WHERE PEOPLE & PLACES MEET: TRAVEL AND THE SPATIAL IDENTITIES OF INDOCHINA, FRANCE, AND HUE IN 1920s-1940s

VIETNAMESE PRINT By Cindy A. Nguyen

A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of HistoryMaster of Arts 2013

ABSTRACT WHERE PEOPLE & PLACES MEET: TRAVEL AND THE SPATIAL IDENTITIES OF INDOCHINA, FRANCE, AND HUE IN 1920s-1940s VIETNAMESE PRINT By Cindy A. Nguyen This thesis examines the creation of the spatial identities of Indochina, France, and Hue in Vietnamese print media on travel and mass tourism in early twentieth century. Through the direct experience of travel as well as armchair perceptions via travel stories and ephemera, individuals constructed Indochina, France, and Hue with political, cultural, and gendered meanings. In other words, travel can contribute to the invention of place, shaped through the topophilia or spatial sentiment. Although affective understandings of place can be subjective, this thesis demonstrates how Vietnamese travelers translated their encounters with new places and people through concomitant discourses on modernity, class, nationalism, and urbanism. In this way Indochina, France, and Hue became sites for the expression of new forms of collective identities such as the Vietnamese intelligentsia, middle class, and students. Through an analysis of Vietnamese and French language advertisements, travelogues, and fiction published within Vietnamese print between the 1920s and 1940s, this project seeks to convey the personification of places through both personal experiences and wider socio-cultural debates. Furthermore, as indicated in many textual representations of travel, the process of movement symbolized the catalyst for self-reflection as well as utopic visions for social and political opportunity. Thus, this thesis demonstrates the interrelationship between people and place, such that travelers defined the places of Indochina, France, and Hue, and were also shaped by its rhetoric.

For Eric who always believed in me

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ACKNOWLEDGMENETS This masters thesis would not have been possible without the kind support of many people. First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Charles Keith for his guidance and encouragement throughout my years at Michigan State University. Through many reflective conversations, he challenged me to be critical, exhaustive, and bold in my research and thinking. I also extend the deepest gratitude to members of my guidance committee, Drs. Leslie Page Moch and Aminda Smith, whose knowledge of migration, social history, and cultural history have shaped my lens of analyses. Special thanks to friends near and far whose selflessness and generosity have defined my experience in Michigan: Alex Galarza, Alison Kolodzy, Andrew Pham, April Greenwood, Ashley Sanders, Beth Dutridge-Corp, Carolyn Pratt, Catherine Foley, Ella Fratantuono, Emily Joan, Flora Feltham, Helen Irene, Jason Black, Jean-Paul deGuzman, Jenae Cohn, Jess Mcleod, Leslie Chanthaphasouk, Liz Timbs, Mark Sanchez, Ryan Huey, Stephanie Yang, and Sylvia Marques. And finally thank you to my best friend and confidant, Eric Kim, and to my family for their unending patience and love throughout my studies.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Theoretical Context Travel and Transportation within the Formation of Urban Middle Class Identity Print and the Circulation of Ideas on Modernity, Travel, and Space Sources & Methods CHAPTER 2 EXPLORING THE SPACE OF INDOCHINA: INVENTION AND REALITY Making Sense of Indochinese Space and Community through Travel Relational Definitions of Spaces & Self: The Wilderness, Countryside & Mountains Power and Privileged Isolation of Airplanes, Automobiles, and Mountain Resorts CHAPTER 3 FINDING CIVILIZATION: FRANCE AND THE FAILURES OF COLONIALISM The Rhetoric of Civilization and Reality of Education Abroad: France and the Opportunity for Socio-Economic Ascension Finding Social Purpose in France, the Laboratory of Political and Cultural Modernization France as Cultural and Generational Dystopia Conclusion EPILOGUE MAKING SENSE OF NEW AND OLD SPACES: HUE AS A SITE OF CULTURE AND HERITAGE Hue and the Invention of a Lost Past BIBLIOGRAPHY 90 vi 1 2 5 16 21 26 27 40 48 56 59 66 72 79

81 82

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1-1: Tourist brochure and map of the famous red colored road, la route mandarine

Figure 2-1: Scenery of -Thin -Thch- Scenic image that accompanied tourism articles to Angkor Wat. Ph N Tn Vn, 9 January 1930 33 Figure 2-2: Phong Ho, 9 June 1933 Two ways of Vacationing or East and West Avoiding Each Other Figure 3-1: Ph N Tn Vn, 26 September 1929. Photo of Vietnamese students who participated in the scholarship competition on 15 September 1929 53 65

Figure 3-2: Cartoons that accompanied the series Going West Phong Ha, 18 August 1932 73 Figure 4-1: Cover of Phong Ha, 13 March 1936 85

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In a two month long series titled Le Tourisme et les Annamites and the Saigon based newspapers La Tribune Indochinoise, the author explained the social and political importance for Vietnamese to participate in the modern practice of tourism. The author expanded on the saying Les voyages forment la jeunesse [Travel broadens the mind], and reiterated that travel shaped the conceptions of ones patrie [fatherland] and that of other countries near Indochina. Through comparison and contrast with locations described as the West, Dutch Indies, Siam, Hong Kong, the author drew the cultural borders of Indochinas spatial identity. As explained in the Vietnamese 1928 article, travel experiences can transform a material space into a place with political, cultural, and gendered characteristics. This thesis explores the creation of the spatial identities of Indochina, France, and Hue through an examination of tourism advertisements, reports, and travel stories, or du k, which flourished in the Vietnamese popular press between the 1920s and 1940s. As Vietnamese traveled through and beyond the region via new modes of transit and popularized routes, they mapped places with cultural, colonial, political, and personal 1 Within the majority of colonial documents, Vietnamese (those of Viet ethnicity) are referred to as Annamese or Annamites. For this project, I instead use the contemporary term Vietnamese to refer to Eastern Indochina and the Viet people as a cultural-linguistic group. 2 The author explains Le voyage, dit-on, forme la jeunessea saying that closely translates to the English phrase Travel broadens the mind. Le Tourisme et les Annamites, La Tribune Indochinoise, 16 May 1928. All Vietnamese and French translations to English are my own. 1
2 1

significance through the publication of their travel experiences. Moreover individuals reflections upon travel and geography complicate the understanding of Vietnamese modern leisure, cultural identity, and political community in the late colonial period. Thus this project joins together concepts of travel and space and interprets this as both horizontal and vertical movementthe former defined as an individuals physical movement, and the latter as the construction of a spatial identity through multileveled reflections on culture, history, and community.
3

Theoretical Context As discursive devices, places can function both as subjects acting upon and objects acted on by travelers. The act of travel and the translation of that experience in personal diaries or print media can demonstrate the multidirectional relationship between subject and environment. For example, many travel stories of Vietnamese youth who journeyed to France convey emotions ranging from responsibility and empowerment to isolation and dystopic realization. Within travel stories of Indochina, individuals reflected on an invented cultural and political space as well as on their own relationship to the changing environment. Yi-Fu Tuan claims that spatial knowledge occurs when movement and changes of location can be
4

envisaged while in a similar way, John Urry and Chris Rojek argue that tourism directly shapes

3 Michael Cronin defines and distinguishes between these two types of travel within his book Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation (Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, 2000), 19. 4 As discussed in Chapter 2, two of the most well-known travel stories to France are Nht Linhs Going to France and L Hu Tho, Itinraire Dun Petit Mandarin: Juin 1940, Collection Mmoires Asiatiques (Paris: LHarmattan, 1997). 2

the foundation of national culture. As routes of self-reflection, these emotional responses to the changing landscape embody how for humans, both the effects of space on our behavior and our use of space are mediated by place. Although the backgrounds and motivations for travelers varied extensively, these narratives expound the influential role of placein this case, the coterminous departure from and definition of homeupon spatial awareness and self-identity. In other words, the act of travel inspired new ways of thinking about the self and spaces such as Indochina, France, and Hue. As Thonchai Winichakul has elucidated in Siam Mapped, space is not presumed but is actively translated into mapped political manifestations of space. Winichakul also challenges Western geography and mapping techniques as the purveyor of political boundaries and provides insight into indigenous conceptions of space based on spatial relativity through power and tributary networks. Furthermore, cultural and literary processes of understanding space also function as other informal ways of imagining space. In this way, the act of travel and its subsequent textual representations also contribute to construct a place. Vietnamese travel stories demonstrate the multiplicity of spatial perceptions and ultimately add to and challenge colonial 5 Spatial Ability, Knowledge, and Place in Yi-Fu Tuan and Steven Hoelscher, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 67-68. Tuan explained the creation of mental maps in the following way: once on its exploratory path, creates large and complex spatial schemata that exceed by far what an individual can encompass through direct experience. Chris Rojek, Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory (London: Routledge, 1997). 6 ngels Pascual-de-Sans, Sense of Place and Migration Histories Idiotopy and Idiotope, Area 36, no. 4 (December 1, 2004): 348357. Pascual-de-Sans poses an innovative method to understand the personal temporality of place using the medical concept of idiotope (the relational determinates of antibodies) to symbolize the sense of belonging of people to places and places to people. 7 Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: a History of the Geo-body of a Nation (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1994). 3
7 6

constructs of space. During the colonial period, a multitude of maps emerged to spatially represent French colonial Indochina. The map represented geo-political boundaries and functioned as a symbol of conquest, Western dictations of space, and what David Harvey describes as the homogenisation of spatial itineraries and spatial stories. For example, Indochina, consisting of the protectorates of Laos, Cambodia, and Tonkin, Annam, and the colony Cochinchina, was both real and imagined. Architectural projects imported and interpreted French ideals of beauty, modernity, and Indochineseness onto the landscape. At the same time, schoolbooks, maps, and cultural projects represented the colonized region, les cinq fleurs [The Five Flowers], as a unified cultural and physical reality. Scholars such as Gwendolyn Wright, Panivong Norindr, Nicola Cooper, and Matt Matsuda have illuminated the phantasmic of Indochina within French popular imagination and colonial policy.
10 9 8

These works depict how the

geographic space of Indochina was co-opted as a blank slate to exhibit French definitions of beauty and historical value. But how did the space of Indochina emerge and evolve on the local, everday level of socio-cultural perceptions and political reality? To what extent did aspects of Lindochine franaise permeate or were reinvented throughout Vietnamese popular imagination and vernacular print? Rather than a purely colonial discursive act, the invention of 8 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford, England; New York, NY, USA: Blackwell, 1989). 9 Les Cinq Fleurs: LIndochine Expliquee by Jean Marquet was a school primer that explained the history of French Indochina to young public school children. 10 Gwendolyn Wright, Chapter 4: Indochina: The Folly of Grandeur, in The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Penny Edwards, Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation 1860-1945 (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2007); Panivong Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film, and Literature (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997); Matt K. Matsuda, Indochina: Romance of the Ruins, in Empire of Love: Histories of France and the Pacific (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA, 2005), 137160. 4

Indochina and space more broadly occurred throughout various literary, personal, social, and political channels. This qualitative and quantitative study of Vietnamese travel and textual media can illuminate how Vietnamese mapped their cultural and physical world and constructed the space of Indochina, France, and Hue. Furthermore, an examination of these texts demonstrates the interplay between ideas such as the West, modernity, colonialism, and the individual upon the everyday understandings of space. Thus, this project integrates the development of spatial identitiesas illuminated through travel and textual translationsinto the cultural history of late colonial Vietnam. Informed by studies on print culture, gendered geography, and cultural translation this research also demonstrates how the relational nature of agent and space shaped Vietnamese conceptions of self and the collective. How did the shift of everyday space and formation of spatial identities that accompanied an individuals travel come to shape their perceptions of self, home, and abroad? Mechanisms of movement could concretize difference, shift cultural conceptions of place, and shape regional, national, and ideological identity. On a more individual level, the experiences of movementsuch as study or travel abroadoften inspired new forms of personal exploration and expression. In examining how places such as Indochina, France, and Hue were spatially represented, rigid borders of empire give way to diverse amalgamations of personal, cultural, and political values associated with the idea of a place.

Travel and Transportation within the Formation of Urban Middle Class Identity In his introduction to modern Vietnamese literature, Gregory Lockhart emphasizes the tremendous influence of modernity upon expressions of individual and social identity: What we are dealing with in this new social arrangement is nothing less than the creation of new

categories of self and collective identity that encompass and include everyone in the rise of the modern city.
11

Integral to the development of the modern city was the evolution of

transportation and communication systems that facilitated the movement of people and ideas. These mechanisms facilitated new and old processes of movement such as local and worldwide tourism, regional and urban rural migration, and study abroad. Charles Burdett and Derek Duncan explain how the 1930s witnessed the global and modern phenomena of movement, particularly because the development of transportation made tourism increasingly accessible to the growing middle class.
12

In the case of Vietnam, the 1920s and 1930s witnessed immense

cultural and economic transformations. This included the expansion of modern transportation networks, the development of a generation of Vietnamese journalists and intellectuals, the petitbourgeois middle class, and urban entrepreneurs who themselves directly shaped and expanded a culture of leisure, exploration, and social debate. The construction of transportation networks such as roads and railways was an essential part of the physical colonization of Indochina and the ideological demonstration of the mission civilisatrice [civilizing mission]. Goscha explains how European missionaries, traders, and later colonialism itself built upon the preexisting infrastructure of overland and sea transportation networks between modern-day Vietnam, Siam, Java, Malaysia, and China. For example, Route Coloniale n1, ng thuc a s 1 [Colonial Route 1] a 2600-km route stretching from China

11 Greg Lockhart and Monique Lockhart, trans., The Light of the Capital: Three Modern Vietnamese Classics (Kuala Lumpur; New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 12 Charles Burdett and Derek Duncan, Cultural Encounters: European Travel Writing in the 1930s (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2002). 6

to Siam, was constructed on a historical route con ng thin l [The Mandarin Road].

13

Described as folie des chemins [road craziness], the laying down of brick and metal supported the colonial economy, extraction of raw goods, and also intrusively symbolized the French presence. By the 1920s, the automobile increased in significance throughout tourism guides, newsprint, and literature, symbolizing wealth and a separation from the environment. David Del Testa describes the automobile as the representation of a French quest for individuality, social status, and difference.
14

Yet automobiles were not exclusive to French colonialists. In a 1923

report Francois de Tessan explained that there were two to three thousand cars in circulation in [Saigon]. A mere 68 were registered in 1914Europeans are not alone in having acquired a taste for automobiles. Out of a thousand cars imported into Indochina over an eighteenth month period, 500 were acquired by whites, 262 by Annamese, 149 by Chinese and 14 by Hindus, Cambodians, 15 or Laotians.

13 Khung Vit, Con ng Thin L, in Tp Ch Tr Tn 1941-1945, Truyn V K: Su Tp Tc Phm, ed. Nguyn n Li and Nguyn Hu Sn (H Ni, Vietnam: Nh Xut Bn Hi Nh Vn, 2000), 677685. Originally published as No. 171 December 1944. Vit explains the history and transformation of the road over time, particularly as new developments in road building and transportation changed who used the road. 14 David W. Del Testa, Imperial Corridor: Association, Transportation and Power in French Colonial Indochina 1, Science Technology & Society 4, no. 2 (September 1, 1999): 319354. For an advertisement of tourism by automobile, see Image 1-2 in Index. 15 Francois de Tessan, Dans lAsie qui sveille, Paris: La Rennaisance du Livre, 1923, 15 as cited in Eric Thomas Jennings, Imperial Heights: Lt and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 171. 7

Figure 1-1 Tourist brochure and map of the famous red colored road, la route mandarine. Other historic names for this road were ng Ci Quan, ng Quan L, Quan B. For interpretation of the references to color in this and all other figures, the reader is referred to the electronic version of this thesis. (The smaller text of the locations are not pertinent to the use of this figure).

Del Testa has examined the influence of modern transportation such as railroads, automobiles, and bicycles upon perceptions of time, space, and also upon how Vietnamese experienced colonialism in the everyday.
16

Building upon the scholarship of Stephen Kern, Michael Adas,

John Stilgoe, and Mary-Louise Pratt, Del Testa proposes the idea of Imperial Corridors defined as environments of cross-cultural contact and political struggle that emanated from the railroad lines and roadways in a colonial context.
17

Although those of financial capability more

directly experienced new modes of transportation such as airplanes and automobiles, travel as a phenomenon influenced a range of Vietnamese social classes through the intrusive construction of transportation networks and routes. Del Testa begins to examine the significance of modes of transit upon personal relations, and proceeds to argue that Vietnamese authors and artists used modern transportation as a platform to critique colonialism. These authors weave together the significance of geography and identity and lay the groundwork for this study, which provides a deeper examination of the processes of relational self-definition that modern transportation inspired. With the development of transportation networks such as railways and roads for trade, administration, and resource extraction, the movement of goods and people extended throughout and beyond the colonial Indochina. In Going Indochinese, Christopher Goscha shows how Indochina developed through the network of Vietnamese administrators and workers who paved

16 David W. Del Testa, Automobiles and Anomie in French Colonial Indochina, in France and Indochina: Cultural Representations, ed. Kathryn Robson and Jennifer Yee, (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005), 6377; Del Testa, Imperial Corridor. 17 Del Testa originally explains this idea in reference to the Transindochinois railroad in 1936 as a space of rigidity and coercion. Del Testa, Imperial Corridor, 65; Del Testa, Automobiles and Anomie in French Colonial Indochina. 9

the way along the eastern coast and westward in an internal colonization of the five regions.

