Word: minh
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Anyone who switched on television last week could not dodge the images, old and new, of Viet Nam: U.S. helicopters retreating from Saigon ten years ago, gaily garbed celebrators parading through the streets of that city, now named after Ho Chi Minh, on the tenth anniversary of the Communist victory. The screen poured forth pictures of life in Viet Nam today: peasants toiling in paddies, cyclists pedaling along busy avenues, children smiling into the camera lens. Yet those scenes did not tell the full story; network correspondents were not allowed free access to "re-education camps," where thousands of Vietnamese...
...networks provided live pictures from Viet Nam, but the costs did not seem worth it. NBC News spent an estimated $1.2 million for its live coverage, including four Today programs, with Bryant Gumbel as host, from Ho Chi Minh City. ABC News paid about the same, mostly for four Nightline shows from Indochina and reports on Good Morning America. CBS decided against live broadcasts, relying instead on taped segments (and spending only about $450,000). Howard Stringer, executive vice president of CBS News, said that his network believed live coverage in a restricted society like Viet Nam's promised...
...years, almost to the minute, after a U.S. helicopter whisked the last American officials out of Viet Nam at the end of a long and bloody war, the anniversary parade began. Along appropriately named 30th of April Street, in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, there flowed last week a motley assortment of patriotic props. Goose-stepping soldiers marched in front of children waving hoops and colored handkerchiefs. Leftover U.S.-made armored personnel carriers followed rumbling Soviet-built T-54 tanks. Roller skaters mingled with medal-bedecked veterans, motorcyclists, and workers bearing a picture...
Ambivalence, indeed, seemed to be a keynote of the celebrations. Just before the parade got under way, Nguyen Van Linh, Communist Party secretary for Ho Chi Minh City, rose to celebrate Viet Nam's place "among the vanguard fighters for mankind's lofty ideals" and to extol its success in "overturning the global counterrevolutionary strategy of U.S. imperialism." But even Linh could not overlook the signs of decay around him. In Ho Chi Minh City (pop. 3.5 million) the walls of many houses are cracked, and the electricity supply is a sometime thing. Thousands sleep on the unswept sidewalks...
Certainly, Ho Chi Minh City today preserves much of the resourcefulness of the Saigon of old, like a fading madam who still has jewelry to sell. Pedicab drivers offer Western passengers "beautiful young girls," while street entrepreneurs compete to buy dollars at several times the official (100 to 1) rate. In the black market along Nguyen Hue Street, a few trendsetters wearing body shirts, designer jeans and modish sunglasses wander among stalls crammed with the latest in color TVs and stereo systems...