Category: Young & Global Magazine

History’s Different Facets: Confronting New Perspectives in Vietnam

Published on April 7, 2014 in Young & Global Magazine:

War Remnants Museum

Here’s a question you probably weren’t asked in history class: Who won the American War? If you’re a little confused as to which war I’m referring to, you’re probably not Vietnamese. To the rest of the world, the prolonged struggle from 1959 to 1975 between communist-backed northern Vietnam and the United States-supported south is commonly known as the Vietnam War. A recent visit to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) taught me that history would never be an easy topic to confront or discuss abroad, but that it is worth trying.

A great many Westerners know little about the history of Vietnam before or after this gruesome conflict. The Southeast Asian nation makes a single, traumatizing cameo in American history books, and students will rarely learn about Vietnam from any other angle. While it would be ideal if our education about other nations were more holistic, it isn’t unusual or even remarkable that Americans are taught about the world mainly through our own country’s actions and interactions.

However, it is often forgotten—as in the case of Vietnam—that the foreign players in our nation’s history have long and rich backstories of their own. This is why travel continues to be vital in an era when every nation on earth is represented by galleries of photos on the internet and summaries on Wikipedia. When we go out into the world, we relocate not just our physical bodies, but our minds as well. We are granted the ability to hear these countries’ histories as narrated from their points of view.

This can be frustrating. The history of the world you learned in school will likely be quite different from the recounting you hear abroad, especially when it comes to conflict. It may be tempting to enforce your own nation’s version of events as the “correct” one, but it is important to remember—whether you travel the world or not—that there will never be one entirely accurate account of history. Retellings vary from textbook to textbook, city to city, and country to country. Authors and historians make assumptions, mistakes, and oversights, just like the rest of us. In some cases, you will come across obvious biases or misrepresentations—such as in North Korea’s museums, which feature a clearly false retelling of world events—but most variations will not be so blatant.

History is a collection of human experiences, and each person experiences the world through a unique lens. This lens is heavily influenced by cultural norms and heritage, and many people are unaware of how deeply embedded these influences are. For example: a person who grows up in a powerful, independent country will learn (through formal teachings and subliminal cultural osmosis) to judge the world differently than one who grows up in a country influenced by foreign invasions and occupation. A person who grows up with more than enough to eat is going to appraise a meal differently than a person who grows up with barely enough. A nation that venerates honesty is going to reflect on war differently than a nation that venerates societal harmony.

Modern Propaganda

It is easy to become emotional when faced with an unflattering version of history, particularly if you are American or British or Japanese. You may become angry with your own country, as perhaps you wonder why your teachers failed to cover certain historical events in class. Or you may direct your anger at the country you’re visiting, as perhaps you believe this retelling of events to be unfair. You may feel the urge to completely write off this account of the past, but by doing so you sacrifice a tool for gaining insight into the nation that authored the account. Instead of reacting blindly to this unattractive portrayal of your country, ask yourself why this portrayal exists in the first place.

The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City attracts approximately half a million visitors annually and has become one of the city’s most popular tourist sites for foreigners. I left the museum in tears, shaken and bewildered by the unforgivingly vivid photographs of American soldiers smiling next to dismembered men, the piles of slaughtered women, and the children torn apart by U.S. bombs. It might be tempting to decry the War Remnants Museum as propagandist. After all, the museum depicts American soldiers as genocide machines who invaded this country for no reason, and there is almost no mention of any of the Vietnamese-on-Vietnamese atrocities that occurred. But it is worth mentioning that many of the photographs are from vetted American sources and it is worth considering why the Vietnamese government would choose to portray the conflict in such a manner. What might their objective be? And what does it say about them?

By framing this part of history in this way, the War Remnants Museum presents a national Vietnamese identity via its suffering. As a country literally and emotionally split in two by a bloody conflict, a unified identity was an uncertain reality, one that needed to be reinforced. And how better to unite people than to depict them with a common enemy? But this enemy isn’t the United States, however much the violent exhibitions may suggest that it is.

The ground floor of the museum is devoted to the international antiwar movement and the museum does take care to include Americans among the posters, newspaper snippets, and photographs: a B-52 pilot who defected, protests in Washington DC, quotes from Martin Luther King Jr., and so on. The Vietnamese government may want its population to forget how divided it once was, but the last thing it wants is to incite its people into another imbroglio. Thus, while the museum has no qualms about demonstrating the gory actions of the United States, the enemy it wants visitors to remember and fear is the brutality of conflict. We are supposed to understand that ideologies may be grand and noble, but for the civilians on the ground, war is never anything but senseless and inhuman.

