LD: During another lifetime, it seems, I was often interviewed, mostly in English but also in Vietnamese, then I was ditched. My last chance to chatter in print was on 3/15/15, but published only in an Arabic newspaper in London. (Its English text is available at my blog.) Another erased person, Kevin Barrett, has had me on several podcasts, but that’s like two castaways playing checker on bobbing planks lashed together with rotting ropes.
Ignoring or ignorant of the memo I was toxic, Robert Patterson risked contagion recently to ask me questions, so I raise my cracked glass to Rob. The interview form encourages spontaneity and candidness, and since it’s a conversation, your prevarications, muddleness or bullshit can be immediately challenged or exposed. Dukes up, I swing.
Interview: Linh Dinh
Linh Dinh is a Vietnamese-American poet, fiction writer, translator, and photographer who I first discovered watching an interview with Chris Hedges discussing the plight of the underclass. Linh's lastest collection on the US, Post Cards from the End of America is a roaming encounter with America's, the West's and contemporary people's financial, political, persona. challenges. Mixed with humor, optimism we connected to discuss chasing COVID, how to travel, censorship in Vietnam, collapse, on being a loser, carpe diem and other Ờ-mây-zing! topics.
All photos copyright Linh Dinh
Leafbox:
Even
though you write about collapse and people on the out, there's
something always positive which I appreciate. I wanted to know where do
you get that positivity from?
Linh Dinh:
Though
I've talked about ethnic, racial and national differences, which you
can’t help but notice when traveling, I don't have problems getting
along with people as individuals, so that's the positivity, I suppose.
Plus, it’s not wise to be an asshole in an alien environment, or you
might end up dead, or locked up with twenty stinking gentlemen you can’t
communicate with. Would you mind not splattering urine on my head when
I’m sleeping?
Even in the US, I was often clearly an outsider, so this shaped my behavior. Taking the Greyhound, MegaBus or Amtrak across the country, I’d get off at some place I knew next to nothing about, so I’d just walk and walk, until I hit some lowlife bar, because that’s where I could meet people and afford many drinks. I was essentially home.
Generally, I don’t overly research a place I’m about to visit. I don’t even want to see photos of it. This ignorance enhances my surprise, even shock, when I get there, though surprises are inevitable, no matter how much research you’ve done. Although I spent three decades in Philadelphia, it continually surprised me, when it didn’t bore me to death, that is. All places are infinite.
In any shit bar, almost without fail somebody would talk to me and, before I knew it, I had learnt about his work history, present job, sexual habits, hope and fear. In a Woodbury, NJ dive where folks downed Bloody Marys with their breakfast scrapple, a frazzled stranger lamented to me about his torturous work schedule, with day and night shifts all mixed up, so he could never sleep properly. Not everyone finds that interesting or enlightening, but I can never get enough of how we get by, so I listen, and not just to what is said, but its delivery. I marvel at each man’s diction and cadence, so I can steal his language, of course, with gratitude.
In a country where I don't speak the language, I can't do that, obviously, but you can learn a lot by just looking at people.
I just got back to Vietnam five months ago. Because of COVID, I was stuck outside for 2 years. I had never traveled for such an extended time, drifting from country to country. Plus, without much money, it wasn't like I had the option of traveling much. When I was well received as a writer, I would get invited to give readings, but they would fly me in, pay me, then I would fly out, so many brief visits to many places. Once, I was hosted in Marfa, Texas for two months, but that was highly unusual. When I traveled on my own, I would often sleep on a bus or train to save money. I couldn't afford hotels really.
For 2 years, I stayed in eight countries. But you know how it is, man, if you stay away from Europe, you can find cheap accommodation. Even in Europe, there are some cheap places, so I was paying less than I would have if I was in Philadelphia.
Leafbox:
You
said the word alien when you entered the US and let's say you enter a
new bar, what's your modus operandi? What's your first question you ask
someone? I'm curious how you approach strangers.
