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VN News (May 24-25, 1997)
May 25: Soccer-China beat Vietnam 3-1 in World Cup qualifier
May 25: Korean at Vietnam Nike supplier to be prosecuted: report
May 24: Travel: The last eunuch looks back in Hue, a relic of Vietnam's
imperial past gives Stanley Stewart the hot gossip from the harem
May 24: Vietnamese actor's life a trail of tears, joys
May 24: Vietnamese rank high in smoking
May 24: Burma-Vietnam -Do Muoi Vietnam leader cuts Burma visit short
for health reasons
May 24: Urban gangsters face trial in Vietnam next month
Sunday - May 25, 1997
Soccer-China beat Vietnam 3-1 in World Cup qualifier
Hanoi (Reuter) - China beat Vietnam 3-1 (halftime 3-1) in their World Cup Asian
zone group eight qualifying match in Ho Chi Minh City on Sunday.
<p>
<pre> Scorers:
China - Li Bing 21, Fan Zhim 30, Hao Hai Dong 45
Vietnam - Le Huynh Duc 36
Standings P W D L F A Pts
China 3 3 0 0 8 2 9
Tajikistan 2 1 0 1 4 1 3
Turkmenistan 2 1 0 1 3 5 3
Vietnam 3 0 0 3 2 9 0
Sunday - May 25, 1997
Korean at Vietnam Nike supplier to be prosecuted: report
Hanoi (AFP) - The prosecution of foreign Korean
supervisor for labour abuses at one of Nike's exclusive shoe
suppliers in southern Vietnam has begun, reports said Sunday.
<p>
The official Vietnam News Agency (VNA) said that Hsu Jui Yun,
who formerly worked as a supervisor at the Korean-owned Pou Chen
Shoe Factory was suspended after she allegedly forced 56 women to
run around the factory floor in International Women's day in March.
<P>The prosecutor's office of Dong Nai province, where Pou Chen
employs some 8,000 workers, has requested that the South Korean
compensate the victims, of whom eight were hospitalized after
feinting during the punishment, VNA said.
<P>At the time Pou Chen executives acknowledged the incident and
suspended Hsu. The incident is one of several labour problems to
have plagued Nike's suppliers in Vietnam.
<P>In April 1996 Nike exclusive supplier Sam Yang Company hit the
news when a Korean supervisor slapped 15 Vietnamese workers on the
side of the head with a shoe upper as punishment for poor quality.
Earlier this month Sam Yang employees staged a strike to protest
work conditions.
<P>Although Nike has no investments of its own in Vietnam, it has a
big influence on working conditions at the five Taiwanese or Korean
owned shoe factories who supply Nike exclusively here.
<P>In order to make sure the companies toe the line, Nike appointed
a dedicated labour practices manager in Vietnam to help oversee the
roughly 35,000 workers turning out products made exclusively for
Nike.
<P>Last month Nike's director of communications for the Asia
Pacific Region Martha Benson flew into Vietnam from Hong Kong just
days after a New York-based Labour activist group highlighted low
pay and instances of corporal punishment at two of Nike's
subcontracters in Southern Vietnam.
<P>"We have had production managers who are Nike employees working
in the factories (in Vietnam) since day one. But we recognise the
need to increase the level of oversight, especially in working
conditions and labour practices" Benson told AFP by telephone from
Ho Chi Minh City at the time.
Saturday - May 24, 1997
Travel: The last eunuch looks back in Hue, a relic of Vietnam's imperial
past gives Stanley Stewart the hot gossip from the harem
The Daily Telegraph London
<br>(1997 (c) The Telegraph plc, London)
<p>
THE last eunuch at the court of the last emperor of Vietnam had
tiny blue hands, a shrivelled face and a high fluting voice. He
drew me inside the mausoleum where the great bronze statue of Khai
Dinh sat amidst swarming dragons and porcelain mosaics, and told me
about that man's funeral.
<P>"It was very impressive. The procession ran from the Imperial
City to the edge of the European quarter - elephants, funeral
biers, musicians, mourners. It took them two days to reach the
tomb." He smiled and his face filled with wrinkles. "I was eight.
