S. Vietnam under Hanoi: changed, confessed., restless

Press, 30 August 1988, Page 20

S. Vietnam under Hanoi: changed, confessed., restless

Michael Fathers, of the “Independent,” went back to Saigon to find, among other things, U.S. movies like “Platoon” are much admired.

I WENT dancing in Da Nang. I went dancing in Hanoi. I went dancing in Saigon. I nearly spent the night on a sampan on the perfumed river at Hue but it looked as if it might rain. At Pleiku it did rain and the central highlands were as dreary as ever.

I got drunk with a former Vietcong commander who is now the successful boss of a profitable rubber plantation. He took me to dinner with his staff, all but one members of his former regiment. . The outsider was a peasant farmer from the north with newly discovered entrepreneurial talents. In Da Nang and Saigon I was told I could smoke a pipe of opium if I wished and everywhere the whores were discreetly, and in the poorer districts not so discreetly, back in business.

In Cho Lon I drank a poisonous concoction of pickled lizard, snake, dog and herbs over lunch with a Chinese-trained ex-North Vietnamese commando 'who has probably killed more American servicemen than you and I have ever seen. : *•'

In a way you could say it was just like the old times. In fact, life is almost back to how it was in 1972 when I lived here. Even people from the north no longer refer to Saigon as Ho Chi Minh city. The exception of course, is always Hanoi. Hanoi is changing, though. For one thing, the beggars and street urchins have arrived. They are not fleeing a war. They have come to the city to escape famine in the provinces south of the capital.

In Saigon, the children of American men and Vietnamese women who made up the city’s urchin community in the early 1980 s have either been exported to the United States or have grown up. Their place has been taken once "more by the children of Vietnamese homeless and unemployed and by orphans. And everywhere in the cities and provinces there is pop music. If you are a man of status you will have a ghetto blaster

either shipped in by relatives abroad or bought on the black market.

There is even a sort of yuppie emerging in Vietnam who is the child of a well-connected party official or perhaps a successful joint-venture man. That is allowed now. He may be a layabout who is working the black market.

The markings are a videocassette recorder, a bottle of whisky in a glass cabinet, coloured glasses on display and, most important, a new Honda motor-cycle. The uniform: jeans and a fake Lacoste T-shirt from Thailand. The style is set in Saigon. For all the refound vitality, Vietnam is still backward and poor. It has almost achieved the level of prosperity reached in the south during the war 20 years ago. The rest of South-East Asia has left Vietnam behind.

Its people persevere, saved by their intelligence, wit and good humour. The lucky ones, especially those from Hanoi, have never had it so good. The unlucky ones are resentful and have no faith in the Communist Party or its leaders. “I am a student, but my studies are irrelevant. I have a feeling of being defrayed and I want to know why I am obsessed by too many questions,” La Vinh Nguyen wrote from Nha Trang to the newspaper for youth, “Tuoi Tre,” on July 14. “We were told that at liberation we would build a richer country 10 times more beautiful and prosperous than before.

“Why are people so poor and have not enough to eat? Why are people who have passed their exams unable to get into university just because their parents are not of the correct political

persuasion? Why, in feudal times, could people air their grievances to the king and protest against his courtiers? “Innocent people in Vietnam today can . only appeal to heaven. In other countries, when mistakes are made, Ministers accept their responsibility and resign. When will Vietnam learn to do the same? The Government gloats about beating the Americans but now it is unable to organise even filling the holes in our roads.”

If this is glasnost, Communist Vietnam hs seen nothing like it before. The newspapers, especially in the south, led by “Saigon Gaiphong,” are filled daily with allegations of corruption and favouritism against party and Government officials, criticism of bad government and bad laws, difficulties readers have in getting justice. Grievances cover a wide field and the newspapers campaign for their readers on instructions from on high. Where it will lead, nobody knows. The reformers in the Communist Party, led by Mr Nguyen Vam Linh, the party’s general secretary, believe it can only lead to better things. The party purists have their doubts, hence the importance of the newspaper campaign to win popular support for the changes that are taking place. The most popular and controversial film in Vietnam nowadays is “Co Gai Tren Song,” or “The Girl on the River.” It is the story of a prostitute plying her trade during the war, on a sampan in Hue. She gives protection in her boat to a Vietcong soldier who is being pursued by soldiers from the Americanbacked Thieu army.

After liberation she is sent to a re-education camp because she

is a whore. When she is released, a reformed and poor woman, she finds that the soldier was a highranking officer who is now in charge of Hue. She appeals to him for help but she is ignored. His wife discovers by accident that the woman has saved the life of her husband and also appeals on her behalf. Again he spurns her. In the end the exprostitute commits suicide. By the by, my own experience of women in Hue, who are renowned for their beauty and soft voices, are that they can be absolute harridans when crossed. I warn travellers especially of the receptionists at the Huong Giang hotel. Do not be won over by their smiles. They are tiger ladies.

“The Girl on the River” is hugely sentimental and romantic, like all Vietnamese music, writing and painting. But lots of other meaning is clear. When it opened in Hue at the end of last year the city authorities were said to have organised a protest demonstration, saying it slandered them.

The truth nowadays is that people in high places tend to ignore ordinary Vietnamese. Common people who helped their country directly or indirectly are overlooked by cadres in authority. Communist bureaucracy has replaced imperialists as the country’s number one enemy and the people are being called up for the fight. Doors that were closed are being opened. Songs that were banned 20 years ago are being heard again. In most cases the words come from Hanoi and are set to music in Saigon. And there is even one popular song to which I fox-trotted across the sprung floor of the workers’ club in Da Nang, which asks the

listener to remember the streets h and girls of old Saigon. It costs 200 duong to get into the dance hall, which is about 26 b New Zealand cents at the official t-. rate or five New Zealand cents; k or less at the black-market rate. But it is a fair sum when you. Lt know that your monthly salary is h only 8000 duong. K Local money, though, is almost meaningless in Vietnam, where ■ inflation is around 1000 per cent vf annually. State Express 555 cigarettes, American dollars, LJ gold, Western consumer goods, • = even old clothes are the main currency. Barter is how business L is done. .

And most of the goods come, from remittances of thousands of - f overseas Vietnamese: the Boat f People of 10 years ago who are now living in the United States, Australia, France, New Zealand, Canada and elsewhere.

They are coming back to Saigon now, the prosperous relatives who bring with them the consumer goods the Vietnamese want. They have also helped to inspire the private-enterprise culture that is undermining communist ideals and socialist purity. Their man weapon is the video cassette. Kung Fu films from Hong Kong are very popular. So too are Hollywood’s films on Vietnam. One of my guides, a young English speaker from the Ministry of Foreign Trade, said he had seen “Platoon” and had thought it was “very, very good and very pro-Vietnamese.”

I cannot imagine why such a violent and tatty film would have an appeal, except I suppose that most of the Americans were killed. Even the authorities see no harm (they certainly see dollars) in allowing Americans to make films in Vietnam on the war. Later this year, a camera unit is to begin shooting a feature film in the Mekong delta.

The ex-commando I met in Cho Lon is to play an officer in the Thieu army. He laughed as he told me he was required to be shot dead. “I suppose it is my fate to die in the wrong uniform.” And so the wheel comes full circle.