Market Frictions: Trade and Urbanization at the Vietnam–China Border 2019007907, 2019009971, 9781789202458, 9781789202441

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Market Frictions

Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy Series editors: Stephen Gudeman, University of Minnesota Chris Hann, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Definitions of economy and society, and their proper relationship to each other, have been the perennial concerns of social philosophers. In the early decades of the twenty-first century these became and remain matters of urgent political debate. At the forefront of this series are the approaches to these connections by anthropologists, whose explorations of the local ideas and institutions underpinning social and economic relations illuminate large fields ignored in other disciplines. Volume 5 Market Frictions: Trade and Urbanization at the Vietnam–China Border Kirsten W. Endres Volume 4 Industrial Labor on the Margins of Capitalism: Precarity, Class, and the Neoliberal Subject Edited by Chris Hann and Jonathan Parry Volume 3 When Things Become Property: Land Reform, Authority, and Value in Postsocialist Europe and Asia Thomas Sikor, Stefan Dorondel, Johannes Stahl and Phuc Xuan To Volume 2 Oikos and Market: Explorations in Self-Sufficiency after Socialism Edited by Stephen Gudeman and Chris Hann Volume 1 Economy and Ritual: Studies of Postsocialist Transformations Edited by Stephen Gudeman and Chris Hann

Market Frictions Trade and Urbanization at the Vietnam–China Border

° Kirsten W. Endres

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2019 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2019 Kirsten W. Endres

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Endres, Kirsten W., author. Title: Market frictions : trade and urbanization at the Vietnam-China border / Kirsten W. Endres. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2019. | Series: Max Planck studies in anthropology and economy ; volume 5 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019007907 (print) | LCCN 2019009971 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789202458 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789202441 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Markets--Vietnam--Lào Cai. | Small business--Vietnam-Lào Cai. | Merchants--Vietnam--Lào Cai. | Ethnology--Vietnam--Lào Cai. | Lào Cai (Vietnam)--Commerce. | Vietnam--Commerce--China. | China--Commerce--Vietnam. Classification: LCC HF5475.V52 (ebook) | LCC HF5475.V52 L363 2019 (print) |DDC 381/.1095971--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019007907 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

978-1-78920-244-1 hardback 978-1-78920-245-8 ebook

° Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations

vi

Acknowledgments vii Notes on Language and Translation

ix

Introduction.  Market Frictions

1

Chapter 1.  Town

17

Chapter 2.  Market

35

Chapter 3.  Neighboring

54

Chapter 4.  Illegality

73

Chapter 5.  Morality

91

Chapter 6.  Renewal

109

Epilogue

128

References

133

Index

153

° Illustrations Figure 1.1.  Wall fragment of Liu Yongfu’s citadel. Figure 1.2.  View toward the historic city center of Lào Cai City. Figure 2.1.  Cốc Lếu Market at dawn. Figure 2.2.  Map of Cốc Lếu Market’s ground floor. Figure 2.3.  Stall holders in the electronics section. Figure 2.4.  Hmong woman looking at the goods. Figure 2.5.  The market’s entrance hall with mobilization banner. Figure 3.1.  Porters and intermediaries waiting at the checkpoint. Figure 3.2.  Volume of bilateral trade, 2005–2014. Figure 3.3.  Mobile Chinese trader delivers goods. Figure 3.4.  Shopping street in Hekou, China. Figure 4.1.  Smuggling goods across the Red River. Figure 4.2.  Transporters with cargo bicycles in Hekou, China. Figure 5.1.  Feng-shui objects for sale at Cốc Lếu Market. Figure 5.2.  Campaign posters. Figure 6.1.  View of market building A. Figure 6.2. Signboard with details of the planned new market building. Figure 6.3.  Main entrance to the temporary market. Figure 7.1.  Main entrance of the new market building. Figure 7.2.  Inside the new market building.

21 33 35 36 38 49 50 56 57 68 70 74 82 92 105 112 122 123 128 129

° Acknowledgments This book is the outcome of a research project on traders, markets, and the state in Vietnam, during which I accumulated many debts. First of all, I thank Chris Hann, whose encouragement and insight were essential in bringing this project to fruition. The Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology provided a stimulating and supporting environment for my work, and I benefited tremendously from discussions and exchanges with colleagues and guest scholars over the past years. Many of them have provided valuable feedback at various stages of this work: Regina Abrami, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, Christoph Brumann, James Carrier, Nina Glick-Schiller, Benedikt T. Kerkvliet, Patrice Ladwig, Ann Marie Leshkowich, B. Lynne Milgram, Dominik Müller, Gustav Peebles, Oliver Tappe, Sarah Turner, Christina Schwenkel, Lale Yalçın-Heckmann, and Roberta Zavoretti. The members of my research group were a great inspiration to me, and I thank Lisa Barthelmes, Christine Bonnin, Esther Horat, and Caroline Grillot for their dedication and enthusiasm throughout this project. Minh T. N. Nguyen offered not only insightful comments and much appreciated help with tricky translations but also her friendship and many a culinary delight. Bettina Mann was always there when I needed sound advice and emotional support. Jutta Turner did an excellent job in preparing the maps. Jacqueline Larson read the entire manuscript and provided superb language editing. Vũ Thị Phương Thảo double-checked the Vietnamese diacritics. In Vietnam, I am indebted to the Institute of Anthropology at the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences, Hanoi, for their institutional sponsorship. Vương Xuân Tình, Nguyễn Văn Minh, and Nguyễn Thị Thanh Bình offered practical guidance and smoothed the path for my research in Lào Cai. Warm thanks to my research assistant Tạ Thị Tâm, whose masterly skill in capturing the voices of our interlocutors greatly contributed to my understanding of the field. I am also grateful for the assistance of Nguyễn Tuân Anh, Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanities, who accompanied me to Lào Cai on two research follow-ups in 2014 and 2016. In Lào Cai City, my research was hosted by the Lào Cai Provincial Department of Culture, Sports, and Tourism. I am particularly grateful to Trần Hữu Sơn, then director, for his generous support and expertise. Special thanks also go to Vũ Trang for assisting with the survey and personal network interviews.

viii  •   Acknowledgments

Informal talks in Chinese were conducted with the much appreciated help of Nguyễn Minh Thảo and Dương Tuấn Nghĩa. Nguyễn Thị Lan Phương was a great source of advice on navigating administrative hurdles. Phạm Thị Hằng did a superb job of transcribing the audio files of the hearings analyzed in chapter 6. My deepest gratitude goes to the traders and stall holders at Cốc Lếu Market, who warmly welcomed me into their community and shared with me their stories, joys, insights, and frustrations. In my previous writings I used a fictitious name for the market, but I now no longer see any reason to keep it from the reader. The Cốc Lếu Market I describe in this book no longer exists, and many of the people whose stories I relate have since either retired or moved to other places. Following the custom of my discipline, I use pseudonyms for my interlocutors and disguise other identifying details to preserve their anonymity. Portions of chapter 3 appeared as “Constructing the Neighbourly ‘Other’: Trade Relations and Mutual Perceptions across the Vietnam-China Border,” in SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 30, no. 3 (2015): 710–41. Chapter 4 was published as “‘Making Law’: Small-Scale Trade and Corrupt Exceptions at the Vietnam-China Border,” in American Anthropologist 116, no. 3 (2014): 611–25. Parts of chapter 5 appeared in “‘Lộc Bestowed by Heaven’: Fate, Fortune, and Morality in the Vietnamese Marketplace,” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 16, no. 3 (2015): 227–43. Chapter 6 was adapted from an article for City & Society “Traders versus the State: Negotiating Urban Renewal in Lào Cai City, Vietnam,” An online preview of the article is available at https://doi.org/10.1111/ ciso.121693. At Berghahn Books, I thank Marion Berghahn, Harry Eagles, Tom Bonnington, Caroline Kuhtz, and everyone else in the production process for their meticulous work in bringing this book to fruition. My heartfelt gratitude extends to the anonymous reviewers of the book manuscript for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions. I am, of course, solely responsible for any remaining errors. Finally, I wish to thank my life partner, Holger, for his unwavering encouragement and forbearance when I spend long months in the field and most of the weekends during the semester in my office in Halle/Saale, which is still four hundred miles away from our mutual home in the southwest of Germany. I am forever grateful for his trust and for all the hard work he puts into making our home not only a perfect living space but a place of longing and belonging.

° Notes on Language and Translation Vietnamese is a tonal language written in an adapted version of the Latin alphabet called quốc ngữ. It has six tones (including the neutral tone), five of which are marked by different diacritics. The pronunciation of different vowels and consonants is also indicated by diacritical marks. I have included the diacritics in all Vietnamese terms and names, with the exception of widely known place names (e.g., Vietnam, Hanoi, Saigon). Vietnamese personal names are conventionally written with the family name first, followed by a middle name and a given name. The given name is the primary form of address, usually in combination with a kinship term or a (professional) title. I have adhered to these conventions and omitted diacritical marks only when the diacritics were not given, which is often the case with publications of Vietnamese or Vietnamese-born authors outside of Vietnam. All translations from Vietnamese and French in this book are my own, except where ­otherwise noted.

Partial map of Vietnam highlighting Lào Cai Province and the adjacent border cities of Lào Cai and Hekou (Yunnan Province, China).

Partial map of Lào Cai City indicating the location of Cốc Lếu Market and the international border crossing.

° Introduction Market Frictions Hồ Kiều Bridge, Lào Cai City, 6:45 a.m. on an October day in 2010. Groups of well-dressed Chinese tourists with rolling suitcases gather in front of the impressive glass and granite–clad building marked as the Lào Cai International Border Gate Administration Center. They may have been on a leisure trip to Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, and taken the seven-hour night train to Lào Cai on their way back to China. A few meters away, a very different crowd waits for the border checkpoint to open. Scores of Vietnamese migrant porters and brokers stand closely packed together behind a makeshift metal fence that separates the spotless terracotta-tiled forecourt of the customs and immigration hall from the pathway for cargo imports and exports. Dressed in simple laborers’ clothes and wearing conical hats (women) or olive green pith helmets (men), they patiently hold on to their heavy pack bikes and pushcarts. Women of the Giáy ethnic minority arrive with large bamboo baskets strapped to their backs. Some men gather around the tea stand of a diminutive older woman, sipping the bitter brew from small glasses and taking deep puffs from a common bamboo water pipe. A Kinh (ethnic majority) street vendor peddles bánh cuốn (steamed rice flour crêpes) from her shoulder pole. Some moneychangers, most of them women, set up shop on the covered sidewalk and start counting thick wads of Vietnamese đồng and Chinese yuan. Three grim-faced border guards with batons in hand pace up and down to keep the pushing crowd in check. At seven o’clock sharp, the barrier will open and they will rush onto the bridge that spans the Nậm Thi (Nanxi) River to reach the town of Hekou in China. Many of the Chinese goods these carriers and go-betweens bring back across the border end up on the shelves of the traders at Cốc Lếu Market, a large indoor public market in the heart of Lào Cai City. For these people, the border between Vietnam and China offers important economic opportunities that involve relations and exchanges between and among various types of actors, including vendors, customers, suppliers, brokers, and creditors, as well as market-control officials, tax collectors, and law enforcement authorities. This book is about the multifaceted dynamics that govern these relations and exchanges. It tells the story of a “traditional” Vietnamese marketplace (chợ truyền thống) and the traders who make a living by running their stalls there.

2  •   Market Frictions

By using the word traditional I do not mean that markets are rooted in timeless principles and resistant to change. Marketplaces have always and everywhere been in perpetual flux and motion, defined by the movement of people and flow of goods from and between various places of production, distribution, and consumption (Agnew 1986: 23; see also Leshkowich and Endres 2018). For that reason, Cốc Lếu Market is “traditional” only in the sense that it dates back at least to the late nineteenth century, when the French established their outpost of Lào Cai (or Laokai, as it was then called) at the border between their newly declared protectorate of Tonkin and the southern periphery of the Qing empire. Like other cities in the country, Lào Cai’s history is marked by repeated episodes of urban destruction and renewal (Schwenkel 2012: 446). This book therefore also tells the turbulent story of a Vietnamese border town characterized by rapid economic development under market socialism. In the past three decades, the number of urban residents increased sharply from roughly 6,000 (1991) to 110,000 (2016) as a result of internal migration and urban expansion. The special location of Lào Cai City on the Vietnam-China border—facing the Chinese town of Hekou, with its impressive skyline of modern high-rise buildings—and its envisaged role as a hub of trade and tourism on the Kunming-Haiphong economic corridor has required major investment in infrastructure improvements in the past two decades, as well as measures to enhance the city’s visual appearance vis-à-vis Vietnam’s powerful and prosperous neighbor, China (Mellac 2014). The government’s effort to control this rapid urbanization process, both planned and unplanned, is apparent in the many street posters and banners that feature visionary slogans aimed at building “civilized, beautiful, and rich cities” and promoting urban civility (văn minh đô thị).1 Such processes do not always unfold smoothly and evenly. My primary aim in this book is to examine the frictions that emerge from the interaction of global market forces, urban-planning policies, and small-scale trading activities. As sites not only of economic exchange but also of social interaction where networks are forged, identities are shaped, and power relations are negotiated, marketplaces are a particularly rich empirical domain for investigating how these frictions relate to historically specific social and cultural contexts and local ways of life. Anna Tsing uses the metaphor of “friction” in the context of global movements and encounters to highlight “the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across difference” (Tsing 2005: 4). The frictions she describes are inherently productive: they create fresh opportunities, new forms of knowledge, and shifting arrangements of power, along with new kinds of uncertainty and enhanced conditions for capitalist exploitation and accumulation. The notion of friction is particularly relevant

Introduction  *  3

to this study because it underscores that markets’ diverse logics emerge out of complex interplays between global economic challenges and local ­market-society-state dynamics. The “market frictions” I examine here evolve from the traders’ encounters of difference and Otherness on both sides of the border. They also arise when marketplace actors try to reconcile their “moral economies” with new or changing market and political-economic forces, or when their imaginaries of economic futures (Beckert 2016) contrast with those of planners and state officials.

Approaching the Marketplace Around the world, markets have evolved as complex social and economic institutions through which goods and services are distributed. They are places where people come together to engage in trading activities. They have existed for millennia, from ancient Greece and Rome to pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica (Hirth 1998). In medieval western Europe, the emergence of marketplaces was closely linked with local rulers’ interests and involved increasing regulation of market locations and times of access, quality and measurement standards, prices, and common rules of fairness (Hilton 1985; J. Davis 2012). Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, markets’ and market towns’ rapid expansion across Europe was complemented by a growing number of annual fairs as outlets for surplus agricultural produce or imported luxury goods. As nodes of local, regional, or long-distance trade, markets were important drivers, and beneficiaries, of urban and commercial growth (Braudel 2002 [1982]). Similar processes also took place elsewhere around the world and contributed to the reconfiguration of spatial relations and infrastructure networks that facilitate the flow and distribution of goods from suppliers to consumers. But in various times, places, and political contexts, market growth also generated frictions that led to heated disputes over the institutionalization and control of marketplaces, taxes, the use of public space, and, more generally, the impact of changing relations of production and exchange (Dilley 1992). Although anthropological studies approach markets from different theoretical and empirical angles, they agree that global processes of market integration articulate with and are shaped by historically specific social-cultural contexts and local ways of life. Market capitalism’s ongoing globalization has reinvigorated interdisciplinary interest in the works of Polanyi, whose “substantivist approach” in The Great Transformation (1944) provided the original inspiration for conceptualizing indigenous, subsistence-oriented economies as embedded in a wide range of nonmarket institutions (Hann and Hart 2009). In the 1960s and 1970s Polanyiites thought of embeddedness

4  •   Market Frictions

as a feature of premarket or precapitalist societies, whereas modernization was considered to extricate markets from social relations. However, current perspectives in economic anthropology do not see embeddedness as a distinguishing feature between “premodern” and “modern” economies. Instead they emphasize that all economies are inextricably intertwined with social structures, norms, and power relations (Hann and Hart 2011). While little is known about the history of public markets in Vietnam, the available sources indicate that the imperial state exerted increasing control over rural trade from the eleventh century until the establishment of French colonial rule in the mid-nineteenth century (Yvon-Tran 2002). Stone inscriptions found in various villages across the Red River Delta suggest that rural marketplaces were tightly regulated economic spaces where power relations were played out. Conflicts arose, for example, over the territorial control of marketplaces, the market’s monthly schedule, the fiscal obligations of traders, and the right to collect taxes. Although some markets operated for several centuries, others eventually disappeared because of their unfavorable location, lack of goods, or infrastructural developments that changed the routes of goods transportation (Nguyen Duc Nghinh 1993). By constructing “hygienic” market halls, the French colonizers aimed to “civilize the urban landscape” (Abrami 2002: 110) and modernize indigenous Kinh commercial activity. The most famous French-built market halls are of course Đồng Xuân Market in Hanoi (1889) and Bến Thành Market in Saigon (1914), but covered market halls were also introduced in small towns throughout the country. Urban petty trade flourished throughout the colonial period. William Turley notes that in Hanoi, toward the end of French rule in 1954, “about 40,000 market stallkeepers, shop owners, peddlers and sidewalk hawkers served the metropolitan area of 400,000, and one family in every two made its living from trade” (1975: 373). Vendors in public markets were encouraged to join cooperative trading groups (tổ hợp tác) and marketing cooperatives (hợp tác xã mua bán) during the socialist transformation (Abrami 2002: 140; Leshkowich 2014a: 139– 41). The legal and ideological underpinnings of central planning severely restricted private economic activity, but it was never completely eliminated. In fact, its prohibition had the opposite effect. Regina Abrami notes, “Central state attempts to control illegal trade in Vietnam only brought further protection from local commune officials and enhanced synergy and integration of the public and private economies” (2002: 416). Whether unplanned fence-­breaking activities “from below” or unorthodox ad hoc measures “from above,” such everyday politics of economic subversion became a major trigger of the economic reforms inaugurated in 1986 (Kerkvliet 2005). Small-scale and marketplace-based trade experienced an unprecedented surge in growth throughout the reform period as a channel for consumer goods’ distribution

Introduction  *  5

and a means of (additional) income, as well as a source of economic creativity, flexibility, and maneuvering. Although the state (at least initially) invested in the refurbishing of preexisting market buildings and constructing new ones, it continued to view market vendors as “objects of ambivalence who, in contrast to modern entrepreneurs or businesspeople (doanh nhân or thương gia), are critiqued as backward, uneducated vestiges of tradition, unable to contribute to economic development” (Leshkowich 2011: 278; see also Leshkowich and Endres 2018). In the current, globalized world, markets no longer seem to be tied to a certain place: they are “nowhere in particular and everywhere at once” (Bestor 2001: 76). The rise of industrial capitalism and modern market economies has effectively changed the meaning of the word market from its original notion of a particular marketplace into an abstract idea. This does not mean that actual physical marketplaces no longer exist. But they have been on the move, in both a literal and a figurative sense (Leshkowich and Endres 2018). As Kalman Applbaum aptly notes, “Marketplace relocation, reconfiguration and, ultimately, trade concentration illuminate a part of the trajectory of the convergence of marketplaces and market principle” (2005: 276). This is apparent in Vietnam’s recent enforcement of market (re)development policies as part of complex infrastructural planning assemblages aimed at national development. In the words of Simone Abram and Gise Weszkalnys, the central aims of such assemblages “include assumptions of a possible or idealized congruence between architectural and built form and the social order; attempted mediation between public and private interests and powers; [as well as] efforts to improve forms of spatial control and regulation, with all their intended and unintended consequences” (2013: 8).

Market Redevelopment Vietnam’s central government promulgated its first detailed decree on the development and management of marketplaces in January 2003 (Chính Phủ 2003). Since then, the relevant ministries (Industry and Commerce; Planning and Investment; and Finance) have enacted various decisions and regulations on distribution network planning; investment in the construction, repair, and upgrading of marketplaces; and general market management. In line with these centrally issued policies, the provincial and municipal people’s committees subsequently launched their own market development projects (quy hoạch phát triển chợ) as part of their local development strategy. These policies created a broader classificatory movement in which different kinds of markets—and people and their economic activities within them—became a proper concern of the government “at all levels” as part of a nationwide

6  •   Market Frictions

marketplace network (mạng lưới chợ) needing to be developed “in a civilized, modern direction” (Bộ Công Thương 2015). In 2007 the Ministry of Industry and Commerce approved a first master plan for the year 2020 that targeted a total of 914 markets throughout the country for “development.” It included the upgrading of previously existing marketplaces and the construction of new ones (Bộ Công Thương 2007). The ministry estimated that a total investment of approximately US$942 million (VNĐ15,267 billion) would be required to achieve the plan’s objectives of developing 157 agricultural wholesale markets (35 would be upgraded and 122 newly built), 319 public retail markets (110 upgraded and 153 newly built), and 490 markets in border areas (167 upgraded and 323 newly built). In total, 354 markets were scheduled for renovation and enlargement (nâng cấp, mở rộng) and 560 planned as newly built spaces of commercial activity (chợ xây mới).2 To secure the funding required to achieve the plan’s objectives, the ministry called for additional private investment in local market renovation and upgrading. The results of market redevelopment activities so far paint a highly uneven picture. In the capital, Hanoi, the spread of modern department stores and luxury malls has spurred the gentrification of traditional markets and displaced small-scale traders from city centers (Nguyễn Thị Thanh Bình 2018). Between 2010 and 2013, the municipal government closed more than two hundred small and informal markets (Daniel et al. 2015).3 Private sector contractors demolished a number of long-standing public retail markets and rebuilt them as multistory trade centers. The vendors of two such markets— Hàng Da Market and Mơ Market—were relocated to the basement of these new buildings. Many market vendors, after years of struggling for economic survival in temporary markets awaiting relocation, now suffer the consequences of higher monthly fees, inadequate spatial conditions, and the loss of customers (Endres 2014a; Hüwelmeier 2018a). In the Red River Delta village of Ninh Hiệp, by contrast, the construction of two new privately owned commercial centers (trung tâm thương mại) combining modern architectural design with a traditional stall layout offered many families an uncertain yet highly welcome opportunity to expand their textile-trading businesses. On the downside, the village economy’s growing marketization and privatization have increased competition and social inequality among Ninh Hiệp traders (Horat 2017). In the multiethnic space of Vietnam’s northern uplands, market redevelopment has played out differently in different places. In the past decades, upland development policies and state investment in rural infrastructure gradually reduced the “friction of terrain” (Scott 2009; see also Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud 2015: 47) that had long prevented the central state from extending its reach into the rugged mountainous landscape of upland northern Vietnam.

Introduction  *  7

Yet the government’s ambition to accelerate economic integration by constructing modern, fixed markets did not always have the desired effect. Many of these newly built market structures have been “left fallow” (bỏ hoang) or were appropriated for other—noncommercial—purposes by the local people because planners and builders failed to pay sufficient attention to local needs and conditions (Bonnin 2018; Bonnin and Turner 2014; Trần Hữu Sơn 2014). Another attempt at upland economic integration was the designation of several long-established periodic markets of ethnic groups as “cultural markets” (chợ văn hóa) and their development as tourist sites where ­reifications of ethnic culture are sold, bought, and consumed (Michaud and Turner 2006; N. Taylor and Jonsson 2002). In contrast to these rural periodic markets, where ethnic minorities make up the bulk of traders, the daily markets in upland urban areas have come to be overwhelmingly dominated by Kinh lowlanders (Bonnin 2018).4 This is also the case in Lào Cai City, where the stall holders of state-run Cốc Lếu Market staged fierce protests against the “sky-high” costs that the local government imposed on them to finance the construction of a modern market building, even if their ambitions as modern, economic subjects are much in line with the state’s larger vision of urban development in Vietnam’s uplands.

Urbanizing the Margins Like market redevelopment, government attention to nationwide urban development is a rather recent phenomenon in Vietnam. In the pre–Đổi mới era, the socialist North experienced a particularly slow rate of urban growth. There were many reasons for this, including a strong emphasis on rural (agricultural) development; scarcities and shortages in the urban industrial sector; the effects of the Vietnam War (especially the destruction caused by the US bombing of North Vietnamese cities); and the economic crisis in the postwar years leading up to the Đổi mới policy reforms (Forbes 1996; Thrift and Forbes 1986). Despite various government attempts at socialist urbanization and urban planning (Schwenkel 2012), David W. Smith and Joseph Scarpaci claim, “There is little evidence prior to doi moi of a comprehensive policy toward urbanization, its role in development, and the management and planning of individual cities” (2000: 748). Since the adoption of the Đổi mới reforms in the mid-1980s, this has clearly changed. Recent government policies are explicitly aimed at upgrading Vietnam’s urban system and fostering “a more even distribution of economic growth and urban development” beyond the two major metropolises, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (World Bank 2011: 3). Along with these urban policies, the government has adopted “new modes of urban planning and urban management rooted in moral and

8  •   Market Frictions

rational discourses of safety, value, beauty, and quality” (Schwenkel 2012: 441) that aim at “civilizing” the city (and its residents) and implementing a modernist vision of urban order and cleanliness (Leshkowich 2005: 199; Schwenkel 2012: 441). In 2001, Vietnam adopted a hierarchical classification system for cities (updated in 2009 and 2011) to implement these policies administratively. This system is defined by a number of criteria, including urban infrastructure facilities and approved schemes for urban expansion (World Bank 2011: 10). Cities and towns are classified into six grades based on population size, population density, infrastructure, and other urban development indicators.5 Urban development policies encourage these municipalities to strive toward upgrading their classification by improving their socioeconomic conditions, expanding in size and population, and upgrading their services and infrastructure. Higher-grade cities enjoy a higher administrative status and greater access to and control over financial resources. Coulthart, Quang, and Sharpe say this explains why securing a city’s promotion to the next grade has become “a major preoccupation of local government authorities” (2006: 4). As a consequence of this ambition, small and medium-sized cities such as Lào Cai have seen increased investment, growth, and redevelopment in the past two decades—even if many prestigious infrastructure projects, including new public market buildings, primarily aim at meeting the criteria of the next higher classification level rather than responding to the urban population’s more immediate needs. Such projects offer rich profit opportunities for elite actors, as Brian Larkin has pointed out with reference to the work of Achille Mbembe (2001), which is why in many cases “the function of awarding infrastructural projects has far more to do with gaining access to government contracts and rewarding patron-client networks than it has to do with their technical function” (Larkin 2013: 334; see also Bonnin 2018). Large-scale urbanization and urban upgrading projects in Vietnam’s North and South have displaced many people from their homes and land and “left a path of extraordinary destruction in [their] wake” (Harms 2016: 5; see also Labbé 2015: 500). The new urban zones (khu đô thị mới) and multistory apartment blocks that emerged from the rubble of previous buildings have become emblematic of new, class-based forms of spatial segregation and inequality. But for those who can afford their luxuries and comfort, as Erik Harms has so cogently shown, these “master-planned housing and commercial developments” also “symbolize the exciting potential of remaking the city, and perhaps even rethinking urban governance and reconstructing social life” (2016: 4). In the northern uplands, urbanization policies may not have been as destructive and segregating as in Vietnam’s biggest metropolises. But they nevertheless contribute to remaking—both the city and the border region.

Introduction  *  9

Lào Cai is an ethnically diverse border province in the northern highlands where minorities account for 64 percent of the population. These highlands are part of the region that Willem van Schendel and James Scott famously called “Zomia” (van Schendel 2002; Scott 2009), a region whose residents tend to “avoid the intensity of the state’s gaze” (Turner 2010: 287) and “negotiate the borderline in the way that they best see fit, be it overtly or covertly, to meet and trade” (ibid.: 284). The Hmong (22 percent), Tày (15.8 percent) and Yao ([Dao] 14.5 percent) are the largest ethnic groups in the province, while Kinh lowlanders have come to represent 35.9 percent of the population (Bonnin 2018). While ethnic minority groups mainly inhabit the mountainous and rural areas, these Kinh migrants from various lowland provinces constitute the vast majority of the urban population in the province. Its capital, Lào Cai City, has been dominated by Kinh lowlanders since the French colonial period (see chapter 1). During the 1960s and 1970s when the central government mobilized millions of lowland farmers to participate in the economic development of the northern and central highlands, some 180,000 Kinh settlers moved to the area. Although primarily aimed at “helping” the highlands and ethnic minorities to “catch up” with the economic standards of the lowlands, these state-sponsored resettlement programs also “intended to secure the borders of the Vietnamese nation with Việt [Kinh] people” (Hardy 2003: 284; see also MacLean 2008a). In the current era, these efforts continue in the fast pace of urbanization in the uplands. Lào Cai’s 2016–2020 urban development plan envisages an increased focus on investment in urban network infrastructure and upgrading the province’s urban centers to achieve an average annual urbanization rate growth of 1.5 percent (UBND Tỉnh Lào Cai 2016). Together with other economic development pursuits, such as expanding and promoting the tourism sector, upland urbanization propels the “enclosure” of the border region into the Vietnamese state’s integrationist project to a new level (Michaud and Turner 2016, 2017; Scott 1998). Although this state project has had wide-ranging impacts on ethnic minority communities and their livelihoods (see, for example, Bonnin 2011; Schoenberger and Turner 2008; Turner et al. 2015), this book focuses exclusively on the Kinh migrant settlers who represent the vast majority of Lào Cai’s urban population and dominate ­marketplace-based trade in the city’s major markets.

Sites and Methods I chose Cốc Lếu Market as my primary field site because of its role as a bustling commercial hub that caters to the everyday needs of local residents

10  •   Market Frictions

(like most other markets in town do). It is also patronized by ethnic minority shoppers from upland communities, Vietnamese travelers, and Chinese tourists. My initial aim was to inquire into vendors’ webs of social relations and support networks, and the sentiments intrinsic to them. Being aware that cross-border trade inevitably involves various means and skills to circumvent the restrictions imposed on it, I was prepared to hear not only about ways of fostering trustful relations with trading partners and customers but also about bribes paid to customs officers, support from patronage, and the exchange of gifts for favors to secure advantages in the market environment. The outright issue of corruption, a topic that I turn to in chapter 4, was not part of my official research agenda—it would have raised concerns for people, especially since the mere presence of a foreign anthropologist in town already posed a potential threat to border security. Without a host institute that processes the research visa application, it is not legally possible to carry out fieldwork in Vietnam. Obtaining the visa, however, is only the first step. The procedure to seek permission for research in contemporary Vietnam is aptly described by Bonnin as involving moves “down an administrative hierarchy, with authorizations required first at the central state level and then, subsequently, at provincial, district and commune levels” (2010: 181). Each level may approve or decline the researcher’s application, although good relations (based on patron-client, kinship, or friendship ties) between the researcher’s host institute and the various administrative levels may work to smooth the process. Much depends on whether the research topic is regarded as touching upon sensitive issues or not. My official research permission was therefore limited to explore “cultural practices and social relationships in the context of economic transactions” at Lào Cai’s largest marketplace, and this is where my Vietnamese assistant Tâm and I conducted the bulk of research from October 2010 to March 2011 and in August/September 2012. Despite my careful explanation of the research purpose and assurances of confidentiality, some of the vendors treated us with suspicion during our first rounds through the market. Their reluctance was even stronger when we started to survey sixty-five randomly picked stall holders in all of the market’s sections. Could I possibly be a foreign investor or working for one who needed these data for their impending eviction from the market? This concern preoccupied many vendors since the rumor had begun to spread that Cốc Lếu Market was going to be “upgraded” to become a modern, multistory “trade center” (trung tâm thương mại) in the not too distant future. The questions we posed were simple and straightforward: Since when had they been trading at the market? What were the main channels through which they received their goods? Who were their main customers? What importance did they attribute to various social relations in the market environment? While the

Introduction  *  11

questionnaire-based investigation gave us an initial overview of the vendors’ central concerns, it soon became apparent that the survey was at best a way to establish first contacts with potential key interlocutors willing to expose themselves to the anthropologist’s curiosity. Methodologically, this was not “easy” research. During peak hours and on busy days, vendors were inevitably busy attracting customers to their stalls and thus not very eager to focus on longer discussions with us. We therefore adopted a research habit of cruising around the market every day for several hours. Much of our daily routine consisted of “deep hanging out” (Geertz 1998) in the market’s various sections, observing the ebb and flow of trading activities and social interactions with fellow vendors, market management staff, and state officials. We engaged in casual conversations and idle gossip with stall holders during the less busy hours and conducted longer narrative interviews with some of them in their homes in the evenings. Data on the stall  holders’ market-related social ties were obtained using actor-centered network cards and discussing them during in-depth follow-up interviews. To ensure confidentiality, none of these conversations were recorded. I thus do not refer to the transcription of recorded speech when I present the vendors’ statements in quotation marks throughout this book, but to the detailed field notes taken after each encounter and my research assistant’s priceless ability to render the narrations of our interlocutors very close to their original wording. From time to time, we ventured to the border gate at Hồ Kiều Bridge to watch the loading and unloading of goods, observe customs procedures, and chat, as inconspicuously as possible, with transporters and intermediaries who crossed the border on a regular basis, some even several times per day. In contrast to international airports where encounters between travelers and custom officials are more fleeting in nature (Chalfin 2008), Lào Cai border gate officials wield their power and authority in the much more intimate space of shared knowledge and practices that define “communities of complicity” (Steinmüller 2010). But the notion of “cultural intimacy” (Herzfeld 2005) does not account sufficiently for the sensitivities that determine Vietnamese state officials’ cautious attitude toward foreign outsiders who they feared could tarnish the image of Vietnam by exposing its ugly sides. This includes the possibility of witnessing (as I did on several occasions) the rather common use of extralegal forms of law enforcement, such as harassment, intimidation, and sometimes even outright violence. Occasionally, I took day trips to Hekou on the Chinese side (using a ­multiple-entry visa) to observe activities and meet the mobile Chinese cross-border traders with whom I had become acquainted at Cốc Lếu Market. I visited some of the shops where Vietnamese middlemen and -women obtained their wares and engaged in small talk with Chinese owners conversant in

12  •   Market Frictions

Vietnamese. Informal conversations in Chinese were held with the help of Vietnamese colleagues fluent in the language. As the pages of my passport filled up with Vietnamese and Chinese exit and entry stamps, I gained insight into different cultures of commerce on either side of the border, an issue I discuss further in chapter 3. Described by Juan Zhang as “distinctly a place of ‘openness,’ a site of desire at the forefront of the experiment of liberalization, a space featuring both the kaifang [opening up] process and its spirit” (2011: 255), the Chinese town of Hekou appeared to have long surpassed Lào Cai City in terms of modern urban construction and development. My research took a major turn in April 2014, when the Lào Cai municipal People’s Committee officially announced to the traders its plan to reconstruct Cốc Lếu Market. Whereas the old market had been built in 1996 using public funds, the city now had to mobilize private investment for the construction of a new market building. When efforts to this end proved unsuccessful, the local government decided to impose the costs of the new building on the traders. Each stall holder was expected to pay a total sum of VNĐ190–240 million each (around US$9,000–11,500) that would be set off against the stall rent for the next ten years. The traders thought that this price was “way above the sky” (giá trên trời), closed down their stalls and went on strike. During the following months, they submitted a total of nine petitions, requests, and denunciations to the municipal and provincial government. I followed the course of events through online media reports. When I returned to Lào Cai in December 2014 on my annual follow-up research visit, the old market had already been demolished and the traders had been moved to a temporary location. They remained there until the opening of the new market in June 2016. My inquiries about the protest proved difficult because the dust stirred up by the controversy between traders and city officials had already started to settle and nobody wanted to be held responsible. However, I was able to obtain recordings of various hearings held between May and September 2014, when traders were given the opportunity to voice their concerns to local state officials.

