"While the rest of the world is strug-gling with the global economic downturn, Vietnam is predicting 7.1% economic growth this year, and major firms are flocking there in droves. Formosa Plastics is considering investing US$10 million in the construction of a chemical-fiber production complex in Vietnam. New Century wants to invest in a cement factory in northern Vietnam," wrote Chang Chiung-fang in the October 2001 issue of Sinorama.

Six years later, Chang has again traveled to Vietnam seeking to learn whether this important Indochinese investment destination has experienced a renaissance. Sadly, the answer is negative. Ho Chi Minh City, the nation's largest metropolis, still resembles the Taipei of the 1970s--noisy, cramped, the traffic chaotic, the people skinny. In short, it still lags far behind fellow ASEAN metropolises such as Bangkok and Jakarta.

Nonetheless, where Taiwanese businesses are often critical of Vietnamese workers, Chang was impressed by the studiousness and drive of the nation's young people.

The two interpreters she worked with while in Vietnam are cases in point. Her interpreter in the south was a graduate of a Russian program and a self-taught, fluent speaker of Mandarin who hopes to study in Taiwan. He has applied for scholarships and is keeping himself busy in the meantime by practicing karate and trying to get work guiding Chinese tours to further improve his Mandarin. Her interpreter in the north, on the other hand, spent a year each studying Chinese in Guilin and Yunnan, and speaks Beijing-accented Mandarin. This fall, she will matriculate as a scholarship student in the economics department of Taiwan's National Central University in Chungli. In the meantime, she's working on her Japanese.

Vietnam has a valiant history. In the 11th century, it thrice repelled the Mongol invaders of the Yuan Dynasty. In the 20th, it managed to fight off the US with the assistance of China and the Soviet Union.

A few years later, when Vietnam deposed Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge regime, China responded to the overthrow of what had been a vassal government by attempting to punish Vietnam. In the ensuing month-long war, China's People's Liberation Army suffered heavy casualties and was forced to withdraw. Though it is hard to name an actual "winner" in the Sino-Vietnamese war, the Vietnamese are proud to be the only people in history to have expelled both US and Chinese forces from their territory.

As the shooting wars came to an end, international investors kicked off an economic conflagration as they began to battle for Vietnamese beachheads. However, this time around the government's goal was to hold onto the foreign "invaders" who, with their technology and deep pockets, were seen as crucial to the modernization and internationalization of Vietnam.

This issue of Taiwan Panorama also reports on Macao. Having achieved fame and fortune over the last five years, Macao has begun seeking the kinds of local perspectives and subjectivities particular to historical studies. The whole process very much resembles that which Taiwan has undergone over the last 20 years. Macao does, however differ from Taiwan in one key respect--where China has obstructed and pressured Taiwan at every turn, it is aiding Macao.

This issue's articles on the Chienshan archaeological site in Taoyuan County delve into a more local history. Chienshan is integral to Taiwan's own story; yet so few people knew about the site when it was first unearthed near the end of World War II that the implementation of a construction ban had to wait until its recent rediscovery, more than 60 years later. Sadly, most of the ancient artifacts that once lay there may have been lost in the interim.

As Kaya Huang notes in her article on the Chienshan site, the word "culture" implies respecting and cherishing the ways of the past. The scholar Chiang Hsun has similarly argued that "culture" should be about addition rather than subtraction. With this in mind, this month's issue features two other articles on history and memory. "Old Movie Theaters Get a Facelift" and "The Booksellers of Wing-Raw-Den" introduce several cultural workers striving to preserve traditional ideas while creating new livelihoods.