Negotiating The Hanoi Traffic Jam - Part 2

Folding Bikes Take Their Place In Post-Modern Indochina
Part II

By Richard Pierce

Editor's Note: This is the 2nd part of a story about the state of urban transportation in Hanoi, Vietnam. In this portion of his story, Richard gives his answer regarding how to encourage Indochina's consumers to embrace green, non-polluting transportation - lead by example. If you missed it, here's a link to Part I of his story.

The history involved in answering that question is far more than any folding bicycle ever asked for and only evokes terms like "murky", "nebulous", and "confusing". The Indochina Wars proved the socio-political volatility of the region and it is obviously not an environment conducive to high-minded talk of saving the air. It is impossible to give the details without sounding like an Orwell paper, but here goes.

The French colonial era (and I'm already omitting 1,000 years of Chinese occupation before the French) gave way to World War II, which, in Asia, was exacerbated by a policy among the last governors of screwing things up as much as possible. Then there was a brief Japanese occupation, which sparked a famine in Vietnam. East Asia, except for a few Islands of British hegemony like Singapore and Hong Kong (and a de-fanged Japan under US control), then devolved into communism. That then failed due to incompetent land reform and corruption, and the Soviets had to prop Vietnam up with subsidies, which they promptly withdrew in 1986, forcing the country to quietly go capitalist.

No one's quite sure how it's all being governed now. Assume all of the above minus the Soviets. That leaves an absolutely gigantic mass of people, 85 million by last count, trying to make sense of their world, make a little money, and enjoy themselves before the next war. What does that mean in terms of trying to get more people on folding bikes?

The murky explanation has to resume for a bit here: the Vietnamese were already riding bicycles because they had no choice, until, again, 1986. (Remember all those photos in the news magazines in your parents' attic, of young women in ao dai dress pedaling through the rice paddy?) Then came the US' and other bilateral trade agreements, and with them the fleeting prosperity of today, which people demonstrate by buying a motorbike or car. Most Vietnamese would just as soon never be seen on a bicycle again and there is virulent disdain among the nouveau riche for real peasants in their conical hats, flooding onto the cities, hawking tomatoes from rusted-out, brake-less three-speeds that may very well have the ones in those photos.

The average age in Vietnam is around 30 now, they are more highly paid, and they love expensive European things. Even though they still live at home with several generations of the family, they will spend all of their money on a five-thousand dollar Vespa just to be seen on Saturday night. But there may be a way to make use of having entrained 85 million people in Western consumerism.

I do see more folding bikes each day, although people still think they're for children, paint them bright colors, and install plastic spoke covers with teddy bears, flowers, or lightning bolts on them. I want to believe, however, that these kids will grow up and remember their folders fondly, and somewhere in this spun-around little world, associate them with reduced carbon emissions. A lot, however, has to happen first, like broadcasting the message in awareness-raising campaigns that motor vehicles create harmful emissions and bicycles don't.

The United Nations Environment Program, IUCN, WWF, and some others are tapping young people too, and they're finding that there is a healthy respect for sustainable development. It's just a sprig now, and survives entirely on foreign funding, but it is there and the Vietnamese will probably take the ball and run with it as their cities are increasingly flooded during the monsoon by rains that even they have never witnessed in thousands of years of living next to a shallow, warm sea.

Two weeks ago, Hanoi had its worst flooding in 20 years and I saw, for the first time in my life, a drowned person. It was in a small lake in my neighborhood that had overflowed, by coincidence, the same lake that John McCain had parachuted into before they put him in the old Maison Centrale, the 'Hanoi Hilton', also called Hoa Lo Prison (which now has an office tower financed by Singapore at one end and a refurbished guillotine at the other to show the tourists).

The key is to get people to see that their personal transport is the place to start. They haven't reached the stage where they are asking themselves what effect the gasses coming out their tailpipes have on their own air, and that would be the natural place to insert folding bikes. But style is everything here, and while images of chiseled Dutch men and women tooling to work on their bikes in Amsterdam may exert some kind of influence on the psyche of the emerging Asian super-class, it still isn't as cool as a pink Vespa.

So I take it one commute at a time. I ride my Dahon, made, ironically, here in Asia, through the middle of the traffic jams and people get a kick out of it. The bike advertises itself and people treat me better. They recognize immediately that it's practical. The Vietnamese also love quirky gadgets that you can pack up and take into your 10sq.m flat. But will folding bikes ever have a meaningful opportunity to prove themselves amid the mind-boggling urbanization? Based on what I've observed, yes.

It's already nearly impossible to get through intersections on a good day and permanent gridlock is not far off. In which case, there is little more we need do other than continue riding through those traffic jams on our folders. In a hundred years they'll look back and call it the "Folding Revolution".

Richard Pierce is in Hanoi doing work for Family Health International (FHI), one of the largest and most established nonprofit organizations active in international public health. FHI's mission is to improve lives worldwide through research, education, and services in family health. To learn more, visit FHI.org. By the way, Richard ordered an E-Z Pack folding bike because he wanted something lighter and more compact than the Dahon he's been using.