TADIOTO

But Tet means, to some: http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/15914
Warning - website may have occasional trouble loading up sound file.  If you have trouble, you can also go here: http://www.theworld.org/?q=taxonomy_by_date/1/20080208 - click on “Entire program” and go to 35 minutes into the program.

Would someone go tell my neighbor something?

His Karaoke singing is truly awful and unbearable. 

The traffic noise is plenty. 

Annoyed in Hanoi, again. 

Tell you the truth, I am addicted to sleep. It’s just that I am addicted to other things too. Like what’s on the internet, news from friends.  And sometimes at 3 am, I wait for San Francisco to wake up and send me emails and tidbits.  And for a moment or two, the years of foggy, hilly living come back to me.  And I go on Google and search for what I knew. For images that remain familiar, yet far away.

That looks a little like the crosswalk of Mariposa and Bryant, where KQED is.  And this somehow reminds me of my last neighborhood in the Fillmore…

I know it’s more like Columbus Avenue, at Vallejo, where you get a great view of the TransAmerica building.  But hey, I’m all the way over here in Ha Noi, and it’s close enough.  Or I can go to this:

and think of the days I used to walk from my flat on Russian Hill down through the alleys in Chinatown, and wasted time drinking bad wine at Mario’s, before North Beach became a weekend playground for tourists from Fremont, or San Diego, or Stockholm.

To really tell you the truth, as if you didn’t know, I’ve been addicted to sleeplessness since 1922. I’ve been always afraid to go to sleep for fear of missing something.  Here in Ha Noi, they say you can hire anyone to do anything. I don’t need anyone killed as I have seen enough dead people in my life.  (One is enough, really, although I’ve seen more. That’s what happens when you grow up in a war.)

So I hired these two guys to sleep for me. But they keep sleeping on the job, so I fired them. Now I have to go get some sleep myself.  What a concept.

So Lunar New Year came and went. It’s been cold, and other than being out walking Moto, I have stayed home.

Of course, I thought of Tet 1968, as I am proned to do every year at this time, and also because I did a story on it for WGBH-BBC’s The World.  You keep wondering why go back to 40 years ago when you live in a country that thinks about the future so much.

I’ve stayed in touch with friends via email, and Skype, and Facebook.  We all like to communicate, but we all do it in the privacy of our own rooms, our computers.  It helps to be in touch with people, and then sometimes you think the way that hated man does - I’m talking Elton John, who thought technology is isolating people, they don’t get out and get together, join hands or whatever.

Among my Asian American friends, there certainly is a large group getting together frequently enough for political reasons, and the members all seem Obamatosed.  No, I don’t mean anything bad. I just mean they’re all supporting Obama.  Maybe it’s just my friends. 

Here in Ha Noi I hear a lot of people say they can’t imagine America allowing a black man to be a president. I guess they have heard enough about racism in America.  The sense I get is that they are not thinking too much about societal racism, or racism among the people.  It’s racism among the people of power.  They seem to think it’s all about Washington, D.C., and the government and the establishment.  That’s where decisions will be made.  And Obama and the people and the hope and votes are all a public exercise that would go nowhere.

One tries to debate that with the average person here.  But we get nowhere.  Even with those who do read newspapers from abroad.  When you see a picture like this one, you think it’s about dark suits and white men.

Well I don’t see any people of color in that pix.  I mean, other than pink.     

I wrote the following last year - and I hope it’s still able to stand up.  More soon though, for this year.

