Mike Paine is one of those people who meet once or twice and then consider him a friend, and his hobby is an elaborate interactive game using model building ships, people, cars, and buildings to create an imaginary Far East China port called HangHai (rhymes with Shanghai.)
Whille not exactly historically accurate, after all there are just too many ships in the harbor, too many exotic looking things, and lots and lots of stuff, not to mention the occasional presence of monsters and magical artifacts and supernatural beings of all kinds. (And if you do look carefully or are told, he will admit that one of his Asian buildings really is a model of the Alamo with some Terra Cotta Army statues in front to hide the iconic entrance, but that's okay.) Mike travels around to wargaming conventions in the northeast lugging all these things with him, setting it all up, and making a lot of people laugh and enjoy themselves when he does. If it's not the real China, then it is the China of our old movies and imagination.
it's really something to see, and, if possible, participate in.Rules were surprisingly simple, some might argue too simple, but no one cared about that as everyone was having fun.
I was told to choose a main character (I chose Professor Flagg as I really enjoyed the old 1980s "American Flagg" science fiction comic by Howard Chaykin) and then a sidekick and three other figures.
Professor Flagg and his companions, a beautiful side kick, three French sailors, a large Mongolian warrior, and a nun. Never hurts to bring a nun for moral, morale, and spiritual support in such places.
The rules were such that it really did not matter what figures I chose, as they all were treated pretty much the same in the rules, but the visual effect and the stimulus to the imagination are everything in this game.
Chop Sockey -Kung Fu Miniature Wargame Rules is one of my current works in progress. The goal was to create a set of rules that would be simple and fun to play while allowing for the flexibility needed to recreate the battle action of a classic kung fu movie or comic book. While much work remains to be done, we had our first real test play, and the basic concepts seem to work surprisingly well.
Troops and characters are divided into four classes: minions, fighters, warriors, and heroes.
Minions are those mobs of virtually useless combatants who get mown down by the dozen when the hero enters the room.
Fighters and warriors are more ordinary people with the warriors being a step up from the fighters. Picture your elite samurai or commando-types and you have the basic idea.
Heroes, well, heroes are heroes, except of course the heores who are really villains, and regardless highly skilled in kung fu and other deadly arts. They dominate the game, but that's the way it should be.
Close combat is handled by rolling large quantities of dice and comparing the difference in the die rolls. Aside from no hit at all, the results can be a hit, a deadly hit, or a spectacular hit. A spectacular hit is so frightening that it causes enemies to check morale.
A long view of the set up for the game. At one of the table, you can see a jungle stockade where bandits have been holding women and children as prisoners. They are being held by an arch villain (a hero in game terms) and two five man units of bandits with sub-machine guns (fighters) and two five man bands of traitorous peasants (minions) who have allied themselves with the bandits and their villainous yet highly skilled leader.
On the other side, are three bands of peasant militia (fighters), one with rifles and two with spears. They are led by three heroes and two native guides (specialists rated as warriors). Their goal is to cross the river, storm the stockade and rescue the prisoners.
Another view of the set up.
The evil bandits and their prisoners.
The good guys, come to rescue the prisoners.
The prisoners.
A close up of the mountain bandits. These are Westwind's Montagniards (delightfully inaccurate Montagniards by the way) from their Vietnam range.
The game ended in a clear victory by the good guys who destroyed the villains and easily won the game. While some rules and stats need to be tweaked,
When we think of survival skills, many don't think outside the box or limit the range of such skills. Recently, I spoke with a Chinese friend who is from Wuhan, epicenter of the coronavirus. While he teaches at a college far from Wuhan, his parents still live there. As the entire city has been quarantined with no one going in or out, there is good cause to worry. He said they are doing well but running low on food. He said he has been ordering food off the internet to deliver to them but it takes a long time to get there and he is worried. I asked if there was anything I could do. Of course, there's not really, and reminded him that his parents had survived worse and that his mother had once survived based on her ping pong playing skills. Apparently, during the Cultural Revolution, a period of total chaos and dysfunction in Chinese history due to insane political extremism, at some point she'd found herself homeless and adrift in territories far from home. (I'm not sure how this happened, but it was not uncommon at this time. The authorities would occasionally order urban people, particularly intellectuals, to move to the countryside to "learn from the peasants" and since the peasants (farmers) often didn't particularly want them there, and society was falling apart, people would find themselves far from home without resources or food or means of making a living. It didn't help that young people were joining the Red Guards, roaming around unsupervised and trying to force the implementation of poorly thought out government mandates. They'd sometimes quite and try to find a way home too. So this young woman, all by herself, far from home, found herself in need of food and shelter. Often one step in doing this was to find the local ping pong table where she happened to be and use it to make friends with strangers. Which often led to offers of a meal and food for the night.
