China Lite?

Hue's citadel, the imperial compound built in the early 19th century and where the last emperor of Vietnam held court until 1945, had been modeled on the Forbidden City of Beijing. Built at a much smaller scale and with much less attention to details, it gives the impression of a cheap imitation of something grand and splendid. Much of the compound lies in ruin after the successive wars. The few surviving buildings look like they are at the verge of collapse. Visitors are left having to use their imagination to fill in the blank that is now an overgrown field. For someone who has visited the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Citadel really leaves one feeling underwhelmed.

If the Citadel is a reflection of the way Vietnam thinks of itself, then Vietnam really needs to find its own identity. Vietnam had struggled for so long to shake off the heavy-handed rule from its forever stronger northern neighbor and finally achieved independence from China in the middle of the 10th Century. After almost a thousand years of self rule, is this the best Vietnam could do - to build an imitation of the imperial compound of its former master? Its culture has been influenced by China to such a degree, it is more Chinese than a lot of ethnic minorities inside China. For a people so proud of its culture, why have the Vietnamese not started to forge its own identity earlier?