In this case, I agree with the choice to portray history this way, even though I left the War Remnants Museum bawling. Most high school history textbooks explore the macro trends that spurred international conflict but don’t expound upon the grisly trauma. And so, it is occasionally necessary to recall that history happened to people. However, while Ho Chi Minh City’s visceral museum is an indispensable reminder of the human element of war, it is also necessary to remember that no matter how mindlessly violent, no conflict is created in a vacuum. Vietnam’s suffering was real and important, but it was not the entire story.

The War Remnants Museum displays some of what occurred during the Vietnam War, actions and reactions, but not why it occurred. Framing the war as a foreign invasion streamlines Vietnam’s role in the struggle, but it subsequently oversimplifies the convoluted and interlocking series of world events that led up to the conflict in the first place. The Vietnam War was only possible due to the tense atmosphere of the Cold War, which cannot be understood without understanding World War II, which in turn cannot be understood without knowing World War I. To fully understand the reasons for the Vietnam War, one has to go back a full century to the beginning of French colonial rule in Southeast Asia. Empathy alone will not prevent history from repeating itself; we must be knowledgeable as well. Thus, it is important when considering a nation’s past to strike a balance between the causes of war as well as the effects. The global currents and ideological conflicts that take place on a macro scale are crucial to understanding why any individual human being would slaughter another.

History gives us context for what we encounter when we travel and while it empowers visitors to be understanding, equally important are your own eyes. Present-day Ho Chi Minh City is bustling and cheerful. The streets are replete with coffee shops, clothing stores, and petite hotels, in front of which women in nón lá (the traditional conical hat) sell baguette sandwiches, bowls of noodles, soft drinks, and fresh coconuts. Tourists are welcomed. When it rains, foreigners and locals hide under the same awnings and share incredulous laughs at the strength of the downpour. This is a far cry from the horrific depictions in the War Remnants Museum and from the somber history featured in Western textbooks. It is important to be aware of the complicated history and to feel personally how brutal conflict is, but it is also vital to take stock of the living, breathing present and to see how the soul and culture of a nation is so much more than just a past struggle.

Young & Global Magazine

 

Division and Illusions in North Korea, the World’s Most Inexplicable Nation

Published on September 3, 2013 in Young & Global Magazine:

Arch of Reunification

On an overcast afternoon in August, I stood on the upper balcony of Panmungak, the main North Korean building in the Joint Security Area (JSA) of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), gazing over narrow, blue buildings. Dead center between Panmungak and the South Korean building called the Freedom House Pagoda, I could see the thick line of concrete that splits the two Koreas. Though we were a mere 70 kilometers from Seoul, it felt like we were on another planet.

Miss Choi, our tour guide, appeared at my elbow. She was a curvy North Korean woman in her thirties, but beyond that I won’t describe her or provide her real name lest I unwittingly get her into trouble. With a placid smile on her face, she led our group down the stairs, out of Panmungak, and across the quiet compound to the squat cyan buildings.

The JSA is used by the two Koreas for diplomatic engagements, but on that day it was devoid of life, save for stiff soldiers and nonchalant sparrows. Since visitors are forbidden from interacting with tourists from the other side, the area operates on something of a timeshare. As we explored the sparse negotiation space that sat squarely on the demarcation line, Miss Choi recited historic moments and explained that the main obstacle to the reunification of the Korean peninsula was the posting of American troops at the DMZ.

“Our country is divided. But maybe one day soon you can have breakfast in Pyongyang, lunch in Kaesong, and dinner in Seoul,” she finished wistfully.

The members of our tour group glanced at each other, but no one moved to put forth a conflicting opinion. Two days earlier, in the Beijing airport, a representative from Koryo Tours had warned us to expect such discrepancies. North Koreans have a genuine pride in their country, he had explained, and though they know Westerners have different versions of their country’s history, they simply believe we’re lying. Or ignorant. After all, why would our version of history be truer than what they’ve been told their whole lives? Would you believe a North Korean who told you Abraham Lincoln was a Nazi?

