Perspectives

Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh

At a seminar with VietNamNet, Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh, who is the Deputy Minister of National Defence, and Do Hung Viet, Director General at the Department of International Organizations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, talked about international cooperation and the great efforts to ensure safety for the mine clearance force.

Vinh, what are the difficulties in mine clearance?

The problems in financial and technical resources are the most mentioned. They really exist, but they are not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is people’s awareness.

If people are aware of UXO (unexploded ordnance) and have a sense of self-protection, and report to appropriate agencies when they discover bombs and mines, this will be very helpful to mine clearance in Vietnam.

People can even see bombs and bombs carried behind them when driving motorbikes and going everywhere. So, what we need to do is educate people to make them afraid of bombs and mines and report to the responsible agencies when they discover bombs. It is necessary to teach students about bombs and mines in the first school lessons.

Second, it is necessary to build capacity for specialized agencies. First of all, we need to have an accurate and sufficient database about the situation in localities, so that we can decide which localities need to be dealt with first and then build a complete plan. We need to improve the capability of management agencies and of people who clear mines on the sites.

Admitting mistakes

The US is one of the countries that most actively cooperates with Vietnam in addressing the war consequences and implementing demining projects. How did the first days of cooperation go?

General Vinh: We need to thank the American people, especially veterans and their families, the families who have relatives who died in the war and the consortium of missing soldiers in the war for their struggle to demand that the US Government be accountable to the children who have suffered from landmines and UXO (unexploded ordnance) after the war.

I, along with a group of US senators, went to see children with amputated limbs caused by tragic UXO accidents, though the war had ended many years ago. They cried and shared the common view that everyone needs to struggle to be sure that this will not occur in the future. The US and some other countries, including South Korea, have shown high responsibility in this issue.

I think that about 95 percent of resources for mine clearance is from the State, while the remaining is from contributions from other countries and organizations. We really appreciate the support in financing, information and technology from other countries.

I assume that in order to obtain such great achievements as we see today, there might be unprecedented stories occurring with the two countries which formerly were on two sides of the front line?

Admitting war crimes, admitting mistakes, and admitting the responsibility of a country after the war is an extremely difficult job. This reminds me of US Senator Patrick Leahy, who said it is a miracle that the handling of the aftermath of the war, which seemed to be a difficult problem in the two-way relationship, turnsmed out to be the most effective field of cooperation.

Director General at Department of International Organizations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

No one could imagine that just several months after the signing of the Paris Agreement, we established an organization specializing in searching for the remains of missing American soldiers in order to return them to their families. This had a profound impact on American people’s feelings and thoughts.

A question for Viet. Can you describe the international cooperation in dealing with land contaminated with UXOs?

The US is a typical example of the great efforts in mine clearance. This is obviously a cooperation of great significance to the bilateral relationship. And from a multilateral perspective, we also can see that it has a positive impact: it helps the international community and countries in conflicts realize that countries that were enemies in the past can cooperate with each other.

In addition to the US, we also have international cooperation with many other partners, including Norway, Ireland, and the UK in the Security Council.

The President of Ireland, during his visit to Vietnam some years ago, came to Quang Tri to see with his eyes the mine clearance operations in Vietnam. We also received cooperation and support from the United Nations, international organizations and non-government organizations.

Heroes in real life

Could you please give us more details about the recent open discussion session of the Security Council in Hanoi?

General Vinh: The discussion session caught the high attention and attendance from the United Nations and Security Council member countries.

There was a ministerial meeting with the participation of nine ministers and deputy ministers of countries, including Vietnam, the United Nations’ Secretary General, and two famous actors, including Daniel Craig, who is a United Nations’ Global Advocate for Elimination of Mines and Other Explosive Hazards, and Michelle Yeoh, who is a United Nations’ Goodwill Ambassador.

Yeoh spent one-third of her speech to talk about Vietnam and Vietnam’s efforts in mine clearance.

Do Hung Viet: Other countries highly appreciated Vietnam’s efforts in mine clearance and showed their response to Vietnam’s comprehensive approach in addressing bomb and mine consequences, as well as their agreement with what Vietnam proposed to the Security Council – paying a lot of attention to this issue in association with efforts for sustainable development and post-conflict reconciliation.

As I said above, two famous actors attended the meeting. Right after the meeting ended, there was a tweet on Twitter, maybe from Norway, saying that the two actors were heroes on the screen, while Vietnam has heroes in real life.

We invited Dieu Linh to the meeting. She was head of the demining female team in Quang Tri province. She represented thousands of army engineers and hundreds of volunteers participating in mine clearance.

The presence of Dieu Linh really created repercussions at the discussion session.

