Word: minh
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...theaters and government buildings, using the same proportional guidelines that gave Paris such remarkable balance in size and form, though French liberals of the time groused over ``la folie des grandeurs.'' From 1945 until recently, however, Hanoi barely received as much as a fresh coat of paint. Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam was too busy, running first the French out of the North and then the Americans out of the South. Neglect reduced many of the great ocher villas to crumbling ghost houses, often with electric wires dangling from broken windows...
...often defiant, disregard for authority among a traditionally obedient populace. ``The only law here is supply and demand,'' says city economist Nguyen Quy Lan. The race to make money has bred corruption within an already unresponsive bureaucracy. Regulations are routinely ignored. Smuggling and prostitution, once confined to Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, are rampant. Consider Hanoi's top-draw weekend entertainment event: midnight motorcycle races through the streets. When police showed up at 3 a.m. on Christmas Day with paint guns and electric batons to put an end to a big race, the crowd of several thousand threw...
...SMALL THREE-ROOM APARTMENT in Hanoi's already crumbling New Quarter, Vietnam's most famous living author sits in a sweaty white shirt and dark blue polyester pants, his feet bare. Outside, most of Hanoi is celebrating Reunification Day. Giant posters glorify Ho Chi Minh and the 1954 defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu. The bright red national flag hangs above shop doors. Fireworks sound over Small Lake. In years past, Bao Ninh used to spend this day with the surviving members of his unit. "Not now," he says. "We've had enough...
...Saigon, where park benches are named for Viet Cong war dead, some martyrs to the revolution share their sign space with Kronenbourg beer ads. The place isn't called Ho Chi Minh City as much anymore. The old Saigon is back, and it will meet you, sometime after midnight, at the Apocalypse...
...been beating a path to the reforming communist country's door, and American business scouts have been like frustrated greyhounds in the traps, waiting to spring. Practically within minutes after Clinton's announcement, Pepsi-Cola was passing out free cans of Pepsi on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. United Airlines promised to inaugurate regular flights from Los Angeles quickly. American Express signed a contract to return with its charge cards, the first to be admitted in 19 years. A regime that used to revile Uncle Sam as an imperialist aggressor was rolling out the welcome...