18

Described within French colonial policy as a Franco-Annamese collaboration or association, the infrastructural development of Indochina involved thousands of Vietnamese as local government agents, soldiers, workers, and explorers.
19

Between 1923 and 1929 alone, over

70,000 contract workers traveled by boat from Tonkin and Annam to Cochinchina, Cambodia, and Laos to develop transportation industries.
20

In this manner, the employment and movement

of Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians along these physical transportation lines reified the imperial construct of an Indochinese state. Goscha explains this ideological and geographic convergence in the following manner: The automobile, the map, the bureaucracy, and an unprecedented Indochinese road network represented a major reorientation in pre-existing

18 Christopher E. Goscha, Going Indochinese: Contesting Concepts of Space and Place in French Indochina, NIAS Classics Series; No. 3 (Copenhagen, Denmark: NIAS Books, 2012). Goscha illuminates how French colonial policy makers built upon the historical construct of Vietnamese expansion, where Indochina could be imagined as Gia Long's Empire reconstituted, expanded by us through [the acquisition] of exterior possession..." Chambre des Deputes, no. 1904, session de 1887, 'Annexe du proces-verbal de la seance du 1 juillet 19887, Proposition de resolution', 32, Memoires et Documents, Asie-Indochine, volume 102, MAE as cited in Goscha, Going Indochinese, 25. 19 In his second mandate La mise en valeur des colonies delivered in Hanoi in April 1919, Governor General Albert Sarraut declared the policy of Franco-Annamite collaboration: "What do we want to do and how must we work together, French and Annamese, for the good of this wonderful Indochina and for the welfare of her populations? That is after all the goal to be reached, the very one that occupies my mind and endlessly haunts my spirit." as cited in Goscha, Going Indochinese. 20 For further information on colonial development policy, see Raymond Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory: 1890-1914 (University of Nebraska Press, 2005). E. Delamarre, L mmigration et les limmigration ouvrire en Indochine, Paris, Section gnrale du travail de lIndochine, 1931, p. 17 as cited in Christopher Goscha, Rcits de voyage vitnamiens et prise de conscience indochinoise (c. 1920-1945), in Rcits de voyage des Asiatiques: Genres, mentalits, conceptions de lespace, ed. Claudine Salmon (Paris: Ecole Franaise dExtrme-Orient, 1996), 256. 10

conceptions of time and space.

21

Thus beyond functional value Indochina permeated

throughout the Vietnamese press as a discursive space with a collective identity in need of understanding and exploration.
22

By the late colonial period, the multifaceted phenomenon of movementas embodied by direct and indirect contact with expanded transportation networkswas a fundamental facet of Vietnamese life, connecting physical and cultural distances. Lines of transit such as the Messageries Fluviales canals and rivers system, railways, and roads for automobiles, bicycles, and cycle rickshaws extended throughout the countryside and cities, connecting and making Indochina a spatial reality. In 1920 the length of the road network was 18,645km and increased to 28,817km by 1940.
23

Furthermore, steamships and airplanes connected Vietnamese to the

networks of regional and global travel. For example, the international lines Messageries Maritimes or Chargeurs Runis had regular service between Marseille and Saigon, and from the Vietnamese ports of Hai Phong, Da Nang and Saigon to those of Yokohama, Vladivostok, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Singapore, that connected through to the Suez Canal. French and Vietnamese travel guides detailed itineraries that included places such as Dijibouti, Ethiopia,

21 Ibid., 49. Goscha, Going Indochinese. Christopher Goscha argues that this shift in geographic mentality also shaped business practices towards the Indochina federation rather than strictly confined within cultural-linguistic realms. 22 One of the most famous debates on the Indochinese cultural reality lasted for several years between Nguyn Vn Vnh and Phm Qunh. The question of an Indochinese collective also emerged amongst revolutionaries who sought a to unify communist movements against French domination. Christopher E. Goscha, Vietnam or Indochina?: Contesting Concepts of Space in Vietnamese Nationalism, 1887-1954, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies no. 28 (1995). 23 Goscha also provides statistics for non-metalled roads: for 1920 10,603 km; for 1940, 19,245. Direction des Services conomiques, Service de la statistique gnrale de lIndochine, Rsum statstique relatif aux annes 1913 1940, Hanoi, IDEO 1941, p. 12 as cited in Goscha, Rcits de voyage vitnamiens et prise de conscience indochinoise (c. 1920-1945), 256. 11

Ceylon, and Malaysia demonstrates how well Vietnam was integrated, measured by its connection with global networks of communication and transportation.
24

Technological advancement in communication and transportation networks, as well as an influx of ideas, goods, and capital, provided the infrastructure for popularized travel. By the turn of the century the influx of investment capital for commercial development contributed to the expansion or creation of industries catering to a European clientele (and some well-connected Vietnamese administrators) who had an abundance of capital and time for leisure. Partially subsidized and promoted by the state, European tourism companies emerged to encourage Europeans to travel to historic heritage sites, natural wonders, and coastal resorts (stations balnaires). Eric DeWald notes that these early industries were racially bifurcated as the colonial state heavily subsidized white tourism in contrast to Asian businesses and commercial development.
25

Some of the most popular sites for European tourism were transformed cultural

and ritual centers such as the Perfume Pagoda in H Ty, Hng Vng temple in Ph Th, La Vang cathedral in Qung Tr, Phong Nha in Qung Bnh, and imperial tombs and the citadel at Hue. The most popular colonial resorts were located in Lt, B N, Bch M, Sm Sn, Ca L, ng Hi, Ca Tng, Thun An, Nha Trang and Tam .

24 Claudius Madrolle and Jacques L Vn c wrote many travel guides that exhibit the global nature of movement during this time. Claudius Madrolle, De Saigon Tourane. La Route Mandarine Du Sud-Annam. Les Monuments Cham. Le Circuit Des Monts Pandarang, Lt et Le Lang-Biang, 1926. Jacques L Vn c, Vers la France! Saigon, Singapore, Penang, Colombo, Aden, Djibouti, Suez, Port-Said, Marseille. Notes de voyage par un Annamite. (Qui Nhon, Vietnam: Imprimerie de Quinhon, 1928). Goscha, Rcits de voyage vitnamiens et prise de conscience indochinoise (c. 1920-1945), 255. 25 Erich DeWald, The Development of Tourism in French Colonial Vietnam, 1918-1940, in Asian Tourism: Growth and Change, ed. Janet Cochrane (Amsterdam; Boston; London: Elsevier, 2008), 221232. 12

It was not until the 1920s and 1930s that Vietnamese tourism increased in popularity. The 1933-1938 reports of tourists in Annam note an increase from 475 to 3,000 Indochinese tourists.
26

Among the popular sites were mountain resorts such as Lt, and also famous

mountains, natural wonders and places of historical heritage such as Hue, Hanoi, and Angkor Wat. Indochinese also participated in tourism as bureaucrats, journalists, and leisure-seeking nouveau riche elites. Like European tourists, Vietnamese leisure-based travel was restricted in accordance to economic means.
27

Later on, the Vichy regime of the 1940s heavily endorsed the

sur place [on the ground] movement and self-realization of native populations (especially Vietnamese elites and youth) through cultural programs, propaganda drives, and sporting events such as the Tour dIndochine, a 4,000-kilometer bicycle race throughout Indochina.
28

In this

way the geographic movement, cultural exploration, and Vichy state-sponsored events reified to a certain extent a spatial and cultural identity of Indochina. Participation in travel was experienced unevenly across Vietnamese social classes; advertisements and travel stories primarily targeted an urban, middle or petit bourgeois readership. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, a Vietnamese middle class emerged with distinct 26 Protectorat de lAnnam, Rapport densemble sur la situation du Protectorat (Hue: Imprimerie Phuc Long, 1938) as cited in Jennings, Imperial Heights, 171. 27 In one advertisement for a several day all-inclusive trip to De Thien and De Thich, the trip was priced at 45$. In comparison one of the most expensive newsletters was priced at 10$. i Chi Tc L Hc, Ph N Tn Vn no. 36 (9 January 1930): 9. 28 These Vichy period cultural projects were founded on the idea of reinstating a sense of cultural and spatial unity: (through) these representatives of the Indochinese youth, we were hoping that, after having contemplated and reflected (on what they saw), they would be able to announce the truth (of the Indochina) surrounding them." (Ducoroy, op. cit., 169-189) as cited Goscha, Vietnam or Indochina, 81. DeWald also explained that these cultural identity projects throughout the French colonies reflected the Vichy regimes state ideology of Work, Family, and Nation. DeWald, The Development of Tourism in French Colonial Vietnam, 1918-1940, 230. 13

social relations and practices shaped by ideas on urbanism, consumerism, and Western modernity. The appeal of travel was part of the fixation with the symbolic capital of middle class success such as Western dress and goods, education abroad, transportation, and other leisurely activities such as sports, dancing, and hunting.
29

Throughout Vietnamese newsprint,

many of these social and cultural practices were conflated with modernitya state of being often associated with the West and defined antithetically against tradition, the past, or resistance to urbanism and ideological changes. These social constructs came into widespread use when discussing travel and its significance as a measure of civilization and modernity. In the volume, The Reinvention of Distinction, Van Nguyen Marshall, Lisa Barbara Welch Drummond, and Daniele Belanger describe how the Vietnamese urban middle class was characterized by the symbolic capital of a certain lifestyle.
30

This understanding expands

upon Pierre Bourdieus interpretation of field and habitus and provides a broader framework to understand the role of Indochinese travel within the formation of Vietnamese middle class identity. The authors of this volume argue that members of the Vietnamese urban middle class were defined by its actions in a way that broadcasted distinction from the urban working poor and the emulation of wealthy and at times Western behavior. Exploring the intertwined relationship between consumer culture, urban Vietnamese middle class, and perceptions of modernity, George Dutton demonstrates how the rational consumer symbolized a shift towards

29 Van Nguyen-Marshall et al., The Reinvention of Distinction: Modernity and the Middle Class in Urban Vietnam, Asia Research Institute Springer Asia Series (Singapore: Springer, 2012). The authors approach the middle class within the framework of behavior and lifestyle: In this view, classes are not defined a priori by fixed and objective attributes; they are not based on a materialistic conception of power and inequality but on the idea of symbolic capital. 9. 30 Ibid. 14

individualism and new configurations of a consumer community.

31

Dutton describes how the

urban shift towards individualism was symbolized in changing gender norms, new definitions of love and relationships, and increasing attention to beauty, appearance, and public representation. Many newspapers reported extensively on and advertised novel modes of transportation, reflecting a fascination with the ability to transcend space and time.
32

Dutton explains that the

development of consumer, middle class identity was centralized within the few cities that had a critical mass of residents (primarily Vietnamese), commercial industries, and a colonial administration such as Saigon-Ch Ln (300,000 inhabitants), Hi Phng (200,000), and Hanoi (150,000).
33

Print and literature functioned as the stage for individuals to make sense of the
34

ambiguities of urbanization, and to understand progress both as benefit and threat.

It is

within these primarily urban settings that Vietnamese dealt with questions of the modern,(represented in newspapers by the French word moderne and Vietnamese t mi [new vocabulary] tn thi, hin thi, kim thi,) and its intersections with ideas of the individual and collective and new notions of time and space.

31 George Dutton, Advertising, Modernity, and Consumer Culture in Colonial Vietnam, in The Reinvention of Distinction: Modernity and the Middle Class in Urban Vietnam, ed. Van NguyenMarshall et al., Asia Research Institute Springer Asia Series (Singapore: Springer, 2012), 2142. 32 The race between airplane and automobile was between London and Edinburg and explained how the train passengers were able to communicate with those in the air by telegraph. Xe-la Chy Thi Vi Tu Bay, Bo ng-Php (July 27, 1928): 1. 33 P. Galstady, La Cochinchine (Saigon: Socit des tudes Indochinoises, 1931) 32, 34 and Eugne Teston and Maurice Percheron, Lindochine Moderne: Encyclopdie Administrive, Touristique, Artistique, et conomique (Paris: Librarie de France, 1931). 454, 537, 543 as cited in Dutton, Advertising, Modernity, and Consumer Culture in Colonial Vietnam., 23. 34 George Dutton, L Tot in the City: Coming to Terms with the Modern in 1930s Vietnam, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 2, no. 1 (February 1, 2007): 80108. 15

Print and the Circulation of Ideas on Modernity, Travel, and Space By the 20
th

century, new technological and linguistic changes created a world of print

that was both efficiently mass-produced and also more easily read through the proliferation of a Romanized Vietnamese writing system, quc ng [national language].
35

While printing houses

emerged primarily in cities, the circulation of newspapers and printed material promulgated across geographic divides, constructing what Benedict Anderson describes as an imagined community based on new, often abstract conceptions of connection and belonging.
36

Many of

these newspapers facilitated discussion of new social trends and political events, as well as furthered the development of quc ng. Quc ng and French language newspapers emerged as the language-of-power to discuss, re-contextualize, and proclaim both t mi [new vocabulary] and new ideas. In the words of a well-known journalist and Vietnamese correspondent in France, We do not pay enough attention to the fact that Vietnamese newspapers have a profound impact on the minds of our compatriots. I do not mean only newspapers in quc ng that, despite falling victim to the tyranny of an arbitrary censorship, play an undeniable role in the moral and intellectual education of the Vietnamese. Even newspapers written in French have tremendous

35 As a result of Chinese domination (111BC-938AD), many Vietnamese cultural practices including language were Chinese-inspired. Based on Chinese characters and a Chinese language model, most Vietnamese literature and popular text was written in ch nm. While most people could comprehend the Vietnamese language, literacy in ch nm was limited primarily to a small number of Vietnamese elite. Formal court writing was recorded in ch Hn-Vit and also as ch nho (Sinicized Vietnamese or classical Chinese), which further narrowed pre-colonial literacy. Portuguese Christian missionaries initiated Romanized quc ng script in the early 16th century, and the French furthered the development of quc ng within its colonial administration and education system. However, literacy in quc ng was still limited to an estimated 20% in the 1930s. 36 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Rev. ed. (London; New York: Verso, 2006). 16

influence among our compatriots.

37

Alongside a plethora of translated literature from all over

the world were new developments in Vietnamese literature, such as reportage, satire, prose fiction, and mulitple forms of novels.
38

The continual development of Vietnamese literature, transportation, newsprint industry, and urbanization promoted a sense of Vietnamese community and consciousness characterized as the lng bo ch [newspaper village].
39

Philippe Peycam explains that the lng bo ch was

also similar to notions of the print sphere and the French social concept of engagement. Peycam states, the use of newspapers by a number of Vietnamese corresponded to both political and socioeconomic functions: the need for economic integration, new forms of convivilaity among urbanized Vietnamese, and new modes of individual agency within and for the community.
40

In

the introduction to the 1930s Vietnamese satirical novel Dumb Luck by V Trng Phng, Peter Zinoman described the the Vietnamese journalism and literature as one dominated by progressive language and modernizing ethos.
41

Hence, Vietnamese newsprint emerged as a

vibrant medium for debate and dispersion of ideas on modernity, travel, and space. Within this effervescent print sphere, individuals discussed local and world news as well as made sense of ambivalent iterations of modernity through cultural and social behavior, material culture, and 37 Cao Vn Chnh in LEssor Indochinois, August 9, 1924 as cited by Philippe M. F Peycam, The Birth of Modern Vietnamese Political Journalism: Saigon, 1916-1930 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 78-79. 38 Amongst the notable works of reportage were those written by social realists such as V Trng Phng. Satirical prose and fiction became increasingly popular as a humorous critique of urban life and social ills during colonial 1920s and 1930s. Of particular significance was the journal Phong Ha of the group T Lc Vn on (Self-Reliance Literary Group.) 39 Peycam, The Birth of Modern Vietnamese Political Journalism, 72.
40 41

Ibid.

Peter Zinoman, Preface, to Dumb Luck: a Novel by V Trng Phng (University of Michigan Press, 2002), 2, 10. 17

literature. Zinoman characterizes the development of Vietnamese intellectual life and interpretations of modernity as a provincial cosmopolitan, a random and uneven mode of engaging with global modernity in which ideas traversed great distances and through texts to the majority of Vietnamese intellectuals who did not directly study in France. Zinoman explains that in reality, Vietnamese intellectuals enjoyed little more than a filtered access to the cultural life of metropolitan France through a dense mesh of geographical distance, slow-moving transportation and communications technologies, and deliberate colonial policies of censorship and obscurantism.
42

In this way, Vietnamese intellectual engagement with modernity was an

amalgamation of local and global constructs, which underwent processes of linguistic and cultural transformation within the pages of print. Assuming a variety of affective definitions ranging from technological advancement to womens rights, modernity took on a talismanic form in newspaper debates and advertisements.
43

Urbanites were fascinated with material objects connected with health, beauty,

and transportation that reflected the symbolic power of modernity, and attainment of such goods was one of the few viable avenues for social advancement within colonial society.
44

Alexander Woodside explains that the obsession with material possessions was a way for the Vietnamese middle class to salvage its sense of subordination to French administrators.
45

Furthermore certain consumerism and travel signified the participation in a filtered world of 42 Peter Zinoman, Provincial Cosmopolitanism: V Trng Phngs Foreign Literary Engagements, in Traveling Nation-Makers: Transnational Flows and Movements in the Making of Modern Southeast Asia, ed. Caroline S. Hau and Kasian Tejapira (Singapore: NUS Press, 2011), 126152, 127. 43 Dutton, Advertising, Modernity, and Consumer Culture in Colonial Vietnam. 28.
44 45

Ibid., 25.

Alexander Barton Woodside, Community and Revolution in Modern Vietnam, First Edition (Houghton Mifflin School, 1976), 92. 18

Western modernity and colonial success. Eric Jennings questions the extent of mimicry in Vietnamese elite behavior and asks, To what degree were claims of wanting to emulate French leisure practices coerced, or at least a product of a system that forced Vietnamese elites to profess admiration for the colonial power?
46

Jennings explains that the colonial administration

used French tourist practices as yardsticks to measure meritor in this case assimilation among Vietnamese subjects.
47

For example, some of the questions asked between 1915 and

1930 to Vietnamese candidates for French citizenship called for the adoption of French social practices such as wearing Western clothes, practicing sports, and making leisurely trips to the sea or to the mountain.
48

In this way, along with Western dress, sports, and the French language,

travel and tourism held a material and symbolic value, associated with socio-economic and middle class success as well as modernity and forward thinking. The practice of travel and tourism lies within an overarching and fluid definition of modernityan imagined socio-political expectation predicated by the civilizational evolution towards Western social norms. As seen in the applications for French colonial citizenship, participation in tourism and other cultural activities was considered one of the benchmark standards for inclusion. In one advertisement, the author called for Vietnamese to participate in the spirit of tourism where they could retreat to the hill station town of Lt to experience the economically privileged and culturally exclusive colonial lifestyle of leisure. Articles called 46 Jennings, Imperial Heights, 174.
47 48

Ibid., 172.

