neoliberalism is alive and well... in Vietam

Okay, I've got to say it. With the possible exception of some policy wonks kept in the basement of the Project for the New American Century, Vietnamese students may well be some of the most unreconstructedly neo-liberal folks in the world.

In class last month during our discussion of urban development projects like "The Manor," I tried to point out the rather specious nature of the claim that they "solve" the problems of rapid urban change. If the problem of urbanization is that the rapidly increasing population of urban poor in places like Hanoi and Saigon does not have access to affordable housing and services, I argued, then it seems questionable whether expensive luxury high-rises can solve anything except the problem of where international capital can make rapid returns.

Happily, though, the Vietnamese students were not taken in by my argument. For them, the problem was less the lack of housing or services for the poor, and more the effect that the increasing population of poor people was having on the quality of life for the rich. Thus luxury developments like the Manor, by providing a spacious, clean, and safe (if sterile) living environment for those who could afford it, really were a solution. Moreover, one student continued, the urban poor really deserved their fate. They had, after all, moved to the city "by choice," and neither government nor society had a responsibility to ensure their access to anything at all. If they didn't like what they got, she added, they could move back to the countryside. Presuming, that is, that their land hadn't been "developed" into a golf course.

Not sure that she really meant what she seemed to be saying, I replied that various societies in history, and even some in the present day, felt that it was important to ensure that all their citizens enjoyed a certain minimum standard of life, often defined to include such things as decent housing, clean water and environment, education, public transportation, and health care. She was unmoved. That might be fine for the wacky Swedes, or even those bland Canadians, but not for Vietnamese. In this nation, people deserved what they got and got what they deserved.

I find this interesting. Is it just a temporary reaction to the perceived failure of socialist policies before đổi mới? Is it that the imported curricula that they study in HANU's Faculties of Management and International Studies carry with them a heavy dose of American-style individualism? Or is it coming from somewhere deeper, from indigenous notions of the individual and their fate? I really don't know. All I know is that the Vietnamese students in our joint class make their American peers look, well, almost communist by comparison. Go figure.

development's not all bad (maybe)

I was drinking beer via Skype with thầy Thư a few weeks ago, and he commented that my blog posts are painting a resolutely bleak picture of the course of development in Hanoi. This gave me pause. I like to consider myself a relatively optimistic person, not just able to see the glass of bia hơi as half full, but also able to rest contentedly in the knowledge that a full glass is but a shout of "bia em ơi!" away. So I set myself the challenge of finding an example of positive change in Hanoi in the last year.

This will probably come as a shock to no one, but my example revolves around bia hơi. Over the last four years or so, bia hơi's have been closing at an alarming rate. This sort of change is driven by the same skyrocketing land prices that are closing places like Cafe Lâm, combined with the aggressive enforcement of policies intended to eradicate street commerce. My sentimental favorite, the Việt Hà on Lý Thường Kiệt opposite the Melia closed long ago, followed by the Việt Hà on Tông Đản (moved to Hàng Bài and since closed at that location, too), and recently by the great old bia hơi Hà Nội Vân Hồ. For a while, it seemed all we were left with were the cavernous beer gardens along the lines of Hải Xồm. Perfectly fine, of course, but not exactly what I think of when I think of "real" bia hơi.

For "real" places like the bia tươi Heninger place at 60 Lý Thường Kiệt, which depend entirely on sidewalk seating, policies against street commerce were a virtual death sentence. For a few years there, I assumed it had closed entirely. But last summer, I happened to meet an old friend (Ricky, I wish you well wherever you are) who suggested that we celebrate our reacquaintance at the same location where we'd shared far too many beers back in the early 2000s. My first few sessions there last summer were still punctuated by impromptu street comedy. The informer would call, the servers would rush out, chairs, tables, and half-eaten plates of chả nhái would be whisked away, and bemused customers would be left standing on the sidewalk as the police arrived, grumbled, and eventually left empty-handed. But now, even this perfunctory attempt at enforcement has ended, and on any night of the week the tables and little plastic stools (we're talking old school here, no chairs allowed; and let's not even mention the toilet) flow out to occupy a good third of the block west of Quán Sứ. And this is not the only example: the Việt Hà on Hàm Long has retaken control of the street opposite the lovely Catholic church, there's a nice cluster of small sidewalk bia hơis down at the end of Hoa Mã... I could continue this list of revitalized bia hơis far longer than I should.

