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smokingbootI was nonplussed as we travelled through Da Nang; it seemed dusty and half built, with long stretches of nothing much type wasteland.
'Airfield,' someone said and our guide confirmed it, saying that many US veterans return here to remember. Apparently "some Americans" pay a lot of money for the place to stay undeveloped.
It's close to a beautiful place, a swimmer/surfer paradise of yellow and turquoise, all sands and playful waves with the Marble Mountains close by. This is the China Beach/Red Beach where American Marines landed in 1964. I hope they got the chance to relax there, given all the ugliness ahead of them. I was only in that water for 20 minutes and it was delightful.
Those Marble Mountains caused no end of trouble to the US forces at Da Nang. Among them lies the cave of Am Phu, one of the seven places on earth where legend claims the shedding of Buddha's blood. Am Phu means Hell, and the massive cave becomes a story, a fascinating depiction of the judgement of souls according to Buddhist teaching. It includes a shrine to Buddha, a rather more lovely and delicate one to Lady Buddha, ten afterworld judges, some kind of massive judge/king of the dead type fellow, many pure souls in the uppermost parts on their way to Heaven, devils in the lower parts, some of these being propitiated with incense.
It's also where the Viet Cong once stored weapons, and climbed out using ropes to scale an impossibly sheer incline that leads to a hole out higher up the mountain. They'd go there,try to shoot down aeroplanes, then clamber back down. Sniping from here was part of a tactic they called 'up the Americans' sleeve,' because the place was too close to Da Nang for the US to contemplate the use of bombs or Agent Orange.
Apart from the mystic power of the place being treated now with great devotion by visitors, I later found myself backing up a step in my musings. Back in Hanoi, we had visited the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, the 'Hanoi Hilton' where at first Vietnamese prisoners were kept by the French, then American POWs were kept by the North Vietnamese. It all looked horrible, and once - just once, the only time I felt the shiver in all of Vietnam - I walked into a room, felt something in the corner, walked straight out. To my anguished brain it felt that the something walked along the small corridor separating cells and watched me for a while, aware that I was aware. I don't know how long it stood there, because I skedaddled fast, but that sense of disturbance was only made worse by the presence of the god damned guillotine. Without suggesting that France was more culpable than Britain or any other imperial power, I would say that if one actually wanted to create an unrelenting enemy, one could do much worse than to help a group bind their cause with a sense of patriotism facing brutality from an invader. Once such alignments are woven together, they can be easily extended for all sorts of purposes. The North Vietnamese, we heard later from Cambodian voices, cut their eye teeth on battling one Western power. Armed by Russia and China they were ready to face another.
Hoa Lo/The Hanoi Hilton is an incredible snapshot of history, and it is also an exercise in propaganda. Much was made of how well the prisoners were treated by their captors. They were required to be very polite, to wave and smile for cameras,etc, but they would be kept clean and treated respectfully... Away from the cameras they were treated ill in dreadful conditions. We were told this by a Vietnamese citizen. The point that struck me was that said citizen felt safe enough to say so publically, confident in his power of free speech.
Vietnam is a one party state. Some censorship occurs (the Beeb's either limited or just plain not allowed, having upset the govt once) but you can get CNN and others. There's no sense of hushed up oppression, though I have no idea of how political opponents are treated or what happens behind closed doors. In terms of everyday life, there's business bustling all over the streets, people pay for medical care via insurance, people pay for their kids to go to school, people seem genuinely happy. Tbh, I cannot imagine Americans staying in Vietnam facing any kind of huge shock at the infrastructural systems though Brits might wonder at a healthcare system rather less socialist than our NHS. Whatever this is, it's not the communism of earlier years. How did that come about?
Vietnam after the war was not an easy place. There was little; even doctors might have to steal medicines/milk for their families. To quote a local, 'there was nothing to aspire to.' Then came normalisation. The result has been an astonishing 20/25 years for the country. Doubtless the exploitation associated with capitalism will be present too, but for now this is hope, optimism, energy, possible because American servicepeople, including some who had known indignity and torture, put that horror behind them and held their hands out to their erstwhile enemies. Where they might have been expected to hate they forgave, and worked instead with the Vietnamese for something better. The result of this extraordinary feat of peacemaking has been to enable many people's escape from blank poverty, to create genuine respect and affection, and to find a friend across the water.
And if in the mountain hall that leads to Heaven or Hell, the Judge of the Dead approves, that's grand, and if Buddha gives many blessings, that's even better. But whatever is to come, when those veterans/their families visit Da Nang and stand on the airstrip, I hope they don't forget how they did their best work, not in their fierce days but years later when they helped millions to rise with a gentle strength that may seem faded but never fails.
'Airfield,' someone said and our guide confirmed it, saying that many US veterans return here to remember. Apparently "some Americans" pay a lot of money for the place to stay undeveloped.
