The Adventures of Laura Drumm

Dear Family and Friends,

You probably have been to a UNESCO World Heritage Site and not even known it.

Actually, I could go on listing them, well, and listing them because the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has compiled a list of 725 cultural sites, 183 natural sites, and somehow totaled this to 936. Despite this odd bit of math, UNESCO seems knows what it is doing, at least when it comes to defining what constitutes a World Heritage site: something on the order of a notable place or site with a group of buildings and/or “architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings and combinations of features, which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science.” At the urging of the United States – probably because we do so hate to be left out of world-wide regard! – UNESCO also designates natural heritage sites that “consist of physical and biological formations or groups of such formations, which are of outstanding universal value from the aesthetic or scientific point of view.” In other words, World Heritage sites are very special places.

Because these sites are so special, I used to believe that I had not visited one of these sites until relatively recently. In fact, if you casually had asked me yesterday, “Where did you visit your first World Heritage Site?”

I would’ve replied, “In Korea. A few weeks after I arrived to teach there, a group and I visited the Haeinsa Temple and Tripitaka Koreana Woodblocks.” Because that was the first time that I remember being aware of UNESCO’s designations.

However, the word aware is key. Apparently our fear of being left out drove the States to successfully nominate 21 sites, 3 sites behind Russia (which is, on the whole, larger and older than the States) and we currently have the 10^th most sites in the world after countries like Italy, Spain, China, France, India and the UK. We’ve managed to have more World Heritage sites than Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and Japan. In point of fact, I actually grew up near a UNESCO World Heritage site, and never knew it.

Seattleites? Care to guess where in Washington is a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

(One gold star shall be awarded if you answered, “Olympic National Park and its rain forest.”)

As little, decidedly not famous Olympic National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site, it is worth asking: have you visited a UNESCO site? I ask because the States possesses a genuine handful of natural sites such as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Yosemite, the Great Smokies, and the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. In the States we’ve even managed to endanger one of our sites – a distinction usually left to countries where people are starving – but is not precisely a problem in the Everglades. Natural sites aside, we have also managed to list a few buildings and historic sites (not many, mind you) including Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Illinois, Mesa Verde in Colorado, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and of course, the Statue of Liberty. With a list like this, most of us have likely been a UNESCO site and never even known it.

I’m contemplating UNESCO sites in particular because we’ve spent that last five days nearby to a living, breathing, working UNESCO World Heritage site in Vietnam: the village of Hoi Anh.

Hoi Anh is home to just over 100,000 people and notable as one of the few UNESCO sites that feels alive. Once a trading port along the Silk Road, today towering palm trees line a sluggish silted river that runs through the “Ancient Town,” that is, on the whole, a few city blocks wide and a few blocks deep. In the city center, the buildings are as Asian as can be—indeed, the town could be used as a period piece set for a movie such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon—ancient brown wood or painted buttercup yellow, roofed with curved tiles, and hung with silk lanterns trailing tassels. Trees filled with periwinkle-colored flowers, a yellow-flowered vine that resembles honeysuckle but is not, and bougainvillea liven up facades. I crane my neck and find more lanterns hanging from dark wood second floor balconies, often in the company of twittering birds in yellow cages. Each building continues to be utilized to the fullest: first floors are commercial enterprises such as clothing shops, purse shops, souvenir shops, open air restaurants, t-shirt shops, painting shops, open air bars lit with strings of white lights, jewelry shops, tiny museums, and more clothing shops. When I walk on the street outside these shops, proprietors attempt to interest me in their wares calling, “Hello! Madam, hello! Please come visit my shop!”

Inside, many of the buildings were constructed of hardened, black wood, the majority of which remains unreplaced since the 16^th and 17^th centuries. The second floor is surrounded by a low railing and open to the first floor. Special trap doors with woven slats that allow people to watch their shops flood inch by inch were included in the second floors so that when the Thu Bồn River floods, as it does from September – December, families move their furniture and wares through the trap doors into the safety of the second floor. From a balcony looking down, motorbikes whizz through the town, weaving around slow-moving Western shoppers, clutching their purses while deciding which shop of wonderful bargains they should visit next. Asian tourists seem as interested in shopping but more interested in pictures, seeming to stop at every step to frame themselves in windows with blue slats, throwing up V or peace signs as cameras click.

A lady vendor approaches a child and tosses a spinning toy into the air – the mother says, “No, thank you” and drags the child away while the child turns to watch the vendor catch the toy. Another vendor kneels on the stone sidewalk, fanning a small charcoal fire, with a basket of something wrapped in banana leaves by her side. The smoke trails into the street, the smell of something unfamiliar making me hungry but the sound of sizzling is drowned out by soothing Western classical piano trills piped through small speakers seated at each corner. At the center of town is an arched bridge, originally built by the Japanese in the 16^th century and covered by Chinese traders, who teamed up with the Vietnamese to add a Buddhist temple to the bridge. A sign inside boasts that “Chùa cầu [bridge] is a symbol of cultural exchange between the Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese people.” Personally, I’ve never seen its like.

Indeed, UNESCO touts Hoi Anh as an “exceptionally well preserved example of a traditional Asian trading port;” however, dearest friends and family, if you have an opportunity to visit Vietnam, I suggest a visit to Hoi Anh because with or without UNESCO’s blessing, it is a very special place.

Yours,

Laura