So while we've lost many of the real bia hơis forever, those that managed to survive the lean years of 2004-2007 now seem to have been able to renegotiate their right to carry on that great Hanoi tradition: selling beer on the sidewalk. The question remains, though: why this positive development? I tended to chalk it up to the inevitable waxing and waning that characterizes Vietnamese law enforcement: laws are made, for a time enforced, and then relaxed as ordinary people reassert their own notions of justice and equity. For my friend Thư, though, the answer was to be found in the current financial crisis, and a conscious government decision to relax the enforcement of laws that might restrict even further the ability of ordinary people to make a living in hard economic times. In the end, we differ primarily in our idea of where the impulse is coming from, I'm a little more bottom-up, he's a little more top-down. But the way I figure it, my analysis holds out a more hope that an improving economy won't necessarily bring the end of sidewalk bia hơi as we know it. Maybe I'm an optimist after all.

leading by example

There's an NGO based in an office on Tô Hiến Thành street (if you must know, it's next to the cafe where I usually have my morning coffee). The NGO is called "Vietnam: Promoting Energy Conservation in Small- and Medium-Scale Enterprises (PECSME for short). They provide training and financial support to businesses to promote energy efficiency, and are currently funding projects in ten provinces throughout the country. I happened to notice their project car the other day: a huge V-8 Land Cruiser. Yet another example of the peculiar way that repeated exhortations to "nói và làm" get translated into reality.

Signs of the times: RIP, Cafe Lâm

Okay, now I'm really sad. Ask a longtime Hà Nội resident, and they'll be able to tell you about Cafe Lâm at 74 Tô Hiến Thành (and not to be confused with the even more famous Cafe Lâm on Nguyễn Hữu Huân) . It is an institution on the order of Cafe Nhân, Cafe Quỳnh, Cafe Thọ, Cafe Giảng, and all the other lovely one-name cafes with original art on the often-mouldy walls, watermelon seed shells on the worn tile floors, and that uniquely Hanoian mix of old-school intelligentsia, new-school businessmen, students, taxi drivers and policemen, drinking their morning coffees and reading their morning papers. These places are part of Hà Nội's history, and as you get to know the owners, you'll learn which famous authors once got into a fight there, or which painting was a gift of a struggling artist long since made good. My own connection to Cafe Lâm is a little more recent: it is the cafe where my Ph.D. supervisor, Peter, and his wife, Cầm, courted each other back in the early days of Vietnam's re-engagement with the West (the owner still asks after you, Peter and Cầm). Add to that the fact that it was one of the few cafes I knew where sidewalk seating was still on the back-breaking tiny plastic stools, and it was pretty much guaranteed that I would stop by for a coffee every few weeks.

That's not an option any more. Cafe Lâm is gone, the space at 74 Tô Hiến Thành sold to investors who plan to build a mini-hotel. Whether Hà Nội really needs another mini-hotel is questionable, and it seems pretty clear that Tô Hiến Thành street, its spatial and infrastructural resources already stretched to their limits, cannot support the increased demands that even a "mini" hotel will make. Even more important, though, the end of Cafe Lâm also marks the destruction of another part of Hà Nội's built heritage.

Cafe Lâm is one part of a larger row house built during the early twentieth century. While it may not feature the unique design of the modernist-inspired villas and houses that were to follow, it is most definitely a genuine example of early French colonial architecture. After 1954, the use-rights (and now effective ownership) of larger properties was divided, and the building that stretched along half the block of Tô Hiến Thành was no exception. As today's investors in the hotel project have only been able to acquire the property at number 74, then that's what they'll "develop." So this concrete part of Hanoi's history will die a strange and slow death, cut in thirds by a six-story slice of architectural disaster. Is there not just a little irony in the that fact that while developers are creating ersatz "French-style" "new cities" in Hanoi's urban fringes, they're destroying real French architecture in its historic core?

Rest in Peace, Cafe Lâm.

Signs of the times: 96 Tuệ Tĩnh

I should preface this post with the observation that I've just consumed way too much rươu cao ngựa bạch (and that I've finally loaded a recent version of Vietnamese Unikey to my computer). But now we've got that out there, I want to relate what is for me the greatest and most preventablest tragedies of Hanoi today, besides the honking issue: the loss of central Hanoi's built heritage.

However problematic their colonial origins might be, few would argue that the houses, offices, and villas that were built during the French administration of Vietnam are a big part of what makes Hanoi special. Others might point to its lakes (mostly filled in now), the various varieties of bún, or that special "screw you and your mother too" attitude that can characterize interactions in this city. But for all but the most hardended advocate of "Development," the lovely old buildings sprinkled throughout Hổ Hoàn Kiếm and Hai Bà

Trưng districts are almost certainly a huge part of this city's charm. But not for long.

I live on Tuệ Tĩnh street, not far from Reunification park. Back in the (colonial) day, this area was populated by wealthy and/or influential Vietnamese, those who collaborated with the French regime or at least did an acceptable impression. And as powerful people are wont to do, they built nice houses to symbolize their power and their connection to the dominant architectural and political discourse of the time. More than fifty y

