Factory.

I wasn't really comfortable going to see the factory on Saturday. As I walked around looking at the workers doing their job, it made me feels like I'm going to the zoo. At Hanoismex, the workers seems to have more benefits working there comparing to Yamaha, which to me seems like a bigger company. Most workers are from the provinces that are looking for jobs in the city to make the extra living to send back money back home. At Hanoismex, workers also have a place to stay and an on-site hospital next to their dormitory. I found it surprising since the services the company offers to the workers are quite decent. One thing that struck me is when I found out that workers at Hanoismex earn 200 dollars a month, while at Yamaha, it's only 100 dollars. As a foreign company, I thought the pay would be somewhat decent if not more, but it was half of what a Vietnamese company is willing to pay their workers. Most of the workers there are between 20-30 years of age. It seems that most of them leave after couple of years working at the factory. This can also mean, they are using the factory work to integrate themselves into the city life and once they can find the opportunity, they can go out and do their own things. This relates to the article from the lecture in which working at factory allows these workers from the less modern area an opportunity to become a part of the city. Working at factory is not something that they might think of doing for the rest of their life. At Hanoismex, they said they are always running low on workers since the demand for this job is not high. That was something different than what the article mentioned before. Some company take advantage of the workers because they know there are more people out there needing a job if anyone rebellious quit. So it was interesting to hear that the company is the one that needed the workers.

As for Yamaha, even though they are bigger and more modern but they have no services for the workers. There's no medical clinic nor dormitory for workers to stay if they are from far provinces. Therefore, lots of their workers said to be recruited from the nearby city. Supposed these two factories are the good/better ones from others. They respect the labor laws and give fair wages. However, after the tour, the factory is not all that a good working place. Wages are still quite low and people still have to pay for a lot of things moving and living in the city out of their own pocket. With the amount of money they make is not a lot for a comfortable living. I can imagine how the worse factory place will be like. Even though foreign company might have provided more jobs to third world country, but instead of making their life better, the workers are being exploit and have to deal with labor rights being violate. However, government control sometime cannot go full force at punishing companies like this afraid they will scare away foreign investment into the country economy. Development gives people many opportunity but it also strip others at certain things.

Sapa

The Sapa trip have opened up my eyes to many things. Sapa town is a lot smaller than I expected and we pretty much have to travel outside of Sapa town to see and do things. There aren't much to the town. I enjoyed the experience a lot due to the minority people that I met there. I felt the warmness from them talking to me trying to sell the little products. There is this old lady that followed me for the whole day trying to sell me her hand-made bracelet.  No matter what, she always have this very sweet smile on her face and it reminded me of my grandma. I also met this one little girl that A-Thai knew from couple years back. It is about 7PM already but she said she can't eat until she comes home in the highlands late at night. When A-Thai treated her out to dinner, I was able to get to know her a little bit more. I asked her about the Love Market. She told me there's not much to it anymore, before it meant for people to find their lovers, but now it has turn into a performance catering to the tourists. From her response, she does realized that the meaning of that cultural event changed and have been shaped differently. Instead of doing it for a more meaningful purpose, the Love Market is now just another way to make money for the minority. Due to poverty, the minority groups have to find a way to make money to support themselves, and unfortunately, they have to give away "part of their culture" trading for food.

Development have been offering more opportunities for people to "live better" but those opportunities are not offered to everyone. While people can take advantage of the economy blooming, others people are living of day by day and barely making enough. Khu, our tour guide, she mentioned how girls are being sell overseas to make money for their family. They are tricked into thinking they can make "easy money" elsewhere, and some never return home. Human-trafficking is a big issue in Southeast Asia countries. When farming can no longer put food on the table, people seek to find other alternative. Often times they are forced to move out from their home to other places (thanks to transportation) in order to make a living. It is a risky decision in which they have never been elsewhere but their hometown, going out into the "world" there are more risks than luck. Seeing how the minority people live, it pains me to realized how they are being pushed back up in the highland into like this "little corner" struggling to make a living while people in the lowlands have more opportunity to make a living. At tourist places like Sapa, the culture also lost it meaning. While people come there for authentic souvenirs, most are made from Hanoi in the factory. Tourism and development have done a lot of damage to the "cultural authenticity" of a certain place. While I have a lot of fun, but realized I am actually contributed to all of this changes also.

