Man, is Hanoi confusing. We're staying near a huge lake, which would normally be a great landmark for getting my bearings. But apparently not in Hanoi. Street names change from block to block.
And there are more eleven-way intersections than I've ever seen in my life. Hence, our taxi to the Temple of Literature. Whether a symbol of education or art, or homage to those ancestors who so revered study and teaching, the temple is highly trafficked by tourists and locals. Surrounded by gardens upon entry, visitors pass through four main gates.
In the first section is a pool. I wonder if like in many of the temples in Cambodia, the pool was used for cleansing prior to prayer and/or study. Another section of the temple is devoted to doctors with rows of huge stone scrolls mounted on the backs of sculpted turtles. As we walked, children and their parents alike rubbed the heads of the turtles and dropped small donations at their feet. 
For luck, for honor, for health, many people I've met say the Vietnamese are a superstitious people. Whatever helps, I say. A building at the end of the temple showcases the history of the temple with shrines to its influential men. Oh, almost forgot. The taxi fare was 15,000 Vietnamese Dong. Our driver tried to charge us 150,000...not so fast.
Next we visited the Hoa Lo Prison, known also as the Hanoi Hilton. Built by the French in the late 1800s and used to house Vietnamese prisoners, it was taken over by the Vietnamese in the 50s. As has been the case throughout much of my journey in Vietnam, I am familiar with names and places mostly because of Vietnam war history and movies. It's curious to think back in the history of humanity...is there a place, a plot of land on this earth where war has not occurred?
Walking through the exhibit, statues of Vietnamese prisoners are locked in foot shackles in a row. Winding further back into holding cells, getting to what must have been solitary confinement, peeping through the opening in the door, there sits another statue. I gasped. I wasn't expecting to see any representation of a body in the cell. And the detail of the sculptures? They may look goofy upon close examination, but at first glance, they're life-like.
Further into the prison still, is a section on the American soldiers who were kept there, most notably John McCain. Photos of American soldiers in the exhibit are shocking. In pretty much all of them, the men are smiling. There are photos of Christmas and the prisoners exchanging gifts. In others the men are exercising or cooking dinner.
It seems that the Vietnamese are quite concerned with showing how well the prisoners were treated. I wrote down a quotation in the exhibit that I found striking, and hope there are no inaccuracies in my copying it. "American servicemen participating in the war of aggression by US administration in Viet Nam and caught in the act while perpetrating barbarous crimes against Vietnamese land and people should have been duly punished according to their criminal acts, but the government and people of Viet Nam, endowed with noble and humanitarian traditions, have given those captured American servicemen the opportunity to benefit a lenient and generous policy by affording them a normal life in the detention camps as practical conditions of Viet Nam permit it and conforming to the situation in which war was still on." As has been the case here in Vietnam, I am learning a different perspective on the war. In history class, the Vietnam war was painted as the US defending south Viet Nam in a civil war. Here in Viet Nam, I haven't seen a single mention of it. The war seems to be viewed as an act of US aggression. Whether this is the propaganda the Vietnamese government is teaching its people, perhaps as is the US with its slant and version, or fact, who knows? Are there three sides to ever story: yours, theirs and the truth?
No comments:
Post a Comment