Hello, Happy New Year.
Happy year of the Pig indeed.
We colonized peoples of Asia have been using the Western Christian calendar for a long time–but what with globalization, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, diversity celebrations… let’s turn the table around and have the non-Asians among you enjoy our new year.
Call it lunar, call it pig or boar, it’s really no different from the western new year.
Yes, shopping malls here have been busy, and things went on sale a few months back. Here in Hanoi, the new year is called Tet, and it’s been driving me crazy.  Every morning, 400 buses, 800 taxis, and about a million twelve hundred and 65 people on motorcycles have been trying to cut me off, run me over, collide with me, kill me with fumes, and burst my ears open.  And that’s before 8 am.  Everybody’s gotta get out, shop, see people, make money.
I tried to stay away from it all, but after more than 30 years of living abroad, I’ve just moved back to Viet Nam—why not get into the spirit?  So I broke down and spent twelve dollars–or 350 thousand Vietnamese “dong,” for a branch of peach blossom, some green bananas and joss sticks, and two traditional rice cakes.
I also bought a miniature orange tree, or kum quat, for four dollars, and paid the guy three times the normal rate to bring it home for me on his motorcycle.
I actually forgot to buy anything for the ceremony last week when we were supposed to feed the Kitchen God before he went to heaven to report on what happened last year, the year of the dog.  Feeding him would’ve ensured he’d tell Heaven good stuff about our family–but that’s like a bribe, and that’s illegal here.  The government tells me I could go to jail for doing that, although I do it all the time.
In three months here, the traffic cops have caught me speeding or running the red lights a few times.  Each time, we go through the rigamarole of them writing me a ticket, and me handing them three bucks, and I still don’t have a driver’s license.  The woman who sold me my motorcycle told me I didn’t need one. The bike’s still not registered.  That’s another bribe.  
I really should have made an offering to the Kitchen God.  It wouldn’t do for Heaven to hear about these things.  Me, bad.  But this year, I’ve an excuse.  Kitchen Gods apparently like to chow down a boiled chicken before heading off to Heaven.  But thousands of birds have been sick and thousands more have died here.  Bird flu. The government tells me the epidemic is contained.  I believe the government.  I’ve been eating chicken. No one I know here has been afraid.  Kitchen Gods though, may not like to eat a sick bird.
So I’ve left America and moved back to Asia, and now I behave just like a local dude.  I run red lights and eat chicken, and I bribe people.  Ah, when in Rome…  Next, I’ll start to believe in fortune tellers. 
Last year was supposed to be a bad year for me: I was born in the year of the dog.

All kinds of stuff are supposed to happen to you when your year comes around.  But it hasn’t been too bad.  Maybe stuff will happen in the year of the boar.  But I don’t need to be in Asia to know that.  I don’t need fortune tellers to tell me in advance.  Earthquakes will happen, in Taiwan, or in Indonesia.  Presidential campaigns will happen in America and be full of empty rhetoric and fighting words.  Congress will keep arguing about a million things and solve nothing much.  Cops will take bribe here where I live, and the government will say there’s freedom of religion, and no press censorship.  The prime minister will travel to the Vatican while monks will stay in jail, Aung San Suu Ky will still be under house arrest in Burma, and the Dalai Lama will go to Atlanta instead of Tibet.  Call it the new Christian year, or the lunar new year, call it the year of the pig or the year of the boar, wars will go on in Africa, and in the Middle East.  And people will die.

to one’s blog: I didn’t expect a blog would keep me so buy. Maybe it’s just me not knowing how to upload items, and fonts and images all go wrong.  Nonetheless, none of that is a good excuse to abandon the blog altogether.  But I also thougth if I wrote so much about Ha Noi, I would likely reach for things I didn’t quite understand, hadn’t processed too thoughtfully. And of course, I’d end up mentioning all the things people do that frustrate me - missed appointments, promises not kept, goods delivered to the wrong address on the wrong dates, red means blue, etc…, and I’d end up forgetting the pleasant parts of life in this city.

Those who know Ha Noi well know this: the moment you think you understand Ha Noi, you find out it’s something else. You have it all wrong.  Nevertheless, this I can say: Ha Noi is a popular spot.  In the last months, I’ve had multiple, numerous, frequent, etc, visitors from New York, Paris, San Francisco, Beijing, Manila, Singapore, Hawaii.  I’m half-expecting someone to show up from Mars - in fact Wayne Karlin, who came from Maryland, insisted he saw a UFO while he was standing on the balcony of the apartment in the Pacific Building off Ly Thuong Kiet Street.  Whatever, Wayne.   
Other than Wayne Karlin, literary visitors included the poets Suji Kwock Kim from New York and Ly Doi from Saigon.  Then there were Rachel Chanoff from the Sundance Institute, Mariam Thuc-Uyen Beevi, film and lit professor from UC Riverside, Viet Le from University of Southern California and Jason Picard who’s in town researching literature post 1954.  Many of us gathered and saw the film “Silk Dress of Ha Dong,” and the discussion afterwards left us wondering again what is taught in history classes here. 
Ly Doi brought me a chapbook from poet Vu Thanh Son, who was a colonel in the secret police.  Somehow he fell in with a bunch of young poets, whose group is called “Open Mouth.”  He started writing poetry, and since left the party and the police, and is camping out in South America.  Here are some of his poems; I did a rather quick translation: 
SELF PORTRAIT
 
In the end they threw me in the trash
along with torn towels full of oil and grease
fallen hair, rusted tin cans,
empty beer bottles, tampons, dead rats, cockroaches…  
They say such things and I
are all useless and empty. But that’s not true.
I know how to walk a straight line,
how to do summersaults.
I know how to cry, how to say beer, beer, beer, beer.
I am a toy.
You just have to wind me up.  
 

