Chapter 3 — The City Has No Smell

Do Nghi sorts fish sauce by tilting each jar toward the light, not by opening the lid. She said the smell lies in the viscosity, the floating oil color and the small air bubbles stuck to the glass walls. Huyen stood behind the counter, wearing a mask down around her neck but did not write immediately. She waited for Nghi to finish teaching the first lesson: don't start with the sentence "what is this smell?"

“Start by asking how it is changing,” Nghi said.

Outside Ben Reu market, a Clean Class spraying truck drove slowly past. The thin white mist touched the corrugated iron roof, causing the ropes hanging the fish to stop vibrating. Passersby looked up and continued to buy things. A boy covered his nose out of habit, then put his hand down because there was nothing to avoid.

Do not look at the car. She opened the first bottle and showed Huyen to smell it from a distance.

"The first smell is old anchovies. The second smell is raw salt. If there is a metallic smell, this jar was left near a hot iron barrel."

Huyen lifted his nose. The smell is strong, salty, with a layer of fermented oil clinging to the back of the throat. She scored the intensity 6 out of 10, the umami and sourness properties, the discomfort level 1. Nghi glanced over.

“You write unpleasant 1?”

"With me."

"For those who buy fish sauce, it is proof that this bottle is worth the money. For those who are not familiar, it could be 8."

“So the center needs to record the context.”

Nghi laughed. “Finally, you guys know you're not alone.”

A market orderly walked over, holding a measuring device. He was much younger than Nghi, his face was red because he had to speak loudly amid the sound of the cart.

"Your counter received a second reminder. The Ben Reu area is welcoming a clean urban assessment team during the week. The smell of fermentation must be covered from eight o'clock to seventeen o'clock."

"What's the cover? The fish sauce is in the jar."

“The smell still escapes.”

"If the fish sauce doesn't escape, who will buy it?"

He doesn't know how to answer. Huyen asked to see what odor level was recorded in the record.

“Recording index exceeds the threshold.”

“What is the threshold?”

Staff opens the machine. The screen has a red strip but does not show the unit. Huyen asked for a rough number. He was confused, saying this device was only used for zoning reminders, not an inspection device.

Nghi put down the towel. “So you guys fine me based on a red light?”

"No penalty. Just request for correction."

“Fix a smell you can't name?”

Huyen saw that the conversation was entering a familiar circle. One person has the machine, the other person has the nose, and neither side has a way to connect the two into a profile. She asked Nghi if he agreed to take the sample. Nghi nodded, but said she had to take the whole jar of fish sauce from the next counter and not open the lid in front of the customers.

“What do you use to prove?” Nghi asked.

"I don't know yet."

"Good. If I had known, I would have just taken what helped me right."

Huyen borrowed a sealed sample box from the center car. She collects air in three locations: inside the counter, at the top of the aisle, and behind the spray truck. The Clean class has just passed through so the sample has no obvious odor. She got that right. Nghi looked at how she marked the hour, position, wind direction and time from when the car passed.

“You can add the scent at the counter as edible,” Nghi said.

“I don't write value comments without criteria.”

“So you wrote that people eat it.”

Huyen looked at her. “That's the context.”

Nghi crossed his arms. “Finally, there is an administrative word that works.”

At noon, the market no longer smelled of fish, even though the fish were still in ice boxes. That makes the seller more uncomfortable than the old smell. They have to look at the color, feel the elasticity and ask the importer many times. One person The woman who bought the fish said she didn't know if the fish had been left out for a long time because its "nose was off". Nghi heard it and pulled Huyen to the end of the counter.

"Do you see? People think I want to keep the smell to sell the goods. I want to keep the smell to know the goods haven't died again."

Huyen does not use the phrase "I understand". She asked Nghi if anyone had ever been poisoned by spoiled fish.

"No. Because before, anyone who smelled something strange didn't buy it. Now they believe the billboard is cleaner than their nose."

At the front of the market, a group of children are distributing leaflets from the city. “Decreased odor, increased quality of life.” An stood in the group, but did not broadcast. He looked at Huyen, then looked at the spray truck.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Draw the line.”

An opened the book. He marked the market as a light green area, although normally it would be yellow because of the strong smell. Near the food area, he drew a small red circle.

"Why?"

