Few research questions for a novel

"  If I die I will feed the fish ", sounds like Mafia suicide talk?

kilimanj wrote:

2. Does anyone know the average cost of ling in 1954 North Vietnam? Or what it might have cost in Dong or Gold to get false papers in order to flee South?

VietNam was split in 1954 after the French demonstrated at Dien Bien Phu, defending a valley is not smart, along roughly the 17th parallel after the Geneva Accords was ratified by the United Nations.

After this there was a 3-month opening where northerners were free to move south and vice versa. There was no charge.

Thank you for your reply, I am aware of the history and actually it was open for 300 days (the French were given only 3 months). However land owners, wealthy, political figures, etc from the previous administration were still under threat from the New Viet Minh and the land reform acts. They were not freely allowed to migrate to the South even though the Geneva Accords allowed it.

I guess a better question would be What do you think the average cost of living during that era in Dong's was?

http://www.vietnamtraveltour.net/1179-v … -quay.html

Vietnam Spinning Tops – Con Quay

2 - this site will help as it mentions average incomes at the time.
I'm shocked you can't find this on google - took me a few minutes each.

1. Cù, chơi cù
3. I tried to search this poem, but didnt find any information. I will search it later when I use laptop.

Didn't have VND back in them days they used p's

Budman1 wrote:

Didn't have VND back in them days they used p's

Yes, and Sth VN had its own currency.
In 1953, the Vietnam branch of the Institut d'Emission des Etats du Cambodge, du Laos et du Vietnam issued notes dual denominated in piastre and đồng. At the same time, the two other branches of the Bank made similar issues with the riel in Cambodia and the kip in Laos. The đồng circulated in those parts of Vietnam not under the control of the Communist forces, which by 1954 coincided with South Vietnam. Coins denominated in su were also introduced in 1953. In 1955, a truly independent issue of đồng banknotes was produced by the National Bank of Vietnam.
Coins

In 1953, 10, 20 and 50 su coins were introduced. In 1960, 1 đồng were added, followed by 10 đồng in 1964, 5 đồng in 1966 and 20 đồng in 1968. 50 đồng were minted dated 1975 but they were never shipped to Vietnam due to the fall of the South Vietnamese government. It is reported that all but a few examples were "disposed of as scrap metal"[2] and the coin is very rare.
   It would be nice to find a few of these?

Ahh thank you everyone for this good info. I will update dong to p's.

Thanks for the Vietnam Spinning Tops – Con Quay. Any idea where I could purchase a traditional one from?

Thanks again

Mas Fred, can you please repost that link?

Or your search term and which countries google you used.

Thanks

Here:

"Khi vượt biên có một trong 3 điều sẽ xảy ra :

Một là con bị bắt đi tù thì má nuôi con
Hai là con chết giữa biển làm mồi cho cá ăn
Ba là con đi thoát được thì con sẽ gởi tiền về nuôi cả nhà

Một là má nuôi con
Hai là con nuôi cá
Ba là con nuôi cả nhà"

THANK YOU! You are the best, ngattt

Sorry, I forgot the link, you can find many things here:
https://sites.google.com/site/dangvukin … ao-ve-xhcn

About: "CÙ", you can search: trò chơi chọi cù, con quay

Here: http://mocchautourism.com/index.php/vi/ … an-Ho-285/

kilimanj wrote:

Thank you for your reply, I am aware of the history and actually it was open for 300 days (the French were given only 3 months).

I only used Lexis-Nexis and searched the agreement. North Vietnamese actually got 90 days but southerners heading north got much longer unofficially.

Many of the southerners were Communist sympathizers who later returned south as spies, etc. They had Southern accents that helped them conceal themselves.

kilimanj wrote:

I guess a better question would be What do you think the average cost of living during that era in Dong's was?

Since the Dong, any version, was never an international exchange currency, you will have to use time worked to earn ... (whatever)

It's very complex because the Japanese were tossed out, the UN (whatever guise) appointed the UK as guardian of the south. The French moved back on so it would take an economist to figure it. Again back to How much labour to earn a good.

