Words

25 April, 2008

Vietnam Phenom

Every night on Hanoi's bia hoi (cold beer) corner, a famous Old Quarter institution, the most frugal and most filthy travelers, those who don't mind street grime in the glasses of their nearly free beers, mingle with the few locals who have sufficient funds to afford cheap keg beer. The plastic chairs on which the patrons sit are the size and shape one would expect to find being used as a stool at a preschool. Anyone larger than a three-year-old toddler must succumb to a fetal-like sitting position to maintain any semblance of balance, much less to avoid destroying the cheaply made chair under their weight. The tables are also shoddy Chinese imports, 12 inches off the ground, plastic, cracked, and covered in a grimy, sticky film. Glasses, which are washed between patrons by being dipped in a bucket of scummy water, top the tables and are filled with a sweet but bitter, watered-down version of Vietnamese keg beer, which is, according to legend, brewed fresh everyday. The rumor may hold true - when one keg is finished, the next one arrives magically on the back of a moto. But from where it comes nobody knows.

All four corners of the intersection at the bia hoi corner are storefronts converted into these cramped drinking establishments. Until about 11pm each night, enthusiastic patrons on rickety plastic stools spill out into the street, either drinking to get a cheap buzz or working up the courage to try out some of their newly learned Vietnamese terminology on the locals. Each corner competes for customers by keeping the price of bia hoi ridiculously low. The going rate is currently 3000 Vietnamese Dong for a glass - about 18 cents. If a bar on one corner of the intersection lowers their price, others must follow suit in order to stay in business. The bia hoi corner is the epitome of capitalistic enterprise - the market economy come full force - in a country so recently plagued by socialism-based food and goods shortages; a country that now basks in the cheap overabundance of all things consumable. Marketplaces thrive; competition is fierce; free enterprise is ubiquitous. The lack of governmental regulation in any visible form in the private sector ensures that the system functions as an enormous competitive swap meet of goods and services. Capitalism, not socialism or communism, is the quintessential social force in Vietnam today.

These observations, however, are in direct contrast to the very essence of the political foundation of this country. Even the name, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, seems to suggest that the kind of unregulated free enterprise taking place at the moment is absurdly contradictory to the idealistic creed of the country's formation. Vietnam is purportedly a socialist state, where the representatives of the people (the government) or worker's councils would theoretically have control over all goods production and enterprise; where private businesses and non-regulated enterprises are barred; where economic freedoms, choices and even voices are banned or silenced; where chosen or elected bodies control most everything, from the production of goods, to the division of labor, to the educational curriculum, to the food available in stores and restaurants. But Vietnam appears to be almost without any regulation whatsoever. Sure, political dissidents are silenced, but economically speaking, if someone acquires a marketable product they are seemingly free to vend it without any interference from social regulation. All socialist countries' representatives, in this day of market globalization, must make the decision as to how much the various aspects of society are controlled. Examples have shown that the more freedom a socialist regime allows economically, the more the free market flourishes, until the point where, like now, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's economy seems to run in a more efficient, productive, and competitive manner than some of the western economies who pioneered free market concepts.

It requires a more in-depth look and a wary eye to begin to understand how these complex socio-political contradictions are reconciled; how socialism and capitalism are able to co-exist in this multifarious society. After spending enough time in Vietnam, one becomes attuned to the chaos of crowded, third-world country. Only then is it possible to peer through the haze and noise produced by millions of motos and their constant barrage of horns. For a Westerner it takes time, but one can scrape off the layer of pollution beginning to cover the old propaganda signs of the Soviet-era influence. One can discern that there is a society, a socialist republic, in a state of extreme growth and flux, but still heavily influenced by a powerful and socialistic government. Just trying to cross a chaotic and dangerous street used to be enough to distract me from the distinctly unique underbelly of this complicated and contradictory country. But now I believe I am able to recognize the way the two opposing forms of government, socialist and capitalist, are inexorably intertwined in , and how the contradictions can be rationalized, even to the extent that the benefit to the average citizen can be discerned.
Not three kilometers from the bia hoi corner, the heart of capitalistic Vietnam, is the most sacred and distinctly socialistic location in all of Vietnam: the mausoleum of the late, great Ho Chi Minh. Minh was the leader of North Vietnam up until a few years before the Vietcong army sacked Saigon, on April 30, 1975, and forced out the invaders from America, ending the Vietnam War (called the American War there), 'liberating' the southern Vietnamese, and uniting a country split apart for decades.
tanks ahoy
One of the tanks that crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace in 1975

As a small honor to a man who helped usher in a new way of thinking, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh city and a new communist country, called the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, was born. As a much larger honor, although against his wishes, upon his death, he was preserved through embalmment, ala Joseph Stalin and other communist leaders of debatable historical character. To those throughout the world who support communism in general, and in particular the current socialist regime leaders in Vietnam, Minh is seen as god-like.
Exploring the mausoleum and its grounds is a trip into propaganda heaven and an adventure in strict social behavioral code, reminiscent of a totalitarian communistic environment. Surrounding the complex on every side are enormous billboards containing pictures of various types of Vietnamese citizens all doing their part to improve the industriousness of the nation: the field worker, the academic, the mother and her daughter, the laborer. All their eyes gaze proudly and in unison toward a Vietnamese flag. Beyond the flag are bridges and high-rise structures that their hard work will create to make Vietnam a better place. These images are quite convincing, actually, when one views the industrial and economic progress of such socialist examples as China in the last few decades. They are probably even more convincing if someone grows up listening to loud speakers all over the city blasting messages detailing the government in power's commitment to helping society succeed.
props to ganda
One of the many old billboards to be found lurking in the streets of Saigon