Kiem An

This week we interviewed a web developer. When we asked whether he did a different job before this, but he has been doing this since he graduated from college. I got surprised a little bit because mostly everyone I know, they have been doing many many jobs before the one they are doing now. It seems that the younger generation is able to pick the job they like and pursuit it while the older generation work because they have to make a living, so whatever job they can get their hands on, they will do it. Working have different meaning now than it is before. Our younger generation now when thinking about working, we thought about will we like the job we do? where should we work? how long will we be working? etc. More in the aspect of whether we will be comfortable and like the job or not. on the other hand, the older generation mostly work because they have to make a living. They cannot pick and choose whether it's a suitable job for them or not, if it puts food on the table, they will take it. The taxi driver I was talking to have been driving for 15 years. When I asked, "Did you do a different job before this?"He said, " I did everything, kiem an ma em." It's not uncommon to meet a Vietnamese person and hearing that they have done several jobs in their life. Since they have work a lot, they knew how to do a lot of things also. Before, I have always wonder why my dad knew so much about fixing things and doing everything. As I talked to him its because he have to do so to feed himself. He took photos, selling books, fixing motobikes, etc. He had to learn everything on his own. Before people are too worry about making enough money to eat, other aspects about working was unnecessary to think of. I felt privilege to be able to pick what I like to do knowing I will have my parents to back me up, so financially for now, I was not worried. Education is something that is not easy for everyone to access during his time due to financial issues. People have to go out and work to help and support the family, they don't have the time nor the money to go to school. The only way to make a living is to work. However the idea has changed. For our generation, the only way to make a living in the future is to go to school. Education, Education, Education. That is also the reason why my parents moved to America so my sisters and I can have a better education. 

As the standard of lifestyle changes, people's expectation changes. There's more "want" than "necessity." As for me, in the future I want to be able to live a comfortable life. Comfortable life meaning I will have a house, a car, be able to take vacation, work at my own schedule, own my own work place, etc. There's a lot of materialistic things that come into the picture of this future dream. I didn't thought of it much because I thought my dream was normal, just like everyone else. But this was not the case for my parents when he's visioning his dream. He wanted to be able to give us what we need and sometime want. He want to be able to afford education for us and make sure we live a "comfortable life" in which we can eat the food we want and not be restricted because of money. To my parents, food symbolizes the wealth of the family. My parents wont let us get everything we wanted, but they will give us all the food we wanted. I am sure this will be the case for most family. Their main purpose to work is to put food on the table for their family. If they have extra they will think about other spending, but otherwise, they can't. Now our  standard of living is increasing, the increase in salary allows the gap for us to spend on other spending like vacation, Iphone, etc. I guess we can call those thing more of "desire want" rather than "needed." I think its interesting to see the difference in definition of "kiem an" according to different people and different generation. Their social standing also influence how they define "working." A person in "poverty" will define it differently than the person who is more wealthy. It's important to be conscious of the changes in the meaning of how we do things. 

Rice Harvesting Week. :)

       Woke up as early as 6:30am in the morning to get ready to go rice harvesting. It is my first time ever and never in my life thinking I would be harvesting rice. Have absolutely no idea what is going to happen, just know I will have to get down and dirty with the mud in the field since it rained couple days before. The muddy field definitely added to the experience of harvesting rice. As soon as I stepped into the mud, from that point on its pretty pointless to keep myself as clean as I can. The mud makes me no longer worry about the dirtiness nor the bugs in the mud. Enjoy this experience was all that is left in my mind. I think we were pretty lucky to be able to be such a good weather. It was not as hot as we expected and the breeze was just perfect!
       After harvesting, we came back and enjoyed a wonderful lunch prepared by our lovely colleagues and drank some rice wine (ruou). The life in the village seems very chill and easy everyone living their day by day. After lunch, our team headed out to talk to the locals and I played with the local kids near the pagoda. As I took the two kids to the village gate to get ice-cream, the locals we passed by were very friendly as they were asking me many questions about my muddy pants. It was heartwarming talking to them in which they kept asking if I'm itch from the mud and if I am tired. They were surprise that we would be harvesting rice and chuckled a bit when I told them I liked it a lot!
      Since younger folks are no longer interested in the traditional rural agricultural work that's why the older people at the village thought it was strange that we are actually enjoying doing work like this. After talking to one of the local while he is fishing at the pond, we see how rural agricultural changes in the village. During the war, the government would divide up land according to the number of members in each household; more people more land. However, after the government set the birth control policy, every household get the same amount of land, don't matter how many members are in their family. Rural agricultural is slowly becoming less popular as an occupation the younger generation would like to take on. About 40% of the youngsters work in the urban area like Hanoi during the day and travel back to the village at night. While the rest had to move to the city to go to school like Chu Khoi's daughter, Yen. The field work is now belonging to the older generation to continue and they are the ones that still live in the village.  Now transportation is available to everyone, commuting from the city to the village is no longer a problem. It allows people to migrate and move around or away from where their hometown to work elsewhere. With the young generation moving away from the rural agricultural labor, how long will this survive in the future? How will development with the new technology affect traditional farming? Will it help or will eventually make farming slowly disappearing?