Query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
From: Matthew Steinglass <mattsteinglass@yahoo.com>
Date: Jul 29, 2006 4:58 PM
Subject: [Vsg] query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
All,
I’m writing a piece for the Boston Globe on the Hanoi Ethnology Museum’s excellent exhibit
on thoi bao cap, the “Subsidized Economic Period”. One thing that struck me is that there
seem to be so few exhibits, in general, worldwide, which treat the everyday tenor of social
and cultural life under Communism; and among those few that do, as far as I’m aware, none
focus on the experience of poverty and scarcity, as the Ethnology Museum does. For the
former East Germany, there are the Wende Museum in LA and the new DDR Museum in Berlin; I
haven’t been to either, but both apparently take a contemporary-anthropology approach to
everyday social life. But neither seems to pay much attention to poverty or scarcity.
(Logical, perhaps, in relatively prosperous East Germany.)
Anyway, I thought others on the list might know whether there have been earlier exhibits
more along these lines, somewhere. I’m also curious whether there’s ever been any museum
exhibit in China treating any related issues.
Best,
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: Jul 29, 2006 5:03 AM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
I think there may be two main reasons why such an exhibition has not been curated in Vietnam
-
1) During the colonial period, many of the best minds of the country lived in poverty
because of their resistance against collaboration. There is a tradition of this strain of
mock pride in one's own desperation in late 19th or earlier 20th century classical poetry -
as exemplified in the poems of Cao Ba Quat, Nguyen Khuyen, Tran Te Xuong, etc.
Culturally, it's an issue deeply embedded in the culture.
2) It is this tension between, ideologically, collaboration and resistance, exploitation and
justice, treason and patriotism, but more concretely between poverty and wealth (ie. ill-
begotten wealth) that lies at the root of the century-long struggle for emacipation and
independence.
When this was finally achieved, partially in 1954 and completely in 1975, the reality,
however, is that political success has not automatically translated into economic
prosperity. The noose of the embargo after 1975 was pulled even more tightly then before the
war ended. This, coupled with poor policies, exasperated the situation further.
Even now, if you go to the countryside, hardscraping poverty is still the lot of many.
The issue of poverty can thus cut many ways. It is still perhaps too early, at least for the
populace, to look at poverty purely objectively, or vicariously. Enormous works are still
required to lift millions above the miserable lot. Few, as yet, need an exhibition to find
it.
Nguyen Ba Chung
From: Frank Proschan <ProschanF@folklife.si.edu>
Date: Jul 29, 2006 5:27 AM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
Matt,
I'm not sure that it is correct to say that the spectacular Bao cap
exhibition at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology "focus[es] on the experience
of poverty and scarcity..." during the 1975-86 period. Scarcity, to be sure,
and privation, difficulties, challenges, constraints (especially cultural
and artistic), but I'm not so sure whether "poverty" is the right word.
Indeed, in several places people are quoted (or shown in videos) recalling
that while people were often concerned with having a full meal, at the same
time nobody worried about starving. This goes to the essential question of
whether "poverty" is a socioeconomic fact susceptible to quantification and
IFI statistics, or whether it is (or is also) a cultural construction. Those
working in remote mountainous regions in Laos or Vietnam often remark that
people there don't even know they are poor--that is, they do not consider
themselves to be poor until national or international "developers" arrive to
teach them that they are poor. One of the many complex, multivocal, and
debated messages that I took from the Bao cap exhibition is that "poverty"
probably does not well convey the lived experience of people in that
period--even if some of them may well look back on it today and reframe it
in those terms.
Anybody who hasn't seen the exhibition, do whatever you can to get to Hanoi
before mid-December to see it. It's really almost unimaginable until you see
it--a few times.
Best,
Frank Proschan
From: Tai VanTa <taivanta@yahoo.com>
Date: Jul 29, 2006 2:54 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
Dear all,
I agree with Nguyen Ba Chung about the beauty of the
literari class's acceptance of poverty in the
tradition of non-collaboration with the rulers (not
only in the French period but during the imperial/
monarchy period too: an ban lac dao, stay in poverty
to enjoy virtue).
But I totally disagree with Frank Proschan's
hair-splitting way of distiguishing "concern about not
having a full meal and... starving"-- because both are
starving in different degrees and both are poverty.
And a scholar should not try to justify the failure of
policies that lead to starvation to different degrees
in both North and South Vietnam after 1975--or obvious
poverty--we don't have to distinguish between the
international developer'socioeconomic criterion and
the cultural criterion of the Vietnamese, because
Vientamese are humans too,and nothing in their culture
says that starvation is all right and to say so is to
treat them as half-humans (government failures of
policies such as new economic zones, taxation to the
degree of making the peasants cut off their orchard
trees and bring their buffaloes to Saigon to sell
buffalo meat rather paying the heavy tax, as described
by Professor Ngo Vinh Long, formerly very sympathetic
to the regime but oboviously disspointed tremendously
with the wrong policies and therefore sarcastically
joking about them at a talk at Harvard.).
