Thai Binh food reviewer being criticized for reviewing Hanoi food: A hint of regional discrimination?

Food reviewing has recently become a “hot job” for dynamic people passionate about food and cuisine. Only with a filming device, one can share his journey of experiencing flavorful food and beverage to viewers on social media platforms. Tran Van Duy has chosen this path and become one of the earliest Hanoi food reviewers on Youtube with a channel of thousands of subscribers named “Hà Nội Phố”. His videos focus on sharing the feelings for a specific dish or food vendors along Hanoi. Besides giving comments on the food decoration, taste, and flavors, Duy sometimes includes interesting background information such as the origin and the cultural stories behind the dishes that he is going to review. In this way, his followers would feel more curious and excited to discover the food, thus, Duy could attract a greater number of views and subscribers.

However, Duy has recently come in for severe criticism for his lack of knowledge when commenting on Hanoi food due to some of his ungrounded statements. One of the most heated debates was surrounding a video in which Duy explains the old saying “Trai tứ chiếng, gái giang hồ” in the wrong way. According to Phan Huy Chu (1819), its original meaning refers to men with outstanding charisma and abilities from four major towns including Son Nam, Kinh Bac, Son Tay, and Hai Duong and beauties that worked as prostitutes in the old society. However, Duy misinformed the audience with his explanation that the saying discriminates and looks down on laborers from other places coming to Hanoi. Indeed, this inaccurate way of interpreting the proverb is popular as it is no longer widely used with its original meaning. Even the credible Vietnamese dictionary also states the modified interpretation, which suggests that Duy might have looked for the meaning of the proverb but misunderstood it due to lack of reference sources.

Another video capturing lots of attention is when Duy mistook drying alcohol for a candle. Among the conflicting opinions, there is a wave of anti-fans opposing people from other areas reviewing Hanoi food with the presupposition that they “know nothing” and are not eligible to give comments. Advocates; however, argue that “Hà Nội Phố” channel should still keep up the great work and strive more vigorously to better the performance.

Having the chance to study intercultural communication, I am strongly against the way opponents attributing and accusing Duy and his works. Admittedly, Duy could be advised to be more careful with his sharing on social media as a key opinion leader whose words can be misleading to people not having the chance to experience Hanoi cuisine in person. Yet, he should not be criticized for his origin and forced to give up his reviewing work. I believe that no origin is qualified to do a specific job while another is not, it all lies in people’s efforts to enhance their knowledge and expertise. In this writing, I would go more in depth on why Duy should not receive negative judgments for being a Hanoi-food reviewer originating from Thai Binh.

First of all, unlike other Hanoi-food commenters who are born and raised in Hanoi, being a member of another regional group enables Duy to add diversity into his reviewing videos. Coming from another area means taking the personal experience of another region, culture, and cuisine (García & Guerra, 2006 as cited in Baldwin et al., 2014). Therefore, Duy can not only give genuine comments on foods based on his feelings but also make comparisons with dishes from his homeland and other places that he has been to. Moreover, Duy’s process of discovering Hanoi’s culture and cuisine, or acculturation with Hanoi being the reference group should be appreciated, rather than criticized (Baldwin et al., 2014). According to Jacoby (2019) (as cited in Baldwin et al., 2014), his sharing is also a way to accomplish civic engagement to better our community. Duy has started his Youtube channel for two years and contributed a great deal in introducing worth-trying restaurants and bistros to other diners. Furthermore, his videos also promote and showcase Vietnamese cuisine and Hanoi food in specific to the wider world, making it a must-try specialty when it comes to Vietnamese tourism. Puiu, Maria, and Georgica (2013) believe that developing national tourism sustainably has to go in close link with honoring the culinary arts. In this sense, Duy has done a good job and should be encouraged to further develop his channel. Unfortunately, viewers seem to only pay attention to the errors, neglecting all his efforts in the last two years due to the selective recall system (Baldwin et al., 2014). This type of intolerance diverts our attention to pieces of information that fit our assumptions and only helps us retrieve the things that we presuppose. As a consequence, Duy could only be remembered as an infamous food reviewer rather than a contributor.

