RConversation

Things I didn't have time for: meal, music, & et cetera

I could have used another week to explore Vietnam, but I’ve got a bunch of stuff going on back in Cambridge this coming week and unfortunately couldn’t stay longer.

I went down to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City - but all the locals seem to have reverted to calling it Saigon) on Thursday to see the Harvard-affiliated Fulbright program offering courses in economics and law to mid-career Vietnamese professionals.  My original plan was to stay in Saigon until Friday evening, so I could have lunch with freelance journalist and food-blogger Graham Holliday of Noodle Pie.   Unfortunately, I ended up having to go back to Hanoi early Friday morning because a meeting I had been trying to arrange came through at the last minute for Friday afternoon. Later that day Graham blogged about the great noodles I missed, and succeeded in making me feel really really sorry I had failed to meet him. Oh well. Hopefully he’ll still be in Saigon next time I go. (Photos by Graham Holiday from his NoodlePie blog.)

Friday was definitely one of those days that you wish had been twice as long. On my way back into Hanoi from the airport I ended up sharing a taxi with Duc Huy, who turns out to be a well known Vietnamese American musician. He was performing in a local Hanoi club that evening and invited me to come. I had to meet up with some people for dinner that evening, however, and convinced them to come with me to the club, but we showed up a bit late and I think he may already have performed. But I'm not entirely sure. We sat and watched a Vietnamese pop show for a while, which was interesting. The place was packed with fashionably dressed and coiffed Vietnamese 20–somethings out on the make. These kids are part of the post-war baby boom generation who seem to have no interest in ideology and little interest in history - and look like the same fashionable young clubbers you see from Bangkok to Taipei to Seoul. (Unfortunately cameras weren’t allowed inside.) We saw several acts: one Vietnamese hip-hop performance followed by a series of romantic rock ballads sung by beautiful girls and stylish guys. Couldn't understand a word, of course, but it was interesting to watch the action in the club, where the 20-year-old hormone levels were rather high to put it mildly. A rather cute Vietnamese guy who spoke fluent German but no English tried to pick me up, but we had no common language. Then my friends got bored with the show and dragged me off, so I didn’t have a chance to see if Duc Huy had actually performed yet or not, or find somebody to interpret…

Another person I would have liked to meet was blogger Geordie of OurManinHanoi, who works for an Australian charity, KOTO, which helps Vietnamese street kids.  Oh well.  Too much to do, too little time.  Geordie will be happy to know, however, that I did managed to eat at KOTO’s restaurant before heading to the airport on Saturday.

More later with an attempt at some broader observations about Vietnam.
(Technorati tag: vietnam)

Hanoi: interesting use of stars & stripes

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Journalism in Vietnam - more than meets the eye

Here in Vietnam, debates that we’re having back in the U.S. about journalism, media accuracy, corporate consolidaiton, credibility, blogs and citizens’ media all seem pretty remote. But it turns out there’s more going on below the authoritarian surface than you might think.

The Vietnamese media is state-controlled. There are no privately owned newspapers or TV stations. They’re all owned by government or Communist Party-controlled organizations. (Vietnamnet, a new online news service, is one exception, using its status as new media to push the boundaries. I’ll be spending the day with them tomorrow and will write more about them later, but they’re still subject to the same press restrictions as all other news media.) 

Since Vietnam’s Chinese-style economic reforms started, Vietnamese journalists have more leeway than they used to have to cover economic and social issues, but still there are a lot of topics they can’t go near: political dissent, criticism of government leaders, many topics related to religion and treat ment of ethnic minorities, etc. Press coverage of countries like the U.S., Japan and China is tighly controlled to keep that coverage consistent with official government policy.

Into this context come organizations like the World Association of Newspapers, which has been conducting a seminar here in Hanoi this week on newspaper management: how to boost advertising revenue and circulation, how new technologies are changing the media markets around the world, how to be more responsive to your audiences, etc. Of course all these things ultimately come back to fundamental issues of content quality, the nature and purpose of journalism, and questions of what readers actually want to read.

