Of marsh and limestone
Postcards from Vietnam's Van Long Nature Reserve + readings + joy, wherever it is found.
However you found your way here, welcome! I’m Emily, and I write letters about how we seek and tell stories to make sense of a changing world and our place in it.
What kinds of landscapes do we find aesthetically pleasing? I’ve often found myself captivated by more austere vistas: they seem more suggestive of otherworldly majesty. On one extreme, perhaps an arid desert; but even among verdant landscapes, such as the limestone karsts and freshwater wetlands of the Van Long Nature Reserve in Ninh Binh, Vietnam, one can appreciate a certain severity—as we did in May. It was in the craggy rock faces, weathered by rain and wind into flinty pockmarked patterns, but also in the wide swathes of green, as yet unbroken by the golden palette of the paddy harvest, which would only come later in the year, and the vibrant pink of lotuses, which apparently bloom riotously from November to April but which we only saw occasional floating patches of. As well, the shallow lagoon created by the dam built along the Đáy River in the 1960, with its waters so still, looked at times like a blank mirror, compounding the sense of an enveloping aloofness, an imperviousness—especially when we came up to the dam’s walls on our bamboo sampan.
It was almost eerily quiet. Often, we heard only the sound of our boatmaster’s oars slicing through the water. Though the reserve is a habitat for various wildlife, we did not see many besides a couple of bird species, including the Asian openbill stork. We did not see the Delacour’s langur, one of the rarest primate species on earth and critically endangered, numbering fewer than three hundred worldwide in the wild—a fact that bestows on Van Long some of its external importance: as home to more than half of the langur’s global population today.
In comparison to the Tràng An Landscape Complex not far away, which we also traversed by boat, Van Long felt more “pristine”, and I am quite astonished at how it’s still possible to feel such enchantment when, in our day and age, so much of nature bears the weight of our human hand, when so much of it is not, in fact, “remote”, but skirts and survives our industrial everything complex. There’s a cement factory near the reserve: a reminder that the limestone hills we had come to see would have, had they not been protected, been blasted and mined for cement. Other hills in neighbouring areas have been destroyed: reportedly, they used to connect to those in the Van Long Natural Reserve as a contiguous range. Which made me think that the gritty grey-ish film that seemed to coat Ninh Binh was perhaps not, as I had thought, something to do with the quality of light attending cloudy skies, but dust itself.
In an essay published in Granta’s Second Nature issue, Callum Roberts writes about “shifting baseline syndrome”, which he describes as “intergenerational changes in how we perceive our world”:
Each generation sets its mental benchmark of normality by how the world looked when first encountered, often in youth, and sees change relative to this. Younger generations accept as normal a world that seems tainted and degraded to oder people.
At first, this makes me feel blue and ineffectual. But it also makes me think of the resilience of nature, how much it still gives and thrives wherever it is allowed to remain, even when we’ve made so much of it disappear. That’s what Roberts describes as the “protective influence” of our collective baseline delusion, which may keep us from the depths of psychological despair but may also be “suppressing perceptions of harm and lowering ambition to reverse human impacts”. However, he also writes that this delusion cannot protect us from our flagrant recklessness today, which has reached such a tipping point as to soon bring about historic, outsized consequences we are ill-equipped to deal with—if we change nothing about how we live.
Whatever’s left, it’s always worth protecting.
Readings, etc.
1./ Recently finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke and I love it. Clarke’s doorstopper of a—debut?!—novel, which apparently took ten years to write, is funny and loopy and dark and it’s been described as fantasy (featuring “practical” vs. “theoretical” gentleman magicians in the nineteenth century) slash historical fiction slash comedy of manners à la Jane Austen, which is very apt. These magicians are not cut from the same cloth as Gandalf and Dumbledore; they’re really of a more bumbling variety and I laughed out loud at various times to repeat their foibles to W.C. The book is sprawling and immersive and I feel like I’ve just been to another world and back—I think the last time I felt like this was after reading Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. I’m still trying to figure out what I think about how the myriad events culminated in the ending, and I think I’ll re-read at least the last volume of the book, if not the whole thing (this is definitely the kind of book that rewards repeat readings), to see what new discoveries I’ll chance upon—I’m sure to find some!—which may yet bring into sharper relief parts of the book’s tapestry for me. There are a lot of footnotes and I read every one; perhaps not every one of them was absolutely necessary…? But it’s such an ambitious and capacious book, a total pleasure to read, I’ll overlook anything!
2./ I’ve read all of Sally Rooney’s books but I think my favourite is Normal People. Having read an excerpt of her upcoming novel Intermezzo, however, I think it might well become my new favourite? From the excerpt alone the characters have already endeared themselves so much to me (which I felt of Normal People and not so much of Conversations with Friends or Beautiful World, Where Are You?) I’ve always found the lives of chess prodigies intriguing and enjoyed Bobby Fischer Against the World, a film documentary about the American grandmaster and former World chess champion, who came to prominence during the Cold War; and I find the way Rooney explores the taboo of a relationship with a big age gap—the woman being older—in this excerpt very compelling. Can’t wait to read it! (If you’re in KL, you can pre-order it from Lit Books.)