Linh Dinh:
Well,
I just sit down. You can tell when people want to talk and, usually,
they do, and most people are pretty friendly. Sometimes, though, they’re
preoccupied or talking to friends, so I just sit and watch. I'm very
comfortable in dives because those were my social spaces in Philadelphia
anyway. Because of my budget, I couldn't afford anything else. In Cape
Town, for example, I went into Corner Bar in Sea Point and, just like
that, I was talking to people. A beefy black guy joked that I looked
like a Kung Fu master, then a white man told me his wife had died from
COVID. Although I was in Africa, the place felt familiar to me. In
Windhoek, Namibia, I stumbled onto The Old Location, so I just chattered
away, but mostly, I listened.
I go to where people are. In the US, people don't hang out in many places except for crappy bars. In Vietnam, it's a little easier to mingle because there's all these cafes and restaurants, and people spend a lot of time on sidewalks. In Vietnam, I don't have to go to dive bars, but there are no dives anyway. There are bars for Westerners, but Vietnamese don't have the habit of going into bars to sit on high stools and drink alone. Usually, they eat as they drink, with friends. In Vietnam, I can just go to a café and overhear conversations. I also get a lot of information that way.
Leafbox:
What is your usual drink of choice?
Linh Dinh:
Just
beer, man. I rarely drink hard stuff because I don’t want to get wasted
too quickly. With beer, I can drink for hours and still be coherent. At
home, I rarely drink. I’m a social drinker. I enjoy looking at people,
hearing people and I find everyone interesting.
Leafbox:
When you meet new people do you tell them that you're a writer or do you usually wait to inform them of that?
Linh Dinh:
I
rarely tell them. They don't care. I just listen to them. I want them
to tell me about themselves and, usually, people are more than eager to
talk. Most people aren’t very curious about me, which is fine. I don't
care.
Leafbox:
Were you this curious as a child or where did this curiosity first come?
Linh Dinh:
I
came to the States when I was 11 and we were very poor, so we didn't
really go anywhere. But we did drift around to find a congenial place to
settle. My father drove us from Tacoma to Houston, and we stopped in LA
to see a friend of his. Our cheap car, a Chevette, broke down in
Arizona. After two months in Texas, we decided we wanted to return to
the Pacific Northwest. Taking a different route, we passed through
Kansas and Wyoming, etc. I remember seeing thousands of pronghorns.
Though I got glimpses of all these places, I was just a child, so had no
control over anything. I couldn’t say, "Let's stop here for a few
days.” Still, I became very curious about places.
With my first car, I’d drive from Virginia, where I lived with my mother, to DC or Baltimore. When you're that young, though, you really don't know anything and you’re intimidated, so it took me a while to get the hang of just roaming. As an adult in Philadelphia, I would take frequent trips to New York City. Visiting New York was very stimulating, but Philadelphia was more congenial. I found New York, especially Manhattan, to be very pretentious, too much preening and posing, so I grew to dislike it, but Philadelphia felt more authentic, because it wasn’t glamorous. To be overly conscious about your image is a corrosive madness.
Leafbox:
Linh, when you first
moved to the United States that was part of the refugee situation with
the Vietnamese or what was the reason, economic?
Linh Dinh:
Yeah,
I got out just before the airport in Saigon was shut down, because of
shelling. Many civilians died. A few hours later and I would have been a
corpse. The excitement of going somewhere, though, was what I felt
most. It drowned out any fear or anxiety I had.
Leafbox:
Got it. How was the linguistic shock for you as a child?
Linh Dinh:
My
father was a lawyer and he was also a minor politician in South
Vietnam, so he had these positions. He was also in the police force, as a
lieutenant colonel. He had a bit of money, but he wasn't very well
educated. He didn’t really know any foreign language. When he got to
California, he tried to pass the bar exam, but he just couldn't do it.
He was already 44, and that’s just too old to grasp a foreign language
to pass a very complicated exam. So anyway, although my father was a
lawyer, he wasn't cultured.
He did force me and my little brother to study all of these languages, which was a kind of torture. Even at the time, I thought, "This is very unreasonable." He had me study French, English and Chinese, and that's just too many languages. This, on top of Vietnamese. A child should not be subjected to that. So I resented that very much at the time and I still think back at it with a kind of horror, but perhaps that exposure to all these languages forced me to be more open to learning an alien language.
Leafbox:
Do you have children now or no, Linh?