Jennings draws these questions from the following studies on questions for Vietnamese citizenship candidates: Hue-Tam Ho Tai, The Politic of Compromise: The Constitutionalist Party and Electoral Reforms of 1922 in French Indochina, Modern Asian Studies 18, no. 3 (1984), 382. Emmanuelle Saada, Les Enfants de la Colonie: Les Metis de lEmpire francais entre sujetion et citoyennete (Paris: La Decouverte, 2007), 130 as cited by Jennings, Imperial Heights, 172. 19

Vietnamese to change their worldviews and cultural practices. Vietnamese newspapers in particular played a significant role in the discussion and dissemination of these ideas, calling for the adoption of modern practices both in and outside of the home.
49

In this way, Western

modern behavior and interpretations of leisure, health, and wealth influenced Vietnamese socio-cultural practices and definitions of success. Using Sanjay Seths understanding of history as a code that constitutes a series, tourism in Vietnam also existed in a code fundamentally dependent upon a language of Western modernity and leisure.
50

Many popular Vietnamese tourist destinations thus mirrored those of

Westerners, and Vietnamese representations of travel also mimicked the Western reasoning of tourism and its benefits. In this way the outward translation of an idea or cultural practice also recycled the original coded language in which the term was born.
51

Lydia Lius concept of

translated modernity in many ways embodies Vietnamese manifestations of travel as a permutation and invention, rather than a trajectory reducible to foreign impact [or] to the selfexplanatory logic of the indigenous tradition.
52

For instance, Liu argues that encounters can not

49 Thuy Linh Nguyen analyzes the translation of French scientific practices and colonial campaigns to modernize Vietnamese childbirth traditions in her dissertation. Thuy Linh Nguyen, The Medicalization of Childbirth in Colonial Vietnam (1880-1944), Ph.D. Dissertation, (University of Pennsylvania, 2009). 50 Sanjay Seth, Reason or Reasoning? Clio or Siva?, Duke University Press 22, no. 1, (Spring 2004): 85101. 51 The act of translation, for example, cannot but participate in the performativity of a language that circumscribes and is circumscribed by the historical contingency of that act. Lydia He Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, Andtranslated Modernity--China, 19001937 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), xvii. She continues: Any attempt to historicize above and beyond the circumstances of such performative/ constative acts of speech and writing (evocation, translation, citation in and out of context, and so on) is bound to lead to the reification of the idea, concept, or theory being analyzed and, consequently, to the impoverishment of our understanding of historical practice. 52 Ibid., xix. 20

be cast along a spectrum divided by constructs of the East and West, essence and translation, Homi Bhabhas Self and Other, or power and resistance.
53

In this way, this project seeks to

problematize the reification of the all-encompassing lens of colonial modernity to interpret acts of identity formation and leisure practices.
54

Thus on a theoretical level, a nuanced examination

of Vietnamese travel and tourism must recognize the tension between mimicry and invention and not simply assume the shadowy definition of Western modernity.

Sources & Methods Throughout the colonial period, foreign places, routes, and modes of transit permeated Vietnamese print as travel stories and advertisements, and empowered the broader Vietnamese readership with the ability to culturally map the world around them. Texts about regional tourism, investigative reports, study abroad in France, and news about transportation provided readers with an armchair experience of travel, exploration, and mechanized movement. Furthermore, these texts perpetuated constructs of spatial realities. For example, in the references to Indochina as a geographic entityTrung Ha Nht Bo often explained regional cultural distinctions as members of the gia nh ng Dng [Indochinese family]; Nam K a Phn

53 Ibid. Preface and Introduction. Robert Young and Homi Bhabhas examination of hybridity and culture embody this critical approach. Bhabha defines hybridity as a problematic of colonial representationthat reverses the effect of the colonialist disavowal, so that other denied knowledges enter upon the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authority. Homi Bhabha, Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority Under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817, in The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 69. As cited in Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race (London; New York: Routledge, 1995), 21. 21
54

printed ng Php a d [A song about Indochinas geography]; and travelogues detailed the systems of regional transit.
55

Within these texts about movement, authors increasingly documented and expressed their journeys through the relatively unstructured, semi-literary genre of du k [travel story]. Du k was not always differentiated from other forms such as nht k [journal], or French rcits [narrative], but were emblematic of new ways of thinking and writing through the first person I.
56

In his analysis of travel stories, Christopher Goscha estimates a minimum of hundreds of

Vietnamese travel stories published between 1918 and 1945. Aside from travels to France and the few to Germany, Russia, and England, most Vietnamese travel narratives contain movement throughout the Vietnamese ethnic space concentrated in the delta; the ethnically non-Vietnamese highlands; Indochinese space that includes Laos and Cambodia; and lastly regional Asian travel from Japan to India and Singapore to China. within and outside the realm of literature.
58 57

Nguyn Hu Sn describes du k as both

Sns research categorizes the majority of travel

55 These two newsprint references to Indochina were explained in Charles Keith, Catholic Vietnam: A Church from Empire to Nation (University of California Press, 2012). Jacques L Vn c provided details on the geography, timetables for sea and land transportation, and explanations for visas and maps in the following travel stories: Ba ngy xe hi du lch (Qui Nhon, Vietnam: Imprimerie de Quinhon, 1925), Jacques Van c L, Du-lich bn Xim (Qui Nhn: Imprimerie de Qui Nhon, 1926). 56 David G. Marr, Concepts of Individual and Self in Twentieth-Century Vietnam, Modern Asian Studies 34, no. 4 (October 2000): 769796. 57 Goscha, Rcits de voyage vitnamiens et prise de conscience indochinoise (c. 1920-1945). Nguyen Hu Sn , Introduction to Du Ky Viet Nam: Nam Phong Tap Chi, 1917-1934, 3 vols. (Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh: Nha xuat ban Tre, 2007), 5. This volume compiles the travel literature or du ky genre of literature from Nam Phong Tap Chi between 1917-1934. Du k or du hnh is loosely translated as travel report or travel story. 22
58

stories according to designated purpose: accounts of long trips, scientific studies, surveys of cultural and historical sites, and artistic musings.
59

In addition to Sns line of investigation, this project delves into the social and psychological significance of movement to shape perceptions of space. Du k travel narratives extend beyond merely individual journeys or leisurely vacation diaries, because these journeys were often published in newspapers and disseminated to the increasingly literate Vietnamese population.
60

Nguyn n Li asserts that ng Dng tp ch (1913-1919), Nam phong (1917-

1934), Tri tn (1941-1945), and Thanh ngh (1941-1945) were four of the most influential culture and education newspapers in the first half of twentieth-century Vietnam.
61

This project

will examine texts from these news sources and other popular Vietnamese serials such as Ph N Tn Vn, Bo ng Php, LAnnam Nouveau, La Tribune Indochinoise, Phong Ho, and Tng Lai. Representations of travel to an imagined public readership embody the multivariable translations involved within the modes of experiencing travel through movement, writing, and reading. The experience and representation of travel functioned as the cartography of self-assertion for individuals to re-conceptualize their lives in relation to changing social

59 Sn also categorizes these stories by three popular regional destinations, North, Quang Ninh, and Hue. 60 The majority of the travel narratives examined in this project was often written by moderate intellectuals, journalists, and officials, who operated in the in-between space of colonial legitimacy and social reform. 61 Introduction to V Nht, H Ni - Vientiane Trong Hai Gi, in Tp Ch Tr Tn 1941-1945, Truyn V K: Su Tp Tc Phm, ed. Nguyn n Li and Nguyn Hu Sn (H Ni, Vietnam: Nh Xut Bn Hi Nh Vn, 2000), 374383. 23

norms of the individual, community, gender, and nation.

62

In other words, these sources provide

insight into the individual transformation and public representation of movement and how these reflected shifting definitions of self and society. Within these representations of Indochinese tourism routes, student life in France, and the imperial and scholar traditions in Hue, the authors associated certain cultural, social, and political identities with the spaces to which they traveled. Underneath the surface details of various routes and encounters, the travel journey itself functioned as a means of transformation for individuals to re-envision themselves in relation to the changing environment. The following two chapters and epilogue examine representations of movement to and through Indochina, France, and Hue. These chapters consider how spatial identities were constructed through individual travel and representation of that movement within newsprint. This approach sheds light on the complex world of the private and public, as individuals conceptualized new spatial realities through engagement with ideas on modernity, individualism, and community. The strength of a geographically defined analysis is the ability to highlight the simultaneous construction of a place and its forces upon human behavior and perception. Furthermore, the borders of a place function to categorize and make comprehensible movementcomplex forms that cannot simply be categorized structurally such as for travel, tourism, work, or study abroad. A wider interpretation of movement and space demonstrates the far-reaching influence of travel and textual representations upon the socio-cultural perceptions of identity, modernity, and urbanism. The following three chapters examine the rhetoric of place and representation of Indochina, France, and Hue. What political, administrative, and cultural contexts brought these 62 Recreation (leisure) transformed to re-creation (regeneration and creation of a new self into a cartography of self-assertion within the intersections of space, gender, status, literacy, the economy, and the body. Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 2. 24

spaces into historical significance during the late colonial period? How are these spaces represented within popular newsprint and constructed as places of affect histories, with cultural or political meaning? This analysis of travel texts will illuminate the personal and political characteristics of Indochina, France, and Hue as sites of middle class identity, youth dystopia, and lost heritage. These chapters also demonstrate the underlying conversation on civilization and modernity, where the voyeuristic nature of the traveler reflected an autonomous individual moving throughout new regions and experiences. Yet along with the transformative rearticulations of individual agency, the role of the individual was shaped too by its relationship with society and formulations of political and cultural community.
63

A close study of the travel

experience and representation within newsprint delves deeper into the complex conversation between cultural expectations, personal encounters, and spatial communities.

63 Mark Philip Bradley, Becoming Van Minh: Civilizational Discourse and Visions of the Self in Twentieth-Century Vietnam, Journal of World History 15, no. 1 (March 1, 2004): 6583, 66. 25

CHAPTER 2 EXPLORING THE SPACE OF INDOCHINA: INVENTION AND REALITY With the development of local transportation networks along rivers, road, rail, and air in the first decades of the twentieth century, travel throughout Indochina became an experience not just for rich Westerners or the Vietnamese royal family, but also for the expanding Vietnamese middle class. For them, Indochina represented an amalgamation of ideals associated with essentialized fantasies of middle class mobility, pastoral landscape, and heritage site. For the nouveau riche Vietnamese middle class, participation in the lifestyle of colonial leisure and travel was a performative marker of socio-cultural success. And for some others, travel signified a modern form of understanding both the cultural and natural landscape of Indochina. As demonstrated in travel stories throughout the region, Indochina became the near abroad for many upwardly mobile Vietnamese eager to experience mechanized movement, cushioned resorts, and tourism destinations. In this way, Indochina represented a space for Vietnamese urbanites, intellectuals, and the middle class to explore and exercise new forms of collective identities. While direct access to such touristic journeys still depended upon a measure of disposable income, the practice of travel to destinations in Indochina such as Angkor, Lt, and Ph Quc permeated the pages of Vietnamese newsprint along with discussions on modernity, urbanization, and gender. These topics of debate ultimately symbolized new spatial

26

perceptions and relations in late colonial society that defined privilege and mobility. Furthermore, the ability to travel symbolized the increasing rift between urban and rural, French and Vietnamese, and the privileged and disenfranchised. With Indochina as the near abroad for Vietnamese, how did Vietnamese imagine and reinvent an Indochinese space through the act of travel? This chapter examines Vietnamese print discussions on travel throughout Indochina. It demonstrates how the spatial identity of Indochina was closely intertwined with the emergence of a Vietnamese middle class consciousness. The first section considers how travel within the region functioned as a way to know and ultimately imagine the spatial identity of Indochina as a cultural and historical unit. The second section addresses the relational nature of traveler and environment and examines how Vietnamese travelers promoted essentialized visions of rural spaces. The last part considers the influence of Western ideas of privileged space upon transportation and leisure culture as it manifested itself in travel throughout Indochina. The following sections illustrate the multifaceted architectures of mobility that brought Vietnamese throughout the space of Indochina and also circulated debates about the personal and collective significance of travel.

Making Sense of Indochinese Space and Community through Travel Many popular journeys such as those from Hanoi to Saigon along la route mandarine [the Mandarin Road], to heritage sites like Angkor Wat, or to mountain resorts of Lt, symbolized routes of engagement with the colonial project and essentialized constructs of the West. This is due to the fact that travel itineraries often developed based on existent European tourism or were shaped by a mimicry of leisure practices. Nevertheless Vietnamese travel within Indochina was also a creative phenomenon, conceived through interpretations of modernity,

27

individualism, urbanization, and leisure. Through travel, individuals could witness sites popularized amongst Westerners as symbols of Indochina such as Angkor, but could also create for themselves a different meaning of that space. In this way, Vietnamese travel within Indochina took on a broader cultural and political significance as a demonstration of Vietnamese modern capability and the expression of alternatives vision of space. While not directly anti-colonial or nationalistic, the spatial identities explored and imagined through Vietnamese travel were products of new ways of thinking about the individual and the collective. This re-orientation towards individual cultivation also embodied the social transformation at the turn of the century, influenced by Social Darwinistic mentalities of a heightened the role of the individual; individual cultivation and personal will-power became underlying currents for Vietnamese literature and newsprint as well as social reform.
64

Vietnamese travel within Indochina demonstrated the

multifaceted exploration of self through space and provoked conversations on questions of modernity, national or cultural belonging, and individual achievement. This section explores the discourse on physical and social mobility as symbols of middle class expression, civilizational progress, and also gendered concepts of spatial difference. In the beginning of many travel stories, authors declared and justified their own cultural and intellectual significance as mediators between the local and the foreign. Authors often framed the travel experience as beneficial to both the individual and the communityan idea loosely referenced as the authors readership, home, country, or the larger Vietnamese imagined community of nh nc [state]. For example, in the first pages of ng-Phng Du-Lch [Travel to the East] written in 1923 by Jacques L Vn c, c emphasized the importance for 64 Mark Bradley considers how Vietnamese intellectuals grafted the Spencerian perspectives of Social Darwinism in early 20 century reform movements of self-strengthening and modernization. Ibid. 28
th

this pilgrimage for both himself and the Catholic community to which he returns.

65

He explained

how on his return he would share his experiences with his parents, friends, and community, and thus the trip would not be without value. The authors designated sense of importance can initially be read merely as a self-promotion and declaration of legitimacy over subject matter. Nonetheless, the ways in which authors represented the purpose of travel in their own du k or in advertisements for tourism reveal a deeper reflection on how travel functioned as a valuable form of understanding and knowledge for the self and community. To justify travel and its inherent selflessness, L Vn c for example, commended those who believed without seeing, but still extolled travel as a form of seeing and learning.
66

He contrasted the Biblical verse with the proverb To travel is to gain knowledge of this and that; staying at home, who knows when one will become wise. Along with this popular Vietnamese proverb, other travel stories often referenced other Vietnamese proverbs, like, Traveling just one step, one acquires a basket of wisdom or journey [to see] for the purpose of knowing, to enumerate the legitimacy, benefit, and objective of travel.
67

Along with other t

mi [new or reinterpreted Vietnamese vocabulary], the idea of acquiring knowledge ranged in definition and interpretation. For example, knowledge could be loosely translated to 65 Jacques L Vn c, ng-Phng du-lch: Cun th nht, trans. Eugne Vn nh Nguyn (Qui Nhon, Vietnam: Imprimerie de Quinhon, 1923). Nht l ch- v phn o, th li cng qui-ho, v khi tr v, ta thut li cho cha m, bn hu, cho ng-bang ta nghe nhng u ta ng nghe ng thy, bit, th no c phi l v-ch? 3. 66 Jacques L Vn c referenced the verse Blessed are those who believe without seeing me. John 20:29 67 i mt ngy ng hc mt sng khn, [Traveling just one step, one acquires a basket of wisdom], i chi cho bit To travel is to learn, i cho bit bit y, nh vi m bit ngy no khn [To travel is to learn this and that, staying home with ones mother who knows when one will become wise] and reiterates how the knowledge, sights, and lessons he gained in this trip would extend to the larger community. 29

intelligence, wisdom, mind, or widened perspective.

68

In just one article, the author rationalized

his arguments for tourism as the opportunity to gy cho mnh c nhiu mi cm tng v lch s v m thut [widen ones perspectives on history and art], lm cho m mang kin vn v tr thc [expand opinions and intelligence], as well as i coi cho bit [journey to see for the purpose of knowing].
69

In these reiterations of the Vietnamese partial compound verb for travel,

i [to go], coi[see/watch], xem [to see], writers appropriated these proverbs to emphasize the cultural necessity of travel for the purpose of gaining knowledge.
70

With such cultural and

ideological importance and benefits, travel was represented as pertinent and priceless. V Nht explained that even for those of limited economic means, travel (specifically an airplane trip) was a great financial sacrifice taken in order to satiate one's curiosity.
71

Phm Qunh (1892-1945) introduced his travel narrative in such a manner, not withholding prideful remarks on his honorable feat to depart from home and gain

68 Knowledge in Vietnamese is often used similar to the English words wisdom and intelligencequalities obtained historically through studying letters and morals (Confucian). Duy Anh o, Hn-Vit T-in (Saigon: Trng-Thi Xut Bn, 1957). 69 Sn Mc N.X.H. Mu, Lc K i ng B T H Ni Vo Si Gn, in Du Ky Viet Nam: Nam Phong Tap Chi, 1917-1934, vol. 3, 3 vols. (Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh: Nh Xut Bn Tr, 2007), 2544. 70 In his definition of du k travel stories, Nguyn Hu Sn describes the action of i and xem as the essence of travel. Sn continues to describe how du k stories depict the experiences and efforts through which a traveler determinedly perseveres. Nguyen Hu Sn Nguyen, Du K Trn Tp Ch Nam Phong (1917-1934), L lun ph bnh vn hc, January 29, 2009, http://trieuxuan.info/?pg=tpdetail&id=1462&catid=6. 71 V, H Ni - Vientiane Trong Hai Gi. The beginning of the quote refers to his fellow readers as we, working class laborers, with an income no more than 100$. Tp Ch Tri Tn was a weekly newspaper that began in June 3, 1941. Its namesake originated from the Confucian saying, n c tri tn, n c bit mi. 30

knowledge.