From wiki:

"Allied Chiefs of Staff at the Potsdam Conference decided to temporarily partition Vietnam at the 17th parallel (just south of Da Nang) for the purposes of operational convenience."

"It was agreed that British forces would take the surrender of Japanese forces in Saigon for the southern half of Indochina, whilst Japanese troops in the northern half would surrender to the Chinese."

While the official Potsdam Declaration and makes no mention of Indochina, as it dealt solely with Japan, the Indochina partition agreement was hammered out at Potsdam before the official declaration was issued. The partition had no political effects, it was for purely military considerations. The end of the war caught everyone by surprise (Allied plans were on the table for campaigns taking place as late at 1947).

During WWII, Ho Chi Minh developed close contacts with sympathetic Chinese KMT leaders in Guangxi province, China's traditional gate into Vietnam. But Chiang Kai-shek chose to send in the Yunnan Army, a region HCM had no connections to, down the Red River. Once in place, they were in no hurry to leave, and began carting off everything they could lay their hands on.

The British were preoccupied with getting back to India, which was on the road to independence and partition. So while they agreed, they only sent in a single Indian division, the 20th, under Gracey, which concentrated on Saigon, as they wanted out of Indochina as soon as possible. In their eyes, and international law of the period, the French were responsible for reestablishing order in Indochina.

The Allied campaigns in France caused a great deal of destruction to France's industrial and transportation infrastructure. So back in 'the Hectagon' no one gave a damn for Indochina, save the Provisional Government, which made plans for its liberation and return to French control. To that end they leaned on the British to equip and arm a Brigade of colonial Senegalese troops, as well as a European French Commando type Unit (the "light intervention corps") in addition to the Free French SOE behind-the-line teams embedded in Force 136. Force 136 made parachute drops into Indochina (mostly Laos) before the end of the war, but movement of the Senegalese and the Intervention Corps was dependent on maritime means under control of the U.S.

At the same time, the French Army began the demobilization process at home while the Allies prepared for the final campaigns against Japan. To save U.S. lives, the U.S. leaned on France to provide an Amphibious Corps for landing in Japan, and to that end agreed to equip, arm, and train two Colonial Infantry Divisions (the 9th and 3rd DICs) along the lines of US Marines. At war's end, one of the Divisions had just been reformed, and the second was still in the planning process. Only one of the divisions received its U.S. equipment.

The Vietnamese Nationalists faced as many uncertainties as the Allies. French, then Japanese security measures, combined with the Allied naval and air campaigns waged throughout Vietnam to make Japanese reinforcement of Southern China difficult, made communications between Viet Minh cells in south, central, and north Vietnam equally difficult. Those campaigns were also a factor in the great 1944-45 Nghe Tinh famine, when relief supplies being sent by road, rail, and sea from south Vietnam were interdicted.

In a nutshell: The Americans refused to move the Senegalese to Indochina, citing a belief that the Indochinese were not welcome Black African troops. The British had to use their own allocated shipping to move what was left of the Brigade to Indochina in early 1946, where Cambodia happily drafted two battalions to replace the Senegalese, while a third battalion was later recruited in Ban Me Thuot. (the second Cambodian battalion was raised among the Khmer Krom of the Mekong Delta, who still had a clandestine Cambodian governmental network they obeyed.) The French, meanwhile, were scrambling for shipping of their own to move in two divisions. Since neither of those were ready, the put together a task force (200 vehicles, 5000 men) from GEN Leclerc's old 2nd Armored Division. 

Meawhile, the surrendered Japanese awaiting repatriation were rearmed and put to work under British and French command, escorting convoys, guarding key installations, etc. IIRC, the last surrendered Japanese went home in late 1946, but the British had departed on 28 January 1946, leaving the French in charge.

