Return to the Past

In the midst of last week's mission to Hanoi by Canadian External Affairs Minister Mitchell Sharp, which was devoted to private discussion about Canada's role in policing the truce, TIME's Correspondent James Wilde took the opportunity to reconnoiter the North Vietnamese capital. His report:

When I arrived in Hanoi one night in 1961 aboard a Russian military plane, the entire North Vietnamese Politburo was there to meet Laotian Prince Souvanna Phouma. I got to shake the hands of Premier Pham Van Dong, General Giap and Ho Chi Minh, who told me in near-perfect French: "Please tell the truth." The second time was totally different. There were no honor guards and no flowers at Hanoi's Gia Lam Airport--only a flock of black-suited men with black shoes, black socks and conservative ties.

While the Canadian diplomatic party was whisked away in black Russian Zil autos, the press corps was crowded into two old camouflaged Russian buses. But the ride into Hanoi was almost pastoral: no soldiers in sight, no guns, no artillery; merely peasants with their straw hats, peacefully working the nearby fields. We passed numerous Chinese and Russian Jeeps and new Soviet trucks, but very few civilian cars. Traffic consisted mostly of bicycles and bullock carts. Hanoi itself was very much as I remembered it--a 19th century French colonial city of yellow stucco buildings, scrupulously clean streets lined with lichee, pine and tamarind trees. There is heavy bomb damage on the outskirts of the city, especially near the airport. But despite the repeated U.S. air raids, I saw little sign of destruction. Hanoi is certainly no Hiroshima.

Red Flags. What is most striking about the city is its anachronistic look. There is a charming seediness about it, like a rundown old woman who meticulously cleans and presses her one and only dress. The crowded old French trolleys, with their paint peeling, still rattle about with a cheerful Gallic sound. Motorcycle cops with their tan uniforms use 1920s BMW machines.

Yet the charm of dilapidation goes only so far. Today Hanoi is mostly drab, and you are very conscious that you are in a Communist city. North Vietnamese, Soviet and Chinese films play in the cinemas. Red flags are everywhere, and everywhere is the legacy of a war that has lasted for 30 years. Hanoi has not one but three war museums--one showing the battle of Dien Bien Phu, another acts of "American terrorism" and the third the thousand-year resistance against the Chinese and Mongols.

The second of these lists the number of deaths caused by U.S. bombing and displays a collection of bombs and bits of planes that were shot down. At the Presidential Palace, there is even a complete B-52, meticulously pieced together out of fragments.

The city was filled with air raid shelters, which had sandbags sprouting grass. One girl, dressed like most of the others in floppy shirt and trousers, wanted her picture taken in one of these shelters. Some wandering Russians wanted to take pictures of us. There were no beggars, prostitutes, bars or houses of ill repute--for all of which Hanoi was famous during the French period.

Food appeared plentiful in small sidewalk markets. Indeed, there were hundreds of little shops selling everything from butcher knives to onions. There was even a souvenir shop selling a few empty bottles, some screws left by the French and bits of downed American aircraft. Free beer is distributed at various points around the city.

Before we left Hanoi, we were treated to a sumptuous banquet in a Soviet compound (compliments of the North Vietnamese government) that included classical French delicacies, Russian champagne and Vietnamese rice and orange wines. As the lights, which flickered on and off throughout the meal, continued to wink, we puffed on "Dien Bien Phu" cigarettes.

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