Outline of the Book This book begins with a brief history of how the town of Lào Cai developed from a trade outpost on the fringes of the Chinese and Vietnamese empires to a flourishing, growing city and important gateway to China’s southwestern provinces. To a large extent, its past is shrouded in hearsay, secrecy, and mysteries. Like other Vietnamese cities of historical importance, Lào Cai’s urban landscape constitutes “a ‘palimpsest’ of past forms superimposed upon each other” (Harvey 1992: 66; Schwenkel 2014). Yet unlike cities such as

Introduction  *  13

Hanoi, Huế, or Đà Lạt, almost no material traces of previous epochs remain in Lào Cai. However, the absence of physical manifestations of the past should not blind us to the fact that a city’s urban space also contains, as Kevin Lynch aptly notes, “crystallizations of meanings that will influence its future” (Busà 2010: 159; see also Lynch 1960). Chapter 1 is an attempt to pin down some of these crystallizations. Since compelling oral accounts of the town’s history are hard to come by when the research focus is on contemporary small-scale traders who migrated or remigrated to Lào Cai predominantly after 1991, I had to hunt down the specters of Lào Cai’s past elsewhere. Besides drawing from the meticulous archival studies of other scholars, I examine published sources from the colonial era to the years of socialist and post–border war (re) construction. As subsequent chapters will make apparent, Lào Cai’s official narratives inform current improvement schemes and visions for the city’s future development. When I started fieldwork in 2010, a sense of imminent change was already in the air and contributed to a general climate of economic uncertainty. At Cốc Lếu Market, many stall holders complained that their businesses had become much less profitable than in previous years. The decline in sales prompted increased competition among the vendors and highlighted the “complicated” (phức tạp) nature of the marketplace. In chapter 2, I zoom in on this aspect to illuminate how Vietnamese markets are not only sites of economic exchange but also thriving social spaces teeming with friction-laden interactions. I take the reader on a virtual round through the market’s various sections and introduce the market actors (stall holders, suppliers, middlemen, clients, bureaucrats) to show how both commercial and noncommercial exchanges require an artful balancing of potentially conflicting social obligations and economic interests. Because Vietnamese markets are dominated by female vendors and stall holders, I also discuss the gender-specific dimensions of marketplace-based trade and examine how vendors navigate their daily (and often problematic) lives and complicated relationships in the market. In Vietnamese society, building relationships based on tình cảm (sentiment) are an essential part of being a moral person (Leshkowich 2014a). Many Vietnamese market traders perceive this highly valued and constitutive element of social relationships as lacking in Chinese business relations. The Chinese, conversely, tend to regard their Vietnamese trading partners as unreliable and deceitful, especially regarding the repayment of accrued debts. Cultural differences in entrepreneurial ethics and business practices thus often contribute to the construction of the cross-border Other as morally aberrant or inferior. In chapter 3, I examine how small-scale traders on both sides of the border build their perceptions of self and Other through a multitude of everyday encounters, economic exchanges, and cross-border pastimes. Their narratives reveal that “the art of neighboring” (Saxer and

14  •   Market Frictions

Zhang 2017) evolves as a complex process that requires the careful management of multiple economic relationships and power asymmetries at the margins of the state. These narratives confirm that borderland identities and alterities emerge from “interconnection across difference” (Tsing 2005: 4; see also Tappe 2015) and take shape through the friction generated in the process. Friction also occurs when goods cross the border, both legally and illegally. Anthropologists have analyzed the intricacies of illegal and semilegal flows of goods and people across national borders from a variety of perspectives: as an expression of resistance to states that fail to provide their citizens with sustainable employment opportunities (MacGaffey et al. 1991), as a subversive economy that imposes practical limits on the exercise of state power (Donnan and Wilson 1999), as a collaborative form of trade regulation governed by practical norms and mutual understanding between state agents and local traders (Titeca and de Herdt 2010; Walker 1999), or as a way for traders to challenge and reinterpret neoliberal logics of free trade to their own advantage (Galemba 2012). Each of these perspectives offers a valid way of understanding the particularities of borderland economies and the wider social, moral, and political processes in which they are embedded. Chapter 4 takes a somewhat different perspective to take into account the systemic nature of corruption in the context of Vietnam’s socialist-oriented market economy. It details the illegal, semilegal, and informal flow of Chinese goods across the border and the ways in which Vietnamese small-scale traders perceive and legitimize their smuggling and selling of contraband. It shows that the “illegal” economic pursuits of Lào Cai small traders must be seen as deeply entrenched in the imperatives of systemic corruption through which local state officials feel invested with the discretionary power to grant exceptions to the law in exchange for bribes. Although local traders feel that bribery creates better profit opportunities, these arrangements ultimately trap the traders within a “gray space” of uncertainty that lingers between the “light” of free trade, economic opportunity, and self-advancement, and the “darkness” of illegality, corruption, and arbitrary exercise of power. As inherently social constructs, markets and marketplace activities are inextricably bound up with issues of morality, an issue I turn to in chapter 5. The commercial principle of “buying cheap and selling dear” has been debated in moral terms since the days of Aristotle, and moral views about how things should be done, and for what purpose, inform notions of just prices, fair competition, and proper conduct of social relations in marketplaces around the world. In late imperial China, merchants were inculcated with Confucian values and taught to practice self-cultivation to suppress their selfish wants and harmonize the inherent tensions between righteousness

Introduction  *  15

and profit (Lufrano 1997). In medieval Europe, Church doctrines and beliefs extolled the virtues of directing profits toward good causes and individual salvation. Disputes and conflicts naturally arose when social, moral, or religious value systems clashed with the realities of life in the marketplace. Keeping peace and order was therefore an utmost concern of market authorities, and traders were required to adhere to the rules of proper commercial conduct that were established in the form of market laws to provide guidelines and restrictions for all kinds of activities in the marketplace (J. Davis 2012). Chapter 5 explores how moral norms, spiritual beliefs, and social obligations play out at Cốc Lếu Market and intermingle with state efforts to “civilize” the marketplace and promote urban civility. In recent years, Vietnam has intensified programs aimed at building “civilized, beautiful, and rich” cities. The modernization of urban and periurban markets forms part of these efforts (see, for example, Horat 2017). Chapter 6 focuses on the contestations and negotiations surrounding the upgrading of Cốc Lếu Market. To retain their stall use rights in the future market building, the traders were required to invest a sum that many felt was beyond their immediate means. Frustrated with the top-down implementation of policy decisions that would potentially displace less-affluent vendors from the market, the traders organized in protest and submitted petitions and complaints at various levels of government. A number of irregularities involving the unofficial selling of so-called ghost spaces by the market management further added to their sense of betrayal. This chapter critically examines the argumentative strategies employed by both traders and government officials during several formal meetings held in 2014. The analysis provides a rare glimpse into the discursive interaction between citizens and state agents in the context of Vietnam’s constant efforts to achieve its urbanization goals as a crucial condition for successful economic development. The frictions resulting from their “struggles over imagined futures” (Beckert 2016: 276) reveal that the traders were not so much opposed to state-led, market-based urban development in Vietnam’s borderlands as it may seem at first glance. Although they felt hard-pressed by the very terms they were given in that process—terms that cut into their financial resources and future profits—and contested the state’s top-down implementation of market renewal policies, the traders ultimately also demonstrated their “will to improve” along hegemonic developmentalist (and economist) lines (Harms 2012). I conclude the book with an epilogue in which I describe some of the changes that have taken place since the traders moved into the new Cốc Lếu Market in June 2016. Their stories highlight both the transformation and the persistence of Vietnamese markets through the centuries.

16  •   Market Frictions

Notes 1. Văn minh (civility, civilization, civilized) is generally associated with ideas of progress and modern (urban) life and features most prominently in official campaigns aimed at promoting urban civility (văn minh đô thị), that is, moral discipline and proper behavior in the public sphere (Harms 2014, 2016). 2. In its assessment report preceding the new 2015 master plan (Bộ Công Thương 2015), the Ministry of Industry and Commerce admitted that these aims had been way too optimistic (Bộ Công Thương 2014: 64–70). 3. These markets are known as chợ cóc (toad market) because of their vulnerability to police attention and the vendors’ fear of having goods confiscated, which requires them to be ready to “hop around” from place to place (Higgs 2003). 4. Upland periodic markets are usually held in sequence on different days of the week in order to not interfere with each other. Besides being supplied by local producers, these periodic market systems also provide opportunities for itinerant traders who move through the market circuit in regular patterns for sale of their wares. In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of anthropologists and economic geographers built on the concepts of central place theory to study the spatiotemporal organization of such regional marketing systems. The three-part article of G. William Skinner (1964/65) on periodic marketing systems in rural China was particularly influential. His macroregional perspective provides valuable insights into broader patterns and processes of spatial differentiation in economic systems that are often neglected in ethnographic accounts. 5. In 2015, fifteen cities were listed as grade 1 provincial cities, and another three are administered by the central government (Haiphong, Danang, and Cần Thơ). Twentyfive cities were listed as grade 2, 42 as grade 3, 74 as grade 4, and approximately 630 as grade 5 (Wang and Nguyen 2017). Only Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have “special city” status (đô thị loại đặc biệt).

1

° Town Ai đưa tôi đến chốn này? Bên kia Cốc Lếu bên này Lào Cai. [Who has led me to this place? Over there Cốc Lếu, over here Lào Cai.]

—Vietnamese folk poem

We had heard about the shrine through one of the traders at Cốc Lếu Market. No sign indicated where it might be, but we knew the street and house number. We found a tiny structure of about four square meters, tucked away in the backyard of a residential house with a shop facing the street, built in the typical style of a Vietnamese temple (miếu). Its whitewashed outer walls, punctuated by two ornately patterned windows, were decorated with two hand-painted dragons coiling below the tiled roof. The entrance was framed by two shiny lacquer boards engraved with Chinese characters. The altar inside featured a porcelain statue and a luminous picture of a seated Quan Âm at the center, a lacquer painting of a famous 1957 photograph showing Hồ Chí Minh working in the garden of the Presidential Palace on the lefthand wall, and a golden miniature throne containing a very ancient-looking wooden statue of a black-faced man holding a sword on the right side of the main altar table. It was the first full moon of the lunar year (ngày rằm tháng giêng), and the shrine was adorned with fresh offerings. After paying respect to the images, we talked to the temple keeper, a native of Thái Bình who had migrated to the area in the 1970s. Twenty years ago, in 1991, she and her family moved to Lào Cai town. “This used to be a wasteland, overgrown with reeds and bushes,” she said. When they set out to clear the land, she found traces of a dilapidated building. “The people nearby told me that this used to be the grounds of a large temple where the Chinese community worshiped a Chinese official (Thổ ty), the lord of this land,” she continued. When the border war between China and Vietnam broke out in 1979, the temple was destroyed completely. “But the border soldiers (chiến sĩ biên phòng) were able to rescue the statue and kept it safe at another temple outside of town,” the keeper said, recounting what she had heard from others. When she learned about the

18  •   Market Frictions

figurine from one of the border guards, she had it transferred to her shrine in a ritual procession (lễ rước). Since then, despite the shrine’s relative inaccessibility, local people come by on a regular basis to light incense and pray. Accessing the history of Lào Cai City proved as challenging as finding the small hidden shrine. Besides the lack of material traces, many aspects of the past have been deliberately “forgotten” or silenced (Chan 2013: 37–39). Historical treatises commissioned by the Vietnam Communist Party in the 1990s focus mainly on the party’s achievements in the province since the end of French colonial rule (e.g., ĐCSVN 1991, 1996). Although these histories provide useful basic information regarding socioeconomic development during the years of socialist construction, we learn very little from them about urban provincial life. The period most cloaked in silence is the decade of apparent desertion following the 1979 border war with China. The booklet “History of the Lào Cai Border Police 1959–1994” (BĐBP 1994) sheds some light on the events preceding and following this brief, but violent military confrontation while perpetuating the dominant official narrative of Vietnam as an innocent victim of brute aggression. This narrative has since congealed around Lào Cai’s heroic post–border war reconstruction in the early 1990s. Although my reconstruction of Lào Cai’s past remains somewhat fragmented and incomplete, it shows that there is a certain historical continuity in the creation of Lào Cai as a vital trade hub and urban outpost in Vietnam’s upland border region.

“Old Road” and Bandit Stronghold In the mid-nineteenth century, the small settlement that would eventually become Lào Cai City was known by the official name of Bảo Thắng in Thủy Vĩ County, Hưng Hóa Province. Located on the fringe of the “fiery frontier” (Anderson and Whitmore 2015: 14) between imperial China and its southern tributary Vietnam, it had become a major hub of the Yunnan opium trade (B. Davis 2017: 25; see also McAleavi 1968). The merchants from southern Qing China, who at that time dominated trade in the region, dubbed it “old road” (老街, lǎo jiē, pronounced lou kei in Yunnanese), which the French would later transcribe as Laokai, Lao-Kay, or Lao-Kaї. This “road” led through a borderland of contested sovereignties where indigenous highlander populations, imperial bureaucrats, marauding bandits, Chinese merchants, and early Kinh settlers vied for control of land, resources, and trade routes (B. Davis 2013: 60). In Lào Cai, merchants frequently clashed with state-appointed indigenous powerbrokers (thổ ty) and with routine officials of the Nguyễn administration. A French treatise on the past and future of Lào Cai noted, “This village was

Town  *  19

at all times a subject of trouble and strife between Chinese merchants and the Annamite authorities” (LCEO 1886: 130). The Annamites (i.e., Vietnamese) were apparently abusing their positions to such a degree that the merchants took collective action to protect their interests. When their petitions to the Nguyễn government went unheard, they even resorted to violence. A Cantonese merchant named He Junchang (Hồ Quân Xương in Vietnamese, Hô-yèn-fan in French sources) ultimately took the lead. With material and financial support from Manhao, an important transshipment center further up the Red River, he recruited a private militia from upland groups and occupied Lào Cai in the late 1850s. Over the next nine years, under He Junchang’s patronage, Lào Cai flourished and became a prosperous commercial hub, not least because all government agents had to stay on boats so that they would not pose any obstacles or resistance to trade.1 In a bid to appease the officials, He Junchang granted them a portion of the revenue generated from the customs duties he imposed. “It may be said that, under the administration of [He Junchang], this tormented district finally enjoyed some peace,” the Courier de l’Extrême-Orient noted in 1886 (“Laokai. Son Passé et Son Avenir” 1886: 130). The merchant community even had a lavish temple built to honor He Junchang’s achievements, “complete with expensive wood from southern China and large characters fashioned from gold, praising He Junchang’s protection” (B. Davis 2017: 32). Could the black-faced statue venerated in the tucked-away shrine possibly be a remnant of He Junchang’s time? We will probably never know. What we know is that the peace and quiet attested by the French was not to last for long. The nineteenth-century reign of China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644–1911), had been marked by unprecedented levels of violence, social unrest, and political upheaval. As Jean Michaud notes, “Organized armed parties from various allegiances continued for fifty years or so to fiercely fight each other, to roam and loot on a large scale in Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan” (Michaud 2000: 340). One of these bands was the Black Flag Army led by Liu Yongfu (Lưu Vĩnh Phúc in Vietnamese), a Hakka Chinese of poor origins who had broken away from an armed movement operating in the shadow of the tumultuous Taiping rebellion that rocked wide parts of China during the 1850s and much of the 1860s (B. Davis 2017: 33; K. Taylor 2013: 455). After taking leave of his former rebel group, Liu Yongfu, together with the followers he had gathered, ventured into the mountainous territory of northern Vietnam. Here they would eventually become “imperial bandits,” allies of the Vietnamese imperial authorities, in their attempts to control rebellious upland populations and prevent French colonial expansion into the northern region. In 1868, Liu Yongfu and his Black Flags decided to establish their stronghold in Lào Cai. This collided with the ambitions of the rival Yellow Flag

20  •   Market Frictions

leader Pan Lunsi (also known as Huang Chongying, or Hoàng Sùng Anh in Vietnamese), who had set up base in nearby Hà Giang (B. Davis 2017: 37). To prevent Liu Yongfu from gaining control of his lucrative trading post, the Cantonese merchant He Junchang called on the Yellow Flags for help. When the negotiations failed to produce a stable arrangement, the two sides resorted to arms. The short but bloody battle for Lào Cai ended in favor of Liu Yongfu’s Black Flags (ibid.: 47). When three years later the French adventurer and gun merchant Jean Dupuis arrived in Lào Cai for the first time during his 1871 exploratory trip down the Red River from Yunnan, he found the town in a state of ruin. From what he had heard during his journey, “Lào Cai had been prosperous and fairly successful in trade along the Red River [under the Cantonese leader He Jungchang], but during [Pan Lunsi’s] and [Liu Yongfu’s] battle for control of the town, everything had been looted and burned, and the majority of its wealthy Cantonese merchant population was massacred” (Dupuis 1877: 41; see also Dupuis 1910). Following the defeat of the Yellow Flags, Liu Yongfu set out to fortify his territory by constructing a strong citadel on the left banks of the Red River, right at the point of its confluence with the Nậm Thi River. Its fiveto ­seven-meter–high outer walls were strengthened by eight square defense towers and enclosed an area of approximately 700 by 700 meters, or 49 hectares (Neïss 1888: 359). William Mesny, a British adventurer who rose to the rank of general in the Qing imperial army in 1873, provides a rare glimpse into the organization of daily life within the citadel’s “massive concrete walls” (Mesny 1884: 112; see Figure 1.1).2 Mesny describes how, besides serving as the residence of the Black Flag leader and his family, the citadel housed a force of 200 handpicked warriors as well as a small group of rich Cantonese traders. These “favored few” presumably held the monopoly on “importing cotton, salt, tobacco, etc., and of exporting opium, copper, tin, etc.” (ibid.: 113), while Liu Yongfu himself maintained a direct monopoly on all gambling activities in Lào Cai. Every day, more than a hundred gambling tables were set up on the banks of the Red River for “the fortunate hunter, successful trader and reckless soldier” to indulge in various games of luck and chance (ibid.: 114). Another source of cash income was derived from hunting and trading in wildlife products (such as musk, velvet deer antlers, rhino horns, and elephant tusks) that were sold to Cantonese traders in the region. What Mesny’s informants did not mention was the brute force and violence by which the Black Flags carried out raids for food, women, and conscripts in nearby upland communities (B. Davis 2017: 45–46). But rather than driving them out of the country, the Nguyễn court decided to ally with the Black Flags and appointed Liu Yongfu as a salaried official of the imperial government in charge of keeping (alleged) mountainous rebels and rival bandit groups (such

Town  *  21

Figure 1.1.  The mossy wall fragment behind the Temple of the Mother Goddess (Đền Mẫu) was once part of Liu Yongfu’s citadel and is the only visible material remnant of the Black Flags in present-day Lào Cai. Photograph by the author (2016).

as the Yellow Flags) at bay (ibid.: 48). As officially sanctioned “imperial bandits,” they would soon also become embroiled in the armed resistance against French colonial expansion into northern Vietnam. The first French attempt to gain political control over northern Vietnam (Tonkin) took place in 1873, when the explorer and naval officer Francis Garnier deployed a small force of French soldiers and tried to seize Hanoi. His efforts were met with a fierce counterattack by the Black Flags that ended with Garnier’s death and subsequent decapitation (ibid.: 64). This failed attempt at conquest notwithstanding, the French started to establish consulates in northern Vietnam in 1874 that would serve as “intelligence-gathering posts” for French commercial interests in Tonkin, including Vietnam’s northern borderlands as a possible gateway into Yunnan (B. Davis 2013: 62). The Black Flags were seen as a major obstacle in their quest to secure the riches and opportunities they assumed they could find in their territory. Among the French, Liu Yongfu was reputed to be ruthless and avaricious. His dense network of customs posts along the Red River provided the Black Flags with a steady income from the collection of duties, passage fees, and trading licenses, as well as a number of seemingly arbitrary taxes that differed from post to post. “The fees that Liu Yongfu levies in Lào Cai with the tacit agreement of the Vietnamese government vary according to his whims,” the first French consul at Hanoi, Alexandre de Kergaradec, noted on his first

22  •   Market Frictions

trip to the region. “It is hardly necessary to say that they are exorbitant” (de Kergaradec 1880: 356; see also B. Davis 2017: 68). When the consul visited Lào Cai in 1877, nine years after Liu Yongfu had established his stronghold there, he found the town thriving. “Lào Cai is a large village of about 300 houses that seems rather prosperous in spite of all the exactions imposed on commercial exchange,” he wrote (de Kergaradec 1877: 24). With the exception of the tiled brick buildings within the citadel, its residential houses were mainly built of wood and covered with straw (Mesny 1884: 115). De Kergaradec noted that most inhabitants were Chinese from Guangdong and Guanxi who spoke Cantonese, “which is not understood on the other side of the Nam Thi River, for the people of Yunnan speak the language of Peking” (de Kergaradec 1877: 24). Rumor had it—or was it French wishful thinking?—that no one had ever been able to collect revenues in Lào Cai for more than ten consecutive years, which was why many people were seriously expecting a change to happen soon. It was not until the end of the Sino-French war over the control of Tonkin (1883–1885) that Liu Yongfu and his Black Flag Army were defeated and ousted from the country by the French military (B. Davis 2017: 119). When the naval doctor Paul Neïss arrived in Lào Cai in the summer of 1885, he found only “the skeleton of a town” (Neïss 1888: 359). French sources claim that Liu Yongfu had set the whole town ablaze upon his departure, sparing only the temple (which was assumed to be dedicated to the Chinese god of war) and half a dozen Chinese houses “whose inhabitants had paid him in gold for leaving them intact” (ibid.: 359).3 The “vast and beautiful pagoda,” according to Neïss, had once been one of the most remarkable in Tonkin. It was built in the 1860s, at great expense, from Cantonese granite stone, sugared cement, and high-quality hardwood. Now it lodged the French resident administrator and several members of the boundary commission in charge of delineating the border between the newly established French protectorate of Tonkin and the southern Qing Empire.4

The Making of a French Outpost During the subsequent so-called Pacification of Tonkin (1885–1897), “a combination of local collaboration and European opportunism enabled the French to overcome Vietnamese resistance and gain domination of northern Vietnam” (Munholland 1981: 630). Lào Cai, now firmly under colonial rule, gradually transformed into a military and customs post that would enable the French to pursue their mise en valeur policy in the region, that is, “to rationalise and consolidate the uplands for greater control and exploitation” (Michaud and Turner 2016: 155). A “European garrison” was stationed in the

Town  *  23

former citadel, and a camp for native (Vietnamese) tirailleurs (infantrymen) was established in the village of Cốc Lếu on the right-hand side of the river (Escande 1885: 67). The plan was to move all military units to Cốc Lếu and to turn the entire citadel—part of which was already rented out to Chinese traders—into a commercial transfer station (entrepôt commercial).5 When the Catholic missionary Léon-Xavier Girod set up his base in Lào Cai in 1886, he noted that since his last visit two years earlier, the town had made significant progress: Of the old citadel of Liu Yongfu, there remains only the pagoda, some Chinese houses and part of the walls along the river. Located on the top of the hill are the pretty buildings that serve as residence of the colonel commanding the fourth territory, and as lodgings for the officers and men of a foreign legion company. The post-and-telegraph office is perched on the hillside facing the river and looks like a magnificent villa. All these French-oriental buildings, built of brick and iron and covered with corrugated metal, present a very neat and harmonious picture in shades of white and blue against the green backdrop of the high mountains along the Chinese border. (Girod 1911: 282)

The missionary was also impressed by the village of Cốc Lếu on the other side of the river, where he was to lay the foundation stone of Lào Cai’s first Catholic church, consisting of “a beautiful block of granite from the ­demolitions of Liu Yongfu’s citadel” (ibid.: 295): Côc Leu, on the right bank of the Red River, with its beautiful and vast barracks and the infirmary still under construction, appears like a new town built from scratch. The former camp of the tirailleurs, destroyed by a fire this winter, was rebuilt brick by brick by indigenous soldiers ably led by their officers. It is high time that the troops and sick are finally lodged in a suitable manner, especially in terms of hygiene. (ibid.: 282)

In spite of Liu Yongfu’s defeat, local bandit groups that the French called pirates continued to cause trouble in Lào Cai. In his memoirs, Girod recalls the night of 28 November 1886, when a group of Chinese brigands marauded in Cốc Lếu, setting the whole village ablaze and killing several people. When the legionaries and tirailleurs finally arrived, the bandits had already left. “This shows once again that it is futile to live close to a French post,” Girod remarked, “one nevertheless always remains under their [the pirates’] thumb” (ibid.: 291). To survive and get things done in Lào Cai, Girod concluded, “you need to hold a trowel in one hand and a revolver in the other” (ibid.: 292). Despite these early troubles, Lào Cai gradually evolved into a town with a “distinct European flair” (Kendall 2015 [1913]: 13) over the next two decades. In 1907, Lào Cai was declared the capital of the province by the same name that had been established the previous year (ĐCSVN 1991: 8). Contributing to the town’s growth and infrastructure development was the construction of the Tonkin-Yunnan railway connecting Haiphong, Hanoi,

24  •   Market Frictions

and Kunming between 1901 and 1906, with Lào Cai as the last station in Vietnamese territory. French efforts to establish a riverine trade route into southwestern China had not achieved the expected results, which is why the colonizers now pursued other means of creating a “foundation for penetration into China” (Starostina 2009: 185, citing Paul Doumer), albeit at catastrophic human costs.6 The railway bridge across the Nậm Thi River, first constructed in 1889, also created a pedestrian link between Lào Cai and Hekou that facilitated trade relations. According to Paul Neïss, Hekou’s role had “always been that of provisioning market for the inhabitants of Lào Cai,” and he noted an abundance of fish, meat, vegetables, and fresh fruit at the local market, in addition to which “there were also weapons of all kinds and even rapid-fire rifles of the newest models” (Neïss 1888: 362). The main market days in Hekou regularly attracted peddlers and customers from the surrounding areas, including Vietnam. On her train journey to Yunnan, Gabrielle Vassal, the British wife of a French army doctor, described the scene like this: Crossing the bridge at the same time as ourselves on the foot-way close to the rails were numbers of natives with loaded baskets. There were not only Chinese and Annamese, but Lolos and Mans, Thos and Khas, and the variety of colour and costume made the scene most picturesque. It was the big market day of [Hekou] and all were on their way to it. (Vassal 1922: 14)

For the Europeans, however, the Chinese village of Hekou7 across the Nậm Thi River was a wretched hamlet of “two to three hundred miserable huts” (D’Anty 1899: 419), a “real lair of pirates, or sinister-looking thieves of sordid appearance” (d’Orleans 1898: 6) that epitomized filth and disorder. In 1904, Albert Marie, a young French engineer who worked on the construction of the Tonkin-Yunnan railway, described Hekou in a letter to his family in France as follows: Yesterday evening, we crossed the Nam Ti (a tributary of the Red River) to go to Song-phong or Ho-Keou [Hekou], the closest Chinese town from here [Lào Cai]. . . . We strolled for two hours in the small streets of two meters’ width, dirty and hilly, swarmed with children, pigs, chicken, dogs. . . . Many beggars stretch out their hands. Some pathetic soldiers, a mixed bag of the nastiest pirates, sleep under the sun in rags that are their uniforms. A few shops are somewhat clean. The shopkeepers, rich and respected, are [plump] chaps, puffy with fat and pride, with a magnificent pigtail, braided with exquisite care, which sometimes trails on the ground. All look at us with complete indifference. (cited in Pholsena 2015: 547)8

Europeans arriving in Lào Cai from Yunnan at the turn of the century felt as if they “had re-entered civilization” and praised the town for its “wide macadamized streets lined with shade trees” and the “clean white bungalows”

Town  *  25

(Little 1910: 131) of its European residents that “made a pleasant contrast to the filth and disorder of the Chinese and Annamese quarters” (Vassal 1922: 12). However, they also “pitied the folk whose duties relegate them to this depressing spot, with little to occupy them, no sports, no society, nowhere to go; hemmed in as they are by pathless jungle” (Little 1910: 133). A more astute observer would perhaps have noticed that Lào Cai had become a hotspot for Japanese prostitutes, usually women of poor background who had been sold, lured, or trafficked into the overseas sex trade (Roustan 2012; Roux 1905; Tracol-Huynh 2012).9 The French scholar Fernand Farjenel bore witness to their presence in town: After dinner at the hotel . . . we went for a nightly stroll along the only proper street of Lào Cai. . . . Some Japanese women were shuffling along in their wooden sandals. What are they doing here at the far end of Tonkin, at the entry point to Western China? They charm, it seems, the legionnaires in their free time. (Farjenel 1914: 31)

At that time, Lào Cai’s military importance had already started to diminish (Casulli 1908: 136), and although the hope of economic expansion into China still lingered, it no longer seemed that the town had much to offer in terms of large-scale commercial opportunities (D’Anty 1899: 419; Little 1910: 134). The majority of the military personnel were now stationed in Cốc Lếu, which had been connected to Lào Cai by a bridge across the Red River. Besides its military barracks and the Catholic church, Cốc Lếu also boasted a roofed market that was first inaugurated in 1905 (ĐCSVN 1991: 22). This market was the precursor to the Cốc Lếu Market, which became my primary field site more than a century later. In its early days it was characterized by “its diversity of autochthonous races,” as noted in the French colonial Guide Alphabetique Taupin (1937: 176). A photograph taken in 1903 shows a group of female sugarcane sellers squatting on the floor in front of the legion’s barracks and several others standing around holding what appear to be canvas shoulder bags for merchandise.10 In the background, two French officers dressed up in white uniforms and colonial helmets are leaving the gates of the military quarter. A small packhorse stands tied to a tree, indicating that at least some of the sellers had traveled a long distance to visit the marketplace.11 Upland sellers typically came to town only on the main market day and traded in negligible quantities, but Kinh market vendors maintained a regular presence in the marketplace and were required to pay fees and taxes. These taxes became important sources of municipal revenue and eventually gave rise to grievances on the part of the vendors. In 1926, the market vendors of Lào Cai and Cốc Lếu protested against the payment of “taxes on goods sold in the markets” and had their case taken to the Chamber of People’s Representatives in Hanoi. “The tax collectors commit abuses, they threaten

26  •   Market Frictions

the traders and sometimes even assault them,” their petition stated. “Trade in Lào Cai can only prosper if there are no such obstacles” (Tonkin 1926: 313).12 The official response to this complaint is worth a closer look. After clarifying that this was not a tax levied on the sale of merchandise but a tax levied exclusively on the traders in the market halls of Lào Cai and Cốc Lếu for the “right of using the public domain,” the response points out that this tax constituted the greater part of the municipality’s revenue and was therefore indispensable. Regarding the abuses, threats, and assaults of tax collectors, the document states, “They never existed, except in the minds of the traders, especially of those who, quite in contrast [to their accusation], create difficulties for the tax-collecting agent” (ibid.: 314).

Toward an Outpost of Socialist Development When French colonial rule in Vietnam drew to an end, Lào Cai became embroiled in intense power struggles in the drive for national independence. Ellen Hammer provides a simplified, yet succinct summary of the dynamics unfolding in Vietnam’s northern mountainous regions toward the end of World War II: Northern Tonkin was a troubled place between March and August 1945. French columns were making their way to China fighting against illness as well as the Japanese. . . . It was the headquarters of Chinese bandits, and the home of various mountain tribes. American and French parachutists traveled about, in touch with both the retreating French and the Viet Minh. And from their hidden camps in the Tonkinese mountains, Viet Minh guerillas sallied out to harry the Japanese. (Hammer 1954: 99)

In September the same year, Hồ Chí Minh proclaimed Vietnam’s independence from colonial rule. During the political turmoil preceding the return of the French, Lào Cai came under the sway of the Chinese Kuomintang-backed, noncommunist Vietnamese Nationalist Party (Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng; ĐCSVN 1991: 47–55). In November 1946, the Việt Minh revolutionary forces relentlessly crushed and persecuted these “reactionaries” (bọn phản động), leaving a trail of blood in their wake (Nguyen Van Canh 1983: 121). Throughout the First Indochina War (December 1946 to August 1954), Lào Cai repeatedly became a target of “bandit activities” and pro-French guerrilla operations involving the participation of ethnic minority fighters (Michaud 2000: 351). Such activities continued even after the French had evacuated from town in November 1950 and underlined the necessity to absorb the highlands and its inhabitants into a unified “national framework dominated by Hanoi” (Pelley 1998: 382; see also BCHĐB 1994: 117; Goscha 2011: xv).

Town  *  27

After French colonial rule in Vietnam ended in 1954, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) embarked on the socialist (aka “democratic”) transformation (cải cách dân chủ) of the society and economy. Many Lào Cai town residents (the majority of whom were now Kinh settlers who had migrated from the lowlands in the tracks of the French; see Turner 2010: 273) had been involved in trade during the colonial period and either ran small-trade businesses or specialized on the transportation of merchandise by land or river (ĐCSVN 1991: 18). Only a few traders were categorized as “members of the capitalist class” (giai cấp tư sản; ibid.: 25). Most of them were Chinese who owned large general stores and transport companies. The most famous Vietnamese “capitalist” was apparently a construction contractor and house rental agent named Hòang Đình Ninh. Several medium-scale traders of tobacco, salt, and fabric were “leaning toward the capitalist class” but could not compete with the Chinese, who “conspired with each other in business and used their economic supremacy to crush the Vietnamese capitalists who wanted to compete with them” (ĐCSVN 1991: 26).13 Ultimately, however, the communist authorities found that “all capitalists in Lào Cai actually resemble each other in that they use the same business tricks, that is, speculation, smuggling, and hoarding goods to raise prices” (ĐCSVN 1996: 57). The remolding of the capitalist class (cải tạo tầng lớp tư sản) was therefore an essential step in advancing toward socialism. Socialist reforms in Lào Cai province did not start in earnest until after the land reform in the Red River Delta between 1953 and 1956 and the subsequent “rectification of errors campaign” in 1957 (ĐCSVN 1996: 55). From 1958 through 1960, entrepreneurs classified as capitalists were integrated into the public-private economic sector (thành phần kinh tế công tư hợp doanh) or became small retailers. Small-scale traders (tiểu thương), in contrast, were encouraged to either join a “purchase and selling cooperative” (hợp tác xã mua bán), work for a state-run shop (mậu dịch quốc doanh), or engage in “productive” labor instead (ĐCSVN 1996: 40). This process went slowly, but apparently smoothly. By early 1961, 72 percent of small traders and 87 percent of craftsmen in the whole province had been organized into cooperatives, 431 traders and workshop owners had taken up “productive” work, and 23 worked for state-run shops (ibid.: 58). But despite these successes, the implementation of reforms did not always yield desired results. “Some cadres were lax in educating the traders,” the party treatise notes, “and some of the cooperatives quickly turned into trader associations (hội buôn),” while a number of traders “took advantage of the sloppy management and ­deliberately kept their old ways of trading” (ibid.: 59). Between 1961 and 1975, under the central government’s program of establishing new economic zones in the northern and central highlands, Lào Cai province experienced an influx of 180,000 lowland ethnic majority Kinh

28  •   Market Frictions

settlers (Phạm Khắc Xương 2007: 140). By 1976, the population of Lào Cai town had reached over 29,000 residents (BCHĐB 2000: 15). Although private trade was discouraged, it remained—as it did elsewhere in Vietnam during the centrally planned economy—a lucrative, if risky occupation for many. This is how a newspaper article published in 1978 described the situation at Cốc Lếu Market: In the Cốc Lếu [Market] area there are those who specialize in “staying ahead,” buying up the goods before these enter the market. They buy rice and meat, pack them as neatly as the packages of sugar sold in state-run shops, and smuggle them into the market in order to make large profits. There are even people who just hang out in front of their house and chalk up large profits. They wait for clients, and then they strike deals with both sellers and buyers and guide them to the spots where “money is given and porridge scooped” [that is, where the transactions are carried out]. When the market authorities are absent, these people rule the roost. Some get arrested, fined 300 to 400 đồng each time they are caught. They are ready to pay the fine and then continue to trade, viewing such loss as a common risk of their trade. (Trung Thành 1978: 4)

Throughout the Vietnam War, Lào Cai remained a strategically important border post because China provided North Vietnam with military and economic aid (Womack 2010: 512–13). In the late 1960s, however, the relationship between the two countries started to deteriorate as a result of the 1964–1968 Sino-Soviet conflict (Chan 2013: 33; Khoo 2011). Besides guarding the border against smugglers and bandits, the Lào Cai border police chased the remnants of Chiang Kai-shek’s defeated troops, Chinese spies, and members of the Red Guards who crossed into Lào Cai to propagandize against the Soviet Union and mobilize ethnic Chinese (referred to with the ethnonym Hoa) to join Mao’s “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (BĐBP 1994: 52). In the 1970s, the border security force reports a steady increase of unauthorized intrusions by the Chinese, including the encroachment of farmland (xâm canh xâm cư, literally: “tilling land in another village”) and the removal or destruction of boundary stones (ibid.: 83; see also MacLean 2008a). At the beginning of 1978, the relations between the border guards on both sides could no longer be regarded as “normal”—allegedly, the Chinese even cut the telephone line between the Lào Cai and Hekou stations (ibid.: 93). The Vietnamese offensive in Cambodia at the end of 1978 further strained the already fragile diplomatic relations between the two nations (Khoo 2011: 127). This coincided with a massive exodus of ethnic Chinese (commonly referred to as Hoa) from Vietnam, triggered by a complex interplay of ­policies, tensions, and rumors (Chang 1982; Porter 1980). Fears of an impending war between China and Vietnam had already started to spread a few months earlier among the Hoa in Lào Cai (and possibly

Town  *  29

elsewhere in the country). False rumors circulated that those who would leave Vietnam and return to China before March 1978 would enjoy priority policies (BĐBP 1994: 96). At the same time, Chinese residents in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi started to feel the full brunt of socialist construction following a heavy-handed “clamp-down on all bourgeois activities in the country” (Chang 1982: 206). Consequently, tens of thousands ethnic Chinese from both North and South Vietnam started heading for the Sino-Vietnamese border. On peak days, more than 8,000 people arrived by either bus or train at the Lào Cai border gate (BĐBP 1994: 96–97). Sometimes the situation spiraled out of control. In May 1978, for example, the Chinese authorities suddenly denied the Hoa entry into the country, and those who subsequently tried wading through the Nậm Thi River were “beaten back by thugs” (ibid.).14 The local press tried to downplay the events. In June 1978, the newspaper Hoàng Liên Sơn featured several articles in which Chinese residents voiced their puzzlement over the exodus and praised the Vietnamese government for the fair and equal treatment they had been receiving as doctors, teachers, engineers, and members of cooperatives (Bội Động 1978; Hồ Sùng Phát 1978; Hòang Liên Sơn 1978). Mr. Lưu Bảo Quang, a Hoa resident of Lào Cai, was quoted saying, “I have never seen any evidence whatsoever that ethnic Chinese are being expelled or deprived of their property. I have only seen gullible people being duped into buying lots of precious goods and carrying them to China” (Hòang Liên Sơn 1978: 3), thus arguing that even the smugglers were essentially innocent people who had been tricked into illegal activities. Until August 1978, Vietnamese border officials at various checkpoints throughout Lào Cai province had “released” (giải tỏa) 64,000 ethnic Chinese back to China (BĐBP 1994: 98).15 Toward the end of 1978, both sides began to step up preparations for an armed struggle. Villagers living near the border were evacuated to safer areas, and the Lào Cai bus station was relocated to the outskirt of town. In the early morning hours of 17 February 1979, Chinese troops moved into Vietnam’s northern border region and launched major attacks on the towns of Móng Cái, Lạng Sơn, Cao Bằng, and Lào Cai (K. Chen 1987). Brantly Womack argues, “War with China was serious business for all of Vietnam, but for border towns such as Lang Son and Lao Cai it meant not only devastation, but devastation with no immediate incentive for recovery as long as relations with China remained hostile” (2000: 984–85). Almost all of Lào Cai’s residents “fled the Chinese” (chạy Tàu) and either returned to the lowlands or resettled in Yên Bái town, which had become the new administrative center after the 1976 merger of three northern upland provinces into a single unit named Hoàng Liên Sơn Province (Lào Cai 100 Tuổi 2007: 31–32). On the Chinese side, many inhabitants of Hekou likewise escaped and moved to further inland regions (Juan Zhang 2011: 20). After

30  •   Market Frictions

twenty-four days of fighting, the Chinese forces retreated from Lào Cai town on 12 March 1979. A few days later, a journalist described the scene of devastation: A putrid smell wafts from the bloodstained streets. Some of the ruins are still smoldering, and metal parts of crushed enemy tanks lie scattered about. All general stores, food shops and warehouses have been looted, the machinery of factories taken away to China. The commercial area around Cốc Lếu Market has gone up in flames and is completely devastated. The enemy not only destroyed our economic basis, cultural facilities, offices, and schools, but also ransacked the wealth of the people. Hundreds of houses were burnt to ashes. Others still look intact from the outside, but the inside is strewn with tattered rags and smashed dolls. I notice a pair of pigeons on a roof, but even these birds had not remained unharmed: one had a broken wing, the other a severed tail. (Trường Túy 1979, my summary)

For the decade that followed, the border remained shut, and a shroud of silence hung over the empty shell of Lào Cai.