A THOROUGHLY SEMENLESS POEM 

A thoroughly semenless poem
Devoid of saliva, blood, or sex
No smell of corpses
No damp tears
Or horror
All you need to do is bathe yourself clean and eat no meat
Before reading it solemnly
In a respectful atmosphere
Then we can hear buzzing flies
Popping water balloons
And many people breathing their last.  

THE CITY 

In this city of eight million, where a person has just about a square meter of space in which to move about on the streets, you have to be quite adept to avoid the person in front spitting–a national sport–saliva into your face; where shitting, poetry and lovemaking are no longer private 
I often wake up with the sense that someone is watching me.  And like a person waking to realize all the doors of his house have been opened, I jump up to check the things I still own and those I have lost: from dreams, ideas, ideology, death, to my penis. 
Maybe it is time I ask someone to measure my sleep to build a door and a lock for it. 
  
 
AN EXAMPLE 
 
When I don’t know what to do with my sadness, I chew it.  The way I would chew a gum.  Leisurely, without hoping.  First I chew on the right. Slowly.  Bite. Grind. Running saliva.  I smell a soft scent.  Then I chew on the left, lightly, caressing the way a cat plays with a mouse.  Sometimes I blow it into pink bubbles of different sizes; when they break they make a noise, the sound of all climaxes of satisfaction.  Or I pull it out and tie it around a finger like a noose with which to hang someone.  When the sadness becomes tasteless and odorless, I spit it out, carefully wrapping it and throwing it into a trash can.  So I wouldn’t step on it.  So no one would step on it. 
  
 
THE ART OF GARDENING 
 
I learned to create dreams
from a gardener.
From early morning,
scissors in hand,
I cut and style them,
to make them into a tower, a globe,
shape them into a dragon with eyes made out of red plastic balls
or a deer, an elephant…
then I hang them on my walls;
they become alive and real
under the sun light. 
Before I go to sleep,
I watch with pleasure my ideas
clipped neatly into squares. 
   
Hope you like those.  I will post more, once I translate them.  But Tini Tran is in town, preparing to take off for Beijing where she will be joining the AP Bureau - after a year at Harvard.  Congratulations, Tini.  Her former colleague from the San Jose Mercury News, Truong Phuoc Khanh, is about to show up, and my sister has been here from California. Tomorrow my uncle and aunt from Maryland will show, with my cousin from Hue.  Everybody is here.  That keeps me busy, but I’ve been busy with building a house in the mountains too. Here are pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=723780164

So my apologies for not staying in touch via Tadioto, but I will keep posting things.  Last night I made it to Thuy Hang’s exhibition at the Viet Art Center on Yet Kieu.  I hope I can post more about such events. Until then, enjoy this photo (details) of one of Hang’s scupltural pieces: 
 

Hasta la vista, for the moment.
 

One wishes never showed up in one’s inbox. Why am I even surprised? It was going to be a matter of time before Ho Chi Minh was going to be used to sell. Exotic golfing indeed. Named after the man, as decribed below, “whose legacy as a nationalist and founding father stands for the Vietnamese as George Washington’s stands for Americans…” 

From: Nguyen Thuy Hanh [mailto:hanh@mandarinmedia.net]
Sent: 05 July 2007 02:32
To:
Subject: Vietnam blazes a new Ho Chi Minh Trail - for golfers
Greetings from Vietnam. Please see below a news item re. launch of The Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail, Asia’s first golf trail and surely one of the world’s most striking, unconventional golfing itineraries. These claims are based on its location in Vietnam, of course, but also on the Trail’s combination of world-class golf with the country’s largely unexplored cultural depth and its collection of truly off-beat/luxury accommodations (on land and sea).
…
If you or a member of your staff is interested in experiencing The Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail first hand — in a dedicated fashion, or as part of an already planned trip to Vietnam or Southeast Asia — don’t hesitate to contact us. We are happy to help arrange or consult with you re. itineraries, travel particulars, etc.
Look forward to hearing from you. Until then,
Best regards,
 
