Vietnam: The Dragon Smiles - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 272

is no more than thirty miles wide west to east. China is on the north, Laos and Cambodia to
the west. East and southeast is the South China Sea. Mountains and jungle are the usual de-
scription of the terrain, but a more precise description might be a low, flat delta in the south
and north, highlands in the center, and mountains in the far north and northwest. Climate
and weather are tropical, with monsoon rains, typhoons, and humid heat.
Figure 18.3. Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City
Perhaps as early as 5000 BCE, warring ethnic groups were scattered across the moun-
tains and northern deltas of today's Vietnam. The dominant ethnic group called themselves
Viet; over time, Viet was conjoined with the Chinese word for south , nam. Vietnam is a
modern coinage, an elision of the prior name, Viet Nam. Today, the country's formal name
is the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the socialist in the title salutes the realities of gov-
ernment: whatever the formal institutions (National Assembly; Prime Minister), power lies
with Vietnam's Communist Party and its self-selected and self-contained power elite.
HOW DO OLD AND NEW SAIGON COMPARE?
France made Saigon the capital of its Vietnam holdings. Canals were filled in and replaced
by wide boulevards. In architecture, Saigon was a distant mirror of Paris. Hotels and the
city hall were and are nineteenth-century Belle Epoch . The cathedral is transcribed Goth-
ic. As Saigon prospered, Chinese artisans and merchants brought market economics and
prosperity to the southern part of Vietnam.
In 1975, as the last Americans were airlifted from the roof of the American embassy in
Saigon, all of Vietnam came under Communist control. Private property was outlawed, and