{"id":184213,"date":"2019-02-25T09:02:38","date_gmt":"2019-02-25T09:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=184213"},"modified":"2019-03-02T07:20:40","modified_gmt":"2019-03-02T07:20:40","slug":"monkeys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=184213","title":{"rendered":"Monkeys"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linh Dinh \u2013 The Unz Review Feb 25, 2019<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"

Shaman in Vinh Chau 2019<\/p><\/div>\n

After three weeks in Saigon for Tet, I\u2019m back in Vinh Chau. It\u2019s 5:33AM as I begin this, and I\u2019ll type until 6:45, to begin my work day at the plastic<\/a> recycling<\/a> plant<\/a><\/span>.<\/h5>\n
As usual, I sit at Mrs. Ha\u2019s cafe. I\u2019m her first customer. Unlike Saigon, it\u2019s chilly here. Appearing suddenly from the shadow between my thighs, her white poodle demands attention. I pet him. She brings me my coffee and tea. Two long distance buses pause in the dark.<\/h5>\n
After Tet, most Vietnamese businesses reopen with a ceremonial<\/a><\/span> food offering<\/span><\/a> to the God of Prosperity [\u00d4ng Th\u1ea7n T\u00e0i] and God of the Soil [\u00d4ng \u0110\u1ecba], two Chinese deities, and the date has to be carefully chosen, to ensure success for the coming year. My brother in law is very superstitious. To reverse some business setbacks, he had a back tattoo etched with a sadistically long needle for half an hour by a renown monk in Thailand, and magical charms given to him by a Teochew shaman in Vinh Chau, 125 miles south of Saigon.<\/h5>\n
This shaman only sees people by special recommendations and charges no fees, though grateful supplicants will bring gifts. He can channel the Monkey King, it is said, but isn\u2019t that a fictional character? Yes, but the Monkey King is based on Chinese mythology, so those who worship him insist there is such a god, as real as any, and there are perhaps a thousand temples dedicated to the Monkey King across the Chinese universe, with most of them in Fuzhou. Communists couldn\u2019t stand this. Trying to eradicate traditional religions and cults, they destroyed countless temples, including those worshipping the Monkey King, but in China and Vietnam, all these folk beliefs have made a huge come back.<\/h5>\n
\"\"You must honor your ancestors. Predating Darwin by millennia, the Chinese have many legends tracing their roots to monkeys. There are tales of monkeys turning into a man or woman to have sex with humans, or become a Buddha. Magical monkeys abound, but the most badass is the Monkey King<\/span><\/a>, for he can shape shift, walk on water or through the earth, stop rivers, grab the moon, transfer his pain onto your body, give you nightmares, divide himself to confuse enemies and grow another head if he\u2019s decapitated.<\/h5>\n
Very few people go to Vinh Chau, but I made my first visit in 1998. My traveling companion was a 6 foot 9, red headed New York Jew, and Lloyd Luntz simply freaked out the backwoods<\/span><\/a> locals. Kids ran up to pull the hair on his arms.<\/h5>\n
Being on the coast, Vinh Chau was the starting point for thousands of boat people, so many natives escaped. Prospering in the USA, Canada and Australia, they\u2019ve sent lots of money back, transforming their hometown.<\/h5>\n
The shaman\u2019s house is 50 yards from a road. I half expected to find some scowling, intimidating dude, but only found a half dozen middle aged men, sitting cross legged on a wooden bed, drinking tea. The sun there is fierce, so people tend to be darker, but one bare-chested, white bearded guy was particularly dark. That\u2019s the shaman.<\/h5>\n
His concrete house was modest<\/a><\/span> and rather ugly<\/a><\/span>, his wife and kids<\/span><\/a> were cheaply dressed and there was a shallow bamboo basket where six puny fish and three flayed frogs<\/a><\/span> were being dried, probably to make rousong. At a nearby patch, rows of purple onions waited to be uprooted. In the distance, a spired Cambodian grave magnificently rose.<\/h5>\n
We entered a small yet elaborate<\/span><\/a> shrine<\/a><\/span> to the Monkey<\/span><\/a> King<\/a><\/span>, with murals on the walls illustrating episodes from Journey to the West.<\/h5>\n
Before seeing us, the shaman<\/a><\/span> had to take care of a man who was made to sit on a chair of nails, as the still bare-chested holy man shouted abuses at him, with \u201cfuck your mother\u201d a constant refrain. Enduring the ordeal, the distressed beneficiary was actually the Police Chief of Bac Lieu Province. In Vietnam, an official of that rank can expect to rake in lots of illicit loots, and make plenty of enemies, so somebody must have put a curse on him, hence this exorcism<\/span><\/a>. \u201cFuck your mother!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\"\"Performing his rituals, it\u2019s standard for the shaman to pierce his cheeks with two long rods<\/span><\/a>, without drawing blood. He knelt, prayed<\/span><\/a>, waved<\/span><\/a> a fan<\/span><\/a>, spoke in Vietnamese and Teochew, wrote<\/a> magical<\/a> charms<\/a><\/span> in red ink with a brush and answered questions about our futures, along this line, \u201cYour break won\u2019t come this year, but you must be patient. Don\u2019t lose heart.\u201d If I can learn to puncture my cheeks painlessly, maybe I can become a shaman also, but just for thinking that, I will likely be disfigured, if not killed, this year, so should it happen, you can trace it to this blasphemous sentence. \u201cFuck your mother!\u201d Forgive me, Monkey King.<\/h5>\n
