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CHAPTER 7 Museum-Shrine: The Revolution’s Guardian Spirit in the Post-Socialist Moment IN 1887, Ton Duc Thang’s parents Ton Van De (d. 1938) and Nguyen Thi Di (d. 1947) built a house in the hamlet of My An and part of the village of My Hoa Hung.1 The village is situated on Ong Ho Island in the lower Mekong River, just four kilometers from Long Xuyen, the commercial and administrative center of An Giang province. Ton Duc Thang, born in 1888, was the couple’s first child. Because he was a boy, he was tutored, probably from 1897 at the latest to about 1901, by a private teacher in Long Xuyen, receiving instruction in the Chinese script and Chinese history and philosophy. Additionally, Ton’s commemorators in An Giang stress the great influence of his teacher, a fervent anticolonialist,2 on the boy’s early politicization. Afterward, in the early 1900s, Ton Duc Thang also learned French in an unidentified “elementary school” in Long Xuyen.3 He lived in his parents’ house until 1906, when, at eighteen, he moved to Sai Gon. We do not know how frequently Ton Duc Thang returned to his childhood home between 1906 and 1929. After his arrest in 1929, however, Ton Duc Thang would revisit his birthplace only twice. In the wake of the August Revolution of 1945 and his liberation from sixteen years of incarceration on Con Lon prison island, Ton Duc Thang made his way to My Hoa Hung in November 1945 to see his old mother. But since he was in danger of being captured by the French, who had largely retaken control of the south by then, he stayed only one night, as the story goes, before making his way to Ha Noi to join the DRVN government . The next trip back home would not take place until after the end of the American war, in October 1975, after de facto unification of the north and south, when Ton Duc Thang, who had risen in prominence in the meantime and become president, was able to visit his native place one last time. In 1984, four years after the president’s death, the Ministry of Culture, upon the suggestion of local cadres, declared Ton Duc Thang’s 168 childhood home a cultural-historic monument. After Ton’s brother Ton Duc Nhung (b. 1896) and sister-in-law (b. 1897) both died in 1986, their son’s family moved to an adjacent building, and renovations of the original house and the creation of a “commemorative area” (khu luu niem) began. Their completion was to coincide with the centennial of Ton Duc Thang’s birth in August 1988. The initiative for these undertakings originated with the provincial branch of the VNCP, which planned to use Ton Duc Thang’s centennial “to educate the cadres, party members, and the people of the province about [Ton’s] great example in struggle, sacrifice, and revolutionary morality.”4 Under the direction of the VNCP’s provincial propaganda board and local cadres, the An Giang departments of construction and culture/information, members of the Club of Former Resistance Fighters (CFRF), and the University of Architecture of Ho Chi Minh City, several projects were started. They included the renovation of Ton Duc Thang’s home, the construction of an exhibition building in the vicinity, the landscaping of the area, the first-ever electrification of My Hoa Hung, and the building or upgrading of bridges and paved roads to connect Ong Ho Island to the provincial infrastructure in preparation for the expected visitors. In addition, Professor Lam Binh Tuong, a museum curator, and the An Giang provincial museum in Long Xuyen started gathering materials and objects for future displays on Ton Duc Thang’s life.5 In August 1988, in celebration of Ton Duc Thang’s hundredth birthday , the commemorative area in My Hoa Hung was solemnly inaugurated . At around the same time, several other historical displays on Ton’s life opened in the south of Viet Nam, most notably the Ton Duc Thang Museum in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, housed in a riverfront villa near Ba Son shipyard.6 They, too, were conceived and realized by southern VNCP cadres and CFRF members as integral parts of one overarching commemorative project on the deceased president. The exhibits largely contain the same scripts and often share copies of materials, however, and my focus in this chapter therefore will be on My...

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