Modernization Of Ho Chi Minh City example essay topic

The film "Three Seasons" was made in 1999 by Tony Bui, an ethnic Vietnamese. As a boy, his family migrated to seek a better life in the United States, where he, while barely out of film school made this directorial debut based on his experiences of his many trips back to Vietnam. "Three Seasons" is set in Ho Chi Minh City, on the south of Vietnam. The recurring theme here is the urbanization, modernization and the western capitalism that comes with it. The main characters in this film do not meet, but are similar in that they are the consequences of this modernization of Ho Chi Minh city and, possibly, of rural-urban migration.

During the Vietnam War, many refugees fled to the cities and towns. Although many moved back to the villages following reunification (of north and south Vietnam) in 1976, some did not, thereby contributing to rapid urban growth characteristic of Southeast Asian countries since the pacific war (Hill, 2002). People are migrating from the rural areas to the urban centers in the north and south (Central Census Steering Committee, 2000) and Ho Chi Minh City now is maturing as a metropolitan area. It is a montage of "Chinese" shop-houses against skyscrapers, of cyclos and motorcycles among taxis and buses, of street hawkers beside new hotels, of the "informal sector" and "formal sector". Kien An is the representative of the "old", more traditional Vietnam.

She is an orphaned girl who works at a lotus farm under Teacher Dao. In this case, Kien An has no family and Teacher Dao and everyone else at the farm acts as her family. The family is the basis of economic organization at the farm, the role of the father and parents in general is reinforced by Confucian traditions and family relations provide a general model for authority relations. Kien An is taught "not to question the teacher" and she is at Teacher Dao's beck and call as he sends for her in the middle of the night. Hierarchical authority is implied here as Teacher Dao is the Head of the household and Kien An, being the young girl, is lowest in ranking. Dressed in a simple "Ao Dai", the traditional dress of the Vietnamese, Kien An indulges herself in song and poetry in the course of a day's work.

She later discovers her Teacher Dao's talent in poetry and helps him regain his interest in the art. This is not surprising as poetry has been a very powerful and popular form of literature in Vietnam and, traditionally, Poets have been respected. The temple Teacher Dao lives in and the lotuses on the farm surrounding the temple are symbolic of Buddhism. Although the Communist regime has succeeded in encouraging a secular society in recent years (according to the 2001 world values survey only 10% of the Vietnamese public view religion as very important in their lives), Buddhism is the dominant religion among those who practice a religion. The lack of health services caused Teacher Dao's leprosy, a disease completely curable since 1981, to deteriorate and forces him into seclusion because of the social stigma attached to it. Clearly living in a rural area with paddle boats, wooden houses and rattan baskets, Kien An travels daily on a packed van with others from the farm to the city where she sells her lotuses.

Kien An is not the only one selling petty commodities in the city. Throughout the movie, we see vendors selling things like food. They operate until the late hours of the night, most probably because of intense competition and because many are running their own "businesses", they see the labour costs as zero and opening their stalls as long as possible maximizes the possible income. Kien An's arrival in the city juxtaposes the old Vietnam against the capitalist economy-the result of "Doi Moi" (an economic renovation introduced in 1986 to allow price floats, private business sectors, de collectivized farmlands and the liberalization of foreign trade and investment). We see billboards screaming "Coca-cola" and "Carlsberg", sparkling new hotels and taxis. At one point of time, Kien An even has difficulties selling her lotuses and she is bewildered as she discovers that even lotus selling has commercialized.

Mass produced plastic lotuses that are as huge and sweet smelling as hers are flooding the street. In her desperation, she meets Hai, who buys a few stalks of her fresh lotuses. Hai is a cyclo driver. He is most probably a migrant from the rural areas using his labour to earn a living, as he has none of the modern skills needed in the new economy. The city was a magnet for its own sake. In it anyone could make a living of some kind even if were as a member of an underclass living rough in the interstices of the urban fabric (Hill, 2002).

Hai and his fellow cyclo drivers illustrate Vietnam's poverty since the Vietnam war. Most of them do not even have a roof over their heads and spend the night sleeping in their cyclos. A pretty lady, Lan, to whom he gives a ride is one who has succumbed to western imperialism. She is dressed in western clothes and works as a prostitute to earn as much money as possible so she can live a good life in future.

It is perhaps because of the lack of high-wage jobs for women or her lack of "modern skills" like a good education or ability to work with machines (technology in general) that has excluded her from the new economy. She services her foreign clients in one of the flashy hotels in the city and tells Hai that she wants to sleep on a big bed with air conditioning and that it's a different world in the hotels and one day she wants to remain in that world, even if she has to marry someone from there. Prostitution, in some sense, allows some women that are able to take advantage of the opportunity to live the American dream, to enjoy and extend increased consumerism to their families. Modernization and sophisticated advertisements have also brought new desires for consumer goods to villagers and a shift towards a cash economy. (Hall, 1994) For Lan, she pins her hopes on prostitution as a way of achieving her dream of marrying a rich man who will save her from her poverty and allow her to stay in the world of big comfortable beds and air conditioning. As Hai brings Lan closer to her home on his cyclo, we start to see the disparities between the rich and poor in Ho Chi Minh City.

