From WIRE REPORTS

            Viet Nam’s Mid-Autumn Festival is changing.

            It used to be that children would parade their lanterns, mostly in the shape of stars, made from bamboo sticks, colorful paper and cellophane, and lit up by small candles.

            But when this year’s festival hits on Sunday, it likely will be a parade of kids towing Chinese-made plastic electronic lanterns that play. The twinkling childhood hula-hoops of yesteryear, which used to be a ubiquitous stable of the holiday – known as Tet Trung Thu in Vietnamese – will be hard to spot, if they are seen at all.

            However, the traditional lantern-making village of Bao Dap in the northern province of Nam Dinh is an exception. There, whole families of artisans are still preserving the tradition of making paper lanterns.

            The village in Hong Quang Commune, Nam Truc District, is the oldest lantern-making village in Viet Nam. It has been busy many recent days, just as it has since lantern-making became its big business in the late 1930s.

            “No matter what happens, we won’t leave the job of our forefathers,” local artisan Nguyen Duy Phuc told a newspaper.

            Phuc says the village’s lanterns do face more competition now than ever before.

            “Children are having more choices than in the past, so many choices it can make you dizzy.”

            But Phuc, as well as other local lantern makers, are sure their craft is not dying. They urge traditionalists not to worry.

            “There were some lows. But there’re also years when we sold out,” Phuc says.

            He says the business relies a lot on the weather.

            “In years when it rains during the festival season, dealers cut their orders and we have to stock the lanterns for the next year. That means that many families then have to scale down production the following year.”

            This year, the villagers are trying a new strategy to survive the competition. They are targeting rural and mountainous children who cannot afford other plastic and electronic toys.

            They have tried to cut costs so that each lantern is sold for between 14 and 24 cents. They want the lantern to maintain its mission as a “holy” toy for Vietnamese children.

            “Once a mountainous customer made a small order of 100 lanterns, I still packed and had them delivered. I just thought some children would be happy,” says Vu Van Khang, 63, whose family is said to make the most lanterns in the village.

            Families have delivered most of their products for this year’s holiday already. They’ve each kept a small stock for nearby customers from Ha Noi and Hai Phong.

            Khang has a few piles of lanterns, which are taller than he is, in his front yard.

            Khang says the family expects to sell 100,000 this year, including orders from Cambodia and China.

            His wife says the family earns between $2,400 and $2,876) in profit every season after all costs.

            Some locals say a good season of lantern making can earn more than rice paddy fields.

            But Hoang Cao Phe, an experienced maker, said the job makes profit only for those who work hard, and thus whole families are often put to work, from the youngest to the oldest.

            Phe uses all three of her daughters. The youngest is in second grade.

            Hoang Thi Anh, an older daughter, said: “I was taught to make lanterns when I was 6 years old. Now I just needs five minutes to make one if I have all materials at hand.”

            Vu Thi Dung, a child from another family, said she can help make between 100 and 200 lanterns a day, depending on which job she is assigned ― splitting bamboo sticks, making the frame, spraying flowers on the paper, or sticking the paper on the frame.

            Dung says it’s nothing special that children in the village are good with lanterns.

            “It’s the family job and we have grown up with it. I started to know a bit when I was a little, and it has been more than 10 years already.”

            The festival falls in the eighth lunar month, but the village starts putting things together five months earlier. Bamboo sticks, around 400 tons of which are used every season, have to be soaked in water for two months to make them tough and preserve them so they don’t go rotten.

            Work is busier after June when children have summer break. Children from families that do not ply the trade also come to work for other families.

            According to locals, the village produces around 2 million lanterns every year, providing enough for the whole country.

            The village used to have all 1,000 families making lanterns but now fewer than 400 still do it because it doesn’t make anyone rich.

            Some people in Bao Dap say they will not stop making lanterns if they have to start operating at a loss.

            “As long as there’re still people playing with lanterns, we will be making them,” Khang says.

