The decision has brought big benefit to Nguyen Huynh Gia Phat, a private enterprise, which plans to exploit the minerals for “making common construction materials” (stones for household use). However, people believe that the project does not deserve the sacrifice of the 247 pine trees of the forest.

Pine trees fall down

On January 11, 2012, Deputy Director of the Lam Dong provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Bui Van Hung signed the Decision No. 58, granting the license to Nguyen Huynh Gia Phat to exploit and use the timber in the leased area and exploit the materials to make common construction materials in ward No. 7 in Da Lat City.

Under the decision, Nguyen Huynh Gia Phat has the right to chop down and use 247 pine trees, of which 113 trees have the diameter of over 25 cm. The exploitation time would finish on June 30, 2012.

The noteworthy thing is that, according to the Decision No 58, this would be just the first phase of the exploitation plan on the 1.83 hectares out of the 4 hectares of the “stone mine” of Nguyen Huynh Gia Phat. This means that the enterprise may get the license for the “second or third phases” of the exploitation in the future.

Stones arise

The Dispatch No. 6033a/VPCP of the government office released on August 30, 2011, stipulates that the licensing for mineral exploration and exploitation nationwide is halted until a new decision is made.

Meanwhile, Lam Dong province still decided to sacrifice the special use forest to develop a stone mine in the forest.

On October 13, 2011, the Lam Dong Department for Agriculture and Rural Development released the Decision No. 1007, approving the design on exploiting and using forestry products on the leased area, licensing the exploitation of minerals to make common construction materials in sub-area No. 148A of ward 7 in Da Lat City, to Huynh Le Gia Phat private enterprise.

Prior to that, on October 4, 2011, the Lam Dong provincial people’s committee released the Document No. 5359 on the mineral exploitation on the leased area of Nguyen Huynh Gia Phat Enterprise in sub-area No. 148A, and two other companies – Nam Tien Construction and Trade Company Ltd, and Lam Dien Company Ltd.

Meanwhile, only on August 22, 2011, did the Lam Dong People’s Committee realize the Decision No. 1823 to take back the land (which previously was allocated to the Ta Nung forest management board and put under the protection of the Lam Dong Military Command) to allocate to Nguyen Huynh Gia Phat.

After the decision No. 58 was made, in March 2012, the owner of Nguyen Huynh Gia Phat signed a contract with Phuong Thanh Enterprise, under which Phuong Thanh would exploit timber as per the license.

This is not for the first time the pine trees in Da Lat were chopped down. Two years ago, local newspapers reported that 1000 pine trees on 5000 square meters of the forest were chopped down.

The culprit in the case, Dang Viet Tam, was forced to pay the penalty of 30 million dong, which was not heavy enough to deter other crimes.

In 2007, the government set up a long term program on the human resource development by 2020, which says that Vietnam needs qualified workers in basic sciences and technologies. However, the training has been going not in accordance with the program.

Under the program, the government prioritizes to develop some natural and social sciences, information technology, mechatronics technology and automation, biotechnology, and some technological branches that can meet the requirements for the industrialization and modernization. The government also emphasized the need of training teachers and highly qualified experts in the service sector.

The government requested to adjust the structure of students so as to obtain the balanced development of the manpower, with nine percent of manpower in basic sciences, 12 percent in pedagogical branches, 35 percent in technologies, 9 percent in agriculture, forestry and fisheries, 6 percent in healthcare, 20 percent in economics and laws, and 9 percent in others.

The program pointed out that by 2020, the professions which need high manpower demand would include industries, construction and services.

It is expected that by 2015, transport, tourism and information technology would be the sectors that need the highest numbers of workers with 500,000 workers for each. Meanwhile, the banking sector, which is now considered the “hottest” job now, would need some 240,000 people only.

Especially, the finance sector is believed to need 2.2 million officers in 2011-2015, but the number would drop to 1.6 million in 2016-2020.

As such, the demand for the manpower in the finance and banking sector would not be as hot as currently, while the demand would see a gradual decrease from 2016.

The imbalanced training

It’s clear that the training plans drawn up by the schools do not go in line with the government’s programming and the career forecasts. The schools tend to expand the training scale in some majors which are considered the hot and fashionable ones, while do not care much about the manpower demand.

The noteworthy thing is that though the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has realized the problem, it has not tried to stop it.

According to the ministry, 248 out of 416 universities and junior colleges, or 59.62 percent, last year enrolled students for one of the four economics-relating majors: economics, business administration, finance and banking, and accountancy.

