6.03.2005
Today, a lazy lazy day. Ryan and i walked out of our hotel around the noon time, after we arrived at the market and bought the famous conical hat, we crashed again. The heat and humid air in Hue is just a little unbearable...Anyways, i feel much better right now since some 2000 liter of water and some strong Vietnamese tea were flashed town my stomach.
We hung around this town since three days ago like what we usually do in every new town we've been traveled. Hue, a bit like Hui An (or last stop), both are the UNESCO city of world heritage, only Hue is a lot bigger, more spectacular whereas Hui An is cuter and more colorful.
After visiting both very very Chinese towns in Vietnam, i had this deep retrospection on Chinese culture, which is my own culture....Yesterday, sitting in the back of Ryan's scooter ride while we were shown and led by a wonderful local lady, Roi, to the great emperor's tomb; I had this embarrassing moment that I realized how much shamed I was to forget and take granted my own culture. On that little dirt road in that countryside where Roi lives, there were pieces of Chinese characters here and there inscribed on the walls, windows, doors where the people who's ancestors came from China and brought and passed town the culture here in Vietnam. Most of the Vietnamese people don't recognize those characters anymore, but they can surely tell you their meaning even though they don't speak a word of Chinese anymore... Roi showed us the big inscription in the King's tomb and asked me what it meant, and saying that those poetry written on the doorway look so beautiful to her and most of people here, yet no one seem to understand them... so explained the words carefully for her but felt so full of sweat!
I remembered one day when we visited a pagoda here, an happy old monk asked where I am from and when he learned that I'm from Taiwan and speak Chinese, he was excited and eager to showed me that he could write Chinese characters and that he knows every single words written in his Buddhist inscription and prayers. When he wrote me an old Chinese poem which a tiny rock on the ground, I was so amazed and felt so flat and small at the same time...
Now, as time brings us closer to the end of our journey in SEA, the more I have feel small and learn to respect and at same time reappreciate my own culture. I'm surprised that it takes so long and so far away from my culture and couture to realize this old yet wise saying in Chinese, "Until you see the mountain, the plains don't look flat"...
Not to mention the exact Chinese idiom is tattooed on Ryan's right arm.
|
