“Same Same” (but different)

A knock off, a fake, a facsimile. Piracy in Vietnam floods the streets like monsoon rains. Street vendors of old Saigon sling armloads of poor representations of original art, music, movies and books.

Wrapped in plastic as carefully as though it were an original, the book I wanted had a full color cover, plasticized, just like an original, but something was fishy. The photo quality was poor and the alignment skewed. A medallion featuring the Kiriyama 1999 Pacific Rim Book Prize was flat and fuzzy. I rattled the loose spine, flipping through the unevenly trimmed pages. The tilted text, a blurry slate gray, lay flat against a too white field, cratered with distracting stray pockmarks. The photocopied pages irritated my skin like a million little paper cuts and lacked the warm eggshell color and texture of a real book. Leaves squeaked rather than rustled.

I was revolted; why would anyone want to even hold this book, much less read it? It didn’t even smell like a book. It was as annoying as scratchy Muzak or fuzzy red and gold wallpaper.

Bob’s patience wore thin as we rounded the block, combing shop after shop, looking for an original of the book I wanted. Again and again, I left the shopkeeper looking confused after they went to the trouble to dig out the title I asked for. Flipping through the flaky pages, I left, crestfallen, time after time.

The irony was the book was Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam, by Andrew X. Pham. Pham, a Vietnamese American, returned to the country of his birth, only to find it far astray from his own culture. He’s been carefully explaining to me, page by page, why I found Vietnam so maddening: aggressive vendors, raucous drunks, deafening horns, and unshakable beggars. Like Pham, I wanted to like Vietnam and felt guilty for not being able to, after all, I was born here too. There must be something I can bond with. I appreciate his honesty. I appreciate having found a genuine volume.

Asian sentiment lacks an appreciation for original work, for intellectual property or the concept of copyright. Everyone in Asia seems to work so hard that it doesn’t seem to matter that your occupation is simply to make copies of something. Same-same.

Pirated books and tapes in Saigon…

I wondered at my visceral reaction to the fakes. Was I feeling sorry for the unrewarded authors? I was upset that the vendors expected me to take part in their farce and willingly accept an inferior product. Maybe my puzzling behavior will set the knock-off vendors to consider what the big deal is.