Accidents are unacceptable

I myself last week was present in Quang Tri province for a business trip and I could see with my eyes the operations of the mine clearance team. The members of the team are young, careful and professional on the site, and are not afraid of the dangers lurking around them.

General Vinh, which measures are being used and will be applied to ensure safety for mine clearance forces and minimize fatalities in peace time?

We have been applying a lot of measures to ensure safety for them. But honestly speaking, there have been unfortunate accidents. However, no army engineer and no volunteer has refused the tasks assigned to them.

I think there are some measures. First, it is necessary to learn about the situation, and determine the exact ERW areas (explosive remnants of war) and types of explosives in order to decide which areas to focus on.

Second, regularly upgrade the capability of people who directly do the demining on the site. It is a must to follow standard procedures in demining.

Third, regularly check the capability of the agencies and units doing this work. Specialized units must get certificates from the appropriate agencies.

Also, we need to modernize demining operations.

These are major measures to prevent accidents during the demining process which have brought effects in the last years. The accident rate is low. However, accidents, though occurring at minor rate, are unacceptable.

At the open discussion session of the United Nations Security Council in Hanoi on April 18, Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son emphasized that peace will be sustainable only when the consequences of wars and conflicts, including bombs and mines, are resolved.

D. Thuy

Lovers of Vietnamese literature are being treated this Fall season to two refreshing theatrical adaptations of poet Nguyen Du’s 19 ^th century work “Truyen Kieu” (The Tale of Kieu).

The French and Vietnamese artists performing in the “Kim Van Kieu” musical staged at the French Institute (L’Espace) in Hanoi. Photo courtesy of L’Espace.

For the first time, local audiences saw a musical adaptation of the country’s literary classic work that tells the story of a talented and beautiful young woman named Kieu who has to sell herself into marriage to save her family and is later forced into prostitution.

The musical “Kim Van Kieu”, adapted and performed by artists from L’Attrape theater in Paris, were shown for two nights in HCMC and one night at the French Institute (L’Espace) in Hanoi.

Elsewhere in the world, before this musical, which was performed in French with Vietnamese subtitles, there was a Vietnamese-English musical adaptation directed by American director Burton Wolfe.

Throughout the years, Nguyen Du’s masterpiece has been translated into different languages and is considered to belong to the world literary canon, like the works of Cervantes, Chekhov, Shakespeare and Goethe.

The 3,254-line poem has also been adapted to various art forms by Vietnamese living in Vietnam, as well as foreign artists and overseas Vietnamese abroad.

Yet, according to musician Mai Thanh Son, one of two Vietnamese artists performing in the French musical, almost no foreign adaptation has been shown to local audiences.

Thus, L’Attrape musical, together with a series of events to be held this October by the Goethe Institute in Vietnam, are filling in the gap and bringing new foreign perspectives to the classic, which has long been treasured for its exquisite language and quintessentially Vietnamese cultural expressions.

Contagious ‘infection’

Christophe Thiry, artistic director of the L’ Attrape theater who directed the  musical, said he didn’t know much about Vietnam, and had never been here before, and it was a Vietnamese friend, a loyal fan of Parisian theatre, who first introduced Nguyen Du’s masterpiece to him.

Madam Tu, a brothel owner, has a belt tied around Kieu’s waist, symbolizing Kieu’s new life as a sex slave. Photo courtesy of L’Espace.

“Read this and maybe you’ll find something in it,” Thiry recalled the friend saying after giving him a copy of “Truyen Kieu”. Thiry said he read it and indeed found many things in it.

“‘Truyen Kieu’ is extremely deep, vivid, humorous, and also filled with violence,” Thiry said at a recent press conference before the Hanoi performance, explaining what made him decide to adapt this work, which Nguyen Du himself had creatively re-written from a 17th-century Chinese novel.

Nguyen Du’s humor has been interpreted well by the French musical. The Hanoi performance evoked repeated peals of laughter from the audience. The musical’s most hilarious character turned out to be the greedy and cruel brothel owner Tu Ba, or Madam Tu, who ends up justly punished by Kieu in the end.

Applying English theater and film director Peter Brook’s idea of an empty stage, the French musical doesn’t use any props other than musical instruments, both Vietnamese and Western, traditional and modern, to help tell Kieu’s story through music.

Mai Thanh Son and his younger brother Mai Thanh Nam play traditional Vietnamese music for the musical, and during the production phase, they translated the French script into Vietnamese subtitles and provided essential coaching in Vietnamese pronunciation to the French artists.

The two brothers said they respected and didn’t interfere with the French script, and only helped their colleagues practice speaking Vietnamese, especially Vietnamese names, correctly.