It was in Beijing—one of only four airports in the world that can fly you to North Korea—where I had first met the small group of adventurous travelers who would be my companions on this trip. I knew nothing about these people except that they were expats working in Singapore, and their curiosity about North Korea matched my own. It must, because we would be among only 3,000 or 4,000 non-Chinese tourists to visit the reclusive nation that year. For me, although I had moved to Singapore a mere five days earlier to reunite with my fiancé after a six-month separation, I was curious enough to take this trip he had planned, even if wasn’t quite the romantic reunion vacation I was expecting.

The representative from Koryo Tours had also given us guidelines for our visit. We were not allowed to photograph construction sites or people, and we were forbidden from wandering away from our guide. While it wasn’t impossible to sneak photos or creep off to out-of-bounds areas, Miss Choi had the power to restrict the planned activities for our trip if she judged our group to be unruly. Most importantly, later she would be the one to pay for any and all of our misbehavior. So we mindfully asked whether pictures were permitted and followed her like quiet schoolchildren.

View of Freedom House Pagoda and Joint Security Area from North Korean side

Freedom House Pagoda and Joint Security Area viewed from the DPRK side of the DMZ

A short drive from the DMZ, a military lookout point stood at the peak of a hill, which our secondhand tour bus struggled to climb. Inside the little building, a North Korean colonel in full uniform gave us a history lesson in front of a large painted map. He then gestured for us to follow him outside, where a row of telescopes allowed us to peer out at the peaceful, grassy landscape, riddled with silent landmines. Beyond a tiny wall marking the border, military bases flew South Korea’s flag. I only half-listened to the colonel’s stilted English; I was skeptical of the veracity of his facts and more interested in studying his appearance. With his large cap and swamp green military garb, he resembled a Chinese officer from the 1960s. I noticed that his bars of honor were actually a multicolored square of plastic, and I wondered if he had seen a picture of a decorated official and endeavored to appear equally important. Affixed directly above this facsimile was a red, flag-shaped pin that featured Kim Il Sung’s smiling face.

Every adult I had seen in North Korea sported this red pin on his or her left breast, sometimes accompanied by a second red pin featuring the image of Kim Jong-il. Miss Choi said the pins were worn simply out of a desire to show respect; there was no mention of compulsion. However, I later learned that the law used to be: forget to wear your pin once, receive a warning; forget it a second time and face punishment.

Much like the colonel’s illusion of military honor, I discovered that the nearby city of Kaesong was also designed to appear more than it was. Houses of solid concrete had brick patterns painted on their exteriors, and concrete walls sported motifs to mimic stone ones. Kaesong was the only city to change control from South to North Korea because of the Korean War. As such, it is the southernmost city in North Korea. Its name translates to “Triumph”, but it is a town of worn buildings and of families fractured by the 38th Parallel.

Atop a hill, a towering bronze figure of Kim Il Sung gazed down a steep road into the little city. Despite the fact that we arrived into Kaesong at 5:30pm and rush hour was in full swing, the streets were scantily populated. As we would for all dinners on the trip, we ate in a nice restaurant filled with only Western tourists, and it soon became apparent that the locals didn’t make a habit of eating out. We slept in a traditional inn, sleeping under mosquito nets in the heavy darkness of North Korea’s nightly nationwide blackout.

The following day, the drive from Kaesong to the capital of Pyongyang took two hours on Reunification Highway, which had no lane lines, but was peppered with guarded checkpoints. Except for the occasional truck or other tour bus, the highway was empty. Tunnels were devoid of lighting. Cornfields lined the road, as well as flat plains in all shades of green and brown merging into distant mountains. We passed tanned men and women on bicycles, brown cows tied up to graze, children bathing in shallow rivers. It’s easy to forget in such a strange country –especially one so ideologically at odds with the Western world – that people are just people everywhere.

A plush pink charm of the whole Korean peninsula swung from the bus’s rearview mirror as Miss Choi gave us lessons on her country’s history and culture. Once again I was struck not only by the bizarre interpretations of historical events but how much weight they still carried in the present. It seemed to me that the people of North Korea obsessively clung to past slights and lorded over past triumphs, while the rest of the world had long since moved on.

The history North Koreans tell is an idealistic, childlike version of the world. Their heroes are brave, their leaders compassionate and wise, their enemies evil and uncomplicated. The big questions have been answered unambiguously. But looking out over the serene landscape I wondered about the people starving somewhere hidden from view. Did they still love their country, their Eternal President, their Great General? Or was the illusion shattered? Were they heartbroken?

Before arriving in Pyongyang, we pulled over to admire the Arch of Reunification, which straddled the highway itself. The concrete monument consisted of two women in traditional Korean dress—one representing the North and the other the South—leaning forward to jointly uphold a sphere emblazoned with the complete land of Korea.