It was 1925. The day after the funeral my mother took me to the
palace, and I began my life in the Forbidden City with the new
King, Bao Dai."
<p>
The trouble with eunuchs is that they bring out one's worst
tabloid instincts. I was dying to ask him about castration. While
he waffled about the porcelain mosaics, I wanted the hot gossip
from the harem. The last eunuch kept glancing up at the statue, as
if it might be eavesdropping. "The wives were all right," he
whispered. "But the concubines were a handful. They kept going over
the wall."
<P>For a century and a half, Hue was the royal capital of Vietnam,
home to the Nguyen dynasty who established themselves in the city
at the beginning of the 1800s. Fifty years after the demise of the
monarchy, and more than 20 years after the victory of the communist
north, Hue has not forgotten its royalist past. There is a
refinement about the it, a touch of gentility.
<P>It is a city of scholars and poets who wax lyrical about the
Perfume River, the lush gardens and the beauty of the local women.
The local accent has an aristocratic lilt, much to the amusement of
other Vietnamese. Somerset Maugham rather curiously described Hue
as "a pleasant little town with something of the air of a cathedral
city in the west of England". Few West Country towns however have
an imperial palace the size of Hyde Park, five universities or
seven royal tombs. Perhaps Maugham was thinking of the weather. For
the English visitor the soft oriental rain of Hue is a touch of
home.
<P>From the quay beneath the hotel, I hired a boat for the day and
set off up the Perfume River to visit the tombs. The morning was
damp. Low sampans ferried women with umbrellas towards the town. A
fisherman beneath a lampshade hat sat in the stern of a tiny
dugout, still as a statue, drifting downstream, apparently asleep.
<P>Round a broad curve we came to the Thien Mu pagoda, which stood
on a bluff above the river. Thien Mu is famous for its
self-immolating monks, but its most compelling relic is an Austin
motorcar.
<P>On the morning of August 15, 1963 the monk Thich Quang Duc
climbed into his Austin and drove the 500 miles south to Saigon
where, in a public street, he set fire to himself. It wasn't the
poor handling that had upset him. He was protesting against the
repressive policies of the Dinh Diem government. The bonfire was an
eye-catching alternative to those dreary protest marches.
<P>The world media took up the story, and a photograph of the
burning monk beside his Austin made the cover of Life magazine. The
idea caught on and soon monks all over Vietnam were torching
themselves.
<P>The Austin was returned to the temple where it too became
history. Pilgrims from the British Midlands now queue to see the
holy relic, which is preserved at the pagoda with the same
reverence as the exquisite bronzes, the ancient vases and the rows
of demure Buddhas. It was the same make and colour as one my
grandfather had owned.
<P>The kings of Vietnam spent so much time preparing for their death
it is no wonder the French ended up running the country. Most of
the royal tombs led a double life. Long before the monarch "mounted
the dragon's back", they were used as country retreats, where the
king and a few hand-picked concubines could spend the weekend. None
is as carefully contrived to exploit the possibilities of the
romantic retreat as the tomb of Tu Duc, who died in 1883. The boat
dropped me on the bank and I followed a lane between thickets of
bamboo and tiny paddy fields the colour of Ireland.
<P>Set behind a rambling moss-covered wall, it is an exquisite and
melancholy place. Brick paths led round the shore of a meandering
lake. Old dilapidated palaces and crumbling tombs were scattered
amongst the pine trees. The harem, overgrown with brambles, smelt
of brick dust and damp wood. Beyond the stale rooms of the Hoa
Khiem palace was an old theatre whose only seating was a vast royal
box. Tu Duc was something of a couch potato; he spent his evenings
watching the oriental prototypes for the modern soap opera, dramas
that lasted up to 1,000 nights.
<P>During the days he fished from the pavilions on the lake or went
hunting on a tiny island which his retainers had thoughtfully
stocked with tame deer. After a strenuous morning of field sports
the king would retire to the Xung Khiem pavilion, the Palace for
Admiring the Moon and Declaiming Poetry, where his concubines would
serenade him. Tea arrived made with dew gathered from lotus leaves.