“Psychological War” and Urban Reconstruction During the years following the Sino-Vietnamese border war, the relations between Vietnam and China remained tense. Between 1980 and 1984 the Chinese apparently employed various tactics of psychological warfare (chiến tranh tâm lý) on the other side of the border. Opposite the towns of Lào Cai, Bát Xát, and Mường Khương, high-capacity loudspeakers blared out defamatory allegations against the Vietnamese who remained (BĐBP 1994: 108). Various open-air markets and itinerant “toad markets” (chợ cóc) popped up on the Chinese side of the border, selling many kinds of goods that were not readily available in Vietnam, such as sewing machines, clothing, flashlights, and lighters (ibid.: 115). The Vietnamese authorities regarded these goods as “psychological goods” (hàng tâm lý) meant to entice the Vietnamese to cross the border and engage in illegal trade. Although the border security force reported a decline in armed activity toward the end of 1985, Chinese troops allegedly infiltrated Vietnamese territory to build defense bases and reinforce trenches (ibid.: 141). In March 1987, a rumor spread that the Chinese were about to attack Vietnam for a second time, and the Vietnamese prepared for a new war (ibid.: 156). Apart from a few minor skirmishes along the border, however, both sides kept the peace. The Sixth Party Congress, held the previous December, had not only endorsed a Đổi mới policy of “renovation” but also declared Vietnam’s willingness to enter into negotiations aimed at normalizing the relations between the two countries (Roper 2000: 1024; Thayer 1994: 352).

Town  *  31

In November 1988, the Central Party secretariat issued communiqué 118 TB/TW, which allowed citizens on both sides to cross the border to exchange goods for daily life and visit relatives. Formal bilateral talks started in September 1990 and marked the beginning of the normalization of relations between Vietnam and China after more than a decade of open hostility (Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud 2015: 35–36). In 1991, Hoàng Liên Sơn province was redivided, and Lào Cai became a separate province again. As such, it needed a functioning administrative center. However, at the time “Lào Cai was just an uninhabitable area, strewn with reeds, bombs, and mines” (Nguyễn Ngọc Kim 2001: 267). If the prewar era had left any architectural traces, they were now cleared to create a clean slate for postwar reconstruction. In the course of the following years, Lào Cai became one huge construction site (BCHĐB 2000: 241–42; Đào Văn Ngoạn 1993). The rebuilding of physical infrastructure included water and electricity provision, post and telecommunication systems, urban street networks, the reconstruction of the two bridges, health and education facilities, as well as the creation of administrative, commercial, and residential districts (BCHĐB 2000: 216–17). The Lào Cai of the future was imagined as a vibrant “political, economic, cultural, commercial and tourist center” (ibid.: 221) and an important border gate in northern Vietnam. To achieve the goals of the first five year plan (1991–1995), the provincial people’s committee issued a number of incentives for new migrant settlers and returnees to actively engage in urban reconstruction, such as free land allocation and long-term interest-free loans, while enterprises with advance funds at hand were given priority in handling public construction projects (ibid.: 228).16 The new livelihood opportunities expected to open up with the facilitation of cross-border trade drew many lowland Vietnamese to the town under construction. Between 1991, when relations with China were normalized, and 1993 alone, Lào Cai’s population quadrupled from 6,000 to 24,000. For example, Mr. Thông, a specialist and trader in traditional medicine from Hà Tây Province, first came to Lào Cai in 1993 to explore the situation. “At that time Lào Cai was still full of mines,” he reminisced. As a medicinal herb trader, he carved out a lucrative niche in the emerging cross-border trade. “Where there are people, there is a demand for health care,” he thought. “The hungry have to eat, the sick need to take medicine” (interview, 4 January 2011). When Cốc Lếu Market received a major facelift through its redesign as an indoor market in 1996, it was seen as “an important step toward realizing a diversified economic development, meeting the hopes and expectation of the people” (Báo Lào Cai 1996). Mr. Thông was one of the first to secure a stall space in the new market building. Over the subsequent years, many of

32  •   Market Frictions

his relatives joined him in Lào Cai to try their luck at trading and other occupations. Small-scale cross-border trade flourished and fortunes were made. Soon they were able to buy land and build houses. Lào Cai’s development into a hub of cross-border trade and commerce was further boosted by the government’s preferential policies concerning the newly established “border gate economic zone” (khu kinh tế cửa khẩu) providing certain benefits, such as tax reductions/holidays for investors and new enterprises, and ensuring the (partial) reinvestment of revenues into its own infrastructure (see Thủ Thướng Chính Phủ 1998). Official development assistance (ODA) and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows further contributed to improvements in socioeconomic and infrastructural development. Upon its merger with the district-level town (thị xã) of Cam Đường in 2002, Lào Cai was upgraded to the rank of a grade 3 provincial city (dô thị loại III).17 An impressive complex of multistory buildings housing the provincial administration emerged along the new highway that connects the two formerly independent towns, and a number of new residential areas (khu đô thị mới) were established as architectural playgrounds of the newly rich and modern urban planners. The facelift of the historical city’s nucleus included the rebuilt Cốc Lếu Bridge across the Red River, the construction of a promenade along the riverbanks, and the redevelopment of the embankment area into a prime residential and restaurant district. Private investment resulted in the mushrooming of multistory hotels, shopping malls, and entertainment facilities. In October 2014, ten years after its elevation to grade 3, the prime minister recognized Lào Cai as a grade 2 city in decision 1975/QĐ-TTg. As one media report noted, “After ten years of steadfast effort, Lào Cai has effectively created the image of a civilized, beautiful, and rich city” (Thu Phương 2014). At that time, the population of Lào Cai’s provincial capital had reached approximately 110,000 inhabitants, and few of the buildings that formed the nucleus of postwar urban reconstruction had remained in place, including Cốc Lếu Market (see Figure 1.2.). As I indicated in this chapter, the history of Cốc Lếu Market—its gradual transformation from a small periodic marketplace to a gleaming modern indoor market—is closely linked to Lào Cai’s development from a dusty trade outpost to a vibrant and ambitious grade 2 city on the border to China. The market building I found when I began my research in the fall of 2010 was still the same one built in 1996, even though it actually looked much older. Not only was its design still very much inspired by the post–Vietnam War socialist architecture of the early 1980s, but it also appeared quite run down with its moldy flat roof and peeling wall paint. The following chapter will take the reader into the market’s busy aisles and into the “complicated” (phức tạp) world of the traders who operate their stalls there.

Town  *  33

Figure 1.2.  View downstream of the Red River towards Cốc Lếu bridge and the historic city center of Lào Cai. Photograph by the author (2017).

Notes   1. Rather than being salaried government officials, these agents were members of the Tai elite hired by the Vietnamese imperial authorities (B. Davis 2017: 25).   2. According to Escande, the citadel was built of brick and clay (1885: 67). Mesny’s account of Lào Cai is based on the experiences of two of his military pupils who had been sent to Liu Yongfu’s headquarters on an imperial mission and stayed there for a month as honored guests of the Black Flag leader (Mesny 1884: iii).   3. Bradley Davis assumes that it was not Liu Yongfu who carried out the destruction, because he retreated through Tuyên Quang and not through Lào Cai (2017: 212, fn69).   4. According to a note published in the Bulletin de l’ École Française d’Extrême-Orient in 1935, the temple was built in 1866 in honor of the “war god Liu Yongfu.” It was dismantled in 1922 to make way for the railway station, and its ornate parts were scattered in different parts of Lao Cai. The École proposed to collect these parts and take them to Hanoi, where they would be reconstituted in the garden of the Louis Finot Museum; see Chronique de l’année 1935, 468 (Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient 35 [1935]: 407–505).   5. Escande also mentions Liu Yongfu’s temple: “The projected organization would give back to the native population the beautiful pagoda of the citadel which is now used as a dwelling place for the commander of the military circle” (1885: 67).

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  6. During Paul Doumer’s term of office as governor general of French Indochina (1897– 1902), the construction of railways was an important component of the colonial mise en valeur policy (Pholsena 2015: 539; see also Del Testa 2001; for an account of the Indochina-Yunnan railway’s failures, see Rousseau 2014).   7. Colonial French sources refer to Hekou as Song-phong; alternative ways of spelling are Ho-Keou and Hokéou.   8. I am grateful to Vatthana Pholsena and the descendants of Albert Marie for sharing the full text of the letter with me. Unfortunately, Marie did not portray Lào Cai in the same detail as Hekou. However, he mentioned that Lào Cai had a population of approximately 5,000 “souls” in these days, of which 2,000 were soldiers and 2,000 were Vietnamese or Chinese (he did not state who the remaining 1,000 were).   9. For visual impressions, see the collection of French colonial postcards portraying Japanese prostitutes in Saigon. Available at http://saigoneer.com/saigon-people/​ 4827-photos-the-japanese-prostitutes-of-colonial-vietnam; see also Tracol-Huynh 2010. 10. The photograph is from the collection of Dr. Albert Sallet. See Tonkin, Lao Kay, Coc Leu, 1903—Marchands de cannes à sucre au marché, at http://www.aavh.org/?p=125. 11. See Michaud 2016 for a more detailed account of upland trade at the turn of the nineteenth century. 12. Protests against taxes as well as market vendors’ strikes also took place in Hanoi during the 1920s (Abrami 2002: 110). 13. It is quite possible that some of them had by then already left Lào Cai for the South (see Turley 1975 for the case of Hanoi). 14. By contrast, the Chinese accused the Vietnamese of maltreating the Chinese on their way and of “driving them back to China across border rivers” (Chang 1982: 209). 15. Of the 1.2 million ethnic Chinese residing in Vietnam at that time, 200,000 had fled to China by the end of 1978 (Chan 2013: 33; Chen 1992: 204). By July 1979, this number had risen to 260,000. The subsequent waves of boat people in the years that followed also included countless ethnic Chinese (Chang 1982: 230). 16. The building boom was characterized by a great variety of forms and architectural styles that town authorities viewed with mixed feelings. “Architecture is a work of art for the people and for the whole of society,” the party secretary of Lào Cai opined. “It thus needs to be beautiful and harmonious, not patchy and uneven” (Đào Văn Ngoạn 1993: 7). This architectural unevenness has been a common characteristic of Vietnam’s fast-developing towns and cities in the post–Đổi mới era. 17. This was not the first time the two towns were merged into one. The first merger of Cam Đường and Lào Cai took place in April 1979, but it was reversed again in June 1992.

2

° Market Cốc Lếu Market, 6 a.m. on a normal weekday. At the crack of dawn, the piercing sound of the security guard’s whistle cuts through the bustling hum of the night market vendors who have been congregating on the pavement of the market’s front court since the wee hours of the morning (see Figure 2.1). Some of them are already packing up their unsold goods, while others are still busy weighing fruit, vegetables, and meats for customers. Soon after, the shutter doors of the market building’s main entrance open with a metal screech. One of the outdoor sunglass vendors (who also offer key cutting, laminating, or shoe repair services) arrives and greets the watchman with a friendly nod. He pulls out his wheeled display cabinet and toolbox from the market hall, where they had been stored overnight, and sets up shop along

Figure 2.1.  The 1996-built Cốc Lếu Market at dawn. The faded banner above the entrance reads: “The people’s tax money contributes to building our rich and beautiful hometown Lào Cai.” Photograph by the author (2011).

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Figure 2.2.  Map of Cốc Lếu Market’s ground floor in building A.

the building’s outer wall. In the meantime, the street sweepers start cleaning up the litter left behind by the open-air fresh market. When the front court is tidy again, the security guard marks the parking area with rope and puts up a tarpaulin as protection from sun and rain. Around 7 a.m., the stall holders start arriving on their motorbikes, ready to launch into a new day of vending at Cốc Lếu Market. Located in the urban ward (phường) of Cốc Lếu on the right-hand side of the Red River, the two-story building A—my main research site—covers an area of 5,000 square meters (see Figure 2.2). Nothing reminds the visitor of the days when ethnic minority groups flocked to town on the main market days and tethered their horses to the trees near the river bank. The 1996built market takes up almost a whole block and is accessible from all four surrounding streets. Its front faces a tree-lined shopping street that cuts through the ancient heart of downtown Lào Cai. Two signboards at the main gate display the general rules that vendors are supposed to observe, such as

Market  *  37

keeping a polite and civilized attitude toward their customers, charging fair prices, and abstaining from stealing customers from their fellow vendors. The entrance opens up to a spacious foyer where the ceiling stretches to the top of the building and allows natural light to flow in. The stalls lining this open space specialize in mobile phones, consumer electronics, fishing rods, wall clocks, costume jewelry, and souvenir trinkets. Because of their prominent location, they are highly valued, and use rights can fetch up to US$60,000 if sold. Grouped around the central hall are the more or less clearly defined sections for electric household appliances, Vietnamese wooden handicrafts, traditional medicinal herbs, and handbags and suitcases. Vendors sell home textiles and garments on the upper floor, which is accessed by three staircases: one central staircase in the main hall and two smaller ones located near the side entrances. Outside the building, but still within the walled market compound, are the sections for refreshments and small souvenirs, children’s toys, fruit, and candies. Along the wall facing Hồng Hà Street, several rather basic market restaurants offer precooked food and soup dishes during lunch hours. This part of the market is covered with blue and orange patches of tarpaulin that stretches across the aisles and protects the stalls from the elements. The market’s southeastern wing, in contrast, features an open courtyard where awnings extend from the surrounding stalls. Children’s cars, tricycles, and bouncy toy deer spill out from the toy stalls opposite the security guards’ common room. The room is flanked on either side by stalls selling ironware, rope, and canvas. Next to the gate that leads from the courtyard out to Hồng Hà Street are the offices of the market administration (ban quản lý chợ), who are in charge of managing the everyday bustle of the marketplace. In 2010, 363 licensed vendors were registered as stall holders in building A of Cốc Lếu Market.1 With more than 130 stalls, the section for home textiles and garments was the most crowded. Other sections had fewer vendors, but they too felt crammed with people and goods. Not only were the stalls quite small (stall units were generally not larger than nine square meters, though some vendors operated several adjacent units) and tightly packed with merchandise, but their arrangement in rows separated by narrow aisles also left little space between them. In front of their booths, the vendors squeeze onto small plastic stools and wait for customers to stop by (see Figure 2.3). Many of them emphasized the importance of selling as a “product group” (nhóm hàng) to support and protect each other, expressed in the adages buôn có bạn, bán có phường (literally: “buying with friends, selling as a group”) and đắt hàng tôi trôi hàng bà (meaning “If I sell well, then my neighbor also sells well”). But trading in the marketplace was also considered complicated (phức tạp). “Each trader has a different temper, a different way,” one of the refreshment vendors explained (26 October 2010). “Some are gentle, but

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Figure 2.3.  Stall holders sit on small plastic stools in the narrow aisles of the electronics section. Photograph by the author (2012).

others rant and rave at each other in their competition for customers (tranh khách).” Tâm, a souvenir vendor, described the market’s complicated nature in the following terms: “Today we are close to each other (thân thiết với nhau), but the next day we call each other names. Today we enjoy a meal together, but tomorrow we throw insults at each other. Our lives and relationships in the market are very complicated” (30 December 2011). This chapter untangles the complex web of social relations the marketplace is embedded in. It introduces the stall holders and follows their stories and everyday lives as they ply their trade. It looks at who their suppliers and clients are and how vendors build and nurture relationships with them. And it shines light on the friction-laden relationships between traders and state officials involved in managing the market and enforcing the rules and regulations that govern commercial activities in Lào Cai City.

Stall Holders Grandmother Ngọc was born in the late 1930s in the Red River Delta. She is the oldest vendor in the souvenir and refreshment section, and possibly the oldest in the market. “She may look old, but she’s still very sharp-witted (sắc sảo),” one of her stall neighbors said about her. As a young woman Ngọc joined the “Resistance War against America” (Kháng chiến chống Mỹ) and

Market  *  39

received a second-grade medal from the state for her service to the nation. But her family was poor, and so they signed up for the New Economic Zones program that brought her to Lào Cai soon after the war ended. At that time, many people in her neighborhood were of Chinese origin (Hoa Kiều) and Ngọc became friends with some of them. When the border war broke out in 1979, she returned to her home province and later joined a tea-growing cooperative in Lai Châu. In 1991, however, she decided to return to Lào Cai and engage in petty trade for a living. She rented, and later bought, a small piece of land near the market, pitched a canvas tent, and started selling rice noodle dishes. When Cốc Lếu Market was built in 1996, she registered for the allocation of stall use rights and received a small, but well-placed corner stall, where she sells refreshments and Vietnamese products to tourists. It was at Grandmother Ngọc’s stall that I spent a lot of time chatting and watching the ebb and flow of customers in this part of the market. While she often complained loudly about her meager sales, she kept a cheerful demeanor and a good sense of humor. “Early morning to the market, back to the house at night, a simple meal of salted fish, but I still show delight,” she recited (“sáng ra xó chợ, tối về nhà, cơm rau cá mắm vẫn hào hoa”). Her life had been hard (khó khăn) and at times even miserable (khổ sở), but this, she found, was also true for many other women vendors in her section. “The market is complicated,” she said. “Look at Thu.” She pointed to a vendor on the other side of the row. “Her husband was a drug addict and left the family. Or that one over there,” she said, pointing in the other direction. “She just divorced her junkie husband. Or take the young stall helper at the corner stall—her husband gambles and doesn’t take care of her at all” (9 October 2010). But despite her sympathetic attitude toward the younger women around her, Grandmother Ngọc also had a penchant for malicious gossip. One afternoon she offered me a cup of hot tea at her stall. The market was fairly empty, and she sat down next to me for a little chitchat. “Today Thu only opened her stall at 9 a.m.,” she threw in casually. “Last night that Chinese guy came by and they went off to spend the night at a hotel—that’s why she was late this morning” (13 December 2010). A few days later, as if in retaliation for her slander, a vendor named Loan revealed some of Grandmother Ngọc’s dark secrets to me. “Back in the 1990s, after her divorce from her husband, Ngọc actually used to be a drug dealer,” Loan said with a disdainful frown. “She not only smuggled drugs (ma túy) across the river but also fooled around with many men while neglecting her children.” I spare the reader the ghastly details of Loan’s scandalous story, parts of which were probably based in fantasy. But the gossip the vendors engage in is instructive in several respects. From the structural-functionalist perspective of Max Gluckman (1963: 313), gossip contributes to the cohesion of tightly knit groups and “provides a way

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of asserting the boundary between morally acceptable action and deviant behavior” (Besnier 2009: 16). Gender norms in many parts of Asia hold that women are responsible for the happiness of the family, and the occurrence of divorce is often seen as resulting from the wife’s inability to maintain familial harmony (Rydstrøm 2003). Women are supposed to engage in sexual activity only within marriage, or at least if they have reached a certain age, for the purpose of procreating (Phinney 2005: 223). At Cốc Lếu Market, single or divorced women are thus under close social scrutiny as they navigate the thin line between respectability and impropriety. It is through their gossip that vendors remind each other where this line is drawn. Tâm, a pretty divorcee then in her late thirties, has been advised numerous times by her friends to remarry. She comes from a rather poor family and grew up in Cam Đường. When she was still in secondary school, she had many suitors and eventually gave in to the advances of the man she married. In their first years of marriage the couple engaged in selling Japanese dogs, which were popular pets during that time and thus reaped good profits. But their success soon went to her husband’s head. He started to “play around” (chơi bời) and spend lots of money, and eventually he fell for drugs. That’s when hell began for Tâm. “All our income went into feeding his addiction,” Tâm relates, “and I had to work hard for our living.” At first she worked as a tailor, but after she gave birth, she stayed with her parents-in-law and started renting out party equipment. She even sold grilled corncobs in the streets to make some extra money so she could pay her husband’s debts. After ten years of marital misery she finally decided to file for divorce. Like Grandmother Ngọc, she signed up for a stall as soon as Cốc Lếu Market opened its doors. On one occasion, her friends introduced her to a handsome bachelor, but Tâm rejected him. “He was the jealous kind,” she explained, “and how can you make a living at the market if you don’t keep friendly relations with all kinds of people?” (28 December 2010). Since separating from her husband, Tâm has raised her daughter alone. Like many other vendors, she hopes that her child’s future will be a better one. “Our lives [as vendors] are hard (khó khăn), which is why we have to make a living in the market in the first place,” she ponders. “And knowing how difficult it is, we have to try hard to give our children an education so that they find employment in the state sector” (30 December 2010). Even though incomes in the public sector remain comparatively low, state sector employment is accorded high prestige in Vietnamese society, while commerce has historically been stigmatized as an inherently selfish and deceitful occupation, suitable only for low-status women (Leshkowich 2014a: 15). It is therefore not surprising that women vendors dominate Cốc Lếu Market (as they do in Vietnam as a whole), although male vendors are

Market  *  41

not exceptional and can be found in almost every section, with the highest proportion in the sections for electronics, mobile phones, and Vietnamese wooden handicrafts. Husband and wife often operate a stall together or tend separate stalls in the same section. In some cases, the wife stays home while the man runs the business. One of these is Duy, a 51-year-old native of Nam Hà. His family migrated to Lào Cai in 1978 but was forced to return to their native village when the border war broke out. In spite of the precarious situation in the border area, they returned in late 1979 and settled in a rural district not far from Lào Cai town. Duy tried to escape the rural life by pursuing an education, but he lacked the necessary grades to qualify for college. At the age of twenty-six he married. The young couple bought a plot of land and started growing cassava and corn. In 1993, they decided to move to Lào Cai town and try their luck in trade. But according to Duy it wasn’t until 2004 that his life became “stable” (ổn định). He invested the impressive sum of VNĐ110 million đồng (approximately US$6,400 at that time) into a stall located in the market’s entrance hall, the value of which has increased almost tenfold since then. At first, his wife operated the stall selling small souvenirs, but Duy took over the following year so that she could take care of the children while they were still small. Initially he tried his luck with selling wooden handicrafts, but he switched to mobile phones three years later (interview, 13 October 2010). Like many of his fellow vendors in the section, he thinks of the market as a battlefield (thương trường là chiến trường). “Competition among us is fierce; that’s why vendors in the same product category are not on all too friendly (thân thiện) terms with each other,” Duy explained (12 December 2010). Many stall holders have relatives in the market. This is most apparent in the clothes section on the upper floor, where a large number of vendors are close or distant kin of Mr. Thông, the medicinal herbalist I mentioned in the previous chapter. State regulations prescribe that each “business household” (hộ kinh doanh) or family-based business can register for only one business location, which is why individual traders can legally operate only one booth in the market.2 Depending on the location of the stall, the type of goods on sale, and seasonal conditions, their monthly income ranges from VNĐ3 to 17 million (US$140–800). Although stall holders in Vietnam’s state-run markets do not properly own their booths, a stall in the market is a tangible asset that may increase in value over time. Local governments often rely on advance contributions from interested traders to finance the construction of new public markets and set off the amount against the monthly stall rental fee for a specified amount of time. In case the demand exceeds the availability of stalls in a new market building, stall use contracts can also be auctioned (bán đấu giá, đấu thầu) to the highest bidder. Many stall holders have thus invested large sums in obtaining the

42  •   Market Frictions

right to operate a booth. This right is transferable: stall holders can also sell their use rights at their current market value or sublet their stall at a higher than official rate to someone else.3 For 47-year-old Wenyang and his wife Huifang, obtaining the proper use rights for a stall at Cốc Lếu Market has never been an option. As Chinese citizens and residents of Hekou, they did not fulfill the basic eligibility requirement of having their household registration (hộ khẩu) in Lào Cai City, so they rented their vending space from a medicinal herbs trader for a monthly VNĐ1.5 million. Wenyang and Huifang are one of only two Chinese couples who operate stalls at Cốc Lếu Market, which is otherwise almost exclusively dominated by members of Vietnam’s Kinh ethnic majority.4 Their stall is invariably busy with customers. Over the years, Wenyang has built up a reputation for providing excellent low-cost shoe repairs, and Huifang carries out clothing repairs and alterations on her antique-looking treadle sewing machine. In addition to these services, the couple also sells a variety of Chinese goods ranging from leather belts and purses to fanciful hair accessories. While Wenyang commutes between Hekou and Lào Cai on a daily basis, Huifang often has to stay behind because her cross-border permit is valid for only a certain number of trips, and the renewal (làm sổ) takes up to twelve days, during which she is not allowed to enter Vietnam. When she’s waiting for permit renewal, Huifang often goes to Kunming and other places in China to purchase goods (lấy hàng) in bulk from wholesalers and manufacturers, some of which she also distributes to other vendors at the market.

Suppliers Stall holders make use of different import options to obtain their Chineseproduced wares from the other side of the border. They can make the trip to Hekou themselves and pick from various wholesalers who own shops in the town center, an option that very few of them choose on a regular basis. Instead they commonly make arrangements with trader-intermediaries, who are referred to as người mối (go-between, middleperson) or người giao hàng (literally: “delivery person”) and pay a per-piece fee for their service. These intermediaries also include mobile Chinese traders who regularly cross the border with small amounts of merchandise. One of them is Shengli, a 45-year-old native of Hunan province. His story, like that of many rural migrants, involves mobility in search of work and wealth. He first came to Yunnan province in 1986 and for three years worked on a rubber plantation, where he was able to make some good money because, as he claimed in broken Vietnamese, “nobody else would do this kind of job.”

Market  *  43

He got married at the age of twenty-three and, together with his wife, joined China’s “floating population” to make a living by painting and renovating houses and furniture in places as far as Beijing. But the money he made was barely enough for food and rent in the big city. In 2000, therefore, he decided to move to Hekou, where he started to run a public telephone service in addition to his repair work. It was not until 2003 that he began selling all sorts of small items, such as keyring pendants and flashlights to traders in Vietnam. “At first it was difficult because I didn’t know many traders,” Shengli reminisces. “I sold at very low prices and let them buy on credit to establish good relationships with them. The prices I charge are the same as what you would pay in Hekou, but I even deliver the merchandise right to their place!” (interview in Chinese, 12 February 2011). According to one woman vendor at Cốc Lếu Market, Chinese producers often sell their products exclusively to one specific large wholesaler or agent, from whom distribution cascades down to many small retailers and agents like Shengli. The lower-level agents, in turn, then seek to establish their own monopolies by selling only certain kinds of goods in a certain area (informal conversation, 14 October 2010). Intermediaries and brokers are almost universally viewed as morally ambiguous figures “whose primary commitment appears as maximizing individual gain” (Lindquist 2015). Relationships between stall holders at the market and their suppliers are thus often riddled with distrust. In the case of Shengli, this attitude is compounded by the fact that he is Chinese, an issue I will return to in chapter 3. “All traders want to make lots of money. Everyone wants to get the greatest advantage, the highest profit,” a male vendor of children’s toys stated. “But we have to trust each other (phải tin nhau); we have to trust that [the middlepersons] deliver us goods at reasonable prices” (interview, 12 December 2010). One such trusted middlewoman is Thanh, a charming 46-year-old native of a Red River Delta village, where she and her husband used to grow rice and vegetables. Because their yield from their small piece of land was not enough to feed the family of three, Thanh decided in 1998 to explore the possibilities of making a better living at the Lào Cai border gate. Seeing that there was potential, her husband soon joined her in the endeavor. At first, Thanh didn’t know anything about “going to the market” (đi chợ), but she quickly acquired the skills necessary for a flourishing goods-delivery service. Whenever I met her at Cốc Lếu Market, I was mesmerized by the swiftness and agility with which she wove her way through the maze of stalls, goods, and people. Over the years, she accumulated enough capital to extend credit to clients (cho mua chịu). In addition to the delivery fee, Thanh also takes advantage of arbitrage opportunities by exploiting “differences in prices and exchange rates over time and space via circulation activities” (Williams

44  •   Market Frictions

and Baláž 2002: 323). “I have to be smart and skillful,” Thanh explained with an almost conspiratorial smile, “in addition to my wage (tiền công; referring to the delivery fee) I also feed on price differentials (giá chênh lệch), which the vendors here know nothing about.” These price differentials usually arise when Chinese shop owners in Hekou sell at a lower price to an intermediary with whom they have an established trade relationship. “Regarding our trade relations with Chinese shop owners, we also have our secrets,” a burly middleman named Hưng explains. “For example, if [some other Vietnamese] would ask for the price of a certain item, the Chinese shop owner would say ‘five [thousand] đồng,’ but he would sell it to me for four [thousand] đồng, or for an even lesser price” (interview, 9 September 2012). A second-generation native of Lào Cai, forty-year-old Hưng specializes in the supply of electronic household appliances to Cốc Lếu stall holders. When he was nine years old, the border war disrupted his family’s life. Like many other Lào Cai residents, they “fled the Chinese” (chạy Tàu) to Yên Bái and remained there for more than a decade. After Hưng got married in 1991, he and his wife Hoa returned to Lào Cai and engaged in various occupations until they decided to try their luck in trading. They started out delivering all sorts of goods from Hekou shops to Cốc Lếu Market and saved every đồng possible until in 2003 they had enough money to invest in a double-size stall in the market’s electronics section. While Hoa operates the stall, Hưng continues to act as a middleman. Together with his sister and two brothers-in-law, he crosses the border several times a day to buy, transport, and distribute merchandise. Like Thanh, though on a different scale, the good-humored intermediary has established trust with his Chinese suppliers and enjoys favorable discounts and payment and credit terms. At Cốc Lếu Market, Hưng supplies approximately forty stalls and collects at least partial payments for the goods on a daily basis. The maximum credit that he extends to each stall holder is limited to between one and VNĐ 2 million per month (US$47–95). “Trading this way does not require a large amount of capital,” Hưng muses. “My main capital is the trust I have built up with the Chinese shop owners” (interview, 6 September 2012).

Clients When the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz studied the bazaar (pasar in Indonesian) of the rural Javanese town of Modjokuto in the 1950s, he found that it was much more than just a picturesque place that thrived on the principle of buying cheap and selling dear. It was what Marcel Mauss would have called a “total social fact,” reaching into all aspects of local society,

Market  *  45

or, as Geertz put it, “a sociocultural world nearly complete in itself” (Geertz 1963: 30). Yet the bazaar was also a place that suffered from being tremendously overcrowded with marginal petty traders who lacked both the capacity and the capital to turn it into an efficient economic institution. In what Geertz (1978) described as a “bazaar economy,” the overall volume of commodities passing through the market is very high, but the volume of goods exchanged in each transaction is very small. Trade is thus fragmented into a vast number of small and unconnected transactions between individual sellers and buyers, each of whom, in line with general economic principles, seeks to maximize profits or utility. These transactions are complicated by another characteristic of the bazaar: the scarcity, unreliability, and uneven distribution of information regarding, primarily, the quality of products and their value and price in the market. The price is therefore not set by the seller based on rational calculation, but instead determined through a more or less elaborate process of offer and counteroffer between seller and buyer that adheres to culture-specific rules of etiquette. As elsewhere in Vietnam, bargaining is an essential feature of exchange transactions at Cốc Lếu Market, even though the market management has introduced rules that oblige vendors to display price lists at their stalls. The abundance of merchandise at Cốc Lếu Market attracts a wide variety of customers, including Kinh majority town residents and rural dwellers, members of minority ethnic communities, and both domestic and foreign tourists. Because tourism is seasonal, stall holders in sections catering (primarily) to vacationers earn their highest profits during peak tourist seasons. These seasons vary for different categories of tourists. During the summer months, for example, Lào Cai sees a large influx of domestic excursionists from the Red River Delta, who mainly visit the small town of Sa Pa that nestles at an elevation of 1,600 meters and offers a pleasant escape from the sweltering heat of the lowlands. Chinese tourists, in contrast, are most numerous during the week-long Chinese New Year and National Day holidays. Kinh local residents and ethnic minority customers typically crowd the market on Sundays, which is also when weekend travelers stop by before returning home in the late afternoon. Marshall Sahlins argues that the mode of exchange in any economy is largely conditioned by the social relationship between the actors involved in that exchange (Sahlins 1972: 196; see also Peebles 2010: 232). As a result, “enemies suffer theft, strangers tolerate higgling commercialism, and kin and neighbors expect fair and binding credit/debt relations” (Peebles 2010: 232). In the Vietnamese marketplace, the price setting and bargaining strategies depend on a number of factors: the social relationship and level of trust between seller and buyer (though a “close” relationship does not necessarily guarantee a lower price), the buyers’ level of price information

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(Alexander and Alexander 1991), the social status attributed to them based on their appearance and demeanor, and, last but not least, their nationality and ethnicity. As one of the woman vendors in the market’s entrance hall summarized it: The foreign tourists just pass by rapidly. Whatever price we tell them, they agree immediately or just bargain a little. In contrast, the Chinese customers bargain a lot. If you set the price at 100,000 đồng, they would only pay 30,000 for it; they’re afraid we’d overcharge them a lot. As for the Vietnamese tourists, they are usually aware of the appropriate price and would only challenge it a little bit. (informal conversation, 21 December 2010)

At the time of my research, groups of Chinese tourists were a common sight at Cốc Lếu Market. They had either booked a one-day Lào Cai City tour, sometimes as part of their organized travels in Yunnan province, or a fiveday package that also included Hanoi and Halong Bay. Chinese companies arranged and sponsored many of these tours as a treat for their employees, for whom a trip to Vietnam would perhaps otherwise not have been affordable (Chan 2013: 75). These lower-income tourists were often rather rustic looking and usually patronized the market in large groups led by a tour guide. Whenever a Chinese tourist came into sight, the vendors in the souvenir section sprang into action. Armed with cartons of Vietnamese cigarettes, bags of candy, and boxes of instant coffee, the vendors chirped and pleaded in basic Chinese: “Come on, buy from me! I sell cheap cigarettes, genuine ones with tax stamp! Come buy a few cartons. I give you a good price.” A common selling strategy was to offer free samples—a cigarette, a cup of instant Vietnamese coffee—and thus to get them to sit down at their stall. Some—especially vendors who could speak conversational Chinese—had established friendly relations with tour guides, who consequently led groups to their stalls on a regular basis. Although small groups of wealthier Chinese, most often businessmen, easily succumbed to the charms of the woman vendors and frequently ended up buying lots of things, many of the group tourists simply seized the opportunity to enjoy free coffee and cigarettes without buying anything. “Sometimes they just sit around, smoke and drink for free, and then they just leave without even saying thank you,” a vendor named Mai complained. “However, I still have to be nice to them; otherwise the tour guide might perhaps not come back to my stall next time!” (interview, 24 December 2010). In the eyes of the souvenir vendors, this type of Chinese tourist ranked the lowest. “These guys usually come from rural areas; they are rather poor, poorly mannered, and uneducated,” Mai reasoned. “They don’t know much about the world and have no idea about what they should buy. In fact they do not even care whether the goods have been produced in China or in Vietnam!”

Market  *  47

As I elaborate in chapter 3, these frequent encounters with Chinese tourists contribute significantly to the vendors’ perceptions of the Chinese “Other.” Whether Chinese or Vietnamese, the vendors usually try to make the most profit from their customers. The following bargaining conversation between a souvenir vendor and a young Vietnamese woman interested in buying flashlights shows that informed clients can bargain the price down to less than 50 percent of the vendor’s initial offer: Client (C): How much is this flashlight? Vendor (V): I sell for 180,000. C: That’s outrageous; over there they sell for only 80,000. V: 80,000 is impossible; nobody here sells at this price. Tell me how much you’re willing to pay and I will see. C: 80,000. V: I sell it to you for 150,000. C: I may buy more next time. I first want to see if I can sell them—I already bought this one here [opens her bag and shows a large flashlight]. V: How much did you pay for that one? C: 200,000. V: Look, I sell this one for 120,000. You can’t get it for less than that anywhere. [Client keeps silent] V: 110,000 is my last price. If you agree, we have a deal. [Client walks away] Vendor: Come back here! [Client returns] V: 90,000, ok? I can’t give you a better price. C: I intend to resell it. If it sells well, I will buy more; 85,000 then. [Vendor puts two flashlights and chargers in a plastic bag] C: Don’t you have a box? V: No, this one doesn’t come with a box. C: Take 170,000 for the two. V: 180,000. C: I said I only buy for 85,000 each! [Vendor agrees and receives 170,000 for the two flashlights] Vendors are well aware that a friendly and polite demeanor is essential to avoid alienating the customer. “Vending is like being everyone’s daughterin-law (làm dâu trăm họ),” Hoa explains. “You have to greet your clients from far and treat them respectfully. Don’t think that because you have a big stall and plenty of merchandise you can pull faces at them (vênh mặt lên với

48  •   Market Frictions

khách). They will walk away instantly if you do so” (informal conversation, 1 January 2011). But vendors often suffer disdain from customers, especially from well-heeled buyers. A 51-year-old clothes vendor named Châu adopts a rather uncompromising stance toward arrogant shoppers: If rich customers behave snobbish and speak ill of my merchandise, like it looks cheap or low quality, I say, “Well, take it or leave it. I don’t have to sell to you. If I don’t sell it today, I sell it tomorrow!” or I may even yell at them: “People like you only look good in a coffin (áo quan)5!” (informal conversation, 8 February 2011).