By ANNA CHALLET, New America Media

            SAN FRANCISCO ― Among the embattled City College of San Francisco’s most vocal supporters is the Chinese community, which recently celebrated the opening of a Chinatown-North Beach campus. But with a looming budget crisis and warnings of a loss of accreditation, the $138 million campus’s salability is frequently mentioned as one way the college could save itself.

            The Chinese community’s stake in the survival of City College has steadily increased in recent years, with the most recent available statistics showing overall Asian-Pacific Islander enrollment at 42 percent of the college’s student population. But necessary reforms to address financial concerns could include closing some of the college’s 11 campuses throughout the city, and the new Chinatown campus ― the result of a near four-decade long effort ― could be a target.

            “We’re all going to hurt,” says community leader Henry Der. “The cuts, if they need to be made, should be equitable. No one community should bear a disproportionate share of the pain.”

            Der points out that City College provides Chinatown residents with “survival courses” offering the tools necessary to live and work in San Francisco, such as free English language classes. But under the current financial crisis, such non-degree bearing classes are becoming harder to justify.

            To open the new campus, the Chinatown community had to overcome a facilities budget shortfall of $800,000. This was achieved by a fundraising campaign spearheaded by the Friends of Educational Opportunities in Chinatown, of which Der is a co-chair. The campaign was able to cover the shortfall with donations from residents of Chinatown and the Richmond District, often referred to as the city’s second Chinatown, as well as $400,000 in matching funds contributed by Lillie Wong, aunt of City College trustee Lawrence Wong.

            The Accreditation Commission of Junior and Community Colleges has given CCSF until Oct. 15 to show “just cause” for remaining open, and until March 15 to address administrative and financial concerns. If the college were to lose its accreditation, it would also lose state funding.

            At the campus’s opening celebration on Sept. 21, Mayor Ed Lee announced his endorsement of San Francisco’s Proposition A, the Nov. 6 ballot measure that would create a $79 tax per year for San Francisco residential and commercial properties for the next eight years. This would raise approximately $15 million annually.

            Along with state Proposition 30, which would authorize a temporary tax increase to provide revenue for schools, Prop. A would alleviate some of the school’s financial troubles. If Prop. 30 fails, the college could lose another $11.5 million in state funding. It has already lost close to $20 million in budget cuts in the past year alone, and has had to cut 700 classes this semester.

            “As Asian Americans, we not only have to help pass Prop. A, but we have a responsibility to our community,” argues Alex Tom, the executive director of the Chinese Progressive Association. “CCSF is nearly 50 percent Asian [students]. Thousands rely on CCSF for job training, ESL, and a stable future.”

            Tom says his group plans to work with Chinese for Affirmative Action and the Friends of Educational Opportunities in Chinatown on educational outreach and press events regarding Proposition A. The CPA will be calling thousands of voters in Chinatown between now and Nov. 6.

            Until the opening of the new campus, City College classes offered at Chinatown educational sites had been, according to Der, “strewn across store fronts” ― adults were taking courses in elementary schools, and the campus facility on Filbert Street was inadequate.

            Given the high demand for classes, Der is dubious about suggestions proposing to merge the Chinatown campus and another, older downtown campus.

            As to concerns over the tracking of learning outcomes, one of 14 deficiencies cited by the accreditation commission, Der agrees more work needs to be done with the college’s administration to gather data on the learning outcomes of students in non-credit courses, like language classes.

            He also thinks there would be a proliferation of credit courses at the new Chinatown campus, which will serve at least 6,500 students. Non-credit courses require more students in order to generate the same amount of income as credit courses.

            Der’s passion to save the new campus stems in part from his family’s own experience with the school. His mother was an ESL citizenship student at CCSF, and his daughter was able to complete courses that she hadn’t taken as an undergraduate student that allowed for her acceptance into a physician’s assistant program. “My family is forever indebted to City College,” notes Der. “My story is the story of virtually every family in San Francisco.”

            It’s a theme that Tom was quick to get behind.