France had meanwhile recognized HCM's government in Tonkin and Annam, but the Chinese were a problem. The Viet Minh did not have the strength to eject them from the North. To this end, a deal was reached between HCM and the French to get the Chinese out. The French landed at Haiphong on 8 March 1946, and on 18 March entered Hanoi. On 10 June the Chinese pulled out of North Vietnam.

Not 1954, but certainly on the road to it. While the British assisted, it was the French who reestablished their control over Vietnam, and they did so on a shoestring.

Hi,
1. Name of the toy: "Con cù quay/ Con quay/ Con vụ.
You can buy it in Cho Lon (1 very old market in China Town Area, Ho Chi Minh City),  but I don't know if it remains the traditional one. Or you can go to West North or Sapa to buy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top
You can switch to Vietnamese version.

2. We used Dong, xu (coin). You can have a look at money (in paper) here:
https://www.facebook.com/scarletvn/medi … amp;type=3
My grandmom was in the North and fleed to South. She had 11 children. My grandfather was a soldier of Formed Vietnam Government, when Vietminh came, she had to run away. She hid her big children who grown up (about 8 and more) outside of her village in trees & bushes. At midnight, she put 4 of the youngest one into her basket and carried it out of the village pretending she went to market like everyday. She had to do it several time until all of her children carried out of the village safely. I was told that soldiers of Formed Government didn't ask her for money to get her through to go to the South.

You can find a lot of books about Indochina & Vietnam war in our project https://www.facebook.com/scmn.vietnam?fref=ts
We are collecting, scanning and uploading as much as book as we find. Many of them are not allowed to be published in Vietnam, especially books about Vietnam war with different points of view from current Vietnam government.

May I ask what book are you writing? Love to read it when it's ready!
Good luck with your work!

Hi Scarletvn,

Thanks for the reply and support, this is good info. As I'm learning more and more I find all of these stories like your grandmothers amazing. It's hard to think what people had to go through and endure during that time.

I don't have a definite name for the book yet, we are floating around a few ideas. Right now its near the beginning stages. The outline is complete and I have written about 2 chapters in full. It will be a biography on a lady I recently met and her stories. She was only 10 during the height of the war so some of the experiences are blurry and I have to do the research behind the scenes. To really briefly summarize, her father was a government worker in Hanoi. He was able to flee to Saigon in 1954. She was born in Bien Hoa, near long binh post. We have talked of stories of her childhood, war literally right in her backyard, the communist takeover after the war, her failed attempt to escape to the US, prison, and ultimately her sponsorship just recently to legally come to the US.

Not being Vietnamese I am trying to immerse myself in as much as I can from the US to understand and provide first hand descriptions in the book rather than solely translation. I've been learning the food, the history, the culture, even trying to learn the language a little. Con Cu was one of those games she talked about enjoying as a child so I want to buy one for her and try it, I hope it will give her a smile for past memories.

This will be my second book and if it follows a similar timeframe I would expect a release in about 1-2 years. I know its a little slow, but I only get to talk with her once a week and it is not my primary job so just spare time. I can promise to post once its near the release stages though

While your on the subject of money ask her if she remembers "C" day. That's the day they would change the MPC notes and the locals holding them would lose everything they had. Never was a set time they would do it, just wake up one morning and everything was shut/locked down till all the people that were legally holding it converted over to the new script.  Rough time for mama-sans.

Hi Budman1,

If you are referring to 1975 when the North started changing money, yes, we actually went through that. She told me of her sister being taken right from the school for no reason for weeks they didn't know where she went, just dissapeared, later they found out she was taken to count money for the exchange. Before it happened there was a mad scramble to exchange money to gold then when it was happening she told me for every 1,000,000 was converted to 200 so families were pooling money together as much as they could. She has several other stories about this time period but I'll let you read the book to see more

History of money exchange in Vietnam:

http://www.tienco.com/lich-su-ve-tien/2 … t-nam.html

I might have confused the op by not spelling out "MPC" here's some background information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_p … ertificate

About half way down there's a mention of "C Day"

Kilimanj, Don't worry about any title for the book. Once it's written you can figure one out. Big House publishers often change the title to what suits them. If you are trying to capture the war from a Vietnamese perspective, Oliver Stone did a credible job with the film "Between Heaven and Earth". And there are several books that give a credible Vietnamese perspective in English. Tran Ngoc Chau's "Vietnam Labyrinth" is one of them, and worth a read.

