Choose any TWO stories you have read in Gullick's "Adventures and Encounters" and write about the cultural observations made by the authors. Do you think that they offer a fair and objective view of local custom and society? Discuss.

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Choose any TWO stories you have read in Gullick’s “Adventures and Encounters” and write about the cultural observations made by the authors. Do you think that they offer a fair and objective view of local custom and society? Discuss.

        Adventures and Encounters is a compilation of travel writings by a batch of people from diverse backgrounds. The works that are chosen by Gullick in this compilation are significant as they portray various cultural observations of the South-East Asians in the eyes of foreign European writers. It is because of this foreign background too, that the validity of the Europeans’ stories are questioned, as to whether these writers have presented fair and objective views of local customs and societies which they had encountered.

        One of the narratives in this compilation is “A Rambling through Saigon”, which was written by Isabella Bird, a prominent female travel writer. In this narrative, Bird narrates her experiences in Saigon, and writes about her observations and personal views of the situation there. Bird’s narrative revolves mostly around the people, their homes, the harsh climate and the travelling condition in Saigon.

In terms of the domestic sphere in Saigon, Bird gives detailed descriptions of the homes she saw or went into – ranging from a native village, Choquan, to a native town, Cholen, and at last to a permanent floating village. In her descriptions, the homes are all depicted in a pathetic state, which highlights the squalor and the poverty of the people’s living conditions. Bird uses words such as “primitive”, “ramshackle”, “wretched” and “forlorn” to describe the homes. Here, readers are able to see that Bird’s perception of things was governed by her ethnocentric view where civilisation and development are defined by the advanced condition in Europe, and anything less than that is considered the opposite, which is negative, uncivilised and backward. David Spurr, in The Rhetoric of Empire, comments on Richard Harding Davis whose descriptions of the houses of Congo in a negative manner is somehow similar to that of Bird’s description of the houses in Saigon,

Davis defines precisely the dilemma of the Western writer who, recognizing none of the familiar constructions of social reality, falls back upon the discourse of negation in writing of the non-Western world (96).

        Besides that, Bird also describes the people whom she encountered in Saigon – the natives, the Anamese, a French officer and the missionary nuns. In the houses that she went into, Bird gives very detailed descriptions about the people that she had seen, ranging from the way they dressed, their daily activities to their physical features. Again, when it comes to the description of people, Bird continues to use her ethnocentric view to judge them. In this narrative, she describes the Anamese as “hideous” people in her eyes:

I never saw such ugly, thick-set, rigid bodies, such uniformly short necks, such sloping shoulders, such flat faces and flatter noses… The dark tawny complexion has no richness of tint… (“Ramble” 163).

Just like other ethnocentric Europeans, Bird tends to measure and judge the people of Saigon by using the European yardstick. It was taken granted by Bird that anything or person that is not of European standard is considered ugly, revolting and unattractive.

Even the way that the natives dressed in their homes seemed offensive to Bird, for Bird’s European culture could never tolerate children being left in a state of nudity, and women being draped just in petticoats. However, Bird did consider the harsh climate in that country, and tried to be fair in defending them by telling the readers to understand their situation: “Remember the mercury was 92°, so (they) may be excused…” (“Ramble” 156). Besides that, Bird portrays the life of people in Saigon as apathetic, for they seemed to be so unconcerned and indifferent to things happening around them. Here, Bird admits to the ethnocentrism attitude held by herself and also her fellow Europeans when she commented, “These natives look apathetic, and are according to our notions lazy…” (“Ramble” 161). It was not just the people who had to bear the brunt of Bird’s criticisms, but even the animals such as the dogs there too were described as “pariah dogs” (“Ramble” 159) or “low caste, leggy, flop-eared, mangy dogs” (“Ramble” 155). That is why David Spurr points out to us the problems of the Westerners when it comes to writing about the non-Western people in The Rhetoric of Empire:

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… this is the projection of a uniquely Western problematic onto the rituals of a non-Western people… colonized peoples are systematically represented in terms of negation and absence – absence of order, of limits, of light, of spirit (96).

It was this Western problem too that the French artillery officer that Bird met, mentioned that “France is doing its best to promote the prosperity and secure the goodwill of the natives” (“Ramble” 162) in Saigon. To the Western forces, the colonized people were not capable of managing their country and also their own lives, thus the need for ...

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