~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

[Year 1997]
[Year 1998]
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[Year 2000]
[Year 2001]

Valentine's Day wins hearts and minds in Vietnam

HANOI - Vietnam's upwardly mobile urbanites are putting their hearts into Valentine's Day, the latest Western obsession to be snapped up, city residents and shopkeepers said Tuesday.Garlands of fresh roses, boxes of Belgian chocolates, even drippy Hallmark greeting cards are being exchanged like never before in the communist state, where a strong work ethic and commitment to the nation was thought to take precedence over displays of affection.

"The holiday was nothing some years ago," says Dong Hai Anh, who coincidentaly turns 24 on Valentine's Day. But Vietnam's ideologues are well-versed at taking snippets from foreign cultures and nurturing them with Vietnamese sentiment. In recent weeks, Vietnam has splashed out on Christmas complete with a round-bellied Santa, millennium New Year's Eve madness, and the most commercialized-ever Tet, Vietnam's lunar new year.

Hai Anh said she now receives loads of attention ever since her friends learned her birthday is February 14. "I don't get many roses anymore," she sulks. "They're way too expensive on my birthday." Flower sellers and other merchants, of course, are the biggest winners in Vietnam's latest flirtation with Western tradition. Wholesale prices for roses jumped 600 per cent by Tuesday over normal rates, according to the Tuong Vi flower shop in Ho Chi Minh City. "We are doing very well," says Tuan Anh, owner of the Hanoi shop Wonders, where Hallmark Valentine's Day cards fly off the shelves.

Tuan said young people, mostly students, are paying a dollar or more per card, equivalent to a day's wage for most Vietnamese. The nation's tightly controlled media has jumped on the bandwagon, with top newspapers publishing elaborate spreads on Saint Valentine, new gift-giving trends, even how to mend broken hearts. "That's not our holiday," gripes Mrs. Toan, a middle-aged housekeeper in Hanoi. "People just want an excuse to sell things." And people are buying it. Vietnam's per capita income is roughly $400 per year, and far less in the countryside, where buying chocolates for loved ones is a remote fantasy.

But both the capital Hanoi and Vietnam's economic hub Ho Chi Minh City are seeing genuine purchasing power, with per capita GDP topping $1,000 per annum. "People have expendable income now," Hai Anh says. "They're more prosperous and want to give and express love to those around them." City dwellers also have wider access to information, particularly through the world wide web, says shopkeeper Tuan Anh. "They understand from the Internet and mass media a bit more about Western culture and they think it's cool," he says. "It's changing the atmosphere a bit."

Deutsche Presse Agentur - February 14, 2001.