1. Con vụ ỏ Bông vụ

2. Dunno. Maybe you can google coz the northern people 1954 I know that can tell you exactly, are mostly dead now.

3. Thats a small poem of the Southern people after 1975. :

Một là con nuôi Má
Hai là Má nuôi con.
Ba là con nuôi cá.

It means that when the northern communists came to Saigon in April, 1975. Many people in Saigon got bad influence from that (which is considered "sensitive" by this forum to talk about) so many people sold everything they have and decided to let their children be "boat people" to flee to America. If they make it, they can send back money to take care of their Mothers, if they got caught, the Mothers take care of them and in the worst scenario, they will die on the ocean and be the food for fish.

My family is Saigonese and know that time very well. Lost everything. My uncles and aunts were boat people and they got lucky that they did not "feed the fish".

lirelou wrote:

Kilimanj, Don't worry about any title for the book. Once it's written you can figure one out. Big House publishers often change the title to what suits them. If you are trying to capture the war from a Vietnamese perspective, Oliver Stone did a credible job with the film "Between Heaven and Earth". And there are several books that give a credible Vietnamese perspective in English. Tran Ngoc Chau's "Vietnam Labyrinth" is one of them, and worth a read.

Do you know if these 2 books are readily available in bookshops in VN?

Blue, you might find them in a backpacker area or expat library. The title of the Le Ly Hayslip book is "When Heaven and Earth Changed Places". I remember the film as being titled "Between Heaven and Earth" but a quick check on wiki says  it was "Heaven and Earth". There is a totally unrelated series of novels called "Between Heaven and Earth". (Under U.S. law, novels can be copyrighted, but titles are not.)

I'm not a Oliver Stone fan (mostly based on the film "JFK") but I consider his film "Heaven and Earth" to be one of the finest on the war. One of the lighter yet telling moments of the film is the refrigerator scene when she first comes to the U.S. Her sister-in-law is a big fat (but friendly) woman. Le Ly sees the refrigerator as an enormous thing two times its actual size, stuffed with all sorts of unhealthy garbage foods, which the Americans dig into at the table almost as if pigs at a trough. All the Vietnamese-Americans in the audience broke into laughter at that scene, as if their first impressions had been exactly that.

By the way, she was born and raised somewhere up in your area.

lirelou wrote:

Blue, you might find them in a backpacker area or expat library. The title of the Le Ly Hayslip book is "When Heaven and Earth Changed Places". I remember the film as being titled "Between Heaven and Earth" but a quick check on wiki says  it was "Heaven and Earth". There is a totally unrelated series of novels called "Between Heaven and Earth". (Under U.S. law, novels can be copyrighted, but titles are not.)

I'm not a Oliver Stone fan (mostly based on the film "JFK") but I consider his film "Heaven and Earth" to be one of the finest on the war. One of the lighter yet telling moments of the film is the refrigerator scene when she first comes to the U.S. Her sister-in-law is a big fat (but friendly) woman. Le Ly sees the refrigerator as an enormous thing two times its actual size, stuffed with all sorts of unhealthy garbage foods, which the Americans dig into at the table almost as if pigs at a trough. All the Vietnamese-Americans in the audience broke into laughter at that scene, as if their first impressions had been exactly that.

By the way, she was born and raised somewhere up in your area.

Thanks Lirelou, there's a few reasonable bookshops up here, I'll have a look.
" By the way, she was born and raised somewhere up in your area." maybe that explains the obsession for most VN's around here to keep checking out my fridge when they visit????? It's all starting to make sense now.