Inside the complex, which, in true communist fashion, is free of charge to all who want to pay their respects to the great leader (I went twice), the rules are many. Here is a smattering: you are not to wear hats. You are to cover your shoulders and wear pants. You will have your bag searched not once but three times. You will pass through two metal detectors. This is no different than the respect one would show when visiting the Vatican. But it becomes even more authoritarian. You will follow the rigidly drawn lines that lead to the mausoleum. You will walk at a controlled speed, in two-by-two formation. You will not smile. You will not talk. Your camera and cell phone will be confiscated. You will be pushed along by guards armed with rifles. You will be scorned and threatened for stepping out of line.
Finally, the mausoleum appears, and the crowds, in formation on the walkway, hush eerily. Red carpet is rolled down the tomb's stairs every morning at 7:30 until 10:30am, except Monday, and Friday, and the two months a year when Ho Chi Minh's body is taken to Moscow for preservation maintenance. The stairs are guarded by several stoic sentinels, complete with bayonet rifles. They are so immovable that they look embalmed themselves. The only way to force them to break their picture perfect posture is to step off the red carpet, to crack a smile, or to slow below the heavily regulated pace of the formation of human traffic. This last lofty crime against the state causes the guards to grab the arm of the perpetrator and shove him forward swiftly and purposefully, to maintain the systematic normalcy of the social order.

Entering the mausoleum itself, a cool dry waft of air blows upon the onlookers, as the climate is specially conditioned for the preservation of a modern day mummy. After a few turns on the red carpet the silence of the crowd intensifies further as the line of spectators enters the small, dark room containing the body. At this point the number and importance of guards increases. There are no less than eight officers standing watch in the room where Minh is encased in thick, bulletproof glass. The room is U-shaped and the crowd travels around three sides of the perimeter viewing the case in a treadmill-like fashion, each person staring wide-eyed at the slowly decaying body under eerie light. Any moment of pause for a better glance ensures a push in the back and a grunt from a nearby guard. The flood of humanity must flow on. It is quite obvious that not only is the proletariat seen as an entity rather than as individuals, but it is not important for the masses to see the body, just to have gone to see the body, to pay due respect to a god.

Marching two by two, it's nearly impossible to catch a lengthy glimpse of the wrinkled, tiny, embalmed leader, a ghostly white appearance of his former self ЁC the skin of his face pulled so tightly over his skull as if all the facial muscles have been removed. His head of stringy white hair appears to be a set of poorly planted plugs. His tiny body, cloaked in a robe, has an unnatural bend, as if his back has been snapped to improve his post-mortus posture. Worst of all, his skin takes on a pasty, waxy characteristic, lit by a sickly glow from a light aimed more at preserving him than illuminating him. If The Simpsons' Mr. Burns were embalmed, he could easily replace the body of Ho Chi Minh without anybody noticing ЁC that is, if Mr. Burns first aged another half decade or so.
The crowd breathes a deep sigh of relief as they exit the mausoleum; the fear of the ghastly air of death is replaced by a perceivable murmur of disbelief that the body that was just viewed was truly Ho Chi Minh and not a wax replacement. The surrealistic experience ends as the red carpet draws the crowd out of the mausoleum and into the daylight.

Later, that evening, at the bia hoi corner, cramped tourists squirm in their plastic chairs for an impossible-to-find comfortable sitting position, while discussing Ho Chi Minh and his legacy. As the beer flows ceaselessly, conversations ramble from the impression of his embalmed body to his dubious stature in Vietnamese society. Eventually the merits of socialism are drunkenly debated. As we all know, idealism complements copious amounts of alcohol ever so well. No matter how good the idea of an egalitarian society sounds to an intoxicated, financially secure traveler, however, due to inebriation and distraction, definite conclusions are never reached in these sometimes heated disputes. The distractions are provided by local entrepreneurs, who incessantly interrupt the bia hoi patrons' discussions, peddling roasted dried squid, bootlegged photocopied versions of The Lonely Planet, baskets of fruit, and campy t-shirts. These locals are capitalists, if opportunists, who spend 18 or more hours a day marketing their cheap wares in the streets. The market thrives due to tourism and a lack of regulation. A few sales per day is enough to maintain their simple existence, and to exacerbate the exponentially increasing realm of free market economics that continues to provide endless contradiction in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Superficially, on this corner every evening, the balance of the interaction between socialism and capitalism in Vietnam seems to be very much weighted toward the market economy. But underneath the chaos lies a strict socialist regime that maintains order. This land of contrasts is difficult to grasp, especially after several bia hoi, when, instead of debating the merits and downfalls of a particular socioeconomic scheme, it becomes more interesting just to watch the endless progression of a phonomenally complex society on the move.