Meet the world's next great metropolis, a once-gracious city bursting from the confines of its history, wide-eyed with the wonders of traffic jams and tall buildings, and thinking very, very big.
Held back by a half-century of war and privation, it is charging forward with gigantic plans for urban expansion and development, determined to seize what it is certain is its rightful place as a world leader.
"We are in a good position and determined to build a whole new Ho Chi Minh City," said Nguyen Trong Hoa, director of planning and architecture for the city once known as Saigon.
PHOTO: AP
"We want to become the biggest city in Vietnam and be the center of ASEAN," he said, "and be the center of Asia and the center of the world as well."
His words might apply to the nation at large, which this weekend is throwing open its doors at a meeting in Hanoi of presidents and prime ministers that has acquired the all-but-official title of Vietnam's coming-out party.
Leaders of 21 nations, including US President George W. Bush, are gathering for an APEC meeting that will also celebrate Vietnam's induction next month into the WTO.
That step, after years of negotiations, has boosted ambitions here in the country's economic center to draw a new wave of investors from around the world.
Ho Chi Minh City, which already produces more than one-fourth of Vietnam's GDP and which pays nearly one-third of its taxes, "will become a hub of industry, services, science and technology in Southeast Asia," according to its official Web site.
Many Vietnamese are certain that this would have happened long ago if, like the bustling Asian tigers that surround it, Vietnam's economy had not been dragged down by war, economic sanctions and the hobbles of a command economy.
Now the country is in a hurry to catch up and overtake its neighbors, and Ho Chi Minh City intends to lead the way.
Over the next two decades, this hyperkinetic city of 7 million people is planning to expand its population by as much as 50 percent, spreading its borders into the surrounding swampland.
An entire sub-city called Saigon South is emerging on reclaimed land along the southern edge of town, and a vast new downtown is planned on undeveloped land across the Saigon River to the east.
With plans for a new port and a new airport, for bridges, highways, a subway system and high-rise buildings, Ho Chi Minh City has embarked on one of the most ambitious programs of urban renewal anywhere.
Sewage and garbage collection services are being revamped at a projected cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. A tunnel is being dug beneath the Saigon River. A latticework of bus and tram routes has been mapped out.
"With the changes they are talking about, we can expect that in the next 10 years we will be seeing a completely different city," said Ayumi Konishi, the Vietnam country director for the Asian Development Bank.
But like the quieter capital in the north, Hanoi, it is trying to resist the helter-skelter development that has robbed Asian cities like Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila of much of their character.
It has not yet decided, though, which way it wants to go, how much to weigh old-world charm against 21st-century aggressiveness. For people who feel they have been left behind by a fast-changing world, the big, the bold and the brassy can feel like hallmarks of class.
"The city is not yet sure of its own identity," said Nguyen Van Tat, an architect who is deputy editor of the magazine Beautiful Home.
"For some developers, modernity is the next step in the city's development. For them, the Singapore model is very attractive, very clear, very obvious, easy to understand," he said. "For me, it would be very hard to accept that that is the final fate of Saigon."
In the 1860s, French colonists laid out grids and began to build the shady city that came to be known as the Pearl of the Orient. City officials are now redefining it for the next century or more, and the question is how much of the old Saigon will remain.
"A city is like a human being," Tat said. "It needs to have a past. There is a saying in Vietnam that even if the pages are frayed, a book must still have its spine."
The pages are already fraying. As Vietnam's economy opened fitfully over the past decade and a half, developers seized their moment to coarsen some of the city center's elegance with faceless office buildings. The skyline was fouled with undistinguished structures including two dozen skyscrapers.
But projects like this are now at least debated, most recently a proposed 53-story tower that would devour a park and overshadow the central market, a city landmark.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique