The Temple of Literature in Hanoi is a good example. There have been countless conflicts as well as shared culture. Vietnam's 2,000 year history with its northern neighbor is complex. Has the conflict with China ever really ended, I ask Pham Thi Ky as she lights another candle. No country weighs on Vietnam like China, and it has been that way for centuries. But relative to China, those were brief battles. They fought and died against the French occupiers, then the Americans. That 1979 war left more than 50,000 dead. In one of the many war cemeteries in Lang Son, a city in northern Vietnam, Pham Thi Ky and her family light incense and offer prayers for her brother-in-law, who died 36 years ago in Vietnam's brief but bloody border war with China.
Vietnam and China have been adversaries for centuries and the friction continues to this day. Every year, the family goes to the cemetery on the anniversary of his death.
Pham Thi Ky (right) and her family pray at the grave of her brother-in-law, who was killed 36 years ago in the 1979 border war with China.
0 kommentar(er)
