Communist Mummy

Vietnamese people, especially Vietnamese women, are extremely hardworking, and the private sector has been booming since it was officially re-allowed in 1986. However, the state has to emphasize at every corner that the political system is still communist. Everywhere, national flags hang, a yellow star on a red background, and, in the same colors, the hammer and sickle as the emblem of the party.

While in everyday life there is neither equality nor brotherhood, but rather everyone fights for their place, one must shed individuality when waiting in line for the mausoleum of President Ho Chi Minh. You become a tiny part of an amorphous, overwhelming mass of people that moves hardly at all for 45 minutes, only to pass through a security checkpoint like at an airport. But you are also reminded that you are just a tiny cog in a larger mechanism.

“Ho Chi Minh has given us our freedom and human dignity back,” says Ruby. She works in a travel agency in the old town, is 27 years old, and has not experienced the tumultuous history of her country. Not the Vietnam War led by the USA between 1955 and 1973, not the liberation war against the French colonizers who oppressed the country since the mid-19th century, and not the Japanese occupation between 1941 and 1945. (Side note: Those who find history boring can skip the next sections.)

Vietnam was a monarchy for over a thousand years, from 938 to 1945. However, from 1858, the country was colonized by the French and occupied by the Japanese from 1941 to 1945.

In the war against the French and later the Americans, Ho Chi Minh, who became president of North Vietnam in 1945, became a national hero. He is still affectionately referred to as “Uncle Ho,” but he did not live to see the definitive victory: he died in 1969 at the age of 79 from lung cancer, having been a heavy smoker. Immediately after his death, officials flew in Soviet specialists for the embalming of corpses.

In his mausoleum, built in a pompous Soviet style, one can view Ho Chi Minh while passing by, as if he has just passed away. Two minutes are allocated for viewing the body; the mummy is guarded by soldiers standing at attention in white ceremonial uniforms with rifles and fixed bayonets. 

Thank goodness we didn’t just stand in line for these two minutes for three quarters of an hour. In the expansive park areas around the mausoleum, we can also explore Ho Chi Minh's simple houses, the presidential palace (built by the French as the residence of their governor), and the building of the prime minister in modern socialist style.