TADIOTO

When I moved to Ha Noi 6 months ago, I knew two things for certain.    
First, friends would visit. Ha Noi’s a trendy destination.   
I was right, but didn’t know I’d have three or four visitors a month: friends and friends of friends, art collectors, businesspeople, journalists. They come from London and Beijing, Seattle and San Francisco, New York and Paris, Phnom Penh and Berlin, Los Angeles and Istanbul.    
We ride around on my motorcycle, laughing and screaming every few seconds, having just escaped another accident. We pray at temples and go shopping at fabric stores and galleries, and we share grilled fish or papaya juice at sidewalk stalls. I’ve met some of my traveling friends at the swanky colonial bar, Bamboo Lounge, by the pool in the gorgeous Metropole hotel, enjoying the refined atmosphere (while wrestling with the despicable history that such a place evokes). Otherwise, I’ve sat with them by the lake near my house, grateful for the breeze and the cold beers, at 3 a.m.     
We are seduced by the charm of this city, and we’re charmed by tree-lined boulevards, the miniscule stools at the brick-walled cafes, the early-morning boys selling warm loaves of French bread, and we’re drunk with the colors reflecting on the surface of the central lake at dusk.   
Sometimes we make it to museums, but it’s enough to walk among the narrow and hyperactive streets of the Old Quarters: the city is alive, but the yellowed walls and faded roof tiles suggest so much history. We feel as if we’ve dropped back decades into the past.   
We’re baffled and overwhelmed by the constant motions of impossibly young and fashionable people. They zoom past you, and you imagine they’re headed toward a new future full of desire and passion. Maybe they’re there already. Being in Hanoi in such moments makes me feel like I have just landed inside some frenzied cinematic vision from David Lynch or China’s Lou Ye.
Still, the dawn-to-dusk madness of Ha Noi can’t hide its stoic and rich past. In those moments of recognition of the one thousand years of history of this city, you suddenly feel as if you’re a player inside a David Lean epic movie.    
And then there’s the other part of living in Ha Noi.  The difficult part I knew for certain would trouble me profoundly.   
Ha Noi remains the capital of a country still run by an authoritarian regime. Visiting friends marvel at the openness and the energy of a people who are turning a failed post-war communist society into one of the fastest growing market economies in the world. What I try to tell them, and remind myself, is that just behind the temples, the tempting shops, or in the alleys beyond the fish stalls, there are many still living in poverty. Hospitals often have two people per bed, and the day laborer would clean my garden, build a bench, fix my air conditioner, and walk my dogs—for 5 dollars a day.    
These are the things I tell my friends, but there are other visitors who won’t be told any such things. That includes the president and former prime minister of Germany. They were here last week. So were the presidents of South Africa and Chile, the prime ministers of Kuwait and Greece, and the head of the International Monetary Fund. There have also been business delegations from China, Japan, Wisconsin, European countries, and elsewhere—all here because of a chance to make money—and a lot more than 5 dollars a day.    
Like many here, I’m thankful these people are visiting—hopefully they will end up creating more opportunities for people here, and business and labor practices might improve.  And maybe, maybe, new styles of management will emerge, and new respect for basic rights will be returned to the people.       
I would like, personally, for some phone calls to stop. Those from the public security agents and cultural police, who ask me politely to join them for coffee, and then for two hours, ask me all kinds of questions.    
Why are outsiders so annoyed with the regime, who did I see last week, would I tell them about Vietnamese living abroad, and who amongst them should be regarded with suspicion?  
Some of those are questions they know I wouldn’t answer truthfully, but I hate having to lie. Some questions, about my personal beliefs regarding a just society, I do answer truthfully. But I hate being questioned further having expressed myself.     
I would like, personally, to meet local friends who are teachers, students, artists and writers, and have them speak to me of their living conditions, express their social and political views, without lowering their voices—or without censoring themselves.     
The government and party deserve some credit for reforms that have improved the lives of many here in the past decade. This year, independent candidates were able to self-nominate, or run for seats in the national assembly. Still, when the votes were tallied last week, 92 percent of the new parliament members were from the Communist Party. Just one independent candidate made it. I suppose everything begins with one.   
What’s troubling also, of course, is that there’s no free and independent press—nothing that is overtly critical of the ruling elite. Meanwhile, there are plenty of glossy consumer magazines, offering advices on the latest car models, or fashion and beautiful homes—the dreams of a middle class. That’s a bit encouraging, and tourists can look at those and feel good about this society.     
But the tourists won’t read about the trials in the last months that have resulted in more than a dozen people, priests, lawyers, journalists, being jailed for speaking out against Ha Noi’s autocratic rule.   
The government has publicly made it a priority to fight corruption—but I would like to know why an artist friend was banned from showing his latest installation—a big diaper, denoting the financial absorbency of official pockets.     
Last week, U.S. State Department official Christopher Hill was here too—saying he was delighted that relations between the U.S. and Viet Nam are heading in a positive direction. Some say that’s a reflection of the fact that President Bush likes Viet Nam–it was one country he visited, late last year, where there’d been no mass demonstrations against him.     
But, Mr. President, mass protests aren’t allowed here.      
Mr. Hill also announced Washington was reconsidering a planned visit by the Vietnamese president in the face of the recent crackdown on dissidents.   
Meanwhile my friends, and world leaders and dignitaries, will continue to visit Ha Noi. We’ll focus on the development in Viet Nam, and the undeniable charm of Ha Noi, and we will forget what’s behind the shops, the temples, and the prison walls.      
It was more than two hundred years ago that haiku master Issa Kobayashi realized this, and wrote: 

In this world 

We toil on the roof of hell 

Gazing at flowers