The embargo is also responsible for isolating and
making the situation worse in Vietnam until the silent
revolt of the peasants and the lower cadre in the
South with the improvised "xe rao" (breaking the fence
to get out of the wrong policies) to adopt the "khoan"
regime ( paying a fixed portion to the government but
keeping the rest of the production), thereby leading
the way for the top government official TO FOLLOW in
the Doi Moi program. Just ask Adam Fforde or Professor
Vo Tong Xuan, Former President of Can Tho University
and present President of An Gian University, about
this.
Tai Van Ta
From: Nhu Miller <trantnhu@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 29, 2006 4:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
When I went to see the exhibit last month, I was struck by how
little had changed
in the reproduction of an home during the subsidized period. In fact,
many people in
Viet Nam still live the same cramped conditions. "The subsidized period lasted
from the beginning of the French war until the early 90s," my aunt who had been
a medical student/doctor at Dien Bien Phu told me. So for many, it
isn't such ancient history. They are still living it. There are some
a few really rich people in Viet Nam, but
there are lots who are still stuck in another economic zone.
I was also struck by the rather tactful absence of the reasons
why this period
existed. While I was ruminating over this, a reporter from Vietnam News, asked
me what I thought of the exhibit. "Where is mention of the wars?" I asked.
"We can't print that," she said.
Oh.
I overheard a teen-ager at the exhibit express her shock that
the high cadres
received more rations than ordinary people and that there was a
hierarchy. An elderly
gentleman explained with some exasperation that this was "natural" because some
people are more important than others. I don't know if he was a
visitor or someone who
was planted by the Museum to answer questions.
The long deprivation didn't exist in a vacuum. It came about
because of the
long and bitter resistance fought by Vietnamese of all classes. It's
odd to me that
the exhibit, despite its noble purpose, didn't mention this.
T.T.Nhu
From: Adam @ UoM <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
Date: Jul 29, 2006 7:04 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
Ask Adam?
Well, I do NOT stress the revolt of the peasants in the South - that is more
Melanie Beresford's line. I tend to stress SOEs and as I have a book coming
out on SOEs I expect to be criticised for being "far too focussed on the
North", which is fine by me as I am used to it. And for 'ignoring the
effects of the war', where I am also used to it.
Also, unfortunately for hating the US embargo, the impact was probably
positive: at least the economic logics strongly argue that the situation
usually got worse when the external resource availability improved, and got
better when it deteriorated (compare 1978-80 and 1989-90 with the early
1980s and early 1990s). What we call 'soft budgetary constraints' (such as
no embargoes) slow progress. But that is just economics, of course. The
hundreds of millions of dollars that aid programs have put into Mass
Organisation cadres' pockets clearly must have a bad impact upon
liberalisation.
The original reference to 'pha rao' is the article by Dam van Nhue and Le Si
Thiep in NCKT for 10 1981 which is all about SOEs. At least so I recall.
Adam
From: Frank Proschan <ProschanF@folklife.si.edu>
Date: Jul 29, 2006 8:17 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
With all due respect to Professor Tai (who, as far as I know, was not a
Hanoi resident in this time period and has not himself seen the exhibition),
the distinctions are made by the Hanoi residents themselves who are quoted
in the exhibitions' panels and shown speaking in the exhibitions' videos.
The exhibition incorporates a wide view of opinions and perspectives and is
intended to stimulate discussion and debate among visitors. However, Nhu is
wrong to imply that the reporter for Vietnam News in any way spoke for the
museum and even more wrong to suggest that the elderly gentleman she
overheard was "someone who was planted by the Museum to answer questions."
(By the way, the chart showing how much cadre, officials, and other citizens
at various levels received in ration coupons is the first time this
information has ever been published in Vietnam in any form.)
I find it exceedingly curious that the exhibition (which is, by the way,
explicity concerned with "Ha Noi life under the subsidy economy 1975-1986,"
and not all of Vietnam, or all of the subsidy period) is now criticized for
placing the blame for Hanoi residents' privations and hardships squarely and
unequivocally on the "mechanism for socio-economic management" rather than
diffusing responsibility by invoking the legacies of colonialism, war,
embargoes, etc. Rather than a "tactful" evasion as Nhu would have it, the
exhibition avoids making excuses or pointing toward external factors. The
exhibition's title panel and brochure state that this was "a period during
which both the courage and intelligence of millions of people were
suppressed." I find no tactful evasions here.
