The Unexpected Gift

As anticipated, one of the most difficult questions to answer upon return from this remarkable trip has been, "so how was your trip?"  Last week I submitted this column to my local paper, the Shelburne Falls/West County (MA) Independent.  It is an attempt to summarize the impact of the trip, through one lens. 
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Understanding Viet Nam: The Unexpected Gift

One of the reasons I love the hilltowns of West County is the sense of history embedded in this landscape: the old barns, clustered town centers, and land use patterns that reflect life lived close to the land.  The longer I live here, the more I learn about lives past and the impact they’ve had on the land.  It makes me feel more connected to the land I live on to know something of the past lives it has supported.

A few years ago, I coordinated a study of agricultural lands in Ipswich; some of the homes still standing and in use had been built in the 1600s.  In this relatively new country, that seems pretty old, especially to this native Midwesterner.  But now I understand how young this country is.

Floating villages at Ha Long Bay have been there for generations.

Earlier this month, I traveled to Viet Nam with my sister and cousin on a tour sponsored by our shared alumnae association.  The 16-day trip, which took us from Hanoi in the north to the Mekong Delta a thousand miles to the south, was profound.  It affected me in more ways than I can recount in one column, but seeing Viet Nam’s rich and complex history reflected on the landscape continues to shift my perceptions of that country and its people.  More specifically, my understanding of Viet Nam’s multi-millennial history of conquest, expansion, subjugation, division and reunification changed my emotional connection to the U.S. involvement in the war in Viet Nam.

A bit of disclosure here: I was quite active against the war. In the early 1970s, I  worked full-time with an anti-war organization, and the images of the carnage documented in newspaper and television photos remain vivid for me, as they do for many in my generation.  Just being in Hanoi brought back all the emotions I felt during Johnson- and Nixon-era U.S. involvement—all those feelings of guilt, sorrow, rage, and deeply held grief.  During the first few days, I found myself brimming with tears, incredulous at the generosity and friendliness of the people, and struck with the beauty of the country and its rich history.

Before the trip, I had read several books about Viet Nam, including The Sacred Willow, in which Duong Van Mai Elliot tells the story of four generations of her family, including a generation dramatically divided by the war against U.S. forces.  Her detailed and balanced account began to shift something within me.  What had been a fairly black and white understanding of the war, framed when I was in my twenties and more sure of my convictions, evolved into many shades of grey.

Roadside mural in Hanoi celebrating the city's 1000th anniversary.

 Our trip began in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, which in 2010 celebrated its 1000^th anniversary—a thousand years since, according to legend, emperor Ly Thai To saw a dragon rising from one of the lakes and flying into the sky, and was given a sword to drive the Chinese out of Viet Nam after a thousand years of domination.   A mosaic wall along one road celebrates the resulting establishment of Hanoi as the capital of Viet Nam.

More than anywhere else in Viet Nam, Hanoi reflects the French colonial influence, its old government buildings still boasting the mustard yellow color of French Indochina. Adjacent to the grand Presidential Palace were the more modest accommodations where Ho Chi Minh lived between 1954, when the French withdrew from Viet Nam, until 1969 when he died.  

Ho Chi Minh's residence from 1954-1969 in Hanoi.

The massive mausoleum to Ho Chi Minh.

 Ho was revered for his success (supported by the U.S.) in driving Japan out of Viet Nam in 1945, but Viet Nam’s independence was short-lived; the French (whom, in a self-serving reversal, the U.S. now backed against the Vietnamese) returned in 1946 and remained until 1954.  When the French left, the Geneva Conference drew a geographic line—the DMZ—that divided Viet Nam into North and South for two decades.

We walked through the Temple of Literatures, founded in 1070, where massive stone tablets, seated on the backs of turtles, record the names of those who passed the highest academic exams.  The oldest of these tablets dates to 1442.  Despite a continuing distrust of the Chinese, this temple—dedicated to the civil law established by Confucius—remains a testament to the importance of education in Vietnamese society today.  

Tablets in the Temple of Literatures.

We visited the Hoi Lo, the notorious prison dubbed the “Hanoi Hilton” in which many US pilots were held, including John McCain and Douglas “Pete” Peterson who later became the first U.S. ambassador to Viet Nam. The arched stone lintel over the door reads “Maison Centrale” reveals its French origin: it was built in the late 19^th century to imprison Vietnamese freedom fighters who were resisting French domination.  

A bronze mural in the Hoi Lo museum (aka Hanoi Hilton) commemorates
the Vietnamese imprisoned and tortured by the French.

 There was an album of photographs of those young U.S. pilots which reminded me of the poor reception they had upon return, but the displays of the torture Vietnamese prisoners had at the hand of the French were equally disturbing. Most remarkable to me was the love of Vietnam that made former prisoner Peterson return as ambassador.