Rather than courting the well-dressed and wealthy-looking shoppers, Châu spoils her underprivileged customers with special discounts or an extra-nice shopping bag for their purchases. A special category of underprivileged or “poor” customers at Cốc Lếu Market are ethnic minority shoppers, for the most part Hmong and Yao (Dao) from rural upland districts. They stand out from the usual market crowd not only by their colorful traditional costumes but also by their different purchasing behavior. Lowland Kinh commonly stereotype them as innately inferior, uneducated, and economically backward. Loan, for example, the souvenir vendor mentioned earlier, describes them as gentle (hiền lành) and unwitting (thiếu hiểu biết). Because of this, she claims, they are particularly prone to abuse by criminals: “The bad guys often use them as carriers of opium from upland areas to the city or trick them into cross-border drug trafficking,” she said during one of our chats at the market (23 December 2010). Confronted with their “innocent” nature, the vendors tend to treat them gently and ask prices that are only minimally higher than their purchase price. “They are honest (thật thà) people with little money,” Mai explained to me after I had watched her sell a toiletries case to a young Hmong couple without any haggling, “and they don’t know how to bargain (không biết mặc cả). That’s why I don’t sell dear to them—I only milk the rich for profit!” (informal conversation, 29 August 2012; see Figure 2.4). This does not mean that compassion toward the poor and needy is a general rule.6 Certain vendors even express disdain toward raggedly dressed buyers by greeting them in a cursory fashion or by throwing insults at them, saying, “Stop it! How can you afford this anyway (làm gì có tiền mà mua)? Now go away!” (informal conversation with a stall helper, 21 December 2010). For Cốc Lếu stall holders, looking good and dressing well is an important factor in business success. Particularly in the market sections that receive many foreign clients—tourists and businesspeople from China and from Vietnam’s lowland areas—women vendors invest significant effort in their looks, including eyelash extensions, permanent makeup, intricate nail art, and stylish outfits. “If a vendor wears ugly clothes, she will have fewer customers compared to those who dress stylishly,” one vendor explained (informal

Market  *  49

Figure 2.4.  A young Hmong woman wearing a traditional skirt over her jeans looks at the goods on display at one of the souvenir stalls. Photograph by the author (2012).

conversation, 18 October 2010). As I made clear earlier, many of them once migrated from the rural lowlands to the Vietnam-China border in search of better livelihood options. Their income from vending has helped many of them achieve a middle-class lifestyle that includes ăn ngon mặc đẹp (eating well and wearing pretty clothes), which allows them to “display themselves to others (and themselves) as attractive, cosmopolitan, and economically comfortable” (Leshkowich 2012: 105). Cốc Lếu Market vendors thus not only dress up to attract more customers but also to assert their new identities as savvy urbanites in a “remote” and mountainous part of the country. At the same time, they also attempt to distance themselves from their own past as poor lowland migrants. Their clothing choices provide a powerful means through which women vendors negotiate and perform their gender and class identities in creative, tactical ways, while at the same time marking the boundaries between rural and urban, past and present, tradition and modernity.

Bureaucrats The daily bustle of buying and selling at Cốc Lếu Market is administered by a management board (ban quản lý chợ) made up of a director and a

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vice-director, an administration secretary, three accountants, one treasurer, and a general security overseer in charge of supervising the security team and the parking service team. Operating under the authority of the municipal people’s committee,7 the board’s main tasks are to (1) assist the city administration in managing all ongoing market activities, including the commencement of stall rental agreements, the collection of monthly fees, and the coordination of repair and construction works; (2) implement the relevant state policies; and (3) make sure that stall holders abide by the laws and rules governing the marketplace. The rules are laid out in the market’s intramural regulations (nội quy) on the basis of the model regulation crafted by the Ministry of Trade in the addendum to Decision 772/2003/QĐ-BTM of 24 June 2003. Besides reminding the stall holders of their obligations to have their businesses properly registered (with the municipal finance and planning department) and pay their taxes and fees in accordance with the law, the regulations also prescribe certain rules of conduct aimed at “civilizing the marketplace” and establishing commercial civility (xây dựng chợ văn minh thương mại; see Figure 2.5). The term văn minh (civility, civilization, civilized) derives from the Chinese wenming and has been promoted by the Vietnamese state in various reform era campaigns aimed at promoting moral discipline and proper behavior in the public sphere. In the marketplace, civil conduct includes dressing in a neat and tidy way, dealing politely with customers, and abstaining from vulgar speech (nói năng thô tục) and bickering (cãi nhau).

Figure 2.5.  The banner in the market’s entrance hall reads “Determined to build Cốc Lếu Market ever more cultured and civil(ized).” Photograph by the author (2012).

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Mrs. Cúc worked in the market administration for many years until she was promoted to director of the management board in 2011. Her flamboyant personality, reflected in the way she dresses and grooms herself, does not really fit the stereotypical mold of a Vietnamese bureaucrat, but it blends in well with the youthful and modern style that prevails among the women vendors at the market. According to her, the market resembles a miniature society. “There are all sorts of good and bad people,” she explained. “They’re usually very gentle, but there are moments when they fight with each other— when they quarrel and compete for customers or vending space in the aisles.” She also hinted at the presence of criminal elements, thugs, and hoodlums. A market official, Cúc argued, needs to have certain characteristics to tame the unruly nature of the marketplace: “As a market official you need to have an ‘underworld temperament’ (máu xã hội đen)—you need to be able to tie their wrists and ankles; otherwise you can’t do the job.” On the one hand, she thinks it is important to be authoritative and resolute “like a man,” but on the other she also emphasizes that a market official must be “close to the vendors” and act with sentiment (tình cảm). Working in close contact with the people and acting with reason and sentiment are among the ideal attributes of a Vietnamese government official (Endres 2014a; Malarney 1997), and Cúc claims that the relationship between traders and officials at Cốc Lếu Market is particularly close compared to other border markets: “The relationship between traders and the management is friendlier and more human,” she reasoned. “Other markets are managed according to strict principles, and traders are not in close contact with the authorities and the administration” (conversation, 24 August 2012). As a street-level administrative unit, the market management board is naturally confronted with the dilemma of striking a reasonable balance between “compassion and flexibility on the one hand, and impartiality and rigid rule-application on the other hand” (Lipsky 1980: 15–16). When the mobile phone vendor Duy sold his stall use rights to the neighboring stall holder, the neighbor took the opportunity to expand his assortment of merchandise to include children’s toys for which he was not licensed. Duy’s stall neighbor Trung assesses his relationship with the market management board in very positive terms. “The market management board provides the conditions (tạo điều kiện) for me to sell many different kinds of goods,” he explained. “According to the regulations I’m only entitled to sell the goods I am registered for, but if I [followed that rule] I would not have enough to eat and would starve to death,” he defended himself. “To ensure an appropriate living standard for my family, I need to sell many other goods as well. The market management board creates the necessary conditions for me so that my goods don’t get confiscated” (10 December 2010). For these “favorable conditions” to occur, Trung and others occasionally pay a friendly visit to the

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market manager’s home after nightfall and discretely leave an envelope with money in it, together with some fruit or a bottle of liquor, a practice called “going at night” (đi đêm). But the market management is just one node in the wider administrative network that facilitates cross-border market trade in Lào Cai City. Other local state agencies that stall holders and intermediaries deal with on a more or less frequent basis include the customs office, the border police, the municipal market control department, the Department for Standards, Metrology, and Quality, the local police, and the tax office. As I will explore in more detail in chapter 4, the avenues through which Lào Cai small-scale traders seize the economic opportunities at hand are invariably smoothed by “greasing the palms” (lót tay; literally: “lining the hands”) of local state officials. Many traders in fact engage in what Donnan and Wilson call the “subversive economy of borderlands” (1999: 87), for example evading (or negotiating) custom duties or smuggling goods that the state prohibits from being imported. These goods include so-called hot goods, for example, dangerous weapons (electric Tasers, guns, sharp knives, etc.) and items considered morally harmful, such as adult toys and sexual-enhancement products. Moreover, the China-made products sold at Cốc Lếu Market are often of low quality (kém chất lượng), unclear origin (không rõ nguồn gốc), and without proper warranty stamps (không có tem bảo hành)—all of which is in violation of regulatory stipulations, such as the Vietnamese Law on the Quality of Products and Goods (Quốc Hội 2007). “That’s why the traders must treat the officials well,” middleman Hưng explains. Such treats include money envelopes, gifts, and invitations to dinner parties organized by the electronics section on special occasions (for example, International Women’s Day on 8 March, and Vietnamese Women’s Day on 20 October). Bribes are usually exchanged between individual traders and relevant state officials, though some vendors implied that the market management also coordinates bribe negotiations with other agencies. “Before a police raid, a tax inspection, or a quarantine check, the officials would first have to work with [the market management director],” one vendor explained. Those who had bribed the director beforehand would then receive preferential treatment from police and other law enforcement authorities. Lào Cai traders consider these arrangements, as well as the unlawful activities they are supposed to cover up, to be essential for survival in the market. The frictions that characterize their relationships with local state officials both enhance economic opportunities and augment the risks and uncertainties inherent to them. This becomes particularly evident in the context of cross-border smuggling and contraband trading. But before I shift the focus to the illegal and illicit economy, let me turn to another necessary precondition for securing a living in the region: the border between Vietnam and China

Market  *  53

and the “art of neighboring” on either side of it. The “market frictions” that arise in the relationships that traders cultivate across the border are of a different nature from those that crop up in the relationships between fellow compatriots. As I will show in the following chapter, they evolve from the traders’ experiences (and constructions) of difference and otherness on both sides of the border. Notes 1. Another 340 vendors were registered in building B (built in 2004 on the grounds of the former horse parking, near the river bank). My research concentrated mainly on building A, though general observations also included the newer building. Building B is smaller, but individual stalls are generally more spacious than in building A. On its two indoor floors, it houses a large section of household items and kitchenware, various shoe stalls, and some clothes shops and electronic goods vendors. The lower-level ground floor is an open structure that accommodates vendors of fresh produce (vegetables, meat, and fish). 2. A household business is defined as a person, a group, or a family who runs a small business at one location with no more than ten employees (see Chính Phủ 2010, art. 49). 3. Until January 2010, the official monthly rental fee for a stall in building A was VNĐ44,000 on the ground floor and VNĐ36,000 on the upper floor per square meter. In February 2011, the rental fee was “adjusted” to VNĐ88,000 (ground floor) and VNĐ72,000 (upper floor) by decision 298/QĐ-UBND (photograph taken in market management office). 4. During my research, ethnic minority traders sometimes appeared at Cốc Lếu Market as suppliers of traditional medicinal herbs. Ethnic minority traders are more prevalent at periodic upland markets (for more on upland ethnic minority trade, see Bonnin 2011; Schoenberger and Turner 2008; Turner 2010; Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud 2015). 5. This insult is a play on words. The Vietnamese compound word for clothes (quần áo) in reverse order (áo quan) means coffin (but note the different diacritics for quần/ quan). 6. Donations to charitable causes are a different matter. The market management occasionally organizes clothing collections for poor upland communities that vendors contribute to generously. 7. Local government at the province, city, district, and commune (xã) or municipal ward (phường) levels consists of a people’s council, a people’s committee, and branches of the Communist Party and its mass organizations (Kerkvliet 2004: 4). The people’s committee is in charge of implementing state laws and regulations at the local level and manages everyday administrative and governmental affairs. It is accountable to the people’s council at the same bureaucratic level and to the people’s committee at the next higher level (ibid.: 7).

3

° Neighboring “Without the border we couldn’t make a living; there would be no tourists and no special things to buy. Our houses on either side would be equipped with the same items. So who would we sell to?” Although the border regime between Vietnam and China imposes certain constraints on cross-border trade, middleman Hưng considers the border’s existence a necessary precondition for securing a living in the region. “If Southeast Asia would open its borders like Europe, we would have no way of earning our food [làm ăn],” he argues (interview, 6 September 2012). For Vietnamese small-scale traders like Hưng, as well as for their Chinese trading partners, the border between their two countries constitutes a zone of ultimately uncertain, often risky, but potentially highly profitable economic opportunities. These opportunities require people to engage in what Saxer and Zhang describe as “the art of neighboring”—an art that includes the skillful management of multiple relations and the careful balancing of power asymmetries at the margins of the state (Zhang and Saxer 2017: 17–22). It is through these encounters and exchanges with the neighborly, yet in many ways unfamiliar “Other,” that borderland identities and alterities are constructed and articulated (Brambilla 2009: 584). Recent studies on borderlands and cross-border movements—of people, goods, information—have stressed that rather than constituting more or less fixed markers of state territoriality that contain distinct societies, borders are continuously maintained and reproduced through various social actors, relationships, discourses, and practices (van Schendel 2005: 46). But borders are also productive spaces where identities and meanings are constructed through perceptions and discourses of difference that position the cross-border Other in relation to the self (Hall 1996: 4). A central concept in postcolonial theory, the notion of the Other is “rooted in the Freudian and post-Freudian analysis of the formation of subjectivity” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 1998: 169). Scholars in subaltern studies use it to conceptualize colonial subjects as constituted by the discourse of domination. Spivak (1985) calls this discursive process of constructing an alien, subjugated, and inferior Other “Othering.” In a more general sense, Othering has come to denote processes of representing individuals or social groups in ways that render them “not only different or distant but also alien or deviant, relative to the norms and expectations

Neighboring  *  55

of the speaker’s own group” (Coupland 2010: 244). Othering thus creates differences and draws boundaries between groups of people, thereby contributing to processes of identity construction. As Connolly aptly points out, “Identity requires difference in order to be, and it converts difference into otherness in order to secure its own self-certainty” (Connolly 2002: 64). Othering is therefore a dialectical process by which the self is constituted through its distinction from the Other (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 1998: 171). Such processes of constructing Otherness typically take place in the context of power differentials, because “power is always inscribed in the relation an exclusive identity bears to the differences it constitutes” (Connolly 2002: 66). In their long common history, bilateral relations between Vietnam and China have ranged from uneasy accommodation to outright hostility. The region that is now northern Vietnam was a Chinese dependency for almost a millennium, from the first to the tenth century of the common era, and subsequently became sinicized to a considerable extent (Pelley 1998; Woodside 1971). China’s paternalistic attitude toward Vietnam includes the conviction that it was the Chinese civilizing project that “lifted the Vietnamese from their previous state of barbarism” (Duiker 1986: 6), but the Vietnamese have long since emphasized their cultural independence and distinctiveness from China, and they glorify the “tradition of resistance to foreign aggression” (Pelley 1995: 234) as an essential part of Vietnam’s national identity. Paradoxically though, the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese border war has not been incorporated into this historiographic self-construction. The political project of promoting and cultivating a specific interpretation of the past in the present chose to instead unburden residents on both sides from their painful and traumatic memories by “forgetting” about this “undignified” war and getting on with business (Juan Zhang 2011: 84; see also Chan 2013: 39). These historical and political contexts and sensitivities, as well as China’s recent unprecedented economic success, form the background of this chapter. However, my main aim is to investigate ethnographically the dynamic and complex processes through which small-scale trader identities and alterities are constructed in the Vietnam-China borderlands. These processes unfold at the intersection of past legacies, sociopolitical discourses, and the localized, everyday experience of, and interaction with, the neighborly Other.

Multifaceted Asymmetries Since the normalization of relations in 1991, bilateral trade has been expanding rapidly. Although the recent disputes involving territorial claims over the Spratly and Paracel islands have (again) strained Vietnam’s “asymmetric

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Figure 3.1.  Porters and intermediaries are kept in check by a Vietnamese border guard as they wait for the checkpoint to open at 7 a.m. Photograph by the author (2010).

relationship” (Womack 2010) with China and stirred up public sentiment in many parts of Vietnam, the “friendship and intimacy rhetoric” (Chan 2013: 36) that marked the reestablishment of diplomatic ties has continued to frame economic exchanges in the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands. When China’s top leader Jiang Zemin visited Vietnam in 2002, he underlined that “in the development of Sino-Vietnamese relations, mutual trust is the foundation, long-term stability is the prerequisite, good-neighbourliness and friendship are the guarantees, comprehensive cooperation is the linkage, and mutual development and prosperity are the objectives” (quoted in J. Cheng 2011: 382). These objectives are put into practice on the ground, in this case at the Lào Cai-Hekou border gate.1 Every morning, Vietnamese transporters and trader-intermediaries gather in large number at the checkpoint and patiently wait for the border to open at seven o’clock sharp (see Figure 3.1). Most of the goods for local trade are transported across the bridge on foot with the use of handcarts, cargo tricycles, or special pack bikes (xe thồ). The hard-working women and men who pull and push these heavily loaded vehicles play a vital role in directing the flow of goods from Chinese wholesalers and retailers in Hekou to Lào Cai City on the Vietnamese side of the border. Not surprisingly, and in common

Neighboring  *  57

Figure 3.2.  Total volume of bilateral trade through the Lào Cai-China border, 2005–2014 (trade value: US$1,000). Figure created by the author.

with cross-border shuttle trade in many parts of the world, a significant part of this flow finds its way around the regulations that govern the import and export of goods between China and Vietnam. Official statistics indicate that the scale of economic cooperation between China and Vietnam has been growing steadily in the past decades. In the 2000s, the total trade turnover increased from approximately US$3 billion in 2001 to US$41 billion in 2012 (Nguyen 2015: 58). In roughly the same time period, the total turnover of goods passing through the border gates of Lào Cai province increased from roughly US$45 million in 2005 to US$885 million in 2012 (see Figure 3.22). These statistics, of course, include only officially recorded goods and ignore the countless loads that are undervalued, misdeclared, or smuggled outright. A 2010 report by the Lào Cai provincial market control department (cục quản lý thị trường) indicates that the local authorities are well aware of the situation: The smugglers take advantage of the fact that border residents are exempt from import duties, as stipulated in Prime Minister’s decision no. 254/2006/QĐ-TTg of 7 November 2006 on the management of border trading activities with bordering countries [amended in 2009]. The smugglers’ trick is to hire porters who split the consignment into small loads before transporting them through the [international] border gate or through other border crossings in the area and legitimize them with regular sales invoices stating a purchase price that is way below the actual market value of the smuggled goods. (Sở Công Thương Tỉnh Lào Cai 2010)

According to the decision mentioned in this passage, borderland residents can apply for a special border-crossing permit that entitles them to import

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into Vietnam, free of customs duties, goods up to a maximum value of VNĐ2 million per person per day.3 This policy was originally intended to “help residents in border areas exchange goods they produce and buy essential goods for daily use and production” (TBKTSG 2015), but it created a loophole that contributed to the emergence of an intricate service network of Vietnamese trader-intermediaries and transporters who take their orders from both resident and nonresident retailers. By having the goods carried across the border in small VNĐ2 million batches for a per-piece or per-load fee, nonresident retailers can evade the import tariffs in place to protect Vietnam’s domestic market from being flooded with an ever-rising tide of Chinese goods. China’s competitive advantage has led to an unfavorable trade balance for Vietnam, the actual size of which has been reported differently in the two countries. In 2014, for example, Vietnam reported a deficit of US$28.9 billion, while the Chinese released the figure of US$43.8 billion. This discrepancy is assumed to be the result not only of smuggling but also of underreporting imports on the Vietnamese side (see A. Chen 2015).

Negotiating Superiority “Our government has launched the campaign ‘Vietnamese people use Vietnamese goods’, but everyone, from worker to leader, prefers to use Chinese goods because they are cheaper and better designed!” (13 October 2010). This statement from one of the vendors at Cốc Lếu Market succinctly captures the ambivalent attitude that prevails among its stall holders toward China’s economic dominance in the region. The sheer volume of mass-­ produced, low-price goods, the abundance of designs and models, and the speed at which Chinese products have flooded the world market are a matter of much admiration mixed with reservations about quality and durability. Vietnamese vendors are aware that China produces many high-quality products, but they usually perceive the goods sold at Cốc Lếu Market as substandard items (hàng đểu) that fall apart or break down after only a short period of use. Tuấn, a stall holder selling Vietnamese wooden handicrafts, thinks that the Chinese are very clever: “They like [Vietnamese] wooden handicrafts as souvenirs, because in China they don’t have as many kinds of precious woods as we do,” he explains. “Coming to Vietnam, the Chinese like buying quality items, but what they sell to us is just junk, such as these fengshui objects made of plastic granulate that only last a few years and harm the environment and our health” (interview, 24 December 2010). Tuấn’s critical considerations characterize the economic power asymmetries between Vietnam and China in terms describing a neocolonial regime

Neighboring  *  59

that capitalizes on the extraction of valuable resources from its less-developed neighbors while dumping inferior products in their markets. Some critics even describe these products as “trash thrown into the neighbor’s yard.”4 Among these goods are counterfeits or so-called mimic goods (hàng nhái) that violate current trade law.5 Mobile phones are one example. Hardly distinguishable from authentic branded phones from the outside, fakes are openly displayed in glass cabinets at many stalls in the entrance hall. Mobile phone vendor Duy shares his opinion: “I do not like selling Chinese phones because the quality is not guaranteed. The phones are credited with many functions but many of these functions [e.g., photographing, video recording] actually don’t work as advertised.” According to Duy’s own classification, there are three types of clients who go for the counterfeits. The first type are “childish people” (người ấu trĩ), that is, people who like cheap goods and have no understanding of quality. The second type includes rich people who like unusual things (đồ lạ) in the latest fashion, but who will use them only for a short time before throwing them away. The third type of people in Duy’s classification scheme are members of ethnic minority groups who do not have much money but who like to “ape” (học đòi) prestigious consumer tastes. “I don’t advise the buyers much,” Duy says. “If they want to buy a good product, I refer them to the more expensive Vietnamese-produced mobile phones. If they like something cheap they just pounce on the Chinese ones” (interview, 2 November 2010). A 53-year-old trader-intermediary named Đào who supplies various vendors at Cốc Lếu Market with fashionable handbags and purses likewise emphasizes the higher quality of Vietnamese goods but admits that the Chinese are more flexible in responding to changing fashions. “The Chinese are very smart (khôn ngoan)—they frequently invent new styles (mẫu mã) and adapt quickly to the customers’ changing tastes,” she says. However, these low-cost fast fashion items were of much lower quality than the “long-lasting but expensive” Vietnamese bags she herself favored. “From the outside, these [Chinese] bags look quite durable, but you can actually only use them for a year before the straps or buckles break. Vietnamese handbags are uglier, but they last much longer” (interview, 11 February 2011). On the positive side, Vietnamese traders acknowledge that even high-­ quality Chinese products, and particularly electronic goods, are still much cheaper than locally produced wares. Hưng points to the rice cookers piled up at his stall: “A good Chinese rice cooker sells for 400,000 đồng, but a Vietnamese one of the same quality would cost twice as much,” he says. “I have some Vietnamese products on offer, but they don’t sell as well as the Chinese ones” (conversation, 2 November 2010). Some vendors note that cheap, low-quality goods in fact serve the needs of the poor, who would otherwise not be able to afford the comforts brought by modern technology

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and scientific progress. “Chinese goods may be of low quality, but their price is within the reach of the Vietnamese people’s purse,” one vendor told me. “It is thanks to the Chinese that many Vietnamese can now afford a decent motorbike!” she asserted (conversation, 14 October 2010). In a sense, then, cheap Chinese products are seen as contributing to the well-being of economically disadvantaged groups both at home and abroad. China’s economic prowess also provides a backdrop against which general notions of superiority and inferiority are reflected, reinforced, and challenged. “The Chinese leadership thinks little of Vietnam,” Duy alleges, “and so do the Chinese people. They say that even in one hundred years Vietnam will not yet have caught up with them” (interview, 13 October 2010). For Shengli, the mobile Chinese trader who supplies Cốc Lếu Market vendors with assorted souvenir items, the reasons for Vietnam’s poor economic performance are obvious. “The Vietnamese evade taxes and smuggle a lot, and this is why the state is poor and cannot invest sufficiently in infrastructural development,” he says in broken Vietnamese. “The Chinese state, in contrast, invests a lot in infrastructure such as road construction; it also imposes many more taxes, such as property tax, and enforces stricter tax laws, but in Vietnam anything goes!” (conversation, 19 December 2010). Despite their respect for China’s infrastructural progress and apparent achievements in fighting corruption, Vietnamese traders feel that the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side. Some of those who frequently commute across the border even perceive the town of Hekou, with its modern high-rise apartment buildings and treeless streets, as dusty and gloomy. Others think that China’s rapid economic development is concentrated in certain regions only and has not yet reached the country’s remote hinterlands, inhabited by ethnic minority populations, whereas Vietnam has ostensibly made considerable progress in this regard. Another issue of national pride is Vietnam’s accomplishments in education. In common with most Vietnamese parents, market vendors—often viewed as representing backward and uneducated elements in Vietnamese society—place a high value on their children’s education “so they don’t end up in the market (cho nó đỡ đi chợ)” (informal conversation with souvenir vendor Mai, 3 January 2011; see also Leshkowich 2011, 2014a). Their encounters with less-educated Chinese clients, most often of rural origin, not only make them feel morally superior as caring parents, but also prompt sweeping generalizations about their Chinese customers’ attitudes toward education. “In rural China they don’t value learning much,” souvenir vendor Thu argued. “Like that girl over there [pointing to one of the Chinese tour guides]—she left school after the seventh grade to work as a tourist guide. Her parents felt fine with it; they don’t give much importance to education.” With a glance at her younger daughter, she adds, “As Vietnamese parents, we

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would have been in an uproar and beat the kid until she went back to school!” (informal conversation, 24 December 2010).

Dancing in China While such comments question the civilizational superiority of the Chinese vis-à-vis the Vietnamese—once designated “southern barbarians” by the Han emperors (Pelley 2002: 148–49)—discourses on gender relations tend to draw the opposite conclusion. Women vendors in the souvenir section—especially women with histories of domestic violence or drug-addicted husbands—often praised Chinese men for their courteous conduct toward them and thought of them as more respectful and caring than their Vietnamese counterparts. Tâm, for example, feels fed up with Vietnamese men. “They hang out late and then in cowardly fashion beat up their wives and children,” she rants. Chinese husbands, by contrast, were controlled by their wives: “For them it is normal to return home straight after work and do the cooking and laundering” (conversation, 2 September 2012). In line with Tâm’s views, souvenir vendor Phường thinks of Vietnamese men as behind the times (lạc hậu) and narrow-minded. “Like frogs sitting at the bottom of a well, they assume that the sky is as small as the lid of a cooking pot (ếch ngồi đáy giếng coi trời bằng vung)!” As an unmarried and childless woman who has long since passed what is considered a marriageable age in Vietnamese society, Phường suffers the lack of social recognition associated with the stigma of having been left as “dead stock on the shelf” (ế chồng) (Bélanger 2004). Among her male and female Chinese friends, however, she feels at ease and treated with dignity. From her personal encounters with the neighborly Other, she concludes that gender relations are more egalitarian in China (informal conversation, 17 September 2012). She also assumes that unmarried women like her are less stigmatized in Chinese society than they are in Vietnam. However, the evidence does not support her inference. In China today, just as in Vietnam, it is still widely assumed that “remaining single is abnormal and represents failure as a woman” (Zhang and Sun 2014: 125; see also Fincher 2014; Zavoretti 2016). To understand how cross-border pastimes and other forms of interaction with the neighborly Other become sites for the projection of cultural fantasies about gender equality and general civility, unraveling the tangled threads of Phường’s story provides insights. Forty-nine-year-old Phường was born in a civil servant family. During the state subsidy period, both parents worked in the provincial forestry department and enjoyed a relatively comfortable life until her father’s career ended prematurely when he was charged with a corruption-related offense. As a

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disciplinary measure he was transferred to a remote area, where he suffered from harsh working conditions and the scorn of his colleagues. On account of sleeplessness and mental stress, the disgraced man soon fell ill and died shortly afterward. From then on, Phường’s mother had to fend for herself and her two children. She decided to quit her job at the forestry department and move to Cam Đường. During her father’s illness, Phường felt the family did not receive much support from their relatives, which is why she now keeps contact with them to a minimum. Her father’s passing was also the reason that Phường—who had always been eager to learn—dropped out of school early. When the border war broke out in 1979, she left Cam Đường for Hanoi to train as a seamstress. There she fell in love with a handsome and well-­ educated young man. Phường fondly recalls the afternoons when she cycled along the shore of West Lake with her boyfriend and enjoyed a bag of popcorn or a cup of sugarcane juice that he bought with his last remaining money. Soon the couple made plans for marriage. Not long after the engagement ceremony, however, Phường found out that her husband-to-be had become involved with another woman. The loss of her “sacred first love” (tình đầu thiêng liêng) came as a deep emotional shock. She broke up with her fiancé and returned to Lào Cai. “I felt depressed (chán nản) for about four years,” she reminisces. “At first I wanted revenge but thinking again I decided to pray for his happiness instead.” Since then, Phường has remained single. “Many people gossip about me or look down on me because I don’t have a family of my own (không có gia đình),” she says, “but I have always lived a solid and pure life. I never engaged in wrongful love relationships with any man” (interview, 26 October 2010). Back in Lào Cai, Phường started to work as a trader. For a while, she engaged in smuggling beer, liquor, and cigarettes across the Red River to the Chinese side. This clandestine activity brought her a high income, but she felt it was not respectable work, and the risk of getting caught was high. A stall at Cốc Lếu Market was a viable and more dignified alternative. But when she started operating her stall seven years ago (2003), she felt that many people slighted her. Perhaps it was her slightly frumpy appearance that caused them to think of her as coming from the countryside. “Many traders in the market despise others, especially peasants,” Phường explains, “but I have great respect for them, because everybody essentially comes from a peasant background.” Some clients also treated her with disregard. Phường recalls one particularly nasty incident when a Vietnamese government official led a Chinese delegation to the market and she greeted them politely to solicit the sale (mời mua hàng).6 The official, however, snapped back at her—how dare she solicit sale from a high-ranking cadre! When Phường told him that everyone was equal upon entering the market, he referred to her as an uneducated woman

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and accused her of following him around and tearing at his shirt. Heaping insult on injury, their argument escalated and Phường was summoned to the local people’s committee. Witnesses testified that she never chased after customers, and Phường was ultimately vindicated as blameless. But this was not the end of the story. One day she met the official outside the market and he smacked her on the buttocks in passing. Phường got furious and slapped him in his face so hard he fell to the ground. He apologized and wanted to shake hands, but Phường declined because she thought that shaking hands with this “dirty scum of society” would have cast an even greater gloom over her spirits. “I may be cowering in a very lowly place (đầu đường xó chợ; literally: “at the street entrance and corner of the market”) to make a living, my face bent toward the ground (bán mặt cho đất),” Phường says, “but I still retain my moral integrity.” The contempt and humiliation that Phường experienced throughout her life have to some degree alienated her from Vietnamese society, in which women like her are marginalized in various ways. It is this alienation that contributed to Phường’s construction of China as an idealized social-cultural space. Over the years, she built up an extensive network of Chinese professionals and friends from many walks of life, including, as she proudly stresses, “farmers, intellectuals, and civil servants.” She took Chinese classes and has come to master the language, both orally and in writing, at a much higher level than any of her fellow vendors in the souvenir section. Most of Phường’s social life revolves around cultivating amicable relations with her Chinese friends. Every evening, she crosses the bridge linking Lào Cai and Hekou. After a ten-minute walk along the river promenade, she joins one of the many dancing groups that congregate on the wide sidewalk of Binhe Road to swing and sway for exercise.7 “The life and cultural activities of the Chinese are very good,” she explains. “The government cares about public health and even provides money for the necessary equipment.” The welcoming and respectful treatment she receives “on the other side” not only contributes to Phường’s sense of social belonging and emotional well-being but also fuels her imagination of Chinese “civilizational superiority” in terms of manners, respect, and broad-mindedness. Crossing the border to dance on the pavement is therefore more than just a way of “releasing the psyche” (giải tỏa tâm lý) from the strains and stresses of being a single, middle-aged woman selling souvenirs in an “unruly market” (chợ búa). As Eric Heuser points out in his analysis of cross-cultural friendships between queer Javanese and Western youth, “the cross-cultural moment leaves friendships in a space in-between different social value systems, norms, and role expectations, and therefore endows them with a liminal character” (Heuser 2014: 135). It is this betwixt-and-betweenness that turns cross-border pastimes and other forms of interaction with the neighborly Other into ideal sites

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for the projection of cultural fantasies about gender equality and civility in the Vietnam-China borderlands.

Imaginings of the Female Other In contrast to Phường’s idealization of Chinese gender relations, Chinese men are likely to feel attracted to the female Other because they believe she embodies virtues that were presumably lost in the process of Chinese female emancipation. As Caroline Grillot notes, “Vietnamese women recall for Chinese men a nostalgic picture of what Chinese women used to embody” (2012: 135), that is, an image that supposedly represents the Confucian ideal of a virtuous, submissive, and dutiful wife. In her work on Sino-Vietnamese couples in Hekou, Grillot (2014) has shown that the number of cross-border marriages between Vietnamese women and Chinese men has been increasing with the opening up of business opportunities and the subsequent influx of migrants to the region. These marriages are often grounded in pragmatic interests and desires related to building cross-border business networks and ensuring better material lives. On the one hand, as Grillot argues with reference to the Chinese husbands in these marriages, such pragmatism “is not considered to be a negative factor, but a personal and patriotic way of penetrating further into a land where local guidance is necessary in order to establish long-term collaboration despite obstacles” (Grillot 2014: 362). On the other hand, people in Hekou often perceive mixed couples with suspicion and ambivalence. Grillot aptly reads these sentiments as “a form of intimate resistance to collaborating with a former enemy and a still uncertain economic partner” (ibid.: 373). The development of transborder trade and tourism in the Vietnam-China borderland has in many ways also contributed to the “sexualization and sensualization of the border” (Chan 2009a: 221). For male Chinese pleasure seekers, the large number of young Vietnamese women working in the border area’s burgeoning sex service sector “embody the fantasy of the exotic sexual encounter on the border” (Grillot 2012: 130), and a visit to a brothel or massage parlor is often high on their list of tourist attractions in Vietnam (Chan 2009b: 210). Many of the Vietnamese women in the sex market see their work not as a means of mere survival but as a way of effectively accumulating enough capital to pursue an alternative future (Juan Zhang 2012). Their straightforward and sometimes even aggressive style of approaching potential clients often leads Chinese men to perceive them “as capable and scheming gold diggers rather than as innocent country girls tricked into sexual exploitation” (Juan Zhang 2012: 101; see also Zhou and Duong 2011).

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The sometimes rather aggressive and straightforward marketing strategies of Cốc Lếu Market vendors may actually reinforce such perceptions, albeit in a different, nonsexualized context. An episode from my fieldwork illustrates this point. One day in February 2011, a small group of rather well-dressed Chinese visitors approached the market stall that Mai operates. They had clear ideas about the kind of cigarettes that they wanted to buy, but Mai did not stock this variety and tried to convince them to buy another. Meanwhile her stall helper dashed away to borrow a few cartons of the desired brand of cigarettes from another stall.8 The vendor in the stall opposite Mai’s quickly grasped the situation, grabbed a carton of the requested brand, and sealed the deal before Mai’s helper returned to the scene. After the Chinese customers had paid for their purchase, Mai urged them to buy an additional two cartons of cigarettes from her. When the men declined the offer and walked off, she ran after them, loudly arguing that they had wanted to buy the cigarettes from her in the first place and that now that she could supply them they were obliged to buy from her. Mai’s stall helper came running with a plastic bag, put the cigarette cartons inside, and pushed them on one of the men, who eventually gave in—whether out of desperation, fear, or for the sake of peace. He handed Mai 200 yuan, equivalent to VNĐ600,000 or approximately US$28 at the time. Mai clutched the money in both hands, politely thanked the Chinese, and ran off, bending over with laughter because of the large profit she had extracted (fieldnotes, 26 December 2010). While I was unable to find out how Chinese customers perceived situations like this one, I feel safe in assuming that such encounters could project an image of cantankerous, money-grabbing women rather than feeding into notions of possible submissiveness and obedience. The examples make clear that processes of constructing self-identity and Otherness at the Vietnam-China border are inherently ambiguous and multivocal. Although some of the traders’ self and Other representations attest to historical prejudices linked to China’s claim of civilizational and economic superiority, different images emerge from personal encounters in a variety of contexts. These images challenge essentialized assumptions about the cross-border Other. Some of them serve as a negative foil for the construction of a positive self-identity, while still others embody a critique directed against the social conditions and societal attitudes that were responsible for negative experiences in people’s daily lives. This critique using images of the Other appear to hold particularly true for single or divorced Vietnamese women traders, who feel constrained by the prevailing gender ideologies and inequalities in Vietnamese society. Most importantly, however, cross-border trade relations also involve dealing with cultural differences in ­entrepreneurial ethics and business practices.