Lunch was served, often running to 50 courses. When he felt a poem
coming on a scribe hurried forward to take it down. Tu Duc may have
been a lousy king but he was a fine poet.
<P>In these sylvan and sybaritic surroundings one might have
expected a jolly hedonist. But Tu Duc was not a fun guy. Most of
his 4,000 poems could best be described as laments. He had 104
wives, more than 400 concubines, brothers who wanted him dead, and
a country that was falling apart. It is no wonder that he felt old
at 40.
<P>The tomb itself lies beyond the salutation court where stone
mandarins await instructions from beyond the grave. In the square
court stands a simple sarcophagus. Tu Duc of course is not inside.
He lies beneath the court somewhere in a vast labyrinth of tunnels.
Those foolish enough to agree to be pallbearers were sealed inside.
<P>At Khai Dinh's mausoleum in the hills beyond, I met the eunuch,
now a ticket collector at the tomb of the king whose funeral he had
attended 70 years before.
<P>"You must visit my old home," he said. "The Forbidden City. The
harem is gone. But the ghosts are still there."
<P>Khai Dinh's tomb is unusual in not containing any living
quarters. He preferred to spend his weekends in Paris. The
mausoleum is a warning about what happens when French baroque is
mixed with oriental kitsch. Grandiose stairways climb the steep
hillside to a mausoleum decorated like a carnival ride. Khai Dinh,
a hopelessly vain fellow, had the same taste in clothes. It is
rumoured that he once brought back a string of fairy lights from
France which he wore around the Forbidden City, twinkling, until
the batteries ran out.
<P>Farther up river lies the mausoleum of the greatest of the Nguyen
rulers, Minh Mang, Tu Duc's grandfather. Minh Mang was passionate
about architecture and his tomb has some of the finest buildings in
Vietnam. Set in a landscaped park of cypress trees and curving
lakes, it is a place to linger. In courtyards beneath the
frangipani trees, behind lacquered shutters in the cool dark rooms
of temples, in pavilions where sparrows flit through fan-shaped
windows, one could happily pass hours thinking of nothing, or
everything.
<P>Such peace has only come to Hue in the past 20 years. During the
war it was a military base for the Americans, and in the Tet
offensive of 1968 the city was held by the Communists for 25 days.
They hoisted the Red Flag above the gates of the Forbidden City
then set about eliminating undesirables - government officials,
intellectuals, priests and foreigners - nearly 3,000 people, who
were dumped in mass graves. The battle to retake the city,
described as the most bitter of the whole Vietnam war, has left its
scars.
<P>The Forbidden City covers an area of two and a half square miles,
just enough room to squeeze in the royal family and a skeleton
staff of a few hundred courtiers. All the traditional elements of
oriental imperial architecture are present: the gates surmounted by
pavilions with soaring eaves, the elaborate roofs with decorative
tiles, the bridges and the moon gates, the pillared halls with
their walls of shutters and the stone dragons.
<P>The central section however is largely in ruin, the casualty of
bomb damage. Grassy mounds mark where buildings stood. Between
wreaths of wild flowers, the old bones show through - stone paths,
a few steps leading nowhere, a crumbling platform on which a palace
once stood. Only the Reading Room survived sufficiently to be
rebuilt, a delightful pavilion built by Minh Mang.
<P>The best part of the Imperial City however is often missed. It
lies to the west, past walled allotments - a district of dusty
temples and harems beneath old walls. Here more than anywhere one
feels the presence of the eunuch's ghosts. In the lanes of old
trees it is not difficult to imagine a silk-robed mandarin hurrying
past in his rickshaw.
<P>At The Mieu, the ancestral temple with altars honouring the 10
kings of the dynasty, a man arrived with a bundle of incense. He
wore an ill-fitting three-piece suit and a matching fedora, and
carried a plastic briefcase full of stationery samples. He could
have been a character out of Arthur Miller, a Vietnamese Willy
Lomax, a salesman treading warily among the market reforms.