Hal Phillips Nguyen Thi Thuy Hanh
Mandarin Media/US

Vietnam blazes a new Ho Chi Minh Trail – for golfers
 
HANOI, Vietnam (3 July 2007)—Southeast Asian golf travel comes of age this month with launch of The Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail, the region’s first coherent, comprehensive golfing itinerary and one of the planet’s most exotic.
The Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail (www.hochiminhgolftrail.com) doesn’t merely assemble Vietnam’s best golfing venues in a North-South fashion, like its namesake trail. It pairs these first-class clubs and resorts with some of the most remarkable, luxury accommodations in world golf, while connecting golfers themselves to all the Trail’s cultural offerings and transport options through its partnership with the Exotissimo Travel Group.
Golfing stops on the Trail include:
• Chi Linh Star Golf Club, a dazzling 18 outside Hanoi and recent host to the Asian PGA Tour’s Carlsberg Masters, with another 18 on the way
• Tam Dao Golf Resort, a stunning new 18 in the cool highlands northeast of Hanoi, convenient to the airport but a world away
• Dalat Palace Golf Club, a mile-high gem, the only wall-to-wall bentgrass course in Southeast Asia, laid out in the 1920s for Bao Dai, the last emperor of Vietnam
• Ocean Dunes Golf Club, a wind-swept Nick Faldo design, a “tropical links” lapped by the warm waters of the South China Sea
• Dong Nai Golf Resort, a breathtaking, 27-hole track laid out by American Ward Northrup, whose design skirts a scenic chain of natural lakes
• Vietnam Golf & Country Club, home to 36 pristine, otherwise private holes just 20 minutes from downtown Ho Chi Minh City
• King’s Island Country Club, Hanoi’s oldest club and home to two 18s that play over some of the finest, most diverse golfing ground in Southeast Asia.
“I don’t think anyone—even hardcore golfers with an international scope—have any idea how good the golf is here in Vietnam,” says Jeff Puchalski, the country’s first PGA of America professional, now the director of golf for both Dalat Palace GC and Ocean Dunes, and past president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam. “People understand that Vietnam’s economy is booming. What most people don’t yet recognize is that the caliber of golf in Vietnam is world class. The Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail will make that clear to discriminating golfers.”
Indeed, for several years, Vietnam has ranked among the three fastest growing economies in the world. Where there’s business, of course, there’s golf. And where there are beaches, sand dunes and sunshine—all of which Vietnam has in spades, more of than any other destination in Southeast Asia—there’s golf… [T]he tracks of the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail beckon.
Vietnam may strike some Westerners as a counterintuitive travel destination, but Europeans, Australians, Singaporeans and Hong Kongers have long flocked here for the country’s tropical climes, its thousand-mile coastline and supreme affordability. The Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail relies heavily on this inviting equation, upping the ante by pairing the country’s top course venues with some equally extraordinary hotel properties. To wit:
• The superb Dalat Palace GC, one of the top 10 courses in Asia*, and its sister property, the Sofitel Dalat Palace, built in 1922 and painstakingly restored to a full-on state of French colonial grandeur.
• Up north, just east of Hanoi, why not a game at the thoroughly modern and lavishly appointed Chi Linh Star GC, followed by a night aboard the Emeraude, which cruises the striking karst seascape on Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
• In the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, follow a round at splendid Dong Nai GC, or Vietnam G&CC, with a night in Lam Son Square at the 5-star Caravelle Hotel, with its famed roof-top bar.
• In Phan Thiet, the most dependably sunny region in Vietnam, ride your buggy directly from Ocean Dunes GC (one of the top 10 golf resorts in Asia*) to your beachfront bungalow at the Novotel Ocean Dunes Resort.
* According to balloting conducted by Asian Golf Monthly magazine, published in its December 2006 issue
The Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail is, as its member clubs and hotels assert, more than a mere golf indulgence. It’s an opportunity for immersion in a culture too long obscured by war and politics. The golfing itinerary, while extensive, is merely a point of departure. Phan Thiet, for example, is 20km from the famed red sands of Mui Ne; the former French resort town of Dalat is home to some of finest French colonial architecture in Indochina; and, of course, the Trail passes directly through Vietnam’s two hubs and cultural centers, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail itself was not a single track either, but rather an elusive series of truck routes and footpaths that fanned out the length of the breadth of the country. Within Vietnam, it was called the Truong Son Road (after the mountain range in central Vietnam through which it passed). For a generation of Vietnamese, the Truong Son Road is not a symbol of war but one of national unity, and it remains the tie that binds.
The golf trail also provides an opportunity to right a few misperceptions, especially about Ho Chi Minh himself, whose legacy as a nationalist and founding father stands for the Vietnamese as George Washington’s stands for Americans.
“Far too many people in the West still think of Vietnam as more of a war than a country,” said Olivier Colomès, managing director of the Exotissimo Travel Group. “Who knows how long that mind-set will endure? It has surely passed for the Vietnamese. In the meantime, the country is seducing a new generation of travelers with its inimitable landscapes, its pristine beaches, and now, with a route that provides both structure and narrative to a comprehensive tour of the country, a golf trail.”  
Colomès points out that English is the dominant second language in Vietnam today. It is fluently spoken by staff at all the golf clubs, hotels and resorts on the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail. What’s more, Exotissimo presides over a superior stable of guides and interpreters in any of 15 languages.
For more information on the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail, visit www.hochiminhgolftrail.com