Looking at the Arch, I didn’t know where the future would take this inexplicable nation, but I knew it wouldn’t be to the joyous and peaceful reunification the North Koreans were convinced was imminent. I also knew that anything I said to the contrary would at best fall on deaf ears, and at worst endanger the safety of our sweet-natured tour guide, so I simply took a photograph of the monument before we moved on.

Young & Global Magazine

 

In the Shadows of Myanmar’s Golden Stupa: New Friends in Old Places

Published on April 23, 2013 in Young & Global Magazine:

Shwezigon Pagoda, Nyaung-U

In the dry heat of the late morning, the gold Shwezigon Pagoda shone blindingly bright against the fierce blue sky. It was February, the very beginning of Myanmar’s blistering summer, and the day was only going to get hotter. Regardless, the compound surrounding the gilt stupa was busy with barefoot visitors. At the giant structure’s base, local women kneeled on cool white tiles or sat on thin mats to pray. Little boys scampered around in packs. Tourists encumbered by cameras gazed up at the elaborate peaks of the various shrines. A dog slumbered in the shade.

Many of the women and children had a yellowish-white paste applied to their faces in a circular patch on each cheek. I knew Myanmar was primarily a Buddhist country and I wondered whether the markings had a religious significance.

A trio of young girls sporting this face paint approached me arm-in-arm and greeted me in English. Like every other local I had seen, they all wore the traditional longyi (a piece of cloth tied around the waist that falls to the ankles) in vivid floral patterns. However on top they wore a variety of shirts not unlike ones I could pick up in an American Target store.

“Hi,” I responded, curious but a little wary. Were they going to ask for money?

“We are students of English. Is it okay if we talk to you so to practice?”

I nodded, with a smile.

Their names were like knotted silk scarves: long and full of soft syllables. I could never hope to pronounce them properly and, out of shyness, I didn’t ask them to repeat them.

The girls at the Shwezigon Pagoda

The ringleader of the little trio had dark shoulder-length hair and a ready smile. “Do you have any questions about our country?” She queried.

“I do, actually. What is the meaning of your face paint?”

She laughed and patted her cheeks. “It is thanaka! To protect from the sun!”

We spent a few minutes chatting about where we came from, and I played them a video on my phone of my teenaged brother in my family’s kitchen in New Jersey last winter. Several feet of snow had walled us in, burying our cars and patio furniture. My new friends marveled at the expanse of white visible outside our windows and they giggled as they proclaimed my brother very handsome.

“Can I be sister-in-law?” The ringleader asked cheekily, causing her friends to squeal and hush her.

“Oh absolutely,” I replied, sending them into peals of laughter.

They were eager to improve their English and pulled out paper notebooks emblazoned with advertisements for the upcoming Twilight movie. I shook my head in amazement. Only six months earlier the Myanmar government had announced that it would cease censoring media before publication, and already Twilight had arrived.

I knew many of the locals refused to acknowledge the country’s name as Myanmar, but when I complimented the beautiful looping letters of written Burmese, the girls shyly corrected me: Myanmar language, not Burmese. Perhaps they were too young to remember Burma before the military junta tightened its grip on the government and isolated the nation from the rest of the world.

The girls’ English writing was neat, peppered with well-rounded a’s and cleanly crossed t’s. The vocabulary lists meticulously written into their flimsy notebooks were curious amalgamations that gathered seemingly unconnected words into one category. One such list contained: elbow, disseminate, max, meander, price tag, and nullify.

I was doing my best to explain how Americans and British idioms were quite different when I noticed “That sucks” was on their list.

“Now that is a useful idiom,” I said with a laugh.

They flipped through several pages, stopping to ask me the correct way to pronounce “I’ve” and to verify the accuracy of their lists of idioms, which some English-speaking tourists didn’t seem to know.

In the shadow of a golden stupa built in 1102 AD, we traded email addresses. Then, promising to stay in touch, we went our separate ways.

In the coming years those girls will undoubtedly see their homeland move through unimaginable changes. The tourism industry is exploding at a startling rate and the local people will have to safeguard their culture against the tide of Hollywood movies, Western fashions, and convenient modern alternatives. But this amicable trio of girls, so eager to learn the English of their visitors, will also have a broader array of opportunities than they’ve ever had before.

Young & Global Magazine

 

 –