Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam

by Andrew X. Pham

The greatest war tunnel in the history of man, Cu Chi was over 260 kilometers of tunnels, traps, barracks, ammunition dumps, and military headquarters, all designed for the final assault on Saigon. Now it is a major tourist attraction and a venue for government propaganda. Tourists, two-thirds foreigners, one-third Vietnamese, come by the busloads. The staff are soldiers and civilians, some dressed in black pajamas and handwoven scarves, uniforms of Viet Cong guerrillas. We were grouped with other Vietnamese visitors seated in a large gazebo to watch a war video about American atrocities spiced with a hefty dose of commentary on the evil of Western capitalism. A young soldier led us into a maze of trails twisting back and forth through the jungle. Great bomb-gouged pits, now weeded with vegetation, gaped like giant satellite dishes, testimonies of unsuccessful U.S. attempts to destroy the tunnels. He showed us invisible trapdoors, tiger pits for men, and grenade-rigged manholes. We shimmied down ladders into caverns, hand-dug in secrecy one scoop of earth at a time. These once served as the headquarters of the Cu Chi operation. Although some areas had been enlarged to accommodate foreign tourists, the chambers were anything but spacious. Most were barely five feet ten inches in height, the tunnels three feet tall. The air was hot and wet, full of the mustiness of packed earth. It was difficult to take a lungful. It had to be breathed in sips. In some sections, the subterra...