But the lingering traces are few and far between.
You mean this used to be French?
My recent stay in Hanoi left me astounded at the dearth of French influence and language. With American dollars and Chinese salesmen on the streets, you wonder what exactly happened to the much-touted allure of French Indochine?
Surely communism happened. Seems like after Dien Bien Phu, the liberated Vietnamese were desperate to rid themselves of anything even vaguely colonial. Almost all traces of the hundred years of French colonialism have been slowly, methodically erased from the maze-like streets. They don't read Voltaire and Rosseau in the cafes. Attempting a bit of 'Parlez-vous français?' would only earn you suspicious looks from the ornery locals. Hardly any of the tree-lined avenues carry names that hint at French influence.
A marked difference from Malaysia.
Despite the gleeful joy our overzealous nationalists take in disparaging their former British overlords, it turns out we have much to be thankful for.
Just take a look at French Indochine. Even the Dutch East Indies. Compare the violent uprisings in the neighbouring nations under their iron-fisted rule to our far more amicable separation from the Brits. A gentlemanly divorce with much fewer bloodied battles on our side. Though we have managed to muck the whole thing up, the Brits initially left us an efficient civil service, a respectable legal system and a functioning parliament. While hardly any French is spoken on the tree-lined boulevards in Hanoi, English remains the lingua franca for the aspiring middle-class bourgeoisie here in post-colonial Malaysia.
Although the colonial British Malaya regime was far from perfect - after all, they maintained power through the cynical manipulation of ethnic and religious division ( a bitter legacy which remains till today ), we were still better off than most.
Unfortunately we just never improved on what they left behind.
4 comments:
Hmm, this has a "we're not doing great, but they are worse off" sorta tone to it, no? :P
More like a 'we were left better off so why haven't we improved since then' :)
The first step to getting better is to admit that there's a problem. That will never happen in Malaysia.
the philippines is worse off. burdened by folk catholicism and colonial mentality, it has never really forged its own identity. most of us filipinos live in an orwellian nightmare. we even use the spanish language to widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots. and to think that we all have the same southeast asian nose. now about my slit eyes.... ;-)
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