I didn’t understand why the shop-owners wouldn’t even attempt to try and understand my broken Vietnamese, or why they were always so reluctant to help me.
Since I didn’t have the language skills to ask why these things were happening, I told myself that I simply needed to learn to accept them. I told myself that in order to assimilate into this new culture, I needed to “get over it” and “move on” with my life. I couldn’t, though, because that was very difficult to do. I was stuck—paralyzed by my own frustration, anger and lack of understanding.
As time went on, I became closer to some of my Vietnamese co-workers, and I even made some local friends who spoke English. Finally, I was able to ask some of them why I had been experiencing all of this “unkindness” in Vietnam. Nearly every single one of them gave me some version of the same response. They told me that it was “just the Vietnamese way.” But this explanation did nothing to deepen my understanding. Instead, I continued to feel like I was fighting my way through daily life in this strange and bewildering country.
Then, one day, I met an expat who had been living in Huế, Vietnam’s imperial capital, for more than 20 years. He spoke about all of the growth, development and change he had witnessed since his arrival there. Then he began talking about his Vietnamese wife. He described her as being fiercely independent and also very protective. She was protective of their children, herself, her emotions, her money and everything she owned. He explained that these traits were rooted in her childhood. She was the way she was, “because she had always had to be.”
This man’s wife had been born in Huế in the early 1970s, towards the end of the Vietnam War.
