At a time when most Hanoi residents are just waking up or sipping a bowl of steaming noodles, exercise guru Song Tung was leading a group of elderly men and women through their paces on a recent Sunday.
That on its own is nothing unusual. Tung, 78, has been leading people down the Path to Longevity for years. What is extraordinary is that on this particular morning more than 3,000 of Tung's followers were performing in Ba Dinh Square, in the shadow of the Ho Chi Minh (胡志明) Mausoleum -- and with the blessing of Vietnam's Communist Party.
And not only were senior party cadres witnessing the event, billed as a UNESCO celebration of the International Year of the Elderly, they were helping to lead the group through their steps.
Vietnam's "Thai cuc truong sinh dao," or the Path to Longevity, is enjoying an undeniable surge in official and peasant popularity in this communist nation just as its looming northern neighbor, China, cracks down on a similar movement.
Large following
The Vietnamese take many of their cues from Beijing. But Hanoi has displayed a remarkable coziness with the Path to Longevity that is anathema north of the border.
Since Tung publicly debuted the exercise in 1990, the number of practitioners has risen to more than 300,000 -- roughly 15 percent the size of the Communist Party -- and easily has the largest following of any such group in Vietnam.
Why has this longevity movement, which incorporates 128 T'ai Chi (太極)-like steps and breathing exercises and is free for poor people, been allowed to flourish, while China's Falun Gong (法輪功) (and many of Vietnam's other dubious sects) been put under the thumb?
Participants and observers alike say the secret to Tung's success may lie in his uncanny ability to recast an essentially Chinese doctrine into an ultra-patriotic Vietnamese movement.
Tung says the exercises, which came from China 2,000 years ago and were later passed on through 20 generations of his family, helped preserve a unique Vietnamese ethnicity from being assimilated into the Chinese community during a millennium of Beijing rule here.
"The exercises enabled the small and physically weak Vietnamese to find the strength they needed, both physical and spiritual, to resist Chinese invasion and drive them from our country," Tung explains.
Such bluster hones in beautifully on a ritualized Vietnam rallying cry of resisting foreign invaders, and Tung knows it. Himself a member of the communist party, Tung once served as Hanoi's ambassador to East Germany and has a cheery but measured confidence about him.
"One reason for The Path to Longevity's sharp rise in popularity is clearly Mr. Tung's ability to organize and lobby for the movement," says practitioner Vu Oanh, a powerful former Politburo member and now honorary chairman of the Society for the Elderly.
Influential figures such as former communist party chief Do Muoi, Archbishop of Hue Stephen Nguyen Nhu The, and avuncular national hero General Vo Nguyen Giap have already voiced their support.
"I have experienced a physical and spiritual rejuvenation," says the archbishop, who joined last year. That is quite an admission from a man whose Roman Catholic order endures a stressful existence in Vietnam.
The attraction
Devotees, Tung says, are attracted to the unique combination of Hinduism, yoga, Chinese breathing exercises and martial arts. The amalgam is said to improve physical fitness, cure disease, and bring to practitioners a sense of tranquility and community.
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