Good morning, Vietnam: on the long road to freedom and prosperity, Vietnam is taking the first halting steps

National Review, May 15, 1995 by William McGurn

Undoubtedly this is not the answer a Saigonite would give, but it does suggest the difference in reference points between South and North. "Saigon is a place where you make money," says Tanya Pullin. "Hanoi is a university town where people read Proust and talk about politics."

This is not the least of Hanoi's many charms, for while the Vietnamese never accepted French colonialism they took readily to French culture, and the rice baguettes I had for breakfast rank as the most delicious treat I have ever tasted. Judging from the frenzy of construction going on all over the city, however, old Hanoi is not long for this world. Although much of this is blamed on foreign development, if Hanoi is to be saved it will be the foreign developers who will do it.

Not that any of this means the hard men running Vietnam have renounced their past or accepted the idea of representative government; men like Dr. Nguyen Dan Que rot away in prison for advancing just such heresies. Indeed, one of the least-reported stories since the end of the war is how badly those non-Communist critics of South Vietnam have fared under the new order. When Thic Quang Duc immolated himself on a Saigon street in 1963, it was news around the world and helped set the stage for the U.S.-backed assassination of Diem. But how many read about the Buddhist who immolated himself last year at the Linh Mu Pagoda in Hue?

In Hanoi I stumble across a Missionary of Charity who is getting ready for a visit by Mother Teresa. The nuns are here taking care of the people no one else wants: disabled children. But the government has laid down any number of onerous restrictions. These include keeping the nuns out of Hanoi itself (even though the archbishop's residence has loads of room) and forbidding them to have daily Mass. Doubtless in the old days many of Vietnam's Catholic elite might have deserved to be brought down a peg or two. Today, however, the Church is completely dispossessed and yet even more of a challenge to the government.

St. Joseph's Cathedral tells the tale in sad grey walls representing fifty years of neglect. Mass is permitted only twice a day, at 5:30 A.M. and P.M., but the Sunday service we attended was packed, and the papers reported that on Christmas Eve there were overflow crowds. As I pass the statue of Our Lady in its very sorry state, I nonetheless suspect that for all its trials the Cross will remain in Vietnam long after the hammer and sickle have become a footnote.

On my last day here, I make the round of the art galleries. In Hong Kong, where I live, Vietnamese artists are quite popular and the prices have escalated accordingly. Most prominent of these is the late Bui Xuan Phai, whose street scenes of Hanoi suggest Degas and whose works go for about three times those of any other Vietnamese artist. Alas, the world's discovery of Vietnamese art is having two economic consequences. The first is a booming business in fake Phais; he seems to have produced more in the 7 years after he died than in the 67 years he was alive. The other is an explosion of bad art. In a nation where average annual income is $210 and a painting can easily fetch $300, more and more people are discovering the inner artist in themselves.