Last year I stood on a corner at a crossroads in Hanoi where a stream of motorcycles, scooters and mopeds was going east to west and another south to north and both flows were heading for each other. A crash seemed inevitable, unless one stream suddenly gave way. But as if it were a baffling experiment in particle physics they all seemed to travel through each other without colliding and moved on safely. This was a very simple example of the baffling skills which are constantly on display on Vietnamese streets. Look at this video portraying a scene in Ho Chi Minh City.
Can this be spontaneous? I am inclined to think that thiey must have been practising this for months. This is the two-wheeler equivalent of an aerobatic squad’s performance.
After seeing this, I wish to nominate “Vietnamās trafficobatics” as a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage.
Should it not take its place alongside intangible cultural heritages such as:
Breakfast Culture in Malaysia, Albanian folk-isopolyphony, Cooking and eating traditional mashed potato with barley in the Mulgimaa region of Estonia, Skills of Parisian Zinc Roofers and Ornamentalists, Manual Bell Ringing in Italy and Spain, Traditional ways of making artisan minas cheese in Minas Gerais, Alpine Pasture Season in Switzerland, and Vanuatu sand drawings.
Personally, I find it to be more fascinating than many of the items on the list and I strongly believe it is fully entitled to be included. In fact, if nobody crashes it is actually more “intangible” than many of these heritages. I think manual bell ringing requires pulling with your hands and, as for breakfast culture in Malaysia, if you checked into a Malaysian hotel and were told next morning that your breakfast was going to be intangible, i think you would be a bit disappointed.
Hello Phil, I seem to be on your mailing list again and so delighted! I am enjoying your posts very much . Thank you. Odile