When my buddy PJ visited last year, he was the first black person Huyen had ever met. The fact is, there just aren't that many black people in Vietnam. Don't get me wrong, there are black people in Hanoi but they're just few and far between. Because of this, I was asked a really funny question by a few of my students the other day when we were talking about how to greet people. My students asked me: "Do you shake hands with black people or do you do this (they motioned making a fist and doing a three step fist bump thing)?"
I told them to shake hands.
2 comments:
That is really funny, and sometimes I wonder why people here in Asia find it so hard to put themselves in our shoes. Just like every place I have been in Asia, people here in Hanoi are really shaken by the presence of Black people. Unlike most any other place, though, people are easy to talk to and do not (generally) seem frightened by us, and that brings me great relief. Still, I am the one who finds it so hard to understand why people are so surprised to see us as I have trouble imagining being so surprised at seeing someone different than me. It seems to indicate that people are taught something about strangers or about the strangeness of themselves. And the whooping and hollering that people do when they see me is still hard to get used to even though I can tell myself that it is just their response to a new experience. I say that it's hard for them to put themselves in my shoes, because I cannot imagine that they would like to watch a group of people respond to them the way they respond to me. Again, I stress that it's clearly shock and not disgust in their response and unlike other parts of Asia they often smile and greet me, which is very nice.
The fist bump would have been the correct answer.
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