"I can't smell it. But my chest feels heavier after the car runs."

Van, an occupational medicine doctor, also just arrived at the market. She didn't know An was following. Van asked him if he had taken medicine, measured his breathing rate, and then told him to sit in a cafe with natural wind. No one said Clean Layer caused irritability. They only recorded the time: the spray truck passed at 11:26; An started feeling heavy in the chest at 11:31; It was better at 11:49 when I left the market entrance.

“Is this model valuable?” Nghi asked Van.

"There's value in asking the question. It's not enough to show the cause."

“Why does everyone say it's not enough?”

Van replied: "Because saying enough when it's not enough can make others pay the price."

Nghi was annoyed, but did not object. She gave An a slice of sauerkraut. "Eat it. The smell is gone but the taste is still there."

In the afternoon, the orderly returned with a report. Huyen read the description: "The characteristic smell of fermented foods affects urban aesthetics." She underlined the word "aesthetics".

“Who defines influence?”

“Market regulations.”

“Are the regulations for recording smells or recording images?”

He looked at Mrs. Nghi and seemed to also see that this sentence was wrong but didn't know how to fix it.

Do sign to accept, do not sign to agree. She said she would open the counter as usual tomorrow, but would put up a new sign: "The fish sauce smells. The smell is not garbage." Huyen asked the board if permission was needed. Nghi replied: "If I ask permission to smell, I ask permission with my nose."

Huyen brought the samples to the center. In the analysis room, she opened the collated data. The counter sample has volatile compounds suitable for fermentation. The rear spray sample clearly reduces odor-causing substances, but does not indicate other substances in the air. There is no evidence that Clean Grade spoils fish. There is also no reason to use a low odor index as a food safety certificate.

She writes two separate conclusions:

“The fermentation smell of the Nghi counter is high in intensity, the level of unpleasantness changes according to the context.”

“After spraying, the ability to detect changes in food has not been evaluated.”

Tung sent a text message asking where she got the sample. Huyen replied with the location code. He responded after a while: "The spray truck ran on schedule today."

Huyen typed: "On schedule, it doesn't say who it's covering."

Tung did not answer.

That night, Nghi sent a photo. A new sign has been hung in front of the counter, the words written in red paint. Below, she drew a very large nose. Huyen kept the photos on file, not as legal evidence but as the context of an ongoing debate in market language.

In a city with no smell, Nghi's fish sauce stall became the first place to publicly say that there was one Odors can be both powerful and beneficial, and need to be managed without being erased.

That evening, Nghi texted Huyen a list of fourteen words the market used to describe the smell. There is a word for the smell of freshly pulled fish, a word for fish sauce that is fermenting properly, a word for hot fish sauce, a word for barrel washing water and a word that cannot be translated neatly into administrative language: the smell that makes the buyer turn back and ask if the seller is sure.

Huyen called back and asked if she wanted to explain every word in the file.

“No,” Nghi said. "I want you to include the fact that there are words that cannot be compacted. If you force them into a label, you will lose the part of the person using it."

“But the data needs standardization.”

“Standardize for comparison, not to force everyone to speak like a meeting room.”

Huyen asked Nghi if she could invite two other sellers to join the evaluation group. Nghi agreed on the condition that they were paid and had the right to read the minutes before publication. She said vendors are often called in to offer free experiences, then left out of the decision-making part.

The next morning, Huyen brought the sample from the market to the analysis room. She placed the standard samples next to them, not mixing them in the same scale. A chemistry expert said the fermentation smell was just a "background". Huyen requested that the word be changed to "natural mixture requiring classification". The expert asked if she was defending the market or defending the term.

“I defend the ability to say exactly what you are measuring.”

When the preliminary results were sent back, the Nghi counter sample showed no signs of danger, but the sample taken from the back of the spray vehicle had too little information to evaluate. Huyen clearly wrote down the limit and asked Nghi to read it over. Nghi doesn't understand all the compounds, but understands the saying "not enough to evaluate". She requested that the sentence be at the beginning of the news, not at the end of the caption.

“People read first,” she said.

Huyen edited the layout. In a city accustomed to seeing big numbers in the middle of the screen, Nghi's fish sauce stall taught her a little thing: important parts should not be hidden at the bottom of the page just because it makes the news look less beautiful.