On the corner of fate & Communism: Lessons in Hanoi

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”  –Mark Twain The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It

It’s an interesting thing to be a guest in country that your father’s generation bombed to perdition with questionable motives. From the moment we hit the ground here I’ve been looking into the eyes of every man in his sixties and wondering how he sees me. If he hates my guts. If in another decade of his lifetime he’d have killed me where I stood just because my passport has a blue back with a golden eagle emblazoned on it. Would he have shot my uncles dead if he’d crossed paths with them in the jungle? Did my older friends drop the bombs that killed his entire family? His black eyes give no hints.

We watched a beautiful and ancient woman cross the street today in the middle of a rain storm. She pulled her long pants up around her knees and gingerly stepped through the puddles in her plastic sandals. She was wearing a traditional cone shaped “rice paddy” hat and was grinning from ear to ear without one tooth left in her head. It’s likely she’s lived her whole life in Hanoi. She was likely a girl under French colonial rule. She likely saw the rise of the Vietnamese revolution, the ousting of Japan and the establishment of a Vietnamese state in the north. She may have had sons who fought against my uncles. She would certainly have spent terrified nights while bombs fell only to clear away rubble by day and pray to whatever gods she may have that those she loved be spared. She surely buried people and part of her heart with them.

What does she think of me? Of my children? What would she say to me if she could?

I wonder these things as I wander the streets here, delighting in so much that is rich and achingly beautiful about this ancient culture.

We spent the day in history lessons, first hand: First, a visit to the mausoleum where Ho Chi Minh’s body is displayed (embalmed with the help of the Russians.) We saw his homes, where he lived up until 1954 as well as the newer stilt house he had built across the pond that he lived in after that. We saw his bomb shelter, just steps from his bedroom. We saw the beautifully preserved cars that were given to him as gifts from the Russians, and Vietnamese in France.

Hoa Lo Prison, the Hanoi-Hilton as most Americans know it, was sobering. It’s not just the prison that held American Airmen shot down over Vietnam, they were some of it’s last residents. It was a prison built by the French where Vietnamese revolutionaries were held, tortured and killed. When the Vietnamese took it over not much changed, it was just the roles that were reversed.

Everything we saw today was a first hand lesson in propaganda. Of course Vietnam is Communist. They achieved independence. They won their revolutionary war. They defeated the American “puppet-government” and we all know that history is written by the victorious. To hear them tell it, the American Airmen were treated better than the Vietnamese people themselves during their incarceration, including Christmas celebrations and top notch food and medical care. Of course the incarcerated tell very different versions of that story.

It was sickening to move from room to room and read the stories of mistreatment on all sides. Vietnamese women and children harmed horribly under the French. US Airmen with blank eyes telling one story while their captors told quite another in the video footage. I tried to imagine being locked in one of those rooms in my own filth for years on end. I tried to imagine my Dad, my Uncles, my husband… my sons. It is unimaginable, and yet, it happened. It is happening now around the world, at this very instant. It is a corner of the human heart, the human condition, our capacity for wrong doing that I simply cannot get my head around having lead the carefully, gently, tenderly treated life I’ve lead. And I know that, in and of itself, skews my perceptions and my ability to understand. I strive not to judge because I know that in the truest sense of the words, I cannot understand.

And then… we sit on the side of the road munching down doner-kebab sandwiches in happy food heaven, joking with the sons of the revolutionaries who are cooking for us and counting our kids, amazed that we have FOUR, as usual. The wizened, old, toothless crone crosses the street, the rain falls, horns honk, and  here we are, in downtown Hanoi, with our children, celebrating Elisha’s 12th birthday.

He’s calling it his “Communist Birthday” because today has been one long lesson in Vietnamese history and their version of Communism. We took his picture in front of “Uncle Vladamir” in Lenin’s park. He got a t-shirt with “Uncle Ho” on the front, not because we in any way sympathize with Ho, just because that was what today’s lesson was and he wanted to remember where he’d been and who he’d celebrated his birthday with. He’s very proud of the t-shirt. I’m proud that he not only knows who Uncle Ho is, but that he understands that there are two, often very different, sides to the same story.

I don’t know what to say about today, and what we’ve learned. I don’t think I’ve lived long enough or had a broad enough experience in these things to have earned the right to say anything at all, except that we learned a lot. Our understanding is deepening, of ourselves, our culture and our government as well as that of the Vietnamese who are so very graciously welcoming us into their homes and their streets and who are stuffing our children with noodles and Pho as if they were their own.

Something occurred to me this evening when slapped hard in the face with the seething hatred and depth of pain that still lies beneath the surface on the American side of the experience. I’m very glad that I’m not often judged by the actions of my government or the governments of my country that have passed in the generations before my time. People are not refusing to feed me noodles because of President Johnson’s policies. I hope that the lesson my children take away is the same, that the Vietnamese are people, who serve a government that tells them only part of the story, just like us. I hope that they learn to separate the individual from international policy. I hope that they learn that in all countries, in all corners of the world are people, just like them, who are trying to cobble together a life out of their dreams and their realities. I hope that they can extend the same grace to the descendants of “enemies” that is being extended to us at this very moment, because it seems to me that that is the ultimate way to defeat the atrocities on both sides, to find a way to reach over and through them, allowing the next generation to build something new.

Posted by | Comments (8)  | April 9, 2013
Category: Asia, Destinations


8 Responses to “On the corner of fate & Communism: Lessons in Hanoi”

  1. rubin pham Says:

    all government have propagandas, that includes the united states of america.

  2. Jennifer Miller Says:

    Oh of course! That’s entirely the point of the lesson for the children… and the grown ups!! I might even add *especially* the USA at this particular point in history!

