The Ho Chi Minh Memorial Complex | Hanoi, Vietnam

The Ho Chi Minh complex in Hanoi is probably the number one must-see place in the city. It’s made up of four main elements, and a loose fifth: the biggest draw is Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum, followed by the Stilt House, the One Pillar Pagoda, the Ho Chi Minh Museum, and the grounds of the Presidential Palace. 

Most people line up to circle the preserved corpse of Ho Chi Minh himself, which is treated as a religious relic: encased in glass, in a giant stone vault with low lighting, and maintained by the same Russians that handle Lenin.  No cameras are allowed, no hats are allowed; cleavage, shoulders and thighs must be covered, and a white-uniformed honor guard monitors everyone uncomfortably. One odd thing about it all is that Ho Chi Minh did not ask for or even imagine anything so gruesome at all, but if you're morbidly curious, check it out.

Speaking of Ho Chi Minh, his museum is way over-designed. It has the feeling of a 90s amusement park, but provides excellent insight into his life and philosophy nonetheless. The gist is that he grew up in a mandarin family, but his father lost his position in a distressing way. Realizing he wouldn't get a great education or job thanks to his dad's reputation, he traveled the world for 30 years, collecting ideas about political and economic systems of governance, and returned to Vietnam with three goals: independence, unification, and communism. 

There are many museums in Hanoi covering the practicalities, if you will, of the Indochina and Vietnam wars, like the Ho Chi Minh Trail Museum, B52 Museum, etc., but if you're actually looking for the reasoning behind it, that's better understood here.

Just outside the museum is the One Pillar Pagoda, perhaps Vietnam's most famous temple. Originally built by emperor Lý Thái Tổ in 1049, the pagoda was the site of an annual royal bathing ceremony for hundreds of years. The original architectural concept is called a lotus station, wherein a hexagonal building recalling a mandala sits on a single stone column in the middle of a lake, resembling a lotus blossom, a Buddhist symbol of purity. Over hundreds of years and many restorations, the temple came to its final architectural form in 1840. The original building was dynamited in 1954, so what stands now is a 1955 reproduction of the 1840 building. Over the past 20 years, there has been on-and-off debate over replacing the building with a reproduction of the original thousand-year-old design.

The Ho Chi Minh Stilt House, built in 1958 by architect Nguyen Van Ninh, is a modern super luxe version of the Tay stilt houses common in Viet Bac, where Uncle Ho built up the Revolutionary Army before taking Hanoi. It's both very stylish and very of its time; if you like mid-century modern, Danish modern, etc. you should really enjoy this luxe Asian version of it. 

The last few displays are in the outbuildings of the Presidential Palace. The palace itself was built by Vildieu in 1900 as the French Colonial Governor’s residence, and is not open to the public; it's only used for government meetings. After taking Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh refused to live there because he felt the optics were bad. However, one of the outbuildings, romantically called House 54, served as his home and office from 1954 until the stilt house was completed, and there are some truly boring rooms to look into there. There is also a small local restaurant on-site and a gift shop with the most extensive inventory of communist memorabilia I’ve ever seen.

Vietnam Museum of Ethnology | Hanoi, Vietnam

Built in 1987, The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology showcases the culture of the 54 ethnic minorities living in Vietnam, plus some inevitable exhibits on Kinh culture of the past. The museum has three main areas. The primary building shows the traditional costumes, instruments, language, crafts, and rituals of the various ethnicities. The secondary building expands beyond Vietnam to show the roots and presence of the various ethnicities elsewhere in Southeast Asia, and the connections between them. The third area, and definitely the most interesting of them, is the outdoor garden, featuring full-scale dwellings built by various tribes as they would have done in their villages. 

The 54 ethnic minorities of Vietnam are an intriguing subject. Composing roughly 9% of the population and divided into dozens of subgroups, photographers and anthropologists have spent decades motorcycling the country, finding, meeting, living with and studying them. 