Best,
From: Adam @ UoM <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
Date: Jul 29, 2006 9:08 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
I can echo the sentiments below. I visited the Stasi museum in Normenstrasse, Berlin, a few
months ago and was struck by how there was so little in it that related to how ordinary
people coped with them on an everyday basis. I think this is a great pity.
I am sure that most people who have lived in Vietnam are fully aware of how daily life is
adjusted to cope with the Vietnamese equivalents. In Berlin the stress was on the
‘resistance’, Stasi technical methods, and so on. But very little that I could see on the
everyday. By contrast the Berlin Jewish Museum does have rather a lot on the daily life,
both before and during Nazi period, but again to my tastes there could be far more, not
least because, like many others including the Vietnamese, the family is so very important.
On the access of higher cadres to special rations, I recall as I am sure others do from the
late 1970s and 1980s that the west side of Hoan Kiem, as well as a street near the Ministry
of Health by Cat Linh, contained Dip Shops that sold goods for hard currency and against
special ration coupons that were favoured by high cadres and their families. I am sure that
there were other private outlets, but these were quite open. It is interesting that a large
number of dachas and special resorts were closed down in the late 1980s as a sign of the
changing politics of the times. What such privileges have now been replaced by is not too
hard to see. But the trend of the times, like the proposals for ending state funding to the
Mass Organisations, are striking.
A propos of the hidden side of Hanoi, Earth Google shows very interesting very large
buildings under construction within the Citadel area.
Adam
From: Tai VanTa <taivanta@yahoo.com>
Date: Jul 29, 2006 10:18 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
Dear Dr. Frank Proschan,
I apologize for being a little too emphatic in my
opinion. Maybe you would forgive me, if you know that
such tendency is due to my habit of following one of
the canons of attorneys: "strenous effort on behalf of
the clients", the clients in this case being the
Vietnamese people in both South and North Vietnam. My
heart ached when I saw my people, who later have
produced the most rice for expxort in Asia, except
Thailand, ate bo bo with rice instead of whole rice
during the the Subsidy period. I have my middle class
relatives in both part of Vietnam during these
miserable years.
In Hanoi, my cousins, who were engineers with decent
government jobs (one, a party member,fought at Dien
Bien Phu), still led a life of poverty,and when I
came back to Hanoi, not during 1975-86 but a little
later, some of them wanted to join me in hotel
breakfasts to taste the good food they never had
before. The 3-story house in which my family lived
with the cousins' family before 1954 prior to my
family moving South in 1954 (only 2 families in that
house in 1954), in the 1980's contained 6 families
with children --result: a slum kind of living in a
former middle class villa of Hanoi; for example, in
one floor, one cousin and his wife shared the living
room with his son and daughter-in-law and grandson by
having a cloth curtain hung in the middle with a
string, to make it into two bedrooms. That is the life
of the middle class families. One of the cousins (who
is now deceased) said to me: "I did not go South, so I
suffered my whole life !(" Tao kho ca mot doi !")".
At the prresent time, after Doi Moi, the standard of
living of these cousins have improved a lot , because
they can do their own business and earn business
income from the relatively free market economy. So,
Doi Moi did indeed alleviate poverty compared with the
Bao Cap Period.
In short, I did not live in Hanoi during the bao cap
period of 1975-86, but I visited there a few years
later and so, in a sense, I had lived there
vicariously through my cousins and I had a chance to
compare their poverty during 1975-86 as reported by
them with the period prior to 1954 and after Doi Moi.
As for people in the Exhibition who describe their
not eating to their full but having not really starved
yet, I think they just wnated to lighten up their
description a little bit, to be on the safe side with
the government. But the basic fact was they were
hungry during the bao cap period and suffered poverty
in other aspects of life, especially in housing. And
they knew they suffered, as exampled by my cousin's
exclamation, even they did not have comparable
standards from other countries during that
period--because they lacked the basic necessities of
life.
All my severe criticisms, stated in these emails,
of the wrong policies during the bao cap period that
made people suffer in poverty, do NOT mean I don't
applaud Doi Moi and all the good economic and social
consequences that come after that (including even some
political liberalization, and the foundation--at least
the foundation, if not the full implementation--of a
rule of law and human rights, embodied in many
statutory laws and a very good criminal procedure
code, that I have compared and found many similarities
to the US case law of 230 years,in a lecture/paper for
the 2004 workshop for attorneys in Hanoi, now on the
Internet.
Sincerely,
Tai Van Ta
From: Markus Taussig <markustaussig@mac.com>
Date: Jul 29, 2006 10:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
The big exodus of immigrants in the late 1980s is often described as
being precipitated not only by hyperinflation, but also fairly large-
scale famine in the countryside. Is there reason to doubt these
accounts? Is it possible that the exhibition is best seen as a
reflection of the difficult times experienced by residents of Hanoi
under central planning and that some of the differences of opinions
expressed here on VSG reflect that Hanoians were relatively better
off than the rest of the country? Just a thought. In any case, I
look forward to seeing the exhibition with my own eyes quite soon.
