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From Quảng Nam to Gwangju: Confronting the Bloody History of South Korea's 'Vietnam'

2026-03-15T19:00:00+07:00

In her novel Human Acts, the renowned South Korean author and Nobel Prize recipient Han Kang writes about the May 18 Democratization Movement, also known as the Gwangju Uprising. That month, student-led demonstrations broke out in the city of Gwangju following army general Chun Doo-hwan’s coup d'état, and his military government responded with a violent crackdown and an indiscriminate massacre of civilians.

In one of the chapters in Human Acts, set in 1990, a university professor interviews an unnamed narrator who had previously been imprisoned and tortured. Upon being asked about a photo depicting a line of dead children from the massacre, the narrator recounts the story behind the harrowing image:

We kept our faces pressed into the corridor carpet for as long as the soldiers ordered us to. Around dawn, they hauled us to our feet and took us down to the yard. They made us kneel in a line, our backs to the walls, with our hands tied behind us. An officer came over. He’d worked himself up into quite a state. His combat boots thudded into our backs, driving our heads down into the dirt, while he spat out a string of curses. “I was in Vietnam, you sons of bitches. I killed thirty of those Vietcong bastards with my own two hands. Filthy fucking Reds.” Kim Jin-su was kneeling next to me. The officer stamped on his back, grinding his face into the gravel. When he let him back up, I saw slender threads of blood clinging to Jin-su’s forehead. [...]

“Look at these bastards!” the officer yelled. He was practically frothing at the mouth. “Want to surrender, do you, you fucking Reds? Want to save your precious skins?” With one foot still up on Kim Jin-su’s back, he raised his M16, took aim, and fired. The bullets tore into those school kids without hesitation. My head inadvertently jerked up, and when he whooped in the direction of his subordinates, “As good as a fucking movie, right?” I saw how straight and white his teeth were.

Han Kang’s depiction of the ruthless and cold-blooded violence is jarring. But what is perhaps additionally surprising is the novel’s reference to Vietnam.

Students captured by soldiers after a raid during the Gwangju Uprising. Photo via The New York Times.

Human Acts is not the only novel by Han Kang that references the “Vietnam War” — as it is known in South Korea, instead of the “American War” in Vietnam. Two of her other major novels, The Vegetarian and We Do Not Part, also make references to the war.

Perhaps her most famous novel, The Vegetarian centers around Yeong-hye, who turns vegetarian and refuses any engagement with meat after dreams involving the slaughter of animals. Towards the end of the first chapter, narrated by Yeong-hye’s husband, Yeong-hye’s father becomes infuriated with Yeong-hye’s refusal to eat meat. In a disturbing sequence of events, her father slaps her and tries to “thrust” a piece of pork into her mouth with his fingers, after which Yeong-hye slits her wrists, resulting in her hospitalization. For her father, Yeong-hye’s vegetarianism is a disgrace, most of all to the patriarchy, inconveniencing the diet and lifestyle of her husband.

Like the officer in Human Acts, Yeong-hye’s father, too, is a veteran of the Vietnam War, described at one point by Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law as a “Vietnam War hero.” Here, again, Han Kang appears to link violence within Korea, this time patriarchal in form instead of authoritarian, to a history of violence abroad.

Han Kang delivering a keynote speech at the International Congress of Writers Writing in Korean, in Gwangju, 2023. Photo via Korea Herald.

The third novel worth mentioning is We Do Not Part, which follows Kyungha’s journey to Jeju Island upon the request of her friend Inseon. The central topic of the novel is the Jeju massacre that took place on the island from 1948 to 1954. Between April 1948 and May 1949, what is known as the Jeju Uprising broke out in protest against US-run elections, which the island’s residents feared would further entrench the division of the two Koreas (which it did). Under the premise of cracking down on communist collaborators, military and police forces under the US Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGK) massacred civilians, resulting in an estimate of between 25,000 and 30,000 deaths.

Like her other two novels, Han Kang again alludes to the Vietnam War in We Do Not Part. Part of the novel’s premise is that Kyungha’s friend Inseon is a documentarian and filmmaker who previously worked on a series of interviews with Vietnamese women who had been the victims of sexual violence perpetrated by Korean troops during the Vietnam War.

What explains the repeated allusions to the Vietnam War? What do they reveal? What are these traces symptomatic of? Though certainly motivated by Han Kang’s works, I should note that my questions are not literary so much as historical. In answering these questions, we must thus first confront the history of Korea's participation in the Vietnam War: a past that Korea has yet to properly reckon with, and one that turns out to be far closer to home than most Koreans realize. Korean violence in Vietnam must be regarded as part of the same apparatus of violence that also brought about the massacres in Jeju and Gwangju. The glimpses of Vietnam in Han Kang are the hauntings of a past that Korea has for too long neglected to face.

South Korea in the Vietnam War

Despite not being so widely discussed, South Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War was significant in multiple facets. Between 1965 and 1973, South Korea deployed 320,000 troops to support the US-backed Republic of Vietnam, making it the second-largest foreign participant in the war, second only to the US.