3./ In nonfiction: I read Alicia Kennedy’s No Meat Required. It’s a slim volume that packs a lot—charting the cultural making of plant-based cooking in the U.S., built on both global and local influences, and highlighting its punk and feminist roots, including among black and indigenous communities. In doing so, she pushes back against how plant-based eating is popularly perceived today: as the province of the white and privileged. Kennedy, a vegetarian food writer based in Puerto Rico, argues for an unapologetic return to its roots of resistance—without losing sight of considerations of “culture, gastronomy, and taste” (yes!)—because a lot is wrong with this world and just developing more alternative or cultivated meat, though that can help us eat more sustainably and ethically, may not solve other injustices of the food system—such as the concentration of power by planet-guzzling corporations wielded against small farmers and local communities. She elucidates particularly well our cultural hang-ups about meat vs. veggies; she also shares anecdotes from her own life and doesn’t shy away from sharing the emotionally conflicting moments of her experience. In chronicling the countercultural history of vegetarianism and veganism, Kennedy also touches on the diversity of its associations, both positive (as resistance to unbridled capitalism) and negative (as perceived cultural “inauthenticity” or as questionable emphasis on “purity” in wellness marketing parlance). Which made me wonder, tangentially and more generally, if we are too often swayed—for or against something—by what a thing symbolises, the meanings we make of it (which are multiple and changeable), rather than the thing itself? In the case of meat, the “thing” itself is the animal: a living, heaving, sentient being—and our decided consumption, or not, of it must surely take this into account? Anyway, whether you eat animals or whatever shade of “plant-based” you are (it’s a term that has become amorphous in today’s marketing landscape), this book is a timely, thought-provoking read. You may agree or disagree with some things and it’ll help you clarify your own approach to eating with more awareness in these troubled times. Kennedy also writes a capacious newsletter about food and writing that I always look forward to reading.
4./ Caught Kuah Jen Han, a comedian friend, at his show, Noted with Thanks, last month—and it was quite the riot! He’s an engaging storyteller, moving seamlessly from one self-effacing, and hilariously exaggerated, personal anecdote to the next, all strung along to build a unified narrative. The last show of his I watched, Electric Butterflies, pre-pandemic, was about his encounters in Uzbekistan, including some will-it-happen, will-it-not intrigue with an Uzbekistani model. In Noted with Thanks, he spins a yarn about his struggles as a comedian during the pandemic, when live shows took a complete leave of absence, and he had to take on the first salaried job of his life as a creative director at an advertising agency at the tender middle age of thirty-four. The title of the show references the stilted email sign-off of corporate jargon, which he learned to parse and spout back. I like that his routines tend to eschew the usual cultural talking points, using the specificities of his own life—his relatable fumblings in becoming (whether with bits of fiction scattered in, is your guess)—to tell nevertheless universal stories.
5./ I’ve realised: I have a penchant for “portrait of a relationship” (usually gone sour) films. Months ago, I watched Scenes from a Marriage. I found Jessica Chastain riveting—if not always likable—to watch as a woman who wants what she wants, when she wants, even if that means subjecting others to her volatility: the kind of woman some might call, as she did herself in the film, “spoiled”. Like Marriage Story, it has an uplifting end despite the intimate wreckage; it’s not the grief-inducing tearjerker Blue Valentine was, which I also loved. I want to say: I’m also a sucker for epic love stories, like Cold Mountain. But wait, that was more an epic tragedy, wasn’t it? I swear I like rom-coms too! Even the kind that leans towards farce, like Hit Man. That scene where Gary burst through Madison’s door, thrusting a message he’d typed on his phone into her face while yelling something wildly different—playing their respective roles, in cahoots, to mislead the FBI—was so entertaining to watch. And speaking of romance, I loved the first couple of episodes from Lessons in Chemistry, in part because the scientist Elizabeth falls in love with reminds me (except for the grumpiness) so much of W.C. 🩵
Joy is not a crumb
Tucking into Hanoi’s street food, butts plonked onto those ubiquitous little red plastic chairs. This was at Tâm Khởi, where the plants-only bún riêu is red rice noodles in a hot broth made of tomatoes and jicama, served with pieces of firmly-textured beancurd wrapped in seaweed, beansprouts, and some other things I don’t remember now, topped with a good chunk of dill. I had not often associated dill with Asian cooking. They go so well together!
And I leave you with
A pair of village kids herding their buffaloes in Sapa, Vietnam.
From back in KL,
E.
Vietnam is such a beautiful and underrated country; I wish to visit it someday. I will live my Studio Ghibli dreams in the near future, but for now, I really appreciate these postcards. Thank you for sharing:)