Meanwhile, only 76 universities (4-5 year training|) and 92 junior colleges (3 year training) which specialize in training art students and some pedagogical schools did not enroll students for the above said majors.

Also according to the ministry, 38 percent of the enrolment quota was allocated to the four majors, while the remaining 62 percent was allocated to all other training majors.

In 2009-2011, the number of students registering to attend the university entrance exams to the four majors accounted for 41 percent of the total number of examinees.

Though admitting that there are too many economics students, the ministry still allocated the highest quota for economics relating majors. 32 percent of the total 576,000 popular training students in 2012 would be the ones in economics, finance and banking. Meanwhile, 30 percent of the training quota has been allocated to technological majors, 9 percent to natural and social sciences.

MOET’s Deputy Minister Bui Van Ga admitted that less and less students want to study social sciences. In 2010, the number of students registering to attend the exams to social sciences and humanity majors amounted to 7.8 percent (the students have to take C-group exams, i.e. literature, history and geography), while the figure dropped to 6.4 percent in 2011.

 

A poet, a pro- fessor of english at north carolina state university, and the former president of the american literary translators association, he has also authored many books about Viet Nam.

 

He translated Spring Essence, a book of one hundred year old poems by Ho Xuan Huong. The book was published in america in English, Vietnamese and in the original Nom script. This is the first time this has occurred for an original Vietnamese work. From October 2000 to June 2001, 20,000 copies of spring essence were sold.

 

 

John Balaban at Ngoc Son Temple, Hanoi, 1998.

 

 

From 1971 to 1972, Balaban traveled throughout many places in the Mekong Delta with his recording equipment, despite the bombing at that time. He recorded more than 500 Vietnamese folk songs. He was surprised to learn that Vietnamese had six tones (Han Chinese has four tones).

 

In 1974, his book Ca dao Vietnam: A Bilingual Anthology of Vietnamese Folk Poetry was published by Unicorn Press in America. By 2000, Balaban had published 11 collections of poems and prose, two of which were given American poetry awards. Some other books he has written about Viet Nam include After Our War, Viet Nam: The Land We Never Knew, Viet Nam: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, and Remembering Heaven’s Face.

 

After years living in Viet Nam and writing about the land, he began translating the poetry of Ho Xuan Huong. This difficult task lasted 10 years although he selected to translate only 49 short poems.

 

For his work he sought all possible documents about Ho Xuan Huong including handwritten copies in Nom scripts, copies carved in wood at the end of the century, printed copies in Vietnamese from the early 1900s, and research conducted by other scholars. He met and received advice from many scholars including Huu Ngoc, Nguyen Quang Hong, Dao Thai Ton, and Nguyen Hue Chi. However, he first had to intensely study Ho Xuan Huong’s life and career.

 

Ho Xuan Huong lived in a time when the Le Dynasty was in decline and the Nguyen Dynasty was in its infancy. She was a descendant of the first doctoral candidate, Ho Hung Dat. Although she apparently possessed extraordinary beauty, she eventually passed the marriageable age and reluctantly agreed to become a concubine.

 

During her life, the ruling families Trinh and Nguyen were at war with each other. Tay Son later united the country from Gia Dinh, Phu Xuan to Thang Long, and defeated 20,000 Qing invaders. However, the Tay Son Dynasty only lasted 14 years (1788-1802). Nguyen Anh established the Nguyen Dynasty with Western help.

 

Balaban wrote:

 

“This period of social collapse and ruin was,  perhaps  not  surprisingly, also a high point in the long tradition of Vietnamese poetry. As Dante says in his De Vulgari Eloquentia, ‘the proper subjects of poetry are love, virtue and war’. The great poems from this period – like Nguyen Du’s famous Tale of  Kieu – are filled with individual longing, with sense of ‘cruel fate’, and with a searching for something of permanence. Warfare, starvation, and corruption did not vanquish poets like Nguyen  Du  and Ho  Xuan  Huong, but deepened their work.”

 

Most  of  Ho Xuan  Huong’s  poems followed Tang’s law of poetry, having seven words and either eight  or four lines. As a Westerner, Balaban  had to spend a lot of time studying the foreign poetic form. He read The Art of Chinese Poetry by James J. Y. Liu thoroughly as well as Tang poetry, prose, sharp tones and syntactic parallel structures.

 

He had to understand the  talent of Ho  Xuan Huong to  be   able  to  translate  her poems into English. It is said that some of Ho Xuan Huong’s poems have double meanings and use phrase reversals. He had to  study diligently for good  and accurate translations. Of course, in some cases, he had to use footnotes.