The dictionary in my computer doesn’t have a word for what the heat and humidity in Ha Noi does to you.

At least I am not wearing a ton of military equipment and a flak jacket, carrying a rifle, having to shoot people, and getting shot at. It’s usually 32º Celsius during the day in Baghdad, or 90º Farenheit. Right now it’s 104º Farenheit there.

And it’s 95º Farenheit or 35º Celsius in Sudan, same as in Ha Noi.

“It’s cooler in the country,” someone told me at lunch. I still shouldn’t think it’d be at all pleasant to be out in the field doing agricultural work.

It was on one of those horrid days a couple of weeks ago that I went to the countryside. It wasn’t to harvest anything.

The painter Le Quang Ha and the singer Linh Dung simply rang my doorbell at 11am, not believing I could be doing anything that important to skip lunch.

We bought clams next door, and neighbors gave us some lemongrass. Ha drove across the river, to Gia Lam, and showed me a plot of land for sale, not far from Dao Anh Khanh’s studio and home, which is a house on stilts surrounded by a sculpture park. From the lot, we walked a few steps to the bank of the Red River and it was nice to look at the scenery for a while but the sun was prohibiting.

We then went to Le Hong Thai’s house, a few meters away. He’s one of the more thoughtful painters in Ha Noi, and has been a dear friend. I’ve always liked how he modernizes lacquer and silk painting techniques, being subtle with both his images as well as his political and social commentaries. It’s always a bit sad to visit Thai as he is planning on spending more and more time away, in Saigon, Bangkok, and Paris, to paint and write, away from the pressure of Ha Noi.

I will miss too his lovely house – some pics are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/47327151@N00/sets/72157600758308546/

It’s an elegant country home, a traditional house on stilts, but Thai added a white-brick shell and floor-to-ceiling French doors and windows. Furniture is kept to a minimal, nothing apparently expensive, but exquisitely put together. My consolation is that Thai will be in Ha Noi often enough – he loves this city.

In the heat, Thai turned on some big vintage electric fans, surprisingly quiet enough so we could listen to a CD Linh Dung has been working on with her band, led by composer Ngoc Dai. The clams, cooked on the open gas fire, were fabulous, and Thai manages somehow to always have great wine. We took sometimes to debate whether Thai should have a party to celebrate - he’s just recently received a medal for artistic achievements from the French government. I now occasionally address him as “Mon chevalier,” or “My knight.”  In Vietnamese, he’s a “Hiep Si.”

Through lunch, which also had a pork stew, morning glory soup, and some delicious mussels, we ran through the normal topics of conversation: the heat of Ha Noi, the obsession with sex, new gadgets. We left relationships and religion alone, but spent enough time on how reforms are helping some people economically in big cities in Viet Nam, while a lot of inequalities still exist.

We talked of a former prime minister’s criticism of the current leadership. I thought it was significant, but Thai felt the man should have said things while still in power. Still, it is rumored the former leader felt the need to be prudent: instead of the hospital reserved for big shots, he recently went to a private clinic for medical services.

Inevitably at such a meal, we’d end up talking about the ability of artists to do as they want. Ha mentioned a national political commissar who said recently that Viet Nam has changed. Artists can paint anything they want, even porn and degenerate art, so long as they leave the party alone. Ha thought that showed a willingness to exchange whatever cultural standards for one thing: the survival of the party.

Thai smoked a cigarette, saying nothing, and wandered away to strum some notes on the guitar I loaned him.

