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Grand architecture, charming city
 Despite
fierce US bombing during the Vietnam War, much of Hanoi's
beautiful architecture remains intact, including many of the
colonial buildings constructed by the French during their
70 years of occupation. Known as 'La Ville Francais,' Hanoi
was, from 1902, the capital of French Indochina, and visitors
declared it to be the Paris of the East.
Yet it was - and is - not only the leafy avenues and ornate
French architecture of the city that inspires this allusion,
but also that the city shares its western twin's appeal for
artists and intellectuals, and has since its earliest days.
Indeed, one of Hanoi's earliest remaining buildings is the
Temple of Literature. Built in 1070, it was Vietnam's first
educational establishment and one of only two buildings to
have survived in the city from the 200-year Ly Dynasty. The
other, the One Pillar Pagoda, has been rebuilt many times;
lastly in 1954 after it was razed by the acrimonious French,
as they withdrew from the city.
Fortunately, the Vietnamese who
replaced them were not so acrimonious, and have left many
of the colonial edifices in place. These include St. Joseph's
Cathedral, built in the earliest days of colonial rule, and
the huge Hanoi Opera House - a replica of the Paris Opera,
though productions of Hugo and Moliere have been replaced
by cultural performances.
More recently, Hanoi has added the imposing Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
- constructed over three years in the early seventies, and
closely resembling Lenin's Tomb in Moscow - and, in 1990,
the Ho Chi Minh Museum, which was designed by a Russian architect.
However, grand as these two monuments to Uncle Ho may be,
their atmosphere cannot compare to the simple stilted wooden
house, where Ho lived for the last decade of his life and
from which he ran most of the Vietnam War.
Today, unfortunately, the city is
fast succumbing to a new invasion - this time by international
property developers, who - in their haste to capitalize on
Vietnam's new economic freedom - are erecting twenty-storey
megaliths that may soon overwhelm the quiet elegance of Hanoi
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