South Korea’s participation was, in part, ideological. Like Vietnam, Korea was one of the “hot” zones in the so-called global cold war. Park Chung-hee’s authoritarian and militant rule, which spanned the whole of South Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War, was staunchly anti-communist, as was the case for both dictatorships that preceded and followed Park’s, during which the Jeju and Gwangju massacres occurred, respectively.

Former President Park Chung-hee (black suit) greets ROK Army personnel during their deployment in Vietnam. Photo via Korea Pro.

But Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War was also heavily driven by economic interests. Park’s initial push to offer South Korean military personnel was strategic, with a broader vision in mind of eventually landing favorable terms to access the US military-industrial complex. Indeed, the Johnson administration repaid the favor. In addition to paying Korean troops in Vietnam rates 22 times greater than regular Korean military pay, the Johnson administration also procured preferred treatment for Korea under the State Department’s offshore procurement program (OSP): a strategic program of procuring goods and services from foreign countries. This proved hugely significant for Korea's economic development. In the late 1960s, OSP and the US’s Military Assistance Program (MAP) collectively comprised between 40% and 60% of South Korea's gross capital formation, while chaebol conglomerates like Hyundai derived as much as 77% of their total profits from military contracts between 1963 and 1966.

South Korea’s ascent from one of the world’s poorest countries to one of East Asia’s “tiger” economies is often referred to as “the miracle on the Han River.” But the term “miracle” mystifies too much. In many ways, South Korea’s participation in the Vietnam War constitutes no small part of the story of the country’s rapid economic boom that began in the 1960s.

A South Korean soldier in Bồng Sơn. Photo via The New York Times.

But as with any war-derived profit, the economic benefits South Korea gained from the Vietnam War were built upon, and remain inseparable from, the tremendous violence that had been perpetrated by South Korean troops. The atrocities that the US committed in Vietnam are well known: carpet bombings, the use of Agent Orange, torture and sexual violence, as well as indiscriminate massacres, including, most famously, the Mỹ Lai massacre. But though less well known, South Korea perpetrated many of the same atrocities, including brutal massacres of villages and rape of countless women. Korean soldiers in Vietnam gained a reputation for being “harsh, ferocious, even brutal,” such that even Americans viewed the Koreans with a measure of fear.

Among the atrocities that Korean troops committed in Vietnam are the following: In December of 1966, South Korea troops murdered 430 unarmed civilians, 166 among them children, in Bình Hòa Village in Quảng Ngãi Province. In February 1968, South Korean marines also killed 151 civilians in Hà My Village in the same province. Of those murdered, 60 were children under the age of 10 and many were women. In the same month, South Korean marines also murdered more than 70 civilians in Phong Nhị-Phong Nhất, Quảng Nam Province. Photos documented by US troops, who entered the village shortly after the South Korean troops left, show brutal images of children shot dead, women with their breasts cut off, and burned corpses. The group Justice for Lai Dai Han continues to campaign for South Korea’s recognition of the rape of women by Korean soldiers and the tens of thousands of children who were born as a result. One such victim, Trần Thị Ngải, recounts the horrors of a Korean soldier forcing his way into her home and raping her at age 24, “he pulled me inside the room, closed the door and raped me repeatedly. He had a gun on his body and I was terrified.”

From Vietnam to Gwangju

The story of Korean violence in Vietnam, however, did not simply end with the withdrawal of its troops — for it eventually found its way back home, to Gwangju. In seeking to justify the expansion of martial law that enabled the subsequent violent crackdown on Gwangju, South Korea’s minister of national defense at the time described the state of the country as akin to the early stages of Vietnam. In the eyes of Chun Doo-hwan’s military government, the threat of communism spanned borders: the events in Saigon that occurred just years prior loomed as what must be prevented at all costs, spurring violent military action.

South Korean citizens in Seoul welcome soldiers home from Vietnam on March 20, 1973. Photo via Korea Pro.

In fact, Chun Doo-hwan, the head of the military coup, as well as other notable figures in his military government such as Roh Tae-woo — who would eventually succeed Chun as president — had themselves served in the Vietnam War. In later assessing and analyzing the excessive use of force and violence by Chun’s government, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) cited their training and experience in the Vietnam War as a driving factor, even describing Gwangju as “Korea’s Mỹ Lai,” in which Korea’s own citizens were treated as foreign threats. In Vietnam, for both US and Korean soldiers, the alleged impossibility of distinguishing ordinary civilians from enemy soldiers in the context of guerilla warfare served to rationalize the indiscriminate murder of civilians. Precisely the same logic was applied in Gwangju. In his book Discourse on Colonialism, Afro-Martiniquan French poet and writer Aimé Césaire writes of the “boomerang effect”: the ways in which colonial violence abroad eventually returns to the metropole to be deployed against its own people. In South Korea’s case, its own military violence boomeranged back from Vietnam to Gwangju.