(As an aside, due to China's high population density, people tend to often live in small, crowded houses or apartments. In a city like Wuhan, this would have made it difficult to stockpile a long term food supply, although a lot of the Karen (Burmese hilltribe) refugees I know in the USA have a few 50 pound bags of rice around somewhere in their houses or apartments. It's not a bad idea dn it makes them happy.)
Greetings, In December of 2019 and January of 2020, I visited the nation of Vietnam. While there, I made a special effort to see the Vinh Moc Tunnels. The Vinh Moc Tunnels are often considered the best preserved Vietnam War tunnel system that exists today. Unlike the better known Cu Chi Tunnel System, which was created primarily by and for military use by military personnel (I am including the Viet Cong as military personnel ), the Vinh Moc Tunnels were created primarily for civilian use. They were intended as a system for safe and hidden transportation and safe shelter during the frequent American bombing raids. (There doesn't seem to be too much easily available on the web about the Vinh Moc Tunnels. Therefore, with a recognition of all its faults and weaknesses, I offer this link to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%E1%BB%8Bnh_M%E1%BB%91c_tunnels )
The author, in the tunnels
In this post, I will focus on the preservation, maintenance, and upkeep aspects of the Vinh Moc tunnels. The "museum side" of things. While I am not a museum professional, and would welcome feedback from those who are, I hope to give enough information here to give some sense of how a relatively recent historical site in a developing nation is maintained.
I hope to do a few posts on my day at the tunnels. Perhaps I'll also be able to get out some old photos and can share images of the current Cu Chi tunnels (which are not, according to the Lonely Planet Guidebook, either completely authentic or accurate but do give an interesting feel for what the tunnels were like. In my opinion, both tunnels are well worth visiting if you have the time.)
Visitors Facilities
The Vinh Moc Tunnels does have two buildings for visitors. Both are relatively primitive but informative.
There are two museum type buildings to welcome visitors. This is the one closest to the entrance. It is used primarily to show a film about the site and its history. The film was in Vietnamese but it did have English subtitles.
Behind the site, next to the public bathrooms, chickens graze on the lawn.
There is a 2000VND fee to use the restroom and a person sits there to collect it. This is less than 10 cents.
Along the public walkway, there are many vendors stands that sell drinks and snacks.
The vendors call to visitors as they pass. "Hello, you wanta buy something?"
Modern, generally good quality walkways have been added for visitors.
More chickens on one of the less well paved, side routes for the complex.
The tunnels were originally built as bomb shelters for the local civilian population who were subjected to frequent, intensive bombing campaigns by the American Air Force. This is a display of some of the different kinds of ordinance that was dropped on the region. My understanding, and I do not have details at this time, is that one challenge in opening the site for tourism was unexploded ordinance and how to disarm it.
Another shot of the ordinance monument / display,
Just a photo of a nearby farm house that borders on the tunnel area. I am not sure if there is any connection between the people who live inside (or their chickens) with the monument itself.
Entrances
The tunnel complex had many entrances. Historically these entrances were often kept concealed and hidden from view, something that is not desirable when tourists and other visitors come. Also, my suspicion is that the entrances were some of the most vulnerable parts of the system, most prone to collapse, and needed to be given extra reinforcement and structural support. Additionally the tunnel entrances are now used by many people every day of the week all year long, and, probably, ironically, see much more traffic than they did when the system was used a s
Obviously the entrance has been reconstructed and in a more reinforced and sturdy fashion than the original.
This portion of the tunnel entrance has been reinforced with wood, something that I am quite certain never occurred with the original. If memory serves me right, I do not think that such supports were here the first time I visited in 2007. Notice the stairs heading down.
While clearly a substandard picture, notice the two boards that cross the tunnel entrance. While easily bypassed, these are meant to warn and deter vistors that this area of the tunnel is not intended for unescorted visitors on their own. Later, with a guide ( a story that I will share in a different post ) I got to visit this area of the tunnel.
Another rebuilt tunnel entrance. This one also have a cross bar indicating that it should not be entered by unescorted visitors.
Another entrance with wooden reinforcements.
Wooden reinforcements that show a crack in the wood and concrete reinforcements on the other side. Notice the Vietnamese language graffiti. This was not uncommon in the tunnels.
Another tunnel entrance, this one on the side of the area that borders the ocean.
Electric Lighting
I do not believe the electric lights here were part of the original tunnel system. I believe that instead home made lanterns using oil and candles hung on the wall were a major part of the system but there may have been other parts of the tunnel available as well.
This is what the original lighting looked like. It was made out of an old bottle, perhaps one discarded by the American forces.
Internal Tunnel Maintenance
Inside the tunnels there was a lot of reinforcement of the walls being done with concrete. Here are a few photos to show such work.
The tunnel ceiling. My guess is that there is a plan to cover this with wood. Notice the bricks. I do not believe that these were used much in the original tunnels.
A rebuilt tunnel entrance made entirely of concrete.
