Vietnam Corner

                                                                                                           By: Ninh Pham

                                                                                                 Vietnamcorner.wordpress.com

Hello again my dear readers. By now, you probably are so excited to know more about The Vietnam Institute, which I affectionately abbreviated as TVI in all of my posts and tags. What was just a pleasant surprise became an important milestone for the opening of let’s say a Vietnam Corner on MU campus.

In 2004, Professor Joe Hobbs from the Geography Department in the Mizzou School of Arts and Sciences, came to Vietnam for a presentation of caves and how people relating to them. As part of the generation growing up during the Vietnam War*, he had all the misconceptions of Vietnam being a land of battlefields with agressive people. That cannot be further from the truth. He came back, teamed up with other professors who were interested in Vietnam to set up a Vietnam Initiative Group, then The Vietnam Institute was born in 2008.

However, most of information on how TVI was set up and what we are doing, you can always read here. Let’s take a grand tour of the institute, where Vietnamese students can feel at home.

On the wall, there is of course a map of Vietnam. Professor Hobbs bought it in Hanoi and got it laminated. Of course, Paracel Islands (quần đảo Hoàng Sa) and Spratly Islands (quần đảo Trường Sa) ** are included.

Laminated map of Vietnam hanging on the wall in
The Vietnam Institute.
Photo credit: Ninh Pham

          There is no shortage of pictures that remind us              of Hanoi:

A framed picture of vendors paddling on Thanh Nien street.
On their right is Truc Bach Lake and on their left is West Lake,
 where PDA is a common scene during the evening. So often in Hanoi,
people would see flower vendors paddling through streets,
selling seasonal flowers. Photo credit: Ninh Pham

Or life back in Vietnam:

Pictures of Vietnam: rice fields in the north, traffic jam
pretty much everywhere, Ha Long Bay, school girls in ao dai
(traditional Vietnamese dress) and farmers’ market.

There are small versions of Vietnamese traditional music instruments such as this "guitar" (For lack of an English name for it)

Vietnamese Guitar

                                Or this "drum"

Dong Son drum

You might find this funny:

“The guy” in the left is called “Chú Tễu” who usually does the opening act
 for a show in musical theatre in the north of Vietnam.
The one on the right shows you how traditional
Vietnamese women looked like during the old days.

My boss found this fish net in Hoi An when he was there during 2008 flood

Dr. Joseph Hobbs claim this net to be 30 years old

There are clothes that are often borrowed by Vietnamese students for one of those international events on campus

Costumes from the North
 of Vietnam

We also have books about Vietnam,
 in both Vietnamese and English

So come on and hangout with us.

*Vietnam War (1955 – 1975): Vietnamese people call this Revolutionary war against Americans. Most people in Vietnam don’t think about this war anymore.

** The two disputed islands in the South China Sea (East Sea).