Dear Mom,
I am pleased to tell you that I provide no end of amusement to my neighbors. They think my attempts to speak Vietnamese are precious and hilarious, and we're just generally inexplicable as people. For example, I recently saw some of the older women of our neighborhood dressed up fancy in their Áo dài (careful, that d is pronounced like a Y with a lisp) and I went over with my friend, Google Translate, to talk to them. They had rented a large van to take them to an amusement park for Vietnamese Women's Day. I think it's probably a new Japanese-themed park over on the west part of the bay, and I did confirm that they weren't going to Bana Hills, which is the only other park I knew about.
Oh, but they were giddy. They laughed and said I should jump in the van with them, and wondered if I had bought them any gifts for Women's Day. They were buying little snacks and treats from the corner vendor before loading up in the van for their excursion. When we were done with our breakfast noodles and walking back to the house, the van passed and I waved and they all waved back with big grins.
But while I consider it something of a duty to provide the occasional chuckle, I don't want to be a laughingstock or offensive. Like this:
Do you see what's going on there, in that photo? Take in the grass mat outside the house at the front door. Seriously? What are the foreigners DOING? Zoom in so you can appreciate the cultural gaff.
We bought two of the colorful grass mats at the local market. Rolled them out and found that they perfectly fit the entry. Pretty much awesome! Then one of our old friends (a 10-year friend, as opposed to some of the ones who are newly entering our lives) came over and stopped, screwed up her face, tilted her chin to the side, and used a VERY tactful way of asking "is someone sleeping out here?" (her actual first words were "what's your vision for here?"
Of course we know that grass mats are part of the sleeping arrangements, especially for the elderly here. They're not into soft beds, at all. They want to be up off the ground, if possible, on a bed frame, and they might roll up the grass mat during the day and arrange a project on the glossy wood of the frame. Then at night they can move the project onto another surface and roll out the mat and get some Zzzs.
Grass mats are also a floor-level table cloth. You can host a party and invite everyone to sit on the mat and share food and drink, on the floor but separated from the floor by the grass mat.
So to me, it seemed like I was perfectly jiving with the gist of the thing. Colorful mats to liven up the entry? Yes, please!
I'm going to interrupt to tell an old China-days story. Mortified, they were. They had been looking in the markets for some napkins to use at the table, but all the tissues that were sold for that purpose tended to disintegrate upon contact. The thinnest one-ply toilet paper was all you could find. Then one day they (our American friends) discovered a seller that sold napkins with Substance. Such a score! They joyously stocked up, because you never know when you might next get a chance to buy things.
And then a friend came over for dinner. The local friend was embarrassed. They were napkins, all right ... the sanitary kind. Our friends the American hosts were mortified.
Okay, back to our friend and the AWESOME grass mats that are no longer in front of our house. It really took some digging into the cultural meaning-attributions for us to get a good metaphor. We clocked that grass mats were used in bedding and sometimes came out to cover the living room floor. Now for the simile: You have to imagine that the cultural norms are reversed, so it's as if you're going to my neighbor's house in Bend, OR. We walk across the street and approach their front door--it's a traditional covered porch with a swing on it and a storm door. And the funny foreign family (for this exercise you can make them Asian, but it's really about the Chases and what we were doing with our grass mats) that doesn't quite do things the way everyone else does them ... you notice that they've taken a quilted bedspread and spread it out on the porch in front of the door. They come out barefoot and greet you warmly and ask you to take off your shoes on the top step and then walk across the quilt to get to the front door.
That's what it felt like to our friends. Grass mats = gone.
Love,
Tim and Janet
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