The Adventures of Brian & Julia

Sorry for using the most cliched title possible, but I thought it was fitting for this post. We’ve been in Hanoi about 4 days, and each morning, we’ve been awoken by the daily propaganda speech. They’re delivered to the people on the streets through a network of skronky sounding horns affixed to telephone poles at about every other intersection. I found the 1984-ism of this so intriguing, I decided to shoot a quick video. I then sent it to a friend at home, a Vietnamese emigrant, for translation. Here’s what he came up with:

Diligent comrades-
Awaken! A new day has begun
Mill your rice flour, prepare your fish sauces and don your yokes
A glorious new era continues today!
We must persevere against our bourgeois capitalist enemies at every turn!
We will counter their every effort with deftness and immutable adequacy!
Render every capitalist endeavor null!

Uniform their dull-witted tourists to our great motherland in poor quality novelty t-shirts!
Distract and confuse them with endless photo opportunities!
Create imitation designer handbags of only slightly diminished quality!
Make ready pirated copies of every movie before they are even officially released on DVD!
Bespeak fine suits at prices so low, they are sure to enrage your overseers!

Our great nation’s enemies will fear us!
They will tremble at the sound of our minions of scooters,
Roaring like some great beast of ill temper in heroic tales of ancient-times!

They will fear our dapper yet terror-instilling grandfathers-
A handsome reminder of our long-established might!

Would-be imperialist oppressors will marvel at our vast array of cigarette brands,
And quake in fear of our smoking prowess!

Our beautiful pop music, love songs as sweet as sweetened condensed milk, will be capitalism’s requiem!