  3. Doug Says:

    As someone who had a family member die in that God forsaken place, all I can say is I hope your child understands the sacrifice of my relative and many millions more that allow your child the freedom to wear such a shirt. When I think about my family member dying in that field in Vietnam, the image of this kid wearing that t-shirt and grinning makes me sick. Sorry, but that is the truth. It shows a real lack of understanding.

    Don’t think I am some Vietnamese hater though, I think they are wonderful people and my family even sponsored a Vietnamese family that are now prosperous American citizens and valued members of our own family. They fled the country on a raft. They were being persecuted for being Christian. They can tell you a story about Ho that is not USA propaganda. It is very real and disturbing. I don’t know anyone that has ever left the USA on a raft to escape. Do you?

    And you are wondering what many of these people are thinking when they see you? They are thinking they wish they could jump on the next plane with you to America so they can be free. And I assure you they would be leaving their Ho t-shirts behind. I hope you will too. Or better yet, burn it.

  4. Jennifer Miller Says:

    Doug, I am so very sorry for your loss, and those of thousands of other families on both sides. The whole purpose of our travel is to help our children understand, and to grow in understanding ourselves. It is a lifelong process and one that I hope continues to break my heart and stretch me. Your sentiments were echoed by our grandparents. There is much deep pain on both sides. I’m sorry that the photo offends you, of course that was not our intention. The thing we seek most is understanding. Perhaps we are not there yet, but we are growing.

  5. Roger Says:

    Hey Doug, this is for you: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” –Mark Twain

  6. Doug Says:

    Jennifer, I have no problem with your travels and what you are teaching your kids. They are lucky to have the experience. I would love to visit myself sometime, so please do not think my comments suggest otherwise. I also enjoy reading the perspective of people like yourself which is why I come to a site like this. As I mentioned before, our family has reached out to the Vietnamese with a helping hand to those souls seeking freedom and refuge from persecution. Believe me, the vast majority of the Vietnamese population yearn for what you and I have in freedom of movement and thought. I like to think our family has been a small part in helping bridge the gap between the two countries with our efforts.

    What I see though when I see that t-shirt is a moral equivalency being taught between the two governments, and some of the commenters seem to suggest there is. It goes back to the old adage that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. That rings so true, except when it is not. The Vietnamese communist are not fighting for anyone’s freedom. North Korean communists are not fighting for anyone’s freedom. Fidel Castro is not fighting for anyone’s freedom. There is no moral equivalency between these actors and George Washington who was fighting for freedom. For sure, the “government” of the U.S. is filled with bad actors making bad policy, but the American people who really are the “government” are freedom loving people. I just think it is easy to get lost in the notion that somehow there is some moral equivalency between governments when there is not in many instances and this is certainly one of those instances. I just hope you teach your children the unique privilege of being an American. As Ronald Reagan once said, “We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.” So true.

    Stay safe in your travels.

  7. Jennifer Miller Says:

    Doug, Thank you for taking the time to thoroughly reply. I appreciate the dialogue very much. Our children do not need to be taught the value of their American passport, it smacks them in the face every single day that we are “elsewhere.” They get it. Truly, they do, in a way that many adult Americans do not, I suspect.

    However, the other thing that we hope the “get” overall, is that there are two (or three, or four, or five) sides to every story, and the American one is just that… one. If you look long term at Vietnam’s history you’ll see that for thousands of years they have been fighting to preserve their boundaries, long before the communists came to power. In fact, our friend in Hue pointed that out, that the Vietnamese see their lot in life as exactly that, to continue the fight that has been handed them.

    The American involvement in Vietnam is a hot topic, I am aware. It’s brought up some virulent reactions even within our own extended family when we decided to visit with the children and let them see “the other side.” What I have come to understand (and I understand that there is always more to learn, I’m open to that, and my understanding will continue to grow and deepen as I continue to become educated) is that we had very little business in Vietnam in the first place and while the Communists certainly aren’t “the good guys” we were not there as the “freedom fighters” that we portrayed ourselves to be.

    I have stood outside a bunker, high above the perfume river, where boys like my dear, sweet, favourite uncle in the world hunkered down and prayed to god they’d live through the night… and wept. I’ve wept for our boys. I’ve wept for the father of our friend in Hue, who marched away on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and never came home… they don’t even know how or where he died… if he died… he just never came home. I’ve wept for the women of Vietnam, who must be the strongest women on earth to bear what they did, lose everything and then rebuild… and still smile at me. I’ve wept for the American mothers, and sisters and lovers who lost their whole worlds to a conflict on soil a half a world away that came to naught. That is what I want my kids to see, and to learn. That it’s not “us and them.” It’s not “freedom fighters” vs. “terrorists.” It’s not “Democracy” vs. “Communism.” It’s our good buddy in Hue, vs. our beloved Uncle Dick. Both good men. The story is not the war, or the governments, or the underlying politics… it’s people, with bright eyes and individual faces… and above all, that is what I hope they come to value. At the end of the day, it’s my belief that only that understanding will stave off future wars in following generations. That is why we travel. That is why it was okay with me when my 12 year old wanted an Uncle Ho shirt… to him, it was a symbol of his emerging understanding, his solidarity with the people of Vietnam, his beginning understanding of the differing political structures of the world and his tiny place in them. When I look at the picture, that’s what *I* see. 🙂

  8. Roger Says:

    @ Doug: Reagan’s attitude was so over embellished about America. “Last best hope of man on earth”? Oh, please. There are plenty of good countries in the world, and we are no better. Get outside of the bubble.