From the flashy billboards and bright lights, we are brought to Lan's world, a small street that is actually a train track with old houses by the side. The street is hardly lit and Lan complains about having electricity blackouts three times a week. Surprisingly, Hai, the cyclo driver, and Kien An, the farm girl, are literate. Hai enjoys reading and Kien An writes down the poetry Teacher Dao dictates to her. Despite the Vietnamese economy being poor since the Vietnam war and the government has often been unable to channel enough money towards education, 88 percent of the Vietnamese population above 15 years of age can read and write (Statistic from the World Trade Press, 2000). As the monsoon season sets in, we are introduced to Woody.

Woody is a five year old street child, one of the more than 21000 "children of dust" roaming the streets of Vietnam. The problem is intense in Ho Chi Minh city as a third of Vietnam's street children are found there. Like the street children in other South East Asian countries like Thailand and Indonesia, Woody is the product of urbanization, poverty and forced circumstances. Woody is part of a gang and his "master" leaves him temporarily homeless when he loses his case filled with odd things to sell. Woody and the other street children are shoe shiners, car attendants and vendors of things ranging from postcards to Zippo lighters to chewing gum. Woody meets a little girl, another street child, who collects drink cans and picks up an old discarded hat and wears it.

His own case is filled with watches, lighters, cigarettes, chewing gum and postcards. He stands outside hotels and literally pesters pedestrians to purchase one of his trinkets. In the course of this, we see him enter a posh hotel and a bar whole trying to get people to buy his things. He looks around in awe at the world he has never been in, what Hai and his cyclo driver friends refer to the place that smells like money.

Generally, the children hit the streets because of domestic problems (children from broken families or overcrowded families or orphaned kids are examples), because they have to supplement the family income or just to pass time. Many live in the streets simply because their families do not have the financial means to raise them. The breakdown of the traditional extended family structures due to rural-urban migration of the younger members of the family and nuclear families, which are favoured in the urban areas, leave many young children unattended. While grandparents, older siblings and uncles or aunts were able to help look after children in the past, the children who eventually become street children were not able to receive care and socialization from the family. Although a large portion of the Vietnamese public think traditional family values are important (world values survey, 2001), it seems that it is hardly put into practice in the city. While these children have become a statistic of severe poverty and evidence of the differences between the rich and poor, they pose a social problem not just because of the sheer numbers they come in, but also because groups (governmental and non-governmental) need to find ways to settle and educate these children who, in a way, do not fit into the "normal" social life - they are neither in school, they are perceived as rowdy etc.

Woody's life crosses paths with James Hager, an American ex-GI from the days of the Vietnam war. James is the reminder of Vietnam's war-torn past and he is back in Ho Chi Minh City in search of a daughter he had with a Vietnamese woman in the 1960's. He finally finds her on the day before he was planning to leave. James' daughter being the illegitimate child of an American soldier faces rejection by the Vietnamese society and works as a prostitute for foreigners to earn her keep. Amidst all the pessimism, the film brings transports us back to the "old' Vietnam when Kien An goes to the floating market of Teacher Dao's childhood. She fulfils Teacher Dao's wish of releasing his lotuses into the river, where he will be "free and pure" (symbolic of filial piety and Buddhism respectively).

At the floating market, similar to the famous "Cai Rang", we see many boats alongside each other selling agricultural produce and livestock like chicken and ducks. These floating markets are not unique to Vietnam and can be found in some parts of Cambodia and Thailand as well. By focusing on the difficult lives of the lower class, the director, Bui, paints a somewhat pessimistic picture of the lives of the people despite Ho Chi Minh City being an economic capital of Vietnam. As Bui puts it in an interview (Black Cat Media Associates Ltd, 1999), "Saigon is a weird mixture of old and new right now... they try to hold onto some of their identity, but the Western influence is quickly moving in and taking over much of Vietnam... I remember when there were no neon signs and the Russian Kiosks were still in the streets... Now it's all Australian, German, French, Japanese tourists.

The films shows this as bitter sweet - the loss of identity for the benefits of the modern world, the Western world". With the implementation of "Doi Moi" have come movements from the countryside to the cities and changes in family and other structures and values. For example, we see farms, but the produce is being sold in the cities. We see commercialization of previously small-scale farm enterprises and we see Lan's materialism, a representative of Vietnam's younger generation whose perceptions have been changed by capitalism. (A survey done by the Thanh Kien newspaper showed that 33.7 of young couples polled said that home appliances were the most important factor in family happiness.) In the midst of forming the "modern world", the social problems of poverty and street children and cultural imperialism caused are very real, not only in Vietnam, but also in many cities of Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines and Indonesia.

Bibliography

Bui T. (Director). (1999).
Three Seasons [film]. October Films. Evans G. (ed. ). 1993.
Asia's Cultural Mosaic - an anthropological introduction. Prentice Hall. Hill R. 2002.
Southeast Asia - People, land and economy. Allen & unwin World Book. [CD-Rom]. 2002.
World Book, Inc. Dalton R. J, & Ong N.N.T. 2001.
The Vietnamese public in transition. California, Irvine: University of California Center for the Study of Democracy. Dalton R.J., Pham M.H., Pham T.N., Ong N.T.T. 2001.
Social Relations and Social Capital in Vietnam. "New spirits fear old ones" - Change in the Vietnamese family. Available Online: web Vietnam - a country study. Available Online: web Vietnam strives to solve street children concern. Available online: web Three Seasons and an interview with Tony Bui. Available online: web Ngo K. C, Flame M & Vu N.B. Street Children. Available online: web Hall J. 1994.