72

Qunh, editor of the Hanoi based journal Southern Wind (Nam Phong Tap Chi)

and later Minister of Education, serialized one of the most extensive and well-known travel stories, A Month in the South between November 1918 and January 1919. Reinforcing his argument with the saying To travel is to gain knowledge of this and that Qunh asserted that his travels helped him obtain a measure of wisdom.
73

Nguyn Hu Sn describes Phm

Qunhs assertive and lengthy self-praise as an attempt to display qualifications as an earned right to cast judgment and publicly comment on various regions and cultures.
74

In another of

Phm Qunhs famous travel narratives, Php du hnh trnh nht k [Diary of a Journey], and in a public lecture at the Hanoi Opera House on October 12, 1922, Qunh announced, After returning from afar, one is free to boast.
75

Through validations for travel, authors of travel

stories attempted to carve out and define for themselves social purpose, intellectual meaning, and even cultural responsibility. Through this convergence of travel and knowledge, the road was positioned to redefine a travelers own sense of worth and reflect changing assumptions of space, mobility, and worldly

72 Phm Qunh, Mt Thng Nam K, in Du Ky Viet Nam: Nam Phong Tap Chi, 1917-1934, vol. 2, 3 vols. (Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh: Nh Xut Bn Tr, 2007), 145253, http://lirc.tailieu.vn/xem-tai-lieu/mot-thang-o-nam-ky-pham-quynh.28971.html. Originally this travelogue was serialized in Hanoi between November 1918 and January 1919 as Numbers 17, 19, 20, 21, and 22 of Nam Phong. Mt Thng Nam K appears in volume 2, 145-253. 73 Here, Qunh engages in a stylistic cyclical argument, both humbly denying his complete and admirable wisdom and affirming the significance of his experiences. 74 Nguyn Hu Sn Nguyn, Du K V Vng Vn Ho Si Gn -Nam B Trn Nam Phong Tp Ch (1917-1934), September 2007, http://namkyluctinh.org/a-hoiky/phamquynhhoikynambo.htm. Specifically, Sn highlights Qunhs enthusiasm to observe and make clear and informed comparative analyses (based on his experiential knowledge) between Saigon and Hanoi. 75 As cited by Lockhart and Lockhart, Broken Journey: Nht Linhs Going to France. 31

experience.

76

Ph N Tn Vn [Womens News], a progressive weekly magazine based in

Saigon in the 1930s, organized a popular tourism trip between Saigon and Angkor for their primarily Vietnamese middle class and urban readership.
77

This approximately ten-day trip

scheduled for February 9, 1930, was advertised over the course of six monthly issues and initially included a visit to Lt. One of the follow up articles, Cuc du-lch -thin published in January 20, 1930, explained how the trip was canceled last minute because those who had to work (anh em lao ng v cc vin chc) would not be able to participate.
78

The

trip would be postponed to a holiday such as Pques [Easter] and explained how a scenic trip such as this, must have a lot of travelers to discuss, learn, and reflect on the landscape together. Defined by an embrace of individualistic values at the philosophic level and new collective ideologies, Ph N Tn Vn functioned as a platform for diverse discussions on cultural trends and political life.
79

Furthermore, popular newspapers such as this one catered to a readership of

primarily men and women of the intellectual bourgeoisie, who according to a colonial study by Andre Dumarest (1935), tended to mimic a certain Western lifestyle and cultural values.
80

In

76 Sarah Whitney Womack, Colonialism and the Collaborationist Agenda: Pham Quynh, Print Culture, and the Politics of Persuasion in Colonial Vietnam, Ph.D. Dissertation, (University of Michigan, 2003), http://search.proquest.com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/docview/287941399/13CE14172B838CCF48A/2? accountid=12598. 77 Angkor- Lt,Saigon-Angkor, -thin -thch, No. 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40. Ph N Tn Vn, December 1929-February 1930. 78 The reason for postponing the trip and the articles use of the term anh em lao ng v cc vin chc remain ambiguous as to what type of audience the trip was catered towards. Vin chc was a general term for official while anh em lao ng implies general workers. 79 Peycam, The Birth of Modern Vietnamese Political Journalism. Andr Dumarest, Formation de classes sociales en pays annamite (The formation of social classes in Annam) (Lyon: Ferreol, 1935), 234 as cited in Shawn McHale, Printing and Power, 177. 32
80

the article i Chi Tc L Hc [To travel is to learn], the author explained that title was inspired by a supposedly popular Western saying.
81

Not only did this article explicate the

direct association between tourism and knowledge but it also used a construct of the West to reinforce its significance. Published in Ph N Tn Vn on 9 January 1930, the trip to -thin -thch [Angkor Wat] promised its participants the experience of gaining worldly knowledge specifically the opportunity to understand the beautiful civilization of the thriving Cao-mien [Cambodia] of the olden days. With cultural and historical knowledge as a primary justification for travel, the advertisement firmly stated that a journey to historic locations far eclipsed the knowledge gained from fifty books.

Figure 2-1 Scenery of -Thin -Thch- Scenic image that accompanied tourism articles to Angkor Wat. i Chi Tc L Hc, Ph N Tn Vn, no. 36 (9 January 1930). Here and in other print media, advertisements encouraged Vietnamese to travel, invoking a sense of social responsibility to know and understand the country in which they dwelt. However, Vietnamese travel to western parts of Indochina (Laos and Cambodia)an area that 81 i Chi Tc L Hc, Ph N Tn Vn, no. 36 (9 January 1930). 33

was not ethnically Vit or Kinh and historically had been spaces of Vietnamese dynastic expansionunderscored the many layers of spatial identity. Throughout travel stories such as Nguyn Vn Vnhs Cochinchine et Cambodge, and Un mois avec des chercheurs dor, and ng Php Thi Bos Ngi Annam Di C Sang Lo [A Vietnamese travels to Laos] authors often raised questions about cultural difference, and within this reflection considered the nature Vietnamese characteristics, culture, and history. Similarly the trip advertised in Ph N Tn Vn to Angkor Wat claimed that by reflecting on the old buildings, trees, statues, and stones, travelers should be stirred to critical reflection, emotion, and a deeper understanding of the world around them.
83 82

Trn Quang Huyn, a civil servant to the Rsidence suprieure of Laos

in Vientiane, described his travels throughout the "foreign" territories of Indochina in Ai Lao Hnh Trnh [Journey to Laos].
84

Even when traveling by river, sea, and road from northern

Indochina southward, he remarked that he only now realized the incredible cultural, ethnic, and linguistic differences in the North and South. With increasing distance from the port of Hi Phng, Huyn felt a sense of homesickness and cultural detachment. Du k and newsprint representations of knowledge continually emphasized the necessity of travel not only as a social imperative but also as a reflection of civilization measured against the West. In a description of fellow airplane passengers, the Vietnamese narrator explained how everyone, except for four Westerners, gazed silently outside the windows, mesmerized by 82 Nguyn Vn Vnhs travel stories were published in LAnnam Nouveau, 7, January 1932, 1-2 and Annam Nouveau, March-April 1936, 1 of each issue. Ngi Annam Di C Sang Lo was published in the 4 February 1928 issue of ng Php Thi Bo. 83 i Chi Tc L Hc. Trn Quang Huyn, Ai Lao Hnh Trnh, in Du Ky Viet Nam: Nam Phong Tap Chi, 19171934, vol. 3, 3 vols. (Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh: Nh Xut Bn Tr, 2007), 257274. Originally published as No. 57 in March 1922. 34
84

the scenery. The author immediately assumed that the Westerners were frequent travelers and thus accustomed to such magnificent views.
85

In the same 1930 article To travel is to learn, the

author also explained that tourists from dozens of Western countries had already flocked to Indochinas historical sites, yet Vietnamese had not yet recognized the cultural significance of such a touristic experience. In this way the author reinforced the necessity to mimic certain Western behaviorin this case of tourism and exploration of Indochina. Moreover within this line of argument, the author seemed to represent the contrast between Westerners and local inhabitants as an affront to the cultural and spatial awareness of Vietnamese. Using precisely the verb to know, the author concludes: If we live so close to historical sites such as Angkor Wat, shouldnt we journey so we could know as well?
86

In this way the road or a travelers journey

took on a heightened meaning beyond physical movement or reclusive leisure. The road symbolized a forum to explore the meaning of modern and Western practices and functioned as an active stage on which meanings could be discovered, created, and communicated.
87

In

other words, the road was a metaphoric space that offered Vietnamese the opportunity to participate in popular Western practices such as tourism, as well as individually experience, redefine, and be transformed by new modes of thinking. In the two-month-long series titled Le Tourisme et les Annamites [Tourism and the Annamese], the unnamed authors viewed travel as a reflection of cultural and civilizational 85 Nht, H Ni - Vientiane Trong Hai Gi. Originally published in Tp ch Tri tn as no. 7778 in December 1942. Except for a group of four Westerners who had been sleeping pleasantly since they had eaten the inflight mealthese four men, either they had no emotions to the site, or they fell asleep because they probably have flown in an airplane many times; thus the scenery from the heavens downwards in their eyes must be so boring." 86 i Chi Tc L Hc.
87

Judith Adler, Travel as Performed Act, American Journal of Sociology 94, no. 6 (May 1989), 1368. 35

necessity. This series appeared throughout 1928 within La Tribune Indichinoise, a FrancoVietnamese newspaper initiated by Constitutionalist Bu Quang Chiu and Nguyn Ph Khai in 1917.
88

The first column on May 16th began with a quotation by Theodore Roosevelt: All great

fundamental truths are apt to sound rather trite, and yet in spite of their triteness they need to be reiterated over and over again.
89

With this declaration of fundamental truths, the article

characterized the freedom of travel as one of the basic human rights. Furthermore, this article continued to say that only a limited number of bourgeois Vietnamese and young students traveled to France and thence exercised this right. Critiquing Vietnamese social mores as patriarchal, simple, and fearful of newness, the article declared that tourism was virtually unknown in Vietnam. These critiques and the explanation of the right to travel formed the foundation of the authors call to action: for the French language and quc ng Vietnamese press both to transform Vietnamese attitudes towards tourism, persuade the indigenous public opinion, and create organizations to facilitate Vietnamese tourism.
90

Much like the avid comparisons that appeared in Ph N Tn Vn, the modern West is contrasted to Vietnamese static and antiquated perspectives. Throughout his extensive travel story from Hanoi to Saigon, Mu Sn Mc reflected on and made cultural comparisons of the 88 La Tribune Indochinoise (founded 9 August 1926) succeeded La Tribune Indigene, which was the first Vietnamese political newspaper initiated by Bu Quang Chiu and in 1917. For a th thorough examination of Saigon political journalism in the first three decades of the 20 century, see Peycam, The Birth of Modern Vietnamese Political Journalism. 89 This quote from Theodore Roosevelt was originally published in Promise and Performance in Outlook in 2 July 1900. 90 It is possible that underlying the authors call to action were Constitutionalist political demands for indigenous access and representation. Calling for Vietnamese to travel to other neighboring countries, especially Siam and the Dutch East Indies, the author emphasized the importance of learning from other independent and colonized societies. For example, he remarked that in the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch colonizers have a penchant for equality, offering indigenous populations the opportunity for public participation. 36

various cities to which he traveled. On visiting Saigon, Mc concluded that Western fashion, particularly feminine attire, could come to signal modernity and forward-thinking and should become more popular in Vietnamese society.
91

Characterizing social strata according to fashion

sense, Mc ultimately called on Vietnamese to mimic Western fashion as a symbol of modernity and forward-thinking: Well-mannered women wear clothing adorned with white flowers, while women laborers wear black with a white head scarf...The most elite Vietnamese women abandon the feminine clothing style and mimic that of men. Instead, we must copy Western fashion, particularly womens dresses...
92

Mcs Lc K i ng B T H Ni Vo Si Gn

[Journey by Road from Hanoi to Saigon] also attributed an intellectual purpose and cultural necessity for travel. In passing through Hue, Mc remarked that his journey was not one for leisure, but one concerning art.
93

Here Mc defined art as the physical manifestation of

literature but remained ambiguous as to its details and social function. In this manner, the pursuit of travel was justified as a mechanism for artistic inspiration and experiential knowledge. Furthermore throughout many Vietnamese travel stories, authors reflected upon how the opportunity to travel shaped their collective identity. Across geographic and cultural boundaries, travelers recognized different manifestations of community such as by class, profession, or socio-political outlook. In an example of a metaphorical journey, Benedict Anderson considers the psychological transformation of functionaries when traveling and meeting others: In his journey, he understood rather quickly that his point of originconceived either ethnically,

91 Mc, Lc K i ng B T H Ni Vo Si Gn. Originally published as number 129 on May 1928. 92 Ibid. 39-41.
93

Ibid., 28-29. 37

linguistically, or geographicallywas of small significance.

94

Here Anderson emphasizes that

movement attaches an individuals localized identity to a larger community. Print media relating to travel, ranging from mass-produced Madrolle travel guides to Vietnamese travel stories, disseminated points of reference for travel and functioned as a platform to explore ideas of Indochinese space.
95

In the travel story i Tu Bay [Traveling by Airplane] signed April 1919,

sergent aviateur Phan Tt To provided practical recommendations such as clothing preparations, and led the reader through the experience of flying in his descriptions of the disconcerting speed and wind, bizarre feeling of lift off, an the excitement of a new perspective of the world.
96

The expansion of mechanized movement such as trains, automobiles, and

airplanes increased the ability to travel and changed the perception of lived distance between cultural spaces.
97

Within Vietnamese newsprint, authors expressed their ambitions to travel to

places such as Laos, Angkor, Hanoi, and Saigon and the logistics of such a trip. V Nht described his aspirations to experience flying in the travel story H Ni- Vientiane trong hai gi [H Ni Vientiane in Two Hours] published in 1942. 94 Anderson, Imagined Communities. Anderson examines the educational and language policy of Indochina in his chapter titled The Last Wave. 95 Goscha, Rcits de voyage vitnamiens et prise de conscience indochinoise (c. 1920-1945). 258. See Signalisation routeiere. Arrete du gouvernement general de lindochine 12 September 1936, Hanoi, IDEO, 1937, and the satirical comic of Dong Song (Nhat Linh) in Phong Hoa 22 Septembre 1932, p. 1. For an example of a Vietnamese guide book, see Jacques L Vn c, Ty hnh lc k: T Sigon n Marseille, trans. Eugene Vn St inh (Qui Nhon, Vietnam: Imprimerie de Quinhon, 1923). 96 Phan Tt To, i Tu Bay, in Du Ky Viet Nam: Nam Phong Tap Chi, 1917-1934, vol. 1, 3 vols. (Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh: Nh Xut Bn Tr, 2007), 7883. "Tuy rng lc cn lo s, song chc rng cc ong b tht trong ngi khoan khoi dn ln, nh nh nhng mt m... 79. 97 Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). 38

Ever since there existed a route from Hanoi to Vientiane, I held in my heart the dream to experience departing through the clouds returning by wind in my lifetime. Every so often I go to the airfield, see the huge engines of the Dewoitine, peer in to see its fancy 98 passenger seats, and my desire grows ever stronger. Towards the end of his travel story Nht quoted eighteenth century Vietnamese nm poet Nguyn Du who called for Vietnamese to visit Laos regardless of the distance.
99

He then

explained in jest that Nguyn Du could foretell the future because the airplane had made the distance to Laos a manageable reality. As in the airplane story Hanoi Vientiane in Two Hours, many individuals expressed how their journey was the realization of a dream to travel within Indochina, explore exotic places referenced in literature, and experience novel modes of transit.
100

For example, when invited to accompany his friend by motorbike to Saigon in the next

three days, Mu Sn Mc immediately agreed, explaining that a journey by highway into Hue and Saigon was one of his lifelong dreams.
101

Pham Qunhs One Month in the South also illuminates the relationship between travel and cultural space. In the following lines, Qunh exclaimed that his travels inspired him to perceive Southerners, specifically, other workers in the newspaper business, as his ng nghip [colleagues]. In each instance of meeting the other colleagues, we have festive and pleasant discussions. I know that those of the South and of the North rarely have the opportunity

98 Nht, H Ni - Vientiane Trong Hai Gi. V Nht references the following quote by Nguyn Du: ng xa chi ngi Ng, Lo. Ibid., 383. 100 Ibid.
101 99

Mc, Lc K i ng B T H Ni Vo Si Gn. 39

to meet one another and become friends; but each time we do meet each other, it truly is 102 easy to become good friends. Described as the spirit of journalism, Qunh emphasized the natural or comfortable relationship between the North and South regardless of geographic distance and historic differences.
103

Following his assertion of Vietnamese camaraderie, Qunh concluded his travel

series with the idealistic proclamation that both Northerner and Southerner were ultimately children of the same household.
104

What Qunh referred to as a tourist trip of the South, travel

extended his consciousnesswhere far away lands become part of our country, strangers become brothers and comrades, and home asserts a new and deeper meaning.

