Vietnam Valentine for the Tet Holiday

Feb. 5, 2015 - PRLog -- For some older Americans, "Tet"  signifies war at its most devastating,  the surprise North Vietnamese offensive of 1968 against American forces in South Vietnam.   In retrospect, that long ago Tet was when the United States might have recognized how vulnerable its mission in southeast Asia was.

        In Vietnam, people call their bloody disagreement with the United States, "the American war" which followed "the French war,"  which itself was but a 20th-century chapter of a centuries-long Vietnamese battle of independence from  occupiers, usually Chinese but at least once, Japanese.

        Tet actually is an optimistic holiday, the week marking the beginning of a new lunar year. And while Tet often occurs very close to our western New Year, in 2015 it starts on Valentine's Day.  The Vietnamese mark Tet by whitewashing walls and buildings and decorating their villages and cities with amazing flowers.   In Communist Vietnam, it remains a festival  which honors ancestors at  Buddhist altars and by balletic wrestling matches governed by ancient rules. It's also a charmed time for weddings.

        Most American travelers choose to visit Vietnam during Tet for both its color and pleasant temperature. To this day, the majority of touring Americans are former soldiers and/or their descendants.  Timeless Vietnam, a collection of gorgeous photography by Canh Tang, amplified with lyrics in translation of classic Vietnamese verse, is the perfect Valentine's Day/Tet gift for anyone reconnecting with or discovering Vietnam.

        Onetime foes agree on the volume's beauty and strength, its revelation of  Vietnam during Tet and in its seasons of planting, harvesting and fishing.   Jan C. Scruggs, founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial , promises this "collection will amaze and excite you. "   The book is similarly praised by  the antiwar folksinger Peter Yarrow, who contributed  its moving introduction.

        Timeless Vietnam  is the first book of the brilliant Hue photographer Canh Tang and, sadly, his last.  The son of Vietnam revolutionaries, he once had three goals in life:  to marry a beautiful  girl whose family had fled to North America, to see his photographs published and to visit the United States. The first he happily accomplished years ago; this book expresses his second goal , and he visited The United last summer. Then tragically, the day after he returned home he was killed in motorcycle accident.

        Timeless Vietnam is his valentine to the durability of Vietnamese culture and to his wife ( now widow) to whom he dedicated it.