Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Date:         Mon, 25 Jan 1993 10:23:50 -0500
              USENET." <VIETNET@USCVM.BITNET>
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      NEWS/VN: Hanoi enters modern age

01/22

VIETNAM'S ISOLATED CAPITAL ENTERS MODERN AGE

    By Kathleen Callo
    HANOI, Jan 23, Reuter - Eighteen years after the Vietnam War, air raid
sirens still splinter the air in Hanoi every day to signal noontime.
    Bicycle-rickshaw drivers still wear army pith helmets and uniforms, which
they say are cheaper and last longer than civilian clothes.
    And it was only in the mid-1980s that Hanoi finally filled in the last of
its wartime bomb shelters.
    But this old French colonial city, isolated by 30 years of war, austerity
and orthodox communism, is changing fast.
    In the morning, you now see the odd American businessman jogging around
Hoan Kiem Lake. In the evening Vietnamese lovers stroll along where the bomb
shelters used to be.
    Shops left empty until the late 1980s by Stalinist policies banning private
enterprise are now bursting with goods.
    In the last two years Hanoi has introduced traffic lights, gained its first
fleet of taxis and emerged from the dark ages of telecommunications, with a new
direct overseas dial phone system.
    Since the Communist Party began free-market reforms a few years ago
allowing people to make money, Hanoi has come alive.
    Young people have abandoned socialist-style grey slacks and white shirts
for brightly coloured clothes. Sidewalk barbers are copying the latest
hairstyles from Hong Kong. A karaoke craze has hit the city.
    Metal workers clank away from morning till night on the street. Many
pavements have become mini-construction sites, as people build houses with
money stashed away for years or newly earned.
    "The change is remarkable," U.S. General John Vessey remarked in October.
He served as special envoy for former president George Bush to resolve the fate
of U.S. servicemen missing from the war.
    Everyone in Hanoi, once known for its sullen socialist-style service, now
seems keen to learn modern management style.
    That includes the party's central committee, which recently invited the
manager of the Metropole, Hanoi's only luxury hotel, to lecture its own hotel
staff on how to serve guests.
    Vietnamese were forbidden until a few years ago to have contact with
foreigners. Children on the street, reflecting Vietnam's isolation, called all
Caucasians "Lien Xo" (Soviet).
    Now they walk up to foreigners and say: "Hello," showing off results of
English classes that everyone here, from pre-schoolers to senior government and
party officials, seems to be taking.
    While street vendors could be arrested into the 1980s for being seen even
shaking a foreign customer's hand, many Western diplomats, business people and
journalists are spending this week in Vietnamese homes celebrating the Tet
Lunar New Year holiday.
    Some of the communist rhetoric has disappeared, too.
    Portraits of Marx and Lenin hung in most state offices until a few years
ago. Now local artists use the backside of those same canvases to make
paintings for a lucrative new foreign market.
    But locals and foreigners say they are worried the frenzied building and
increase in motorised traffic may soon destroy the beauty and tranquillity of
Hanoi, which is filled with lakes, shade trees and French colonial architecture.
    "Hanoi is like a woman who is not very beautiful, but has a lot of grace
and charm. If we're not careful, she will lose that," says Tran Hoan, minister
of information, culture and sports.
    Bicycles are the main means of transport, but streets are increasingly
clogged with motorbikes, and even a few cars.
    Purse-snatching and other street crime that have been rife for years in Ho
Chi Minh City are slowly heading north to Hanoi.
    Diplomats who held a New Year's Eve ball at Hanoi's old French opera house
later found that local staff in charge of security had allowed thieves to go
through guests' coats and steal more than $1,500, several cameras and other
belongings.
    Such an incident would have been unheard of until recently in the capital
of Vietnam, a police state -- albeit a relaxed one.
    But most people in Hanoi seem excited about the future.
    Trinh Van Tan, 71, who charges a few cents to weigh people on his sidewalk
scale, says people's lives have clearly improved.
    "People weigh more now, especially the young people. They're eating
better," he said.
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