The Changing Landscape of Vietnam
I'm trying not to make this trip a petri dish for blog posts. It's not working. But I don't have a lot of time to think and analyze and come to a useful conclusion with many of my thoughts so I'm just going to blog some simple stuff here and hopefully tie up all the frayed posts I've started to make something "good."
The one thing I don't want to do is paint Vietnam as something it isn't. I've only been here twice, but it's enough to see that the idea of Vietnam as a land of nón lá (conical hats) and áo dài (flowing Vietnamese dresses) and phở (noodle soup) is just that: an idea. But I don't want my conclusions of Vietnam to solely reflect positive economic growth and government policy either, which is just as shallow as the previous perspective. Vietnam is a country, consisting of endless peoples, places and things that all contribute to its meaning. I will never be able to capture the whole of Vietnam, let alone articulate it, but I hope that I can contribute a bit to redefining Vietnam as a country, not a war or a tradition or a monetary sum.
And hopefully by doing so I will learn for myself what Vietnam means to me.
1 comment:
I appreciate your effort to view Vietnam comprehensively, not partially. And to represent it to your audience as accurately as possible. It is easy to fall into the tourist trap way of thinking -- making everything rosy and beautiful and cultural -- although Viet Nam IS movingly beautiful and culturally rich. The economy is booming like crazy and I'm curious to know how that has changed its face these past years.
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