Making up 88% of the population, Viet or Kinh people arrived in the red river delta from Southern China between four and five thousand years ago. Some of the ethnic minorities were already present in the area, but many were not. Over around 1000 years, the Kinh conquered or absorbed indigenous groups until they became the overwhelmingly dominant culture, moving ever further south. In Vietnamese creation myth, this history is described thus: The Dragon King of the South married Au Co, a beautiful northern princess, and she gave birth to 100 strong princes. However, missing his lowland home, he decided to return there. He left 50 sons in the highlands, where they fathered the tribes, and took the remaining 50 south, where they became the Kinh people.

Members of the highland tribes are distinguishable by physical features, language, dress, and customs, in that order. As an ignorant outsider, even when visiting them in their homes, some groups are more easily distinguishable than others. For example, the difference between Dao and Hmong was obvious to me, but the difference among subgroups- Red v. Black Dao, Black v. Green Hmong etc., needed to be explained to me. Relatively speaking, Westerners have a lot of cultural and linguistic overlap; if you understand one Romance or Nordic language, with a bit of relatively superficial study you can understand a good part of them all. It was wild to me that people living on either side of a single mountain in Northern Vietnam wouldn't understand each other or intermarry for hundreds or thousands of years. The origins and development of the related groups, their diasporas and distinctions, are a rich field of study for ethnographers. 

Based on language, there are 8 original peoples, if you will, who over the centuries have subdivided into the 54+ we know today:

1. Mon – Khmer (Ba Na, Brau, Bru Van Kieu, Cho Ro, Co, Co Ho, Co Tu, Gie Trieng, Hre, Khang, Khmer, Kho Mu, Ma, Mang, M’nong, O Du, Ro Mam, Ta Oi, Xinh Mun, Xo Dang, and Xtieng)

2. Tay – Thai (Bo Y, Giay, Lao, Lu, Nung, San Chay, Tay, and Thai)

3. Tibeto – Burman (Cong, Ha Nhi, La Hu, Lo Lo, Phu La, and Si La)

4. Malayo – Polynesian (Cham, Chu Ru, E De, Gia Rai, and Ra Glai)

5. Viet – Muong (Chut, Kinh, Muong, and Tho)

6. Kadai (Co, Lao, La Chi, La Ha, and Pu Peo)

7. Mong – Dao (Dao, H’Mong, and Pa Then)

8. Han (Hoa, Ngai, and San Diu)

At the museum, they are grouped as:

1. Muong, Tho, Chut

2. Tay-Thai Group

3. Kadai Group

4. Hmong-Yao Group

5. Sino-Tibetan Group

6. Northern Mon-Khmer

7. Truong Son Range - Central Highlands Mon-Khmer

8. Austronesian

9. Cham, Hoa, Khmer

According to the museum, what the ethnic minorities have in common is their traditional way of life: most of the groups rely on wet rice agriculture, combined with raising poultry, hunting, and fishing. They also typically practice handicrafts including weaving, forging, pottery, and carpentry for personal consumption and local barter, and only participate in commerce on a limited basis. Most ethnic groups consider the village as the most important social unit; however, village organization, house styles, family, society, and religious traditions are diverse. Spiritual beliefs remain genuine, and rites shape calendars.

The role of the ethnic minorities in recent history, and their degree of assimilation to Viet, American, French, and Chinese culture, politics and religion is left untouched. I was shocked to learn that many Hmong are some degree of Catholic, for example, and had to visit them to learn it; it's not in this museum. Also, the Montagnards rather famously allied with the French during the Indochina wars, in exchange for the promise of an autonomous homeland, but their role in this recent history and in modern Vietnamese politics, where they are well represented in the party congress, is not explored.

As for the museum itself, I think it's a good jumping-off point but rather too superficial. If you're coming in with a total ignorance of the topic, I'd recommend you visit the bookstore first, read up, then hit the museum to match the objects of material culture with the info and photos you've absorbed. In terms of costume, jewelry, shamanistic and cultural objects, you can see much of the same at the history museum and the women's museum. However, the ethnology museum really sets itself apart in the garden. 

If you are not going to make it to every mountain village during your trip to Vietnam, you can rest assured that the houses here are full-sized, rather luxurious dwellings built by the ethnic minorities themselves, who were paid dearly to come to Hanoi and do the job. The houses and the objects in them are the real thing, and immense fun, especially for kids. 