Linh Dinh:
No,
no, no. At a very early point in life, I realized I had to be very
careful to get by. I was a painter, and it’s very expensive to maintain a
studio. I realized I had to cut out most expenditures just to make it
as a person, much less as a painter. I rarely bought anything. I've
owned two cars in my life, for a total of maybe a year, which is very
unusual. I lived mostly without a car my three decades in the USA as an
adult. I hardly bought anything.
I even stopped buying music. I thought, “Wait a second, you can't afford 20 bucks for a CD!" So I cut out many expenditures. Having a child would be out of the question. When I was young, my biggest fear was to be a failure as an artist, which was exactly what happened, but I became a writer. You know how it is, man, you sacrifice so much to do this. The chance of you doing anything, gaining any kind of attention, is very slim. I had a tremendous fear of exerting myself to such a degree, but still end up with nothing.
West Side Tavern in Osceola, Iowa on 9-23-14
Leafbox:
And
what is your fear now as maybe past middle age and more as an
established writer and photographer and artist? What's your biggest fear
now?
Linh Dinh:
OK, so after a
while, I got published. I think I ended up publishing 10 or 11 books in
English, I can't remember, maybe 10 books. Anyway, there was a point
where I was treated fairly well, I was invited to places, I was
anthologized. I think I got a little sloppy. I've always been impatient.
Even now, I'm very impatient with my writing. I crank out a lot. So
there was a point where I got a little sloppy. Looking back, I'm like,
“Man, you should have spent more time on this poem, or you shouldn’t
have written this poem, etc.” As someone nearing 60, I look back at my
so-called writing career and see all the missteps. I'm trying to correct
them. I just finished editing my Collected Poems.
The book was supposed to be published in the USA before the publisher became appalled… It was all ready to go to the printer, then it got cancelled. Now, I'm going to get it published in Vietnam. I have a publisher here, but it's an underground publisher. It won’t be distributed in bookstores, but it will be a book, and that's all I want. I want a document of all my poems, of all the poems I care to keep. Just going through all these old poems was rather painful, because I had to eliminate a bunch, and reworked a bunch. Sometimes you can just tweak a word here and there. A seemingly minor edit can make a huge difference. Anyway, my Collected Poems is at the publisher and I sure hope this guy doesn't cancel me also! It should be out soon.
Leafbox:
Now that you're back in Vietnam, are you writing in Vietnamese as well?
Linh Dinh:
Well,
I compiled two books in Vietnamese, but mostly translated from my
English writing. I haven't written directly in Vietnamese in a while.
For a short period, I did that while living outside Vietnam. Of these
two books, one is of my recent travel writing, originally written in
English, now translated by me into Vietnamese. Because these are my
pieces, I can take more liberty with the translation. If it was someone
else's work, I would have to be more exact. You can't mess with someone
else's thoughts or style, you know.
Leafbox:
So
Linh going back to language, I'm just curious, as someone who speaks
many languages, did you find your Vietnamese had caught up with
contemporary Vietnamese after being away from Vietnam for so long?
Linh Dinh:
I
speak English and Vietnamese. Since I lived in Italy for two years, I
learned to speak very basic Italian, but I'm not really good at
languages. I studied French as a child, so I can read shop signs and
maybe half of a newspaper article, and I can do the same with Spanish,
but I'm not conversational in any languages except two.
Leafbox:
Well, two is more than most Americans.
Linh Dinh:
But
I just want to clarify that I don't have any exceptional facility with
languages. Anyway, my Vietnamese deteriorated during my time in USA,
because I wasn't using it very much, but in 1995 and 1998, I returned to
Vietnam, then in '99, I came back and stayed for two and a half year.
I've worked at regaining my Vietnamese. Because I’ve translated quite a
bit of Vietnamese literature into English, I had to improve my
Vietnamese.
Like I said, there was a period when I wrote directly in Vietnamese, and I was surprised I could manage it. I got good responses from leading Vietnamese writers. Although some people still find my Vietnamese a little weird, it’s not because my Vietnamese is bad. It’s because I do certain things stylistically that annoy some people, you know, the more rigid ones, or maybe they’re just slow learners! I’ll teach them!