That’s where journalism training comes into the mix. My friend Jessica Smith is here on a program sponsored by the Knight Foundation to help train Vietnamese journalists. Trainers don't deal with larger, more sensitive issues of the relationship between government and media, of course. But they do promote journalistic professionalism by focusing on things like: the importance of things like fact-checking, citing your sources accurately, double-checking facts and figures given to you by official sources, writing compelling headlines and leads. In other words, they’re teaching people how to do stories that are more credible, interesting and readable from the public’s point of view. Apparently, many young journalists here are very responsive to this training and are eager to improve their work because they want their work to be respected by readers and viewers. In a state-run system where journalists are expected to be the government mouthpiece, and whose job survival hasn’t been linked to the readibility of their stories, there hasn’t been much incentive to do good journalism – even within the allowed constraints.

From what I gather from talking to some Vietnamese journalists, they’d like to be part of a more credible and commercially viable press. They want more leeway to do more. So they welcome the training and hope that there will be more of it.

What about grassroots media?  I don’t think we’re going to see blogs emerging as an alternative or opposition press any time soon. It wouldn’t be politically possible for a hard-hitting alternative news blog – like Jeff Ooi’s Screenshots in Malaysia, for instance – to emerge here. There is one Vietnam Journalism blog run by a local journalist as a place for journalists to discuss their profession. It’s categorized as a private site rather than a news site. But he has to be careful about what gets posted there. As for other blogs out of Vietnam, most are written by expats talking about their lives and travels. The most famous is Noodlepie, devoted to food.

On the other hand, Vietnam’s MSM (mainstream media) seems quite open to using participatory media tools to improve their content and strengthen relationships with their audiences. VietnamNet has a section devoted to contributions from readers, along the lines of South Korea’s OhMyNews. Today I met an editor from the country’s most popular newspaper, Tuoi Tre, or “Youth”. He says not only do they have very active reader discussion forums, but they also welcome readers to write articles that get posted online and sometimes even published in the paper. People get paid about $10–20 for stuff that gets used. The editor says that his journalists have gotten a lot of story ideas from readers. They’re also developing a team of editors to collaborate directly with readers/citizen-journalists on investigative stories.

Of course, the investigative reporting can’t go beyond certain limits without people getting into trouble and a reporter was recently jailed for a news scoop exposing corruption. But such teams can at least ensure that the paper’s coverage delves into issues and stories that its readers are most passionate about.

Emerging participatory media in Vietnam. Who wouldathunkit?

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Vietnam first impressions

Here’s a picture of the Hanoi Opera House, built in French colonial times. 

After flying in from Laos, Saturday night and Sunday in Hanoi were no-photo situations: a diplomatic party hosted by a diplomat I used to know in Tokyo, then Sunday spent with a Vietnamese family, then dinner with a Japanese journalist I also knew in Tokyo.

Not everybody gets to spend Sunday afternoon with an extended Vietnamese family on their first full day in Vietnam. Lucky for me, my friend Jessica, who conducts journalism training courses at various news organizations around town, is well liked in Hanoi. A friend of hers picked us up at our hotel this morning and drove us an hour outside of Hanoi’s urban sprawl, to a country house where his parents spend the weekends. We spent a wonderful afternoon eating home-cooked Vietnamese food and talking with Jessica’s friend, his father, his brothers and their wives… as everybody’s kids played around us. Out of respect for their privacy I will not name the family or upload pictures of them here.

The brothers and their wives speak English and have spent time in the U.S. and elsewhere abroad. They are members of Vietnam’s new internationally-minded professional middle class. They have cars, travel abroad, and are making sure their kids learn English. They recognize what is and isn’t possible here under the current regime, and find ways to work within the boundaries while pushing the envelope gently. They're optimistic that things will continue to open up and that life will continue to improve if they work hard - and keep their frustrations with the way the older generation runs the show to themselves, for the time being.

