A Dragon Apparent- Travels in Cambodia, Laos & Vietnam
Norman Lewis, 1951
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The late Norman Lewis
(1908-2003) is a celebrated English writer who authored thirteen
novels and thirteen non-fiction works, mostly travel writing,
throughout his lengthy career. Perhaps best known for Naples '44
(published 1978) and The Missionaries (1988), one of Lewis'
seminal travel books was the much earlier A Dragon Apparent
(1951), a record of the author's travels around Vietnam, Cambodia
and Laos at the brink of the crumbling of France's colonial grip on
Indochina, and in advance of the disastrous American war that was to
follow.
The world that Lewis
captures is considerably bleak and forlorn. One of his first
impressions is of the disdain seemingly shown towards him, a
foreigner, by Vietnamese people, who were described by early
missionaries as inquisitive towards strangers. This seems to be a
suggestion of the damaging impact of colonialism, one of many signs
that Lewis notes as he travels across the peninsula, visiting tribal
villages, plantations and Viet Minh strongholds.
Lewis' travels take him
primarily through southern Vietnam, then still known as Cochin China,
with briefer visits to Cambodia and Laos. Unfortunately he is not
able to make it across the border to Tonkin, northern Vietnam, which
surely would have been an interesting visit. On his numerous trips
with French officers, Lewis meets communities of ethnic minority
groups and witnesses their plight to retain their traditional customs
within changing wider political circumstances. The tragedy of this
book lies in the knowledge that the moment in history seen by Lewis
was soon to be lost forever.
This special interest
in tribal groups is not unique to A Dragon Apparent. Across
his extensive repertoire of writings, Lewis is known for his interest
in tribal societies and for his concern over the damage caused to
them by outside influences, particularly through the activity of
missionaries. Notably, Lewis is known to have regarded his life’s
greatest achievement as being the outcome of his 1968 Sunday Times
article Genocide in Brazil, which resulted in a change in the
Brazilian law regarding the treatment of Indians, as well as the
establishment of the organisation Survival International, which
campaigns to defend the rights of tribal people around the world.
There are some
interesting cultural revelations to be learnt from Lewis' travels in
Indochina, due to his keen interest in the habits and lifestyles of
the people he sees. On first arriving in Saigon, he observes: “There
was a rapid, silently swirling traffic in the streets of bicycle
rickshaws mixed up with cycles; a bus, sweeping out of a side street
into the main torrent, caught a cyclist, knocked him off and crushed
his machine. Both the bus driver and the cyclist were Chinese or
Vietnamese, and the bus driver, jumping down from his seat, rushed
over to congratulate the cyclist on his lucky escape. Both men were
delighted, and the cyclist departed, carrying the wreckage of his
machine and still grinning broadly.”
As
the above passage demonstrates, Lewis has a dignified writing style
that suits his self-styled position as an outside observer of
everything he witnesses.
The
1982 edition of this book was published by Eland, a London based
publishing house that specialises in travel books. The edition
includes darkly printed photographs that were reproduced from the
first edition (the originals no longer existed), which, despite being
imperfect in quality, are nonetheless fascinating glimpses into the
tribal lives Lewis describes. In his preface, Lewis comments on his
travels in Indochina with the hindsight of the incredible destruction
it had endured in the years between the first and second publications
of this book. He writes hauntingly of “the greatest holocaust ever
to be visited on the East”: “It consumed not only the present,
but the past; an obliteration of cultures and values as much as
physical things. From the ashes that remained no phoenix would ever
rise”.
Despite the tragedy of
the destruction Indochina has endured, there is some comfort for the
reader of Lewis' work, particularly one who has spent time in each of
the three countries in question, to find that there are certain
places and scenes mentioned in Lewis' account that are seemingly
eternal elements of Indochina, transcending the passing of time and
the destructiveness of war. In some cases this is the sublime, such
as the beautiful ruins of the ancient kingdom of Angkor, and in other
cases the ridiculous, such as the Cao Dai temple erected in Tay Ninh
in 1926 as the holy centre of Vietnam’s most bizarre religion. The
latter was described by Lewis as probably “the most outrageously
vulgar building ever to have been erected with serious intent”,
and, incidentally, was described in similarly derogatory terms by
Graham Greene. Yet whether for better or for worse, it is comforting
to be reminded of these distinct, nostalgic characteristics and to be
reassured that at least some things have survived Indochina’s most
volatile period in recent history.
Published only four
years before Greene’s classic The Quiet American, it
is interesting to note that A Dragon Apparent has been
described as Greene’s inspiration. Greene was certainly a fan of
Lewis’, describing him as “one of the best writers, not of any
particular decade, but of our century”.
For his extensive
collection of works and the impact they have had, it is perhaps
surprising that Lewis is not better known as a writer. In the
Guardian’s obituary for him, published in July 2003, this is
accounted to the ‘modesty’ of this ‘deeply private’ author.
Certainly, in A Dragon Apparent, Lewis is never showy and
maintains a detached, civilized writing style. Yet for me, this lent
the book to lack any feeling of passion, and consequently I did not
find it to be particularly compelling. Nonetheless, as I have already
alluded to, there are several moments of intrigue from Lewis’
experiences in Indochina, from which I learned new things about the
culture of Indochina as it was before the wars. No doubt, A Dragon
Apparent is an important documentation of a pivotal moment in the
history of Indochina; a time and place at the brink of monumental
change that would leave it irrevocably scarred.