From: Tenley Mogk <tmogk@vn.seapro.crs.org>
Date: Jul 30, 2006 2:37 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
It's an interesting supposition, Markus, that Hanoians could have been better off than the
rest of the country during thoi bao cap. I have no evidence as to whether this could true
but it's interesting to note that Hanoian friends who lived through thoi bao cap have
reported to me that 'nguoi o que' during that time were better off than they because they
could grow extra food (plants, weeds, what have you) and kill field mice/rats to eat. This
could be accurate or instead an urbanite perception. Either way it's interesting.
Another brief note: as a UNHCR monitoring officer who interviewed hundreds and hundreds of
northern Vietnamese, primarily from Hai Phong and Quang Ninh, who left Vietnam for Hong Kong
after 1988, I can say that the vast majority left to, in their own words, "make a better
life" and not because of starvation - although 1988 is quite late in the game. ALL
believed, understandably, that they'd be given passage to the U.S., England, Australia, etc.
as those who went before them had been. The returnees I interviewed sounded more like
Mexican migrants to the States in their reasoning to head across the border: to find a job
in a place that had them, to educate their children, and to someday return to their home
country. Again, this was at least 3-4 years after the end of bao cap so likely not the bulks
of the folks you mean, Markus.
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
Date: Jul 30, 2006 3:32 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
I know some people who also worked for the UNHCR in Hong Kong at the time
and I don't think they would view the Vietnamese asylum seekers there --
mostly from northern Vietnam -- as on the same level as Mexican
immigrants.
See for example, this article by Anne Wagley (then Anne Wagley Gow)
written in 1994, in which she said many Vietnamese among the hundreds she
interviewed there were "black-listed families", that is fleeing from
discrimination based on their family political background:
http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.seasia
-/browse_frm/thread/e2ddd750cdf7af41/b91694fee8e688f2?
lnk=st&q=&rnum=3&hl=en#b91694fee8e688f2
Or this article by William Collins, who also worked for the UNHCR, who
said that most Vietnamese stated political reasons as their reason for
leaving:
http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.seasia-
l/browse_frm/thread/463d709597719340/f466fbcc0688a587?
lnk=st&q=&rnum=1&hl=en#f466fbcc0688a587
- Steve Denney
From: Peter Hansen <phansen@ourladys.org.au>
Date: Jul 30, 2006 4:37 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] query for article on Hanoi "subsidized period" exhibit
Dear List,
I worked in the Refugee Camps of Hong Kong from 1990 until 1993. I was
part of a scheme sponsored by the Jesuit Refugee Service to provide
advice to asylum seekers as to the effect on their individual situations
of the so-called Comprehensive Plan of Action and its interface with the
Geneva Convention. This involved me listening to literally thousands of
stories as to why people left Vietnam, so as to make some preliminary
assessment of whether they would qualify for refugee status under the
process they referred to as 'Thanh Loc'.
The characterization of most of the Haiphong/Quang Ninh departees as
economic migrants is, I think, legitimate. Most of them mentioned such
reasons for departing (no job prospects, seeking better future for
children, etc.). Few who I can recall mentioned famine as a motivation
for leaving (unlike Southerners sent to various New Economic Zones, for
whom famine was a perennially cited reason).
But not all those seeking refuge were simply coastal dwellers with
access to boats. I also interviewed many Northerners who had
experienced various political fall-outs with Hanoi. Draft dodgers and
AWOL soldiers who didn't want to go to Cambodia were another common
group. There were some ethnic minority people from the North-West, and
even a small number of ethnic Chinese from the Northern border regions
who found their situation difficult after the Border War. As a rough
estimate, I think that such group would have constituted about 20% of
the Northern asylum seekers.
After the terrible fire in Sek Kong Camp in 1991, in which several dozen
Northerners were burnt to death (allegedly by Southern counterparts),
the northern and Southern populations were segregated. I was then sent
to Tai A Chau camp, populated entirely by asylum seekers from south of
the 17th.
Here was an entirely different situation from the northern camps.
Central Coast fishermen mixed with remnants of the RVN regime (even a
couple of lesser members of the Royal Family). But the largest group
was ethnic Chinese from Cholon, many of whom had fearful stories of
persecution in the post-1979 period. Kong Kong Immigration, doubtless
trying to prevent an influx, refused to accept these stories as being
evidence of extant persecution, contending that they represented a
period of Vietnamese political and social history which had by then
passed. Consequently, few attainted status.
Sorry if this has been a little off the original point.
Peter Hansen