This picture on the left was taken this morning (Monday) when I went out for a run around the local lake near my hotel. With anti-Japanese protests in China and the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon coming up next month, history looms large on this visit. But the Vietnamese do not seem as obsessed with history as the Chinese are. Sure the local media is running lots of special coverage about the 30th anniversary, but apart from a few small banners and billboards on the streets of Hanoi, the event is not being handled in the same in-your-face-propaganda-everywhere manner in which the Chinese celebrated their 50th anniversary of the PRC’s founding in 1999. I asked my new Vietnames friends about this. They said people here – especially young people – don’t see Vietnam’s victory over the U.S. (or over anybody else) as an important part of their national identity. They say there’s no anger toward the Americans, despite some lingering issues over Agent Orange and so forth. The government is not using the anniversary to thumb its nose at Americans, either.

In China, on the other hand, historical rage has become very much part of the Chinese identity. (As my good friends know, I can still sing the anti-Japanese songs I was taught at age 10 in a Beijing primary school.) The Chinese government cultivates a sense of historical rage in its young people: Rage over Japanese atrocities. Rage over the unequal treaties imposed on China by foreigners up through the middle of last century. Rage over perceived American arrogance and “interference in China’s internal affairs” that has enabled territorial problems like Taiwan to exist. This rage is used to help bolster the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy as the only entity with the requisite nationalistic credentials to run the country. But as the latest anti-Japanese protests around the country show, the government is now riding a monster it created but which it no longer fully controls.

The Vietnamese suffered under Japanese occupation as did many Asians, but people here are not taught to hate Japan in the way Chinese are. They like Americans and there is no smugness or self-congratulation about having forced us out of their country. My new friends pointed out this is in part because Vietnam is a small country trapped between too many great powers. Vietnam can’t afford to harbor historical bitterness or arrogance. It can’t afford to offend the Americans, Japanese or Chinese. It needs them all. But when push comes to shove – I’m told by a number of local residents –  Vietnam fears and distrusts China most. I can’t say I’m surprised. 

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Blogging from Laos

After four days in Luang Prabang, I’m heading back to Hanoi. With a half-day layover in Vientiane I’ve managed to find a cybercafe that lets me hook up my laptop to their high-speed connection, giving me a chance to upload photos. Check out my Flickr feed for a selection of highlights… and for future photos of Vietnam as I take them.

Luang Prabang is the ancient Lao capital from which the royal family ruled before Laos became Communist. While the regime can be nasty, buddhism and capitalism are more widely apparent than communism in Luang Prabang, anyway.

Many young boys are sent by less affluent families to live as buddhist monks – it’s a great way for them to get square meals and an education, and it’s not expected that young men will remain monks for life, apparently. Every morning at dawn the monks parade along the city streets
collecting alms (food donations) for the day. 

These kids are keeping up with the 21st century, though. A couple of teenaged monks in flowing orange robes sat down next to me in a Luang Prabang cybercafe as I was checking e-mail. Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera with me, but my friend Jessica Smith did when some sat next to her.

Jessica, her friend Rick and I stayed in a beautiful little hotel called the Apsara, run by an Englishman. I highly recommend it.

Our visit happened to coincide with the Lao New Year. Celebrations involve parades in which everybody on the street gets splashed with water – and many people get flour and coal smeared on them as well. It’s a huge street party.

This guy on the left had spent a long time living and working in San Diego. His family now owns a fish restaurant along the Mekong river and makes decent money. He carries photos of his girlfriend and of The Buddha around his neck in a flash memory stick.  Cool idea.

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Off to Laos & Vietnam

I'm just about to board the plane for a trip to Luang Prabang, Laos, and then to Vietnam, where I'll be visiting my new friends at Vietnamnet in Hanoi. VNN's founder and CEO Tuan Nguyen visited the Berkman Center last week - see David Weinberger's writeup here. I'll probably also visit Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Watch the Technorati Vietnam and Laos tags for photos - though I'm not sure what my connectivity will be like in Laos.

Right now, there aren't many Vietnamese bloggers - most of the blogs coming out of there are written by expatriates and travelers.  That could change quickly, however, as the internet is developing fast there. I'll blog more about the situation from the ground.