My heart sinks each time I cross the narrow cul-de-sac where a young woman from the suburbs lives. To earn a living, she pushes a bicycle around the streets of the town the whole day, crying out: "who wants to buy salt?" With one kilo costing less than 15 cents, she has to work very hard to make ends meet.
My thoughts go back to the resistance zone during the First War of Resistance against the French more than 40 years ago when we ran very low on salt was we were caught up in the jungles of Viet Bac in northen Vietnam. Salt was then a precious commodity. Many resistance workers, civilian and military, suffered grave health problems because they could not get the 20 grams or so that the body needs daily. It happened more than once that we had to do with the ash of burnt bamboo.
Ancient Vietnam comprising only the northern area of the present territory, had a mountainous region inhabited by a dozen ethnic minorities and the plains inhabited by the Viet, the majority group. Salt was therefore the most important article in barter trade between people of the plain and the highlanders.
As with many other cultures in the world, salt assumes a high symbolic character in Vietnamese culture.
Man's subconscious is haunted by salt. Is it because the first germ of life which was to engender the human race came from the sea where water holds the same proportion of salt as human blood?
Salt is first of all the symbol of friendship, love, solidarity and hospitality and durable social ties. Is it because when sharing this indispensable stuff of life with another, one wishes to show that one's faithfulness is complete? In ancient Greece, as well as among the Jews and Arabs, salt represented friendship, hospitality and respect for a promise made. Homer on many occasions affirmed the sacred character of salt which was frequently used in sacrificial rites.
According to Hindu philosophy, the individual self merges in the universal consciousness just as salt dissolves in water.
Another trait of salt is its indestructibility. For the Semites, to eat bread and salt together is to seal an indestructible friendship or a durable commitment. A French proverb says: "They will not eat a pinch of salt together, they will quarrel soon."
Salt and ginger constitute, according to a Vietnamese folk song, a vow of eternal love:
"I raise the plate of salt in my hand where I have immersed ginger,
the ginger is hot, the salt is salt, let neither of us will forget the other."
Salt is used to preserve fish, meat and food in general. Some beliefs make it a symbol of preservation and even purification. Japanese shintoism devotes a ritual ceremony to the harvest of salt. Small mounds of salt placed at the house entrance or on the brim of the well or on the ground of the house of someone who has fust died is believed to have a purifying and exorcising effect. Some Japanese spread salt on the threshold of their homes everyday; they do the same after the departure of an undesirable guest.
Many Vietnamese phrases allude to the figurative sense of the word "salty".
"A fish that refuses to be salte will be spoiled."
Excess of salt causes a burning sensation. The proverb "when the father eats too much salt, the child will be very thirsty", is an allusion to Buddhist karma: Children have to pay for the crimes and bad acts of their parents.
Moral wounds are likened to the burn caused by salt on live flesh in such expressions as: "Only he who has his entrails burnt by salt knows what it is", "he has his face salted, to be very ashamed, accept to do something very humilitating, to lose face, which is a very grave thing in Asian cultures".
The old expression to throw salt into the eyes means an eyesore, to be disgracefully unpleasant to the eyes.
The correct quantity of salt will give flavour to dishes and, in a figurative sense, give ardour to an action or a feeling, something piquant and spiritual, to a narrative, a story. The French says: the salt of life, the salt of an epigram, a joke full of salt, that has plenty of salt, and so on.
For Vietnamese, a woman who speaks with charm is being salted sentiment; passionate love is salted ardour, and a customer who wants to buy at any price is being salted purchase.
Grilled and salted sesame and salted vegetable are lean dishes in pagodas.
