Word: gongs
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...Vietnam in 1967, documents an entire society of such anomalies. The literacy rate in Vietnam was lower after the French left than before they arrived in the nineteenth century, but North Vietnamese children attend school next to air-raid bunkers. When American bombers are sighted, the teacher bangs a gong and the kids retreat into the shelters. When the alarm is over, they emerge happily, grinning like American kids when the ice cream man comes around the corner...
...pulls it tight, then falls to the ground in a lifeless swoon, her hair spilling in an orange cloud over her crimson robes. On a balcony overhead, a chorus splits the air with a rising lament-a sort of aural locust swarm-followed by a series of immense, loud gong-tones...
...Chinese doctors, whose livelihood is threatened, are equally disturbed. A group led by Dr. James L.K. Gong, who combines acupuncture with the use of such exotic folk medications as dried sea horse and seal penis, met at a Chinese restaurant and agreed to ask the state to grant its members temporary licenses or to explore other ways of enabling them to continue to practice...
...acceptance speech, the President promised that he would "never stain the honor of the United States" in settling the Viet Nam War. "Honor," of course, is one of those words that strike a patriotic gong in the citizen's mind, but the concept is sometimes more complex than Nixon suggested. In the case of Viet Nam, most critics of the U.S. war policy insist that it is precisely the continuation of American involvement-especially the bombing-that threatens the national honor. But beyond that, one occasion's honor tends often to dissolve in next year's realism...
...remember the day I filed for the firemen's examination as clearly as a king remembers his coronation ... I was ecstatic that I would soon be a part of the gong clangs and siren howls . . . climbing ladders, pulling hose, and saving children from the waltz of the hot-masked devil. Tearful mothers would embrace me, editorial writers would extol me, mayors would pin medals and ribbons to my breast...