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re vietnamese cultural values
This is from a non-Vietnamese - from observation of my Vietnamese friends
1) Goals: Educational/business/marriage
My Vietnamese friends are extremely goal oriented
These goals take precedence over everything else.
They either have an educational goal (typ engineering or medical degree)
or a business goal (restaurant, beauty shop, video store.....)
Everyone has some kind of marriage goal (same or other sex)
They all take a very dogged, determined step-by-step approach to
achieving
these goals; changing goals when one (to me) obviously isn't working out
is done only after repeated failure, and then with great resistance
and reluctance; some never give up no matter what.
2) Family ties: 1st to parents, then brothers and sisters, then
grandparents, then
nephews and nieces. Much effort & money is spent maintaining these
ties -
sponsering relatives to come here, phoning those in Vietnam, making
trips to
Vietnam, sending money, fixing relatives houses or cars (in the US),
driving relatives places, making
medical appointments for them, participating in weddings, religious
ceremonies,
etc. Vietnamese are also very attentive hosts - always offering
food and drink
to any visitor - the visitor becomes sort of extended family. I
think I need
to upgrade my host skills by imitating them in this regard...
3) Consumerism: With very few exceptions, they all have karaoke systems
with huge TVs
(40 inch?) video-disk players (and many video disks), stacks of kung-fu
videos (Hong-Kong dubbed in Vietnamese), enormous speakers, equilizers, and
CD and casette players and lots of Vietnamese CDs and tapes for them. It
seems the karoake system must always include a huge fish-tank. These
karoake systems (with fish tank) are universal even among those living in
public housing. I think the karoake-fish tank purchase is made with the
first paycheck in the US, before buying new clothes. I should look, maybe
in the appropriate store the fish-tank comes included with the karaoke
system. Karaoke IS grand fun, especially in Vietnamese, and many many
Vietnamese sing it very well. Most Vietnamese have late model cars, usually
Honda Prelude (preferred) or Accord. I rarely have trouble spotting any
Vietnamese friend's suburban house - it's usually the one on the block with
5 or 6 cars parked in the garage, on the driveway, and in front (a minimum
of one for each adult). Quite a few of those garages have motor boats....
"Minh"
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