We flew from Hanoi into Da Nang, landing at the airport that had been a major U. S. military base from 1959 to 1975, and stayed in a very posh resort on China Beach, where the first US marines landed in 1965.  The contrast in appearance is striking.

If you look closely, you can see bullet holes in this ancient urn.

In Hue, where the famed Imperial Citadel of the Nguyen Dynasty was all but destroyed in the conflict following the Tet Offensive of 1968, great bronze urns show the impact of bullets from the weeks of intensive street-to-street fighting. Behind the impressively restored sections we could see ruined walls and mounds covered by tropical vegetation hiding what remains to be restored.

The Cu Chi tunnels in the Mekong Delta have also become a museum of sorts.  This is where Viet Cong insurgents, as well as Viet Minh who followed the Ho Chi Minh trail from the north, traveled through and hid within the 150 miles of hand-carved tunnels to challenge the much better armed South Vietnamese Army and U.S. forces.  Again, the history of these tunnels precedes U.S. involvement; they were originally excavated by Vietnamese farmers trying to escape French forces decades earlier. 

In each of these sites, the history of occupation and resistance is told in unemotional terms.  The long history of the country—from Chinese domination to imperial dynasties to communist insurgence—reflects an on-going effort to be independent and unified.  And despite changing politics and economies, there appears to be a quiet pride that is grounded in this history.

However, my impression is that the industry, generosity, and determination of the Vietnamese people is focused on the future rather than dwelling in the past.  In the 37 years since the fall of Saigon and the reunification of north and south, the country has reinvigorated itself.  After eleven dark years (1975-1986) of rigid control and “reeducation” of more than a 100,000 South Vietnamese sympathetic with the Americans, the Communist government realized the failing economy signaled they were on the wrong track, and changed courses.  In 1986, Viet Nam opened its doors to the west. 

The thriving floating market on the Mekong delighted us.

Private enterprise, previously outlawed, is now encouraged.  Family farms have replaced the communal farms of the late 1970s and early ‘80s.  Boats along the Mekong are loaded with rice, building materials, fruits and vegetables in a veritable floating market of free enterprise.  And thousands of motorcycles and scooters, carrying everything from porcelain to goldfish to refrigerators, careen through the cities, defying any sense of order yet somehow avoiding death.

The thriving agricultural economy is largely non-industrial, relying instead on the efforts of individuals.  Irrigation, plowing, planting, harvesting of rice is done by hand. Most industries—with the notable exception of oil production and export—are now privatized. While the political system is still communist, the economy is becoming more capitalist.

Our remarkable guide, Nguyen Tuan Huy, took us through a farming village, a brick factory, an island nursery of fruiting trees that is an eco-tourism destination, a rice-polishing factory, a UNESCO World Heritage site that was a trading metropolis in the 16^th century, and several pagodas, tombs and museums.  His candor about life in Viet Nam, his balanced narrative of the war (which he described as not a regional north vs. south conflict, but a conflict of philosophies), his humorous description of the “Vietnamizing” of colonial influences (“We kicked out the French, but kept the croissants”), provided a remarkable perspective about this resilient country.

At the Cu Chi tunnels, Huy spoke of the enormous discrepancy in power between those fighting for reunification of Vietnam, and the American-supplied and –backed South Vietnamese Army.  “We had to change the terms of the battle,” he said.  “We had to let the Americans know they did not belong here.”  Which is what the Vietnamese did to defeat the Chinese a millennium ago, and again with the French half a century ago.  I believed him when he said Ho Chi Minh was not so much a communist as a nationalist; the desire of Viet Nam to be one country has been the driving force behind their eventual victories over colonial occupation.

When I think of Viet Nam now, I recall the breathtaking beauty of the vertical cliffs standing in Ha Long Bay, the pastoral industry of those harvesting rice, the lively markets in the old quarter of Hanoi and floating on the Mekong River, the cacophony of all those motorcycles pulsing the cultural lifeblood through the paved arteries of Saigon. I especially embrace the generosity and kindness of the people we met. The whole experience shifted something in me. 

I better understand the United States as an adolescent country, somewhat impetuous, not anchored by the longer history of place, not tempered by the experience of occupation.  And, like adolescents I have known and loved, unwilling to admit when we are wrong, unwilling to accept that our perspective might be short-sighted, unable to learn from past  mistakes.  On the other hand, my personal angst over the war has been ameliorated somewhat.  My tears seem self-indulgent in the face of the Vietnamese choice to focus on the future. 

 As we prepared to leave the country, Huy expressed his hope that, if nothing else, we would now think of Viet Nam as a country, not as a war.  That has been the unexpected gift from this remarkable trip.