Vietnam, Issue 199, Year 1975

Living in China long term sometimes leads to strange collector habits. I used to collect comic books when I was a university student, and now, at the age of 42, I sometimes like to collect old Chinese language magazines. One of these is "Vietnam" or   越南  Yuènán in Chinese. This magazine issue number was the one that started me on this casual collecting path. I was at Nanchang Temple in Wuxi, and I was browsing the collector's markets. I spotted this cover. 

Yes, that is Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam's revolutionary leader who fought to kick out the French first and the Americans second. I leafed through the magazine a bit, and the I realized I had to have it. Currently, I can't read Chinese all that well, but I am learning, and someday, I will. At this moment, I realized that living in China afforded me unique opportunities to learn other perspectives on history. While even not being able to read the text -- yet -- it is still interesting to me to leaf through the pages. 

Another fascinating thing, I thought, were the pictures of Americans I saw in here. It really is stuff like this that makes me want to learn Chinese very badly. As an American who was born at the end of a pointless war with Vietnam, my curiosity really, really wants to know what the Chinese articles are saying. And by saying "born at the end, I mean I was born in 1974, and this magazine was published in China when I was only a one year old. 

And lastly, here is the color back cover. Notice the blue stamp at the bottom? You see that on several pages throughout the magazine. This is only a guess, but I'm sure it's from a propaganda office reading the magazine. I now have more than a few old Chinese magazines, and this stamp appears in all of them, frequently.