ears later, the area is still filled with the physical remains of this impulse. One of my favorite streets in the city is Triều Việt Vương, where a particular convergence of the local and the global has left us with fascinating vestiges of a hybrid Franco-Vietnamese modernism. In this context, perhaps the house at 96 Tuệ Tĩnh isn't particularly special. Yet its curves and its graceful detailing will always make it infinitely more pleasing than the six-storey glass and steel office building that will soon take its place. For that is what will happen. 98 Tuệ Tĩnh has already been sold, and as soon as the property rights of the owners of 98 Tuệ Tĩnh can be "acquired," then this building will disappear in a matter of weeks, if not days, and Hanoi will have lost another part of its built heritage. I can't help comparing this process to the sort of "development" that gutted Singapore's historical core. Yet where modern and utterly characterless Singapore was the result of conscious choices by a ruling elite committed to a certain vision of modernity, in Hanoi the same outcome will occur building by building as a thousand lovely old villas are replaced by a thousand identical and ultimately unsustainable office buildings. In some ways I prefer the Singapore version: at least there was a larger, if utterly wrongheaded vision at work. By contrast, Hanoi's lovely old buildings will be the victim a thousand cases of shortsighted greed and brided local officials. Yet whatever the vision (or lack thereof) at play, the end result will be the same: in another five years, Hanoi will have little to recommend it aside from its bún. And the honking, of course.

Food and Joy

There's not too much that I can say about The Manor that hasn't already been said. But that won't stop me from throwing out a few random observations. First, the rather surreal sign that announces your arrival at the fifth-floor food court of "The Manor's" shopping center, "The Garden." Yes, that's right, "Food &Joy."

The first thing I thought of when I saw the sign was "Arbeit macht Frei," the sign that hung above the Nazi concentration camps. Because just as work did not bring freedom to the camps' inmates, I don't get the feeling The Food at The Garden is going to be brining a lot of joy to anyone except perhaps the development's investors.

Doublespeak was the word George Orwell coined in the novel 1984 to describe the surreal language a future totalitarian state used in an attempt to turn reality on its head. And I'm certainly not the first to notice that a similar kind of doublespeak characterizes the modern art of marketing. But what fascinates me about Vietnam today is that the marketers of our ideal future are so blatant about it. Is it that the legacy of the command economy allows them to give up all pretense of subtlety, or that they're just bad at their jobs? I'm not sure. "Manors" that are essentially low-cost housing projects with a heavy (and ineffective) dose of security. "Gardens" that have no green space or places to sit and relax (and where the background music, I kid you not, is an endlessly looped muzak version of "I've got you under my skin."). Generic, deep-fried, ethnically essentialized "Food" that is "Joy." It's 1984, but with a soothing dose of consumerism and fatty food.

At the same time, though, what struck me about the Manor was how real life kept sneaking back in. At the first hint of uncontrolled space, you'd find tea stalls, where the real people who actually do all the work in The Manor, The Garden, and all its associated developments can get an inexpensive drink, a cigarette or a hit of thuoc lao, and some time to interact with other humans (not to mention a place to sit; in all the "parks" and green spaces of The Manor and The Garden, there is not a single chair or bench. Don't linger, and for god's sake don't chat: you've got consuming to do!).

Once you cross the demarcation zone that separates the two modes of existence, of course, the real Vietnamese world comes back with a vengeance: stalls selling pho, bun, mien, and all the other foods you need in a normal day; motorbike washers; haircutters; cafes; and thank god, a bia hoi. My question is whether the inmates of The Manor (are those guards keeping people out or keeping people in?) are so thoroughly indoctrinated that they don't realize how artificial and empty their little bubble is? Can they really exist on a continual diet of processed, pre-packaged food, supplemented with a daily dose of KFC to keep things balanced? Or do they sometimes sneak out when the guards aren't looking, and escape at least temporarily to the real world? Do they actually, dare I say it, resist this totalizing vision of an ideal existence?

Or was ol' Blue Eyes, and the managers of The Garden, right all along?

I've got you under my skin. I've got you deep in the heart of me.
So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me.
I've got you under my skin.
I'd tried so not to give in.
I said to myself: this affair never will go so well.
But why should I try to resist when, baby, I know so well...
I've got you under my skin.

Yup, we're screwed.

so what do you want to do with your life?

I actually had my undergraduate supervisor ask me something to that effect when I was in my first year of college. We never did really come up with an answer, beyond drinking a lot of Alexander Keith's and seeing which of my circle of friends could make out with the most girls by the end of the semester (I won, but 1. my circle of friends was pretty small, and 2. looking back it doesn't seem like quite the object of pride it once did). History, as we all know, tends to repeat itself, and so it's probably not surprising that I now find myself posing the same question to my own students. Except that unlike the Reverend Doctor Hankey (yes, that's really his name and those were really his titles), I'll limit the scope to the next four months, and endeavor to keep it on a somewhat less philosophical plane. So what am I going to do?

Stop smoking. It's done. See that, everybody?

Start studying Vietnamese again, and push my limits the same way I keep exhorting my students to do.

Meditate. I gotta do it.

Be more present for my students than I was last year. And I don't just mean at Dragonfly on Friday night.

Laugh. A lot.

And this last one might not happen, but I'll put it out there just in case: work one night per week in a bar. So if bar owner wants to hire a bartender with limited skills beyond opening a bottle of beer, but capable of being charming in English, French, and Vietnamese, just let me know. I'll work for peanuts. Literally.