Hanoi has long been considered a political, socio-economic, and cultural quintessence. Therefore, those comments on Duy’s origin are trying to differentiate “Hanoians” from others as a superior group and marginalize people from other provinces. They also reflect the annihilation of race in intercultural communication (Tuchman, 1978 as cited in Baldwin et al., 2014). Those sarcastic comments only emphasize the importance of being “Hanoi-rooted”, overlooking other regional groups. How people from other areas are called “người tỉnh lẻ” or people from “minor” provinces also suggests a self-centered view. Notably, this can even be observed in ancient poetry: 

“ Chẳng thơm cũng thể hoa nhài

Dẫu không thanh lịch cũng người Tràng An"

(Source: folk poetry)

These two sentences indicate that “Hanoians” share the elegancy and traits of the elite class who are well-educated and delicately-mannered. From the Intercultural communication perspective, we call this phenomenon ethnocentrism where members of one group believe that they are better than others (Baldwin et al., 2014). Apparently, the commenters have forgotten that Hanoi is a metropolitan center where people from all walks of life gather and together they add and form Hanoi culture and cuisine. For example, “bánh cuốn” or steamed rice wraps, a pride of Hanoi cuisine is actually from Thanh Tri, which was considered the suburb. Those judgments above underrepresent peoples of other groups in public and marginalize them. Worse still, there is a deeply-rooted stereotype that out-group members are outdated, unknowledgeable, and “do not know how to enjoy the dishes”. Therefore, the criticism violates the fundamental attribution error when putting too much emphasis on personal features in others’ errors and tends to picture Duy as dull and ignorant. In comparison with other food reviewers from Hanoi who also make mistakes while reviewing food, Duy has received far more unfavorable feedback, which could be accounted for by the ethnocentric attribution (Baldwin et al., 2014). To be specific, when something unwanted happens, people attribute the failure to the personal characteristics of the mistake maker; however, when they or other members of their group are the ones who fail, they blame the poor performance on external factors and context. For example, Duy was considered as uncultured and illiterate for saying the inappropriate word “sồn sột” when describing the food whereas DK - another Hanoi food reviewer - was defended when he made the same mistake.

Lastly, all of this regional discrimination occurs in mediated contexts that leads to cyberbullying. Anti-fans form groups to make mean jokes at not only Duy but also his family members including his innocent children. This type of intolerance in cyberspace among Internet users goes beyond stereotypes to become an overt racist hate crime. The situation is even worsened with the facilitation of instant technology in this ever-increasing digital world. Moreover, group members that have connections with VTV (Vietnam Television) even create opportunities to express their aggressive attitudes on a TV show named “Trash in cyberspace”. Baldwin et al. (2014) state that the empowered-group members may be unaware that their practice has the power to divert the way watchers view the targeted case and form stereotypes of it without experiencing themselves. That Duy is being disparaged just for coming from another province is undoubtedly geographic discrimination that may undermine the solidarity of the society as a whole. Therefore, I strongly believe that this action needs condemning more than the reviewer himself.

In conclusion, from the case of Tran Van Duy - a food reviewer coming from Thai Binh being criticized for reviewing Hanoi food, we can see that social events are complex and cultural in nature and need to be observed with critical eyes. In this way, we could not only appreciate and embrace the differences in intercultural communication but also facilitate communication. Hopefully, this analytical writing could shed light on the motive behind the way the public reacts to surrounding events in an informed way and discourage our community from treating other group members as outsiders.

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Reference list

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García, S. B., & Guerra, P. L. (2006). Conceptualizing culture in education: Implications for schooling in a culturally diverse society. In Redefining culture: Perspectives across the disciplines (pp. 103-115). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Retrieved from: https://pdf-drive.com/pdf/John20R.20Baldwin20-20Redefining20Culture20Perspectives20Across20the20Disciplines2028Lea27s20Communication20Series292028Lea27s20Communication20Series292028200529.pdf#page=128

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Tuchman, G. (1978). Introduction: The symbolic annihilation of women by the mass media. In Introduction: The symbolic annihilation of women by the mass media (pp. 3-38). Oxford University Press. Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-62397-6_9