With my two Vietnamese books coming out, readers will finally get a chance to examine my writing in my own language, because I have been translated rather badly by other people. Until recently, I didn’t realize how distorted or even degraded was my writing in Vietnamese! It’s very important to straighten this out, because I don’t want to die as a clown!
Leafbox:
Nice.
Linh, what is the contemporary Vietnamese writing literature community
like? Is it all in Hanoi or is it academic? Is it fiction for mass
culture? I'm just curious, who is the reader in Vietnam?
Linh Dinh:
After
'75, the South Vietnamese writers who got out, they continued to write
overseas and there were also new writers emerging, outside Vietnam. It
was a very lively scene because there was a lot to talk about. They had
endured so much trauma. Although these writers were not allowed to
publish inside Vietnam, many of their works got smuggled back in, so
there was a very healthy scene outside Vietnam. The problem was these
people got older, and the younger generation was not that interested in
reading Vietnamese, or even being Vietnamese! So all these Vietnamese
bookstores in the USA, France or wherever started to disappear. With
writers dying or not much read, this scene has pretty much collapsed.
With the internet, these overseas writers can be read inside Vietnam,
but most readers have become too flighty or dumbed down to engage with
substantial writing.
We see this with every language. Paradoxically, the internet allows people to write and read much more, but they read and write so sloppily, they can’t really grasp anything, and even when they do, they’ll forget it within seconds. People have a hard time recounting what they read online just a minute ago.
The internet, then, has actually hurt writing in every language, so it has hurt Vietnamese writing. Inside Vietnam, serious writers are barely visible. For about 15 years starting in 1989, there was a lot of exciting writing inside Vietnam, because the government had eased censorship considerably. With many writers emerging, there was a lot of excitement, but that has died out. One reason was the government reasserted control, though not as severely as before.
Writers are mostly left alone. For example, my two new books won’t be allowed to be sold in bookstores, but no one will get in trouble. At least I hope not! I have already published two books of poems in Vietnamese, but they’re underground, so the government doesn't care. In the past, it would go after the publisher and maybe even me. Now it doesn’t really care, because no one reads these books anyway. The younger generation is not really interested in serious literature. They’re on Facebook or watching YouTube, so the writing scene here is not very healthy right now. There's also this infatuation with English. In pop songs, you hear English inserted into lyrics, many shop signs flaunt English, often ridiculous, and richer kids go to bilingual schools. All these phenomena mean there is less attention paid to Vietnamese. A deep, sustained love for the language breeds serious literature. When this is largely absent, all you have is a handful of stubborn weirdos composing for almost nobody. With English so purposely degraded, English speaking societies have become madhouses, with inmates manically flinging incoherent shit at each other!
Leafbox:
It's
interesting Linh, the American culture is still the hegemonic in
Vietnam. Because I read about China and Japan and even Russia seems to
have influence into Vietnam. I'm just curious so the American dream is
still active.
Linh Dinh:
Here's a
sickly funny story. One reason Vietnamese are so vaccinated is that
they trust American medicine. I find this sadly hilarious. Although
these fuckers showered Agent Orange onto Vietnam, Vietnamese now line up
to get maimed or even murdered by Pfizer! When the first batch of
Pfizer “vaccines” arrived, most were shipped to Hanoi, so the top
Communists and their families could snatch them. Having fought Uncle Sam
not that long ago, they still trusted him to bring them health and
happiness, and not blood clots, strokes, heart attacks and numerous
other illnesses! Save me, Uncle Sam!
Leafbox:
The brand, whereas in the Communist Party in China will never, of course, you can't take any of those shots in China, maybe.
Linh Dinh:
The
top Communists here send their kids to schools in the UK and in the
USA. Some buy houses in the USA. So enamored of American culture, wealth
and glamor, they’re scrambling onto the sinking Titanic. It's
hilarious.
Leafbox:
But that just
seems like the oligarchic class, in China it's the same. So who is the
censorship regime in Vietnam controlled by, is that the middle
bureaucrat then?
Linh Dinh:
Listen,
they don't want anyone to say anything bad about the Communist Party,
it's a big taboo, so you can't question Ho Chi Minh, for example. You
can't mock Ho Chi Minh or address corruption in the Communist Party.