<P>Standing before the central altar of the emperor Gia Long, the
founder of the dynasty, he lit the incense before making a series
of perfunctory bows. Willy had not been paying attention. Twenty
years of revolutionary rhetoric had gone in one ear and out the
other. The old kings are not forgotten.
<P>Passport to Hue
<P>British Airways Holidays (01293 723171) offers a 15-night tour of
Vietnam, including Hue, Hoi An, Danang, Hanoi and Saigon with three
nights in Bangkok. Prices start from pounds 1,479 for departures
until June 30, including return scheduled flights, accommodation
and some breakfasts. Four-night extensions at a Thai beach resort
cost from pounds 1,995 for Phuket or from pounds 2,139 in Koh
Samui, both b & b.
<P>FURTHER INFORMATION
<P> Vietnam Handbook (Footprint Handbooks, pounds 10.99); Vietnam
(Rough Guides, pounds 9.99).
<P>WHEN TO GO<P>The mild spring (February to May) is the best season to avoid
Hue's rains. In the muggy summer temperatures reach the mid-80s.
The north-east monsoon heralds the beginning of the wet season in
September.
Saturday - May 24, 1997
Vietnamese actor's life a trail of tears, joys
By VICTORIA PIERCE
<br>The Pantagraph Bloomington, IL
<br>(Copyright 1997)
<p>
No one will take care of you but yourself.
<P>It's a lesson Kieu Chinh learned for the first time at 14. It's
been reinforced many times since her childhood in Vietnam.
<p>
To say that Chinh, widely known as a star in the film, "The
Joy Luck Club," has seen tragedy in her life is an understatement.
Death, war, separation, infidelity, poverty and depression forged
her life.
<P>Allied bombs during World War II had killed her mother as she
lay in a Hanoi hospital after giving birth. She had seen her father
first dragged behind a Jeep by the French and then captured by the
Japanese.
<P>"It scared me to witness all these things at this young age,"
Chinh told the group of more than 500 gathered at the Illinois State
University Bone Student Center for the eighth annual Women of
Distinction awards dinner Thursday.
<P>It was in 1954, when Chinh was 14, that the Indochina War ended
and the Geneva Agreement divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel. The
north, where Chinh's family lived, was to be communist. Her father
wanted to take Chinh and her brother south to freedom.
<P>But the night before the family was to leave, her brother decided
to stay and join a student group supporting the new government.
He walked out of the house and Chinh's life - not to be seen by
her for 41 years.
<P>She and her father went to the airport, but instead of flying
south together, Chinh's father put her on the plane alone. He stayed
behind to search for his son and she never saw him again.
<P>"At the age of 14, I became a refugee in my own country. At
14, I went south all alone with only the clothes on my back," Chinh
said.
<P>One family on the plane saw her crying and took her in. A couple
of years later, she married the family's son before he went off to
the United States to train as a paratrooper. Chinh said her
mother-in-law feared her son would marry an American girl, and she
wanted him to have a Vietnamese wife before he left.
<P>But that didn't stop him from marrying an American anyway. At
16, Chinh was pregnant with the first of her three children, married
to an unfaithful man a world away and living with her in-laws.
<P>"I was so sad, in so much pain," she said.
<P>It was during this time that "The Quiet American" was being
filmed in Vietnam. A producer saw her on the street and asked if
she would like to be in the movie. Her mother-in-law said "no."
But a later role as a Buddhist nun received her mother-in-law's
approval.
<P>"I started my career as a Buddhist nun," Chinh said with a
laugh. Before long, her acting career took off and she became
famous.
<P>"I became rich. I had a house for my parents-in-law and a
Mercedes at the age of 22. I continued my education," she said. She
became one of the first female Vietnamese producers traveling the
world making movies. Her children went West to receive their
education in Canada.
<P>But underlying the heady success was concern for her father and
brother. She had no idea where they were or what had happened to
them.
