Viet Nam! – Myth to Modernity

I am sorry to say that I felt that the exhibition was very disappointing, no even more so……a tad underdone. Yes, there was quite a lot of artifacts, from earlier eras, but little to tie them together and cover the ebb and flow of the great dynasties, rulers, regality and the reach of kingdoms across what is now Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia even into Thailand and southern China in the period 1200- 1600, before the arrival of Christian missionaries. After all, one of the ancient rulers of Vietnam beat the great conquering mongol, Genghis Khan. Some of the artifacts are quite stunning, especially the bronze and porcelain, and the statuary.

There was little on the modern period, even the 19th and 20th centuries – little on the French period in the late 18th and 19th centuries, little on the nationalist era of the early 20th century and the removal of the French colonialists, little on the American war [the Vietnam War of the 1960s- 1970s] except for a small photo of the Ho Chi Minh trail, nothing on the heroin trade of the 1970s and 1980s [see the book - The Politics of Heroin in SE Asia by Alfred McCoy] and really nothing on the period since 1980, when most of the current citizens of Vietnam arrived in the world.

All of a sudden the exhibition just stopped, with nothing but a few propaganda posters of the 20th century and a picture of Ho Chi Minh made of postage stamps. Not a lot that extended the exhibition in name ie the modernity, and the rapid industrialization of the past 30 years was also conspicuous by its absence.

Even the Ho Chi Minh trail, a key element of the so called American war…….if you have seen it, you marvel at the effort to move goods and munitions along the trail. It is tough going in monsoonal weather, of the character of the WWII Kokoda trail in Papua New Guinea, and a powerful tool that boosted nationalism and effectively operated through, and survived the US bombing. Where is all this stuff???? You can learn more of the pre 2nd world war period [1930-1940] by reading The Quiet American by Grahame Greene, or seeing the movie. What an opportunity squandered!