Ho Xuan  Huong used Nom script and Han  Chinese  to  write  poems. Nom script, despite a thousand year  history was, unfortunately, almost lost  by the 20th   century.

 

Balaban wants to  place that ancient script in a position of respect so that young Vietnamese will know their own language and motherland. With  the cooperation of scholar Ngo Thanh  Nhan,  a computer  expert and linguist at Courant Institute of Mathematics Sciences, New  York University, Balaban was able to have his translation published  with  Ho Xuan  Huong’s Nom poems.

 

In 1999, Balaban came to Ha Noi to consult with some researchers at the Institute of Han -Nom Studies. He also studied  the Ho Xuan  Huong’s poems in  Nom script in  the L’Oeuvre de  la  poétesse  Vietnamienne  Ho Xuan  Huong   by  the  French  author, Maurice Durand.

 

Balaban says that the work was extremely challenging and cumbersome:

 

“For ten years I have pecked at these translations, often  just giving up,  but always returning.  My  persistence was sustained by admiration and awe, which I hope the reader will experience: for Ho Xuan  Huong’s lonely, intelligent life,  for  her   exquisite  poetry, her stubbornness, her sarcasm, her bravery, her irreverent humor, and her bodhisattva’s compassion. She is a world-class poet who  can  move  us  today  as she  has moved  Vietnamese for  two  hundred years.”                                                                                 

 

The Spring Essence has received positive reviews  from  professionals. Frances Fitzgerald, the author of Fire in the Lake, wrote,  “In  John Balaban’s translation, the poetry of Ho Xuan  Huong – witty, caustic, and profound-should  find its place in world literature.”

Neil Sheehan, author of   A Bright Shining Lie, a book about the Vietnam war, said “John Balaban, an accomplished poet in his own right, has presented us with a gift of art and scholarship -a splendid translation of the work of the beloved  Vietnamese poet, Ho Xuan  Huong. She was a woman that possessed, along with her literary talent, that great Vietnamese virtue of courage,  and dared to  defy the  conventions of her time.”

 

John Balaban is now in the process of reprinting Spring  Essence and trying to bring the book to Europe with the help of French and Russian translations. He is also thinking  of translating Tale of Kieu into English.

If Vietnam is facing the ‘invasion’ of the Hallyu wave from South Korea on its media, Laos is also confronting the flood of music and movie tapes and disks from its neighboring country – Thailand.

“Music tapes and disks from Thailand are flooding Laos. Lao people do not understand this danger. Thai people ought to have protected their copyright but they have not to infiltrate our market. They attract Lao people to follow their culture. This is very dangerous but we don’t know how to deal with it,” said Mr. Xayxavat Singnamvong.

“Sharing a long border (around 2,000km), the customs and habit of Laos and Thailand are similar. They (Thailand) are equipped with modern techniques so their means of visual and audio entertainment highly develop. There are 5-6 Thai television channels in our country. Their culture not only appears in the border area but now in our bedrooms. We don’t know how to solve it and we would like to learn from you,” he added.

Mr. Bien said that Laos and Vietnam are small countries so they both face the threat of “cultural invasion.” The two countries should lean on each other. Though Vietnam still has difficulties in performing at management, Vietnam is willing to help Laos.

“Vietnam has recently integrated into the world so we are building new laws to run the country. To well manage a country, we need 600-700 bills. At present, we have a small number of bills and we need more time to compile them,” Mr. Bien said.

What does Vietnam learn from the Korean cultural invasion?

In an interview with VietNamNet, Mr. Bien admitted the threat of “cultural invasion” in the current situation. He said: “This is the common situation of small countries like Vietnam in the time of integration. Preserving cultural characteristics has become very important. Maintaining our culture is preserving the nation’s self-reliance.”

“Based on recent performing activities, we can see that Vietnamese youth have highly idolized foreign stars. We should balance the time for foreign movies and shows and for Vietnamese movies and arts on local television channels. The youth should firstly respect their country’s culture and are proud of their tradition. Integration and exchange is necessary but our culture must be highly respected,” Mr. Bien added.

Harmonizing tradition and the youth is difficult and how can Vietnam do it? Mr. Bien said: “I think that awareness and action must walk abreast. First of all, performing acts must be healthy; performing costume could not be ridiculous. Music works and movies must reflect tradition. Not all genres of traditional arts are attractive but we must seek ways to transmit them to the youth and make the youth think that traditional arts are interesting.”