Odile Heimburger, who plays several female characters in the musical, said Vietnamese is a beautiful but difficult language. The task of speaking Vietnamese well was particularly daunting to Nicolas Simeha, who doesn’t know any Vietnamese but had to sing the southern folk opera song “Da Co Hoai Lang”.

Simeha, who plays one of two narrators as well as So Khanh, a finely drawn playboy and con artist character in Nguyen Du’s poem that has become a noun in Vietnamese, designating a terrible man who deceives women, said that it was thanks to this musical that a friend of his, actor François-Xavier Phan, decided to return to Vietnam and connect with his roots.

Phan’s parents are Vietnamese, but he was born in France and barely had any connection with Vietnamese culture. After he saw Kim Van Kieu in Paris, he was greatly moved. He returned to his home country and along the way, developed a project related to “Truyen Kieu”.

“So our play is like an infection,” Simeha said. “It spreads, in small ways, from one person to the next.”

Universal values

In Vietnamese literature, Kieu, a heroine who is quite assertive in love considering the Confucian ideal of female timidity and obedience of her times, represents a woman’s courage and willingness to sacrifice her own happiness to protect her family.

A scene in which Kieu meets the ghost of Dam Tien, also an unfortunate beauty and talent whose tragic fate is an omen of what will befall Kieu. Photo courtesy of L’Espace.

As the oldest child, when her father and younger brother are framed by a silk dealer and have their wealth taken away by the government, and face imprisonment – all in an incomprehensible twist of fate reflecting turbulent times, Kieu steps up and does the only thing a woman can do: sell herself into a marriage to have money to save her family.

She is later tricked and forced into prostitution, and spends an ordeal-filled 15 years in “exile” before being reunited with her family.

For many contemporary readers, this story of a daughter having to sell herself for her father’s sake and being forced into prostitution can sound too outdated.

“For us Westerners, this is unacceptable. Why do daughters have to sell themselves to save their fathers?” Christophe Thiry asked rhetorically. He then added that, on second thoughts, the West these days is also facing a great deal of violence. “So this is a story that can happen.”

Thiry said Nguyen Du’s genius lies in the fact that he was able to capture universal values that encompass many cultures and countries, starting from Vietnam and China.

Actress Odile Heimburger also stressed the universality of a gendered story about a woman who has to face many hardships in life.

The relevance of such themes as gender oppression, forced prostitution and human trafficking evident in Nguyen Du’s classic is also being recognized by the Goethe Institute, which is carrying out another project of reinterpreting and adapting “Truyen Kieu”.

The Goethe Institute’s project includes four theatrical adaptations to be shown at the Tuoi tre (Youth) Theatre in Hanoi on October 12 & 13, and at Hong Van Theatre in HCMC on October 19.

These adaptations are being produced by three Vietnamese troupes led by well-known directors Hong Van, Tran Luc and Bui Nhu Lai respectively, as well as by German director and professor Amélie Niermeyer.

A wall installation exhibition titled “A Girl Named K” featuring German artist Franca Bartholomäi’s woodcuts and papercuts about “Truyen Kieu” opened on October 7 at the Goethe Institute in Hanoi.

Commenting on this seemingly coincidental interest in “Truyen Kieu”, Thiry said that it may reflect an alternative response to the current common tendency to treat life lightly, simplify it, and easily let go of it.

“Truyen Kieu”, on the contrary, reminds one that reality is much harder, human beings are much more vulnerable, and life is much more intelligent and precious, he said.

On the other hand, musician Mai Thanh Son, who teaches traditional Vietnamese music at the HCMC Conservatory of Music, pointed out that such an interest is the hard-earned result of a very long process in which authorities have been trying to promote traditional Vietnamese culture worldwide.

“This is not accidental,” Son said. “Nothing is.”

By Nguyen Dat

A performance by young artists on a street near Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem (Returned Sword) Lake). The capital city has completed and submitted its application to become a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in 2019 . VNA/VNS Photo Thanh Tung

UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) will meet in November this year to look through the city’s application. If approved, Hanoi will become the 181st Creative City in the world recognised by the organisation and the 32nd capital in terms of design creativity. This should help the city to increase its role and position in the world with more opportunities for international exchange and co-operation.

To reach this goal, Hanoi has been focusing on enhancing creative talents, especially from a design perspective, at the centre of sustainable development with a vision to become one of the creative capitals of Southeast Asia.

The objective of building a creative city is to create sustainable culture and urban development based on original cultural foundations and resources. This means the city should strive for creativity on a higher level of sustainable urban development.

To apply for the title, each city has to choose among seven areas to build a creative city: craft and folk arts, media, film, design, gastronomy, literature and music.