The bookstore is also excellent, and the gift shop, while expensive, is a Craft Link shop, with excellent quality souvenirs made by the ethnic minorities themselves, and other underprivileged populations, ensuring your money flows back to them, at least in part. The restaurant employs students at a vocational school for underprivileged youth, training them for hospitality jobs, so it's certainly worth patronizing. Lastly, there's an excellent daily water puppet performance. I've been to the famous water puppet theater in Hanoi as well, and this performance is equally wonderful, if not better, because it provides a booklet explaining each of the stories, which are hundreds of years old and well known by all, rather like Punch and Judy shows in the UK. 

If you have kids, this museum is a must-see in Hanoi. If you don't, it's not an absolute must, the information can be gleaned elsewhere, but I did truly enjoy it.

Vietnamese Women's Museum, Hanoi | Vietnam

Of the 20+ museums in Hanoi, this is my favorite! It’s very much a living museum, constantly showcasing community issues and outreach, and honoring living women of impact in a deserving manner.

The museum’s permanent collection is divided into three permanent exhibits: Women in the Family, Women in History, and Women in Fashion.

Women in the Family covers the traditional roles of women in different segments of Vietnamese society, with a particular focus on the ethnic minority tribes and rural life; patriarchal and matriarchal marriage and social hierarchies are explained, as are birthing rituals, and women’s economic contributions as farmers, craftspeople and educators.

Women in History focuses heavily on heroines of the colonial resistance, liberation, and communist movements and heroic mothers of the nation.

Women in Fashion displays ethnic dress and jewelry from many of Vietnam’s ethnic minority groups, often personally given by the original owner along with its story. Traditional costume for big events like weddings is explained, as is the evolution of the ao dai; examples of pre-colonial fashion are preserved, including oversized old-style bamboo hats and teeth lacquering accoutrements.

There’s also a robust rotation of temporary exhibits, typically a photo essay with a few accompanying artifacts or artworks. So far there have been 11 temporary exhibits: Memories from Female Civilian Supporters of the Dien Bien Phu Campaign, the Founding of the Vietnamese Women’s Liberation Movement and its role in society according to Ho Chi Minh, Stories from the Peaceful Shelter home for women trafficked abroad, Single Mother’s Voices, the Difficulties Faced by Female Economic Migrants to Vietnam’s urban centers, Personal Accounts of Domestic Violence, the Daily Life of Green Living Teams in Hanoi and Hoi An, Traditional Worship of the Mother Goddess, the Vietnamese Women’s Union 13th National Congress exhibit, and the UN 75 Photo Exhibition winners.

This museum is one of the few worth a repeat visit. They also have an excellent gift shop and decent restaurant on the premises.

St. Joseph's Cathedral, Hanoi | Vietnam

Built in 1886 and consecrated on Christmas Eve of that year, the Neo-Gothic St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Hanoi was one of the first places I visited on moving to Asia, and it immediately hit me that I wasn’t in Kansas (or, I suppose, Paris) anymore. Outside, it is incredibly dirty due to unabated, unfiltered traffic mere feet away, and likely years of neglect. Inside, it is simple, with no decor beyond its original stained glass windows imported from France, and the lightly maintained gold lacquer on the woodwork. There is a single local touch; the virgin Mary is sculpted enclosed in a palanquin and reclining sideways on a pillow, a bit more in the manner of a reclining Buddha than how we typically see her.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the church is that it was closed for 35 years; after the French withdrawal from Hanoi in 1954, Catholicism was persecuted until 1990, when the cathedral was permitted to reopen. Perhaps it’s worth popping in if you’re in the neighborhood anyway, and it’s nice to see in the background when you eat on a balcony of one of the restaurants on the square, but it’s not worth a dedicated visit.