<P>"And then in 1975 at the peak of my career, I lost everything
again when the longest American war ended," Chinh said. She escaped
the fall of Saigon with only her purse and the clothes on her back.
She arrived in Singapore but had to leave or risk deportation back
to Vietnam. With the little money she had, she started calling
people she knew in the United States.
<P>"It's a good thing I carry my address book in my purse," Chinh
said. The people she knew were the Who's Who of Hollywood, people
she had worked with during her acting and producing career. After
trying to reach Burt Reynolds, William Holden and others, Chinh
reached actress Tippi Hedren. Hedren became her sponsor so she could
enter the United States.
<P>"She's like my sister now," Chinh said.
<P>In the intervening 22 years, Chinh has rebuilt her acting career
but not without more personal setbacks. She divorced her unfaithful
husband, and her youngest son was in an accident and required years
of nursing to recuperate. She later tried to commit suicide and
had a breakdown before meeting a counselor who convinced her to
talk about her life as a way to heal herself.
<P>Chinh went back to Vietnam in 1995 to dedicate a school built
by the Vietnam Memorial Association, which she co-chairs. During
that trip she reunited with her brother. They talk and write often
now, but there are still many unanswered questions between them.
<P>"As you see, I have fallen many times but I have always tried
to walk up straight," Chinh said. "Like my father told me, only
you can help yourself, nobody else."
Saturday - May 24, 1997
Burma-Vietnam -Do Muoi Vietnam leader cuts Burma visit short for
health reasons
<
RANGOON, Burma (AP) The visiting head of Vietnam's Communist
Party, Do Muoi, cut short his official visit to Burma for health
reasons and left Saturday, a day ahead of schedule, officials said.<p>
Muoi, 80, had been feeling tired and uneasy since Friday,
said
the officials, who insisted on anonymity. They were unable to
provide any other details about his health.<p>
Muoi, leading a 65-member delegation, arrived here Thursday for
a four-day visit at the invitation of Senior Gen. Than Shwe, head
of Burma's ruling junta. He was the highest ranking Vietnamese
official to come to Burma since the late Ho Chi Minh visited in
February 1958.<p>
Muoi had been scheduled to visit the ancient city of
Pagan and
Burma's second biggest city, Mandalay, on Saturday, before
departing on Sunday.<p>
Instead, he left Rangoon at 2:30 p.m. local time (0800 GMT)
Saturday, officials said.
Saturday - May 24, 1997
Urban gangsters face trial in Vietnam next month
Hanoi (Reuter) - An underworld godfather and 27 members of his notorious
Hanoi mob will go on trial in mid-June <p>
for a string of violent crimes, the official Vietnam News said on Saturday.
<p>
The daily said that police had charged Duong Van Khanh and his accomplices
with murder, robbery, rape, intentionally causing injury and disturbing
public order.
<p>
The trial, which follows several high-profile corruption, fraud and
drug-trafficking cases, is likely to underline the communist government's
determination to hold back a rising tide of organised crime.
<p>
Khanh's mob, which Vietnam News said numbered 500 before he was arrested
exactly a year ago, is alleged to have run extortion and protection rackets
at four of the capital's big markets.
<p>
The paper said that Khanh -- who was nicknamed ``White Khanh'' after his
skin was bleached by an acid attack -- donated money to charities and poor
children to earn an image of respectability.
<p>
``It is alleged that when he or his gang members were accused of criminal
activities, he made full use of his relationship with corrupt local and city
police to be cleared of all charges,'' it said.
<p>
At least one police officer was arrested when the crime syndicate was busted
last year, but Vietnam News did not say whether security officials were
among those charged.
<p>
The country's leadership has repeatedly expressed concern about soaring
crime rates in urban areas, where even trishaw drivers and shoeshine boys
are beaten up if they encroach on a neighbouring gang's domain.
<p>
Conservatives say that the trend has been fed by a decade of
capitalist-style economic reforms, which has brought a more money-spinning
and free-wheeling society, higher unemployment and an erosion of traditional
community values.