Tens of thousands of people who have shared a Facebook post criticizing the Vietnamese booth at the ongoing Expo Milano 2015 in Italy and echoed its message that it is a “national shame” seem to forget two things.

These people have vented their anger on what they call a waste of US$3 million to present an ugly, unprofessional face of Vietnam to the world just because they learned of it from the viewpoint of merely one Vietnamese visitor.

Officials have said that they spent $3 million running the booth showcasing Vietnamese culture, cuisine and tourism at the Expo Milano 2015, with two-thirds of the amount on constructing the pavilion designed by renowned architect Vo Trong Nghia.

Nguyen Thi Oanh, who wrote the viral Facebook update one day after her visit to the universal exposition on Monday, might have her own reasons to feel disappointed at the Vietnam Pavilion at the expo, a world-level fair participated by more than 140 countries.  

But never judge a book by its cover, as the saying goes. Those behind the 15,700 shares the Facebook post has garnered as of Friday afternoon simply judge the pavilion by a description made by one person.

Visitors are pictured inside the Vietnam Pavilion at the Expo Milano 2015 in Italy. Photo: Expo Milano

Oanh, the chairwoman of a Ho Chi Minh City-based international school system, said she and her family were “really angry” during their Expo Milano visit, and titled her Facebook status “National Shame” when referring to the Vietnam Pavilion.

In her lengthy Facebook update, the woman complained that there was no Vietnamese flag at the booth, while some souvenirs, clothes and Vietnamese dishes were displayed in what she deemed “an unprofessional way.”

Such products were on display without adequate information to let people know about them, whereas their quality was no different from those on sale at markets back in Vietnam, according to the post.

Oanh posted the Facebook status update with a number of photos illustrating her remarks, plus comments that the Vietnam Pavilion looked “messy, unadorned, and cheap.” This seems more than enough for thousands of others to jump to the same conclusion.

But they forgot to look for feedback from other visitors before they started complaining and criticizing the booth.

The second thing they do not seem interested in taking into consideration is wondering how foreign visitors, the real target audience of the universal exposition, think and feel about the Vietnam Pavilion.

Oanh did not ask for feedback from any other visitors, except for herself and her children.

She viewed things as a compatriot of those behind the Vietnam Pavilion. But how would it look in the eyes of foreign people, to whom Vietnamese culture, cuisine and tourism remain a mystery?

View from another side

“So a Vietnamese visitor came to the Vietnam Pavilion at the expo and immediately blasted it as a ‘national shame.’ But no one consulted the foreigners,” Truong Anh Ngoc, a Vietnam News Agency correspondent in Italy, wrote on his Facebook on Thursday.

Ngoc also posted a photo showing a crowd of foreign audiences watching a show of Vietnamese traditional music at the Vietnam Pavilion.

In a comment below his post, Ngoc said he has frequented the Vietnam Pavilion and insisted things are not as worse as Oanh claimed.

“One can feel disappointed because the booth does not look good and the food does not taste as great as it does at home, but they just cannot not call it ‘a national shame’,” he wrote.

The journalist admitted there are things that need improving, but “looking at the foreigners queue in long lines waiting to look up information about and explore [the booth], it is really not a national shame.”

Thien Binh, a Vietnamese man who lives in Milan, also took to Facebook on Thursday to protest the ‘national shame’ complaint.

Binh posted numerous photos showing foreign visitors queuing in front of the Vietnamese booth and attentively enjoying the traditional music shows put on inside the bamboo structure.

“No visitor talked badly about the Vietnam Pavilion. They admired the architecture and were willing to sit for nearly an hour to watch the music shows, and the Vietnamese food is one of the things they most looked forward to,” he wrote.

The Vietnamese traditional music shows prove a distinct feature of Vietnam at the world’s fair.

Kaiser Fung, a New York-based trainer and advisory in business analytics and data visualization, attended the shows and was so impressed that he considered them one of the event’s highlights.

“Vietnam decided to offer three concerts a day in which the performers play traditional musical instruments that I haven't encountered before,” he wrote on his blog called Junk Charts on June 24.

“I was amazed how the stone pieces of this xylophone could be struck to make some very pleasant music.”

Fung wrote that he loved the Vietnamese presentation because it entertained him and helped him learn “something new.”

The blogger even returned to the Vietnam Pavilion the ensuing day to try the Vietnamese food.

“Go for the summer rolls,” he recommended. “If you are into fried foods, the spring rolls and the fried shrimp look like safe bets.”

Fung also noted that while Vietnam “basically ignored the theme of the Expo,” which is feeding the planet, it turned out to make the booth more interesting, at least for the visualization expert.

“Unlike others, I don't think every presentation needs to follow the food theme,” he explained.

“It gets boring to see one presentation after another about farming, health and so on.”

The Vietnam Pavilion was chosen as one of “the best pavilions at the exposition,” according to a list published in May by IBTimes UK.

The Vietnamese booth was also listed among the ‘unmissable pavilions’ at the event by the organizers of the Expo Milano 2015.

Expo Milano 2015, running from May 1 to October 31, expects to welcome over 20 million visitors to its 1.1 million square meters of exhibition area in Italy’s second biggest city.

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