Relations with France are good, but French fluency has declined since independence 80 years ago, as more students choose to study Chinese or English
A massive military parade will herald on Tuesday the independence proclaimed by revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh on September 2, 1945, which was meant to end nearly a century of French rule but instead started a decade-long war until the defeated French eventually left in 1954.
Ba Dinh Square in central Hanoi, where the legendary leader, affectionately known in Vietnam as Uncle Ho, made his historical declaration, is flanked by two of the capital’s best preserved French colonial buildings – now home to the presidential palace and the foreign ministry.
But none of the six under-30 Hanoians interviewed in front of the yellow-painted foreign ministry headquarters, a masterpiece of French Indochina style, were aware of its architectural origin.
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