Although Hanoi has inherent strengths in the fields of gastronomy, craft and folk arts, it has chosen design as its key target because experts say it sits at the heart of the other six categories.

Design, particularly the creation of cultural space, is one of the areas that has drawn mass attraction from the public in recent years, according to some experts.

Moreover, by choosing the field of design as its key target, Hanoi has more chance of boosting the process of international integration.

Out of 31 cities, 12 countries have chosen to focus on design.

Pham Thi Lan Anh, head of the Heritage Management Office under the Hanoi Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, who helped prepare the application, said Hanoi had developed three initiatives, programmes and projects to meet the criteria to join the UNESCO network by promoting the role of culture and creativity in sustainable development.

“First, the city will set up Hanoi Creative Design Centre with the goal of nurturing talents in the field of creative design, strengthening the network of creative design in the city, supporting creative projects and promoting international co-operation. Second, the capital will build a creative space network and consolidate creative hubs in the area,” Anh said.

“The Hanoi creative space network will provide a platform for design, crafts and culture in the city. Another important initiative will be the construction of a specialised area for design, crafts and art, located next to the Hong (Red) River. The area will be put under the management of the Hanoi Creative Design Centre.”

In addition, creative motifs used in this area will also be used in other parts of the city, forming a common creative ecosystem.

As a typical example, a smart space at the Hanoi Museum has been set up using modern technology and interactive equipment such as a 3D experience space and virtual reality.

Another creative area at the Dong Anh Smart City is providing technology for creative designs incorporating elements inspired by traditional craft villages.

Anh said in its application, the city had also presented three major initiatives, programmes and projects, orienting towards the objectives of the network at an international level, especially those related to other member cities of the global network.

“First is the Hanoi Creative Design Festival which will take place annually and include a series of events for professionals and the public, highlighting the innovation of design in the city and around the world. Designers from member cities of the network will be invited to Hanoi to present their works. This will be a space for members to discuss co-operation opportunities,” Anh said.

“Second is the Southeast Asian Creative Cities Network Forum which will be held in Hanoi to support the exchange of knowledge and co-operation among Southeast Asian cities. Participants will include representatives from city authorities, international research and training organisations, businesses and innovative design organisations.

“Third is a network of young creative designers set up by the Hanoi Creative Design Centre with a mission to find new talents, thereby providing support and opportunities for those who aspire to build creative cities for the future.”

Meanwhile, the Head of the Hanoi Popularisation and Education Commission, Nguyen Van Phong, said the city was celebrating the 20th year of the title ‘City for Peace’ this year and this event marked a time to create a new breakthrough in its development vision.

With support and consultation from UNESCO, its application for the title Creative City of Southeast Asia and joining the organisation’s Creative Cities Network was very important.

“If that goal is put into practice, it will really be a real drive to promote the soft power of Hanoi’s culture,” Phong said at a conference held recently in the city by UNESCO and the Việt Nam Institute of Culture and Arts.

According to Phong, the capital’s long tradition of handicrafts, cultural tourism, creative spaces and cultural events could become its strength and create a trademark for the city.

UNESCO launched the Creative Cities Network in 2004 to promote co-operation among cities which recognise creativity as a significant factor in their development.

The network recognises craft and folk arts, media, film, design, gastronomy, literature and music as creative fields.

The main benefit of joining the network would be co-operation with other member cities, who must agree to invest in creativity, social inclusion and cultural vibrancy.

Chiang Mai, Phuket and Singapore are currently among the recognised creative cities in Southeast Asia. VNS

Initiated by the French Institute in Hanoi – L’Espace, the month-long event will adopt photos to tell stories, show diverse perspectives and approaches to the multi-colored world through the prism of domestic and international photographers.

Nearly 30 domestic and international photographers, visual artists, and creators including French-Vietnamese photographer Lam Duc Hien, French photographer Philippe Marinig and Polish photographer Victoria Siwik will participate in the event. Many of them have developed an understanding of Vietnam’s culture and art scene after living in the country for years.

Throughout May, a series of exhibitions, seminars, and workshops will take place in many of the capital’s cultural centers, highlighting diverse practices in making and displaying photographs.

At a press conference on the event, Thierry Vergon, director of L’Espace, said the institute believes that photography is for everyone, and will seek to engage people from different walks of life.

It will promote a conversation about the art of photography between international and Vietnamese photographers. Events during the month will showcase talents, skills and unique visions that will express the ideas and thinking of the artists, Vergon said.

Lam Duc Hien’s “The Mekong – Stories of man” exhibition, and the “Format” exhibition featuring the work of 10 photographers are events that will be part of the photography month.