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September 29, 2014

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With Vietnam’s upward mobility comes a new tension of the mind

AT an ultra-chic bar in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, a well-dressed woman in her mid-20s named Tram tells me that she’s si-tret. She speaks Vietnamese but switches to English for a word heard often here.

There is no equivalent word in her language. The closest you can get is cang thang than kinh — tension of the mind.

Stress is probably the biggest trend to hit Vietnam from America since MTV. At first glance it seems impossible: Vietnam, after all, is a country full of hard-working young people, and rural life is backbreaking for the majority.

Generation after generation has known nothing but sweat and toil. But stress is a phenomenon not of simple hard work. It is a kind of symptom associated with young, upwardly mobile urban professionals in peacetime.

One is si-tret, therefore, like Huy Phan, 32, an ad executive for a publishing company. This evening at the bar he has lost his voice after talking nonstop for four hours with clients, models, and photographers on his expensive cell phone. “It’s always like this,” Huy complains. “It’s my day off, but I never stop working. I’m terribly si-tret.”

Vietnam’s upwardly mobile urban young are given to multitasking these days. Next to Huy, Tram is talking on one phone, ordering a drink, conversing with another friend, and, yes, text messaging on another cell phone — all at once.

“I have a headache almost every night,” Tram complains. “I never had this kind of headache until I got my new job.” Her new job: overseeing dozens of young saleswomen in a cosmetic company.

Privileged group

Huy and Tram are quick to acknowledge that they are a privileged group with opportunities unavailable to previous generations in Vietnam.

Just a generation ago, more or less everyone had to stand in line to buy rice, and moving from city to city was a prohibitively complex task that required navigating Vietnam’s heavy bureaucracy. These days, young twenty- and thirty-somethings like Huy vacation regularly in Thailand and Singapore.

Huy has traveled twice to the United States. Tram flies to Thailand every few months to de-si-tret herself. How? “I go shopping,” she laughs.

The owner of the bar, on the other hand, says he’s not si-tret. Duc, 32, is gentle and calm. He tells me his secret. “I have very good managers,” he says, smiling and patting the shoulder of a handsome young man standing next to him. “They si-tret on my behalf.”

Vietnam is a heated economy, in Asia second only to China in terms of growth. Tourism, too, is increasing. There’s a shift toward more economic and political transparency here in the last few years. But success comes with a price. The newspapers are full of stories of young people who commit crimes of greed.

Bao Nguyen, 28, a flight attendant who also owns a cosmetic store, says he must constantly purchase new, expensive toys to fit in with his business circle.

US$1,200 phone

“I bought a 500-dollar cell phone, and everyone in my circle has one. So I bought a new one for 1,200 dollars, and now I’m respected. It’s materialistic, but in my business, you have to do it.” And yes, he is often si-tret. But “to de-si-tret,” Bao says, “I go to spas and get pampered. It’s popular now, even among men.”

In a report by the Pew Center a few years ago, of 44 countries surveyed, Vietnam was the most optimistic.

A whopping 98 percent of Vietnamese said they expect their children to be better off.

“Vietnamese are experiencing stress now because life is no longer routine,” says Michael, an American businessman who declined to give his full name and who has lived in Vietnam for three years. “Or rather, new routines must be learned, and learned quickly in a society that’s going through enormous transition.”

Yet as someone who speaks fluent Vietnamese, I cannot help but detect a hidden bragging tone within the familiar complaints of the upwardly mobile here. When a Vietnamese says he is si-tret, he is also saying, “I’m doing something important, and I’m successful, and this is the price I’m willing to pay for it.”

Huy, meanwhile, is buying everyone at the counter a drink.

“I just made a big sale. Come on, drink up,” he says hoarsely, just as his cell phone starts to ring again.

 

Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and author of “Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora,” and “East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres.” His latest book is “Birds of Paradise Lost,” a short story collection published in 2013. It won a Pen/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2014. He visited Vietnam, his homeland, in spring.




 

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