The History Museum and Hung King Temple, HCMC | Vietnam

After fruitless hours searching for the elusive “Mr. Rivera”, the supposed French architect of the Hui Bon Hoa complex, I was surprised to find the life and career of Auguste Delaval, architect of the HCMC History Museum, so thoroughly attested and accessible. His many prize-winning watercolors and gouaches of Indochina are held in his hometown museum in Hennebont, France; scans of his transcript at the École des Beaux-Arts are a simple google search away.

The History Museum and the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang are the two buildings outside France that Delaval remains known for today; the history museum, built between 1926 and 1929, is undoubtedly his best extant building. He was among the clique of architects typically competing for Indochinese colonial commissions, including Vildieu, Moncet, Bussy, and Hébrard. He submitted designs for lots of institutional jobs he didn’t get; the Dalat train station, for example, went to Moncet. Each firm had a side business in privately owned luxury villas, since they knew how to build in Indochina; most of the current non-French, non-original owners of these buildings have no idea who their architect was.

Incidentally, I think that’s what happening with the Hui-Bon-Hoa property: Given their differing styles, I think each building was actually built by a different architect, perhaps even from old or previously incomplete plans. For example, I can’t find any Beaux-Arts graduate named Rivera, but the first building constructed (originally the company office, currently the building on the left when you walk through the gate) looks like the work of Gustave Rives, the go-to man for classy Parisian apartment buildings, museums, and townhouses at the time of Hui Bon Hua senior’s death in 1901. If I was the richest man in Saigon, a rental real estate magnate, and a naturalized French citizen, that’s certainly who I would choose.

But back to Delaval and the history museum! It was his last institutional building in Indochina; he designed both the main museum building and the adjacent Hung King temple. If it seems odd to you that a Frenchman would be tasked with designing a Hung King temple, you are right: it was originally the Temple du Souvenir Annamite, built to honor the 12000+ Indochinese colonial troops who gave their lives for France in World War 1. It was paid for by public subscription of wealthy Vietnamese, but rededicated nonetheless after the French withdrawal from Vietnam in 1955 (a tasteless act of erasure, in my opinion). The bronze elephant in the adjoining garden has nothing to do with the zoo next door; it was a gift made in 1930 by the Thai King Rama VII to symbolize the troops never being forgotten.

The museum itself is a jewel box. Though the façade is grand, the museum is small, and the interior of the building has an intimate quality; the rooms aren’t overly large, but have very high ceilings with overhead windows or vents. The museum covers the entire history of Vietnam, from prehistory to the current era. It has only a few examples pertaining to each important theme or period, but each example is the absolute best. I was particularly impressed by the quality of the Buddhist relics, ethnic costumes, and Cham and Óc Eo sculptures. It also inexplicably houses an ancient mummy and a second-rate collection of antiques left by a local collector and prolific author on the topic.

As for the temple, it’s been locked for two years now due to Covid; my videos are peeking through the door slats. I was impressed by how totally authentic the materials, construction, and decorative workmanship are: undoubtedly made for and by Vietnamese people. The mark of the French architect is solely in the proportions: it is a cube rather than a long, low, building, with lots of daylight coming in through openwork friezes just below the roof. Relative to old, totally Vietnamese temples, it feels very tall and flat; the columns are more slender, the carvings more shallow.

The proportions and decorative motifs remind me strongly of Emperor Khải Định‘s tomb in Huế, which began construction in 1925 and finished in 1931, concurrent with the museum. It’s quite possible Delaval had an unacknowledged hand in that tomb’s architecture: thought it’s current Vietnamese practice to deny credit to French architects and artisans wherever possible, the tomb is widely admitted to be inspired by the Emperor’s visit to the 1922 Colonial Exhibition in Marseilles, at which Delaval’s scale model of Angkor Wat was the star exhibit. Delaval also had many watercolors of Indochinese architecture, both native and colonial, shown there; he was commissioned by the French colonial government to design this history museum and adjoining (now destroyed) art galleries as a result. It’s not too much of a stretch to think the Francophile emperor hired him to design or collaborate on his biggest commission as well.

If you wish to plan your trip on a tight schedule, the museum website is rather detailed and helpful. However, it shouldn’t take more than two hours to thoroughly review the entire collection. I recommend visiting the museum in the morning before your attention wanes, and visiting the zoo afterwards. Also, be prepared to feel a bit miserable: there is no air conditioning, there are lots of mosquitoes, and the adjoining cafe is cash-only and allows smoking. Admission costs less than $2.

Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts | HCMC, Vietnam

Huang Wen Hua 黃文華 was born in 1845 in Fujian province, China. He moved to Vietnam at the age of 18, following the 1860 Treaty of Peking, which allowed Chinese citizens to seek employment overseas. By the time he moved in 1863, Vietnam was freshly colonized by the French and consequently seen as full of business opportunities and relatively safe for Chinese immigrants.

The French privileged these Chinese immigrants over native Vietnamese within their corvee system; between 1870 and 1890 over 20,000 Chinese (mostly single men) moved to Cholon alone, creating the largest Chinatown in the world at that time. In just one generation, a merchant class of wealthy, pro-French, relatively unassimilated Sino-Vietnamese elites was created that held economic control of the south until reunification in 1975.

Huang first changed his name to the rather more Vietnamese Huỳnh Văn Hua, but soon realized it would behoove him to convert to Catholicism and use a French baptismal name. He finally ended as Jean-Baptiste Hui Bon Hoa; Hui Bon Hoa being not only an approximate transliteration of his name as pronounced in his native Hokkien dialect, but homophonous for the French “oui, bon Hoa”. His name taken as a whole, in English, reads: John the Baptist yes good Hoa (Hoa meaning people of Sino-Vietnamese descent).

He became the richest man in Saigon during his lifetime, but still visited China frequently, passing away there suddenly in 1901. He built his business from a single pawnshop opened in partnership with a former French employer to a property development empire; he was known to have owned 30,000 shophouses, as well as hotels, banks, hospitals, etc. His unrealized dream was to build the grandest villa in Saigon, a French style mansion large enough for all of his children and grandchildren to live together. In 1929, his three sons decided to start building the dream; before it was completed in 1934 two of them had also passed away.

Over time, successive generations were educated overseas and emigrated. These descendants still live in France and America today, using Hui-Bon-Hua as their surname. By 1967, the house was seized by the South Vietnamese government. All members of the Hui-Bon-Hua family left before the end of the Vietnam war, and in 1987 the three buildings were officially “donated” for use as an art museum, which opened in 1992.

The art here is solely Vietnamese. There are the requisite displays of Cham and Óc Eo artifacts, plus traditional Vietnamese styles like monumental lacquer paintings and paintings on silk. The most famous artists in Vietnam are shown here, as well as artists in the Vietnamese diaspora. I have zero knowledge of Vietnamese art or artists, and found the works of Lê Thị Kim Bạch, Trần Việt Sơn, Huỳnh Quốc Trọng, and Nguyễn Minh Quân compelling.

As in Hanoi there are umpteen war pictures, yet not a single one depicts an ARVN flag, despite this being the South. Money is too new in Vietnam for there to be any grand patrons of the arts just yet . . . if there are any Picassos or Chenghua porcelains in Vietnam, they are in private homes.

The museum doesn’t take more than a day to explore fully. I wish there was an onsite cafe, but I survived. I’d also advise against buying anything on nearby Antique Street, it’s all fake. If you want to buy an authentic work, there’s a selection of antique porcelain and some lithographs and watercolors in the museum’s ground floor gallery. They also have the best selection of books on Vietnamese art and artists that I’ve come across.

Independence Palace, HCMC | Vietnam

The Norodom Palace, the 1867 jewel of French colonial architecture, was demolished in 1962. In 1961 and 1962, the South Vietnamese government was collapsing in on itself, and fighter pilots from a coup faction bombed the palace, then home to South Vietnam’s first family and Vice President’s office. One wing of the palace was destroyed, and 5 people were killed - though no one high ranking.

Rather than restore it, then-President Ngô Ðình Diệm - its resident of 8 years - ordered it demolished. He commissioned the currently standing Independence Palace in its place, from the up-and-coming 33 year old architect Ngô Viết Thụ, the 1955 First Prize winner of the Grand Prix de Rome. Working with civil engineer Phan Văn Điển, the new palace took 4 years to finish.

