Monday, February 16, 2009

Learning from the Central Part

Dear All,

The warmest greetings to every one on the New Year of the Ox.

My Lunar New Year has been celebrated by the journey along the paths from Quang Nam to Quang Binh province in the central part. It was long enough to sense a little taste of this area under different perspectives.

Sometimes I had felt a bit interested by the distinction of the culture, environment and people in the area; and of course always feeling warm by the friends' hospitalities along the roads.

The central part of Vietnam has treasured a natural beauty with its greenery of forests, mountains, caves, oceans, and of course deep tastes in its cultures and foods. On the other side, I've been struck by its different levels of economic growth and the hardship of people.

The delta is smaller than the northern and southern parts due to the majority of highlands. People hardly earn much from agriculture growing and planting except leaning on the nature. The more developing parts seem to benefit from their land, and natural resources. This is the story of resource allocation that contributes to one part’s growth but not for the others’ (Success to the Successful - StS). Noticing the more growing areas such as Da Nang, Hue, Quang Binh, and Hoi An are having more houses and transportation infrastructure. It is said at the first place, early centuries ago; the overseas traders arrived and did their own businesses here. Mostly, we don’t see these people (as well as external elements such as TV, etc.) playing the roles of creating the StS structure.

The story is the same for either Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi as well as the other developed cities nowadays. These stories observe the structure of “Success to the Successful” playing around along with their “escalations”. When we are keen to pay attention to one part (more investments to HCMC over time) and ignore the other part, it does not help the other part even grow by the visionary pictures people hold from the beginning. I have heard many stories from students of their dreams for ‘developing the hometowns’. At the end, it seems more pull-outs.

Under the eyes of systems thinking, I am a bit stuck to see different systemic archetypes at play around at the same time. One tip that my friend has given is to look around for different patterns over time.

It has been quite blessing and delighting for the trip as I could travel also to different fantastic places. Three of them are World Heritages (Hoi An Ancient Town, Hue Imperial city & Phong Nha National Park). Of course, we did enjoy food, festivities with the local families.

What could you see this differently?

Wishing every one the New Year of the Ox of Persistence, Good Health and Spirit!

Regards,

Tuan Anh

No comments: