITIOUS FOR CHILDREN; STRENGTHEN BONES; FIGHT FAT
. Inside, more slogans:
GOOD FOR THE BLOOD; GOOD FOR THE KIDNEY; SMOOTH THE SKIN; COOL THE LIVER
. There was a scale for diners to weigh themselves after a meal. The menu, however, featured such fatty foods as pizzas, cheeseburgers, fried chicken and cheesecakes. Although few of these “occidental” items were prepared very authentically, the reasonable prices suited a Vietnamese clientele. By contrast, the fancier international joints downtown—Sapa, with its Swiss specialties; Ristorante Santa Lucia; and Tex-Mex, etc.—catered almost exclusively to foreigners.

In short, Saigon reverted to being a city where eating is the main pleasure. Discos also sprang up. It was becoming a happening place again and Vietnamese who had escaped at the end of the war started to return for visits in sizable numbers. They brought with them money and news from overseas. These overseas Vietnamese were called Viet Kieus. You could always spot a Viet Kieu by the way he dressed, by the size and shape of his body, and by his body language. A Viet Kieu always took up more room and he usually overtipped.

One afternoon in 1999, a Viet Kieu wearing a gray T-shirt and blue jeans walked into Paris by Night, accompanied by Huyen, a girl from the neighborhood. Pale and muscular, he smiled easily and seemed amused by everything he saw. He chuckled at a ceramic statuette of the Goddess of Mercy standing on the counter. Abetted by a hidden pump, she was pouring water into the mouth of a carp, to encourage the free flow of money. He saw a Christmas tree in a corner, complete with gold reindeer, red stockings, tin soldiers, cherubim and a Star of David. “Christmas in August!”

“I bought that for thirty bucks!” Kim Lan exclaimed. “It was the fanciest tree I could find!”

“That’s Mrs. Kim Lan,” Huyen said, “the owner.”

The Viet Kieu shouted at Kim Lan, “You have a very cool place here!”

“You should come by in the evening,” Kim Lan said. “It’s much more lively.”

“I have enough liveliness in the United States. I just want a nice place to sit and relax and drink a beer or two.”

“Where in America do you live?”

“In Philadelphia. I’m in business. I run a restaurant.”

A restaurant?! This young guy runs a restaurant in America?! He’s probably lying. He’s probably a waiter or a dishwasher or something
. Kim Lan continued, “Restaurants in America must be much more classy than the ones we have here.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” the Viet Kieu said modestly, “but they are definitely cleaner!”

Kim Lan wanted to ask about the Viet Kieu’s income, but she didn’t want to be rude. Suddenly Huyen blurted out, “We’re getting married in two weeks!”

What?! This plain girl is marrying a Viet Kieu?!
“That’s very nice,” Kim Lan said, forcing a smile. “How did you two meet?”

“We met in an internet chat room.”

Kim Lan had heard of the internet, but she didn’t know what a
chat room was. She didn’t want to betray her ignorance, however. She turned her attention to the Viet Kieu. “Is this your first time back?”

“No, I came back for the first time two years ago. It was a real shock. I had left as a kid, you know. I was overwhelmed by a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“Well, you know, like the traffic, for example. All these motorbikes nearly running into each other all the time. It was weird. I thought I was going to die!”

“It must be very different in America.”

“They stop at red lights, for one. Even at three in the morning, with no cops around, and no cross traffic, a car would stop at a red light.”

“That’s incredible! And everyone drives a car, right?”

“Just about everyone. And everyone stands in line for everything. You don’t have to take an elbow in the ribs just to buy stuff.”

“But we have supermarkets now,” Kim Lan said brightly. “People stand in lines at the supermarkets. I never shop there, however. It’s too expensive.”

“But the regular markets are so dirty!”

“Yes, they are,” Kim Lan agreed, frowning. “I hear that all the countries on earth are clean now. Except Vietnam. Have you been to many countries?”