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Trade and Trust across the Border At 9:30 a.m. on an unremarkable morning, my assistant and I were watching the ebb and flow of market life from Grandmother Ngọc’s stall. Dressed in a pair of Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt, Shengli was running back and forth between stalls distributing goods and joking with the vendors. “He boasts around and makes crude jokes, but he’s kindhearted (tốt bụng),” one of the vendors offered. Not all of the Chinese suppliers were cast in a positive light. When I asked one of the female souvenir vendors how she felt about her Chinese business partners, she snarled: “Those Chinese are pretty clever. They are friendly with you if they sense a profit opportunity; if not, they turn their back on you instantly. If you don’t trade with them for a while, their attitude gets as stale as snail water (nhạt như nước ốc), or they turn really cold if you don’t bring them profit” (conversation, 24 December 2010). Other vendors hold similar views and describe the attitude of Chinese traders toward building positive trading relationships as primarily profit oriented (thân vì có lợi). Vietnamese traders often perceive their Chinese business partners as not stressing tình cảm (sentiment) as much as the Vietnamese do. Shaun Malarney explains: “Having sentiment with another implies . . . a feeling of warmth and affect, a sense of unity that transcends any status differences and an abiding conscientiousness in which one will willingly make personal sacrifices to assist the other” (2003: 190). Constructing relationships based on tình cảm is thus an essential part of being a moral person. In the economic sphere of the marketplace, tình cảm is expressed through mutual support and cooperation in handling daily affairs, as well as through participation in important events in the lives of fellow traders and their families, such as weddings and funerals (see also Leshkowich 2014a: 114–18). Cốc Lếu traders consider this highly valued and constitutive element of Vietnamese social relationships lacking not only in Chinese business relations but also in Chinese society as a whole. “They [the Chinese] only socialize with each other (chơi với nhau) if they see an advantage (lợi nhuận) for themselves,” said a male vendor who usually bought his merchandise in Hekou (interview, 2 November 2010). This perception of the Chinese Other as primarily motivated by mercenary self-interest is not uncommon in Southeast Asia (see Chirot and Reid 1997). Vietnamese traders, in turn, are often perceived by their Chinese suppliers as untrustworthy, especially when it comes to their debt-repayment practices. In common with small-scale traders in other parts of Southeast Asia (Alexander 1997; W. Davis 1973; Geertz 1963), Vietnamese small-scale traders largely depend on credit from their suppliers; they usually purchase

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merchandise on account and repay their outstanding debts gradually in installments (see Leshkowich 2014a: 102). For many traders at Cốc Lếu Market, however, establishing interest-free credit with suppliers is not necessarily a sign of financial constraints. As Hưng explained, it may also be a way to let their money work for them: If [a vendor] has 500 million worth of goods at their stall, then 300 million is owed to [middlemen and suppliers], and the vendor only uses 200 million of their own capital [for their daily business]. They stash their money in a savings account, or they lend it at high rates of interest to borrowers, and the money [they owe for goods delivered] they leave on the tab for no interest.

Vietnamese stall holders’ reluctance to settle their accounts upon delivery apparently poses a huge challenge to the trade ethics of Chinese nationals. According to Fuhua, a mobile trader who supplies Cốc Lếu Market vendors with cheap perfumes and other items, a Chinese entrepreneur has to adhere strictly to the terms of payment agreed on with his suppliers, lest they come to see him as untrustworthy and terminate their trade relations with him (interview, 19 February 2011). The biggest difficulty that Fuhua faced in trading with Vietnamese market vendors was to collect the money they owed him. “With a few exceptions, the vendors usually come forward with all sorts of excuses for not paying their debts,” he complained. One lame excuse, for example, would be that it was the first or the fifteenth of the lunar month, that is, a day dedicated to fulfilling ritual obligations. Or the vendors would lament that they couldn’t sell a thing because it had been raining all day. “I usually have to return many times to collect just a few hundred thousand đồng, which is really annoying,” Fuhua grumbled (see Figure 3.3.). Shengli experiences the same attitude toward payment obligations among Vietnamese traders. “Some actually have the money, but they still postpone paying for the goods; they just don’t care about trust [or trustworthiness] in trading relationships,” he complained (interview, 12 February 2011). In August 2012, Shengli estimated Lào Cai Market vendors’ total outstanding debts to him at VNĐ700 million (US$33,120; informal conversation, Hekou, 31 August 2012). To prevent losses from fluctuations in the exchange rate, he resorted to charging his clients a slightly higher price for the goods that he delivered to them if they did not pay immediately upon delivery. This practice earned him a good measure of insult and reproach from an outspoken souvenir vendor named Hồng: “Jeez, this Shengli guy is so ill bred (mất dạy), selling dear to us!!!” (field notes, 11 February 2011). While Shengli enjoys popularity among the vendors for his jolly demeanor and bawdy humor despite his approach to pricing, Longwei, a Chinese supplier of cigarettes and liquor, is widely regarded at Cốc Lếu Market as “a dirty scumbag in every possible sense” (thằng bẩn theo mọi nghĩa; conversation, 24

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Figure 3.3.  A mobile Chinese trader delivers goods to one of the souvenir stalls at Cốc Lếu Market. Orders and outstanding debts are written down in a notebook. Photograph by the author (2012).

December 2010), for the main reason that he always demands cash up front for his merchandise. According to vendor Hồng, “That bugger (thằng) Longwei makes lots of money, but he is such a dirty character! He demands money first thing and won’t let us buy on credit!” (conversation, 26 December 2010). Because vendors in the souvenir section of Cốc Lếu Market depend heavily on seasonal tourism for their incomes and generally sell at very low profit margins, to survive they have to rely on higher sales volumes than, say, vendors of electronic household appliances or hand-carved precious wood items. Since their financial capital resources are limited, small traders like Hồng often run short of cash and are unable—or pretend to be unable—to meet their debt obligations. Mobile Chinese traders and middlemen like the three I mentioned, in turn, depend to a very large extent on the Lào Cai vendors for their business and grudgingly have to put up with their slow payment habits. In contrast, Vietnamese traders and intermediaries who buy their merchandise from Chinese wholesalers in Hekou have to comply with the payment terms set by their suppliers to be regarded as trustworthy trading partners who are committed to long-term relationships for mutual profit. Chinese merchants who have been able to establish themselves as shop owners in one of Hekou’s wholesale and retail streets usually maintain a wide range of trade relations and thus have clear advantages over mobile traders like Shengli, Fuhua, and Longwei, who sell their wares directly to Lào Cai Market vendors. To assess

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the creditworthiness of a new customer, Chinese shop owners commonly insist on a trial period, during which they carefully observe the client’s behavior. If the client manages to establish a record of credibility, the shop owner gradually raises the amount of credit available to the client until it reaches the limit that the Chinese trader deems appropriate in the given circumstances (see also Barton 1977: 233–36). Middleman Hưng explains this process: After one or two years of trading and knowing each other, they would allow me to purchase on credit (mua chịu) because I never betrayed my trustworthiness (không làm mất uy tín). Once you have established trust, trading conditions get more favorable; they will let you order larger quantities, for example. It is easier to make a living on the basis of a long-term relationship, and you also get to know more people. (interview, 21 December 2010)

One of Hưng’s regular providers is Boqin Chen, a Hekou shop owner and wholesaler whose family migrated from Hunan province in the early 1990s. Because of their long-term business relationship, Boqin allows Hưng to buy up to a maximum of CNY20,000 (US$3,169) worth of goods at a time on credit. Upon his next purchase, Hưng has to settle a portion of his previous debt, in a practice called trả gối. At Boqin’s shop, Hưng is allowed to accumulate a maximum debt of CNY100,000 (approximately US$16,000), to be settled at the end of the lunar year. Hưng then has to collect the outstanding debt from the stall holders he provides with goods. This is not always so easy: “If [a trader] is unable to pay, then I have to take a loan (đi vay) and advance the money for them,” Hưng explains (interview, 6 September 2012). If one of his seven regular suppliers urges him to settle his bill earlier, Hưng will try to transfer the debt to the other creditors: In a long-term trade relationship, if you lack 2,000 yuan, or even 20,000 yuan, you can have it put on your tab. Whenever [the Chinese shop owner] needs the money he will say, “Hey Fatso, bring the money over”—and then I take the money I collected to pay someone else to pay the one who needs the money more urgently. This way we can shift the debt around. (interview, 6 September 2012)

Hưng’s long-term relationships of trust with suppliers across the border has shaped his perceptions of Chinese in ways that stand in striking contrast to their depiction as ruthless and calculating in their behavior. His views transmuted difference into sameness: “They live the same kind of business life that we do,” the good-natured middleman mused. “With regard to sentiment, the language barrier is a little bit of a problem, but once they can speak Vietnamese, we are like brothers and sisters” (interview, April 2013). For the Chinese shop owners in Hekou, however, the situation is more complicated. According to one of the electronics merchants in Hekou’s busy wholesale and retail streets (see Figure 3.4.), Chinese traders have to pay

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Figure 3.4.  One of Hekou’s main shopping streets catering to Vietnamese retailers. Cargo bicycles were a popular means of transporting goods across the border until they were banned in January 2014. Photograph by the author (2012).

their suppliers within three months’ time, if not immediately. “If I don’t have the money, I have to borrow from my friends to pay for the goods,” one of Hưng’s suppliers explained. By contrast, the Vietnamese would pay some this month and some the next. “They always buy on credit,” he said. “In Vietnam, everyone is in debt [ai cũng nợ].” He estimates that Vietnamese traders owe him a total of VNĐ1.5 billion (US$71,256). Yet this amount, he claims, was not very large compared to the outstanding debts owed to the Hekou shoe traders, which could amount to as much as VNĐ10 billion [US$475,041]. In his view, therefore, it was harder for the Chinese to make a decent living than it was for the Vietnamese (conversation, Hekou, 19 September 2012).9 In recent times, small-scale trade across the Vietnam-China border has become harder for both sides. Not only have Cốc Lếu Market vendors suffered from a decline in Chinese tourist visits in the past five years, but they also have had to deal with unpredictable customs practices and transport regulations at the border checkpoint. This unpredictability contributed to a decrease in small-scale trade flows, even though official statistics suggest otherwise (see Figure 3.2). Uncertainties associated with developments in the dispute between Hanoi and Beijing concerning the South China Sea and fears of a possible escalation in those disputes compound these challenges. While diplomatic tensions between Vietnam and China have been growing, traders like Hưng and his Chinese suppliers continue to stay on friendly

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terms, because they depend on one another for their livelihoods. “Whether we are facing difficult times or easy times, we still do business. It’s our relationships that matter,” Hưng says. “Concerning politics, I don’t know anything about that. I’m just an ordinary person” (interview, April 2013). Borders and boundaries, as Newman and Paasi point out, “not only separate groups and communities from each other but also mediate contacts between them” (1998: 194). With a few exceptions, the protagonists I quoted have moved to the Lào Cai-Hekou international border from distant areas of Vietnam and China so they can seize the economic opportunities at hand. Although the great “gold rush” to Hekou (Juan Zhang 2011: 126) and Lào Cai has clearly subsided and traders on both sides claim that business is no longer as profitable as it was in the 1990s and early 2000s, cross-border trade has remained an important part of the local economy. In the volatile market environment of the past years, the “art of neighboring” has taken on more importance and requires strategic skills in “navigating constraints and opportunities by way of constantly investing in social relations and networks” (Alff 2017: 112). As I have illustrated, small-scale traders on both sides construct their perceptions of self and Other through a multitude of everyday encounters, cross-border pastimes, and economic exchanges. As complex, multidimensional processes that involve both shortlived interactions and carefully cultivated relationships with the neighborly Other, these borderland identities and alterities are continuously in the making. The border thus emerges as a site of productive friction, providing not just access to economic opportunity but also a boundary through and across which c­ onstructions of self and Other take shape. Notes 1. The overall themes that relate to the dynamics of cross-border trade between Vietnam and China, such as transnational mobility and seasonal or permanent migration, local and international, in fact take on different emphases in different places. See Grillot 2016 and 2018 for an account of these dynamics in the twin border cities of Móng Cái (Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam) and Dongxing (Guangxi Province, China). Likewise, the marketplaces of different borderland communities are characterized by a high degree of diversity in terms of their spatiotemporal features, ethnic composition (of vendors and patrons), product specialization (local produce, China-made goods), clientele (local/translocal), and seasonality. For scholarly treatments of upland periodic markets, see, for example, Bonnin and Turner 2014; Schoenberger and Turner 2008; Tugault-Lafleur and Turner 2009; Turner 2010; Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud 2015; Turner and Michaud 2008). 2. Sources: Laocai Statistics Office 2011 (printed version; for the online versions of 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014, see http://cucthongke.laocai.gov.vn/cuct​hongke/​1248/​ 28158/50331/Nien-giam-thong-ke-/.

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3. Decision No. 254/2006/QD-TTg of 7 November 2006, amended by Decision No. 139/2009/QD-TTg of 23 December 2009. The government is currently considering cutting this amount to a total of VNĐ8 million per month (see TBKTSG 2015). 4. Informal conversation with Hanoi-based intellectual, fieldnotes, December 2011. 5. Fake products have long been swamping the Vietnamese market. In 1999, shoppers in Ho Chi Minh City even spoke of “a national epidemic of false goods and consumer deception” (Vann 2006: 287). 6. Vendors usually solicit sales by uttering the following sentences: “Please buy something, [elder brother, younger uncle, etc.] (mua gì đi anh/chú ơi),” “What would you like to buy, [elder brother, younger uncle] (mua gì anh/chú ơi)?” or “Please take a look at my merchandise (xem hàng cho em đi).” 7. The border is open every day from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. Vietnamese time (8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Chinese time). 8. Vendors often help each other out if one of them runs out of stock, and the gesture is commonly rewarded with a small share of the profit from the sale. 9. During her research in Móng Cái’s Central Market, where Chinese traders are in the majority, Caroline Grillot observed similar credit/debt practices. She notes that these practices “put the Chinese traders in a very uncomfortable position, which not only worries them and disrupts their commercial strategies and long-term investment plans, but also deters them from considering their Vietnamese customers as sustainable and reliable business partners” (Grillot 2016: 176).

4

° Illegality Cross-border economic opportunities also involve the illegal movement of people and goods across national boundaries. The rich returns from such opportunities often take the literally concrete form of opulent buildings standing out in Lào Cai’s posh neighborhoods. My inquiries about their owners were almost inevitably met with an indication that pointed to the complicity of some higher-level state official—or, rather, their relatives (con cháu các cụ cả, i.e., the grandchildren and nephews of senior elders)—in smuggling ventures. “They enjoy the elders’ protection and can thus freely engage in [the pursuit of illicit wealth],” one of my more straightforward interlocutors (whom I shall call Dũng) claimed. “That’s why there are so many luxurious villas here, although many rich people are cautious—they maintain a simple lifestyle in Lào Cai and buy houses in Hanoi instead.” Moreover, I was told that the contraband smuggled through the Lào Cai-Hekou border gate is really just the tip of the iceberg. The big smuggling apparently takes place elsewhere, at night. “Nighttime is the time when the black society (xã hội đen, i.e., organized criminals) becomes active,” Dũng continued, “and the majority of these guys are under the patronage of some big man. It’s only drugs and human traffickers who get caught. Everything else may move freely.” Journalistic reports generally confirm allegations like these and convey a lively sense of what takes place under the cover of darkness: There are plenty of small border crossings [along the Nậm Thi River]. Some have existed for a long time, but new ones keep mushrooming. At night, villagers even hang lights in the trees to facilitate the loading and unloading of goods. . . . “A few years ago, chickens and sweetmeats went through these spots, but nowadays it is mostly fertilizers,” [one of the villagers] revealed. He said the majority of bosses [chủ hàng] were from the lowlands, from Yên Bái, Phú Thọ, and Vĩnh Phúc. For lack of money, the village people were not involved in trade; they just worked as hired porters. Some time ago, so the man went on, smuggling goods across the river was as easy as going to the market [dễ như đi chợ], because the bosses had all “made law” [làm luật, i.e., made bribe arrangements] beforehand and didn’t need to worry about being arrested. Since the Chinese [had become stricter], the merchandise was mainly transported at night. All kinds of goods piled up on the banks of the river, and when everything was complete the villagers would inform their Chinese and Vietnamese recruiters to pick up their goods. “At the stations around here we mainly export pineapples and green bananas,

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whereas imported goods are packaged into sealed bags,” Mr. T. said. “We don’t know what is inside these bags, but we heard it was fertilizer, electronics, and household items.” During peak times, when lots of Chinese goods are imported, the young men in the village even lined up at the shore to pick up “express goods” [hàng cấp tốc]. (adapted from Hà An and Nguyễn Tuấn 2014)

These bustling sites of illegal transactions naturally remained off-limits for the foreign anthropologist, who, in the eyes of government officials, already posed a potential threat to border security. As it turned out, however, I did not have to sneak out to the countryside at night. I could observe small-scale cross-river smuggling right from Lào Cai’s riverfront promenade, in broad daylight. One afternoon in November 2010, my assistant and I were hanging out near one of the makeshift landing piers, watching a wooden long-tail boat carrying a group of people over to the other side (see Figure 4.1). Some wild-looking young men caught our attention. “Wanna go to China?” one of them asked in heavily accented Vietnamese. We decided that feigning naïve curiosity was probably the best strategy to get some information about what seemed to be an unlicensed ferry service across the river.

Figure 4.1.  An unofficial ferry boat carries bags of unidentified goods across the Red River from Hekou to Lào Cai. Photograph by the author (2011).

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An official-looking Vietnamese man wearing a shirt with attached badges appeared and offered assistance. I asked him, “So the boats can go freely? We would not get caught?” “Don’t worry,” the man reassured us, “we have a guarantee on that (có bảo lãnh).” “How much for the passage?” my assistant prodded further. “Fifty thousand đồng one way,” the man said. “In fact it’s only worthwhile if you have lots of goods to carry, or if you don’t have a visa for China and just want to cross over to take a few photos,” he explained. “But if you’re here for longer, I’d recommend you to get a border-crossing permit. It is easy to obtain and ultimately cheaper than the ferry service.” The Lào Cai-Hekou border region is a vivid—though in no way unique— example of what Itty Abraham and Willem van Schendel describe as a “zone where illegal flows are naturalized and intersect with the licit” (2005: 29). Although in common usage, the binary opposition of the legal and the illegal is treated as synonymous with that of the licit and the illicit. Abraham and van Schendel argue for “a more subtle approach” that distinguishes “between what states consider to be legitimate (‘legal’) and what people involved in transnational networks consider to be legitimate (‘licit’)” (ibid.: 4). In other words, ordinary citizens may see certain practices or things that the state prohibits by law as in perfect accordance with prevailing social or moral norms. The tensions and contradictions between official (state) definitions of legality and the people’s sense of legitimacy perhaps become most visible at the territorial margins of nation states (Galemba 2013: 276). As adjacent border towns, Lào Cai and Hekou are quite distinctive in character and appearance, but both can be described as places where “unsavory trades of smuggling and trafficking, gangs and prostitution prosper alongside the grandiose development paradigm[s] promoted by the state” (Juan Zhang 2014: 377). Building on Edward Aspinall and Gerry van Klinken’s conceptualization of “the state” as a complex relational arena “that favours certain kinds of strategic action while obstructing others, and where multiple players compete for influence, make alliances, and expropriate resources” (2011: 11), I am interested in the numerous entanglements and frictions between the legal, the illegal, and the informal1 that characterize local cross-border trade and marketplace-based commerce at the Vietnam-China border. The unevenness with which developmental policies and their related regulations have been implemented and enforced at various levels of authority has contributed to the emergence of what Aihwa Ong calls “zones of exception” (Ong 2006: 118). Ong applied the concept of the exception to neoliberal strategies of governing

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that rely on “differently administered spaces of ‘graduated’ or ‘variegated sovereignty’” (ibid.: 7), such as free trade zones in border areas and other economic and administrative enclaves. These spaces of neoliberal exception offer economic opportunities to certain segments of society but not to others. In line with this conception, the Lào Cai-Hekou border gate provides small trader and migrant citizens with opportunities for economic self-advancement that are not easily available in Vietnam’s lowland regions. But in contrast to the chances offered by the neoliberal exception, these opportunities are considered viable only if tariff regulations and other legal provisions can be circumvented. This is routinely achieved by colluding with corrupt state officials. Corrupt officials amount to more than just a few bad apples in Vietnam’s bureaucratic system. “By paying bribes we feed [nuôi sống] the tax inspectors and customs officials, and these guys in turn feed other guys,” middleman Hưng explained to me, alluding to the intricate networks of patronage that permeate Vietnamese state administrative structures (Gainsborough, Đặng, and Trần 2009; Gillespie 2001), “because if you want to work in a lucrative place like this [the Lào Cai-Hekou border gate], you have to spend huge sums to pay your way in” (interview, 6 September 2012). In this chapter I show that those who inhabit the margins of a relational arena where material and immaterial “goods pass up, down and sideways through and along the patron-client networks and alliances that pervade state institutions and that crisscross the boundary between state and society” (Aspinall and van Klinken 2011: 23) ultimately become trapped in a “gray space” (Yiftachel 2009) of overlap between their inclusion in the neoliberal logics of economic self-advancement and their exclusion from access to legal means of livelihood.

Neoliberal Reforms, Corruption, and the Secret of Law Corruption has long been closely associated with underdevelopment and poor governance in the non-Western world. However, since the end of the Cold War the spread of neoliberal principles of market deregulation and privatization has spurred unprecedented forms and scales of corruption across the globe, contrary to the promises of dominant neoliberal perspectives (Brown and Cloke 2004). Vietnam’s shift from a centrally planned to a socialist-­ oriented market economy has had similar effects, and ordinary citizens feel increasingly disenchanted by the degree to which corruption in its various manifestations has come to permeate their lives.2 “I just hate the system (chế độ),” one woman vendor whispered into my ear, “it is corrupt all the way through!”3

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Corruption is of course nothing new to Vietnam. Besides the most common contemporary terms for corruption and bribery, tham nhũng and hối lộ, the Vietnamese language is rich in metaphorical expressions denoting a variety of corruption-related practices in different historical and social class contexts. The phrase “the silver bullion pierces the paper document” (nén bạc đâm toạc tờ giấy), for example, dates back to precolonial times and indicates a bribe paid to influence a mandarin official to revoke a decree or an edict. If he was a member of the petitioner’s lineage, the official would even have been morally obliged to generously grant favors and privileges to his relative, true to the adage “one man becomes a mandarin, his entire lineage benefits” (một người làm quan, cả họ được nhờ). Under French colonial rule (1884–1945), corruption and nepotism among mandarins and local notables became ever more pervasive (Gillespie 2002: 174). The common people’s attitude toward greedy and corrupt officials was encapsulated in a proverb that is still popularly used today: “Bandits steal by night, officials steal by day” (cướp đêm là giặc, cướp ngày là quan). During the so-called subsidy period from 1975 to 1986, bribing and gift giving was frequently referred to as lo lót (“taking care of the lining”), in the sense of feathering someone’s nest to generate favorable conditions for oneself. Significant segments of the Vietnamese population, including traders and entrepreneurs, apparently “survived decades of central planning and official suppression by co-opting, corrupting and evading state regulators” (Gillespie 2009: 248; MacLean 2008b). In southern Vietnam, similar practices evolved during the cooperativization of private trade in the 1980s. Ann Marie Leshkowich relates how traders at Bến Thành Market (in Ho Chi Minh City) “today joke that one of the great ironies of the central government’s cooperative system was that the primary cooperation it fostered was between traders and market management in outwitting the state” (2008: 23). As elsewhere in socialist economies, elaborate networks of social ­relations—based on mutual obligation and reciprocity and nurtured by the exchange of gifts and favors—played an important role in facilitating access to otherwise scarce goods.4 After economic reform, such networks—as well as corruption—not only became more or less “regular solutions to problems of exchange left unsolved by the rule of law and administrative reforms” (Abrami 2002: 2) but gradually evolved into a system of rule that some scholars classify as neopatrimonial. In such a system, public offices become commodities that provide ample opportunities to earn back one’s own investment by way of misappropriating public resources and extracting rents from below, parts of which are channeled upward in return for further patronage from higher levels of state bureaucracy. In other words, a situation in which the state thrives upon the proliferation of informal and illegal activities, regardless of the loss of revenue from import duties (see Reeves 2014: 169).

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From an anthropological perspective, corruption can hence be understood as “a form of exchange: a polysemous and multistranded relationship and part of the way in which individuals connect with the state” (Shore and Haller 2005: 7). If all forms of exchange are ultimately embedded in social and power relations and moral economies, then corruption, too, is subject to continuous processes of adjustment and adaptation to changing societal, economic, and political circumstances. Besides addressing the particular social and cultural complexities involved, an anthropological inquiry into the practices and discourses of corruption further sheds light on how, in Gupta’s words, “people imagine the state to be, what state actions are considered legitimate, and how ideas of rights of citizens and subjects are constituted” (Gupta 2005:175). However, Gupta does not take into account that citizens may also be, to some extent, co-opted into the wider political economy of systemic corruption. As David Smith has pointed out in the case of Nigeria, ordinary citizens “can be, paradoxically, active participants in the social reproduction of corruption even as they are also its primary victims and principal critics” (2007: 5). In my conversations in the market, I found that metaphors and other figures of speech play a crucial role in mediating such processes of embedding and co-opting. As cognitive tools “rooted in the cultural categories within which speakers construct their conversations” (Ben-Amos 2000: 152; see also Lakoff and Johnson 1980), metaphors frame and shape human (self-)perception and social experience. They also harbor the potential to transmit social commentary and political criticism. The metaphorical framing of petty corruption as “making law” (làm luật) is a thought-provoking case in point. It was apparently not until the early 1990s that certain forms of corruption became couched in terms of làm luật. Gillespie contends that making law refers to “the arrogation of power by officials to resolve issues not directly addressed by formal law” (2001: 10), which then “has the positive connotation of manufacturing local solutions to centrally imposed problems and the negative implication of inventing laws to extract rents.” My research, however, shows that in its current usage the term more likely refers to the negotiation of actually existing legal prescriptions. Perhaps the most commonplace làm luật situation involves the payment of an on the spot fine between the traffic police and a traffic rules violator, such as when a motorcyclist is caught turning into the wrong lane or fails to present a valid driver’s license during a routine traffic stop. Smugglers of contraband make law with relevant local authorities before carrying their wares across the border. Larger illegal trade networks, for example in the logging and timber industry, may even use bribe brokers, called người làm luật, to ensure that each truckload of wood enjoys a smooth passage through various

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road checkpoints along the way (Sikor and To 2011:695; To, Mahanty, and Dressler 2014). Depending on the nature, amount, and size of goods smuggled on the chosen route, more or less elaborate arrangements need to be made. The term therefore implies a certain agency on the part of the bribers in making laws that suit their needs. But làm luật also refers to the extortion of bribes from offenders in return for not applying the law. To unravel the strands of the law-making metaphor, we will need a brief review of the Vietnamese political and legal system. In Vietnam’s one-party system, the role of the Communist Party as the leading force in state and society remains firmly enshrined in the constitution. The National Assembly, designated as the highest organ of state power and representative of the people, is vested with the sole constitutional and legislative authority. But, as with legislative processes elsewhere in the world, the reality is more complicated. During the prereform era, party resolutions and directives, though not technically considered law, in fact had a prelegislative function and thus formed the “skeleton of national legislation” (Dang and Beresford 1998: 71–79). These resolutions, often mapped out in opaque propagandistic prose, were then basically left to interpretation at the hands of lower-level authorities, which allowed for a limited, but relevant scope of flexibility in (technically illegal) local adaptation and experimentation (Kerkvliet 2005). Since the launch of the Đổi mới reforms in 1986, the legal system has undergone profound changes aimed at establishing the rule of law and improving government transparency. This entails that the government is now not only authorized to propose and draft laws but may also issue further subordinate legislation such as detailed regulations, bylaws, and guidelines. Adding to the complexity of the legislative process is that law-making authority is not limited to the central level of state administration. It also takes place at the provincial, district, and commune levels. Thus, “Each level can promulgate subordinate legislation and from a constitutional perspective act as a lawmaker” (Gillespie 2008b: 681). The vertical distribution of law-making authority has led to a proliferation of decrees, ordinances, directives, and circulars, while providing its enforcers and transgressors (who often coincide with each other) with new avenues for corruption—an effect that Lü sees as an “unintended result of institutionalization efforts” (2000: 172) in the case of China. In Vietnam, the coining of làm luật as an idiomatic term for corruption underscores Walter Benjamin’s contention that “law making is power making, and, to that extent, an immediate manifestation of violence” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2006: 35). The “secret of the law,” as Anders and Nuijten argue, is that the possibility of its violation is already “inscribed into the law as hidden possibility” (2007: 12). At the Lào Cai-Hekou border gate, this hidden possibility emerges as a

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rule and generates a form of localized sovereign power that wields authority by violating the law, or, as Jakob Rigi puts it, by “counterfeiting legality” (2012: 81). The following ethnographic account explores how Lào Cai traders frame and enact relationships of complicity in the spaces of exception where corrupt encounters with state officials take place. It shows how these relationships are shaped in a dialectic tension between the degree of illegality or illegitimacy perceived by either side and the degree of reason and sentiment applied in the act of corruption.

Compassionate Complicity One chilly morning in early January 2011, a team of inspectors from the provincial Department for Standards, Metrology, and Quality (Cục Tiêu Chuẩn Đo Lường Chất Lượng; under the Ministry of Science and Technology) arrived at the electronics section of Cốc Lếu Market. Mrs. Hà, a stout vendor in her forties who runs a stall selling rice cookers and other electric household appliances, had just finished arranging her merchandise on the shelves when the inspectors randomly singled out her stall for close examination and started rummaging through the mostly Chinese-produced goods on display. Hà’s puzzled expression quickly turned to indignation. “For heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed, “All of our goods are floating goods, across the river goods—just go ahead and confiscate them from each and every stall; here at the border we’re all smugglers and tax dodgers!” A male vendor from a neighboring stall chimed in with a pleading voice, Please sympathize with us—we are market folks suffering from famine [đói kém]! Please exempt us so that our kids have a bowl of rice! If we don’t sell these goods we won’t have any customers—they like buying cheap stuff. In many months we suffer losses, in others we just make enough to survive!

Lowering his voice again, he continued his cell phone conversation: “We’re having a quality inspection here; now we’ll have to bargain and make law; sure it won’t be a problem.” After about an hour of agitated suspense, bureaucratic formalities, and negotiations, one of the inspectors explained: The law needs to be implemented; you [vendors] need to accept that. Merchandise that doesn’t comply with quality standards either has to be confiscated or charged with a fine of at least 10 percent of its value. In this case this would probably mean ten million đồng [around US$475]. However, we will only charge one million, because people in the border area could not live by trade if we imposed the law properly. The annual inspection is just to remind you that there is, in fact, a law.

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As this incident shows, the fines imposed for violating quality regulations are often little more than symbolic reminders that there is a law in place as well as a government agency in charge and capable of enforcing it. This has different implications for the traders than one might expect. It implies, first and foremost, that vendors need to make law with relevant authorities. At Cốc Lếu Market, this is sometimes done collectively on a monthly basis. “Each stall holder pays 200,000 đồng per month to the market control department,” Hưng’s wife Hoa claims. Each month, the section head (tổ trưởng ngành hàng) collects the VNĐ6 million bribe from the thirty stall holders in the electronics section.5 He then invites the market control officer out for a drink and discreetly hands over the money in an envelope. “At the end of the day, it is important to know people who are able to help you and who you can rely on in difficult circumstances,” Hoa ponders (conversation, 21 December 2010). The quality inspection incident also needs to be considered in the larger context of the everyday practices, social norms, and moral attitudes that inform Vietnamese small market trade. Mrs. Hà’s cynical self-accusation (“We’re all smugglers and tax dodgers!”) captures, in a nutshell, a crucial aspect of the social stigma attached to traders and commerce. Although marketplaces and small-scale trade are ubiquitous, legitimate, viable means of income in contemporary Vietnam, the ancient stereotype of the dishonest trader has prevailed to this day in public opinion (Leshkowich 2011; Malarney 1998). Vendors are usually suspected of manipulating their weigh scales or yardsticks, of lying about the origins and quality of their goods, and of overcharging the unsavvy customer for the sake of higher profits. These accusations are not always unfounded, and sometimes they are even openly admitted: “If we don’t lie,” souvenir vendor Loan confided, “we cannot survive in the market.” Mrs. Hà’s outburst adds yet another dimension to this picture, namely that traders also cheat the government of tax revenue by smuggling goods across the river (or through the official border gate) from China. Her stall neighbor’s plea to the quality inspectors for compassion (“We are market folks suffering from famine”) does not dispute this practice but instead provides a number of explanations for the traders’ resort to fiscal fraud. Most explicitly, he mentions the customers’ preference for cheap goods that don’t allow the official tax and customs fees to be calculated into the prices. He implies that market trade is not a highly profitable business in the first place and that it provides little more than mere subsistence—a bowl of rice for the children, so to speak. One key to this self-construction is certainly to be found in the dictates of popular morality according to which honest traders must keep their profit margins very small lest they are accused of charging cutthroat prices. By emphasizing the smallness of their commercial endeavors and downplaying their success in the market economy, contemporary small traders perhaps

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primarily seek to shield themselves against all sorts of regulations that can cut further into their profits. However, their self-description as unfortunate and pitiable market folks plagued by poor sales and meager profits also entails a performative dimension that elicits the compassionate complicity of state authorities, in this case the quality inspectors.6 But the inspectors are of course not the only law enforcement agency to be considered. Let us therefore look at the various hurdles that electric rice cookers and other merchandise have to pass before ending up on the shelves (or under the counter) of Cốc Lếu stall holders.

Transporting Goods across the Border A transporter or intermediary with a full load of Chinese goods in the oversized bags attached to her cargo bicycle’s handlebars first has to report to the Chinese customs and file a customs declaration stating the total value of the goods (see Figure 4.2). She (or he) then has to pass the entry exit inspection and quarantine officer, who briefly checks whether the load contains quarantine risk items or prohibited goods. After having her border-crossing permit

Figure 4.2.  Transporters push their cargo bicycles towards customs clearance in Hekou, China. Photograph by the author (2011).

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stamped by the immigration officer, she crosses the bridge and heads toward the Vietnamese customs and immigration office. Mrs. Oanh, a 47-year old native of Thái Bình province, explains, “If I carry only one load and the value is below two million đồng, I am exempted from import tax. But if I make a second trip on the same day I have to pay.” In that case the customs official would estimate the value of the goods to assess the appropriate amount of customs duty, and Oanh would try to bargain with him to get what she calls “a small reduction.” In case she transports high-value goods, she has to “make law” (làm luật, i.e., negotiate a bribe) with the official: “For each consignment I have to line their hands (lót tay, i.e., grease their palms) with a few hundred thousand đồng, but that amount is still two times less than the customs duties,” Oanh says with a mischievous smile on her weathered face. “These are the tricks by which we can make a living (mẹo làm ăn) as transporters” (interview, 23 February 2011). Porters and trader-intermediaries earn an average VNĐ100,000 per day (around US$5). The “fees” they pay at the border gate cut into their net profits because the responsibility for customs clearance rests on their shoulders. Their income therefore depends not only on the quantities they carry but also on their skills in negotiating with customs officials. Dealing with customs officers is a risky business fraught with uncertainty, because it basically leaves the transporter/intermediary at the mercy of the individual customs official’s whims and demands. One day the officer on duty will let her pass without further hassle; the next he may feel inclined to conduct a thorough inspection of the goods. Those who can afford it, therefore, make arrangements with customs officials on a monthly basis, which means paying a fee commensurable with the volume of their expected goods traffic. Hưng, for example, has an arrangement with a set of customs officials on a VNĐ500,000 per month basis (around US$24) and schedules his trips to match their hours of duty. Once the goods have reached Vietnamese territory, he may be pounced upon by a mobile patrol of the market control department in charge of trade law enforcement (Cục Quản Lý Thị Trường, under the Ministry of Industry and Commerce). For a monthly “fee” of VNĐ400,000 (around US$19) to the market control team, Hưng does not have to worry much about such encounters. The good-natured intermediary regards these arrangements as necessary for him and the vendors he supplies to run a reasonably profitable business. “Making law with customs officials and evading (import) tariffs are essential; otherwise we couldn’t make enough to live on,” he claims. Hưng sees his trade in cheap home appliances as a legitimate way to make a humble living, not as a way of getting rich. “Honest people who run legitimate businesses stay poor; they just make enough for a bowl of rice,” he explains. “If you

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want to become rich, you have to smuggle and trade in prohibited goods” (conversation, 27 August 2012). While this may well be the case for the bosses of organized smuggling rings, it is not necessarily true for small-scale traders and transporters who trade in contraband goods and prohibited items. Thanh, who I introduced in chapter 2, supplies Cốc Lếu Market vendors not only with legal merchandise but also with a variety of so-called hot goods (hàng nóng), such as electric shock prods, daggers, dildos, vibrators, and inflatable sex dolls. During her early days as a transporter, Thanh mainly relied on the unofficial ferry boats for smuggling these items. For this service to operate “freely” (tự do), both the boat owner and the smuggler have to negotiate bribes with various regulatory and law enforcement agencies. For Thanh, these complicated arrangements were worth the trouble only when she wanted to transport large volumes of contraband or items that could not easily be hidden in bags or strapped to the body. “When I used the ferry boat, besides paying the ferryman, I had to pay a local tax [thuế địa bàn] at the landing place, and I also had to make law with the border patrol police, the river police, and the market control department,” she reminisces (conversation, 12 February 2011). To save expenses, she decided at some point to use the official border gate for her smuggling activities. On each of her trips she carries only small amounts of illegal items hidden under legal goods or underneath her loose-fitting clothes. “These fake weenies [she uses the Vietnamese expression chim (bird) for the vibrators] are small, just a bit larger than a mobile phone,” she said. “I carry them on the body (trong người), strapped to my shins, because [the customs officials] can’t search me there.” If the customs officer on duty was known to be especially picky, she would rather wait for the next shift than risk having her goods confiscated. Every once in a while, Thanh said she was “caught” by the mobile market control team that frequently patrolled the border gate area. “Of course they see me going to the market [i.e., crossing the border] every day, so they know [I smuggle things],” Thanh explained. “I pay 400,000 đồng to make law with them. They say, ‘When going to the market, you need to know the right moves [đi chợ thì phải biết điều].’”7 These bribe arrangements obligate the recipient to bend or ignore the existing rules to the givers’ benefit, thus minimizing (though never completely eliminating) the risk of customs scrutiny. Hưng conceives of this arrangement as an exchange: “They give us a bowl of rice, and we reciprocate with a bowl of congee for them [người ta cho mình bát cơm, mình bớt lại bát cháo cho người ta]” (interview, 21 December 2010). This metaphorical conceptualization deserves some further attention in light of the concept of the moral economy that E. P. Thompson (1971) advanced in the context of the English working class and that James Scott (1976) applied to Asian peasant societies. While Thompson’s emphasis was “confined to confrontations in the market

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place over access (or entitlement) to ‘necessities’—essential food” in times of scarcity (Thompson 1991: 337), Scott further underlined the importance of social norms and values that inform notions of rights to just prices (including rents and taxes) and access to economic resources, as well as moral expectations regarding the balance of reciprocity in the relations between common people and ruling elites. Such notions can also be seen at work in the small-scale traders’ bribe arrangements. By granting an exception to the restrictions imposed by the law, the state official allows the small trader to import (either tax-free or tax-reduced) cheap goods that are in popular demand and can be sold with a reasonable profit so that the small trader has a bowl of steamed rice to eat. In return for the officer’s leniency, the trader presents him with a token of appreciation (“a bowl of congee”).8 In addition to its construal as a share of profits, the rice and congee metaphor serves as a poignant reminder that, according to popular conceptions of virtuous leadership, a state official should be goodhearted with the people and act in their interests (Koh 2006: 91–95; Malarney 1997). The ideal of the virtuous official resonates with the Confucian-based emphasis on “leadership by moral virtue” (Gillespie 2002: 184) that has been adopted (and adapted) by the Communist Party as one of its core principles. However, the extent to which contemporary state officials take advantage of their positions to enrich themselves has long exceeded the limits of acceptability in the eyes of the public. After all, the law is not negotiated by small traders in their own interest alone. It often serves as a pretext for corrupt officials to extort bribes. Many traders are aware that even the most compassionate customs official in fact takes more than is his due share in the bargain. According to Dũng, customs officials do not just content themselves with the additional income from the small trader’s bribe. They also siphon off large parts of the tax revenue: “Besides the law-making money (tiền làm luật), 70 percent of the reduced tax rate I pay ends up in the pockets of the customs officers and their patrons. Only about 30 percent goes to the state coffer.” Regardless of whether this particular accusation is valid or not, it implies that the petty bribe arrangements of Lào Cai small traders are deeply entrenched in the exigencies of systemic corruption and (inevitably) contribute to the sustenance of the corrupt exception as the only viable way of securing access to economic resources and muddling through the vicissitudes of life. Compassion and sentiment are therefore only one side of the coin in the metaphorical construal of market sellers’ complicit relationships with state officials. The other side—marked by mutual contempt—reveals the arbitrary nature of sovereign power in sites of corrupt exception at the Vietnam-China border to an even greater extent, as the following ethnographic incident shows.