Leafbox:
What about religion or LGBT kind stuff is that censured or is that just…
Linh Dinh:
The
gay and transsexual scene is not too visible here. It has permeated
this culture too, but not like in the West, where it has become nearly a
state religion! Vietnam is still very much a traditional society, and
it's certainly very nationalistic. The Communists here don't stress
Marxism, internationalism or class struggle. They derive their
legitimacy by posing or rebranding themselves as nationalists. Even Ho
Chi Minh projected himself as a nationalist above all. Communists have
to do this because most Vietnamese are merely nationalists. They just
take it for granted that Vietnam’s heritage, history, culture and
language should be protected. I just said that they're enamored with
English, but very few of them can speak it comfortably. I just saw an ad
at a convenience store. They use the English “amazing,” but transcribed
into Vietnamese.
Leafbox:
No, I get it. It's like loan words in English or Japanese where it adds cachet to the language.
Linh Dinh:
It's
retarded. At the top of this help wanted sign is, “Ờ-mây-zing, có job!”
So only “have” is in Vietnamese, with “job” and “amazing” in English.
Businesses here use English even when they know customers can't even
read it. Like you say, it lends cachet to the store. It intimidates
people when there's English on the sign.
Leafbox:
So
going back to the creative process, if most of the creatives are in the
undergrounda and if they just stay away from taboo censored` topics.
Basically, they have free reign, it's very libertarian, they can do
whatever they want except certain topics.
Linh Dinh:
OK,
like sexual content, it's not that big of a deal, but they're not going
to have a song that says “suck my dick,” like they do in US. Vietnamese
listeners won't put up with that. It's not the government, but the
people objecting to that. Civilized people don’t tolerate such cultural
pollution.
Leafbox:
It's a conservative society still. I understand.
Linh Dinh:
They
just find it appalling. Sometimes I play videos of American music for
my friends here, just to show how degraded American culture has become,
and they're just shocked. They're like, "What the hell is this?”
Leafbox:
Well,
let's talk about that degradation. There's a show on HBO in America
called The House of Ho, it's kind of a Kim Kardashian reality tv show...
have you heard of this?
Linh Dinh:
No, I haven’t.
Leafbox:
It's
basically, a reality show on a rich Vietnamese-American family, the
wealth they have, their life. They're like Kim Kardashians, they live
very extravagant, they have mansions, and it's all about the family
battle. But what's more interesting about the show is that it's very
popular in Vietnam and maybe they are selling the American Vietnamese
dream.
Linh Dinh:
Wow. I didn't know that. I've never heard of this. Ờ-mây-zing!
Leafbox:
I'm
curious what the relationship is between Vietnam and American Dream. Is
that because the upper class Vietnamese dream about the American dream
still is that what the relationship is about? Maybe you can tell me
since you are both a Vietnamese American and Vietnamese, what's the
relationship between the two?
Linh Dinh:
Most
people here still believe in the American dream, they believe USA has
to be number one, and there are several reasons for this. Most white
people you see here are well off compared to the locals. If you are a
poor white person, you're not going to come to Vietnam. Since you can't
even fly to Mexico, you're not going to show up in Vietnam. Since whites
here tend to throw their money around, most Vietnamese are convinced
whites are filthy rich. Also, overseas Vietnamese also throw their money
around when they return, the ones who can afford to return. None will
admit they can barely pay their rent in the USA or they’re cleaning
toilets, or overworked, with hardly any social life. Back home, they
have their only chance to strut and brag. This notion that everybody's
just living fabulously in the West is also reinforced by media images,
by music videos and movies, so Vietnamese are bombarded by this nonstop
seduction from the West, and America is best at this. She’s a go-go
dancer who flashes everything but won’t even give you the cheapest
feels, only deadly vaccines, bombs, degenerate music and hypocritical
lectures, and she can go on and on.
This infatuation is common. Almost everyone believes it because most have never been to USA to see for themselves what the situation is like right now.
Leafbox:
I have a Cuban friend who's a refugee in Miami. He's been in the United States for 20 years, and he recently just went to San Francisco for the first time, and he couldn't believe it. He just could not believe the situation. This is a Cuban, he's like, "We don't even have food in Cuba." And he just couldn't understand the reality of San Francisco in California, and he just wanted to get back to Miami.