            “For the Chinese community and other immigrant communities, education is key to our future in the United States,” Tom says. “Education via job training, ESL, [and] citizenship classes is one of the most effective ways to lift low-income people out of poverty.”

            As an example, he points to a partnership with Chinese for Affirmative Action and City College called the Restaurant Worker Career Ladder Program, which trains low-wage workers in Chinatown and places them in stable employment in the hospitality industry.

            “This has changed the lives of so many families. This is why the Chinatown campus [is] such an important issue that cuts across our whole community.”

            The bottom line, says Der, is that the community won’t allow the new campus to close. “We are not going to let them shut this down.”

Việt Nam

• Gần 100 trường đại học của Mỹ triển lãm về du học tại hai thành phố Ðà Nẵng và Sài Gòn; Mỹ hiện đang có 14,888 du học sinh Việt Nam.

• Công an Hải Phòng bắt ba nghi can trong một đường dây lừa đảo năm phụ nữ trẻ rồi bán họ sang Trung Quốc.

• Ông Trương Ðình Anh, tổng giám đốc FPT, một trong các công ty tin học lớn nhất Việt Nam, chính thức xin từ nhiệm.

• Tám tháng đầu năm nay, Việt Nam xuất cảng hơn 3.2 triệu tấn khoai mì và thu về gần $1 tỉ.

Cộng Ðồng/Ðịa Phương

• Cảnh sát Anaheim chi $1.7 triệu tiền trả cho gần 24,500 giờ phụ trội của nhân viên cảnh sát trong Tháng Bảy và Tháng Tám, khi người biểu tình xuống đường bốn tuần lễ để phản đối hai vụ cảnh sát bắn chết người.

• Thị Trưởng Sukhee Kang của Irvine khẳng định sẽ bảo vệ cư dân bằng mọi phương tiện để chống nạn chó sói tấn công và ông viện dẫn trường hợp mới xảy ra cho cha con một bé trai một tuổi.

• Cửa hàng Nordstrom Rack thứ năm ở Orange County rộng 34,000 sqft, đối diện với khu thương mại Bella Terra, sẽ tưng bừng khai trương lúc 7 giờ sáng Thứ Năm và mở cửa vào lúc 9 giờ sáng.

 Hoa Kỳ

• Tám vị dân cử liên bang đang thúc đẩy chính quyền Tổng Thống Barack Obama tăng thuế nhập cảng sản phẩm pin mặt trời nhập từ Trung Quốc.

• Một tổ chức bảo thủ đang tính tài trợ cho Dân Biểu Todd Akin (Cộng Hòa) đối đầu với Thượng Nghị Sĩ Claire McCaskill (Cộng Hòa) tại tiểu bang Missouri vào ngày 6 Tháng Mười, mặc dù trước đó họ chống lời phát biểu của ông liên quan đến hiếp dâm.

• Ngoài đường phố trên khắp thế giới, bản đồ “Google Maps” bắt đầu có hình ảnh một số nơi dưới đại dương.

Thế Giới

• Cảnh sát Tây Ban Nha phát hiện một người đàn ông Morocco được giấu trong ghế một chiếc xe hơi do hai người đàn ông khác lái vào biên giới nước này.

• Tỉ phú người Nga, ông Alexander Lebedev, một người luôn chỉ trích Tổng Thống Vladimir Putin, có thể bị năm năm tù vì một vụ ẩu đả, mà nhiều người cho rằng ông bị nhà lãnh đạo Nga trả thù.

• Các nhà làm luật ở Uruguay, một quốc gia Nam Mỹ có đa số dân Công Giáo, vừa bỏ phiếu với tỉ số sít sao cho phép phụ nữ phá thai.

• Ông Julian Assange, sáng lập viên WikiLeaks, qua một bài diễn văn được truyền hình trước Ðại Hội Ðồng Liên Hiệp Quốc, chỉ trích Hoa Kỳ vừa ủng hộ tự do ngôn luận tại Trung Ðông, vừa ngăn cản trang web WikiLeaks tung tin của Mỹ ra bên ngoài.