Relational Definitions of Spaces & Self: The Wilderness, Countryside & Mountains Travel stories and advertisements dedicated pages to discussing in length the natural landscapes and countryside, often in oversimplified, stark contrast to a sense of modernity and normalcy. With the overwhelming ascendancy of the urban middle class within the realms of travel and print, representations of the trips into the wilderness and countryside often slipped into the realm of bucolic romance and even utopic fancy. Revolutionary Trng Chinh described the 102 He begins this reflection by defining the newspaper workers from Saigon as explicitly fellow comrades (ng nghip, tc l cc anh em lm bo Si Gn) with whom it is naturally are easy to become friends (tht l d nn ci tnh thn i vy). On this trip Phm Qunh notes that he visited the editors, managers, or contributors of southern newspapers such as Bi Quang Chiu, Nguyn Ph Khai, Dip Vn Cng, and Dip Vn K. 103 Qunh, Mt Thng Nam K. Pham Qunh commented that journalists from all regions dedicate their lives to proclaim news for the country and are united as a community under the universal goal to strengthen and modernize ones country. 104 Ibid., 253. In another section when discussion Qunhs visits to fellow newspaper journalists, he reiterates his realization with the following profession: Since we (northern and southern people) are part of the one country, although far away, we are brothers; as long as with each other we are fair, and not have habit of indifference of a rude person, then would it virtually be impossible to not become close friends?" 40

urban middle class illusion of the countryside in the following anecdote: [Vietnamese] aristocratic and bourgeois writers set out in their cars and speed through the countryside; they see the green and fragrant fields, the thick smoke rising from the thatched roofs in the evening and immediately invent a picture full of poetic flavor.
105

These sketches of the rural landscape

portrayed the countryside as the ideal space, or Leo Marxs Middle Landscape, one carefully balanced between the raw dangers of the wild and the oppressive structure of the city.
106

Furthermore, the mutable environment often functioned to fulfill the dreams and ideals of the author. Stories that reinforced masculine determination framed the wilderness as unconquerable while advertisements for mountain resorts appealed to those who wanted to cleanse themselves of urban disorder. These texts harkened upon certain emotions of topophilia, the sentiment associated with place, to buttress visions of power aligned with masculinity and class.
107

Within these accounts, authors often associated the roadfrom wild frontier to

tranquil escapein a relational understanding of their own sense of home and self. Although a measure of egocentrism dominated the perspectives in these travel narratives, these representations exemplify how the natural environment and experience of rural travel came to shape the identity of the predominantly urban travelers themselves. For example, travelers often described how the countryside and mountains inspired new perspectives such as a deeper appreciation for the comforts of home, the realization of a new cultural community, or nostalgia 105 Trng Chinh and Nguyn Gip V, The Peasant Question 19371938, trans. Christine Pelzer White, vol. 94, Data Paper--Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974). 9. 106 Yi-fu Tuan, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974); Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America, 35th Anniversary (Oxford University Press, USA, 2000). 107 Yi-fu, Topophilia. 41

for the past. In other stories, the natural environment served as both an escape from the urban chaos and as an adventuresome challenge into the frontier. L Vn Ngn explained how during his summer living with a rural French family he learned the pleasant simplicities of country life away from the noisy city. He described that there, happiness was derived from scenes such as a peaceful family, the high mountains, vast fields, conversations while milking cows, and flocks of chickens fed each morning.
108

In Chi Ph Quc [Traveling to Ph Quc], Mng Tuyt intertwined depictions of the natural envioronment and local inhabitants with a poetic flavor, inspired by the exotic, foreign, and elegant sounds of the island.
109

Mng Tuyt whose real name was Thi Th c,

was a journalist and poet, known for her writing style, vivid imagery, and participation in the H Tin t tuyt literary group (ng H, Mng Tuyt, L Kh, Trc H). Although for a short period, Mng Tuyt published under her husband, ng Hs pen name, she quickly established a literary reputation, even earning recognition from the T Lc Vn on (Self-Reliance Literary Group) for her work in 1939.
110

One of her lesser known contributions is the romantic

travel narrative Traveling to Ph Quc serialized in 1934 in Nam Phong [Southern Wind], numbers 198-200. In Traveling to Ph Quc, Tuyt eloquently illustrated her visit to the island 108 L Vn Ngn, Nm y Php, in Tp Ch Tr Tn 1941-1945, Truyn V K: Su Tp Tc Phm, ed. Nguyn n Li and Nguyn Hu Sn (H Ni, Vietnam: Nh Xut Bn Hi Nh Vn, 2000), 753760. 109 Mng Tuyt, Chi Ph Quc, in Du Ky Viet Nam: Nam Phong Tap Chi, 1917-1934, vol. 1, 3 vols. (Thnh ph H Ch Minh: Nh Xut Bn Tr, 2007), 382395 originally published in May-July 1934 in Numbers 198-200 in Nam Phong journal. 110 Mng Tuyt was recognized for her work Phn hng rng in 1939. Website Phng GD V T Giang Thnh - Kin Giang N S Mng Tuyt, accessed February 21, 2013, http://giangthanh.violet.vn/document/show/entry_id/4981638; Truyn Mng Tuyt Tht Tiu Mui - Tc Gi H Trng An, accessed February 21, 2013, http://kinhdotruyen.com/tac-giaho-truong-an/truyen-mong-tuyet-that-tieu-muoi.html. 42

as a dream realizedan internal conversation weaving between fact and fiction, hearsay and her own perspectives. For example, when she and her companions came upon a rugged field, Tuyt recalled stories of local villagers who picked sim fruit in the fields during the spring. This recollection triggered a dreamy image of a pair of women, flittering among the trees, singing and picking fruit. Even with the empty field, Tuyts imagination built a story of idyllic peasant life. In another instance, she remarked upon the hardworking locals at the small western township of Dng ng: Underneath the dim lights, the fisherman works to repair his net while conversing; he seems happymerrily and peacefully content with his task.
111

This story

demonstrates how a space becomes a place for expression of middle class life, environmental leisure culture, and urban illusions of the utopic countryside.
112

Tuyts travel story is also an example of how the natural environment served to engage and transform the traveler over the course of the journey. In the beginning of her narrative, Tuyt described her previous world as the silent and secretive life of a girl living in an isolated maidens chambers, and the sights and sounds of her journey bring her to forget all the sad things in her life. Nevertheless, the place and significance of home transformed over Tuyts journey and the physical challenges of exploring the island both excited and reminded her of her own limitations. Home and road are placed in this contradictory binary, but with fluid reinterpretations triggered by physical markers, such as a waterfall that reminded her of a proverb on parents unending love for their children. By the end of the trip, Tuyt described her departure from the island as a return home to a place that she always held in the heart. While much of this story reads as a romantic recollection of a young girls first travels and inevitable 111 Ibid. 384.
112

Sn, Du K V Vng Vn Ho Si Gn -Nam B Trn Nam Phong Tp Ch (1917-1934). 43

homesickness, the emphasis on personal adventure, physical displacement, and emotional conversion is significant. In reading Mng Tuyts travel narrative, the physical departure from home brings her to realize that very space both as an impediment and as a safe, welcoming haven. As a metaphorical movement towards new ideas and customs, travel could symbolize an escape from the static home towards the pursuit of progress and intellectual newness. Throughout travel stories and advertisements, physical mobility was presented in ways that at times reinforced gendered spheressuch as of feminized homes and colonial projectsand other times celebrated the triumph over realms of immobility. Newspapers often posted announcements about great feats of transportation movement particularly by women. For example, a 1929 Ph N Tn Vn article announced that an American woman successfully led a fleet of cars around the world for eight years, and thus defied the popular belief that women had khng ti cng ngh lc [a limited number of talents and capabilities].
113

Furthermore,

freedom of movement was in some cases aligned with political and civic liberties. In an article titled Ch em cn bit iu kin g trc khi tip xc [Before going out to the world, what should you women know?], the author Xuyn Sn explained the importance for women to physically and symbolically step away from the home and take upon more civic responsibilities outside of the home.
114

These articles emphasized the importance of ngh lc, represented as

energy or self-initiative for women to initiate change to overcome cultural and environmental obstacles. Also published in the same newsletter Tng-Lai [Future] in 1934, the article Bit Hot ng Mi c [One Must Know Activities] demonstrated the link between movement 113 Mt Ngi Con Gi, Lm u Mt Ton Xe Hi, i Du-lch c Th-gii T 8 Nm Nay, Ph N Tn Vn no. 25 (October 17, 1929): 6. 114 Xuyn Sn, Ch Em Cn Bit iu Kin G Trc Khi Tip Xc..., Tng-Lai, 1934. 44

and political liberation, but through the perspective of female author Qunh Diu. Qunh Diu attributed movement and transportation to a sense of social change and gendered mobility. Addressing women explicitly, Diu proclaimed that the world was becoming more mechanized and women must walk towards the future, We are now living in a time of movement, of global competition and comparison, a world with the emergence of very big cities, trains operating north and south, and numerous other changes si ni [rumbling and emergence of change]" have already occurred, and 115 thus has undeniably transformed the mentalities of the past. In particular Qunh Diu used the metaphor of movement to emphasize the importance of gii phng vn ph n [the liberation of womens issues] and bnh quyn [equality].
116

Diu

explained that in Vietnamese history, men kept women constrained to the household, and Vietnamese women must become strong, believe in the ability to move forward, participate in the world beyond family, and not be weighed down by the mentality of the past. Within this article Diu associated the past with antiquated social mores that denied women the physical ability to move (such as foot binding) and social mobility (such as holding political positions and suffrage). She explained that the light of equality still lies defiantly at the curtain of the ancient world such as Vietnam, and encouraged Vietnamese women to look towards China who entered the world economy, encountered the West, and their old ways of looking at the world dissolved. Movement away from the gendered realm of home signified the liberation from the past and towards equality loosely associated with constructs of modernity and the West.

115 Qunh Diu, Bit Hot ng Mi c, Tng-Lai no. 1 (February 15, 1934): 5657. Diu continues to explain that much like how China was changed by trains and transportation towards social and cultural change, we (Vietnamese women) too should take this road of equality, and walk towards the future too. 116 Ibid. 45

Throughout Vietnamese print media the opportunity for movement offered agency and power, the space of home was aligned with a mother who could be both welcoming and debilitating, and exotic lands exuded a heroic appeal for adventure and conquest. Furthermore, these articles emphasized the significance of tourism or the freedom of movement as an expression of both civilizational behavior and civil liberty. In the beginning lines of Phm Qunhs travel story, he referenced a popular Vietnamese proverb that symbolically glorified the responsibility of going to the battlefield and surrendering ones life to defend the Vietnamese people.
117

This duty signified an individuals rite of passage, aligning the gendered sacrifice of

leaving ones home to what Qunh described as becoming a man or exerting manliness. In this way, with a nod to Confucian social mores, Qunh linguistically twisted the proverb to redefine how he, a well-traveled man who had left his home, spent 10 days at the capital of Hue, and now one month in the South of Vietnam, definitely had earned his right to become a man. In Ai Lao Hnh Trnh [Journey to Laos] Trn Quang Huyn attempted to combat his homesickness by reminding himself of the cultural responsibility for men to leave home. He associated the significance of travel with manliness in his allusion to the Vietnamese proverb "Nam nhi ch ti t phng
118

Loosely translated to signify that men should travel to many

places, Huyn also added that during their journey, men should not hesitate when confronted with the need to climb mountains, ford rivers, travel through the wind and night, and must bear on their shoulders all obstacles and challenges.
119

The discourse of gendered difference was

deeply embedded within many narratives, attributing masculine empowerment and change to the 117 Lm trai ng nn trai, Ph Xuan tri, ng Nai cng tng.
118 119

Huyn, Ai Lao Hnh Trnh. Ibid., 258. 46

road and feminine stability to the home.

120

These media representations of womens apparent

immobility and the isolation of home, however, must be regarded within its historical context and print audience of the generally urban, literate, middle class.
121

In the investigative and scientific report titled Cnh Vt H Tin [The Natural Environment in H Tin] by ng H and Nguyn Vn Kim and published in Nam Phong Tp Ch between May and September of 1930, ng H dedicated one section to retell his travel to Mount Dng on December 7, 1926. H explains how this site was one of the ten most stunning sights deemed worthy by eighteenth century official and literary figure Mc Thin Tch.
122

Within ng Hs retelling and personal observations, Mount Dng offers the most

scenic view in all the lands, and thus must be the most challenging of all journeys. In stark contrast to the dreamy lure of Tuyts illustration, particular attention is dedicated to the countless number of obstacles encountered on the way up Mount Dng such as sporadic storms, difficult rocky terrain, and fallen trees. Within this description, the physical challenges and the process of overcoming them were the measures of what made an enjoyable and adventuresome experience. The story concludes with a proverbial statement ...if this scenic 120 Studying historic gendered mobility in the Edo period (1600-1868), Laura Nenzi examines the symbolic construction and limitations of the Japanese Tokugawa government to regulate womens mobility. Nenzi argues that the symbolic association of women to the home reflects the importance of womens crucial roles in the economy of the household, lineage, and power balance. Nenzi, Laura Nenz Detto. At the Intersection of Travel and Gender in Excursions in Identity Travel and the Intersection of Place, Gender, and Status in Edo Japan. (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2008), 51. 121 Additionally, the question of womens freedom to travel assumed certain class-based definitions of movement that could disregard historical patterns of Vietnamese mobility related to economy, spirituality, and marriage. 122 ng H and Vn Kim Nguyn, Cnh Vt H Tin, in Du Ky Viet Nam: Nam Phong Tap Chi, 1917-1934, vol. 1, 3 vols. (Thnh ph H Ch Minh: Nh Xut Bn Tr, 2007), 516639. The structure of this report followed that of a scientific encyclopedia as seen in its extensive sections on topics such as fruit and foliage, beautiful scenery, history, and schools. 47

point was in the middle of the market, then it would not be valuable at all. While the original account could have been presented more as a metaphysical painting of the undiscovered beauty of the region, ng Hs selective literary translation emphasized the relationship between the traveler and the untamed frontier.
123

Driven not just by the goal of experiencing a scenic

mountain view, the travelers seem to be compelled to demonstrate their own physical and mental capabilities. They declared that this trip was neither for the weak nor for those who agonized over proper appearance and formalities. In this way, representations of travel and its unseen obstacles offered the symbolic opportunity to assert a re-conquest of the land. Throughout these depictions, Indochina was represented with a timeless, pastoral quality, and functioned as the backdrop for individuals to deal with questions of cultural belonging and social identity. From the fetishization of the rural life to the victorious exploration of rugged terrain, these associations demonstrate how travelers reasserted a sense of authority of a space and experience.

Power and Privileged Isolation of Airplanes, Automobiles, and Mountain Resorts The structure of colonial tourism developed alongside the appeal of privileged alienation. Mountain resorts brought visitors to a retreat away from the chaos of the city and modern transportation brought travelers through a surreal experience of time and space. The ability to visit a place through the modernization of transportation and an infrastructure around tourism, contributed to a consumerist, extractive mentality in which places served designated purposes for 123 Here I examine the intertextuality of these sources as acts of cultural translationan attempt to interpret foreignness in the cultural language of the local (in this case of two drastically different literary styles and periods). Beyond linguistic transference, translation can be conceptualized as a discursive and ideological migration throughout time and space. In other words, the translation of an idea focuses on the transformative process the idea undertakes as it moves throughout cultural and geographic distances. Clem Robyns, Translation and Discursive Identity, Poetics Today 15, no. 3 (October 1, 1994): 405428. 48

visitors. Furthermore, the relatively short duration of time spent in travel destinations also helped to fetishize the place within the travelers memory. The landscape often operated within the performativity of a touristic culture and signified a homogenous, essential, utopic space for travelers to either transcend and overcomehence demonstrating dominanceor to manipulate for the purpose of privileged isolation. Novel forms of transportation such as the airplane, train, steamship, and automobile also symbolized positions of power between travelers and their surroundings. Based on the concept of space-outside-time modern transportation enclosed travelers in a realm of order and luxury and isolated them briefly from the environment.
124

Within many travel stories authors contrasted the

sense of order and control of transit schedules, compartments, and routes with the rugged terrain that they sped through. Traveler V Nht was increasingly impressed by the sense of timeliness of his flight from Hanoi to Vientiane: on the long awaited day of his departure the passengers completed their paperwork at the Air France office at 5:20AM, were transported by automobile to the Bch Mai airport at 6:00AM, and by 6:25AM were buckled up in their seats labeled with a sign of each passengers name so that we could neither choose where to sit nor could we argue about which of the seats were better.
125

The sense of timelessness of his trip was accentuated

by the indulgence of the presentin an all-inclusive experience the airline took care of the passengers luggage, provided biscuits and coffee, and even offered the in-flight service to compose telegrams.

124 Del Testa references Certeaus chapter on railways and the exterior for this idea. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Randall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 125 Nht, H Ni - Vientiane Trong Hai Gi. 49

Of all the forms of transit, the experience of travel by airplane most symbolically and physically lifted passengers away from the earthly terrain and provided larger than life perspective from the clouds. Nht described the flight as an ineffable suspension within white emptiness and explained that he now understood the feeling of elation as if rising through the clouds.
126

As if swept away into a realm of dreamy impossibility, timelessness, and

placelessness, he described that at the same time where on earth it was only raining, he and the passengers were sitting on the clouds where scholar Tn encountered the heavenly fairies. In i Tu Bay [Traveling by Airplane] published in December 1942, Phan Tt To leads the reader through the experience of flying with practical recommendations and descriptions on clothing preparation, reactions to the disconcerting speed and wind, the bizarre feeling of liftoff, and the excitement of a new perspective of the world.
127

Just as how the journey to Ph Quc

brings Mng Tuyt to forget all the sadness in her life, Phan Tt To exclaimed, of course we dreamt that this flight would never end so that we could gaze at the scenery forever. And all our earthly worries disappeared.
128

These iterations of travel demonstrate a sense of surreal

timelessness and euphoria surrounding modern transit. Through the physical departure from the familiarity of home into the novel experiences of existing outside of that time and space, travelers expressed a sense of renewed perspective. In the case of the Vietnamese middle class travel, the material separation wrought by modern technologies reinforced ideas of privilege and also of difference between urban and rural society. 126 Ibid. Sng nh ln my. To begins his travel story with a mention to Governor General Albert Sarraut, whom To explains to be the reason for the arrival and popularity of the airplane in Indochina. Phan Phan, i Tu Bay. Originally published as No. 77 and 78 in December 1942. 128 Ibid. Cn bao nhiu s lo ngh di trn ai th qun sch. 50
127

David Del Testa explains that modern transportation allowed observers to objectify and thus romanticize the world they envisioned and cathect with it their desires for bucolic simplicity and an organic social order with themselves primary.
129

Throughout Mng Tuyts trip, she and her

companions traveled by boat, automobile, and food and her remarks about each stage of the trip seemed to be deeply shaped by the mode of transit. Throughout the days by automobile through Dng ng, Mng Tuyts descriptions of the environment lack the eternal and romantic quality that characterized the boatride and walks. The automobiledescribed by David Del Testa as a symbol of individual strength and the private worldseemed to contrast distinctly with the collective experience of boat travel within this travel narrative.
130

On their return trip

home, Mng Tuyt and her travel companions decided to take a fish sauce shipping boat home for the experience of it. Although they faced torrential storms and grew increasingly homesick, Mng Tuyt also described the collective joy of exploring another island and playing music together as they waited for the storm to pass. The cartoon titled Hai li cu mt hay l ng ty khng gp nhau [Two ways of Vacationing or the East and the West Avoids Each Other], exemplifies not only the separation between the automobile driver and the physical and temporal environment, but also the association of the automobile with Western tourism.
131

Printed in the weekly satirical newspaper

Phong Ho on 9 June 1933, the left panel depicted automobiles winding up mountains towards 129 Del Testa, Automobiles and Anomie in French Colonial Indochina. Del Testa explained how the automobile also reflected the owners position in the world: Because society views them as an extension of the individual, automobile owners take great pride in maintaining their appearance, keeping them in a manner that reflects their won worldview and advertises to the world 67. 130 Ibid. Khc Nghp, Hai Li Cu Mt Hay L ng Ty Khng Gp Nhau, Phong Ho, 9 June 1933. 51
131

the hill stations of Tam-o, Chapa, and the beach -sn while the right side portrayed crowds of Vietnamese partaking in prayer and festivities. Khc Nghip included a caption that contrasted these scenes as two ways of vacationing or li cu mt [ways of praying for the cool].
132

This representation accentuates the difference between West and East and the caption even described the Vietnamese style of vacationing as l thay [strange and abnormal]. While this cartoon explicitly compared the traditional activities to Western tourism, the author also drew a contrast between the relationships of individuals to the environment. While westerners sped through the roads towards the isolated hill-stations, the other scene highlights the stationary activities of prayer and festivals.