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Predatory Harassment It was a Saturday afternoon in September 2012. My assistant and I were about to embark on one of our last rounds at Cốc Lếu Market before departing from the field, when we noticed a crowd gathering around one of the stalls in the souvenir section. I decided to stay inconspicuously out of sight, but my assistant joined the vendors at one of the nearby stalls where she could observe the scene and take note of the vendors’ comments. Linh’s stall had been targeted in a police raid seeking to crack down on prohibited goods. It is an open market secret that several stall holders in the souvenir section offer so-called hot goods (hàng nóng), such as dangerous weapons or goods that are considered morally harmful (e.g., adult toys and sexual health products). These items are carefully stored out of sight, and customers interested in taking a look are usually asked to step inside the vendor’s booth. Buyers who were not yet familiar with the market first needed to ask where they could find what they were looking for. A young stall helper named Bình relates: A lot of people ask for toys [đồ chơi], and of course they mean adult toys, but I pretend to be naïve and refer them to the children’s toys section. But some ask directly, “Do you sell hot goods?” In this case you need to be very careful because these guys could just as well be plainclothes policemen. (conversation, 31 December 2010)

When Bình refers a customer to one of the hot goods vendors, she has to be pretty sure that this person is not an inquiry agent; otherwise she would be in trouble as well. But if the deal works out successfully, she also receives a portion of the profit. Earlier that day, Linh had been oblivious to the trap awaiting her. Two separate teams of plainclothes police officers acted as customers and bought several electroshock weapons and sex toys for a total market value of VNĐ8 million (around US$380). At the time of our arrival at the market, the stall had already been thoroughly searched, and a number of guns, knives, and Tasers as well as a bunch of vibrators and blow-up dolls had been confiscated. Two officers from the market control department recorded notes about the case, while the vendors at the neighboring stall engaged in discussion. “Everyone [in this section] sells that stuff—there ain’t anyone who doesn’t,” one of them claimed. “It’s just bad luck that these cunt-faced bastards came by [Linh’s stall]. These dogs just crave money!” Meanwhile, Linh was pleading with the market control officer, “I have to take care of my family—we’re not making much money—please kindly exempt me [from being fined]!” A small group of vendors, including those who are most notorious for selling prohibited items, was watching from afar. “It doesn’t help to call on

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your family members [who work for the government] or on police acquaintances,” one of them argued. “You still have to pay—probably 25 to 30 million đồng [US$1,190–1,430]. If you’re lucky, they close your stall for only a few days. If not, they shut it down for a whole two weeks. Then it’ll be long before you can earn some rice to eat!” Linh’s friend at the opposite stall added, “These dogs just want to eat money (ăn tiền). Go ahead and make law with them to get it over with.” The following day Linh’s stall remained closed. My assistant learned from one of the vendors that the ward police had played hard and threatened that from now on they would raid one suspected vendor’s stall every day. To prevent this from happening in the future, the stall holders in question all went to the ward police station and paid VNĐ3 million each (US$143), true to the common wisdom that “up-front money is clever money” (đồng tiền đi trước là đồng tiền khôn). They paid the up-front money not only to the police but also to Mr. Thọ, the director of the market management board in 2010. During my research, I frequently saw Thọ strolling around in the market, sometimes in the company of his little grandson. He often sat down at Grandmother Ngọc’s stall and watched the flow of customers in the souvenir section while having a free cup of tea and a cigarette. “Mr. Thọ roams around the market to loot,” one of the vendors nagged. “He smokes for free, drinks for free, and whatever his grandson likes he gets for free. Or he buys things he likes, but then he does not pay for them” (conversation with Thu, 30 December 2011) The vendors also saw him observe the stalls selling prohibited items so that he could make some extra money by issuing fines. “This even happens to those who have already ‘made law’ with him for the whole year,” Thu complains. Although the traders generally resented Mr. Thọ, they also enjoyed a certain freedom during his term of office. “When Mr. Thọ was the director it was easier [to trade in prohibited items],” Thu told me in 2012, when Tho had already been replaced by his successor. “Business was easy, because he took bribes [ăn tiền]. Whatever we wanted to do, we just had to give him some money; that’s it—no more worries!” (conversation, 5 September 2012). The police raid incident is in many ways similar to the quality inspection I described earlier. A law enforcement authority sets an example by singling out a particular stall for scrutiny, which then leads to negotiations of a fee for being exempted from such inspections for a while, although there is no time guarantee. Such raids are generally understood as a staged pretext for bribe arrangements and are met with much resentment and contempt on the part of the small traders. In the case of Hà’s substandard rice cookers the inspection is construed as a kind reminder of state authority, but the raid for weapons and sex toys at Linh’s stall served as a crude assertion of sovereign power to clamp down on the souvenir vendors’ trade in prohibited goods any day, any

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time. Rather than being considered as legitimate enforcers of law, the police (as well as other law enforcement officials) are despised as hungry predators who literally feed on money (ăn tiền)—despite the fact that dealing in prohibited items, particularly deadly weapons, does not render the perpetrators morally virtuous subjects either. Of course the profits from selling an electric Taser to a teenage hoodlum are significantly higher than from vending rice cookers and other electric household appliances, and so are the sums that have to be paid for this gate to riches to remain open on both sides. Law making—in its euphemistic sense of demanding or negotiating bribes—emerges here as the negotiation of the very terms that facilitate the corrupt state of exception, defined by the murky entanglements between the shadow economy, criminal networks, and the state, of which the petty bribe arrangements between small traders and local-level state officials obviously constitute not more than a negligible fraction.

Corrupt Exceptions Starting from the metaphorical framing of petty corruption in the context of small-scale trade at the Vietnam-China border as “making law,” I have conceived of bribery arrangements between Cốc Lếu traders and local state officials in terms of a corrupt exception, that is, as a condition of localized sovereign power in which the rule of law has no force and corrupt acts and practices acquire the force of law (see Agamben 2005: 39). The incidents I have described illustrate how the prevalent stigma of moral inferiority, fraudulence, and dishonesty attached to market trade plays a decisive role in the small traders’ self-descriptions as low-profit earners whose shelves are glutted with unsellable goods. Traders cleverly employed notions of family responsibility and images of nurturing to urge local officials to show compassion and apply the law with reason and sentiment, that is in flexible and selective ways. The rice and congee metaphor adds another moral dimension to small traders’ bribe arrangements by casting them as reciprocal obligations, with the bribe as a token of appreciation in exchange for reduced tariffs on their import. “If we don’t make law,” Hưng explains, “they charge higher import taxes. If we make law, they may let us pass through right away. It’s all just a give and take.” The analysis of the “popular semiology of corruption” (Blundo and Olivier de Sardan 2006) sheds light on how Vietnamese cross-border traders perceive and experience a state that Gainsborough has described as one that “is little more than a disparate group of actors with a weak notion of ‘the public good’, using uncertainty, not impartial rules, as the basis of order” (2010:

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182). It also reveals how the corrupt exception is engaged to both contest and reinforce local sovereign power. On one hand, the rhetorical construction of bribed state officials as compassionate accomplices serving the interests of the people can be understood as a (somewhat ironic) reminder that moral (and legitimate) leadership must rest on the devotion to the sustenance and well-being of the ruled and not on the use or extraction of resources for the rulers’ benefit. On the other hand, such arrangements are considered essential in the obvious sense that they are felt to create better profit opportunities from small-scale trade. Recently, operating a stall at the market had already become less profitable than in earlier years. Under current conditions, small-scale traders find it much harder than in earlier years to make a decent living without breaking the law. In common with Ong’s spaces of neoliberal exception—that is, economic enclaves and special administrative zones that are “subjected to different kinds of governmentality and that vary in terms of the mix of disciplinary and civilizing regimes” (Ong 1999: 7)—the Vietnam-China border region offers avenues for economic self-advancement to small trader and migrant citizens. The difference is that these avenues are not officially sanctioned by the law. On the contrary, they are, in fact, restricted in scale and scope by the existing legal framework—although one might argue that they are not particularly discouraged. Many governments in fact refrain from rigor in enforcing tax and tariff laws as a way of ensuring their perceived legitimacy and the loyalty of their subjects (Karras 2010: 109). The traders circumvent the restrictions by negotiating bribe arrangements with government officials, without which, they say, their businesses would not yield enough income to feed their families. However, these arrangements, irrespective of whether the merchandise is strictly prohibited by law or merely liable to customs duty, ultimately traps the traders within a “gray space” (Yiftachel 2009) of uncertainty that lingers between the “light” of free trade, economic opportunity, and self-advancement and the “darkness” of illegality, corruption, and arbitrary exercise of power. Considered in this way, the corrupt exception nestles in a shadowy overlap between what Ong (2006) describes as neoliberalism as exception and exception to neoliberalism. At the Lào Cai-Hekou border gate, corruption’s complicit construal as a compassionate act of mutual feeding thus underscores the failure of the central party state to provide better livelihood opportunities for its citizens as much as it highlights the frictions inherent in local market-society-state dynamics.

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Notes 1. The term “informal economy” was originally popularized by Keith Hart (1973) to describe the “unregulated” economic activities of low-income urban dwellers in Ghana. Here, it refers to “situations where the goods and services transacted are legal, but the ways in which they are transacted are not” (Smart and Zerilli 2014: 229). 2. For a concise discussion of whether and in what ways Vietnam can be considered neoliberal, see the special issue of Positions edited by Schwenkel and Leshkowich (2012). 3. Since Vietnam passed its first anticorruption law in 2005, there has been a marked increase in high-profile corruption, fraud, and embezzlement charges resulting in longterm imprisonment and death penalty sentences (Gainsborough 2010; Hayton 2010). But as Gainsborough cautions, this clampdown should not be attributed solely to an intensification of anticorruption measures. These big cases, he argues, “are best understood as an attempt by the political centre to discipline the lower levels of the party state in a climate of increased decentralization” (2010: 52). 4. In Soviet Russia and prereform China, such personal networks constituted by the exchange of favors (known as blat and guanxi) played a similar role in securing access to scarce resources (e.g., Ledeneva 1998; Yang 1995). 5. The section heads are commonly elected by the traders and act as intermediaries to the market management board and other government officials. 6. As Leshkowich (2014a) has pointed out, the performance of weakness in the context of dealing with state officials is also profoundly gendered. Kusabe (2009) made a similar point about women traders using gender stereotypes when negotiating with officials at the Thai-Lao border. 7. Consisting of the words “to know” (biết) and “word, sentence, fact, matter, pretext” (điều), the Vietnamese compound biết điều is translated as “reasonable, judicious, sensible” in the dictionary. Its connotations, however, go well beyond this meaning and translate into “knowing how to behave appropriately in a certain situation” as well as “knowing one’s place in the interaction.” Thanks to Minh T. N. Nguyen for pointing this out. 8. Anyone who has prepared cháo knows how little rice is needed for a whole cauldron of congee—although, strictly speaking, the human labor involved in this transformation certainly accounts for some added value—and the cháo is therefore seen as a fraction of the benefits bestowed. As such, the rice and gruel metaphor is reminiscent of a term used to describe a different form of corruption. Lại quả (literally: “retaking the fruit”) refers to the traditional betrothal ceremony and the custom of presenting the bride’s parents with a set of gifts involving cakes, areca nuts, tea, and tobacco. After the ceremony, the bride’s family reserves a small portion of these gifts for the groom’s family to take back. This expression is used, for example, when large projects get approved and the contractors return a certain percentage of their funds to the patronage bodies who decided in their favor.

5

° Morality At ten o’clock on a cloudy December morning, souvenir vendor Xuân sits in front of her stall and frowns. “The market is deserted today [vắng khách lắm], these goods are unsaleable [hàng hóa ế lắm]!” she blurts out when she sees me ambling down the aisle. She had been tending to her stall since eight o’clock this morning without selling a single item. The only person who had expressed interest in her goods, a poorly dressed country bumpkin (nhà quê) according to Xuân’s judgment, had fingered every item on display and then haggled incessantly over a single nail clipper keychain. This had put hot-tempered Xuân over the edge. “This lunatic acted like a piece of shit this morning, blackening my whole day!” she roars. To chase away the bad vibes of the unfortunate customer, Xuân takes a small sheet of wrapping paper and sets fire to it. Waving the flame quickly back and forth over her goods, she whispers the words, “Gentle soul, remain—wicked soul, fly away (vía lành ở lại vía dữ bay đi)!” According to Vietnamese market morality, the first deal of the day has to be sealed in a smooth way, without much haggling by the buyer. “The first customer of the day (người mở hàng) is very important,” Xuân relates. “If this person has a good, nimble soul (vía tốt, nhanh nhẹn), then the vendor will be very lucky on that day—she will sell lots of goods or feel very easygoing” (conversation, 10 December 2010). Vendors often feel jittery before their first sale, and many Vietnamese avoid going to the market in the early hours for fear of feeling obliged to buy an item they find too expensive or not nice enough just to “open the stall” (mở hàng) of the vendor. Others, in contrast, take advantage of the vendor’s desperation to strike a particular bargain. As one vendor explained, “For the first sale of the day it is not important to make a big profit. One may sell for the cost price or even with a small loss, because it’s only for good luck on that day” (conversation, 21 December 2010). If the first sale turns out to be difficult and the vendor feels that her stall remains deserted, she may ward off bad luck by “burning the material soul” (đốt vía) of the apparently responsible client.1 But if the market day is profitable, the vendor will attribute this success to the first customer, who brought good luck to the stall. The practice of đốt vía can still be observed despite being prohibited by fire regulations in the marketplace. Such regulations also prevent Cốc Lếu

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vendors from worshiping the god of wealth (Thần Tài) and the god of the land (Ông Địa) at their stalls, because it involves burning incense.2 Both deities are believed to enhance good fortune and protect wealth. Small altars containing their figurines are most common in shops and restaurants, where they are placed on the ground facing the entrance door. Good luck can also be attracted by so-called feng-shui objects—such as frogs, horses, and lucky Buddhas—that are believed to channel the random flow of vital energies to where they are needed most. These objects are widely available for sale at Cốc Lếu Market and have become popular with tourists as gifts and souvenirs that bring good luck, happiness, and prosperity to their owners (see Figure 5.1). Whether vendors attribute their success in the marketplace to positive fengshui influences or the gentle soul of the day’s first customer, their good fortune might just as well be a result of their economically rational calculation, strong discipline, and entrepreneurial skills. Many Cốc Lếu stall holders in fact stress the importance of mastering the “art of vending” (nghệ thuật bán hàng) and of developing an individualized style of selling goods (cách bán hàng riêng) that sets them apart from their fellow vendors. “Each vendor has her own style,” souvenir vendor Tâm suggests. “If not, you’ll starve to death with your teeth bared.” Such vending strategies include treating clients in polite and respectful ways, establishing trust by persuading them of the quality and value of the goods (so that they will recommend her stall to others or return on their next

Figure 5.1.  A wide range of so-called feng-shui objects is available in the market’s handicraft section. Photograph by the author (2012).

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trip to Lào Cai), and sweet-talking shoppers into buying more than intended. But vending skills and diligence are understood as not being the only avenues to good fortune in the sense of wealth and prosperity. As I explore in this chapter, the metaphysical assumptions that frame Vietnamese perceptions of the self vis-à-vis the powers believed to govern a person’s fortune in this world also affect perceptions of economic success and moral responsibility in the marketplace. The woman traders I refer to narratively construct their propensity for trade and the wealth generated by it as part of their heavenly decreed fate. They cast their success in business as “fortune bestowed by heaven” (lộc trời cho) and take any possible spiritual measure to ensure that luck and fortune come their way. This fortune can then be secured by moral virtue, enhanced by ritual practice, reciprocated in ritual exchange, distributed among kin, and transferred to future generations. Michael Lambek argues that morality does not consist of simply following specific sets of rules and performing one’s duties with unquestioning obedience but also “includes the reasoning behind choosing to do so and the reasoning that determines how to balance one’s multiple and possibly conflicting commitments” (2000: 315). Morality therefore consists of “the forms and acts by which commitments are engaged and virtue accomplished—the practical judgments people make about how to live their lives wisely and well” (ibid.). Building on this understanding, I examine how spiritual assumptions and moral meanings are implicated in easing the frictions in the everyday economic life of Vietnamese market traders. Many traders have come to think of the market—in both its broad and its narrow senses—as a battlefield (thị trường là chiến trường) where fierce competition and greed for fast profit seem to prevail over affectionate sentiment (tình cảm) and virtuous conduct. The Vietnamese state tries to reign in the unruly aspects of the marketplace through social mobilization campaigns that promote a “cultured urban lifestyle” (nếp sống văn hóa đô thị) and “markets imbued with commercial civility” (chợ văn minh thương mại) where traders compete for customer satisfaction rather than for profits. These campaigns intend to regulate urban (feminine) disorder (Leshkowich 2005) by fostering moral discipline and proper behavior in the public sphere. Meanwhile, Vietnamese marketplace “cosmoeconomics” (DaCol 2012) continues to stress the entanglement of moral and material value production through the concept of “fortune bestowed by heaven” (lộc trời cho).

Lộc Bestowed by Heaven Tâm operates one of the approximately thirty stalls in the souvenir section. Her merchandise is aimed at international and domestic tourists and consists

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of a jumble of items, ranging from Vietnamese cigarettes and instant coffee to Chinese-produced key rings, manicure sets, and hairpins. Her display of goods does not differ much from that of the neighboring stalls. What distinguishes Tâm from the majority of vendors in this part of the market is that she, apparently, does not offer strictly prohibited items for sale under the counter, such as weapons (i.e., electric Tasers, guns, knives) and “adult toys” (i.e., vibrators, dildos, rubber dolls). In August of 2012, several stalls in her section had been raided by the police, and their owners ended up paying VNĐ25 million in penalties (around US$1200) for violating the law. “In the souvenir section, it’s only myself [and three others] who don’t trade in these things. All the others sell them like mad (kinh khủng) and reap huge profits,” Tâm answered in response to my inquiries about these events. “I just can’t do that—my conscience does not allow me to.” Although she does not consider the sex toys as particularly harmful, Tâm is concerned about the possibility of the weapons being used in crime. Vendors of these items risk hefty fines and having their stalls closed down for several weeks if they are caught red-handed. “I see no need to compete in selling prohibited items and make my life miserable,” Tâm reasons. Instead, she contents herself with the much smaller gains from trading in licit goods: “Wealth is fortune bestowed by heaven (lộc trời cho),” she explains. “Of course I’m not lazy or extravagant, and if my income is enough for food and bills, that’s fine. Everything in life depends on heaven. If heaven wants you to enjoy, you’ll enjoy; if heaven wants you to suffer, you’ll suffer. Nobody knows what will happen. I just think it is heaven that provides me with good fortune” (conversation, 2 September 2012). Lộc (in Chinese: lu) is a Sino-Vietnamese word that, in ancient times, referred to the salary of a scholar-bureaucrat in the imperial administration, a position that signified high social status and material well-being. In combination with the concepts of phúc (happiness; in Chinese: fu) and thọ (longevity; in Chinese: shou), lộc carries the general meaning of good luck, fortune, prosperity, and divine benevolence (Soucy 2006: 109). In combination with the notion of heaven as the ruler of fate, lộc has come to denote a person’s fate-fortune, that is, the material assets and benefits that heaven has endowed the person with. Lộc thus has a predominantly material and tangible quality, either in the form of wealth or in a very concrete sense of an object, for example a fruit offering taken back from an altar, or a talisman bought during a pilgrimage. Lộc is also transferable to others and forms part of the larger social processes of caregiving, reciprocal exchange, and relationship construction (Soucy 2006). It is thus in constant circulation: from heaven to humans, from humans to deities and ancestors, and from deities and ancestors back to humans. In common with borderland traders in many other parts of the world, Cốc Lếu Market vendors do not necessarily regard the unlawful aspects of

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smuggling and trading in contraband, counterfeits, and gray market goods as morally reprehensible. Rather than expressing a general condemnation of contraband merchandise, Tâm’s reasoning points to a moral differentiation between smuggling (and selling) weapons or drugs (i.e., goods that are both legally prohibited and morally illicit) or carrying a bag of undeclared hairpins or electric shavers (i.e., illegally imported but morally licit goods) across the Vietnam-China border. Likewise, her decision to rely on heaven instead of joining her fellow vendors in trading in illicit items does not necessarily express a fatalistic attitude toward life but can be understood as part of her effort (and choice) to live a morally upright life in accordance with the will of heaven (Q. Wang 2011: 79). Vietnamese beliefs in the role of fate in human life have been profoundly influenced by Confucian and Daoist ideas of predestination as well as (to some lesser extent) by Buddhist notions of reincarnation and karma. Most commonly, fortune and luck are seen as part of a person’s fate (số mệnh) allotted by heavenly decree, as indicated by the adage “Life and death are matters of fate; riches and honors depend on heaven (tử sinh hữu mệnh, phú quý tại thiên).” During my research on spirit mediums in Hanoi (Endres 2011), a thầy cúng (ritual master) elaborated on the Vietnamese concept of fate as follows: “A person’s fate [số mệnh], if we speak true to the meaning of it, comes down from heaven at the time of birth,” he said. This, he went on explaining, basically meant that a person’s life cannot deviate from its predestined course. “If fate has predestined me to become a professional thief I have to become a thief, no matter what,” the ritual master continued. “If I try to change to another occupation I am doomed to fail. For example, if I decide to work in an enterprise, that company will go bankrupt, the next one will be disbanded and so on. Regardless of what I try, it’ll all be fruitless” (interview, 16 June 2006). But the Confucian-derived notion of heaven (trời, thiên) goes beyond the idea of an impersonal force controlling the fates and fortunes of humans. It also “provides a goal for moral striving” (Alexander 1980: 408), for humans to fully realize their inherent moral potential (see also Q. Wang 2011: 78). People can thus also positively affect their destiny by cultivating virtue and moral righteousness. Mr. Hiền explained, “We also have the proverb ‘morality wins over fate’ (đức năng thắng số) that means if a person lives in a morally good way this will conquer fate.” Amoral determinism (or “blind fate”) is therefore only one side of the coin. The other side is that fate also offers a certain degree of scope for improving one’s lot through self-cultivation, hard work, dedication, and a morally upright lifestyle. Of course, hard work can take you only so far if you’re female. Because of prevailing gender assumptions, a Vietnamese woman’s fate is commonly considered to be much more unyielding and thus more difficult to alter than that of a man (Leshkowich 2006: 288).

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Predestined for Trade It has been a basic assumption of modernization theories that notions of fate and destiny would, together with spirit beliefs and other so-called superstitions (see Endres and Lauser 2011), gradually disappear in modern societies as a consequence of individualization and the loosening hold of tradition. This assumption has turned out to be inaccurate. Ideas of fate, fortune, and luck continue to be invoked around the globe, offering “those who hold them both a source of hope for the future and a sense of control over daily events” (Eidinow 2011: 16). Rather than fostering a sense of passivity and determinism, notions of fate, fortune, and luck may “do precisely the opposite, promoting action and the taking of responsibility” (ibid.: 157). Much like Jens Beckert’s “fictional expectations” and “future imaginaries,” they may become “a motivating force for action” because they promise “consequences in the real world” (Beckert 2016: 75, 76). When I asked stall holders what is needed to be successful in the market, Cốc Lếu vendors often cited a predestined affinity (or propensity) for trade (duyên bán hàng) that grants them good fortune in their economic pursuits. This predestined affinity also accounts for Tâm’s success in the souvenir section. Although she conceives of some of her fellow vendors as “enemies surrounding her from all sides,” she feels no fear of losing anything. “Lộc is bestowed by heaven,” Tâm argues, “and I am heaven’s child, the child of Buddha. Nobody can take away from me what heaven bestows, and no enemy can harm me. But whatever I do, I do with moderation and reason.” While her fellow vendors compete for customers by chirping and flirting, she insists that she does not have to do anything to draw potential buyers to her stall: “Frequently, when I take a rest at lunchtime inside my stall, a client comes by and wants to buy from me. Everyone says this woman is fated for heavenly luck” (interview, 28 December 2010). Although lộc bestowed by heaven forms part of a person’s preordained fate-fortune, it can also be enhanced by moral acts or good deeds. Mrs. Khanh, a vendor of wooden handicraft items and fishing rods phrased it this way: “Success in the marketplace depends on your predestined affinity for trade, on fortune bestowed by heaven, and therefore you have to be decent and kind; otherwise you’ll lose customers and can’t sell much” (conversation, 12 October 2010). What Khanh seems to imply is that acting in accordance with moral virtue could account for an enhancement of lộc, whereas heaven would withdraw its favor from a trader whose conduct does not comply with the social norms and moral values that regulate trading relationships. Yet such moral considerations do not always and do not necessarily imply compliance with the law. As I pointed out in the previous chapter, Cốc Lếu

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traders generally see their illegal pursuits as a legitimate way to make a humble living and fill their bowls with rice instead of congee. Souvenir vendor Xuân, for example, whose merchandise also included strictly prohibited items, likewise justifies her success in business in moral terms: “I used to be poor and miserable, but I was always kindhearted and traded in a morally sound way (lành mạnh). I never cheated in commerce (không buôn gian, bán lận) and never betrayed anyone or took anything from anyone” (conversation, 10 December 2010). In contrast to Tâm, who could not reconcile the sales of prohibited items with her conscience, Xuân does not regard the illegal aspects of her trading activities as morally illicit. “I live true to my conscience (đúng lương tâm),” she argues. “I am on good terms with everyone; I help everyone. But what other people think about me I don’t know.” For the outspoken vendor, money is allegedly much less important than her family’s happiness. “Having a husband and children is already happiness,” Xuân explains. “We don’t worry too much about money. Even in times when money is tight we are still happy and live comfortably.” In common with other women vendors, Xuân credits her predestined affinity for trade as a key to her entrepreneurial success: “A person who is fated for success in trade is a person on whom heaven bestows lộc. That person attracts lots of customers, makes good sales, and earns high profits. In contrast, a person who is not destined for trade will meet more difficulties and make only small profits.” Unlike Xuân, a vendor of ritual items (incense, candles, votive paper offerings) named Thủy deliberately keeps her profit margins low. She argues this is necessary to ensure continued good fortune for her children and grandchildren: “I only sell with small profit and make sure the items are of good quality in order to draw lộc that I can pass on to my progeny (để lấy lộc cho con cháu về sau).” Thủy’s statement reflects both the ambiguity of moral meanings attached to commercial exchanges in Vietnamese society and the challenges that women traders face in their attempts to reconcile “traditional” feminine virtues (including their responsibility for their families’ welfare and happiness) with their struggle for survival in the marketplace (Leshkowich 2014a). From this perspective, the notion of fate-fortune bestowed by heaven can also serve to reinforce moral values and virtuous behavior—or in the words of Esther Eidinow quoted earlier, “the taking of responsibility” (2011: 157). Mrs. Hương, a vendor of traditional herbal medicine products, considers her work in a similar vein: “Trading in medicinal herbs brings lộc and happiness to my children, which is why I don’t dare to do anything bad, since it will affect their lives in negative ways.” By emphasizing the interrelation between moral behavior and the flow of lộc, Thủy and Hương alluded to the Vietnamese concept phúc đức (merit and virtue), which holds that a person’s moral merits (as well as their failures) will be passed on to future generations, thus forming part of their fate-fortune. The acquisition of phúc đức, as Slote

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pointed out (1998: 324), is primarily women’s responsibility, as expressed in the saying phúc đức tại mẫu (“Merit and virtue depend on the mother”). A morally virtuous woman is seen to bring good fortune and happiness to the family, while a woman considered morally depraved is regarded as the cause of misfortune and calamity (Nguyen and Harris 2009: 132). Men, on the other hand, “embody the inborn ‘morality,’ ‘honor,’ and ‘reputation’ of their entire patrilineage” (Rydstrøm 2001: 403, my emphasis) and display their moral virtuousness by fulfilling their filial duties and obligations toward their patrilineage, the neglect of which can likewise affect the fate-fortune of the family bloodline in negative ways.

Divine Efficacy Good deeds and moral acts are indeed not limited to the world of the living but include paying respect and making offerings to a vast pantheon of ancestors and deities. At 8 a.m. on a cloudy morning in February 2011, about a dozen electronics vendors gathered at the home of Mrs. Hà. It was the eleventh day of the lunar year, a time when many Vietnamese go on pilgrimages to famous temples and pagodas throughout the country to pray for good luck in their daily affairs. The previous day, Hà had collected VNĐ200,000 (US$9.50) from each participating household and bought an assortment of offerings for the Seventh Prince (Ông Hoàng Bảy), whose temple was our destination. When everything was packed and strapped to the back of their motorbikes, the group set out on their journey to Bảo Hà, a good seventy kilometers south of Lào Cai City. According to the legend, the Seventh Prince was an army general during the Cảnh Hưng reign of Emperor Lê Hiển Tông (1740–1786) who was dispatched by the imperial court to defend the counties of Thủy Vĩ and Văn Bàn against marauding Chinese bandits. He was eventually killed in a battle, and his body floated down the Red River until it reached the shore of Bảo Hà, where a military post had been established. After his burial, a temple was built to commemorate the general’s meritorious contribution (công) to the country. In the recent decades, the ritual invocation of powerful divinities has gained in importance as a strategy by which Vietnamese traders confront the risks and uncertainties inherent to the market (P. Taylor 2004: 87). The Seventh Prince has joined the crowded ranks of divine agents believed to bestow economic success and material wealth. Traders and entrepreneurs perceive him to be particularly efficacious in bestowing luck in business. Another characteristic trait is his penchant for gambling, which is why risky business ventures, speculative land deals, and illegal games of chance are

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all believed to be within his scope of divine agency. In contrast to the stern warrior hero Trần Hưng Đạo, the Seventh Prince does not seem to care about the moral integrity of his worshippers or about the moral virtues of their purposes. Like the southern Vietnamese goddesses described by Philip Taylor (2004), the Seventh Prince is part of a pantheon of deities who “will help anyone with anything, but the assistance they offer is conditional on dealing with them correctly, believing in them, staying faithful to them, and repaying them” (ibid.: 266). The chilling wind bit through our clothes, but the pleasure of riding through the scenic landscape far outweighed the discomfort. When we arrived at the temple, it was already teeming with worshippers. The electronics vendors, four men and five women, immediately started unpacking their boxes of offerings—including fruit, cans of energy drinks and beer, instant coffee, cigarettes, votive paper items, a whole boiled chicken, and a large mound of fragrant red sticky rice (xôi gấc)—and arranged them neatly on trays provided by the temple management. For each of the vendors, a ritual petition for wealth and good fortune (sớ cầu tài cầu lộc) was prepared by one of the temple’s petition scribes. Further adorned with a number of small bills and several metallic gold paper lotus flowers (bought from one of the devotional paraphernalia shops outside the temple gates), the offering trays were then placed on the main altar. After performing their prostrations and invocations at the Seventh Prince’s shrine, the vendors reclaimed their offerings, now transformed into blessed gifts (lộc), and put them back into the boxes. The group then went on to perform a slightly less elaborate ritual at two additional temples in the vicinity before settling down in a small roadside rest house. Straw mats were laid out and the vendors spread their lộc items out for equal distribution among the group. They consumed the chicken and sticky rice on the spot (together with some additional dishes prepared by the rest house owners) but stored the other items in plastic bags for the drive home, where the vendors would offer shares of their lộc to family and friends. The traders’ engagement with the spiritual realm, of which a pilgrimage to the Seventh Prince’s temple is just one example, thus not only enhances their chances of a continuous flow of lộc between the realms of gods and humans but also improves relationships of sentiment (tình cảm) with fellow vendors and others. Exchange relations between the earthly world and its counterpart—the realm of deities, spirits, and ancestors—have long been central elements of Vietnamese religious belief and ritual practice. The supernatural world is imagined as a reflection of the human world (dương sao, âm vậy), which is why its inhabitants are thought of as having the same needs and desires as mortals. Material wealth in this world also entails the moral duty of the living to fulfill their ritual obligations toward otherworldly beings with proper

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sumptuousness. Transactional sacrificial practices are therefore a constitutive part of the reciprocal relationship between people, ancestors, and deities that keeps the flow of wealth and prosperity, that is, lộc, in constant motion. Lộc bestowed by heaven can be secured and enhanced through good moral conduct, ethical economic practice, and transactional engagements with the spirit world, but the vicissitudes of the Vietnamese marketplace also leave ample room for chance luck (may mắn). Some traders I talked to compared their work to that of fishers who cast their rods and patiently wait for their prey to fall for the bait: “On a lucky day, you may catch a lot, but if you’re unlucky, you may not even catch a single fish,” a vendor of bags and suitcases explains. The same applies to trade, she says: “When the market is crowded with customers and you’re lucky, you can sell lots of goods with a high profit. Yet on other days, when the market is deserted, it is a waste of energy to even open your stall” (conversation, 5 December 2010). Chance luck is essentially happenstance and fleeting, but it can also be fostered by a number of means: choosing an auspicious day and hour to reopen the market stall at the beginning of the new lunar year, for example, is considered crucial for securing good luck in trade. Auspicious dates are commonly calculated based on the Vietnamese lunar calendar. Although the solar calendar was adopted as Vietnam’s official calendar in 1954, the lunar calendar (lịch âm or lịch vạn niên) was never completely abandoned and has, in the post-Đổi mới era, reasserted its important role in structuring the ritual year with its religious commemorative days, traditional festivals, and ancestral death anniversaries, as well as in “indicating when to avoid certain foods, buying certain things, travelling, building a house and getting married” (Derks 2015: 7). Whether a day is auspicious or inauspicious for certain activities depends on astrological calculations that consider the twelve zodiac signs of the SinoVietnamese lunar calendar and link them with the five elements (ngũ hành; water, fire, wood, metal, earth) and the principles of yin and yang. This method calculates the influence of good or bad stars at particular times of the hour, day, month, or year, along with how these stars affect a person’s fate, thereby predicting major and minor obstacles (đại hạn, tiểu hạn) in the course of life (Hữu Ngọc 1995: 664–65). Besides consulting their lunar calendars (or an astrologer, fortuneteller, or geomancer) to select an auspicious time for important endeavors, people generally avoid certain days for certain activities. Vendors selling items that are associated with bad luck because of their color (such as the black beehive coal briquettes; see Derks 2015) may have difficulties finding customers on the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month. Many traders avoid borrowing or spending money (e.g., repaying debts; see chapter 3) on the first day of the lunar month, because they believe it will bring them bad luck for the whole

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month. On a daily basis, as described in the introductory vignette, it is the first customer who determines whether the market day will be a lucky one or not. But the soulful gentleness that characterizes the ideal attitude of a luck-bringing customer might not be a vendor’s most auspicious virtue. In the competitive environment of the marketplace, sales negotiations often erupt into vicious arguments that lay bare the tensions between moral ideals and the self-interested “unruliness” of the market.

