Near the Cu Chi tunnels there stands a memorial to some of Vietnam's war-dead. On the inside of the structure, covering three of the four walls and reaching eight meters tall, are the names of some 40.000 soldiers killed, each golden name engraved in stone. Behind the building is a statue standing twenty meters tall, its backdrop the lush ricefields of the south. On top of the monument are two hands, palms faced upward as if posed to catch the giant tear that is suspended above them. This single and immense tear symbolizes the tears of every mother who mourns for a lost child. The two cupped hands are monumentally small in comparison to the tear, a gesture that has deep symbolic significance; as if saying that no two hands are large enough and no compensation great enough to sooth the suffering of the countless mothers who lost their precious children.