132 Jennings, Imperial Heights. In Eric Jennings interpretation of these two scenes, he emphasizes the difference in Western and Eastern strategies of experiencing cool weather or the strangeness of older Vietnamese ways [such as hot and cold techniques], in contraposition to rational, modern, and elite Western tourism [and altitudinal benefits]. 173. 52

Figure 2-2 Phong Ho, 9 June 1933 Two ways of Vacationing or East and West Avoiding Each Other; Caption reads -sn, Tam o, Chapa, Westerners experience cool weather in these three places. ...But we experience cool weather so strangely! Mountain resorts or station balnaire daltitude exuded that appeal as a colonial utopia and ecological haven. The hill station at Lt, the urban project of chef de lurbanisme Ernest Hbrard, was developed primarily with the purpose of privileged isolation for colonists to retreat from urban life. The altitude and physical separation from other cities reflected the deep-seated ideas of boundary anxiety based on fears of hygienic contamination and racial difference and

53

the integrity of the colonial body.

133

Like some parts of cities, mountain resorts were often

racially zoned, yet not explicitly exclusive to white colonialists. Several Vietnamese newspapers questioned why so few Vietnamese traveled to mountain resorts and concluded that these types of experiences were accessible to the wealthiest, who expected lavish amenities, transport, and hotels.
134

At the same time, other articles called for Vietnamese to emulate French trips to the

mountains, based on Saint-Simonian philosophy, hygienic popularization, hints of colonial reformism, and a discourse of social amelioration.
135

Nguyn Tin Lng praised Lt and the

dream of journeying there in Indochine, La Douce: he described Lt in the following way: Lt, so highly praised in tourist propaganda, Indochinese paradise that has become the dream of so many honest families, Lt does not disappoint. It is a restful resort, an Indochinese Simla. Beautiful and luxurious, with around its Palace some hundred and forty villas
136

Many of these Vietnamese travel guides and stories emphasized the natural

environment and reclusive appeal of Lt. Catered mainly to Western tourists, Lt also offered the infrastructure for sightseeing, hunting, and hotels, and thus provided individualized opportunities for the romantics to culturalists interested in the hill tribes around the

133 Nicola Cooper, France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters, First Edition (Oxford, United Kingdom: Berg Publishers, 2001). 134 Peut-on dvelopper le Tamdao? Eveil conomique de lindochine, September 20, 1924, 3, Lt et les Annamites, Lecho annamit, 31 December 1925 as cited in Jennings, Imperial Heights. 135 Ibid., 170. Nguyn Tin Lng, Indochine La Douce. (Hanoi: ditions Nam-ky, 1935) as cited in Jennings, Imperial Heights, 139. 54
136

region.

137

Many of the travel stories described above compared the urban and rural landscape,

often associating the countryside and nature with an idyllic allure contrary to that of their home. These stories also demonstrate how a space becomes a place for expression of middle class life, environmental leisure culture, and urban illusions of the utopic countryside.
138

Popular

European tourist destinations in Indochina, such as Angkor Wat, Hue, and environmental retreats, echoed the colonial imagination of Indochina as a lost antiquity and natural wonder. In the traffic-filled decades of colonial exhibitions, airplanes and railways, and mass consumer branding, what can now be understood as global consciousness and marks of modernity, developed in localized and fragmented ways. Such motifs permeated throughout Vietnamese print, some even with explicit calls to mimic Western practices such as tourism and womens dress. Yet as demonstrated in these stories on travel, new forms of movement and experiences were translated through personal understandings of place as well as the gendered domains of the home and the road.

137 Nguyn Trung Thu, Chi Xun alat, Tn Tin Bo, 20 February 1938, 27 March 1938, as cited in Jennings, Imperial Heights, 176. 138 Sn, Du K V Vng Vn Ho Si Gn -Nam B Trn Nam Phong Tp Ch (1917-1934). 55

CHAPTER 3 FINDING CIVILIZATION: FRANCE AND THE FAILURES OF COLONIALISM Throughout the colonial period, thousands of Vietnamese traveled to France for varying purposes and durationsfrom short tourism trips, study abroad, and employment to recruitment as soldier-workers during the two World Wars.
139

The idea of France pervaded throughout

Vietnamese newsprint, and existed as both a place of opportunity and disillusionment throughout the circulation of news, letters, and travel stories from abroad. These writings originated from a politically and economically diverse group of Vietnamese who through their accounts of their experience abroad, created a place with cultural and political meaning. For some individuals, travel to France was an opportunity for socio-economic ascension through stud and employment. And for others, France was a space for the exploration of the individualemancipated from the expectations from home and influenced by new ideas, opportunities, and networks. This chapter seeks to shed light upon the various iterations of France throughout Vietnamese newsprint, with an emphasis on moments of personal and collective discovery accentuated through movement. Furthermore, it demonstrates the complex dualities of France as 139 Some Vietnamese also permanently resettled in this period. One of the most well known Vietnamese immigrants to France during the colonial period was L Hu Th, author of the semi-autobiographical Itinraire dun petite mandarin. Th had studied in Tonkin at a French lyce, and arrived in France in 1939 at age 19 intending to be a translator. However, L Hu Th found himself caught within the tides of the second world war, and lived through the Vichy regime, and settled in France. 56

a place of economic and cultural opportunity, new perspectives, and forms of community as well as personal disappointment, imperial limitations, and anomie. The first section examines the construction of France as a place of civilization and opportunity. For many Vietnamese, the journey to the mtropole embodied a personal realization of global modernity and its nebulous tenets such as civil liberties, individualism, and political engagement. At the same time these writings often conflated new experiences abroad such as modern transit, different foods and cultural practices, as the zenith of civilization. With the limitations for intellectual and economic ascension in the colony, France was portrayed as a spaceboth real and imaginedfor economic opportunity, social acceptance, and cultural zenith. Furthermore, for those who traveled to France to study, their time abroad was shaped both by the desire for a French degree and by a discourse on the ascendancy of modern education and Western knowledge. Within the rhetoric of sending Vietnamese students abroad, France was a place of symbolic power and responsibility defined in relation to shifting definitions of the homeboth familial and national. Yet students did not always wholeheartedly assume this burden of socio-cultural obligation and instead perceived their physical separation from home as the emancipation from both family and outmoded social expectations. The second part of this chapter considers how the experience of student networks and political associations contributed to the formation of new communities and forms of collective identity predicated on diasporic existence, a phenomena that Benedict Anderson has described as long-distance nationalism.
140

Although some of these

groups were founded upon nationalistic visions of the home-country of Vietnam, they also reflected a personal and inward search for social purpose. In this way within these affective 140 Benedict R. OG Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World (London; New York: Verso, 1998). 57

understandings of France, the question of home and belonging remained present as a frame of constructing their travel experience. Underneath the grandeur of economic possibility and civilizational modernity were also the challenges of life abroad and the subtle everyday experiences of the colonial relationship. Along with the expenses of living abroad, many of the authors also discussed the difficulties of acculturating to French culture and city life. Although there existed transnational networks of friends, classmates, and socio-political associations, a theme of cultural isolation and disorientation permeates many texts. This sense of personal wandering and collective disillusionment symbolizes the development of a generation of Vietnamese dclasss who transcended both physical and cultural space existing as neither fully Vietnamese nor French. These representations of France exemplify the diverse ideals associated with the space such as the idealistic luminance of French civilization and political liberties as well as the harsh racial and financial realities of life in the mtropole. This examination of Vietnamese travel to France does not attempt to represent the diverse experiences of Vietnamese abroad, but seeks to provide insight into the dialectic that existed between mtropole and colony, ideal and reality, fantasy and disillusionment. In particular, these texts shed light upon the emergence of a Vietnamese generation of young, male, middle class elites and urban intellectuals who traveled and wrote about France throughout Vietnamese newsprint. How did these marginal/exceptional individuals exposed to Western education and social idealism perceive themselves and the space of France? How did these travelers navigate the ideal and reality of France and the quotidian contradictions of French colonialism? For example, some of these texts demonstrate how travelers comprehended ideas of the West through the bifurcation of civilizational ideals,

58

separated from an oppressive colonial identity.

141

Rather than assume colonial study as simply a

producer of radical intelligentsia, this chapter considers how the spatial identity of France was shaped both by the attraction to the cultural and political fantasies of France and rejection by that cultural world.

The Rhetoric of Civilization and Reality of Education Abroad: France and the Opportunity for Socio-Economic Ascension Throughout Vietnamese travel accounts, the idea of France was often interwoven with constructs of civilization, individualism, and Western culture. Published in the weekly newspaper Ph N Tn Vn [Womens News] the article Hai mi bn gi ca ti t Php [My 24 hours in the country France], exemplifies the progression of emotions on arrival in France.
142

In the initial lines of his travel story, the author Cao-Chnh reminded himself that

France was known as the place of the national revolution of 1789, the home of Mirabeau, La Fayette, and the land of freedom and that for the next three years he would benefit from the free and unhurried European atmosphere.
143

However even before he could descend from the

ship, Cao-Chnh met with a series of police interrogations that made him doubt the authenticity of freedom in France. After the initial confusion, the rest of the travel story retold his initial impressions with France and his comparisons with Vietnam. In witnessing the large buildings, 141 Shu-Mei Shih, Writing Between Tradition and the West: Chinese Modernist Fiction, 19171937, Ph.D. Dissertation, (University of California, Los Angeles, 1992). And her article ShuMei Shih, Gender, Race, and Semicolonialism: Liu Naous Urban Shanghai Landscape, The Journal of Asian Studies 55, no. 4 (November 1, 1996): 934956. 142 Cao Chnh, Hai Mi Bn Gi Ca Ti t Php, Ph N Tn Vn no. 24 (10 October 1929), 1011. 143 Ibid. Khng kh thong-th u-chu. 59

boulevards, and monuments, Cao-Chnh exclaimed, My feeling, is one of a person who has lived for a long time in an ancient customs and culture, who has just stepped foot into a place of civilization that is very new and very different." Cao-Chnh also recounted his conversation with his hostess, Madame R., who inquired about the lack of displays of affection of Asians. Through his attempted explanation of Vietnamese customs, Cao-Chnh realized the deep rootedness of Vietnamese identity, and remarked that even those who lived in France for a long time would never become as expressive as Europeans. As if critiquing surface attempts of cultural assimilation and Western mimicry, Cao-Chnh explained the recent trend of the modern women of Asia and fascination with the idea of a-tnh [love and affection], a word that has only existed in Asia for a few years.
144

Even in a short article, the author conveyed his initial

impressions of France such as middle class customs, transit systems and buildings, as well as more abstract ideas of freedom, liberty, and relationships. Within this travel story, Cao-Chnh also navigated constructs of Western civilization and considered the claims of Western comforts and cultural superiority. He concludes the narrative with the sarcastic assessment of the train ride to Saigon, a metaphor for his first impressions and disappointment in France: My first night in the country of France was very comfortable. Vietnamese study abroad in France also was another process by which individuals dealt with the rhetoric of Frances civilizational superiority and educational opportunity. Characterized by shifting colonial education policies, lack of funding, and a disorganized scope of curricula and training, the French colonial school system offered a haphazard and limited educational

144 Ibid. 60

opportunity for Vietnamese.

145

Thus, many Vietnamese sought intellectual enrichment and

economic leverage through overseas studies in France. Aside from the few cases of early Vietnamese diplomats from the Hue court to France, large-scale Vietnamese study abroad did not occur until after 1910when a series of initiatives for modern education in Vietnam were suppressed, leaving little alternative for modern education except for a Ty Du or voyage lOuest [journey West] to France.
146

Children of well-connected and landlord merchant classes,

or the petit bourgeois urban population, formed the majority of the student population, yet the relatively poor working class also participated in overseas education through community or patron sponsorship.
147

Furthermore, the emergence of a nouveau riche Vietnamese middle class

ushered in new social standards to showcase affluence and success, many of which reflected the perceived lifestyle of French colons such as the following material and experiential qualifiers: Western clothes, practicing sports, leisure travel, or access to a modern French education for

145 Even though over the years the primary education system showed improvement in organization and access, between 1920 and 1938, the highest number of Vietnamese youth enrolled in school did not surpass 10 percent. Gail P. Kelly, The Relation Between Colonial and Metropolitan Schools: A Structural Analysis, Comparative Education 15, no. 2 (June 1, 1979): 209215; Gail P. Kelly, Conflict in the Classroom: A Case Study from Vietnam, 1918-38, British Journal of Sociology of Education 8, no. 2 (January 1, 1987): 191212. 146 Pierre Brocheux, Une histoire croise : limmigration politique indochinoise en France, 1911-1945, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontires, 2009, http://www.europesolidaire.org/spip.php?article14195.1908 marked the end to Phan Bi Chus ng Du [Go East] movement for Vietnamese to study abroad in Japan, and around the same time the closure of the University of Indochina, Tonkin Free School (ng Kinh Ngha Thc or Lecole libre du Tonkin), and attempts for modernisation or enlightened education initatiatives. 147 David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). 61

their children.

148

In this way, the possibility of study abroad in France also symbolized entrance

into the cushioned fantasy of colonial success, defined by a French degree or a position in the civil service. By 1926 and 1927 colonial educational reforms in Franco-Vietnamese education also pushed Vietnamese students to obtain a French diploma in order to hold a position in the civil service.
149

With this restriction, a degree earned in the mtropole, regardless of prestige of

institution, carried considerable weight in comparison to one earned from a Franco-Vietnamese school.
150

The majority of officially registered students stayed in France for six to seven years

depending on their ability to secure funding. Official records estimated Vietnamese high school and university students in France in 1929 to be at least 1,800 (1,100 in Paris, 200 in Aix-enProvence, 110 in Toulouse, and the remaining in Marseille, Bordeaux, and Lyon).
151

Although

around 3675 individual files of Indochinese living in France were accounted for in the Ministry of Colonies, official population data on Vietnamese migrants was severely limited, unsystematic, and often broadly classified. 148 Many of the nouveau riche, large landowner families from Cochinchina (Southern Vietnam) financially and politically benefited from French colonial redistribution into a plantation economy. Kelly illustrates how this lifestyle was mocked through the popular Vietnamese proverb The civil servant gives orders; in the evening he drinks champagne, and in the morning, cows milk. Kelly, The Relation Between Colonial and Metropolitan Schools. 213-214. 149 Marie-Eve Blanc, Vietnamese in France, in Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World, vol. 2, 2 vols. (New York: Springer, 2005). 150 For example, Vietnamese students who held a French baccalaureat garnered more socioeconomic clout than those who earned a colonial baccalaureat. 151 These population statistics originated from a police note from 23 January 1929. CAOM, Slotfom III/6 as cited in Brocheux, Une histoire croise : limmigration politique indochinoise en France, 1911-1945. Furthermore, Marie-Eve Blanc provides a useful, although limited chart of the changing Vietnamese population in France during the colonial period in Vietnamese in France, in Blanc, Vietnamese in France. 1161. 62

Colonial officials did not maintain a consistent policy on migration and instead issued confusing and contradictory policies in regards to Vietnamese travel and study abroad in France. In the earlier years of overseas study, colonial policies were deeply informed by the mission civilisatrice and associationist policies; accordingly, in the 1910s to 1920s study abroad was described by colonial administrators as the opportunity for cultural and intellectual enrichment of the gentle, well mannered, and hard-working Vietnamese.
152

The semantics of building loyal

and educated Vietnamese elites carried through many of the reforms in Franco-Indigenous schools as well as the rare colonial scholarships to study abroad, such as the highly publicized sponsorship of Phan Vn Trng.
153

On the other hand, some officials such as Governor

General Pierre Pasquier, worried about the politicizing influence of a liberal education system and left-wing associations in France. Regulative measures were enforced more strictly in the late 1930s, due to attempts to quell the rise in anti-colonial activity. Nevertheless, compared to other French colonies, Vietnamese traveled to France in larger numbers through initiatives such as family sponsorship, military or ship hand consignment, or aided by informal networks for housing and job opportunities. Aside from an administrative classification, the Vietnamese student in France also emerged as a particular social category throughout Vietnamese intellectual and political debates on modernity, nationhood, and education. The Vietnamese student became a social type, infused with overlapping expectations for socio-economic prestige or political activism on their return to the colony. In many ways the student served as a vehicle for depicting broader discontent in 152 Scott McConnell, Leftward Journey: The Education of Vietnamese Students in France, 1919-1939 (New Brunswick, USA; Oxford, UK: Transaction Publishers, 1989). 153 Phan Vn Trng c Chnh Ph Php i-x, Ph N Tn Vn no. 48 (17 April 1930), 11. 63

Vietnamese politics and French colonial society. These texts demonstrate how the construct of the Vietnamese student emerged in conjunction with the spatial identity of France, and were constantly re-invented within social and political discourses. The newspaper Ph N Tn Vn [P.N.T.V.] used national rhetoric to garner a sense of civic engagement to support Vietnamese in France. In its second issue on 5 May 1929, the series A Xu/Sou for the Students urged its readers to donate weekly to aid Vietnamese students in France.
154

While the request did not explain how the money would be sent or for what explicit

purpose, the act of giving and sacrificing for Vietnamese society merited detailed justification. Following the request for donations for scholarship funds, the article explained the social significance of supporting the education of Vietnamese youth with the following declaration: When we brothers and sisters realize and feel compelled to worry about our home (qu hng) our country and futurethen on that day we will stand up and open our eyes with others; if not that day will be very far away from us. This statement revealed the complex relationship between individual and homea bond depicted as civic duty towards the country of Vietnam. Within these study abroad campaigns of civic engagement and social improvement, France was the space where Vietnamese could acquire new skills and perspectives that ultimately could contribute to our country and future.

