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Helene Chung, Hue, Vietnam, January 2010

Vietnam Rewrites Vietnamese-Australian History
Cameraman Neil Davis’ historic 1st tank renumbered

Helene Chung and Sue Slamen at Radio Australia’s 70 Anniversary 1/12/09

Book Helene Chung as a Speaker

‘Helene speaks as she writes – with crystal clarity, sensitivity to her audience,
a firm grasp of her subject, and always a touch of humour.’
Dr John Fitzgerald
Head of Ford Foundation, Beijing
Former Founding Professor of Asian Studies, La Trobe University

‘With China emerging as a world power, Ms Chung’s detailed knowledge of the
country, its politics and its people comes across in her articulate and amusing
presentation, during which she engages with her audience in a relaxed and
informal way. I have not heard better in the 25 years that I was based in Asia.’
John W Downer, AM
Former Group Chairman, Maunsell International Consulting Engineers

'Your presentation was so interesting, very topical, very entertaining and well presented. You were very relaxed and responded well to our audience and their questions. We had fabulous feedback from our clients who thoroughly enjoyed your presentation.'
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Director Hayes Knight Melbourne

‘A thoroughly professional presentation … I wish the lessons I sat through at
school on modern Chinese history had been half as interesting and engaging.’
John Crone
Former China Head, Radio Australia
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Buy Ching Chong China Girl

Buy Lazy Man in China

Helene Chung on Ching Chong with Sarah McDonald, ABC 23/4/08

Helene Chung on Ching Chong on RA's Breakfast Club, 28/4/08

Helene Chung on Ching Chong with Jon Faine, ABC 29/4/08

Helene Chung on Ching Chong, on Robyn Williams' Ockham's Razor, ABC 6/12/09

Helene Chung on Lazy Man with Peter Blight, ABC 14/11/04

Helene Chung on Lazy Man, on Robyn Williams’ Ockham’s Razor, ABC 16/1/05

ABC Books Media Release Ching Chong China Girl, April 2008

Hobart's China Girl: Sunday Tasmanian 19/5/08
'From outcast Hobart schoolgirl to foreign correspondent,
Helene Chung discusses her new autobiography with Mike Bingham'

'Hobart model mum's true story laid bare' 23/5/08

'engaging memoir', Age, 31/5/08

Read Chapter: Old Peking New Beijing

'Anything but a "lazy man" in perceptive letters' 19/2/05

Lazy Man: Reviews in Australian Studies April 2006

ABC Foreign Correspondents Travelling Exhibition 2004-2006

Helene Chung's Family Background

Helene Chung chairs China Diplomat Chen Yonglin on Defection and Delay

Tasmanian Chungs: Journal of Chinese Australia

Willi Chung Sing's Story: Journal of Chinese Australia

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Vietnam Rewrites Vietnamese-Australian History
Cameraman Neil Davis’ historic 1st tank renumbered

Tank 843 smashes through gates
30 April 1975 (Tim Bowden)

Davis poses on tank 843
Hanoi 1984 (Tim Bowden)

Reunification Palace
15 January 2010 (Helene Chung)

Helene Chung beside tank 843
15 January 2010 (Susan Alexander)

‘This was the first tank,’ I protested, pointing to the Russian-built No 843, which I saw as ‘Neil’s’ tank’.

‘No, the Chinese tank was first,’ insisted the Vietnamese guide, directing my gaze back to No 390, which stood ahead of 843 inside the grounds of the renamed Ho Chi Minh City’s Reunification Palace.

‘But 843 was the one filmed by Neil Davis, an Australian, and his exclusive footage of the first tank crashing through the gates at the fall of Saigon was shown around the world.’

‘843 was the second tank,’ he repeated, hustling us in heat across the circular drive, past pristine lawns, up steps into the cavernous interior of the former Presidential Palace, a 1960s edifice with glistening chandeliers and other luxurious fittings, monitoring centres and a rooftop sporting a helicopter like that which whisked American-backed South Vietnamese President Van Thieu to safety days before Davis captured the moment of liberation.

Surely I can’t be so wrong, I mused, irritated at being misled on a Melbourne University study tour for fourteen Australians, all except me teachers. Our courageous group leader, who fled threatened communist incarceration to teach in Sydney but regularly returns to Vietnam, puzzled me by a blank expression when I mentioned Davis. Now the local guide flatly dismissed him.

I recalled Tim Bowden’s best-selling One Crowded Hour, documenting his fellow Tasmanian’s euphoria and anxiety as he positioned himself on the palace lawn on 30 April 1975. As the first tank pushed the wrought-iron gates Davis ran towards it, his camera the only one rolling.

‘I started to film as that tank, No 843, smashed through ... The soldier on the front holding the huge [red, blue and yellow] Viet Cong flag jumped off and ran towards the palace ... But out of my left eye – the one not to the camera – I could see a very determined Communist solder racing straight towards me ... with his rifle pointing at me and shouting ...

That was the last big decision I made in Indo-China ... I thought, well, after eleven years of covering this war I’m here alone, and I have what the Americans like to call just about the greatest scoop one could imagine ... and I’m going to keep filming. Maybe it’s wrong, and maybe I’m going to die, but that’s my decision.’

He kept filming until poked in the guts by the rifle, the soldier screaming ‘Stop! Hands up!’
With hands up, still holding his camera, Davis uttered his rehearsed, ‘Welcome to Saigon, comrade. I’ve been waiting for you.’

Although assumed to be American, he established his Australian identity and continued filming. Afterwards, because the trailing official Communist crew failed to film the event, he gave a copy of his story to the new Vietnamese government. Then iIn 1984 Davis squatted atop 843 for a photograph in Hanoi’s War Museum, before the tank was returned to Saigon.

Perhaps Vietnam can’t acknowledge an Australian role because Davis switched from British-Australian-owned Visnews to NBC so this was American footage. And with two-thirds of Vietnam’s 86 million under 30, this is ancient history.

‘I think Vietnam just wants ownership of its own history,’ Bowden responded when I raised the issue with him back in Australia.

I wanted to visit Vietnam partly because Davis determined the course of my career. While covering the Indo-China War in Saigon and elsewhere in 1970, he wrote letters to me - some of them reproduced in Ching Chong China Girl - in which this fair-haired son of a Tasmanian farmer dissuaded this fourth-generation Tasmanian Chinese from heading straight to London: ‘First, report from Asia.’

Hanoi Duck

A plucky Vietnamese

Outside Hanoi, 6 January 2010

This Hanoi Duck is nothing like my image of Peking Duck, which is served as slivers of crisp roasted skin, placed on a wafer-thin pancake, and rolled with scallions and plum sauce into a delectable package. As ABC Peking correspondent in the 1980s, I was once obliged to feast on this four times in a single week. Westerners called the duck restaurant near Capital Hospital the ‘Sick Duck’.

Despite less than hygienic conditions as this Hanoi Duck is prepared, for me it conjures no connotation of sickness. It’s an image of enterprise: a plucky pony-tailed Vietnamese youth absorbed in her task beside a battered motor scooter in a nation fast honk-honking, weaving, cycling and seizing every opportunity on the road to modernization.

I caught her and the pink and white-dotted masked rider through the window of my passing bus on the busy stretch from Hanoi to the Museum of Ethnology.

Pronunciation: He-lane and Chung as in hung