http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/20/news/letter.php
Letter from Vietnam: Emblems of war persist, but enmity is long gone By Samuel Abt Bloomberg News Wednesday, June 20, 2007 Members of Vietnam's National Assembly walk past the mausoleum of former communist leader Ho Chi Minh after paying their respects in Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi on Tuesday. (Richard Vogel/AP) HANOI: Because "war museum" and "mausoleum" can sound alike, especially if a pedicab driver speaks no English and his passenger no Vietnamese, a recent visitor to Hanoi found himself in a long line waiting to view the embalmed corpse of Ho Chi Minh, "He Who Enlightens." The change in plans was acceptable. Although he had not been one of those Americans who chanted "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh" during war protests in the turbulent 1960s - still less "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" - the visitor had opposed the war and respected Ho's impulses more than he did Lyndon Johnson's. So, instead of heading for 28 Dien Bien Phu street and the Military History Museum, his original goal, the visitor stayed at the mausoleum in Ba Dinh Square. It is a huge, gray temple, air conditioned against the fierce heat, and Ho's body is under glass and guarded by four soldiers in white uniforms. He died in 1969 and is said to have wanted not a mausoleum but cremation and burial of his ashes at three sites around Vietnam, north, central and south. In the Presidential Palace Area near the mausoleum are more vestiges, as a tourist pamphlet put it, of Ho. The sparse dining room in the House of 1954, where he lived and worked from that year until 1958, has a table set for one. The workroom has portraits of Marx and Lenin, a small bust of Lenin, a collection of books and a clear desk. The House on Stilts, where Ho lived and worked from 1958 until 1969, is also uncluttered. A metal air raid helmet sits behind three telephones, none of them red. A fish pond, orchards and a pergola complete the site except for the imposing Presidential Palace, formerly the seat of France's governor of Indochina. Acclaimed in the same pamphlet for his "simplicity, modesty, gentleness and dedication for the nation and the people," Ho seems never to have used the palace. Strikingly absent throughout the compound are any references to Vietnam's wars against the French (1946-1954) for independence or the Americans (1964-1973) for reunification. Almost all of Hanoi is mute about those conflicts, especially what is known in the United States as the Vietnam War and in Vietnam as the American War. That is why the visitor wanted to see the Military History Museum, where, guidebooks say, the forecourt includes a U.S. tank and a second courtyard is littered with the wreckage of U.S. planes. The visitor was curious whether these spoils would be labeled with denunciations of the enemy, but that will have to wait for another visit; woozy in the heat, he hailed a cyclo, or pedicab, and returned to his hotel for a shower before the flight home. It had been an exciting visit to a vibrant city. Bao Ninh was surely too pessimistic in his searing novel, "The Sorrow of War," about his 10 years as a North Vietnamese soldier, when he wrote in 1991: "The aura of hope in those early postwar days swiftly faded. Those who survived continue to live. But that will has gone, that burning will which was once Vietnam's salvation. "Where is the reward of enlightenment due to us for attaining our sacred war goals? Our history-making efforts for the great generations have been to no avail. What's so different here and now from the vulgar and cruel life we all experienced during the war?" Ask young Vietnamese if they agree. At the hotel and in the few shops and restaurants where young Vietnamese spoke a bit of English, there was no resonance of the American War. Questioned where he was from, the visitor noticed no loss of smile, no sudden intake of breath when he said "the United States." He might as well have identified himself as a Finn or Bolivian. A people who have battled in the last half-century against the Japanese, the French, the Americans, the Cambodians, the Chinese and, certainly, themselves, appear mostly to have put that history far behind. Not entirely, though. Here and there in the teeming Old Quarter of Hanoi are shops devoted to propaganda art, which is to art what military music is to music. Posters with primary colors and slightly idealized figures - workers, peasants, soldiers - range over several decades up to the present day. Mainly they concentrate on the American War, possibly because the shops' customers are overwhelmingly American, as a clerk explained. All the posters are inspirational, puzzlingly in English, and some are dated. "Congratulations on the great victory in Tri Thien-Hue (1975)," exclaimed one under a drawing of smiling combat veterans. "More manure and good rice varieties mean bumper crops (1970)" announced another. In one poster, a huge fist demolished a plane marked USAF, or U.S. Air Force. In another, a storm of bombs falls toward an infant in a basket above the question, "Is this what you want to do, Nich Xon?" first and middle names Richard Milhous, the man with the "secret" peace plan that consisted of increasing the bombing and spreading the war into Cambodia. For $9, no bargaining, the visitor bought two posters. The first showed a woman soldier with an automatic rifle standing in front of a cheering crowd and was captioned "Let's hold firmly to our guns to protect revolutionary achievements (1974)." The second was Ho gazing benignly over a swarm of doves and soldiers, labeled "Dien Bien Phu victory (1999)," or, 45 years earlier, the battle that broke the French. Then it was time to leave the shop. The street outside was the standard Hanoi maelstrom of cars, trucks, taxis, motorcycles, cyclos, bicycles and motorbikes, all of them blaring their horns to warn that they were passing everybody else, none of them particularly observing any rules of the road, like not turning across traffic. It was intimidating to try to cross that two-way nonstop flow. As he stood wavering at a corner, the visitor felt his hand being taken. An old man smiled at him and, in a move worthy of Moses parting the Red Sea, looking neither left nor right, only straight ahead, led the visitor across and unscathed. "Thank you, friend," the visitor said. The old man nodded, understanding perhaps the words, certainly the sentiment. The guidebooks confirm it: All is forgiven. On both sides. 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