Hanoi Museums, 10/10 & 10/11

Friday morning, 10/10 we were slated to go to the Air Force Museum, but when we got there we discoverd they had changed their opening days recently, without publicizing it. Now the museum is closed on Fridays, and open on Saturdays. So we switched gears and went to the Fine Arts Museum, which had originally been scheduled for Saturday.

The Fine Arts Museum has an excellent collection of pieces, dating from ancient times, all the way up to the present.

Tom looks like he may be trying to assume the position of the Buddha below.

One traditional type of Vietnamese art is woodcut, sometimes with laquer overlay. The piece below took the artist from 1960 to 1997 to finish, although I doubt that he worked on it every day.

A good portion of the works, and virtually all painting from before 1945 to after 1975, was concerned with the struggle for indepencence. Julia and Pam are looking at the same woodcut as above, but behind Julia is a laquer painting of soldiers on patrol.

Diana is looking at a water color of uniformed soldiers addressing what appear to be local force guerillas, many of them women. If you look closely, you can see two howitzers amongst the women.




To the right is a depiction of tanks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, along with workers, many of them women, maintaining the trail.

A number of pictures depicted the destruction of war. Here you see tanks fording a stream under attack, and a crippled plane heading for the ground.

Art work was used to depict the trials of war for people not in the field, and also for propaganda. To the right you see a picture showing the heroic work done by seamen to keep the troops supplied.

And here you see villagers hauling a piece of a downed B52 out of a pond. Note that the wreckage is mislabeled as U.S. Army.







Uncle Ho also appears prominently in the art work. The picture to the right shows Ho and an assistant watching troops and supply carriers on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and below you see him in an idealic wooded scene, with birds singing in the trees. Note that he has a cigarette in his fingers, which is often seen in photos of him.

The North Vietnamese also kept track of the political situation in the U.S. Here an anti-war demonstration is depicted. I assume the train is meant to convey the thought of sending our young men off to war.





The anti-war movement definitely had a morale boosting effect for the people and the troops of North Vietnam and the Vietcong.


After the museum Long took us to the bake shop of a friend, Ms. Huong. She is the lady in the yellow blouse in these pictures. The purpose was to show us the operation of a very successful entrepreneur. Ms. Huong has a six story building in which she produces and sells her goods, and is buying the building next door so she can expand.

She rolled out the samples for us, including the plates of cakes and biscuits above, and fresh rum raison ice cream coming out of the machine.

Each of us got an ice cream cone. The rum flavoring was real rum, as shown.

Then she took us through each section of the shop, giving us samples of the chocolate decorations, and explaining the decorating of the cakes.

She got a little back from us, as we bought a cake similar to those shown for Diana's birthday celebration the next day.

Saturday morning we accomplished what we couldn't on Friday, plus two other stops. The language partners were also with us on Saturday.

The Air Force museum was indeed open on Saturday.

The first outside exhibits were MIG fighters flown by the North Vietnamese to defend against the U. S. bombing. This is a MIG 17 provided by the Russians. There was also a MIG 19 produced by China and given to North Vietnam.

Inside the museum there were a number of exhibits describing the exploits of the air defense forces, as well as the air force.

There was also a Russian space capsule that took the only Vietnamese astronaut into orbit in 1980.

However, the most interesting exhibits were the aircraft on display outside.

Here our guide explains the MIG 21, also provided by Russia. The guide did not speak any English, so Long had to act as translater.

A short way down the line was Ho Chi Minh's presidential helicopter. This picture is actually from 2006, as this year they have most of the paint sanded off, awaiting a refurbishing coat of color.



This is what it looks like now.

Out back there was a huge Russian helicopter, which I understand they flew into the museum site several years ago. All the electronics have been removed, so it isn't going anywhere now. That's probably why they let us go inside.

Inside, the cargo compartment is higher and wider than a Chinook by about two feet, but had just about the same usable length as a Chinook. One of the reasons it looks so big from the outside is the long tail boom that extends out of the picture below, where the antitorque rotor is located. The Chinook doesn't require that, as it has two counter-rotating main rotors.

The plane below is a small American built fighter that was used by us for training. We gave some of them to the South Vietnamese Air Force. When the North Vietnamese forces took Danang in 1975 without a fight, they captured all the planes at the airport.

This plane, and four others like it, were flown south to bomb the Presidentail Palace. It was mostly a token gesture, as they have very little armament and payload. It did get the message across that the Northerners were coming.

After seeing everything at the Air Force Museum we headed toward the center of Hanoi, and the Temple of Literature. Here Long is explaining what the students will see inside. The sign on the entrance gate says to dismount your horses before entering.

The Temple of Literature, dedicated to Confucius, was founded in 1070 to honor scholars and men of literary accomplishment. In 1076, Vietnam's first university to educate the sons of Mandarins was established here. In 1484 they started erecting stone tablets with the names of those passing the triennial exams for the doctorate. The tablets are mounted on marble turtles, and it is considered good luck to rub the turtle's head. Kate, Jill, and Pam should be all set for their next exams after returning to school in January. The practice continued until 1778. During that time there were 116 exams, and 82 of the tablets still remain at the Temple of Literature. In 1802 the National University was transferred to the Imperial Palace in Hue. Today there is again a Vietnamese National University in Hanoi, but it is down in the area where our students are living, not at the Temple of Literature.

The stone tablets are in the third courtyard from the entrance. There are three walkways through the courtyards. The center one is for the Royal family, while the two on the sides are for the academic and military mandarins.

The fourth courtyard houses the Emperor's temple, with the emperor in the middle, and mandarins on either side.

Two courtyards farther in is a reconstruction of the University buildings, the main hall of which is shown to the right.

On either side of the main building is a large drum (shown) and a large bell, which is a characteristic of temples and Royal buildings.

We went to a group lunch with the language partners after the Temple of Literature. On the way to lunch we stopped briefly on the causway between West Lake (Ho Tay Lake) and Truc Bach Lake to view the monument indicating where John McCain was captured. He landed in Truc Bac Lake after parachuting out of his crippled plane. The picture that has been widely circulated is of the local people pulling him out of the lake rather forcebly, despite his wounds. The word is that he was lucky the police showed up quickly, as the locals might have taken things into their own hands. The monument is rather non-descript, so I won't include a picture of it. The monument wouldn't have been put up if McCain had not gained notariety in the U.S.

West Lake is rather large (13 km shoreline), and was formed when the Red River overflowed it's banks many centuries ago. Truc Bac is much smaller. These days there are dikes to keep the Red River in check, but as we know from New Orleans, there isn't a dike around that won't be overtopped at some point. Since real estate is so expensive in Hanoi, people have settled on some of the land on the river side of the dikes. They are going to get wet when a substantial flood comes. West Lake is the upscale place to live in Hanoi. The Sheraton Hotel is nearby, which is where President Bush stayed during the APEC Conference in 2006. The conference occurred while we were here.