On a searing afternoon in Vietnam, Tung Linh declared she "basically knows nothing" about the bloody, decades-long war that pitted her country's Communist-run North against the United States-backed South.
"My grandparents fought in the war and because of that today we can look at the sky and see an airplane and we don't feel scared, like they did," says the 20-year-old college student.
Stuck to her right cheek was a little yellow star on a red rectangle – the Vietnamese flag. Like her, Ho Chi Minh City, where she lived, was gearing up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, when the Communists triumphed.
Today's Vietnam is a remarkably different country than the one American troops withdrew from in defeat – it's enterprising, it's growing fast and it's getting richer.
Its authoritarian Communist leadership has embraced capitalism. They aspire to follow in China's footsteps, and have ploughed money and effort into becoming a reliable manufacturing hub, even an alternative to China.
But that is a risky ambition during US President Donald Trump's trade war – it's partly why he is threatening a 46% levy against the South East Asian nation. That could shatter the country's economic potential.
Vietnam was a French colony, a Chinese vassal and for 20 years, the proxy battlefield in America's bloody struggle to stop China spreading communism across South East Asia.
But it cannot escape its geography. Nestled beneath China's wide rump, it is once again on the frontline in a new American battle –which hopes to stem Beijing's rise as an economic superpower.