154 Qun Chi, ng Su Cho Hc-sanh- Kin Ca Bc-s Nguyn Xun-Bi, Ph N Tn Vn no. 45 (27 March 1930), 56. 64

Figure 3-1 Ph N Tn Vn, 26 September 1929. Photo of Vietnamese students who participated in the scholarship competition on 15 September 1929. Almost every issue of P.N.T.V. contained at least one article focused on Vietnamese students in France. The topics concerned requests for monetary contributions, the status of community-funded scholarships, or discussions on the importance of education. In virtually all of these correspondences and campaigns, those in need of scholarships, or just simply young Vietnamese in France, were often referred to as the Poor Students. These conversations lacked specific details of the Poor Student, what subject they studied, or if they were actually registered students abroad. Thus students were often represented as a social category in need of community assistance. This conflation of identity presumes individual characteristics as well as a sense of individual agency. In the scholarship campaigns of P.N.T.V., the construct of Poor Student functioned as a rallying force, a social cause to invoke community activism. Furthermore, the act of furthering educational opportunity was often portrayed as a contribution towards the greater good or fellow ng bo (compatriot, or literally children of the same

65

womb.)

155

This moment of vibrant socio-political debates, cultural reform, and re-articulations

of identity represented the development of an imagined community of our country, in which individuals both belonged to and could shape. Yet, at the foundation of social change and the expression of the collective (be it understood as a national consciousness, global modernity, or class awareness) was the reexamination of the relationship between self and society.

Finding Social Purpose in France, the Laboratory of Political and Cultural Modernization
156

In contrast to the well-publicized community event of scholarship competitions (that even merited positions in the first pages) the series titled Letters Sent from France depict a much more conflicted representation of student life in France. Often these articles were published by student correspondents currently living in France; some letters were authored by well-known contributors such as Cao Chnh, (who also went by Thch Lan) but the majority of the articles, like the other columns, were un-authored or signed by the collective P.N.T.V. One of the most critical examinations of Vietnamese study abroad was Thch Lans reflection titled What do Vietnamese students learn abroad? printed on 16 January 1930.
157

Modeled as an interview

between the author and a student, Thch Lan asked the student to explain the significance of Vietnamese youth studying in France. Characterizing Vietnamese study abroad as a popular current trend, Lan repeatedly pushed the student to explain the purpose of study abroad, rather 155 Jayne Werner, Gender, Household and State in Post-Revolutionary Vietnam (New York: Routledge, 2009). 156 Brocheux, Une histoire croise : limmigration politique indochinoise en France, 19111945. 157 Thch Lan, Ngi Annam i Ngoi-quc Hc G?, Ph N Tn Vn no. 37 (16 January 1930), 12. 66

than the technical details of the experience. The student responded by explaining the various disciplines, (law, literature, medicine, and machinery,) and degrees, (t ti, c nhn, tn s, k s,) that Vietnamese earned; simply put, a student returned to Vietnam and was henceforth a nhn ti, [talented person] of course. Yet, as evident in Thch Lans repetitive questioning of So then what? Lan sought to expose the flawed justifications for purposeless travel abroad. The rest of the two-page article critiqued the supposed knowledge that came with a diploma. In Lans caricature of a Vietnamese student, French degrees were devoid of meaning because they were not awarded on merit, but instead were given because teachers were frustrated with their lazy and ignorant students. In describing an incident in which an English teacher took pity on his poor but lazy Vietnamese student, Lan sarcastically commented, Yet again, today our Vietnam receives another degreed scholar. Although Lans interrogative fictional piece projected a caricature of Vietnamese students as lazy and undeserving, Lan, a student correspondent himself, did not believe in the deterministic fate of Vietnamese youth. He proudly asserted, Our Vietnam truly has the potential to learn. With this qualifier, Lan adamantly called for the reexamination of the role and responsibility of Vietnamese youth. Our generation of youth today has a penchant for excusesat age 20, they claim that they are still too young to contribute to society and must focus on their studies! In this way, Thch Lan measured the success of Vietnamese study abroad according to students return to Vietnam and their ability to contribute to society. Lan continued to elaborate on the social responsibilities of educated youth by describing and dividing the existing social stratum of intellectuals into two categoriespolitics and letters, (the former listed as law, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and the latter as journalism, literature, and speech competitions). He specifically used the new word thng lu x hi, translated from

67

the French word for intellectual elite, [lite], to categorize the broad spectrum of educated individuals (without much regard to background, class, or political leaning). In reexamining these intellectuals, Lan recognized their intellectual accomplishments, but critiqued this elite intellectual generation as outdated for modern society.
158

Thus, he once again addressed the

youth of today to step up and assume the necessary social and political duty that accompanied the new educated social stratum.
159

While Lan did not clearly specify what the inherent duty

of youth actually entailed, his focus was clearly to invoke both shame and responsibility within the young readers of the newspaper. He further critiqued students who not only hid behind their studies, but also did not return as wise, empowered intellectuals. Lan concluded with the request for those apathetic, ignorant students to come home and either better prepare themselves for dedicated study, or find some other meaningful contribution to society rather than be a mere degreed student, described as no worse than a retired person. In this piece, Thch Lan positioned himself outside of this class of elite intellectuals to re-examine the troubling state of Vietnamese youth, who he believed to be mesmerized by modern trends and leisurely life in Paris. Instead, Thch Lan commanded students to take up the social responsibility that accompanied their education and contribute to the larger meaning of x

158 Thch Lan described the existing heritage of social intellectual elites in the following manner: from the South: Bu Quang Chiu, Nguyn Phan Long, Dng Vn Gio, the Central: (?) and the North: Nguyn Vn Vnh, Phm Qunh, etc... Lan recalled his disappointing interview with intellectual Bi Quang Chiu where Chiu hesitated to directly address Lans question on the issue of women. Instead, according to Lan, Chiu replies, Im already very old, and my duties are almost overThch Lan, Ngi Annam i Ngoi-quc Hc G?. 159 Thch Lan called on the generation of students to be ashamed of their accomplishments in comparison to those of the Chinese heroine Trnh Duc T, with the phrase even this little Chinese girl took on the responsibility of society. 68

hi [society], (another newly defined word influenced by the idea of French societ).

160

While

the caricature of the Vietnamese student in Thch Lans article differed greatly from the Poor Student of P.N.T.V.s scholarship campaigns, both representations continued to reattribute new social meaning according to constructs of France and its allure as a space of civilization and modernity. Within discussions on colonial education policy, socio-economic success, civilizational discourse, and political activism, sending communities and students discussed and re-invented the student as vehicles for change. This constructed reciprocity between community and student sheds light upon the symbolic power of the modern (as understood within politics, culture, and/or class) derived from a French educational degree. Inherent to this understanding of student purpose were two factors: the potential of a cultivated individual and the necessary return home of the student. At the same time, this generational and radicalizing shift was specific to the group of Vietnamese youth who came of age in a political climatea time characterized by iconoclasm and the marriage of the personal and the political in which Vietnamese were frustrated with the failures of acommodationist reform to produce change and also unattached from the past scholarled resistance of colonialism.
161

Hue-Tam Ho-Tai explains the various manifestations of

Vietnamese radicalism within diverse nascent ideological paths ranging from Marxism to Constitutionalism. For example, Marxism attracted many Vietnamese anti-colonial youth through its promise of a certain victory instead of annihilation, and national redemption instead 160 o Duy Anh defines x hi (society) as 1) nhiu ngi cng mu ch li chung, kt hp thnh on -th 2) Nhng on th loi ngi c mi quan-h sinh-hot chung nhau (societ). 572 The first meaning refers to mutual benefit and coordination, the second focuses on relationship and a more Western notion of social interaction. 161 Ho Tai Hue-Tam, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992). 69

of endless struggle for survival characteristic of Social Darwinism.

162

Amongst the Vietnamese

population in France existed a smaller number of student activists who also engaged within the loose network of Vietnamese and French students, workers, writers, socialists and liberals, and intellectual leaders. The most famous of these activists were the Five Dragons, Nguyn An Ninh, Nguyn Tt Thnh (H Ch Minh), Phan Vn Trng, Phn Chu Trinh, and Nguyn Th Truyn.
163

In another article of titled Why were so many Vietnamese sailor-workers and

students arrested in Paris? Thch Lan explained the political and social atmosphere in the months building up to the 22 May 1930 protests of the Yen Bay rebels executions.
164

Also

published within the series titled Letters Sent from France, the article depicted a world of political activity and a sense of public advocacy for issues in Indochina. Throughout Lans descriptions, Vietnamese activists, students, and workers from the North and South, Communists, and Trotskyists worked alongside countless locally based international associations.
165

World events such as the Russian Revolution in 1917, the exile and death of

Vietnamese leaders, the founding of Communist parties in France, China, and Russia shaped the political and intellectual leanings of Vietnamese intellectuals living in France, where the

162 Ibid., p. 243. Les cinq dragons [The Five Dragons] for a brief period in 1919-1923 were centered in a small apartment in the 13th arrondisement of Paris. Inspired by Woodrow Wilsons Fourteen Points, this group of colleagues wrote the famous petition for Vietnamese self-determination. 164 Thch Lan, V Sao Nhiu Th-thuyn V Hc-sanh Annam B Bt Paris, Ph N Tn Vn no. 59, Bi Bn Paris Gi V (July 3, 1930), 1112. 165 Thch Lan lists the participation of associations such as y-hi phn-u, and Bn ng Dng Xut-Dng Php, and ng-Dng hc-sanh tng-hi, and newspapers Verit and Lutte des classes. 70
163

interactions between individuals and ideas functioned as a laboratory of political and cultural modernization of Vietnam.
166

Furthermore, personal interactions amongst classmates and strangers also came to shape perspectives on the political and cultural space of France. Trotskyist H Hu Tng (19101980) described the transformative experience of studying abroad in Marseille and Lyon in the 1920s, and defined much of his experience around his interaction with other students such as the politically active Nguyn Th Truyn, Phan Vn Trng, Nguyn Vn To, and Phan Vn Chnh.
167

Many of Tngs remarks on the generational identity of students revolved around a

students revolutionary potential and an ironically subversive academic accomplishment abroad. Tng portrayed Nguyn An Ninh (1900-1943) as another radicalized student protegy. Nguyn An Ninh (1900-1943) was a well-known and talented scholar, journalist, and anti-colonialist. What struck Tng mostly about Ninhs academic accomplishments was his ability to skillfully write in French, notably in his anti-colonial newspaper La cloche fle [The Cracked Bell] based in Saigon. According to this retelling, Ninh skillfully navigated the French degree structure, and earned the highest degree within only one year. Tng describes: Through this symbolic act and accomplishment, wherever Ninh went, the colonizer French in Paris held Ninh in extremely high regard.
168

In this way, Tng broadly defined his studies as a potential for social and

individual empowerment in the context of a colonizer-colonized relationship. 166 Brocheux, Une histoire croise : limmigration politique indochinoise en France, 19111945. 167 While H Hu Tngs autobiographical Bn Mi Mt Nm Lm Bo [41 years of Working in the Newspaper Industry], had a propensity to blur the lines between recollection and creative embellishment, Tngs description reveals the significant political undercurrents of student life in France. 168 H Hu Tng H, Bn Mi Mt Nm Lm Bo: Hi K (Saigon: Tr ng, 1972). 71

In reality, study abroad in France did not automatically manifest itself into individualistic emancipation, political radicalism or nationalist ideology. The opportunity for socio-economic ascension, civic duty, as well as individual autonomy empowered some of these students, yet cultural and social expectations weighed heavily on these students as well. Feelings of cultural anomie and non-belonging, financial burdens, and expectations from family and community were among the many pressures of study abroad. Furthermore, the increasing political fervor of nationalist discourse in France and Vietnam generated idealistic demands from Vietnamese youth to fulfill not only their individual familial obligations but also a responsibility to the vague greater good. The following sections convey the diverse experiences and complex ways in which individuals, such as Tng Hng and Nht Linh, negotiated different expectations, challenges, and new ideas through exploration of France.

France as Cultural and Generational Dystopia Son of a failed Confucian mandarin, Nguyn Tng Tm (1905-1963), more widely known as Nht Linh, had a prolific and complex literary career as a writer and editor of multiple journals including of the first satirical journal in Vietnam, Phong Ha [Customs] launched in 1932.
169

In 1935-36 Nht Linh serialized the short story i Ty [Going West], which poked

fun at the social regality and blind confidence of Vietnamese intellectuals, who believed in the ideological and physical journey towards civilization.
170

Portrayed as a transformative

169 Nht Linh was also known as the founder and active contributor of the Self Reliance Literary Group in 1933. A cohort of intellectuals, the Group fought a socio-cultural war with words; their works encouraged socio-economic responsibility, rebuked Confucian traditions, and advocated a measure of modernization. 170 For more biographical information on Nht Linh, see the Introduction to Lockhart and Lockhart, Broken Journey: Nht Linhs Going to France. 72

moment of self-validation, to become civilized was to sng mt ra [open ones eyes] and functioned as the primary motivation for the life and journey to France of the protagonist of Going West, Lng Du. One of the few literary works focused on the experience of study abroad, Going West is also argued to have been a semi-fictional account of Nht Linhs own three-year journey to France in 1927 to study journalism and receive a science degree.
171

Although largely a humorous caricature of Vietnamese students abroad, Going West sheds light upon the multifaceted emotional, cultural, and financial difficulties as well as the intricate of life abroad in France.

Figure 3-2 Cartoons that accompanied the series Going West Phong Ha, 18 August 1932 as found in Broken Journey: Nht Linhs Going to France, translated by Gregory 172 Lockhart and Monique Lockhart. Lockharts translation of the The return of the sophisticate (left image) caption reads: Mother: My dear son, while youve been away studying for four years overseas, your father has died. Ive been alone here dreaming all the time of your return. Son: Maman, chre Maman, rjouis-to, me voici arriv. Mother: Oh dear God! Has my son gone mad? Poor boy! This is your mother! Right image: Going West of Lng Du 171 Ibid.
172

Ibid. 73

Through the wanderings and process of self-discovery of the protagonist Lng Du, (whose name literally meant wandering) Nht Linh voiced a sense of non-belonging as an intellectual caught between the romance of modernity and the social reality of urban life in France. In Going West and in many of his other works, Nht Linh addressed how the clash of old and new, traditional and modern, emancipated many young individuals, like himself, from the chains of archaic social mores. The main protagonists of his stories such as Lng Du, whose name meant wanderer, often drifted around as excluded vagabonds, in search of social, intellectual, and artistic fulfillment.
173

Lng Dus overt naivet possibly reflected Nht Linhs

perceptions of Vietnam and his own imprisonment within what he described as the weight of backward cultural mores and expectations. As he traveled farther from Vietnam, Lng Du finally realized the economic and social deficiencies of Vietnam. While his time in France offered a sense of intellectual and social fulfillment, Lng Du felt that his race and cultural upbringing inhibited his attempts to assimilate within French society during his short stay in France. The France that Nht Linh depicted carried a certain imagined dystopic qualityto fully escape and become French required the impossible rejection of the physical and cultural baggage of being Vietnamese. Furthermore, at the end of Going West, the social and emotional rejection that some students experienced was characterized by the forced return of Lng Du back to Vietnam, on suspicion of anti-colonial activity. Concluding this travel narrative with the depressing awareness of his place in Vietnamese society, Nht Linh described Lng Dua student migrant caught between reality, enlightened modernity, and social acceptanceas someone not dead, but something else. Assuming a language of modern romantic 173 In another of Nht Linhs reflexive short stories, titled A Dream of Tu Lam, the two main characters abandon their unsatisfying administrative careers in search of a lost utopia, wandering the world as vagabonds. 74

desperation, but under the guise of tragic-comedy, Nht Linh voiced the cultural and emotional struggles of student migrants placed between two worlds and ultimately trapped in a non-place, as a dclass. In another of Nht Linhs short stories, the protagonist often expressed a disheartened feeling towards the failures of education to deal with the realities of colonial society: My years of study and work have all been for nothing. The law I have stuffed into my head is very half-baked in a society that has been created by the efforts of our ancestors and is still deeply influenced by their ways.
174

Going West was embedded with the deep sense of

estrangement, depicting the liminal existence of students such as Nht Linh who straddled the reality of anachronistic Vietnamese social expectations, an unsupportive and exploitative colonial structure, and a contradictory and socially excluded intellectual class. Further complicated by the ideological movement between colonial landscapes, these experiences and pursuits of social purpose left many students disheartened or detachedsuspended between the ambiguous civilizational rhetoric and isolative reality of temporary student life. In contrast to H Hu Tngs exuberant autobiography, many letters exchanged between students abroad and family, friends, and lovers back home depict the routine challenges of life abroad. These letters bring to the surface the challenge and necessity of maintaining migrant transnational kinship networks beyond emotional nostalgia both social and economic expectations surrounded those family members to maintain emotional composure and financial stability. Thus, these personal sources shed light upon the significant influence of temporary or permanent migration upon family relationships, as well as the consequential adaptations, transformations, and methods of assistance within local and transnational networks. 174 Gregory Lockhart and Monique Lockhart, trans., A Dream of Tu Lam, Heat 5 (1997), 51 65, 64. 75

Some of these personal letters were selected and published on the pages of journals such as P.N.T.V. and Nam Phong [Southern Wind], which sought to provide news abroad and also doubly functioned as emotional vehicles to enlist financial support for students. Although letters chosen for publication often carried a journalistic purpose, published correspondence, such as the letters of Tng Hng, also offered the reading public an almost sensational experience of life abroad. The letters of Hngs journey to France from 16 July 1924 3 December 1931 were published years later in Nam Phong Tp Ch throughout September 1932.
175

Although the

biographic information of Tng Hng is relatively limited, the emotional candor embedded within each letter home to Saigon provides valuable insight into how some Vietnamese students comprehended and depicted to others their study abroad experience. Hng introduced the series of published letters with a tone of humility and hesitancy: I wrote these letters during my experience on a journey where I could not complete my university degree, thus I could not achieve the feat of making a name for myself for my country; therefore I did not want anyone to pay attention to me. As revealed in this reluctant confession, a French degree received in the colonial mtropole became a signifier of success in Vietnam. Nevertheless, in his disheartened introduction Hng explained that recovering these letters made him realize that these honest emotions, struggles, and journeys were nonexistent in other books. Thus, he felt compelled to share these emotional reflections, (regardless of his sociocultural failure to return with le bac degree,) and to remember the significance of such deeply

