For a city as big as
of Ho Chi Minh, there are astonishingly only few major venues for
cultural shows. There are quite a few
small theatres, where smaller companies or groups in town from the
provinces perform. The Opera House, Lam Son Square
(tel: (08) 825-1563), has ongoing performances and irregular shows
by international classical artists. The large Hoa Binh Theatre,
near the Quoc Tu Pagoda in District 10 (tel: (08) 865-3353), provides
a few small theatres inside the complex and may offer many different
shows each night. The Gia Dinh Theatre, 475 Bach
Dang, Binh Thanh District (tel: (08) 841-2045), puts on minority
music or dance performances and the Ben Thanh Theatre,
6 Mac Dinh Chi, District 1 (tel: (08) 823-1652), hosts drama from
visiting performers. There's a central ticket office to buy tickets
for shows, and it should be done in person at the respective venue.
Some shows provide information in The Guide which is published every month by the Vietnam
Economic Times.
Music
Vietnamese music is somewhat jarring to the Western ear, but first-class
performances are held every night in many restaurants. Blue Ginger, 37 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia (tel: (08) 829-8676), and Vietnam
House, 91/3 Dong Khoi (tel: (08) 829-1623) are
worth trying. Irregular shows can be attended at the Conservatory
of Music, 112 Nguyen Du, District 3 (tel: (08) 822-5841).
Theatre
Vietnam
is well-known for its water puppets.
The Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre in Hanoi tour
worldwide regularly. Ho Chi Minh City has a makeshift water puppet
theatre, the Ho Chi Minh City Puppet Band, 28 Vo
Van Tan, District 3 (tel: (08) 930-3496), daily performances are
at 0900 and 1400. The Zoo, Nguyen Binh Khiem, District
1, also has water puppet performances (tel: (08) 823-4582). They
perform daily at 9.00 am, 10.00 am, 11.00 am, 2.00 pm, 3.00 pm and 4.00 pm; they last
only 17 minutes and cost US$1.00. The Opera House
(tel: (08) 825-1563), on Lam Son Square, District 1, has regular
music, dance and acrobatic shows.
Dance
Dance performances are not
as popular in Vietnam as they are in Cambodia or Thailand; however, the shows are seen at many of the restaurants around Ho Chi Minh and at some of the theatres named above. A
very good show during dinner is provided at the Cung Dinh Restaurant
(tel: (08) 829-2185) in the Rex Hotel. On the banks of Saigon River a few minutes outside the
city, Binh Quoi Tourist
Village (tel: (08) 899- 1831), provides dance performances every night, the high point
is a re-enactment of a minority wedding.
Film
There are a few cinemas and only two show
English-language movies in Ho Chi Minh City. They are Diamond Cinema, 4th Floor, Diamond Plaza, 14 Le Duan (tel: (08) 822-7897), and CLB Phim Tu Lieu,
212 Ly Chinh Thang, District 3 (tel: (08) 846-8883).
There have been only a few international movies filmed in Vietnam,
one was the acclaimed film Cyclo (1995) which was directed
by the French-educated Tran Anh Hung. It's a brutal portrayal of
Ho Chi Minh City in the early 1980s. Tran Anh Hung also directed
the well-received film Scent of the Green Papaya
(1994), filmed in France, is about a pre-war Vietnamese/Chinese
family’s decadent lifestyle in Saigon. The first American
film to be made in Vietnam since before the war was Three
Seasons (1999), directed by Vietnamese-American Tony Bui.
The film describes the rise of Ho Chi Minh City and its people from
the post-war period and garnered awards all over the world. Graham
Greene’s The Quiet American, directed by
Phillip Noyce was the first Hollywood film to be made in the country
and was Filmed in Ho Chi Minh City in 2001 and released in 2002s.
Cultural events
The most important holiday in the lunar year is Tet,
the celebration of the New Year. Preparations are
made for the coming year, houses are decorated with peach blossom.
Meticulous care is paid to the family altar. Tet occurs on the 1st
to 7th days of the first lunar month (between late January
and early February). The celebrations begin at the stroke
of midnight. In the past, these were extremely noisy as the New
Year was marked with huge fireworks. fireworks have been banned
since 1995 so drums and tape recordings of fireworks have replaced
them.
Literary Notes
 Due to its rich French colonial and wartime history, Ho Chi Minh City
has appeared as the background for a number of books. Probably
the most famous is The Quiet American (1955) by
Graham Greene – the story of an American
trying to establish a Third Force, while the French fight the Vietminh.
Greene’s novel was written because of his many years spent
in Saigon.
Anthony
Grey’s 1982 novel, Saigon, tells
the story of Joseph Sherman who arrived as a teenager in 1925 and,
drawn back many times, finally left on the last American helicopter
in 1975. Even though the author never visited Vietnam, he managed
to capture the city completely:‘The white stone wharf, when
it appeared, took him by surprise. It ran beside a broad, shaded
boulevard of feathery pepper trees, and the sudden sight of European-style
houses made him reflect that the jungles, fields and villages
through which they’d been moving for the past few hours had
remained unchanging throughout many centuries. But there without
doubt were the elusive twin spires of Saigon’s cathedral that
he’d seen from far off, stationary now and clearly visible,
standing sentinel over the wide tree-lined avenues.’
A touching
epic story by Duong Van Mai Elliott is The
Sacred Willow (1999), about 4 generations of a Vietnamese
family from French colonialism through World War II to the American
War.
The
British Labour MP, Chris Mullin, and once a war
correspondent in Vietnam, covers post-liberation Saigon in his 1986
novel The Last Man out of Saigon. It tells of a
CIA man, undercover as a journalist who stays on after the fall
of the city to disrupt the new regime. He loses his cover and spends
time in re-education camps and working as a rice-farmer. Here he
learns that there are 2 sides to every story and to the war. |