Authoritarian, nepotistic, and corrupt, Diệm didn’t survive long enough to move in; he famously fled from his temporary residence in what is now the Ho Chi Minh City Museum to Cholon in November 1963, and was assassinated with his brother in the back of a car, in the belief they were being led into exile.

The palace’s sole presidential resident, Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, lived and worked here from 1967 to the 1975 fall of Saigon. Many blame him personally for giving mixed orders with unclear goals when it became clear the Viet Minh were rapidly encroaching on Saigon; cynics believe he did so in order to buy himself enough time to secure exile in Taiwan. On April 21st, he announced his resignation on TV and flew with his family to Taipei; a mere 9 days later a Viet Minh tank famously rammed through the front gates of the palace, officially ending the Vietnam War.

Today, all that remains of the old Norodom Palace is a circa 1910s gatehouse on Nguyễn Du (now a bistro) and the low buildings surrounding the tennis courts, still the backside of the Cercle Sportif. The Independence Palace has been maintained perfectly, and the design is so emblematic of its era. It has a very institutional feel to it: it’s somehow light and bright and big, but not at all grand. It felt rather more like visiting a public library in a wealthy American suburb than a palace in the European sense. Some of the original furniture has been retained, and apart from some marvelous traditional lacquer paintings and burlwood veneered furniture, it’s nothing good.

All the tables are set with vintage French porcelain and crystal, but the glasses are placed to the left! They must have gotten confused while looking at an old picture or something. It just goes to show how quickly a century of cultural imperialism can fade from memory. Another faux pas that made me chuckle was the nonsensical English painted on the side of the plane parked on the grounds (“for emergency action suitable for use to aromatic . . .” ,etc.). The South Vietnamese flags were also painted on, but then Xed out, as if it were possible for someone to just fuel up, pop in, and start the war again.

All in all, I enjoyed my visit. The grounds are a pleasant place to walk and enjoy a spot of green in crowded, commercial HCMC, and you don’t even need to cross the street to buy a coffee, juice, or some noodles.

War Remnants Museum, HCMC | Vietnam

The War Remnants Museum in HCMC, according to a former ARVN officer who was also my tour guide to the Cu Chi tunnels, is “full of bullshit.” I found the visit worthwhile nonetheless.

Originally named the ‘Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crimes,’ the exhibits show exactly that: the legacy of Agent Orange; the My Lai massacre and similar atrocities; the torture methods used against some political prisoners in South Vietnam’s jails; the bodies of napalm victims; the refusal of some American soldiers to fight, either by defection, desertion, or simply getting thrown into basecamp prisons after deployment; the brutal killing of peaceful anti-war protestors at Kent State, etc. None of it is bullshit, it’s all absolutely true and real and horrific and shameful.

The bullshit Tuan refers to is the total lack of balance: there’s simply nothing about the crimes perpetrated by the Viet Minh; the generations of staunchly anti-communist Northern Vietnamese robbed of their assets and driven from their homes to fight for their lives in the South; the violent post-unification reprisals against known or accused collaborators or capitalists; the decades of refugees fleeing the economic and social isolation of unified Vietnam; the strife between Catholics and Buddhists, the dirty involvement of both sides in the black market drug trade, the fights for and against the Khmer Rouge, the manipulation of ethnic minorities by both sides, the pursuant war with China and mass deportation of ethnic Chinese, the concentration camps where ARVN vets were forced to labor as slaves for up to 30 years, etc. The Indochina Wars are not exactly misrepresented in the museum, it’s just a zoomed in closeup of a panoramic photo.

For the record, I do think the Vietnam War was a crime, and I’m surprised daily at just how hospitable most Vietnamese are to me, an American. Yet I also sympathize with Tuan. He grew up poor in the wartorn Mekong Delta because his family was forced to flee Haiphong as political refugees. He was pushed into the army at 17 and spent 7 years, the prime of his youth, fighting a losing battle. After it was all over, he couldn’t leave his family to go to America, but as a former ARVN officer found it very difficult to get enough work to feed them. Even now, he has to bribe a government official with $400/year for his tour guide license, because former ARVN officers are not legally permitted to work in any educational capacity. I understand his wanting people to know that it was not just a war against foreign oppression, but an ideology based civil war, whose losers weren’t any more evil or wrong than its winners, and for whom the need to fight never really disappeared.

