The Beauty of Humanity Movement (4 page)

The history of Vietnam lies in this bowl, for it is in Hanoi, the Vietnamese heart, that ph
was born, a combination of the rice noodles that predominated after a thousand years of Chinese occupation and the taste for beef the Vietnamese acquired under the French, who turned their cows away from ploughs and into
bifteck
and pot-au-feu. The name of their national soup is pronounced like this French word for fire, as H
ng’s Uncle Chi
n explained to him long ago.

“We’re a clever people,” his uncle had said. “We took the best the occupiers had to offer and made it our own. Fish sauce is the key—in matters of soup and well beyond. Even romance, some people say.”

It was only with the painful partitioning of the country in 1954 that ph
went south; the million who fled communism held the taste of home in their mouths, the recipe in their hearts, but their eyes grew big in the markets of Saigon and they began to adulterate the recipe with imported herbs and vegetables. The ph
s of Saigon had flourished brash with freedom and abundance while the North ate a poor man’s broth, plain and watered down, with chicken in place of beef as the Party ordered the closure of independent businesses like H
ng’s and a string of government-owned cafeterias opened in their place.

Terrible stuff it was, grey as stagnant rainwater in a gutter. Those who are old enough to remember it thank H
ng for getting rid of the mouldy taste in their mouths. Kids of T
s generation probably can’t even imagine it. T
was born just before the government’s desperately needed economic reforms of 1986, when the market was liberalized in order to alleviate starvation and independent ownership once again became a possibility. Only then could the true potential of ph
be realized.

The challenge for H
ng now has less to do with the availability of ingredients than with the need for restraint. H
ng sees himself as a guardian of purity, eschewing bean sprouts and excessive green garnish in accordance with northern tradition. They may well have opened their doors to the world, but that does not mean they must pollute their bowls.
An b
c; m
c nam
, they say—eating as in the North; clothing as in the South—something so fundamental must be respected through deference to tradition.