Perfume Pagoda

Our last day in Hanoi, we hired a guide to take us to the Perfume Pagoda, a complex of temples and shrines built into the limestone cliffs of Huong Tich Mountain, about 60 km from the city. The journey to the pagoda felt like venturing back in time as we traveled two hours by car through the increasingly rural farmlands. Our guide, Tu, provided us with a wealth of historical and cultural context for the sights that we encountered along our trip. Tu was 28 years old and was raised in a small town on the outskirts of Hanoi. As we drove, he offered many insights into the complex and war torn history of Vietnam, as well as his own perspective on the rapidly changing cultural and political landscape.

Leaving the city, we crossed the bridge over the Red River and Tu pointed to his palm, "Here," he said, "is Hanoi, and here," he traced a half circle around the point in the center of his palm, "is the Red River. See, it is shaped like an ear. In Vietnam, we have a saying that having big ears means that you will be a very rich man. You see, I have small ears, and so I am a tour guide. So, the Red River is like a very big ear around the center of Hanoi. It means that Hanoi will be very powerful and for a thousand years we have fought against many great nations. We have fought one thousand years of Chinese domination, and then the French and the Americans. So my ancestors fought against the Chinese for many years, and my grandfather fought against the French, and my father fought against the Americans. We have a saying that these great nations are like an elephant and that the Vietnamese people are like a tiger that hides in the jungle. You see, the elephant is so big that it could crush the tiger, but the tiger comes out only at night while the elephant is sleeping and it claws the elephant a little every night until slowly, the elephant loses all its blood. And so, no one can defeat Vietnam, because the whole Vietnamese people are like a family. Everything is connected, like a web through all the villages in the country. But for now, we have peace for the first time in a thousand years and now things are very good in our country."

We would later learn that Tu's mother and father had both carried supplies for the North Vietnamese Army along the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the war, in what would be the final chapter of his family's long, battle scarred history. Even as Tu described the Vietnamese struggle with so many years of foreign occupation in a tone of nationalist pride, he also spoke favorably of the more recent economic reforms that have seen Vietnam engaging with the global economy, telling us that he preferred the more "modern" economy of Saigon to that of Hanoi. As recently as the 1990s, it was uncommon to see any form of motorized transportation in Hanoi, a city that is now clogged with cars and motorbikes and an increasingly dense urban population of over five million as people migrate from the farmlands in hopes of more prosperous opportunities in the city. But as we ventured further out into the countryside, we began to see scenes of life that have remained unchanged for centuries. Green fields of rice patties stretched out in all directions to a horizon that was studded with the dramatic forms of towering limestone mountains.

"In Hanoi," said Tu, "People are making maybe five dollars a day, and it is not enough to live on. But here, people are making less than one dollar and still they have more than enough, and they are even saving money because they grow rice, and so they have food, and one person raises maybe some pigs and some chickens and they sell them at the market. Everyday they wake up early they kill one pig and go and sell it and someone else grows some herbs or vegetables and they can sell those. It is very good, because our food here is very fresh. Not like in America where you shop at the supermarket and everything travels from far away to get there." Tara told Tu about our farmers' markets in Seattle and he seemed quite surprised to hear that not all Americans shop in Safeways and Walmarts.

Our drive through the farmlands ended in the small town of My Duc where we were to board a river boat for the hour long journey upstream to the base of the mountain. Our trip to the pagoda happened to coincide with an annual pilgrimage that takes place in the first and second month of the lunar calendar. Thousands of Buddhists from all over Vietnam make the pilgrimage to the pagoda to seeks purification and blessings of fertility. This meant that we would see very few other westerners and drew quite a bit of attention as we joined the hundreds of pilgrims paying their visit to the pagoda.

The river meandered through a striking landscape of limestone cliffs and dense forest. The boats were rowed almost entirely by women, who sat facing forward and rowed by thrusting their arms out before them, in arcing movements that propelled the boats swiftly forward against the lazy current. As we approached the village at the base of the mountain, I pulled out my camera to take a video and one of the passengers of a nearby boat called out to me. "I think he wants you to take his picture," said Tara. "No, he wants you to drink some snake wine with him," said Tu. "Do you know this wine? Two drinks will bring you good health, but any more will make you dizzy and confused." We had seen this wine in store fronts in Hanoi where bottles containing cobra heads, scorpions and ginger roots suspended in the amber liquid lined the windows facing out onto the street. At ten in the morning, it was a little early for me to indulge in the fermented snake head, and so I had to respectfully decline his generous offer.

On shore, we walked past a row of makeshift restaurants and souvenir stores. "The people here make all of their money for the whole year in these two months of pilgrimage," said Tu. "But if you want to buy something, you must bargain because the people here are very poor and they have no education. They will ask you for a very high price. Would you like to try the squirrel?" He pointed ahead to one of the restaurants where there hung, suspended from above, the carcasses of squirrels, nutria, small deer and what I'm pretty sure was some kind of cat. "There is still much forest here, so the people can hunt for these animals. You want to try?" "Maybe on the way back," I said and we continued up the path to the base of the mountain.

Our mountain ascent was aided by the newly installed cable car which carried us hundreds of feet over the densely forested mountains. At the summit, we joined the throngs of pilgrims shuffling their way down a long stone stairway leading to the mouth of the cave that held the Perfume Pagoda. Inside, we were enveloped by the mass of worshiping pilgrims, their recitals of prayer echoing throughout the cavernous enclosure that was lit only by hundreds of flickering candles casting wavering shadows across the rocky walls of the cave. We walked back down the mountain, through scattered villages and thickly forested valleys, to where our boat was waiting on the river to carry us back.

On our drive home, our conversations with Tu took on a less scripted and formal tone as we chatted about the differences between marriage traditions in Vietnam and America, and the merits of handmade goods versus mass production as it related to my own work in custom cabinetry and Tu's observation of his country's shift from traditions of handicraft to the sweatshop labor that fuels their largely export driven economy. He told us of his hopes to one day find work in Australia or Canada.

Back at the hotel, we thanked Tu and our driver with a tip, and I worried for a moment if it was enough, for although it was a generous amount by Vietnamese standards, it seemed paltry to me when you consider the experience they had provided us. These worries were a reminder of the ocean of differences that stood between us, economic, historical and cultural, and of the impossibility of really knowing what the other sees when they look across these divides. But we left with smiles and wishes of good luck and were thankful to have the opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences across the boundaries that divide us and find recognition, laughter and solemn remembrance of the violence that has preceded us.