Prior to 1975, the modernist museum building was the Saigon USIA headquarters. Formed in 1953 and abolished in 1999, the USIA (United States Information Agency) was the formal propaganda wing of the US government, at its height employing more people than the top 20 US public relations firms combined. I graduated high school in 2001, and it always surprises people when I say I didn’t learn much, if anything, about the Vietnam War in school. Despite many fathers, uncles, and family friends of people my age being vets, my generation didn’t hear much about it at home either. The thinking then was really shellshocked guys needed talk therapy, and just your average vet could hash things out over drinks once a week at the VFW Post, but it was not a topic for civilians, and certainly not families or kids.

Consequently, I’ve visited every Ho Chi Minh museum, watched every documentary, and read several autobiographical accounts of the war. The most interesting media, in my opinion, are primary sources like contemporary news reels and articles. It’s striking to me how well attested the war was, and how hard the North Vietnamese worked at releasing lots of their own foreign language, especially English language, propaganda. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the lifetime of the USIA spanned roughly from the beginning of America’s involvement in what was then a French war to the lifting of American economic sanctions on and resumption of diplomatic relations with unified, purportedly communist Vietnam. I say purportedly because the reality is that while the United States and Vietnam superficially espouse the diametrically opposed economic models of capitalism and communism respectively, the reality in both countries is socialism and too-big-to-fail style safety nets for a political and economic oligarchy, paid for by the harsh, do or die market capitalism endured by the rest of us. But that’s a topic for another day.

Did the US government bow out of the propaganda game because it’s distasteful, immoral, and unconstitutional, or because it’s a game they couldn’t win? In a country where a government practices “public diplomacy” that can be fact checked, critiqued and debated by a free press, truth is valued, disputed, and exposed. In a country where government workings are increasingly opaque, specifically military action, the free press can only compete with their guesses at the truth or interpretations of it. Running the best researched, hardest hitting, exposés becomes less profitable than running the most superficial, pandering soundbites, the most engaging gossip, or the most controversial, extreme opinions. Limited, poorly presented or even misleading information is proffered by the government rather than checked by it, profited from by the same elite profiting from arms sales. We pay for those weapons and demand no true accountability, decade after decade. It’s ironic, darkly humorous even, that the erstwhile epicenter of American propaganda about Vietnam has become the temple of Vietnamese propaganda about America, and yet the two are now the best of friends.

The Vietnam War is a matter of history, but its legacy, in both the US and Vietnam, is one of lies by omission as government policy, and it’s incredibly dangerous. I see it in America, in the habituation of the taxpaying public to decades-long foreign wars, sometimes several running at once. The average American expects and accepts tens of thousands of ruined lives to be reduced to a forgettable nightly news clip, on every forgettable night, as if that’s the most natural thing in the world. Though the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been exposed as colonialist cash grabs not dissimilar to Vietnam, there is no discourse among lawmakers on how policy can be changed today to prevent the next 20 year-long, taxpayer-funded, corrupt governmental overreach. I see China mimicking the United States’ destructive colonial path, and drumming up vitriol with their aggression towards Taiwan and in the South China Sea. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown us the dangers of indulging the territorialist aspirations of those who profit from the military-industrial complex by allowing them to buy and sell our political leaders. Are we already as powerless as citizens of China and Russia?

To quote the September 12th 1969 front page article of Shakedown, the antiwar newspaper written semi-anonymously by Fort Dix GIs:

Peace will come when we want it. Most American people would rather sit around watching TV than do something about all this slaughter. How many more people have to die before something will change in our “liberal” government system? It’s up to all of us. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC POWER MUST BE CONTROLLED BY THE PEOPLE — not the rich, fascist elite of Washington and Wall St. IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF ALL PEOPLE TO SEIZE THAT POWER. BRING THE WAR ON HOME!