It's close to a beautiful place, a swimmer/surfer paradise of yellow and turquoise, all sands and playful waves with the Marble Mountains close by. This is the China Beach/Red Beach where American Marines landed in 1964. I hope they got the chance to relax there, given all the ugliness ahead of them. I was only in that water for 20 minutes and it was delightful.
Those Marble Mountains caused no end of trouble to the US forces at Da Nang. Among them lies the cave of Am Phu, one of the seven places on earth where legend claims the shedding of Buddha's blood. Am Phu means Hell, and the massive cave becomes a story, a fascinating depiction of the judgement of souls according to Buddhist teaching. It includes a shrine to Buddha, a rather more lovely and delicate one to Lady Buddha, ten afterworld judges, some kind of massive judge/king of the dead type fellow, many pure souls in the uppermost parts on their way to Heaven, devils in the lower parts, some of these being propitiated with incense.
It's also where the Viet Cong once stored weapons, and climbed out using ropes to scale an impossibly sheer incline that leads to a hole out higher up the mountain. They'd go there,try to shoot down aeroplanes, then clamber back down. Sniping from here was part of a tactic they called 'up the Americans' sleeve,' because the place was too close to Da Nang for the US to contemplate the use of bombs or Agent Orange.
Apart from the mystic power of the place being treated now with great devotion by visitors, I later found myself backing up a step in my musings. Back in Hanoi, we had visited the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, the 'Hanoi Hilton' where at first Vietnamese prisoners were kept by the French, then American POWs were kept by the North Vietnamese. It all looked horrible, and once - just once, the only time I felt the shiver in all of Vietnam - I walked into a room, felt something in the corner, walked straight out. To my anguished brain it felt that the something walked along the small corridor separating cells and watched me for a while, aware that I was aware. I don't know how long it stood there, because I skedaddled fast, but that sense of disturbance was only made worse by the presence of the god damned guillotine. Without suggesting that France was more culpable than Britain or any other imperial power, I would say that if one actually wanted to create an unrelenting enemy, one could do much worse than to help a group bind their cause with a sense of patriotism facing brutality from an invader. Once such alignments are woven together, they can be easily extended for all sorts of purposes. The North Vietnamese, we heard later from Cambodian voices, cut their eye teeth on battling one Western power. Armed by Russia and China they were ready to face another.
Hoa Lo/The Hanoi Hilton is an incredible snapshot of history, and it is also an exercise in propaganda. Much was made of how well the prisoners were treated by their captors. They were required to be very polite, to wave and smile for cameras,etc, but they would be kept clean and treated respectfully... Away from the cameras they were treated ill in dreadful conditions. We were told this by a Vietnamese citizen. The point that struck me was that said citizen felt safe enough to say so publically, confident in his power of free speech.
Vietnam is a one party state. Some censorship occurs (the Beeb's either limited or just plain not allowed, having upset the govt once) but you can get CNN and others. There's no sense of hushed up oppression, though I have no idea of how political opponents are treated or what happens behind closed doors. In terms of everyday life, there's business bustling all over the streets, people pay for medical care via insurance, people pay for their kids to go to school, people seem genuinely happy. Tbh, I cannot imagine Americans staying in Vietnam facing any kind of huge shock at the infrastructural systems though Brits might wonder at a healthcare system rather less socialist than our NHS. Whatever this is, it's not the communism of earlier years. How did that come about?
Vietnam after the war was not an easy place. There was little; even doctors might have to steal medicines/milk for their families. To quote a local, 'there was nothing to aspire to.' Then came normalisation. The result has been an astonishing 20/25 years for the country. Doubtless the exploitation associated with capitalism will be present too, but for now this is hope, optimism, energy, possible because American servicepeople, including some who had known indignity and torture, put that horror behind them and held their hands out to their erstwhile enemies. Where they might have been expected to hate they forgave, and worked instead with the Vietnamese for something better. The result of this extraordinary feat of peacemaking has been to enable many people's escape from blank poverty, to create genuine respect and affection, and to find a friend across the water.
And if in the mountain hall that leads to Heaven or Hell, the Judge of the Dead approves, that's grand, and if Buddha gives many blessings, that's even better. But whatever is to come, when those veterans/their families visit Da Nang and stand on the airstrip, I hope they don't forget how they did their best work, not in their fierce days but years later when they helped millions to rise with a gentle strength that may seem faded but never fails.
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Date: 2024-04-12 02:16 pm (UTC)Yeah. It's a one-party government but a highly mixed market economy. In some ways, not unlike the Democratic Socialism of much of Scandinavia (though I get that those nations are republics, so not a precise analogy. 😀)
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Date: 2024-04-13 07:53 am (UTC)