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Partisan Comrades. During a banquet in honor of the visiting Americans, Foreign Ministry Official Phung Cong Duc reminisced to Air Force Colonel William Hubbell about World War II. Due and his Communist partisan comrades had cooperated closely with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) against the Japanese and helped rescue downed American pilots. "What an irony," said Hubbell. Due merely smiled and shrugged.
One reason for the surprising friendliness toward Americans is that the Vietnamese are worried about becoming too dependent on their Communist allies, particularly China. Strolling near Chi Linh Park, one official pointedly explained that Return-of-the-Sword Lake is named after a legend about a giant turtle that emerged from the depths and gave a Vietnamese folk hero a magic golden sword with which to repel Chinese invaders. This same official complained about the regimentation of the Chinese and pointed with pride to the many colorful ao-dois (traditional flowing dresses) and the occasional young woman wearing lipstick or young man wearing bell-bottom trousers—more "souvenirs from Ho Chi Minh City."
An evening of Vietnamese music featured dances of the tribal minorities, folk songs the peasants have been singing for centuries and haunting instrumental classics played on the dan bau, a one-string violin. There was little of the tedious Red-flag-waving "revolutionary culture" with which visitors to Peking are entertained. "We believe that ideology has its place, but so does tradition and so does spontaneity," said one Vietnamese. "Unlike certain of our neighbors, we are an informal and a tolerant people." As an example of official tolerance, he pointed out that a Catholic newspaper called Righteous Path is published in Viet Nam. A European resident of Hanoi later explained, however, that the editors of the paper take pains to identify the teachings of Jesus Christ with "Marxist-Leninist values."
Until the U.S. establishes relations with Communist Viet Nam, American visitors to Hanoi will be rare, and their impressions of the capital, to say nothing of the rest of the country, will be fleeting. But the Vietnamese are already thinking—and talking—about the future. A number of our escorts confided a desire to serve in their government's first embassy in Washington, and Western diplomats based in Hanoi say that the American consulate there, closed in 1955, is being kept in good repair.