Twenty years ago, Vietnam was filled with beggars, but there are hardly any left. In a park across the street from this scene, however, a guy begged from me rather aggressively, but he made no sense whatsoever. He was most likely on something.
In the same park, a girl of about seven was repeatedly beating, with a stick, her four-year-old brother, who was sitting on the ground and bawling. Walking by, I said, "Stop hitting your brother," but of course she ignored me. Two nearby adults turned out to be the kids' grandpa and mom, and both saw nothing wrong with the girl tormenting her brother. Except for grandpa, they were all dressed in shabby, dirty clothing.
As grandpa, mom and toddler rode away on a motorbike, the woman said to her own daughter, "Fuck your mother!"
Waving her stick, the dirty, ragged girl walked across the street.
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3 comments:
Linh,
What has changed in the last 20 years where there are now very few beggars?
Hi Jeffrey S,
Capitalism, simply put! In 1986, the government here began to abandon Communism, with its collective farms, state-owned factories and ban on private businesses, and this allowed Vietnamese to reclaim ownership over their own economic lives, so extreme poverty and hunger started to disappear.
The first time I returned to Vietnam was 1995, and I visited Saigon, Hanoi, Hai Phong, Son La, Dien Bien Phu, Sapa and a bunch of other places. There were many beggars then, but there were also private businesses all over, most of them tiny ones. Things were improving.
My next trip was in 1998, then in 1999 I returned to live for 2 1/2 years, so I saw the improvement over time. By 2001, however, there were still too many beggars, and prostitutes could be found in every neighborhood.
Now, the beggars are mostly gone, and I haven't seen one hostess cafe, where the whores once worked.
Two days ago, I walked about eight miles through a bunch of Saigon neighborhoods, and everywhere, there were restaurants, shops, small factories and mini hotels. A few weeks ago, I visited a Taiwanese owned factory that employed thousands of people, with many other foreign-owned factories nearby. I've also visited Vietnamese owned factories.
One of the richest Vietnamese is a man who made his fortune producing instant noodles and soups in Ukraine, and he started his business career as just a restaurant owner, in Ukraine. Another Vietnamese billionaire is Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, the female CEO of VietJet Air. She started as an importer of goods while living in the Soviet Union.
As a university student, my brother-in-law used to be so poor, he could only afford 9 cents for lunch, but he's now a producer of plastic crates, which he exports to Thailand.
Collectivism doesn't work because it goes against human nature, and must be enforced through state violence. Unshackled by this, Vietnamese thrive.
As I said to Kevin Barrett during a recent interiew, Vietnamese on both sides for the Vietnam War were fighting for Vietnam, because no Vietnamese would be willing to die for any ideology, much less a foreign power. Though the Communists won, Saigon has reverted to being itself, a huge open market, just like the rest of Vietnam.
All the propaganda billboards here stress nationalism, not any Communist ideology, and nearly all images of Marx and Lenin are gone.
Linh
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