175 Nam Phong Tp Ch, no. 176 September 1932, republished in Tng, Hng. Trn ng Nam Php (My on Gia Th). in Nguyn Hu Sn, Du K Vit Nam: Nam Phong Tp Ch, 1917-1934, vol. 2, (Thnh ph H Ch Minh: Nh Xut Bn Tr, 2007), 303331. 76

affectionate phrases such as Through you, I am able to love and cherish the sound of my country.
176

On 30 November 1924, Hng recounted his first experiences eating salade (x lch) and melon, his difficulties adjusting to the cold weather, and the fascinating lectures and discussions in his classes. Following the pleasant recollections of student life, Hng listed in detail the increasing living costs and student fees, forcing him to decrease his budget on meals and clothing. Here and in other accounts, Hng represented his student life in France as well adjusted: he confided to his addressee the excitement, novelties, and daily events of his new life, but also tempered this romantic migrant experience with difficulties in finances, acculturation, and homesickness. These detailed daily expenses inherently reflected both the downtrodden life of many Vietnamese students and also the immense dependency of students on their families and sending communities for financial support. Hngs letters and reflections also reveal how certain social expectations and political predilections influenced individual experiences and identity formation. For example, the widely assumed superiority of French education and the dedicated Vietnamese student played a substantial part in forming Hngs first impressions of student life. In Hngs first encounter with local Vietnamese students and his first classes in Marseille on October 18, 1924, he described his days as extremely regimented with designated times for eating, speaking, and studying. In contrast, after studying in Lyon at du Parc, Hng ruminated on the French style and quality of teaching, and concluded that the education did not differ from that in Saigon.
177

176 Nh anh m em mi bit yu qu ting nc nh, Hng, Trn ng Nam Php, 303.
177

Journal entry dated 16 December 1924. Ibid. 77

He exclaimed, Ive already spent time and efforts to travel all the way here, only to find that this is exactly like home!
178

Furthermore, in stark contrast to H Hu Tngs fascination and full involvement with student associations and political activism, the archetype of the radicalized Vietnamese student emerged very subtly in Hngs letters. In a long letter on 2 September 1925, while describing in detail the various French national holidays and developed transportation system, Hng mentioned only in passing, the existence of French-led student strikes. He asks, Do you know what a protest is? and continued by explaining that anyone who held a measure of power, discontent with any issue, could assemble with others, drag oneself outside, and shout throughout the streets.
179

Describing only one example, Hng explained a recent protest

regarding Christianity and the involvement of a group of students at the University of Lyon. In a tone of surprise, Hng described that the students confronted the government building, sang songs in protest, and could not be dispersed by government soldiers on the basis that Arrest would be illegal, since they were granted freedom (of assembly). Here Hng used the word for freedom, t do, in a manner influenced by the French concept of libert that implied both individual and social freedom.
180

As swiftly as he introduced this topic, Hng nonchalantly

proceeded to explain other aspects of French life, such as strange holidays commemorating Cyatherine, Noel, and a description of a local Chinese restaurant. This short reference to student activism shows how political life was just another aspect of French life, and in Hngs case, not 178 i xa ng m nh th ny thi cng tic thay. Nh ng no cm quyn m c lm iu g bt bnh, th h hip on nhau ri ko i reo h cng hng ph. 180 o Duy Anh defines t do [freedom] as following only ones opinion, resistant to others constraints, (libert). Du, Hn-Vit T-in. 78
179

particuarly interesting besides as an act of strange defiance. As evident by the immense detail of his routine life and expressions of nostalgia for his loved ones, these letters home functioned also as a medium to cope with the complex and isolative process of life abroad. Like a progression of emotions, the preponderance of self-doubt, curiosity, dislocation, and anomie within these entries illustrate how travelers encountered and constructed a spatial identity around their experience. In particular, through his experiences of French politics and culture Hng questioned the legitimacy of French political liberties as well as the value of a French degree. In this way, Hngs published journal entries exmplify how the complex ways in which expectations of a spatial identity were tempered with the reality of the everyday and mundane.

Conclusion In recognizing the socio-political vestiges of their parents moral and educational upbringing, the Vietnamese youth who came of age between the 1910s and 1930s experienced a dramatic generational shift in education and worldviews. These ideas were shaped by certain Spencerian perspectives of Social Darwinism that offered new modes of identity focused on individualism, self-cultivation, and ideals of civilizational achievement. Travel to France embodied the pursuit of the individual, a phenomenon that George Dutton explained to be younger urbanites ways of reimagining their lives that gave precedent to their personal aspirations and desires, and that reduced their subordination to family interestes.
181

Throughout

Vietnamese newsprint debates, France embodied the zenith of civilization the realization of selfcultivation, social acceptance, cultural zenith, and for some, the emancipation of the individual. Within fundraising campaigns that promoted study and debates on travel, France also 181 Dutton, Advertising, Modernity, and Consumer Culture in Colonial Vietnam. 79

represented a space where individuals could gain a Western education and ultimately contribute towards the modernization and self-strengthening of the imagined Vietnamese community. Both realms of socio-cultural significance reflect the grafting or localization of civilizational discourse, a re-inscription of definitions of modernity, individualism, and nation. Thch Lans critique of students abroad and Tng Hng and Nht Linhs experience of cultural anomie also reveal the limitations of France as a constructed figment of imperial grandeur. In this search for personal and collective expression in France, this politically and economically diverse generation navigated constructs of past and present, tradition and modern, social expectations and individual aspirations. This manifested in diverse visions of a future for Vietnam, that ranged from modernization and self-strengthening, to national independence. David Marr emphasizes this yearning for self-expression as the intelligentsias search for a set of beliefs that both explained reality and provided the means to alter it.
182

These internally

and socially constructed debates supersede one just between self and society, but also traverse constructs of history, memory, social responsibility, and generational differences. Thus, through examining reformulations of the spatial identity France within Vietnamese travel stories, this chapter brings to light how the generation of youth constructed, rejected, and re-inscribed their own sense of personal identity against interpretations of France and Vietnam.

182 Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945, 329. 80

EPILOGUE MAKING SENSE OF NEW AND OLD SPACES: HUE AS A SITE OF CULTURE AND HERITAGE This thesis has focused on the formation of the spatial identities Indochina and France through the travel and translation of that experience within newsprint and literature. Embedded within these explorations, the writers often reflected upon a deeper sense of belonging to certain cultural spaces, and in that process articulated personal and collective identities of class, national, and political orientation. With new forms of mechanized movement, transportation routes, and regional tourism industries, Vietnamese travelers experienced the physical terrain and invented colonial entity of Indochina. These textual representations of movement and space demonstrate how constructs of Western modernity, leisure, and privileged isolation influenced the formation of middle class identity. Stories of travel to France also shed light on the crafting of collective and individual identity in conjunction with the exploration of space. Idealized as the space of civilization, freedom, and personal expression, the spatial identity of France was formed in part through the association with phenomena of Vietnamese study abroad and political activism.

81

Described by Hue-Tam Ho-Tai as the radicalism of urbanized and Westernized youth in pursuit of freedom, France embodied an emancipation and separation from Vietnam.
183

In this way, travel and the construction of spatial identities were intertwined within the larger conversation on modern practices, forms of social capital, as well as expressions of individual and social identity in the changing cultural and political landscape of the 20 century. Within this discursive exploration of cultural, political, collective identities, spaces were also measured by relational constructs of East and West, modern and traditional, rural and urban. Hue, the historic seat of the Nguyen dynasty, was symbolic of this tension between past and present, Confucian tradition and colonial modernity. Hue stood as a physical testament to a lost pre-colonial past, and in the intelligentsias yearning for new articulations of cultural and political identity, often harkened back to this sense of lost heritage to understand the colonial reality. This epilogue will analyze the representation of Hue within travel stories as a site of lost heritage and cultural nostalgia.
th

Hue and the Invention of a Lost Past Like the polity of Vietnam unified by Emperor Gia Long in 1802, the imperial capital Hue was a relatively new construct and had wavering success maintaining a loyalty on the eve of Western encroachment. Built under the first Nguyn emperor Gia Long (1802-1820) and modeled after the Chinese Forbidden City, Hue embodied the spirit of nation-building during the Nguyen dynasty. In attempts to exert legitimacy and loyalty, Vietnamese leaders relied upon 183 Hue-Tam Ho Tai describes Vietnamese radicalized youth in the following way: They saw asymmetry between the national struggle for independence from colonial rule and their own efforts to emancipate themselves from the oppressiveness of native social institutions and the deadweight of tradition. Ho Tai Hue-Tam, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 4. 82

a Chinese political orthodoxy and Confucian classical philosophy as models of governance. Alexander Woodside explains that the Nguyn rulers borrowing and re-appropriation of Chinese models of governance provided the ideological support for centralized government under the Vietnamese emperor.
184

This period of Confucianization has been compared to historical

attempts to build Confucian legitimacy, such as in the L Thnh Tng era (1460-1497), but the extent to which Vietnam became Sino-Confucianlet alone a stable unified entitywas partial and superficial.
185

Although formally the capital throughout the colonial period, Hue did not develop into one of the primary Vietnamese urban centers for intellectual activity or trade such as Saigon-Ch Ln, Hi Phng, and Hanoi. Hue served as the seat of the Vietnamese royalty, whose limited political power and adherence to rites and pomp symbolized an antiquated pre-colonial world. With the profound administrative and cultural changes in French colonialism, Vietnamese perception of Hue and its administration became increasingly antagonistic; the Nguyen administration received the blame for colonial conquest and was critiqued for its limited power and corrupt bureaucrats. By the death of Emperor Khai Dinh in 1925, the Resident Superior Pierre Pasquier officially transferred all remaining power from the Vietnamese royalty to the resident superior. Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hmery explain the perpetuation of the Nguyen dynasty throughout the colonial era as Coupling its successive capitulations with an attitude of

184 Alexander Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model: A Comparative Study of Vietnamese and Chinese Government in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). 185 Nola Cooke, Nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Confucianization in Historical Perspective: Evidence from the Palace Examinations (1463-1883), Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 25, no. 2 (1994): 270312. 83

historical awaiting composed of veiled reticence and murmured criticisms concerning the colonizers decisions, grounded in royal decrees.
186

In these articulations of authority, Hue became a space of invented cultural and political heritage. The idea of heritage was rooted within the ability of the capital city to use cultural elements to tie the citizenry together into a more cohesive and cooperative entity.
187

Hue

maintained a surface tribute to this sense of Confucian Vietnamese heritage through the continuation of palace exams and rituals. The front page of the March 13, 1936 satirical journal Phong Ha conveyed this dedication to ceremony in an image of three scholar-mandarins bicycling towards the finish line. The caption read On the sporting track of Hue and seemed to critque the spectacle of palace examinations and ceremony characteristic of the Vietnamese scholar-bureaucrat system. The humorous depiction of scholars in traditional garb, sweating and bicycling towards the finish line also emphasized the anachronistic event of scholar competitions.

186 Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hmery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858-1954, From Indochina to Vietnam: Revolution and War in a Global Perspective v. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 106. 187 This study contextualizes the role of Hanoi and Hue within contemporary and historical definitions of heritage. William S. Logan, The Cultural Role of Capital Cities: Hanoi and Hue, Vietnam, Pacific Affairs 78, no. 4 (December 1, 2005): 559575, 560. 84

Figure 4-1 Cover of Phong Ha, 13 March 1936. Caption reads On the field of Hue: After the presentation, the officials must go to Hue one last time to finalize their ranking. This competition was not reported by other newspapers, only Phong Ha witnessed this event. 85

Within travel stories to Hue, visitors would explore the palace and royal burial grounds as well as the mountains and landscape around the city. Scattered throughout the city was an amalgamation of old and new monuments and administration buildings from before and during the colonial period. In Cuc i Chi Hu [Traveling to Hue] published in December 1930, Phc Ba reflected upon the history, architecture, and current role of Hue, and compared that to his first visit to the imperial citadel 10 years earlier to study Giam.
188

Ba explained that in this

touristic trip with his friend, everything had changed; even the changes had changed. Within his ruminations of the history and culture of Hue, the travel story slipped into a nostalgic remembrance and wistful invention of the past. When coming to certain historic sites and contemporary administrative buildings, Ba rhetorically asked, Was this really where the scholar candidates camped out? Was this where mandarins would ride in to the citadel on their horses for royal ceremonies? Was this a garden where poets composed poetry, reflecting on the peaceful sounds of palace horns and 189 ceremony?

These questions show how travelers constructed places with affect culture, histories, and vivid narratives. Within these invented recollections of a pre-colonial past was also the surreal overlap with the contemporary uses of the Hue capital. Ba provided a detailed portrayal of the pomp and circumstance surrounding the court behavior of mandarins and the emperor and also heightened the role of the emperor to introduce new literary arts to Vietnam. For example, the act composing poetry was a key component to Confucian literati culture, as an authentic

188 Phc Ba, Cuc i Chi Hu, in Du Ky Viet Nam: Nam Phong Tap Chi, 1917-1934, vol. 2, 3 vols. (Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh: Nh Xut Bn Tr, 2007), 376383. Originally published as No 157 12-1930 P.B. 189 Ibid. 86

presentation of a historical experience.

190

Poetry in Confucian literati culture was both an

intellectual and metaphysical practicewriting poetry was not only a description of the physical world, but a response and conversation with the terrestrial: The material world influenced the poets thoughts and feelings, and when these thoughts and feelings were uttered, they took the form of poetry. Thus we can view the poetic process as constituting three distinct, but directly related parts. There was 1) some external stimulus which 2) stirred thoughts that were 3) expressed in the form of 191 poetry.

The sng Hng [Perfume River] also was an important site within travel stories to Hue and symbolized a flowing journey of contemplation. When traveling down a majestic river in the island of Ph Quc, Mng Tuyt recalled how other tourists at Trng An depicted the sng Hng river and the magical experience of riding along the river. Tuyt combined that dreamy image with her own experience on a different river, and was stirred to compose poetry; however Tuyt noted that the experience still lacked the famous voices of the Hue women singing along the river bend.
192

The gendered, utopic, and romantic connection of travelers to Hue also permeated Nguyn Tin Lngs travel story, Li ti thn kinh [Visiting the imperial capital once again].
193

Even though he had visited Hue three times already, Lng explained the metaphysical

quality of Hue to remain vividly within his mind and heart. On work assignment for Nam Phong 190 With his extensive research and translations conducted at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan and the Han Nom Institute in Hanoi, Liam Kelly provides a unique and revelatory resource of envoy poetry. Liam C. Kelley, Beyond the Bronze Pillars: Envoy Poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship (Association for Asian Studies, 2005), 39. 191 Ibid. Mng Tuyt, Chi Ph Quc, in Du Ky Viet Nam: Nam Phong Tap Chi, 1917-1934, vol. 1, 3 vols. (Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh: Nh Xut Bn Tr, 2007), 382395, 388. 193 Originally published as No. 200 July 1934 and No. 204 September 1934. The original travel story was dated 18 June 1934. 87
192

Tp Ch, Lng rode down by train from Hanoi but was frustrated at the inability to view anything outside of the train. To quell his anticipation on the journey to Hue, Lng recalled a poem by the scholar Tn a about the endless beauty and mesmerizing magnificence of Hue.
194

Lng used

the line from the poem Yu em anh c anh v to express his overwhelming love for Hue since the day they first met when he was but a student at the Albert Sarraut School. Retreating into a dreamy romance Lng continued to personify Hue with the feminine, mystical power to captivate visitors with her sights and sounds. In contrast to the dreamy allure of Hue as a place of history, culture, and ineffable beauty, some travel representations also depicted the hollowness of Hue under colonial rule. In the case of Cuc i Chi Hu, Bas emotional boat ride down the river demonstrates travelers awareness of the colonial situation, and the intensified sense of loss. Ba professed, I hear the sound of Hue singing, a call of sorrowful resentment and loss of nationis this what remains of the country of Xiem Thanh? Similarly, Mu Sn Mc N.X.H.s journey down the sng Hng in Lc K i ng B T H Ni Vo Si Gn also accentuated the colonial rupture. Paying close attention to the architectural landscape, Mc explained how one of the historic Vietnamese buildings had been washed away in its re-appropriation into a colonial administration office.
195

Mc then continued to explain that the original Vietnamese K i Ng

Mn could still be seen through old eyes; but with new eyes the overwhelming majesty of the historic site had disappeared. Mc continued to argue that throughout history Vietnamese art and 194 ng v x Hu quanh quanh, Non xanh nc bic nh tranh ha Yu em anh c anh v, K trung nh H, mc ph Tam Giang. 195 Mu Sn Mc N.X.H., Lc K i ng B T H Ni Vo Si Gn, in Du Ky Viet Nam: Nam Phong Tap Chi, 1917-1934, vol. 3, 3 vols. (Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh: Nh Xut Bn Tr, 2007), 2544. 88

architecture had been subordinated to literature, and explained how under the social and political transformations of colonialism, Vietnamese art and architecture was once again pushed to the wayside. On returning to shore, Ba joined other travel companions to translate books based on the notion that they had nothing better to do and did not want their journey to be futile. Yet just as Phc Ba was becoming engrossed in his revisiting of old texts, he was forced to return home due to a family death. The story fades away in a bittersweet remembrance of Hue, a place that he could not resign himself to forget. At the end Phc Ba explained that the fate of the book project he was working on before his premature departure: his book was like a frog in a well that nobody paid attention to; yet the contribution was a small accomplishment in itself towards the study of literature and society.
196

These conflicted renditions of Hue developed based on an imagined sense of Vietnamese ancestryintensified and essentialized further due to the colonial condition. The physical monuments, historic buildings, and even the river seemed to stand in stark contrast to the colonial administrative buildings, limited power of the royal family, and increasing corruption of the bureaucracy. In this way the cultural nostalgia and constructs of a pre-colonial past symbolize one of the many paths through which the Vietnamese intelligentsia searched for self-expression of the individual and collective.

196 Ba, Cuc i Chi Hu, 383. Cho hay xem hi n cha, Rng vn kho sch ca vua thiu gi. Ngh mnh ging ch bit chi. Gi l cht mc ghi chuyn i. 89

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