A traditional village facing the market economy

My recent visit to Lệ Mật, located seven kilometers north of Hà Nội in a suburban district, caused me quite a surprise. About half a kilometer from our determination, before taking the communal road, the motorbike on which I was riding pillion was approached by Honda motorbikes flaunting on their handlebars the sign: “Savor Snake Meat at Restaurant X”.

They were touching for snake meat eating-houses which had mushroomed along the road close to where it forks.

I could barely recognize the Lệ Mật I depicted in 1993, I wrote then: "…we were amazed by the urbanization of the village with its asphalt roads and its modern houses…” 1993 was six years after the launching of the policy of renovation, that is, among other things, the adoption of the market economy.

Presently, the snake boom is accompanied by tough competition between dozens of eateries of all kinds, some of which are in brand-new villas that have appeared only recently and which target prosperous city people, especially foreign tourists seeking exotic “pastimes.”

Mr. Quốc Triệu, fifty-ish and with healthy tan, was waiting for us at the door of his restaurant. He was full of kindness, as well as self-confidence. His business was among the earliest and more prosperous in the place. He took us to a place of honor in an Oriental-style pavilion on the second floor. There he offered us, as appetizer, a drink based on the bile of hổ mang (moegerophis) which, he said, would improve our sight and cure our lumbago if we happened to need it.

Then he left us to make our choice in a list of dishes using civet, pangolin, black cat, monkey, porcupine, freshwater turtle and salamander – many animals of which were kept in cages placed at the entrance to the restaurant. Indeed, the names of many dishes evoked stories found in the “Arabian Nights” stories.

We tasted sautéed hedgehog flavored with citronella, porcupine, cigarette-sized imperial rolls of snake meat, snake meat rolled in flour and fried, snake meat and rice gruel, and snake meat cooked with sugarcane juice. A snake was also killed and its blood let to drip into a cup of rice spirit, but I could not summon up enough courage to taste the mixture.

I humbly confessed that snake meat was not to my taste in spite of all its professed medical properties. Left to macerate in rice spirit, the animal is said to help cure all pains in the joints and is such an effective aphrodisiac that young people are advised against taking any of the drink!

At my rate, snakes have brought wealth to Lệ Mật, as testified by the “rag-to-riches” story of our host Quốc Triệu. He was born into poor, peasant family who, from generation to generation, earned a supplementary income from catching snakes which used to swarm in bamboo groves, hollows in big trees and holes in paddy dikes.

The animals were mostly sold to Chinese living in the towns who ate their flesh or kept them in jars of rice spirit. However, the trade brought little money as the Vietnamese public was not yet familiar with the consumption of food derived from snakes.

Life in the village was miserable. People starved during the great famine of 1945, and snake hunting was not without risk. Quite a few people died from snake bites or were paralyzed. Quốc Triệu, even though he had benefited from his father’s experience, was also bitten by a poisonous snake on one occasion. A herbal antidote not being available to him then (although each family had its own secret recipe), the fingers of his right hand were paralyzed. His left arm also suffered some less serious injury.

There was time when Triệu sold snake venom – coming from animals he bred – to the State pharmaceutical service. His family lived a little better then but had to hunt snakes in the highlands as they were fast disappearing from the neighborhood.

True prosperity has come to his family only since the establishment of the market economy. People are more prosperous and more inclined to sample snake meat and snake spirit. Trucks come every day from the highlands to deliver bagfuls of snakes to Lệ Mật eateries which engage in cut-throat competition among themselves.

Village solidarity suffers and, if restrictive measures are not taken against snake catching, and snake breeding not encouraged, the ecosystem of our forests will be affected. The market economy, too, has its own venom.