Chợ Cốc Náo or “Hubbub Market” The conception of the market as an unruly place is not unique to Vietnam, nor is it specific to the current era. Where women traders dominate the sphere of small-scale trade, this unruliness is strongly associated with “an unseemly, immoral, illegal, and undesirable feminine disorder” (Leshkowich 2005: 188) that challenges societal conceptions of feminine propriety and conduct (see also Brenner 1998; Clark 1994; Kapchan 1996). In 1915, the reform-oriented journalist and modernist critic Phan Kế Bính (1875–1921) listed a number of reasons he thought trade in Vietnam was not yet thriving (thịnh vượng) as much as it should. One of his points was that the Vietnamese thought of commerce as a despicable profession (một nghề khinh thường). This, he argued, was the reason most trading activities were in the hands of women (and a few transporters) and could not expand into something bigger. The reformer further bemoaned that there was no sense of honesty (lòng thành thật) in the female-dominated sphere of petty trade: Out of greed, goods are overpriced to cheat the naïve and foolish, thus taking advantage of the people’s carelessness in order to get rich, which is very despicable. Furthermore, there are deceitful ways of talking good and selling ugly, and the more regular the customer is, the more they get charged, which is even more wicked. (Phan Kế Bính 1995 [1915]: 210–11)

In 2010, almost a century later, vendors at Cốc Lếu Market accuse each other of the same malpractices. Rather than experiencing the marketplace as it is often idealized by the vendors (that is, as imbued with an intimate sense of community and mutual support), many stall holders feel that it has become a combat zone for the selfish pursuit of personal wealth at the expense of moral integrity and ethical conduct. A woman vendor named Hồng summarizes it like this: The marketplace is a battlefield of competing vendors who try to squeeze the most profit out of every sale, who chase after customers and press them to buy, and who find all sorts of other ways to grab money. You need to be really nasty (ghê gớm) to

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become a successful market vendor. If you are gentle (hiền lành), then others will take advantage and snatch away your clients. (interview, December 27, 2011)

Some vendors hold that the situation has already improved compared to earlier days, when Cốc Lếu Market was considered a sheer pandemonium of angry curses and agitated bickering, which is why it was called “Hubbub Market” (Chợ Cốc Náo). In spite of a general rise in market civility, the vendors still have much to criticize. Tâm, for example, greatly disapproves of the trading practices of her stall neighbors. “I hate these bitches (bọn nó) in the section. I keep a friendly façade but I hate them with all my guts,” she rants. “They sell to the customers at cutthroat prices; I just can’t do that.” Her credo is to do everything in good moderation. “Selling excessively (quá đáng) would only give me more worries when I get home, and it would be harder for me to put my mind at ease” (interview, 28 December 2010). One issue of constant conflict among vendors is the “snatching of clients” (tranh khách) by undercutting each other’s prices (bán phá giá). In the peak summer season, when scores of excursionists from the Red River Delta escape the lowland heat to spend a few days in the cooler mountainous region, rivalry among the vendors becomes particularly fierce. During the many hours I spent at Cốc Lếu Market, I witnessed several heated arguments between stall holders that started because one felt the other had snatched customers away by approaching potential clients outside the boundaries of her stall and undercutting the prevailing price. A middle-aged vendor named Hiền refers to such practices as “selling goods by way of fighting and robbing from others” and points at another of her stall neighbors as an example. “That one over there, Vân—she’s short and very fast. That’s why we call her Vân-B52! She darts around the section like an arrow to drag clients to her stall. It’s as if she’s hunting them down. Or take that bitch over there,” she hisses, hinting at the vendor at the opposite stall. “She is dumping prices and snatches away other vendors’ customers. Like when she overhears that I’m offering to sell a bottle of liquor for VNĐ400,000, she would call that customer over straight away and offer a price of VNĐ300,000. Now how mean is that?!” On another occasion, Hiền complained to me about her stall neighbor who undercut her price for a carton of Thăng Long cigarettes by 75 percent.3 According to the 52-year-old, “It’s mainly the young vendors who tend to be very pushy and snatch away other vendors’ customers” (conversation, 5 January 2011). Tâm also criticized this practice. She said it happened to her many times that her stall neighbor came running after her client and tried to sell even more, and cheaper. Undercutting prices this way was not only unscrupulous but also undermined her own credibility as a trustworthy trader. “I told them, ‘Don’t make me lose my face,’” Tâm said. “‘My sales are none of your

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business, and I don’t care about your sales. If you sell cheaper [than me], the client will not return to my stall, and I also will not have the countenance to look them in the face again.’” Sometimes, Tâm continued, the vendors would even refuse to return the change to the customers and instead try to cajole them into buying more for the amount. This competitive behavior and thrusting goods on the customers was not her style, she said. “I act according to the principle ‘take it or leave it.’ If a customer gives me 100,000 đồng and I owe him 40,000 đồng in change, I give him the money right away instead of [keeping it and] urging him to buy more. I just don’t do that.” Generally speaking, pursuing money too aggressively is not considered the proper conduct of a market vendor. Mrs. Hà, whose stall in the souvenir section was conveniently located near the entrance gate, put it this way: “You can only enjoy as much as heaven provides,” she said. “Chasing around selling goods doesn’t do any good. In the end the money that flows in through the front door disappears again out the back door” (conversation, 26 December 2010). Instead it alienates the vendors from each other. “Fighting for a couple of đồng in the market doesn’t make anyone rich—there’s no point in fighting with each other,” Tâm opines, and adds, “I’m not close with anyone, because ‘the closer you are, the more you can hurt each other’ (thân nhau lắm, cắn nhau đau)” (interview, 28 December 2010). Many of the long-established vendors in the souvenir section of Cốc Lếu Market feel that the “caring, sympathetic, and supportive relationships” (Leshkowich 2014a: 114) that are highly valued in Vietnamese society have been eroding in recent years as a result of increased competition. “The vendors in this section only peer at each other,” Phương complained to me. “They don’t help or support each other much, because they don’t live with sentiment (sống không tình cảm). Instead, they hate and envy the success of others” (conversation, 21 August 2012). Fighting and bickering also occur between vendors and clients, for example, when buyers want to return a purchased item for a refund because they received a cheaper offer elsewhere, or because the merchandise turns out to be defective. “If both the vendor and the customer would give in just a bit, if they wouldn’t start shouting and arguing, then there wouldn’t be so much fighting in the market,” stall helper Bình mused (conversation, 21 December 2010). According to her own assessment, Bình worked for the most talented, skillful, and successful trader in the whole market, a woman from Yên Bái whose husband was apparently praised by everyone for being the most caring man around. Her stall was usually teeming with customers and she had three stall helpers buzzing around them in a constant frenzy. Although the atmosphere at her stall was usually cheerful and friendly, many customers there nevertheless end up paying more than the market price for a good. Bình explains: “When a group of tourists enters the market and gathers at the stall,

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the stall owner treats the clients very nicely and offers very cheap prices to the first buyers, even below her own costs. Yet when other members of the group get hooked, she sells at much higher prices so she can make up for the loss” (interview, 30 December 2011). Tempers commonly flared at the market when buyers’ price expectations were well below those of the vendors. This sometimes even happened to the point that the security guards or the ward police had to intervene. Mrs. Cúc, the market manager, relates one particularly violent incident, when a group of Chinese tourists clashed with a vendor and her husband because they refused to buy at the price offered. “That vendor’s husband is connected to the local underworld (xã hội đen; literally: “black society”), which is why they started cursing the buyer,” Cúc recounts. “The buyer cursed back and they started beating each other until the Chinese woman was hit over the head with a folding shovel (xẻng du lịch) and had to be rushed to the emergency room” (conversation, 28 December 2012). The Chinese woman’s husband then grabbed a knife from the vendor’s stall, five others from the group grabbed truncheons (dùi cui), and together they chased the vendor’s husband around the market building. In the end, the market management had to soothe the feelings of the angry tourists and help them file a complaint with the police. Although such incidents don’t happen on a daily basis, they contribute to the overall image of “Hubbub Market” as a battlefield of unfettered rivalry and selfish ambition. As Katherine Browne aptly explains, “Market economies make fewer moral demands on economic actors than precapitalist economies, where all economic exchange carries a moral mandate” (2009: 17). The deliberations of the Cốc Lếu Market traders I’ve quoted in this chapter indicate that, since Vietnam’s turn to a market-oriented economy, the marketplace has turned into a contested terrain where new (and often illicit) opportunities for economic self-advancement and competitive selling strategies clash with ideas of moral virtue and principles of proper conduct. In the morally ambiguous sphere of the market, the notion of fortune bestowed by heaven exerts a moderating force oriented toward human responsibility by emphasizing the importance of cultivating virtue to prosper in this world and ensure the well-being of future generations.

Commercial Civility Party state policies obviously tackle the issue from another angle. The local government’s effort to rein in the market’s unruliness is apparent in the posters and banners that express determination to build a more cultured and civil(ized) Cốc Lếu Market and remind the traders of their responsibility to contribute to this endeavor (see Figure 5.2; see also Figure 2.5 in chapter 2).

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Figure 5.2.  These posters on the market’s walls remind the traders of their responsibility to implement the government’s policy of building cultured and civilized markets. Photographs by the author (2010).

These slogans are meant to inspire the “will to improve” (Li 2007) both for the sake of commercial civility, and for the civility of urban society as a whole. In chapter 2, I briefly introduced the term văn minh (civility, civilization, civilized) as a notion that has been closely associated with ideas of progress and modern life since the colonial period. From the 1940s onward, the Vietnamese Communist Party sought to mold a “new socialist person” through various social mobilization campaigns advancing socialist ideas about social order, morality, and behavior (Drummond 2004: 160–66). Standardized booklets on the “New Way of Life” (nếp sống mới) were published at central and local levels of government and served as instruction manuals for the implementation of this campaign (e.g., TVHTT 1964). Similar campaigns were launched elsewhere in the “worldwide socialist ecumene” (Bayly 2007: 30), most notably in the Soviet Union and in China, with the aim to “create new standards of ‘socialist civility’ in the realm of everyday interaction” (Betts 2014: 430) and to instill new moral principles consistent with socialist goals (Y. Cheng 2009; Malarney 2002: 53). Over the years, these campaigns underwent several shifts in emphasis. In Vietnam, the “new way of life” turned into the “cultured” or “civilized way of life” (nếp sống văn hóa; nếp sống văn minh) during the 1960s and 1970s, thus rhetorically solidifying the party’s claim to legitimacy as “inheritor of the Vietnamese cultural legacy” (Drummond 2004: 163).

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The campaign initially targeted the individual, though it later affirmed the importance of “cultured families” in socialist construction (Leshkowich 2014b: 153). In the Đổi mới era, its focus widened to include village communities and urban neighborhoods. In the last few decades, “urban civility” (văn minh đô thị) emerged as a critical concern in urban planning and development (Harms 2016). Meanwhile, the “cultured/civilized lifestyle” campaign also reaches into schools, workplaces, and public markets. As Erik Harms (2009, 2014) points out, the concept has become ubiquitous, not just in state and party rhetoric, but also in wider contexts of everyday life and thinking. Most generally speaking, “Civility encourages individuals to discipline their actions, comport their bodies, and live their lives in ways that do not unduly impinge on collective interests” (Harms 2014: 228). These issues are certainly implicit in the criticisms voiced by Cốc Lếu Market traders against unruly vending practices, even though they are not explicitly framed in terms of văn minh. In a 2008 decision regulating the award procedures of the nếp sống văn hóa campaign in Lào Cai City, the conditions for conferring the status of cultured/civilized market (chợ văn hóa) were laid out as follows: 1. Traders strictly comply with market regulations and pay their due fees and taxes. 2. Stall holders have registered their businesses, they don’t trade in goods for which they are not registered or that are prohibited by law, and they display a price list for the main types of goods at the stall. 3. Stall holders express a civilized and polite attitude toward their clients, wear a badge with their full names, and cultivate professional knowledge. 4. Traders observe the regulations on environmental sanitation, food hygiene, and fire safety; they don’t set up altars or burn incense in the market. 5. The [market’s branch of the] women’s union promotes exemplary unity, politeness, and commercial civility, as well as cultural and sporting events. 6. Traders foster solidarity (đoàn kết), help each other in life, and actively participate in local social activities.4 Even though the designation here is văn hóa (culture/cultured), these criteria are instructive for understanding the meaning of văn minh (civility/­ civilized/civil) in Vietnam’s economic sphere.5 For the Vietnamese state, civility in the field of commerce seems to be first and foremost a matter of complying with the laws and regulations set by the government (points 1, 2, and 4), many of which are concerned with a safe and hygienic market environment. Second, in its most common connotation, civility is the display of politeness and respect toward others (points 3 and 5), in this case the clients in the market. It is interesting that civility, as discussed by eighteenth-century

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moral philosophers such as Adam Smith and David Hume, was closely ­associated with the rise of market economies and the growth of cities as commercial centers in Western Europe (Boyd 2006: 866, 868). Civility in economic life then came to signify a moral disposition or virtue that regulated commercial exchanges between virtual strangers. As such, Boyd argues, “It represents something more than the anonymous self-­interest of a Hobbesian world where possessive individuals chase after the next economic increment” (2006: 866), even though it cannot compare with the “intense moral solidarity” of family, kinship, and community relationships. In Vietnam, however, this moral solidarity remains an important aspect of civility, as expressed in point 6 of the eligibility criteria for the designation of “cultured/civilized market” as well as in subsequent campaigns that aim even more explicitly at establishing “markets imbued with commercial civility” (chợ văn minh thương mại).6 Besides hanging banners and posters featuring slogans such as “The stall holders of Cốc Lếu Market are determined to implement a civilized way of commerce” or “Building a market imbued with civilized conducts is everybody’s responsibility” (see Figure 5.2), the market management also urged traders to attend special classes in polite business etiquette organized by the Lào Cai Provincial Department of Culture. “Those who joined these classes received 30,000 đồng in cash and a certificate of attendance that they could hang at their stalls to remind them [to implement what they had learned],” Mrs. Hồng reminisces (conversation, 27 December 2012). In addition to teaching them better ways of cajoling their customers into “transferring money from their pockets into our pockets,” as she put it, these classes contributed to an increased awareness of the importance of commercial civility, condensed in the maxim that traders are supposed to ensure “customer satisfaction from arrival to departure (vui lòng khách đến, vừa lòng khách đi).” A less obvious but likewise important aspect of these social mobilization campaigns or “movements” (phong trào) is to raise the self-esteem of the vendors. “I’d like to further develop this campaign so that the vendors no longer regard themselves as small peddlers selling from baskets (buôn thúng bán mẹt) in a lowly place,” market manager Cúc offered, then added, “I’d like to turn the market into a cultured commercial center where traders engage in trade in a cultured way” (conversation, 5 October 2010). At the time, Cốc Lếu Market was already buzzing with rumors about the local government’s plans to demolish building A and replace it with an impressive multistoried trade center financed by a private sector developer. Like the social mobilization campaigns aimed at fostering urban and commercial civility, the project’s main objective was to civilize and regulate the “disorderly” sphere of the female-dominated Vietnamese marketplace. While the traders generally welcomed the prospect of a new market building with modern amenities, they

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also felt that the conditions they were given might put their good fortune and luck in trade in jeopardy. The frictions and negotiations that were sparked by the politics of market renewal in Lào Cai City are the topic of the next chapter. Notes 1. The Vietnamese concept of the soul distinguishes between the spiritual soul (hồn) and the material soul (vía). The spiritual soul is “a facet of humanity rather than personality,” while the material soul “configures the moral person and his or her unique personality” (Kwon 2008: 106). 2. Unlike many other public markets in Vietnam (Hüwelmeier 2018b), Cốc Lếu Market did not have a room with a central altar for worshipping. 3. Chinese tourists were usually charged outrageous prices for cheap Vietnamese cigarettes. In this particular case, the vendor charged CNY200 for a carton that would normally cost about one-tenth of that (VNĐ70,000). 4. Quyết định số 617/2008/QĐ-UBND ngày 14 tháng 10 năm 2008 về việc ban hành quy định công nhận các danh hiệu nếp sống văn hóa trên địa bàn thành phố Lào Cai (Decision no. 617/2008/QD-UBND dated 14 October 2008, promulgating the regulations for conferring the status of “cultured lifestyle” in Lao Cai City). 5. For a detailed discussion of the concept’s (Western) philosophical history, see Rouner 2000. 6. See Quyết Định 2279/QĐ-UBND ngày 19 tháng 7 năm 2016, Ban hành quy chế tạm thời xét công nhận “Chợ văn minh thương mại” trên địa bàn tỉnh Lào Cai (Decision 2279/QĐ-UBND dated 19 July 2016, promulgating the regulations concerning the recognition of “civilized commercial markets” in Lao Cai province).

6

° Renewal Three months into my research a young clothes vendor I had become friendly with waved me over to her stall. She wanted to know, “Is it really true what many people say that you came here as an investor for the new market?” (conversation, 22 December 2010). My previous efforts to quell this myth had apparently been fruitless. The municipal government had recently started to look for an investor (chủ đầu tư) for a new market building with space for additional stalls, but many vendors had mixed feelings about the upgrade project. “What do you think about this plan?” I asked the clothes seller. “It’ll be a difficult time for us,” she said. “[During construction] we’d have to sell on the street or stay at home and starve.” Many stall holders I talked to said they would appreciate more spacious stalls, additional storage facilities, and, more generally, a cleaner and more modern market environment. Like the energetic young woman, however, they worried about the time they would have to spend in a temporary location during construction. They were also afraid that additional competitors in the market would further drive down their profits. “How do you feel about the market upgrade project?” I asked Hưng, who traded in household electronics. “What do we know about the state’s policy? They do whatever they see fit (họ làm thì làm thôi),” he answered. “We worry because we are already many traders, and building a new market means there will be even more traders competing for customers. Business is already difficult enough these days, and the new market will make things even more difficult for us.” “Has anybody actually asked your opinion on that matter?” I prodded further. “Nobody has asked us,” he said. “They just proceed with their plans. They will hold meetings and announce their decisions by loudspeaker. That’s how we will learn the news” (interview, 6 September 2012).

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More than three years later, in April 2014, the people’s committee of Lào Cai City officially announced to the 363 traders of building A that their market was going to be demolished and rebuilt. The good news was that the new structure was no longer going to be a five-story shopping complex, but a three-story urban indoor market featuring a modern, functional design. The bad news was that the traders were expected to contribute to the construction costs by paying a lump sum of between VNĐ240 and 290 million (around US$11,500–13,800 at the time), which would be offset against their stall rent for the next ten years. Whereas the old market had been built in 1996 using public funds, a 2009 government decree stipulated that only class 2 and class 3 markets could be financed through the state’s budget for investment in development (see Chính Phủ 2009, art. 1/4). The new building A was now planned as a class 1 showcase market for which the city had to mobilize private investment. The traders’ anger over the administrative decision to burden them with such high costs sparked numerous acts of collective resistance in the form of striking, organizing meetings with government officials, drafting and filing a petition to the government inspectorate, and sending letters to various newspapers known for their investigative reporting. Urban infrastructural planning, like any other form of planning, is an essentially future-oriented activity that fosters ideals of progress and creates “fictional expectations” (Beckert 2016) about future economic outcomes (see also Larkin 2013). But the—often elusive—promises of planning do not always convince their intended beneficiaries (Abram and Weszkalnys 2013: 9), who may be well aware that “one person’s benevolent infrastructure can be another person’s burdensome barrier” (Howe et al. 2016: 556). In his recent book Imagined Futures, Jens Beckert argues that imaginaries of economic futures, or what he terms “fictional expectations” (2016: 11), can mitigate economic uncertainty by creating a shared conviction among actors about how the future will develop. These expectations then guide and coordinate (economic) decision-making processes. But what if citizens feel that the future imaginaries of planners aggravate their economic uncertainty? In Lào Cai City, planners and officials foster the expectation that an attractive and competitive future urban landscape will be a key driver of further economic growth, for example by attracting more tourists and business investment to the city. Small-scale traders, by contrast, are less optimistic that the high investment required from them for the sake of city beautification will work to their advantage, even if they align their own ambitions as modern, economic subjects with the state’s larger vision of urban development in Vietnam’s upland border region. In this chapter I examine the arguments and narratives through which traders and state officials construct their contrasting future imaginaries. More specifically, I focus on the protests and negotiations following the official

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announcement of the market reconstruction plans and analyze the argumentative strategies that traders and state officials employed during five formal hearings held between May and September 2014.1 One of the traders shared the audio and video recordings of these hearings with me during a follow-up visit to Lào Cai in December 2014. They provide a rare glimpse into the discursive interaction between state officials and citizens in the context of Vietnam’s efforts to speed up urbanization and urban renewal. Much as in present-day China, such hearings may be mere “ritualistic moments in the politics of infrastructure, moments in which the ideology of urbanization and development is reproduced” (Jun Zhang 2016: 412). But they also offer a vivid insight into the contested nature of neoliberal urban planning policies and their implementation on the ground. As I will demonstrate, the traders’ sense of betrayal over the local government’s decision to rebuild the market was sparked not because their ambitions and visions of the future markedly differed from those of the state. As entrepreneurial subjects who seek to maximize their profits, minimize their costs, and enhance the value of their assets, the traders actually shared with the state many of its ideals regarding market-based urban development and city beautification. What they disagreed with were the terms they were given in this marketization process, which in their case took the material form of a new market building. Yet rather than arriving at a solution that satisfied their concerns, the dispute between market traders and state officials ultimately took a form that reinforced some of the hegemonic terms on which the marketization and urbanization of Vietnam’s ethnically diverse borderlands take place.

Traders versus the State The combined effects of Vietnam’s harsh climate, low-quality materials used in postwar construction, and lack of maintenance had been hard on the T-shaped building A of Cốc Lếu Market. Hailed as “an important step toward realizing a diversified economic development, meeting the hopes and expectations of the people” (Báo Lào Cai 1996) in 1996, the weather-worn structure now looked strangely out of place among the modern buildings that surrounded it (see Figure 6.1). In December 2013, the provincial people’s committee decided to push ahead with its plan to reconstruct building A with additional space for more than 100 vendors. The city’s efforts over the past years to mobilize funds from private investors for the construction of a new market building on a BOT (build-­operatetransfer) basis had not been successful, though. Mrs. Cúc explained to me that a number of stakeholders and companies had considered investing but

112  •   Market Frictions

Figure 6.1.  By 2011, the market building A had become weatherworn and decrepit. Photograph by the author (2011).

then shied away from the risk, especially with regard to the unstable business conditions of small-scale traders. The traders, in turn, would rather invest their money in their children’s education or in buying land in Hanoi. “Quite unlike the Chinese,” Cúc said, “the Vietnamese invest in all sorts of things rather than in their shops and businesses” (conversation, 24 August 2012). Without funding, however, the project could not proceed as planned in time for Lào Cai’s envisioned upgrade to a grade 2 city. The solution was to impose the costs of the new market building on the traders. To retain their guaranteed space in the new market, the stall holders were asked to contribute between VNĐ190 and 240 million each (around US$9,000–11,500), in return for which they would be exempt from paying stall use fees for a period of ten years. To facilitate the funding process, the Lào Cai provincial government entrusted the Local Development Investment Fund (LDIF) with the implementation of the project. LDIFs are “locally based state financial institutions” that allow provincial governments “to invest in urban and economic infrastructure that provides a satisfactory return on investment” (Albrecht, Hocquard, and Papin 2010: 33). LDIFs may be financed through share capital subscribed by the province, through bonds, or through domestic or (via the Ministry of Finance) ODA loans. In the case of Cốc Lếu Market, however, the LDIF acted as

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an investor (chủ đầu tư) that, rather than asking for funds from financial institutions, forced (most of) the traders to take out substantial bank loans to raise capital for constructing the new market. In other words, the state shifted the responsibility for realizing its ambitious urban development plans to the people, at their own risk. While the cofunding of state-owned markets through trader contributions is a long-established practice in Vietnam (see chapter 2), the traders perceived the amount required as “way above the sky” (giá trên trời). When the authorities announced this decision in April 2014, the traders staged a series of angry protests, including a strike that lasted several days, and entered into intense negotiations with representatives of the local government.2 The traders’ discontent boiled down to a plea for reducing the burden of costs imposed on them. At the first official hearing between officials and trader representatives held in May, the original amount of VNĐ240–290 million (around US$11,500–13,800) per trader had already been revised downward to VNĐ190–240 million (around US$9,000–11,500), depending on which story their stalls were located on. But the traders felt the reduced amount was still beyond their capacity to pay. Although they did not challenge the hegemonic national ideals of modernization and progress that drive marketplace redevelopment policies, the traders felt hard-pressed (bức xúc) and angered by the city administration’s top-down approach in pushing through with them. During the hearings, the traders advanced their interests by employing (roughly) three different strategies of argumentation: pleading for consideration of their economic circumstances, questioning the local state, and demanding “rule of law” and citizen rights.

Pleading for Consideration The market traders I met during my research were commonly reluctant to disclose their monthly income. On average, their profits ranged from VNĐ3 to 17 million (US$140—800) per month, depending on the type of goods, location of the stall, and seasonal conditions. Many traders therefore had reasons to feel the sum of VNĐ190–240 million was well beyond their means. However, traders also generally tended to downplay their success in the market to elicit sympathy for their plight as “unfortunate and pitiable market folks plagued by poor sales and meagre profits” (Endres 2014b: 618; see also Leshkowich 2014a). During one of the hearings, a female trader explained the situation as follows: We are not at the market because we are rich. Only people in difficult circumstances become market vendors—if we had the means we wouldn’t be sitting in the market at all. It is because of our difficult circumstances that we have to make a living from day to day as market vendors! (hearing, 6 May 2014)

114  •   Market Frictions

As I mentioned earlier, in recent years, Cốc Lếu Market traders felt that their businesses were no longer as profitable as they had been in the past, when there were fewer competitors and fewer consumer choices. “Those who started trading in the days when Lào Cai was newly reestablished could become rich easily because they could sell a lot and reap huge profits,” Mrs. Lan, a Lào Cai native in her early forties, said. “Nowadays, if you run an honest business, that is you don’t smuggle or do bad things, [profits are] only enough for food and basics” (interview at Mrs. Lan’s house, 8 February 2011). This general decline in sales was also emphasized during the hearings. “Our businesses get more difficult every day,” a male trader argued, “so difficult that we just cannot accept the high price we are supposed to pay.” One of the women traders pointed out that many families were still needy (nghèo khó) and pleaded with the officials to please try to find funding to help them “eradicate hunger and reduce poverty” (xóa đói giảm nghèo).3 “Our market area is located in a mountainous border area,” she argued, “so we would like you to check if there isn’t a policy to support us, because if we have to carry the whole burden we cannot continue trading.” Other traders put things in a more realistic perspective. “Perhaps 10 to 30 percent of traders are very rich,” one of them said, “but their wealth is not from market trade alone. They must have one foot inside and one foot outside [the market] (phải chân trong chân ngoài); only by doing many different jobs can they get rich” (hearing, 6 June 2014). Generally speaking, the wealth generated from trade was unevenly distributed across the different goods sections of the market. Most traders on the ground floor, where the sections for household electronics, Vietnamese wooden handicrafts, traditional medicinal herbs, mobile phones, and assorted souvenirs were located, were actually able to make a decent living, but the textile vendors on the second floor faced more competition for fewer customers. During one of the hearings, a male section head invited the officials to come to the market and see for themselves so they would understand why the contribution demanded from them was simply too high. “Some traders on the second floor cannot sell one thing in five days,” he said (hearing, 6 May 2014). “On the first floor, many of us just make enough for food and our children’s education, for paying our taxes and fees and contributing to the state budget.” In this situation, he argued on several occasions, having to take out a bank loan of VNĐ200 million (around US$9,500) would be devastating. “How long would it take us to pay back the principal?” he asked, and then he succinctly added, “Bank loans only enrich the bank, but impoverish the people. And if all else fails, the bank can seize the stall and the trader is left empty-handed. So I kindly ask you to consider the economic reality of the people!” (hearing, 6 June 2014).

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Questioning the Local State Vietnam’s current national and provincial market redevelopment policies aim at developing the national market network “in a civilized, modern direction” (Bộ Công Thương 2015, art.1/d) with the overall goal of “ensuring social security and stable livelihoods” (ibid., art.2/a). Although rural markets are part of the agenda, these policies are intricately linked with the government’s accelerated efforts to speed up urban development. At the time of the market protests, the city leadership was preparing for Lào Cai’s elevation to a grade 2 city (Hương Thu 2014). Upgrading Cốc Lếu Market to a class 1 market was closely related to the province’s accelerated urbanization effort.4 The traders were aware of this and criticized the local government for pushing urban development projects that they felt were not in line with their economic realities: Urbanization is related to economic advancement—that’s what is causing us problems. . . . I dare estimate that about 60 to 70 percent of the market traders do not have the capital to bear the costs. They even have to rely on bank loans for their working capital needs. But the comrades [officials] (các đồng chí) were not in close touch with the people; they did not understand our economic realities [before deciding to let the traders pay for the upgrade to a class 1 market]. (male trader representative, hearing, 6 June 2014).

The same trader then continued criticizing the city officials for not considering the interests and financial means of the people before designing the project, and he questioned the sustainability of the market upgrade. He asked, “Why can’t we just build a class 2 market that matches the economic reality of the city and the people?” (hearing, 6 June 2014). The traders did not understand why the LDIF had not secured financing by borrowing from financial institutions or other donors but instead was forcing the traders to take out bank loans. One trader posed the question, “As far as we understand things, the LDIF can borrow at a very low interest rate for investment, that’s what the party state has done before, so why doesn’t the LDIF borrow?” (hearing, 1 June 2014). By challenging the necessity of the local government’s decision, the traders implied that they expected stronger support from the party state to reach the national goal of building “a rich people, strong country, and an equitable, civilized society”: Where are we supposed to get the money from? We have to get it from the bank, and it won’t be given to us interest-free. So why doesn’t the [provincial government] provide [favorable] conditions for us by borrowing capital and collecting reasonable contributions from us? Ultimately, this is all for the party, for the country, for the people (vì Đảng vì nước vì nhân dân), not for an individual’s sake, or in the interest of profit. (male trader representative, hearing, 6 June 2014)

116  •   Market Frictions

This statement is revealing, not just for its critique of the local government’s effort to achieve market development through increased household indebtedness but also for its invocation of the “socialist contract that promised essential social protections and services in recognition of [the people’s] contribution to the nation-state” (Schwenkel 2015: 207) that the traders felt was now betrayed for the sake of enhanced bank profits. Their conceptions of beauty and developmental progress were not necessarily in disagreement with those of the state, but they objected to the terms they were being given in the marketization process. Not only were the traders well informed about state policies and market mechanisms, but they also knew that the local government needed the people’s consent to fulfill its task of developing the province. “If you don’t solve this issue in favor of the people,” one female trader argued during a particularly heated meeting, “then you are unable to ‘build the province’; you are unable to do this work, and we will petition the higher levels for a solution!” In an almost threatening way, she continued, “You know well that you have to satisfy the people’s hearts (phải thỏa đáng lòng dân). You have to be able to mobilize the strength of the people (phải huy động được sức dân)—if not you can’t achieve anything, no matter how high your position is!” (hearing, 1 June 2014). This statement seems to confirm that in contemporary Vietnam, local state officials are expected to “seek majority popular approval for a number of activities, including public works that require contributions from residents” (Mattner 2004: 122). More generally, working in close contact with the people and acting with reason and sentiment are among the ideal attributes of a Vietnamese government official: officials are therefore commonly faced with the need to balance policy implementation and rule application against popular conceptions of legitimate leadership (Gillespie 2007; Koh 2006, 91–95; Malarney 1997).5

Demanding Rule of Law and Citizen Rights A general distrust toward the local government was evident in the discussions. The traders suspected that part of the contributions demanded from them would be used as compensation payment (tiền đền bù) to the nine families whose houses would have to be moved to make way for the new market. The traders saw this as violating budgetary principles, and they called for the local government to act within its own legal framework, i.e., the Law on Construction. “We are citizens of this socialist state, and we are tax-paying traders (người kinh doanh), legally recognized by the state in the field of trade (lĩnh vực kinh doanh),” one of them argued. “So when it comes to the field of construction, at the very least everything has to happen within the scope of the Law on Construction” (hearing, 1 June 2014).

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Appalled by the top-down approach of the local government, the traders also felt that their rights as tax-paying and law-abiding citizens were not being respected. “We have been trading here since 1996,” one female trader argued. “We have contributed money, we always paid our taxes in full, and we submitted our registration fees for our trading permits. So where are our citizen rights (quyền công dân)? Where are our interests (quyền lợi)?” (hearing, 1 June 2014). During a meeting in early June, it was officially announced that the traders’ contracts, signed annually and valid for a year, would expire by the end of the month and that construction work would start in July. When the vice-chair of the city people’s committee pointed out that this meeting was not intended as a dialogue (between traders and officials), the traders were in an uproar. “You are telling us we have to close the doors of the market by the thirtieth of June. You are not allowing us to present [our grievances], we don’t have [any] citizen rights, we [only] have responsibilities!” one trader exclaimed. “We have been trading here for many years and we have always contributed, and now we don’t even have the right to speak!” (ibid.). The day after this tense discussion, the traders closed down their stalls in protest and went on a two-week strike. During the following months, they submitted a total of nine petitions, requests, and denunciations to the municipal and provincial government. Adding to their list of grievances, the traders discovered a number of irregularities involving the unofficial sale of so-called ghost spaces (gian hàng ma) by the market management board and demanded further investigation into the matter. Mrs. Cúc had apparently “sold” additional spaces in the old market (some as tiny as twenty by thirty centimeters) with the promise that their owners would later receive “preferential treatment” in the new market. The money received for these spaces had of course not entered the state budget but disappeared into private pockets. When the scheme was uncovered through the traders’ initiative (i.e., recordings of staged phone calls and visits to the parties involved), Mrs. Cúc was transferred to another position in the city administration, and two staff members received disciplinary warnings. However, the traders were not satisfied with this outcome. They argued that it was a case of embezzlement that should be brought before the law instead of being handled internally by the Lào Cai provincial people’s committee. When all their pleas for fair treatment and justice at the local level had been rebuffed, a group of trader representatives went to Hanoi to protest in front of the government inspectorate (Thanh tra Chính phủ).6 They had signed a petition to “complain and denounce” (khiếu nại và tố cáo) the abuses they had faced and implored the central authorities to take action and bring all irregularities before the law, “so that we, the people, can firmly believe in the leadership of the party and in the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

118  •   Market Frictions

The Perspective of State Agents The concern of local officials was twofold: maintaining order and stability while pushing the project forward with as few concessions as possible. Listening to the traders (i.e., their representatives) was an important cornerstone of their tactics, but even more important was staying firm in their decision and persuading the traders to unanimously consent to the city’s implementation plans. Although the traders were given the opportunity to voice their grievances and opinions during various meetings and hearings, officials clearly dominated the speaking time. Besides giving detailed explanations concerning specific matters, their main argumentation strategies involved stressing long-term benefits and developmental visions, emphasizing paternalistic benevolence and the importance of consensus, and apologizing and pleading for popular support. While the officials remained steadfast in pushing their agenda, they managed to evoke a collective sense of mutual respect, responsibility, and necessary sacrifice.

Stressing Long-Term Benefits First and foremost, state agents tried to contain the dispute by co-opting the traders into national visions of development and promising future benefits once the temporary financial hardship was overcome. The vice-chair of the city people’s committee criticized the traders for their alleged unwillingness to make additional investments in their businesses: “If my house is about to collapse, I can’t just say, ‘let it be’; I need to find a way,” he argued (hearing, 6 May 2014). While he sympathized with the people’s hardships, he also stressed the necessity of the project coming to fruition. “City beautification is one thing, but even more important is that you will be successful under the new conditions,” the vice-chair explained. “But how can the city attract more tourists if there are no proper access roads, no parking spaces, if the market is rundown like that, its electrical wiring and fire safety system [in disarray]— how can you expect many tourists to come?” (ibid.). The argument went on: it was for the benefit of the traders that the city had decided to push through with its plans for the new market. But investment into a new building that fulfilled all the new electrical and fire safety standards would naturally result in a higher rental price. As one state official explained, “If we invest in a new building that fulfills all the new standards, we cannot keep the old price. You can’t say, ‘I want a new building but the price has to be old.’ This is just not possible” (hearing, 6 May 2014). In a recent article on resident evictions in Ho Chí Minh City to make way for “new urban zones,” Erik Harms observed that ideas of beautification can

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be “important parts of the legitimizing structures used to displace people from their land,” yet at the same time “allow people to feel like they have a stake in new urban projects that promise to improve the cities and nations they live in” (Harms 2012: 737). This is exactly what local government officials conveyed to the traders during the hearings. Improvement cannot be achieved without sacrifice, the party secretary argued, referring to the difficult years of postwar reconstruction and the downsides of urban expansion: You know how difficult it was in the beginning. Until now we have had to evict many people from their land to expand the residential area, but all these difficulties are for the sake of the city’s development. . . . So what is true for the city as a whole is also true for the market. It has completed its mission (hoàn thành sứ mệnh của nó rồi), so we have to take these steps. In the beginning it will be hard and difficult, but I believe it will bring about improvement in every respect. (hearing, 6 June 2014)

The provincial leadership was hoping to attain the city’s status upgrade by October 2014, in time for the celebration of Lào Cai’s tenth anniversary as a grade 3 city. I was not able to verify whether class 1 markets are a precondition for city status upgrades or whether the city government had already included the new class 1 market in the application, but this was how the chair of the city people’s committee made his case: We would like to announce that in October we are going to celebrate the tenth anniversary of receiving [grade 3] city status, and we hope to attain recognition as a grade 2 city. [The new market] is one criterion regarding trade and services, and we very much hope to fulfil it. (hearing, 6 June 2014)

To counter the traders’ objection that a class 2 market was more in tune with their economic reality, the chairman continued to list the advantages of the grade 2 status for the city residents. He stressed that it was certainly not linked to the government officials’ own career interests: “The elevation to [grade 2] city status does not mean that a few leaders will get anything out of this—we will not be promoted or anything. But it will raise a number of standards in the municipal infrastructure, for example, electrical grids and water pipelines” (hearing, 6 June 2014). These infrastructure improvements would be funded by the state, he added. That’s how they all would benefit. As a further bonus to the traders, he claimed that their land would most probably increase in value.

