NGUOI VIET - Stress - A new word for a new Vietnam

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Stress - A new word for a new Vietnam
Thursday, February 24, 2005 By Andrew Lam

SÀI GÒN — At an ultra-chic bar called Nam Kha, a well-dressed woman in her mid-20s named Trâm tells me that she’s “stress.”

She speaks Vietnamese, but switches to English for a word heard often here. There is no equivalent term in her language. The closest you can get is “căng thẳng thần kinh” — tension of the mind.

Stress is the latest trend to hit Việt Nam from America since MTV. At first glance it seems impossible. This country, after all, is full of hard-working young people, and rural life is backbreaking for the majority. Generation after generation has known nothing but sweat and toil. But this new phenomenon is not of simple hard work. It’s a kind of symptom associated with young, upwardly mobile urban professionals in peacetime.

One is “stress,” therefore, like Huy Phan, 32, an ad executive for Tiền Phong publishing company, an association of lifestyle magazines.

This evening at the bar he loses his voice after talking nonstop for four hours with clients, models and photographers on his expensive cell phone. “It’s always like this,” he complains. “It’s my day off, but I never stop working. I’m terribly stress.”

Việt Nam’s yuppies are given to multitasking these days. Next to Huy, Trâm is talking on one phone, ordering a drink, conversing with another friend, and, yes, text messaging on another cell phone — all at once. “I have a headache almost every night,” she says. “I never had this kind of headache until I got my new job.” Her post: overseeing dozens of young saleswomen in a cosmetics company.

Huy and Trâm are quick to acknowledge that they are a privileged group with opportunities unavailable to people in decades past in communist Việt Nam.

Just a generation ago more or less everyone had to stand in line to buy rice from government issued stores, and moving from city to city was a Herculean task that required navigating Việt Nam’s heavy bureaucracy. Now, young 20- and 30-somethings like Huy vacation regularly in Singapore. He has traveled twice to the United States, while Trâm flies to Thailand every few months to, “de-stress” herself. How?

“I go shopping,” she laughs.

The owner of Nam Kha, on the other hand, says he’s not “stress.” Đức Phan, 32, one of three partners who own a growing conglomerate of silk stores, restaurants and resorts across the country, is gentle and calm. He tells me his secret. “I have very good managers,” he says, smiling and patting the shoulder of a young man standing next to him. “They stress on my behalf.”

Việt Nam is a heated economy, second only to China in terms of growth in Asia, with around a 7 percent growth rate annually and a higher rate expected for 2005. Tourism, too, is increasing. Bob Bannerman, who works for the U.S. Consulate in Hồ Chí Minh City, says that he sees a shift toward more economic and political transparency here in the last few years. “More and more foreigners are coming in to invest,” he notes. “Việt Nam wants to be taken seriously now, and there are many smart young people doing amazing things here.”

But success comes with a price. The newspapers are full of stories of folks who commit crimes of greed. A story that ran recently in Tuủôi Trẻ, a youth newspaper, is a case in point. A young man seduced a teenage girl, but when his cell-phone business went belly up he murdered her and took all of her expensive belongings in order to pay back his debtors.

Bảo Nguyễn, 28, a flight attendant who also owns a cosmetics store, says he must constantly purchase new expensive toys to fit in with his business circle. A practice among the urban young is to place one’s cell phone on the table upon sitting down at a restaurant. Everyone then proceeds to check out everyone else’s new toy. “I bought a $500 phone, and everyone in my circle has one. So I bought a new one for $1,200, and now I’m respected. It’s materialistic, but in my business, you have to do it.”

And yes, he is often “stress.” But “to de-stress,” he adds, “I go to spas and get pampered. It’s popular now, even among men.”

In a 2002 report by the Pew Center, of 44 countries surveyed, Việt Nam was the most optimistic. A whopping 98 percent of Vietnamese said they expect their children to be better off.

“Vietnamese are experiencing stress now because life is no longer routine,” says Michael, an American businessman who declined to give his full name and who has lived in Việt Nam for three years. “Or rather, new routines must be learned, and learned quickly in a society that’s going through enormous transition.”

Yet, as someone who speaks fluent Vietnamese, I cannot help but detect a hidden bragging tone within the familiar complaints of the upwardly mobile here. When a Vietnamese says he is stressed, he is also saying, “I’m doing something important, and I’m successful, and this is the price I’m willing to pay for it.”

Huy, meanwhile, is buying everyone at the counter a drink. “I just made a big sale. Come on, drink up,” he says hoarsely, just as his cell phone starts to ring again.

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