Romancing Vietnam- Justin Wintle (1991)

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Justin Wintle, English author, journalist and editor, and graduate from Magdalen College, visited Vietnam between October 1989 and January 1990, with the aim to research, and write about, ‘Vietnam Now’. Wintle was extremely fortunate in securing a four-month visa at a time when few foreigners were permitted to stay in Vietnam for more than a month. In this sense, Romancing Vietnam, the book he produced as a result of his travels, provides a unique insight into a period of recent Vietnamese history that I previously knew little about. When Wintle visited Vietnam, the war had been over for fourteen years; the new, liberalised economic policy of Doi Moi had been introduced only six years earlier; the US trade embargo was still in place; Vietnamese troops were in the process of withdrawing from Cambodia; and, in the outside world, communism in Eastern Europe was falling through.  These factors determined the political and economic shape of the Vietnam that Wintle entered. And there are other things he observed that are wholly alien to the Vietnam I know today: there were no neon lights to be seen; Hanoi suffered from three power-cuts a day; bicycles were a positive, not negative, status symbol; there were no known cases of AIDs.

Wintle’s experiences of Vietnam were largely defined by the programme he was assigned to by the Ministry of Information, which was carried out by his two guides, both party cadres. His own priorities were not always adhered to, meaning he had little control over the people he met and the things he learned about. Wintle makes several attempts to break from his pre-arranged programme but always encounters conflict; certainly, he learned much about the working of the Party, if not so much about those elements of society that were not officially sanctioned. During his tour from north to south, and back again, Wintle was accompanied by characterful guides and drivers who provided him with insights into Vietnamese culture. Moreover, however, at each new province that Wintle entered he was obliged to meet with local party representatives for lectures on the geography and history of the province- in particular, in the patriotic and revolutionary tendencies of its people. Wintle refers to these lessons as his ‘indoctrination’, and his weariness with the whole thing often transpires onto the page in the form of dull reporting.

Nonetheless, there are interesting moments. For example, when, taking a walk in the backstreets of Hue, Wintle is approached by a man who invites him to see the remains of four American MIAs (Missing in Action). This came in the weeks after President Bush had formally accepted Hanoi’s claim that certain ‘bad elements’ of Vietnamese society had been hoarding the bodies of MIAs to be sold to families later. This led Wintle to question whether he had been set up, with some of his contemporaries warning him that his guide may be a security agent.  On another occasion, Wintle learns through official sources of a massacre in Binh Hoa, Quang Ngai province, conducted by South Korean forces in late 1966, a year and a half before the much more well-known My Lai massacre (conducted by the Americal Division of the US Army). The two massacres had similar death tolls- each around five hundred people- but the Binh Hoa massacre was unheard of to Wintle at the time. He had the opportunity to visit the sites of the tragedy and speak to local people, who were moved and perplexed that a foreign writer would visit them- the first journalist of any nationality to do so. There was no monument in remembrance of those who were killed. On returning to the UK, Wintle was to become the Chairman of the Binh Hoa Massacre Trust Fund.

Something that grates me throughout the book is Wintle’s attitude towards women. His experiences are very male-centric; for example, the journalists and aid workers in Hanoi bars with whom he discusses Vietnam’s current situation are invariably all men; the people he interviews, too, are mostly men. I’m sure it would be very accurate to say that the majority of the information Wintle gains about Vietnam comes from men, and male perspectives. That said, in a meeting with Nguyen Thi Dinh, president of the Women’s Union, he brings up the problem of male chauvinism within the Communist Party. Yet, immediately after the meeting has finished, he flirts with the ‘young, pretty’ trainee interpreter. Indeed, the women Wintle meets during his travels are usually described as ‘appealing’, ‘pretty’ or ‘giggling’. Or if he refers to a group of women, he will comment on their ‘loveliness’. His attitude is illustrated by a visit to a school in Hanoi, where he watches a class of sixteen to eighteen year-olds lined up for assembly. Wintle is unashamed of using his title as a journalist as an excuse to make his way up and down the lines photographing the most attractive girls in their white ao dai uniform.

Romancing Vietnam contains useful and interesting information about the politics, economy and, to a lesser extent, society of Vietnam in the late nineteen eighties, a period of interesting reform and change. But, for me, this information was lost somewhat due to the format of the book. Structured as a diary, interviews and history lessons are often preceded by episodes of drunken merriment with his travelling companions. At moments, such anecdotes are entertaining but overwhelmingly, the result is a messy, disengaging chronology (there are no chapters in the book). The structure prevents the story from being compelling and I found it a real drag to get through all 455 pages. Furthermore, there was no decisive summary of the things Wintle had learned about Vietnam Now; the useful information in this book must be picked up in snippets throughout. Wintle has journalistic credibility- and it is true to say that the information he could collect was limited by the rigid structure of his imposed programme- but the large amount of time he spends drinking vodka and rice-wine and leering at women serves little purpose. It is difficult to enjoy the narrative when the narrator comes across as an unpleasant character.