Emphasizing Paternalistic Benevolence Socioeconomic development has been the most important way that the Vietnamese Communist Party has asserted its legitimacy since the Đổi mới reforms introduced in the mid-1980s (Le Hong Hiep 2012: 158). In continuity

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with the past, popular conceptions of virtuous leadership hold that state officials should be good-hearted with the people and act in their interests. Such ideals of benevolent paternalism also guided the party’s self-conception and self-presentation during the meetings: There is not one party secretary who wants the people to have a “bulging belly and small behind” [bụng ỏng đít beo; indicating malnourishment] or [wants] trade to decrease. . . . The party wants the people to be happier, their markets more magnificent, their faces brighter, their children studying at university, their families contributing to urban construction (xây dựng thành phố), to building a heroic city (thành phố anh hùng). (hearing, 6 June 2014)

Having outlined the party’s benevolent attitude toward the people and their well-being, the secretary expressed his incomprehension of the traders’ rebellion in the face of this. “Lào Cai’s Cốc Lếu Market has always contributed to development; the traders have even shared their food and clothing with their poor fellow country people in the mountainous regions,” he argued, referring to the many charity donations for upland minority communities the traders had made. “So why do they suddenly behave like this toward the party secretary, toward the party and the government? This is not nice!” (hearing, 6 June 2014). His explanation was that these good people had been influenced by what he called agitators (đối tượng kích động), that is, people who exerted pressure on the traders to close their stalls and join them in petitioning a higher level of government. “This creates tensions in the border area,” the party secretary reasoned. “It blackens the image of our city and makes things difficult for the people.” He continued saying that these agitators, eleven altogether, could easily be silenced, as some government units had suggested he should do, but he had decided against taking authoritarian measures: “I said no, they are also the city’s people, the party secretary’s people. And if they don’t yet understand, then it is the responsibility of the party secretary, the party and the government to explain things to them.” He then went on pretending that the traders had already given their consent, saying, “My personal impression is that the people are in agreement with the party to build the new market. The will of the party and the hearts of the people are united!” (hearing, 6 June 2014). The importance of reaching a consensus was in fact expressed at all the hearings. “The city has no greater wish than arriving at mutual consent (thống nhất) about the construction of the new market,” the chair of the city people’s committee said toward the end of his speech on 7 June 2014. This narrative of shared interests and mutual consent, spiced with small yet biting reminders of the Party-state’s repressive potential tempered only by its kind-heartedness towards the people, primarily served the purpose of harnessing the traders’ discontent into a loyal appreciation of the local government’s benevolent intentions.

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Pleading for Popular Support The purpose of gaining popular support became even more apparent in the third strategy of argumentation that the state officials employed, that is, apologizing for having made stall holders feel hard-pressed (bức xúc). “I apologize to the petty traders for all the distress we have caused you of late,” the chair of the city people’s committee said, “We very much hope for your sympathy (thông cảm)” (hearing, June 6, 2014). The city party secretary, whose position is even higher, chimed in: “The chairman’s apology is not enough. As the highest-ranking leader of the city, it is my responsibility to wholeheartedly apologize to you.” He ended on a slightly lighter note, asking the trader representatives present at the meeting to convey to their 390 fellow vendors that he had lost several kilos of weight and shed tears because of the situation, that he sympathized (thương) with them very much, and that he felt sorry for causing them so much distress. Despite their expressions of regret, the city leadership also made it clear that their hands were tied by legal and financial constraints and that the traders were not to expect any (further) reduction in the amount of their contribution. The officials’ final point related to more immediate political concerns. Vietnam’s already complicated relationship with its neighbor China had been placed under further strain in May 2014, when China introduced a drilling rig into waters near the Paracel Islands. The rig caused several collisions between Vietnamese and Chinese ships and contributed to concerns about a possible escalation. Given that Lào Cai had been bombed to rubble during the 1979 invasion of Chinese forces into Vietnam’s northern border region, border residents felt particularly vulnerable when diplomatic tensions flared. “You know well that the current conflict in the South China Sea is heating up, and you are worried about stability because we live in a border region next to our friend China, whose expansionism is well known to us,” the party secretary said. “And now of all times the people’s committee has decided to rebuild the market, so you not only worry about political stability, but also about this large amount of money [that you have been asked to contribute]” (hearing, 6 June 2014). But if they were to find a consensus, he continued, everything would be easy, because, in the words of Hồ Chí Minh, “Without the people you cannot solve even a small problem; with the people’s support you can overcome thousands of challenges (khó trăm lần không dân cũng chịu, khó vạn lần dân liệu cũng xong)” (ibid.). By quoting Vietnam’s revolutionary leader and chief moral exemplar, he indicated that, whereas in the past, hardship and sacrifice had contributed to national defense and unity, the traders’ financial investment into the new market building would now contribute to the noble task of remaking the Vietnam-China border region into a hub of modern development and urban prosperity.

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Figure 6.2.  A signboard at the construction site shows details of the plans for the upgraded market. Photograph by the author (2014).

“We always trust in those who hold pen and ink,” the Cốc Lếu protesters wrote in a letter titled “Urgent Cry for Help” that they sent to a number of journalists to alert them to their case. At the heart of the controversy over market redevelopment in Lào Cai City was a growing sense of betrayal among stall holders who felt that the government should act more in the people’s interest to retain its political legitimacy. Given their recent economic woes, they did not quite buy into the city officials’ promise of a better future as stall holders in a shiny contemporary market building (see Figure 6.2). Yet their reservations about the “fictional expectations” of planners and city authorities did not keep the authorities from following through with their plans. In September 2014, one month before the prime minister recognized Lào Cai as a grade 2 city in decision 1975/QĐ-TTg, the traders were ­relocated to the temporary market (chợ tạm).

Temporary Market Upheavals In December 2014, the rubble of the demolished Cốc Lếu Market building had already been cleared and a vacant lot gaped in its place. The temporary market set up to accommodate the traders during the time of construction

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Figure 6.3.  Main entrance to the temporary market (chợ tạm) stretching along the banks of the Red River. The poster on the left hand reads “Determined to build a civilized, rich and beautiful Lào Cai City.” Photograph by the author (December 2014).

extended for about 280 meters along the right bank of the Red River. In spite of the traders’ petitions to the government for the redress of their grievances and using the press to air their discontent, they had not been able to wrest more from the city than the promise that the rent-free period for their stalls in the new market would be extended from ten years to twelve, although they had bargained for fifteen. Walking up and down the main aisle and chatting with the stall holders, I realized that some vendors were now selling in the busy front part of the temporary market while their former stall neighbors in the same section were looking down an empty aisle in the rear end. As I was to find out in the next few days, the vendors were divided between those “who drew lots first” (bốc thăm trước) and those who drew them later. In late August, while the protests were still going on, the Municipal Department of Home Affairs (Phòng Nội Vụ) had issued a communication urging all cadres, civil servants, and contractual state employees whose family members (i.e., parents, spouses, children, siblings, and children) operated stalls in the old market to persuade their relatives to comply with the government directive to vacate the building and move to the temporary market so that the construction of the new market could proceed according to plan. This “strange document” (văn bản lạ đời) caused much anger among the protesters,

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who even passed it on to the press to raise public awareness of the local government’s machinations (see Thành Vinh 2014). By the beginning of October, all but ninety-six stall holders had registered and drawn their lots to secure a space in the temporary market. They had apparently been promised a “reward” of two additional rent-free years in the new market.7 “We would have had to move anyway, so why not go first,” an elderly vendor of medicinal herbs explained to me when I met her at her new (temporary) spot at the junction of two busy aisles, where she was now able to sell much more than previously. The ninety-six dissenters, however, were not willing to give in so easily and wanted to continue negotiations with the local authorities. On 9 October, however, the people’s committee issued communication 855/UBND-VP, urging all involved government units to step up preparations for dismantling the old building. The remaining traders were urged to register for the temporary market before the tenth of the month and to vacate their stalls in the old building before the fifteenth. Afraid that their contracts would not be renewed at the end of the year, they grudgingly obeyed. As a “punishment” for their insubordination, they not only were forced to self-finance the time needed for the construction of additional vending spaces but also had to organize their move to the back of the temporary market themselves.8 “If our solidarity had been stronger, we would have been able to bargain more,” souvenir vendor Tâm opined. The move to the temporary market created a spatial boundary between “those who drew lots first” and “those who drew lots after” as well as a deep emotional rift between former stall neighbors and trader friends. Some didn’t even talk to each other anymore. “It’s like the border between Vietnam and China,” one vendor joked. Those in the rear were also angry with their leaders (or representatives), who they blamed for putting them in this situation. Whether this was the local government’s intention or not, the prospect of a material reward for giving in to the authorities had the effect of muting the protesters by fragmenting them into two alienated and differently advantaged camps.9 But discontent at the temporary market was not limited to the latecomers’ camp. What the city had provided was basically four rows of tin-roofed metal cages facing each other. To not be affected by the elements, many traders needed to “upgrade” their 2.5 by 3.0–meter kiosks by building a connecting roof between the rows, elevating their stall floor, installing proper shutter doors, attaching partition panels to the mesh wire, and improving roof drainage and lighting. Each stall holder spent between VNĐ6 and 10 million (around US$280–480) for these essential enhancements. Traders operating several stalls faced the additional problem of having to hire staff because their formerly adjacent stalls were now dispersed in different locations as a result of the lots-drawing mechanism. In November 2014, the local online news reported that since the temporary market went into operation, the number of

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visitors had dropped by 30 percent, from an average of between 2,000 and 2,500 to 1,200–1,500 per day (Phạm Khánh 2014). In a bid to compensate for their slump in sales, the traders in the clothes section submitted a petition to the tax department asking for a 50 percent reduction of their tax obligation. “Marketplaces should be built with the aim of advancing culture and improving peoples’ lives,” a vendor of beauty products ranted when I asked her how she felt about the outcome of their recent struggle. “Yet what they do is build markets that make peoples’ lives more miserable” (interview at the temporary market, 18 December 2014). More than a year later, however, it seemed that the tide had turned once again. When I visited Lào Cai again in March 2016, the opening of the new Cốc Lếu Market was only a few months away. Most traders I talked to were beaming with satisfaction. “Other markets may be deserted, but Cốc Lếu Market will always be crowded with customers!” one of my interlocutors said. The temporary market was bustling with domestic tourists arriving in busloads after a trip to the nearby tourist town of Sa Pa and its recently inaugurated three-rope cable car up Vietnam’s highest summit, Mount Fansipan (Michaud and Turner 2017). Some vendors claimed their sales were even better now than at the old (demolished) market. Yet despite their upsurge in confidence, the traders also remained aware that the market upgrade would accelerate ongoing processes of retail gentrification whereby less-affluent vendors are gradually displaced from their stalls and replaced by those who are able to pay off their bank loans and afford higher rents while still making a decent living.

Struggles and Hope Market protests are not uncommon in Vietnam since the central government has initiated policies aimed at reorganizing, standardizing, and modernizing the nationwide network of marketplaces and market halls. In most cases, these protests are directed against decisions to relocate public markets or to “upgrade” them into modern shopping malls as part of Vietnam’s national campaign to build cities that are civilized (văn minh), rich (giàu), and ­beautiful (đẹp; see Figure 6.3). The case of Cốc Lếu Market is somewhat different in that the disputes emerged in response to the funding scheme adopted by the municipal government for the on-site construction of a new public market. The public expression of dissent against the “sky-high” amount of money the traders were expected to contribute to the new market’s construction not only offers insight into the disenchantments brought about by neoliberal urban planning policies and their implementation on the ground but also unveils the discursive strategies

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at work in the creation of self-reliant subjects under market socialism, be it in Lào Cai City, in Hanoi, or elsewhere in the country. In line with global trends over the past decades, the adoption of neoliberal-informed practices and strategies has proved a key mechanism for producing and organizing self-reliant subjects whose “will to improve” (Li 2007) includes a willingness to sacrifice for the common good and national development. The basic idea here is that entrepreneurial individuals, by pursuing their own interests, will stimulate economic growth and political stability. This repurposing of socialist rhetoric to push neoliberal aims indicates that socialism and neoliberalism may actually have more in common than one might think. The other side of the coin, however, is that responsibility for implementing national visions of development—such as building a “new countryside” (Nguyen 2017) or “civilized, rich, and beautiful cities”—is increasingly being shifted to individuals, families, and local communities. The case of Cốc Lếu Market, therefore, also illustrates the “struggles over imagined futures” (Beckert 2016: 276) that are as intrinsic to neoliberal urban planning as they are central to the dynamics of capitalism more generally. The outcomes of such struggles may largely be predetermined by the developmental ambitions of political elites and local state authorities, but the ultimate success (or failure) of urban redevelopment projects very much depends on the authorities’ ability to transform the disenchantment of citizens with top-down neoliberal planning into a sense of “infrastructural hope” (Reeves 2017) that the fulfillment of all promises for an even brighter future is within everyone’s reach. After all, state policies and their communication to the public play a critical role in creating confidence in national narratives of progress and state-led development (Beckert 2016: 82). Such confidence may well mask the sense of betrayal sparked by urban development interventions, the outcomes of which, for better or worse, remain stubbornly contingent and unpredictable. Notes 1. The hearings were conducted on 6 May, 1 June, 6 June, 7 June, and 24 September 2014. Two hearings took place between trader representatives and state officials (6 May, 6 June, and 24 September), one meeting was held at the market and involved all traders (1 June), and one very formal meeting was open to all traders (basically a speech by the vice-chair of the city people’s committee) was held at the city assembly hall (7 June). In this chapter, however, I have chosen to disregard the chronological order of the discussions and instead focus on the central themes and arguments put forth by different actors. 2. While some of these hearings were open to all traders, during others they were represented by the market’s twelve section heads (tổ trưởng ngành hàng). Unlike in India or

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3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

the Philippines, for example, restrictions on the formation of associations persist and effectively block more organized avenues for Vietnamese market and street vendors to pursue and safeguard their interests (see Anjaria 2011; Milgram 2011). This phrasing echoes the national poverty reduction program that targets Vietnam’s poorest populations, particularly in mountainous and ethnic minority areas. According to the three-tiered market classification system in place since 1996 (Bộ Thương Mại 1996) and revised in 2003 (Chính Phủ 2003), class 1 markets are defined as centrally located commercial facilities that accommodate more than 400 vendors and meet certain service criteria, such as having parking and storage facilities and following quality control, food hygiene, and safety requirements. It is also possible that social unrest and inadequate dispute handling may have a negative effect on officials’ career prospects. In China, local cadres would not be considered for promotion if they could not prevent petitioning (J. Wang 2015: 4–6). The Government Inspectorate is “a state investigation agency” responsible for resolving “‘hard’ cases that are not directly covered by statue” (Gillespie 2008a: 215). While the communication 855/UBND-VP of 9 October 2014 mentions only a “bonus mechanism” (cơ chế thưởng) without further specification, an article in Báo Mới Online states that the incentive took the form of two additional rental-free years (i.e., twelve years instead of ten) in the new market (Tuấn Việt 2014). Initially, the temporary market had been constructed according to the number of preregistered traders. The spaces in the rear were added only after the dissenters had finally registered. See Lee and Zhang (2013) for an excellent analysis of “bargained authoritarianism” in China. They argue, “Regardless of the outcome, once conflicts enter the processes of petition, mediation, and litigation, officials can and do rely on the effects of bureaucratic procedures to buy time and reduce the visibility of unrest. Attrition, atomization, and demobilization of resistance often result, allowing the state to absorb challenges through bureaucratization, not politicization as others have argued” (1481). I feel safe in assuming that authorities in Vietnam use similar strategies in managing social unrest.

° Epilogue December 2016. “Sales are bad in the new market!” Tuấn, the wooden handicraft vendor, squats next to the side entrance of the new Cốc Lếu A Market, a cigarette in his hand. Maybe the sprinkler system would go off if he smoked inside the gleaming new building. The imposing structure sits squarely in the middle of the block and glistens in the December afternoon sun (see Figure 7.1). After eighteen months of construction, it went into operation in June 2016 (Lê Thị Hà 2016). Its main entrance is flanked by pilasters to which colorful propaganda posters have been attached. They carry the slogans of the latest commercial civility campaign: “Always put the customer’s interests above all else—for the sustainable development of Lào Cai” (Luôn đặt lợi ích của khách hang lên trên hết vì sự phát triển bền vững của điểm đến Lào Cai); “Good behavior in buying and selling exemplifies the cultured lifestyle

Figure 7.1.  Main entrance of new market building. Photograph by the author (December 2016).

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Figure 7.2.  Disco laser lights reflect off the spotless tiled floor inside the new Cốc Lếu Market. Photograph by the author (2016).

of civilized urbanites” (Xây dựng ứng xử đẹp trong mua—bán là xây dựng nếp sống văn hóa, văn minh người thành phố); “Commercial civility creates a friendly environment and attracts tourists” (Thực hiện văn minh thương mại sẽ góp phần tạo nên môi trường thân thiện, thu hút du khách) and “Behave properly and show respect toward the customer, always ready to utter the words ‘hello, sorry, please, thank you’” (Ứng xử đúng mực, tôn trọng khách, luôn sẵn sàng với các câu nói xin chào, xin lỗi, xin mời, xin cảm ơn; see Figure 7.1). A red banner with the words “Vietnamese people prioritize Vietnamese goods” above the entrance completes the picture. As I enter the building, I am greeted by a strangely sterile, yet ultimately familiar scene. Flickering laser lights are dancing on the spotless tiled floor (see Figure 7.2). They are projected from one of the mini disco lights for sale in the electronics section. Small plastic stools are placed in front of the kiosks. Goods spill out into the aisle from tightly packed stalls. Vendors while away their time chatting or checking their Facebook feeds and other social media sites on their mobile devices.1 “My goods get stuck on the shelves!” Mrs. Hà responds to my question about how she has been faring in the new market. “First, there are now plenty of goods available in the districts and small towns, so that [rural] residents no longer have to come to Lào Cai City to buy things,” she says (conversation, 21 December 2016). “Second, there is a new highway connection and tourists heading to Sa Pa no longer have to pass

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through Lào Cai City,” Hà continues. “And third, the new market manager is not close [tận tâm] to the vendors!” Many things have changed since I first embarked on this study in 2010. Grandmother Ngọc retired from the market after more than twenty years of vending and now enjoys her old age. Mrs. Cúc, the former market manager, took part in various advanced training courses and started a new career teaching political theory at a continuing education center. Middleman Hưng and his wife Hoa disposed of one of their stalls to be able to pay the VNĐ290 million for the remaining booth in the new market. Souvenir vendor Phường sold her only stall for VNĐ1.2 billion (around US$57,000), paid off the VNĐ290 million, and used another VNĐ300 million to acquire the use rights for a stall in another market. “I made a profit of six hundred million đồng!” she laughs, “That’s enough for a new house!” She now takes yoga classes three times a week in Lào Cai and no longer goes dancing in China every day. Her former stall neighbor Tâm is still blessed with good fortune in the new market. When I pass by her stall, I see that she has a box of silicone breast nipple massagers on display among her assortment of Chinese-produced small souvenirs. “They don’t have a clue what this is!” she laughs when I ask her whether she wasn’t afraid of getting caught by the market managers. Thanh, the swift middlewoman and smuggler, decided to leave her strenuous work as a “transporter” and joined the ranks of market vendors. She rents a stall for VNĐ4 million a month, which is still cheap compared to the VNĐ6 million that Wenyang and Huifang, the Chinese couple, pay as rent to the owner of their stall. “They started renting when prices were still high,” Thanh explains. “When I came into the market the rent had already gone down because sales were so bad.” While most vendors I talked to complained about business in the new market being slow, some lucky few felt better off now because they had been allotted stalls (by drawing lots) that were much better positioned than their previous ones in the old or temporary market.

Change and Persistence The transformation of Cốc Lếu Market from a periodic place of commercial exchange between upland and lowland people to a modern urban market facility is best epitomized in the decorative art captured in the book’s cover photo. The colorful ceramic mosaic adorns the stairway leading up to the eastern side entrance of the new market building and depicts members of ethnic communities clad in their traditional garb on the way through rugged terrain toward a river junction. A man leads his horse packed with goods, while the women carry wicker baskets filled with fruits and vegetables strapped to their backs. A little boy raises both arms as he joyfully jumps along the way. These

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upland people are clearly on their way to the market. They are joined by a couple dressed in what looks like the plain peasant dress commonly worn by Kinh lowlanders. They, too, carry goods with them as they keep walking along the steep path on their bare feet. The contrast between the marketplace of the past that the merry scene depicted in the mosaic alludes to and the brand-new market building the mosaic-decorated stairway ascends to could not be greater. Continuous change is of course a pervasive aspect of human life. But change and transformation does not happen in a frictionless world. As Saul Alinsky cogently put it, “Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict” (1971: 21). This book has traced the tensions and conflicts that accompanied the evolution of Lào Cai from a Chinese bandits’ lair and French colonial outpost to a prospering and rapidly expanding urban center dominated by Kinh migrant settlers. It has also traced some of the many frictions that inhere in the contemporary everyday practices and experiences of market vendors at the Vietnam-China border. These frictions contribute to the market’s “complicated nature” and reverberate in the social and economic relations in which traders engage. They are inherent in the negotiation of power asymmetries and identities at a border that had for many years been characterized by armed violence and diplomatic hostility. They are at work in the “negotiation” of better economic opportunities and higher profits through bribe arrangements between traders and state officials. And they prevail in the contestations over public retail space and imagined futures sparked by neoliberal urban planning policies and their implementation on the ground. The story of Cốc Lếu Market appears in many ways similar to what has been written about the history of markets and their renewal over time in Europe and North America (e.g., Gonzáles 2018; Guàrdia and Oyón 2015; Miller 2015; Schmiechen and Carls 1999; Tangires 2003; TenHoor 2007; Thompson 1997).2 Even more parallels can be drawn with the frictions surrounding public markets in present-day towns and cities across the Global South, where, as a result of neoliberal reforms and policies, “urban communities now confront similar challenges amid newfound political realities that exacerbate long-standing economic arrangements” (Koenig and Matejowsky 2015: 6; Milgram 2015). In the introduction to her edited collection Contested Markets, Contested Cities (2018), Sara Gonzáles outlines a number of different factors and forces involved in turning markets into “frontier spaces” for processes of retail gentrification: [The gentrification of markets] can be part of a wider residential neighbourhood gentrification process, where the retail offer is “upgraded” to fit the new residents while

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the older ones are priced out or left out of place. Other times markets can be part of “retail-led” regeneration strategies, where the market itself could become a flagship for the redevelopment of an area. (Gonzáles 2018: 8)

The case studies from Europe and Latin America compiled in Gonzáles’s volume provide ample proof that market and retail upgrading potentially displaces both vulnerable traders and their customers from central urban locations. In one form or another, such processes also take place in many parts of Vietnam, including the northern uplands (Endres and Leshkowich 2018). In the tourist town of Sa Pa in Lào Cai province, the authorities closed down the centrally located market in December 2014 and urged stall holders to move to a new location on the town’s fringe (Bonnin 2018). The Cốc Lếu stall holders portrayed in this book have so far managed to avoid such a fate. Their market has neither been displaced from the city center nor replaced by a modern department store. Although its new building design (and the price tag attached to it) effectively contributes to the “middle classification” (if not to say, gentrification) of the Vietnamese marketplace by raising the threshold of access for aspiring small-scale traders who want to set foot in this realm, Cốc Lếu Market has persisted, not just as an important livelihood source and shopping venue, but also as an emblem of modern development and urban prosperity in the Vietnamese borderland, reshaped and adapted to contemporary ideals of commercial civility and middle-class respectability. Notes 1. Social media have become a major outlet for traders to advertise their goods to customers. 2. One major difference is of course that many of these markets are basically food markets, whereas vendors of fresh produce and food items only make up a small part of Cốc Lếu Market and have not been considered in this book.

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° Index Abraham, Itty, and W. van Schendel, 75 Abrami, Regina, 4, 77 Applbaum, Kalman, 5 Aspinal, Edward, and G. van Klinken, 75, 76 arbitrage, 43–44 bargaining, 45, 46, 47, 48; with customs officials, 80, 83 bazaar economy (Geertz), 45 Beckert, Jens, 15, 96, 110, 126 Bến Thành Market (Ho Chi Minh City), 4, 77 bilateral trade volume, 57 Black Flag Army, 19–21; defeat of 22 borderland identities, 14, 54, 71 borders, as productive spaces, 54 border war (1979), 18, 29–30, 39, 44, 55 Boyd, Richard, 107 bribery, 52, 73, 76, 88; via bribe brokers, 78; of customs officials, 83, 84, 85; as essential for economic survival, 83, 89; of local police, 87; of market control officers, 81, 84; of market management officials, 51–52, 87; of traffic police, 78. See also corruption Browne, Katherine, 104 China, attitudes toward, 55–56; economic advantage of, 58, 60; French colonial expansion into, 24, 25; and perceptions of superiority, 60, 61, 65; single women in, 61 Chinese goods,quality of, 52, 58–59, 60 Chinese men, as perceived by women traders, 61; marriages with Vietnamese women, 64 Chinese suppliers, 44, 66, 70; attitudes of Cốc Lếu traders toward, 59, 66; 67–68;

69, attitudes toward Vietnam, 60; at Cốc Lếu Market, 42; in Hekou, 44, 69; frustrations over debt repayment, 66; 67, 69–70 Chinese tourists, 1, 46, 70; attitudes towards, 46, 60; bargaining strategies towards, 46, 64, 108n3; clashing with Cốc Lếu vendors, 104 Chinese stallholders, at Cốc Lếu Market, 42, 130 city hierarchies, 8, 16n5, 32, 112, 119, 122 civility, 106–107; promoted in social mobilization campaigns, 15, 105; urban, 2, 4, 6, 8, 15, 106. See also commercial civility, văn minh clients, 45–46; attitudes towards, 47–48; snatching of, 102; treating traders with disregard, 48, 62–63 Cốc Lếu Market, construction of, 31; during French colonial period, 25; fieldwork methodology, 9–12; location and layout, 36–37; management, 49–51; number of traders in, 37, 53n1; physical design, 32; as tourist destination, 45; stall (rental) fees in, 53n3; reconstruction of building A, 111–113 Cốc Lếu market (female) traders 37; arguments between, 103–104; associated with disorder, 40, 93, 101, 107; complaining about economic situation, 39, 80, 91, 114, 128, 129–30; downplaying own success, 81, 113; family life of, 39; feminine virtues, 97–98; monthly income, 41, 113; outward appearance, 48–49; vending skills and strategies, 47, 65; selfdescriptions of, 37–38, 80, 81, 82, 88; spiritual activities of, 91, 98–99

154  •   Index

commercial civility, 6, 50, 104–106, 107, 132; campaign slogans, 107, 128; and market redevelopment policies, 115. See also civility Communist Party, Vietnamese, 79, 85, 105, 115, 117, 119, 120 competition, 13, 14, 101, 109, 114; among Cốc Lếu traders, 38, 41, 51, 93, 94, 96, 103, 104 contraband, at Coc Leu Market, 52, 84, 86; smuggling of, 14, 76, 89. See also smuggling corruption, 76; in cross-border trade, 83–85; during socialism, 77; as a form of exchange, 78, 88; metaphorical expressions for, 52, 77, 78, 79, 84, 85; and uncertainty, 89. See also bribery credit, forms of, 43,44, 66–67, 68, 69, 70, 114 cross-border trade regulations, 57–58; and circumvention of, 57, 83–84 Cúc (market manager), 51; on raising selfesteem of vendors, 107; on relationship between traders and bureaucrats, 51; on the unruliness of the marketplace, 51, 104; and “ghost spaces,” 117 cultural intimacy (Herzfeld), 11 Cultured Way of Life campaign, xx customers, attitudes of traders toward, 47–48; bargaining strategies toward, 46; different types of, 59. See also clients customs officials, 83, 84, 85 customs procedures, 82–83 Davis, Bradley, 19, 21, 22, 33n1 Department for Standards, Metrology, and Quality, 52, 80; annual inspection at Cốc Lếu Market, 80–81 dispute, between Cốc Lếu vendors and state officials, 111–122 Đổi mới (renovation), 7, 30, 106, 119; and changes in legal system, 79 Đồng Xuân Market (Hanoi), 4 dressing up, 48 Dupuis, Jean, 20 Duy (trader), background of, 41; on quality of Chinese goods, 59

duyên bán hàng (propensity for trade), 96, 97 education, attitudes of Cốc Lếu traders toward, 40, 60, 112, 114 Eidinow, Esther, 96, 97 embeddedness, 3–4, 78 ethnic minorities, attitudes towards, 48; in Lào Cai Province, 9; and upland marketplace modernization, 7; as shoppers at Cốc Lếu Market, 48 everyday politics, 4 fate, as a motivating force, 96, 97; Vietnamese concept of, 95. See also heaven ferry boats, 74, 75, 84 fictional expectations (Beckert), 96, 110, 122 French colonialism, 4, 9; exploration of northern uplands under, 20; resistance against, 21; end of, 27 friction, 2–3; 13, 14, 15, 52, 53, 71, 75, 89, 93, 131; of terrain (James Scott), 6 Garnier, Francis, 21 Geertz, Clifford, 11, 44, 45 gender relations, 40, 97–98; in China, 61 Gillespie, John, 77, 78,79,85, 127n6 Girod, Léon-Xavier, 23 globalization, 3, 5 Gonzáles, Sara, 131 gossip, 39-40 government inspectorate, 110, 117, 127n6 Grillot, Caroline, 64, 72n9 Guide Alphabetique Taupin, 25 Gupta, Akhil, 78 Hammer, Ellen, 26 Hàng Da Market (Hanoi), 6 Harms, Erik, 8, 106, 118, 119 He Junchang, 19, 20 heaven, Confucian notion of, 95 Hekou, 2, 12; Chinese shop owners in, 68-70; as seen by Cốc Lếu traders, 60; as seen by nineteenth-century European travelers, 24; sidewalk dancing in, 63

Index  *  155

Heuser, Eric, 63 Hồ Kiều Bridge (Lào Cai), 1 Hoa (ethnic Chinese minority) in Lào Cai, 27, 28; 39exodus of, 28–29, 34n5 household business (hộ kinh doanh), market stall registration as, 41, 53n2 Hưng (middleman), background of, 44; on bribery, 52, 76, 83, 84, 88; on credit-debt relations, 67, 69; on market upgrade project, 109; on price differentials, 44; on quality of Chinese goods, 59; on the role of the Vietnam– China border, 54; on trust, 44, 69 illegality, 80, 89 informality, 75, 90n1 infrastructure projects, 110; as profit opportunities, 8 intermediaries, 52, 56, 58, 59, 82; income of, 83; as morally ambiguous, 43. See also middlepersons Kinh settlers, 9; in uplands, 7, 18, 27, 31, 49 Kergaradec, Alexandre de, 21–22 làm luật (making law), 78, 79, 83 Lambek, Michael, 93 Lào Cai (province), 9, 30–31; ethnic composition, 9; economic development, 57; lowland migration to, 27; socialist reforms in, 27, urban development, 9 Lào Cai (town), as bandit stronghold, 19; catholic church of, 23; citadel of, 20; destruction of, 17, 22, 30; under French colonial rule, 22–26; during First Indochina War, 26; as hub of crossborder trade, 32; in the mid-nineteenth century, 18–22; military importance of, 22, 28; population of, 2, 28; postwar urban reconstruction, 31, 32, socialist transformation in, 27; upgrade in rank, 32, 112, 115, 119, 122; during Vietnam War, 28 Lào Cai International Border Gate, 1, 31, 57, 73, 76, 79, 84, 89 Larkin, Brian, 8

Leshkowich, Ann Marie, 5, 13, 40, 49, 77, 97, 101, 103 Liu Yongfu, 19–20; defeat of, 22; temple of, 22, 23, 33n4–5 lộc, concept of, 94; as blessed gifts from deities, 99–100; as wealth bestowed by heaven, 93, 94, 96, 97, 100 Local Development Investment Fund (LDIF), 112, 115 local government, 12, 41, 53n7, 104, 111, 115, 116, 117, 120, 124 Mai (trader), about Chinese tourists, 46; on Hmong clients, 48; price gouging Chinese clients, 65 male traders, at Cốc Lếu Market, 40–41 management board, of Cốc Lếu Market, 37, 49–50; 52, tasks of, 50; relationship with traders, 51 market economy, emergence of Vietnamese, 6, 76, 111 market vendors, 5, 25, 35n12. See also Cốc Lếu market (female) traders market regulations, 36, 41, 50, 51, 91–92, 106, 108n6, 147 market(place) development, 5–7; of Cốc Lếu market, 109–110; effects of, 6; failure of, 7; feelings of traders about, 109; government policy concerning, 5–6; in Hanoi, 6; in Ninh Hiệp, 6; in Vietnam’s northern uplands, 6–7; and socialist contract, 116 marketplaces, 2, as battlefield, 41, 101, 104; complicated nature of, 38, 39; as contested terrain, 104, 131; as disorderly commercial spaces, 101–102; emergence and expansion in western Europe, 3; funding of state-owned, 41, 110; as social and economic institutions, 3; and socialist transformation, 4; in Vietnam under French colonial rule, 4 Mesny, William, 20 Michaud, Jean, 19, 26; and Sarah Turner, 22 middlepersons, 42, 43, 44, 68, 130 Mơ Market (Hanoi), 6 moral economy (E.P. Thompson), 84

156  •   Index

morality, 13, 50, 52, 60, 63, 66, 75, 77; and commerce, 81; and entrepreneurial success, 93, 95; gendered, 97–98 moral virtue, 85, 93, 96, 99, 104 mutual support, 37, 66, 101, 103 Neïss, Paul, 22 Ngọc (trader), 38–39 neoliberalism, 14, 76; as exception, 76, 89, 90n2 new economic zones, 27, 39 new urban zones, 8, 118, 119 Ong, Aihwa, 75, 89, 90 othering, 54–55, 65 Pacification of Tonkin, 22 periodic markets, 7, 16n4, 53n4, 130 petitions, during French colonial times, 25–26; submitted to government inspectorate, 110, 117; ritual, 99 Phan Kế Bính, 101 Phường (trader), background of, 61–62; on Chinese civilizational superiority, 63; on denigration of female traders, 62–63; and idealization of Chinese gender relations, 61; on Vietnamese men, 61 Polanyi, Karl, 3 porters, 11, 56, 58, income of, 83; at Lào Cai-Hekou border gate, 82, 83; and their role in smuggling, 57, 73, 84 psychological warfare, 30 Qing China, 18, 19, 20, 22 Sahlins, Marshall, 45 Sa Pa, 45, 125, 129, 132 Scott, James, 85 Schwenkel, Christina, 8, 116 self-advancement, economic, 14, 76, 89, 115 sentiment (tình cảm), 13, 51, 69, 88, 99; as moral virtue, 66, 85, 116; versus competition in the market, 93, 103 Seventh Prince, 98 sex workers, Japanese, 25; Vietnamese in China, 64

Shengli (Chinese mobile trader), attitudes of Cốc Lếu traders toward, 66, 67; background of, 42–43; on debt repayment practices, 67; on Vietnam’s economic performance, 60 Shore, Cris, and D. Haller, 78 smuggling, 28, 39, 52, 57, 58, 62, 74, 89, 95, 114; at night, 73. See also contraband socialism, 4, 18, 27, 29, 77, 105, 106; and neoliberalism compared, 126 soul, Vietnamese concept of, 108n1 spiritual beliefs and practices, 91–93; first sales, 91; feng shui objects, 92; đốt vía, 91; pilgrimages, 98–99; selecting auspicious days, 100 stall use rights, 41–42, 112; as assets, 37, 41 Tâm (trader), on the art of vending, 92; background of, 40; on competitive behavior, 102, 103; on complicated nature of market, 38; on moral wealth, 94; on success in the marketplace, 96, on Vietnamese men, 61 taxes, 4, 21, 25, 26, 50, 60, 80, 81, 83, 85, 88, 89, 106, 114, 116–17, 125; protests against, 25, 34n12 temporary market, 6; discontent of vendors at, 122–25; relocation of Cốc Lếu vendors to, 122 Thanh, (middlewoman and smuggler), background of, 43; on price differentials, 43; smuggling contraband, 84 Thompson, E. P., 84–85 tình cảm, 13, 66. See also sentiment Tonkin-Yunnan railway, 23, 34n6 tourism, 9, 45, 64, 68 tourists, 45; bargaining strategies towards, 46. See also Chinese tourists trade, denigration of traders and, 5, 27, 40, 81; under He Junchang’s patronage, 19 trade cooperatives, 27 trust, 43, 44, 56, 66, 67, 68, 69, 92, 102 Tsing, Anna, 2

Index  *  157

Turley, William, 4 Turner, Sarah, 9 urban development, 7–8, 15,110, 111, 113, 115; and displacement, 8, 119; policies concerned with, 8; as recent phenomenon, 7 urbanization, 7–8; in the border region, 9, 111. See also urban development văn minh, 16n1; etymology of, 50; in the marketplace, 50. See also civility Van Schendel, Willem, 75 Vassal, Gabrielle, 24

Vietnam War, 4, 24, 28 Vietnam–China relations, 29, 30, 55, 121; deterioration of (1960s), 28; and economic cooperation, xx; and friendship rhetoric, 56; normalization of (1990s), 30–31, and power asymmetries, 55, 58 Vietnamese Nationalist Party, 26 Yellow Flags, 19–20 Zhang, Juan, 12, 75 Zomia, 9 zones of exception (Ong), 75