“That’s the responsibility of artists. They have to prove to the youth that traditional arts are interesting and attractive. There are two aspects: in one side, we have to preserve the origin but on the other side, we have to keep it abreast with the time. Water puppetry, cai luong or tuong might be different 100 years ago, but to make them alive we have to seek new ways to transfer it to the society, particularly the youth.”

What can Vietnam learn from the Korean cultural invasion in Vietnam? Mr. Bien said: “Economic status of the Republic of Korea is much developed than Vietnam. They have big groups that sponsor cultural and performing activities. They invest in exporting culture. However, we are not inferior to them in terms of art development.”

One month ago, during a talk on culture in Hanoi, Mr. Oriza Hirata from Japan shared with Vietnamese scholars Japan’s experience. This country once concentrated on rebuilding the economy and neglected culture. Japan ranks third in the world for economic development but its cultural activities are equivalent to one fifth of France or other European countries.

He quoted an example: two Japanese cities – Furano and Ashibetsu in the 90s. Being invested with JPY10 billion to develop giant works and resorts but Ashibetsu could not draw tourists because of lacking cultural characters. Meanwhile, Furano, only 24km from Ashibetsu, which had only several fields of lavender left from the expansion of factories in the 80s, has become a popular destination.

According to the Japanese scholar, culture must be preserved from each village and commune. When each village becomes a center of the world, that’s wonderful. At that time, villagers will not have to look to big cities or capitals because they have their own squares and cultural centers. Cultural activities will make benefit after 100-200 years.

Mr. Oriza Hirata said that South Korean has learned experience from Japan when it focuses resources in culture, not only economic development. He advised Vietnam to not follow Japan.

Again, the story about cultural development of Korean people has returned, told by an insider, Prof. Bae Sang Soo, Dean of the Faculty of Vietnamese Language at Busan University of Foreign Studies and Secretary General of the Association of Vietnam-loving People in South Korea (VESAMA) on Tuoi Tre dated April 22, 2012.

“Approximately 20 years ago, we worried a lot about the potential effects of hip-hop music that came from Western countries on our teenagers, as they tried to compete with one another in getting hair dyed or decorated themselves with weird jewelry pieces or clothes. We held a lot of seminars regarding this topic in which many questions were raised: Do young people deny tradition? Do they imitate western cultures? Are youngsters no longer patriotic?

However, last of all we realized the reason the youth became “crazy fans” of western artists was partly that South Korean showbiz at that time was not fascinating enough to appeal to them. Hence, we developed the policies that helped encourage changes to this field.

Let me take an example from K-pop (the South Korean music industry) today. My generation and other older ones do not get accustomed to listening to this kind of music, simply because western experts have been hired to teach local musicians, who are also encouraged to study music abroad in order to find a new trend for the K-pop development.

The local musicians studying abroad are required to compose songs as a mixture of traditionalism and modernism. As I know, a number of South Korean musicians have hired foreigners to offer professional advice for their works to ensure that both locals and foreigners like them. Along with musicians, film producers, choreographers, singers, among others have made great efforts for changes. For these reasons, Hallyu is the result of the change efforts jointly by the government and showbiz artists…”

Chief inspector Mr. Huynh Phong Tranh, told correspondents on April 5–that in the Tien Lang case, local authorities made mistakes in managing, using and withdrawing land, resulting in a criminal case.

However, Mr. Tranh said that the Government Inspectorate’s point of view is cases are different and inspectors cannot review all other cases.

The chief government inspector said that after the Tien Lang case, the number of claims related to land conflicts and the number of group claims have both increased.

He said that land-related claims have been a problem for a long time. “Some local governments have avoided dealing with land-related cases. In some cases, local authorities made wrong decisions so people do not agree with them,” he added.

The official said that land management in Vietnam was not strict enough and it affected people. The number of group claims is high owing to poor awareness of law of some people. According to the Government Inspectorate’s statistics, 40-50 percent of claims are wrong, 25-35 percent are both wrong and right and 20-25 percent are correct.

Mr. Tranh said that many complainants were induced to lodge group claims.

He said that the Government Inspectorate would check the land revocation process to protect the interests of those whose land was withdrawn.

“The State must take care of the people’s interest but the people should not lodge unfounded claims and when they are induced by others,” Mr. Tranh said.

In the first quarter of 2012, the Government Inspectorate completed inspection at 11 state-owned groups, ministries and provinces. The agency detected economic violations worth VND30.72 trillion and proposed the government to collect over VND3.7 trillion to the budget.

At the same time, inspectors of ministries and provinces finalized 395 inspection cases, detecting violations related to VND94 billion, 14.9 hectares of land and proposed relevant agencies to collect over VND54 billion to the budget.