Linh Dinh:
Incredible squalor. People who live worse than animals all over the place.
Leafbox:
It's
a very complicated issue. I think it has to do with the lack of
religion and the lack of family and structure and just all kinds of
issues and even possibly foreign influence. Going back to Vietnam, you
write a lot about I have to be careful the words kind of the Corona
madness and just the psyops all over the world. I'm curious, what are
the psyops ongoing in Vietnam? What is the
government selling, are they selling the American dream? Are they
selling commerce? What are they selling to the people? What is the
narrative-
Linh Dinh:
In regard with COVID or what?
Leafbox:
Well,
not just COVID but I assume the Vietnamese is page in terms of the same
madness as the rest of the world. In Vietnam, I’m just curious, what
is the dream? Is the government controlling people by fear? Are they
controlling people by a carrot of a mansion in the future? Because I've
never been to Vietnam so I'm curious you as an American who's written
about collapse in the West, how is the Vietnamese society keeping itself
intact from the current levels of collapse that you see in the West?
Linh Dinh:
I
mentioned the loosening of censorship in literature around 1989, but
there was an overall shift, because hardcore communism just wasn't
working. People were starving and there was no reason for Vietnamese to
starve, so the government had to change its policies. Finally, it
allowed people to do whatever they wanted, as long as they didn’t mess
with the Communist Party. In Vietnam, the first thing you notice are all
these small businesses everywhere. Every street is just filled with
stores, and there are all these stores in alleys. Anyone can just open a
store. I can open a store tomorrow without any license. I can just set
up a table and sell food.
People here are left alone to just buy and sell and be themselves, and Vietnamese are very good at commerce, so life has improved. From 1990 onward, each year got better, but by 2000, there was still a lot of destitution. You’d see children begging or selling lottery tickets. In the last 20 years or so, most of this misery has disappeared, however. Many Vietnamese are their own bosses, with their little stores, or they’re walking around to sell stuff. I'm not saying everybody's doing well, but the mood is optimistic. Vietnam is selling electric cars in the USA. Did you know about that?
Leafbox:
No, but it seems
like because of the growth people are just eager to grow. It's like
Chile in the '90s, everyone was excited the future was coming.
Linh Dinh:
They
have an electric car called VinFast, so Vietnamese are proud of that,
though this car was not engineered or even designed by Vietnamese. A
rich Vietnamese guy just hired people of various nationalities to slap
together a car he can sell. Anyway, Vietnamese can see that they are
making better stuff, the restaurants are looking better, the cafes are
looking cooler and the nightclubs are glitzier, louder and more
obnoxious. Everywhere they look, they see improvements, and their own
lives have improved. It used to be very hard for Vietnamese to get a
visa, but now, a bunch of countries, 54, to be exact, don’t even require
a visa from Vietnamese.
Leafbox:
Developing.
Linh Dinh:
So
they travel. You have all these YouTube vlogger who talk about the most
obscure places, so Vietnamese are dressing better, eating better and
traveling. At the convenience store near me, you can get maybe five
different types of cheeses, plus sushi and Korean kimchi. Two blocks
away is a French and Spanish restaurant. There are two excellent Italian
restaurants here, and keep in mind Vung Tau is only Vietnam’s 15th
largest city. Compared to Saigon, Hanoi, Nha Trang or Da Nang, etc.,
it’s very provincial. In Saigon, I can get a marrakesh burrito or some
of the best pizzas anywhere.
The mood in Vietnam was very optimistic, then COVID came. Now, things are returning somewhat to normal, but it's still problematic because, for example, the Chinese tourists are not here. When the Chinese tourists were here, Vietnamese complained about them all the time, but Vietnamese love to complain about Chinese, period.
China this, Chinese that. When there were so many Chinese tourists here, everyone had a negative story about them, but now they’re gone, and dearly missed in many cities. It’s baffling to see China locking in its own citizens. Though some foreign tourists have returned to Vietnam, there's still a lot of uncertainty. The worst COVID trauma was last year’s lockdown that lasted over two months. It was a real horror because many people had hardly any living space. You might have four factory workers in a tiny room without air conditioning. To force them to live inside a steaming little cell like that, day after day, was torture.