That was 52 years ago. 52! I’d be very lucky to be alive in another 52 years. When will America change?

Jade Emperor Pagoda, HCMC | Vietnam

Though Buddhism took off in Vietnam during the 3rd century BC, and is still the largest organized religion in the country, Taoism and the concept of the Jade Emperor entered Vietnam between three and four hundred years later (during Chinese occupation) and have become an integral part of Vietnamese folk religion.

In Chinese mythology, the Jade Emperor is the closest thing to what monotheistic Westerners would identify as God: the omnipotent ruler of heaven and earth, the precipitator of destiny and creator of life. Unlike in Western religion, the Jade Emperor has a backstory: it took him approximately 3.3 million years and several reincarnations to evolve from an untalented but benevolent local prince into a god, and an additional 9 trillion years spent fighting off evil to establish himself as the supreme god-king, ruling over the three realms (Heaven, Water, Hell).

Saigon’s Jade Emperor Pagoda was built in 1909 by the local Cantonese congregation. Though it’s on the opposite end of town from Cholon, it is right on the water, opposite the Nha Rong port; it was positioned to cater to a community actively involved in that era’s merchant trade. This temple is more famous than other temples constructed by 18th and 19th century Chinese immigrants, and I honestly can’t discern why. Yes, it has lovely woodwork, but so do others. I believe it is so popular due to the money ritual: supposedly giving a small donation to the City God, then rubbing his hand with red paper, will cause him to give the money back to you many times over.

The Jade Emperor’s birthday is the 9th day of the lunar year, so if you want to see monks and congregants in traditional dress kowtowing and chanting, that’s the best day to visit.

Pagoda Hopping in Cholon: Part 2, HCMC | Vietnam

Fifty years later, the Qing officially permitted the emigration of Chinese as per the first Treaty of Peking; additional tens of thousands moved to Cholon without giving up their Chinese nationality. Privileged over the native Vietnamese in the new French colonial system, these immigrants were typically single men who married local women, building the existing Sino-Vietnamese merchant class into an economic elite that dominated the finances of the South until reunification in 1975.

That’s one of the reasons the names for these places can be so confusing; they not only have a Chinese name and Vietnamese name, but are interchangeably called a guildhall, temple, assembly hall, pavillion, or pagoda. In China, these would be separate institutions within a community; in Cholon, the assembly halls are one stop shops, with most not more than a five minute walk from the next.

4. Ong Bon Pagoda - Nhi Phu Temple, 1765

(also known as Er Fu temple, Chauzhou Guild Hall and Sheng Mu temple)

Ni Phu (two cities) assembly hall was built by Hokkien immigrants from Xuanzhou and Zhangzhou. This is the only temple in Cholon where Ong Ban, the god of the soil, is worshipped. The best days to visit are the last day of the lunar year, and the second day of the new lunar year. On these days, traditional Nanyin music is performed on vintage instruments.

Next door is a high school built in the French colonial era that still teaches Chinese language classes; various Chinese dialects and standard Mandarin are still commonly spoken in Cholon, and the Chinese minority population here is still considered somewhat privileged and unassimilated. That said, the Hokkien worshippers at this pagoda are minorities even among the ethnic Chinese of Cholon, most of whom are Cantonese or Teochew.

5. Ming Dynasty Ancestors Village Hall, 1789

This temple is only open between 8:00 and 12:00 on weekdays, because there’s an elderly caretaker/tour guide (Mme. Vuong) who speaks English well, and this is when she prefers to volunteer. A lifelong worshipper here, she explains the history of the temple and its renovations. The temple was damaged in 1962 and the rear house was largely rebuilt at this time.

6. Sanshan Hokkien Temple, 1796

(also known as Hội Quán Tam Sơn, San Hui Temple, Fuzhou Guild Hall and 三山會館)

Built by immigrants from Fuzhou to worship the Lords of the 3 Mountains, this temple also holds a shrine to the goddess of fertility, Me Sanh, and is known locally as the right place to pray for a baby. When I was there, a couple of the tiniest puppies were cuddling in front of an altar.