15 Things about Vietnam #17 - That Kinda Cute But Slightly Daft Thing Vietnamese Girls Do With Two Fingers

A little light humour to counterbalance some of the moderately heavy material from the last few weeks - probably something you're already aware of: that kinda cute but slightly daft thing a lot of Vietnamese girls do with two fingers for any nearby camera, with almost terrifying enthusiasm. 

Is it a sign they come in peace? Is it a backwards version of the sign for victory?

Please examine the evidence below (figures 1 - 21).

Having considered the evidence and discussed it with various local friends, it seems certain to me now that the contemporary Vietnamese version of the two-fingered signal is a simple visual/linguistic pun. The number 2 in Vietnamese is "hai", which is pronounced "hi", as in the English "hello".

That's right, the two-fingers all those girls are offering the camera are not some sort of off-key reference to anti-war activism, but a simple greeting, perhaps, you might say, a greeting mixed with some sort of low key invitation to enjoy their massively non-edgy sensibilities.

Within those general parameters though, there are a gamut of specific issues - multiple shades of silly, sweet and stylish - that the practiced observer of Asian girl-behaviours needs to pick up on, if s/he wants to fully appreciate the Vietnamese girly-hi.

With the right degree of confidence, I think the Vietnamese girly-hi is straightforwardly hot:

Figure 1

Though clearly adding a whiff of the shrinking violet/wilting daisy is an enchanting, old-fashioned touch too:

Figure 2

In groups, the desired impression seems to be that life is some sort of high school musical:

Figure 3

Which Vietnamese boys, when they're not hitting the piss or moralizing about female virtue, can also create to marvelous effect:

Figure 4

Various problems arise, however.

For example, when one is barely past the mirror stage of the great Freudian adventure, one has to concentrate very hard to differentiate the concepts of twoness, fiveness, whatness and my-it's-my-hand-iness:

Figure 5

Then there is the strange effect created by giving the hi-signal but forgetting to smile:

Figure 6

Or the slightly unnerving double-handed "hi" that makes it look as if one is putting one's own head in inverted commas:

Figure 7

Or the anti-effect of hesitating to hi or even refusing to hi when everyone else is wildly cavorting to get their hi into the picture:

Figure 8

(Personally I think the girl in the maroon top who's too shy to hi is the attractive one in this shot: the Asian equivalent of the hot, nerdy girl who brought a novel to read at the footy.)

Clearly, there are more or less inappropriate places to give the hi signal. E.g. in front of Uncle Ho's tomb is clearly not quite right:

Figure 9

In front of the boys toilets at socialist boot camp is an interesting place:

Figure 10

And (of course) in front of Western anthropologues observing your behaviour at close range:

Figure 11

However for me, and for most Westerners, the real issues arise when the hi-signal gets turned back-to-front and starts to look like . . . an old-fashioned two-fingered salute:

Figure 12

Churchill himself - who of course pioneered the use of two fingers as a way of signaling Victory - seems to have been aware of the ambiguities here: rotate your two fingers through 180 degrees and, in the West, you're giving your audience a very different sort of message:

Figure 13(a)

 

Figure 13(b)

In Figure 14 (below), Wally was apparently too busy explaining his mobile phone to the hot girl from Figure 1 to notice what sort of messages people were giving off in the foreground:

Figure 14

While at the time I took this shot:

Figure 15

I thought the pint-sized cutie in the middle was giving me a backwards girly-hi, which, like its cousin the frontwards girly-hi, means, of course, hi. But the more I examine the photographic evidence (the looks on her friends’ faces), the more I think she was telling me to . . . eth off.

Couldn't get more curious?

More curious still is when Vietnamese girls position their backwards girly hi's in front of their mouths and start pouting or kissing or in anyway . . . licking:

Figure 16

Or indeed when they start pouting, kissing or licking en masse:

Figure 17

I’m not sure what the boys at your local high school used to do when they worked out what performing oral sex on a woman involves, but a backwards-hi held in front of the mouth, possibly with some crass use of the tongue to go with it, is what the hormonal 15 year-olds in my part of the world used to do. Which makes it harder to look at Vietnamese girls doing this for some reason . . .

Figure 18

Last but not least, there is the whole issue of Westerners giving the hi-signal.

I'm not going to warn you off too strongly, but let me say the Vietnamese girly-hi is hard to get right, not least because it's hard for big-boned, irony-addicted Westerners to propose to the camera what Vietnamese girls are essentially proposing to the camera when they do the hi-thing: "look how cute I am – doesn’t it make you happy? – it makes me happy”. 

The general principle: if done with an absence of blind joy or an excess of mockery, the Vietnamese girly-hi just starts to make you look like you're trying too hard.

Figure 19

This, I think it's easy to see, is a little awkward:

Figure 20

 This is more convincing, but not fully numerate:

Figure 21

Judge this one for yourself: the anthropologue trying out one of his own hi-manoeuvres: the walk-into-the-room + look-away-hi (degree of difficulty: 2)

Figure 22

Actually, if you're interested in the upper-tier anthropological issues related to the hi-signal, it's quite useful to take Churchill’s victory-signal as a reference point. 

The Vietnamese girly-hi in fact signifies the opposite of a victory over something. 

What in the West became a symbol of the successful conclusion of a gut-wrenching struggle with adversity, Nazis, etc has been re-invented in East Asia as a photographic invitation to spontaneous enjoyment of . . . nothing in particular at all.

A little bit funny, no?