Linh Dinh:
Now
things are more or less normal. Over half of Vietnamese, though, still
wear masks in public. This makes no sense because they take them off in
cafes and restaurants, but put their masks back on when they get on a
motorbike. I've taken a few photos of people wearing masks in the ocean.
They’re taking a dip in the ocean, there's nobody around and they’re
wearing a fucking mask! There is a psychosis here, which I find very
annoying and disturbing, but most people are living fairly normally.
When I first got back, I wasn't sure whether I had to wear a mask to go
into a bank, for example, then I realized they didn't care, so I don't
wear a mask anymore.
Leafbox:
Linh, going back to that psychosis, how did you evade the psychosis?
Linh Dinh:
How did I what?
Leafbox:
How did you evade the mind virus?
Linh Dinh:
This
is funny, man, because when COVID broke out, I was in Laos. When
somebody mentioned it, I thought it was just some minor whatever, so who
cares? When I heard it was rather serious, I returned to Vietnam and
went straight to the Chinese border.
There's a city, Lao Cai, that’s right across from China. There, you can see Chinese buildings and Chinese people across a narrow river. I had been there once, so I rushed to it, to be within fondling distance of Coronachan. In Lao Cai, I walked along the river and stared at the empty streets and rooms on the other side, at all the closed businesses. Every so often, there would be a solitary figure just walking, or standing inside a window. On the Vietnamese side, life was normal, but on the Chinese side, it was post apocalyptic. Keep in mind this was just some remote place on China’s very edge, 1,200 miles from Wuhan. I wasn’t sure if I was glimpsing the end of China. Maybe they would all die soon!
It was morbidly fascinating, this entire city with hardly anyone on the streets. I would see Chinese tourists returning to China with looks of distress. It’s like they were going back to sickness or death. Foolishly, I thought maybe I could sneak into China, but you know how it is, desires have their own rules. I had once crossed from Texas into Mexico illegally, and it was no big deal, so I thought I could do the same now. After over a month along the Chinese border, I could only see China but not smuggle myself into it, so when COVID erupted in South Korea, I flew there! I was chasing after COVID.
Leafbox:
Were you chasing COVID because you wanted to write about it, or you're just curious to see what the fuss was?
Linh Dinh:
Well,
you have to see it to find out if there’s anything to write about it,
but I’m the kind of guy who finds even a trip to 7/11 terribly exciting.
Everything is worth writing about. At the beginning, I believed in the
COVID narrative totally. I thought it was some horrific pandemic that's
going to kill billions. So I ended up in South Korea for five months,
because Vietnam had closed its borders, and so did Cambodia, and all of
Asia, actually. Stuck in South Korea, I saw the contradictions of this
COVID nonsense.
You probably know this already, but the Japanese and Koreans loved to wear masks anyway. Many Japanese wore masks long before COVID, and the South Koreans were nearly as bad. Japanese friends told me they wore masks to prevent themselves from spreading illnesses, not for self-protection. Still, it seemed overdone, if not farcical. Anyway, South Koreans would wear a mask on the subway, and they mostly wore masks walking down sidewalks. Inside a drinking or eating place, however, they took their masks off, of course, and there was no social distancing, so what's happening here? Since the Koreans loved to mingle, carouse and drink alcohol together in public, they had to ignore COVID rules.
Leafbox:
I
understand that. No, I agree. I'm just trying to understand what in you
Linh prevented you inoculated you from that mind virus? Is it the fact
that you're American; from thinking that way.
Linh Dinh:
It's because I saw these contradictions.
Leafbox:
Most
people don't see or question the contradictions they just accept it and
they don't even question anything. So I'm trying to understand, where
does your questioning nature come from? Is it the fact that you've been
an alien in the US, the fact that you're a writer.
I have many friends who accept everything, I've lost friends over the
last two years. So I'm curious, where does it come from in you? That's
what I'm asking.
Linh Dinh:
In
Vietnam right now, my favorite part of the day is to walk outside at 6
in the morning. My first step outside, I'm always very happy. I love to
be on the sidewalks. I love to be walking down the street. So I was not
going to lock myself in out of fear. In Philadelphia, I always walked
and always loved to be among people. Of course, when I write I have to
be alone because writing is a solitary activity. But when I'm not
writing, I walk around to look at people and talk to them. Even with
COVID, I maintained this habit. Since South Korea was a very exciting
place, with a lot of visual stimulation, I walked around constantly. I
was eating out and drinking out, that was my compulsion, so I kept doing
that, despite COVID.