It was hot when Ha and Dung drove me back across the Red River.

Uyen Ly and Na Son - two cool media people in Ha Noi tell me pix on this site are small. 

I had no idea.  They appear big when I post them.  I am going to develop ideas, strategize, conquer my ignorance in these matters, and generally fix this.  As to when that happens, this is Ha Noi: one doesn’t ask such a question.  When?!  What a funny question.  When?!?!

I’ve had a little accident and haven’t been able to keep this site updated.  I will try in the next days - about hanging out with artists here, and about my accident, which allowed a glimpse into the health care system at one hospital in Ha Noi.  It is also about friends and neighbors I am lucky to have in Ha Noi.

For now, this: 

Since moving to Ha Noi eight months ago, I get asked whether I miss America or not.

I do my friends, and particularly Asian American friends and colleagues: I often saw them and worked with them in the past ten years. We believe in each other, and felt a necessary solidarity, even if sometimes we differ culturally, ethnically, socially and more. Other than that, I miss London, or Essaouira, Morocco, more.

There isn’t an easy explanation for this fact. But the comfort I felt as a San Franciscan was rooted in the fact that as diverse as we are, Asian Americans come together and support each other – we celebrate each other the way birds fly in flocks across a vast sky. We celebrate our own presence in America, and we form communities.

The communities we’ve built are residential and commercial, a physical space such as the Chinatowns, Little Saigons, and Japantowns, from Boston to Honolulu, from Washington, D.C., to Seattle. Otherwise, we group together around common causes, whether it’s about raising our voice in the media, combatting stereotypes, or sharing professional concerns.

America’s landscape keeps changing with the establishment of these Chinatowns, Japantowns, or the Little Saigons and Koreatowns. In these neighborhoods, immigrants from Asia nurture their first steps—and their first dreams—in America, the way Irish and Polish immigrants once built communities and new identities in Manhattan or Milwaukee.

With whatever English and job skills, some immigrants struggle to put together a life in their new land, adopting new customs as they try to maintain old ones. Once known as ghettos, these ethnic districts would often transform into fantasy destinations for tourists, from Ohio or Minnesota, who come looking for the odd gifts, an exotic meal, a souvenir to remember a trip. It is a trip abroad, without leaving the U.S.

Americans stay home. They aren’t forced to be immigrants or refugees. And so there are no Americatowns in Asia or elsewhere in the world. To be sure, America is abroad. There are Hollywood images and Coca-Cola signs at the Singapore malls. Wal Marts and the New York Times in Beijing and Shanghai, a Kentucky Fried Chicken downtown Ho Chi Minh City.But who’s ever heard of an Americatown?

American Peace Corps volunteers stay abroad for a year or two, supposedly immersed in the local community. They aren’t numerous enough to build an Americatown for themselves. The closest one can come to an Americatown would be a shopping mall, an American trade or diplomatic club, or an illusion called Dysneyland. These don’t come with dive restaurants, or sweatshops. They come with a golf course, and Asians seen at such places are usually of the elite class, friends of American businesspeople or diplomats. Otherwise they’re drivers and house-cleaners. They aren’t tourists looking for an American souvenir.

I’ve been to American libraries and cultural centers in a couple of Asian cities. They are run by the US embassy, or the US Information Service: well-appointed, air conditioned chambers of glass and steel. The kind of place where you feel you should be holding a cigar in one hand and a champagne glass in the other. These aren’t so much ghettos, but golden ghettos, the equivalent of the British or French highland resorts in cool and picturesque places dotting Malaysia, India and Viet Nam.

Each year while living in the U.S., I’ve continued to watch the Lunar New Year parade snaking from downtown to Chinatown, as colorful and noisy as Macy’s Thanskgiving Day Parade in New York. And I think, wouldn’t it be great if America could do the same in Asia? Start a parade from Americatown, and snake your way past the main streets of Hanoi and Tokyo, and have floats that would show the best America has to offer. I would think people would come out and line the streets – smiles on their faces. Perhaps they would enjoy American swing bands, Elvis impersonators doing the twist, the way Americans enjoy a Chinese dragon dance, or a Japanese Taiko Troupe. But reality is a difficult thing.

American parades and American cultural sounds in Asia? No such things. Americatowns? None. Just the military bases, with GIs guarding democracy and freedom inside, beggars and sex workers on the outside. And the sounds of air force jets, and troops marching behind barbed wires.