The blue car

When I visited the Thien Mu Pagoda temple grounds in Hue last week as part of the Old Frees' Association tour group, I was confronted with a grim reminder of Vietnam's sad and violent days from the 1950s till the 1970s. 

Photo by Oon Chee Seng

There in a far corner of the temple was this blue Austin Westminster sedan car. I did notice the car fleetingly from afar. I glanced at it but I failed to pay much attention to it. I had thought it was rather odd and out of place. After all, it was an old car in an even older temple. So I dismissed it from my mind and did not take a real good look at it. In hindsight, I should have.

As someone with some interest in history, I learnt the significance of this old car to the Thien Mu Pagoda only after coming back home. Was there a religious connection between car and temple? Of course, there must have, but it had everything to do with politics too. Vietnamese politics, that is.

The car was used to carry an old senior Buddhist monk in 1963. The Buddhist monk was Thich Quang Duc. If you don't know who he is, please do a google search on his name. You'll be surprised, if not shocked, to learn what happened to him, and how it led ultimately to the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam five months later.

A religious suppression by Diem's government resulted in many anti-government protests taking place all over South Vietnam, but notably in the capital, Saigon. On 11 Jun 1963, Thich Quang Duc was driven in this blue car to his self-immolation spot in Saigon. Read about it in Wikipedia here, or otherwise learn what I had first written about him in this blog 12 years ago here. It was the first of a series of self-immolations by members of the Buddhist clergy, which brought the plight of Buddhists to the attention of the international community.

Historical photo by Malcolm Browne

So there we were at the Thien Mu Pagoda in Hue. We could have seen the car up close first-hand. Maybe even attempted to touch it. Unfortunately, it is disappointing that many of us in the tour group had missed out completely on this significant aspect in Vietnam's history because the tour guide had failed in his job to inform us adequately of it. I was told by someone in our tour group that the guide said quite vaguely that it was "the vehicle used by monks and donated to the temple by someone big." Certainly, the comment wasn't helpful at all, if he had truly said that.

The 1960s was a time of great changes to almost all of us from The Old Frees' Association who were in this tour group. If you were growing up in the 1960s, chances are that you would not have missed knowing about the war in Vietnam. Even a superficial knowledge of a war far away had left a mark in my memory decades later. It might have left the same impression in your mind too.

Thus when we had the chance to visit the Thien Mu Pagoda, if we had been told about the history of this car properly, we would have appreciated its association with Vietnam's past. A hands-on history lesson lost.