So I was always among people and no one else showed any real fear either. When I first got to Seoul, most cafes were empty because people didn't know how to deal with this, but soon enough, people wandered out. Koreans also had this compulsion to eat, drink, mingle and laugh regularly. I visited more than a dozen South Korean cities, and each one was lively and near normal. Of course, there were weirdos who stayed inside, but paranoiacs and misanthropes exist in every society.
Anyway, I realized soon enough there's nothing to be afraid of. After five months in South Korea, I had to leave because if I was going to be stuck outside Vietnam, I might as well travel. I went to Serbia because there was no COVID test requirement or quarantine. Several Balkan countries were also similarly relaxed, so from Serbia, I could enter neighboring countries without hassles. I ended up in North Macedonia and Albania. Before returning to Vietnam, I was also in Lebanon, Egypt, Namibia and South Africa. All these places were more or less normal, and I never had to endure a lockdown. In Egypt, if you take the cheap train, you can't even move, man. You're touching four different bodies. Foreigners are not supposed to take third class train, but I did it anyway.
Leafbox:
I've
been to India, it's the same. It's understandable. So I'm just curious,
so while you're traveling around during the COVID and you're watching,
obviously you're talking to friends who have been absorbed by the mind
virus. What did you think of them, that the fear was overtaking the
whole planet?
Linh Dinh:
Being in these places, I saw
that life was normal, that people basically had no fear of this disease.
In poorer places, people didn’t have much of a choice. They had to
function normally to eat. In Sub-Saharan Africa, most people wisely shun
these deadly jabs from the sinister West. During my five months in
Windhoek, Namibia, the COVID “vaccination” center at a downtown shopping
mall was nearly always empty. Most Namibians weren’t tricked into
harming themselves.
When I started to read up on what’s going on, I came to realize there was an agenda behind this, then came the appearance of the genocidal jab. They’re trying to kill us. During the first year of COVID, only 35 people died in Vietnam, but after the Covid “vaccine” rollout, thousands started to die, and they’re still dying. Of course, the government and global media blamed it on COVID, and they’re also making all sorts of laughable excuses for healthy people dropping dead all over.
I'm pretty sure I caught COVID in Albania because I had never been so sick in my life. I was a total mess for about three weeks. Just lying in bed, I had to think maybe two hours before daring to shift positions, because it was just too painful. Everything was too painful. Still, I refused to go to the hospital. Though I didn't have friends or family nearby, my landlady was in the same apartment. Had I moaned loud enough, she would have taken me to the hospital, but that would have likely been fatal. Wrong treatment in hospitals worldwide murdered many COVID patients.
I was determined to just ride it out, so if I died, I died. Delirious, I had passing thoughts about jumping out my 8th floor window, but that would have left a very bad impression with the neighbors. Crazy Oriental came to Tirana to jump out window! Not a good exit.
Though I'd never been so sick, I took no medicines, saw no doctors and then it was over after roughly a month, with three weeks truly hellish. Though I was beyond exhausted, I couldn’t quite sleep, and I ate almost nothing day after day. It was too difficult to get up to do anything.
Leafbox:
So
Linh, going back to this, I'm going to call it pre and post COVID. How
has your writing and mindset changed now that we're in the post COVID
era? Do you feel more free or less free or... I'm just curious, how do
you feel? Are you more worried?
Linh Dinh:
Worry about what's going on?
Leafbox:
No,
I'm just curious, do you feel more liberated or more carpe diem? What
is you pre COVID, I get a sense of what you're like and now what are you
post COVID? Has your writing changed or artistic mindset, you're still
doing your walks at 6:00 AM. What's changed?
Linh Dinh:
My
routines are the same. I'm still doing what I've always loved to do.
The focus of my writing, though, has changed. The last book I published
in USA was Postcards from the End of America, a collection of pieces about different places. This came out in January of 2017.
2 comments:
Great interview Linh
Thanks, man!--Linh
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