Word: ho
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...Grandchildren. During his eleven-year reign, Ho has generated a remarkable image among his 18 million subjects. "He is everywhere," rhapsodize his court poets. "He is at once our father, uncle and older brother. He is the heart that feeds a hundred arteries." He is also the man whose three-year land-reform program (1954-56) ruthlessly eradicated perhaps as many as 100,000 peasants. Still the survivors love him. More than 400,000 Vietnamese children bear the title "Uncle Ho's Grandchildren," a reward proffered only to the best students of Vietnamese Communism...
...Ho seems to be in remarkable health. Recent visitors to his presidential office-fully 20 tatami mats (360 sq. ft.) in area, as one Japanese describes it, and topped by a huge, sonorous fan-have found Ho ruddy-cheeked and cheerful. For a Communist boss, he has a lively sense of humor: once when Chou En-lai spoke in Hanoi, Ho sat on the stage beside the speaker, subtly aping Chou's every gesture and facial twitch, much to the audience's amusement-and Chou's puzzlement. As a carryover from his days of flight and subversion...
...President, Ho pulls down a salary of $840 a year-nearly ten times the annual income of the average Vietnamese. He lives in a thatch-roofed house on the palace grounds of the former French Governor General, dresses simply in cream-colored, mandarin-style uniforms, and "Ho Chi Minh sandals" carved from automobile tires. For all the simple surface, his tastes are exquisite; he smokes American cigarettes (Philip Morris and Camels), and his favorite food is a rare delicacy called "swallow's nest"-a meringue of sea algae and swallow's saliva...
...only big cities in a country the size of Missouri. In the Red River delta, where 80% of the population nonetheless try to live, breathe, and grow enough food to eat, population density is 2,000 people per sq. mi. and growing at 3% a year. Ho has tried since 1954 to get the lowland Vietnamese up into the mountains behind Hanoi in the hope of developing new agricultural land, but the million who have been forcibly moved complain of ghosts and malaria. This year North Viet Nam will fall 2,500,000 tons short of its programmed rice-production...
Since the U.S. bombing raids began last February, Hanoi's working routine has been rudely disrupted. Citizens now rise at 5 a.m., perform calisthenics in the streets under the watchful eye of the local can bo, then go off to work until 9:30 a.m. Since Ho & Co. fear midday air raids, the workers do not get back to the job until 3 p.m., then stay on until 9:30 p.m. On Sundays "volunteers" wheel out of town to work on the dikes of the Red River delta. "Some go because they feel legitimately patriotic," explains a visitor. "Others...