Word: minh
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...apocryphal vow that "we will not go to war over any damn Ding Dong." At Lang Son, a crowded market town nine miles to the southeast, a nipple-crested mountain that colonial troops named the "baroness's breast" overlooks the ruins of a fort demolished even before the Viet Minh's war against the French...
...year. Last spring, intent on consolidating their purer-than-thou socialist revolution, the Vietnamese authorities decided to root out "bourgeois trade" and "dangerous elements," namely ethnic Chinese who had lived for years in northern mining areas, in Danang and in the bustling Cholon district of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). An estimated 160,000 Chinese refugees fled the country, aboard fishing boats or on foot across Friendship Pass, to resettle on communes in Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces. Meanwhile, a sporadic series of raids and skirmishes that were to intensify in the next months flared back and forth across...
...Sparta intent on becoming gendarme and ruler of all it can grasp. One mystery: How do the Vietnamese maintain that martial impulse after more than 30 years of constant warfare? Part of the answer derives from who has the upper hand in the collective leadership that succeeded Ho Chi Minh. The eleven-man Politburo is divided between pragmatists who want to concentrate on internal reconstruction and hard-liners who are bent on military adventure, despite the gruesome hardships involved. The hardliners, led by pro-Soviet Party Boss Le Duan and Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap, are in control. Says...
There is more bustle in the South, particularly in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). Motorcycles and motor scooters still crowd the streets, and there are such remaining signs of "bourgeois decadence" as beauty parlors and blue jeans. But the U.S. embassy building now houses Viet Nam's state petroleum agency; the enormous former U.S. AID compound is headquarters for Saigonese trade-union organizations. The notoriously sinful La Vie en Rose bar has been subdivided into small meeting halls. Night life in general has been thoroughly quelled by the rectitudinous Communists...
...persecuted and expelled Chinese residents on a mass scale." To prove that charge, government officials organized press conferences for foreign newsmen in border areas where Hoa refugees were living in improvised camps. Meanwhile, China's official propaganda machine ground out endless grim tales. An old woman from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) recounted how all her possessions had been seized. "Not even her wardrobe, beds, stools, bowls and saucers were spared," according to one report. She was also threatened with resettlement in one of the "new economic zones" where Hanoi proposes to place 10 million city dwellers. China charges...