Each in our party of six left with magical charms, and the shaman also granted our plastic recycling plant strips of paper imbued with supernatural power, to be posted at strategic locations. Most importantly, we got our lucky reopening date.<\/h5>\n
9:34AM. After the last paragraph, we\u2019ve unloaded two truckloads of plastic garbage, and the work day is going reasonably smoothly. By reopening a bit later than expected, we lost a handful of workers, for they simply couldn\u2019t hang around without an income. Also, Mr. Cuc is hospitalized, thanks to decades of heavy drinking. Though our oldest worker at 58, he seriously hauled ass. Mrs. Vinh is also not likely to return, for she continues to suffer beatings by her husband. The laws can\u2019t prosecute since she won\u2019t report these abuses. A few times, her male relatives have come over to rough up her husband in retaliation, but they can\u2019t keep doing that unless Mrs. Vinh wants them to. Black and blue, she stands by her man. In the US, too, I know women like this.<\/h5>\n
\"\"As I type, a small girl, nicknamed Rabbit, plays<\/a><\/span> behind me, with plastic toys scavenged from the garbage. Both her parents work for us. Every so often, we get a kid<\/span><\/a> inside our plant, and I try to humor them with cookies or candies. With heavy bags being moved about and bottles of insecticides among our recyclables, this environment is not exactly child friendly, but Rabbit is reasonably well behaved<\/span><\/a> and rarely throws a tantrum. Next to broken dolls, a \u201cHAPPY\u201d rooster, brightly colored combs and a matchbox sized shopping cart, she fusses with a tiny oven. \u201cMake me some food,\u201d I tell her. \u201cI\u2019m hungry!\u201d<\/h5>\n
Rabbit looks up, \u201cWhat will you have, uncle Linh?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cBroken rice with pork chops.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cLots of vegetables?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cLots!\u201d<\/h5>\n
She\u2019s wearing a red muscle T with a tiara-crowned blonde mermaid holding a seahorse, and, \u201cFriends<\/a><\/span> love wheres YOU find them.\u201d Even if the English was good, no one here could decipher it anyway. It\u2019s just cool to be adorned with the language of that most magical place, America, where everything, as projected, is beyond real, and the further you are from it, the more fantastic it becomes.<\/h5>\n
On the way back to Ea Kly, we passed a town, Ki\u1ebfn \u0110\u1ee9c, that seemed oddly desolate, with many restaurants empty or out of business.<\/h5>\n
\u201cThey must have suffered a bad season,\u201d my brother in law concluded.<\/h5>\n
\u201cWhat do they grow here?\u201d I asked.<\/h5>\n
\u201cSichuan pepper [ti\u00eau] and cashews [\u0111i\u1ec1u].\u201d<\/h5>\n
Since \u201cti\u00eau \u0111i\u1ec1u\u201d in Vietnamese is also \u201cdesolation,\u201d I joked, \u201cThat\u2019s what they get for growing desolation. They should switch to growing apricots [mai] and making fermented fish [m\u1eafm].\u201d<\/h5>\n
Mai m\u1eafm, you see, sounds a bit like \u201cmay m\u1eafn,\u201d or \u201clucky.\u201d Vietnamese think like that. Since mai alone also means lucky, most Vietnamese overspend during Tet to buy at least one apricot tree in blossom, to ensure good luck for the rest of the year. It\u2019s an absurd belief, but that\u2019s culture for you.<\/h5>\n
The Vietnamese susceptibility to magic is more than counterbalanced by a clear headed practicality and common sense, for otherwise, they wouldn\u2019t be able to survive or even thrive. Take my brother in law. Though prone to mumbo jumbo, the 43-year-old has risen from nothing to become a millionaire, with his main business the making of plastic crates that are exported to Thailand. Two years ago, he traveled to India to explore the possibilities of exporting organic Vietnamese fruits and vegetables.<\/h5>\n
There is much that is irrational or fantastical in every society, with some beliefs imposed from above, sometimes abruptly, even violently. The worst beliefs aren\u2019t just costly, but suicidal, but you can\u2019t see what\u2019s killing you if you\u2019re mesmerized.<\/h5>\n
Marx is a false god, conclude most Vietnamese, so now you can drive hundreds of miles here without encountering his bearded face once, but everywhere, temples<\/span><\/a> and churches are being built<\/a>, and statues of Guanyin, Jesus and the Virgin Mary front millions of homes. Vietnamese breathe easier because the state no longer micro manages their lives or, worse, try to control their every thought. Surely, that\u2019s the worst evil.<\/h5>\n
Linh Dinh\u2019s<\/em><\/strong> latest book is <\/em>Postcards from the End of America<\/em><\/a>. He maintains a regularly updated photo blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/h5>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Vietnamese seem to have concluded that Marx is a false god. In place of his image temples, shrines and churches are spreading throughout the land, together with the odd shaman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=184213"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184223,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184213\/revisions\/184223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}