Education

Although Huy says the Vietnamese will be quick to say how unlike the Chinese they are (not a happy history there -- yet one more chapter in the domination of this country), there is much Chinese influence in the Vietnamese culture.  Nowhere is this more evident than the importance of education. The Temple of Literature in HaNoi provides centuries of evidence.  This temple is a tribute to Confucius who, in the 6th century, created a code of civil law.

The entrance to the temple includes rows and rows of giant tablets, sitting on the backs of huge turtles, inscribed with the names of those who passed their highest educational test. The oldest of these stone tablets -- each maybe 8' tall -- was inscribed in 1442.   The latest is from the 19th century.

Turtles appear everywhere: the feet of huge stone tables are turtles, there is an enormous golden turtle  featured in a glass box next to the altar to Confucius, and just outside the altar is a statue of a crane maybe 10' tall, its feet on the back of a turtle.

 The sculpture captured my attention, and if I can just figure out how to get my photos off my camera and onto this blog, I'll share it.  We didn't hear the story about that image until yesterday, which Marianne will share that in another blog.

But I am struck by the presence of the turtle, since in Native American tradition we are said to be living on turtle island.

Land use

The flight from HaNoi to Danang did not allow for much study of the land below-- air quality was too poor--but first impression was of extremely dense pockets of housing in islands surrounded by large mosaics of rice.  It certainly looked that way on the ground. Rice is grown right up to the walls of four story "skinny houses."

Since half of the country is mountainous, its 90 million people live primarily where food is more easily grown -- on the flat lands and flood plains near the coast. all land in Viet Nam is owned by the state, but the uses are individually owned and taxed accordingly.  Farmland enjoys very low taxes, and to encourage farming, no taxes are charged for the first 4 or 5 years.  Land can be out under permanent agricultural preservation.

Homes traditionally have that skinny, tall, railroad quality since, starting in the 13th & 14th centuries houses were taxed on the width of the building. Ground floors are devoted to shops ( the majority of people are self-employed), and families live upstairs, the youngest generation at the top.

Landing in DaNang, I could see what looked like neighborhood blocks with only one or two skinny houses within -- the rest lost to war? Or not built? This city, the third largest in Viet Nam, is much less dense, and homes tend to be a little broader. According to Huy (of course, all of this is according to Huy), the mayor of DaNang is responsible for reducing density and retaining more green space within the core.  It's the city where Huy would like to move, leaving his native HaNoi.  We passed an enormous, multi-block long sports complex open to everyone and intensively used with courts, fields, etc.

Everywhere along the stretch of new road where the Furama Resort is located, there are frames of buildings begun and abandoned.  Long fences promote future development of "beachfront retreat," new gated condominiums and resorts planned but halted due to the same recession we have been facing.  International investors, I presume.  On a smaller scale, we saw the same thing in HaNoi--many partially constructed homes, piles of sand and bricks, lumber, metal sheeting sitting idle.

I wonder what this stretch of road will look like in another decade --the new Gold Coast of vacationland? And what about the rising oceans? I asked Huy.  He thinks the bedrock foundation and ridge of mountains to the west make this much less vulnerable to flooding and climate change than the southern part of Viet nam, but I wonder.