Now this is particularly interesting. In one part of the tunnels, an area not normally open to unescorted visitors, a metal sheet covered with the red, muddy clay of the tunnels covered part of the tunnel. Down the side I could see extensive digging, and a deep, unsafe looking tunnel that went down to who knows where. Of course, I had to ask, and my guide told me that under the metal sheet there was a bomb shelter from the war days.
Of course, with all this concrete work being done, one must have wheelbarrows,
and I found a pair of them, covered with concrete in a cubby hole on the side of the tunnel.
Why waste time each day bringing them up and down, into and out of the tunnel each night?
Tourist Signs
One can't have a historical site open to the public without at least a few signs, can you?
I'm not sure if this is historically sound or if it is a modern restoration and preservation work, but there are drainage ditches next to the tunnels.
Finally, a couple photos of yours truly, the author,
exploring the tunnels
A Vietnamese language travel video on the tunnels
Books for Sale
(just FYI, at this time, I am straightening out an issue with Amazon. So I won't actually get credit if you buy any of these books --except, of course, the books by me at the end, but the first five won't get me anything or support this blog. Nevertheless, they are all excellent books and I enjoyed them all.)
FINALLY
books by me. If you really want to support this blog,or enjoy it and wish to see what else I've done, please check this out. Thanks.
The Boxer Rebellion was a conflict that occured in 1900 in China. It began when a secret society called "Yi He Chuan" or "Yi He Tuan" emerged. The names mean "Fists of Harmonious Righteousness" and "Society of Harmonious Righteousness" respectively. It was a reactionary group that tried to use magic and Chinese mystical traditions to drive foreign influence from their nation. This included violence against missionaries and their local converts, as well as attacks on the embassies in Beijing. (It is worth mentioning that the Chinese had never really seen much purpose for embassies from foreign countries and had only permitted their appearance as one of the terms for peace following a series of conflicts with the British and other foreign nations.
A Russian force for the conflict in 15mm scale. Most of the figures are from Old Glory 15s but there is a unit of the old Frontier Miniatures infantry in front. Some liberties were taken with uniforms in that most, if I understand correctly, are wearing their winter pants with their summer shirts. This is how they are shown in the Osprey book to the period, but I've seen photos from the conflict that show them dressed entirely in their summer uniforms. In classic wargaming style, I chose color over accuracy.
The Chinese refer to the conflict as "the Eight Nation War," because it involved warfare between their nation and eight other nations all of whom were involved in colonialist endeavors in China. In fact, however, the bulk of the foreign troops came from four of the nations. These were Britain (who sent mostly Indian troops ), the USA, Japan, and Russia. The other four nations who fought, France, Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary sent much smaller forces, token forces,or forces that arrived after the conflict began.
Russian artillery and a pair of commanders. A force like this really should include some automatic weapons but this one doesn't. Neither range included gatling or machine guns.
When the conflict began, Russia took advantage of the need to protect foreign interests and civilians by sending a large force into Manchuria, intent on conquest and acquisition of territory.
According to most sources, the Russian forces were very brutal and prone to mistreating and committing atrocities on the Chinese civilian population. However, according to some sources, strangely enough, the Russians, being a force of largely, unsophisticated peasants, did not have some of the condescending attitudes that other Europeans had when in China. In other words, while they did burn down houses, loot indiscriminately, and rape and brutalize people, it wasn't because they felt they were better than those people. Merely because they had the chance to do so. Yeah, not much of a consolation I know. But history is often full of strange, tragic situations.
Russian Infantry. Old Glory 15s.
Two units of Cossacks
A unit of Russian dragoons.
If you wish to support this blog, you can purchase these books from Amazon through these links. They are not intended to be a definitive bibliography on the subject. Cohen's a history in three keys is a classic on the conflict but sparse on military details. It does make it clear that in addition to fighting in the main conflict the Russians were fighting their own campaign in the north east. Bayonets before Bullets is considered by many to be the best book available on the Russian army of the period and how it fought and campaigned. However, it is out of print, expensive to acquire, and I read it by borrowing from the library through interlibrary loan and would recommend you consider doing so. The Osprey book on the subject is not a bad introduction although it is considered to have some innacuracies in it.
If interested, these are three of my books written by me. Please feel free to purchase them and support this blog that way as well.
Whille not exactly historically accurate, after all there are just too many ships in the harbor, too many exotic looking things, and lots and lots of stuff, not to mention the occasional presence of monsters and magical artifacts and supernatural beings of all kinds. (And if you do look carefully or are told, he will admit that one of his Asian buildings really is a model of the Alamo with some Terra Cotta Army statues in front to hide the iconic entrance, but that's okay.) Mike travels around to wargaming conventions in the northeast lugging all these things with him, setting it all up, and making a lot of people laugh and enjoy themselves when he does. If it's not the real China, then it is the China of our old movies and imagination. 