But we can complicate things further. For it is not that violence simply boomeranged back from abroad. Rather, such violence already existed in Korea long before the Vietnam War, deployed on its own people via US-backed, staunchly anti-communist and anti-left authoritarianism, as had been the case for the Jeju massacre — which had been the result of the perpetuation of forms and methods of violence deployed by Japanese colonizers during its occupation of Korea. From this perspective, it is no wonder that Han Kang considers Human Acts and We Do Not Part to constitute “a pair.” Both novels invoke the Vietnam War because the atrocities committed in Vietnam and the civilian massacres of Jeju and Gwangju belong to the same historical matrix of state violence, driven by a logic of cold war counterinsurgency and aggressed by US-backed governments. This shared history was not lost when, in 2018, two victims, one of the Hà My massacre, and one of the Phong Nhị-Phong Nhất massacre, visited victims of the Jeju massacre and commented, "I had not realized that Jeju had experienced such pains. It broke my heart to witness a similar scene.”

Civilian protestors captured by troops in Gwangju. Photo via AP.

Jeju, Vietnam, and Gwangju exist in an interconnected web. In The Vegetarian, Yeong-hye's father "thrust[s]" a piece of pork at his daughter's lips, an act that unmistakably evokes sexual violence. It is a form of violence rooted in the same patriarchal system that enabled sexual violence in Vietnam — the subject of Inseon's documentary in We Do Not Part. It is also the same patriarchal system that Park’s regime invoked in mobilizing a “remasculinization” of the nation via the Vietnam War. And again, the violence committed by Korean troops in Vietnam remains inseparable from the atrocities of Jeju and Gwangju. The glimpses of Vietnam in Han Kang are brief and sparse, but together they point to historical connections that run far deeper than what the surface reveals.

A Moral Failure

Concerning the atrocities of Jeju and Gwangju, significant, though far from adequate, efforts have been made by the state to address the injustices and human rights violations, including, most notably, the trial of former presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo (both of whom were convicted but eventually pardoned), as well as various truth commissions tasked to investigate the truth behind the events and give victims a public platform for testimony.

The same simply has not been true concerning the Vietnam War. Though several left-wing presidents have expressed regret for the pain and suffering Korea has caused during the war, South Korea has yet to make a formal apology to Vietnam. This comes even as the country recognizes the immense economic benefits it has gained through its participation in the Vietnam War.

Against the state’s largely disappointing refusal to engage with the legacy of Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War, Korean civil society groups have long pushed to bring justice for victims and their families — specifically, ever since the progressive Korean newspaper Hankyoreh’s breakthrough investigations that began in 1999.

In recent years, there have been two noteworthy developments. On the one hand, there have been efforts to seek compensation for victims through the courts. In January 2025, Nguyễn Thị Thanh — one of the two aforementioned victims who visited Jeju Island, a survivor of the Phong Nhị-Phong Nhất massacre — received a favorable ruling after the South Korean government sought to appeal a lower court decision (a move which the Vietnamese government called “extremely regrettable”) requiring the government to pay more than KRW30 million, or approximately US$20,000. At the age of 8, the massacre left Nguyễn Thị Thanh orphaned and with an abdominal injury caused by a shot in the stomach.

Nguyễn Thị Thanh (right) and her uncle Nguyễn Đức Chơi (left), a witness to the same massacre, at a press conference prior to a hearing before the Seoul Central District Court on August 9, 2022. Photo via VICE.

Meanwhile, there has been a push to launch a formal investigation into the Hà My massacre under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Unfortunately, the TRC dismissed the request, citing lack of jurisdiction over incidents concerning foreign nationals outside Korea’s territory. Since then, five victims and bereaved family members of the massacre filed an appeal to challenge the dismissal, but in August 2025, the appeal was rejected in a lower court decision. Lawyers representing the victims plan to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

In criticizing the TRC’s dismissal, Im Jae-seong, lawyer for the Vietnam War Task Force of Minbyun (Lawyers for a Democratic Society), commented, “How crucial is the victim’s nationality? [...] How crucial is the location of the unlawful act? Why discriminate, choosing not to pursue truth simply because the victim is foreign?”

Indeed, why the discrimination? Especially in the face of unthinkable violence, such a distinction feels utterly arbitrary. If anything, the brutal violence committed in Jeju, Gwangju, and Vietnam must be seen as one. The three are all connected in that the violence committed in each case had been a result of the same lineage of cold-war authoritarian dictatorships leading up to Korea’s democratization in 1987. Why is it that Korea has utterly failed to make progress in reckoning with its atrocities in Vietnam, unlike in Jeju and Gwangju? Vietnam is exceptional in that it laid the groundwork for Korea’s “miraculous” economic boom. The exception of Vietnam sends the message that violence, even at its most barbarous and heinous, remains permissible if it enables economic growth.

For the American anti-war movement, Vietnam has long served as a shorthand for the moral failings of US foreign interventionism. The Vietnam War is more often than not invoked as what must not be repeated elsewhere. Gwangju, likewise, occupies a similar psychic territory in Korean public memory. In a way, Gwangju is to Korea what Vietnam is to the US — both operate as “common nouns.” But as we have seen, the parallels run deeper than mere rhetoric or symbolism. Since its very beginning, Gwangju has already long been Korea’s “Vietnam.” Korea cannot properly reckon with injustices at home without reckoning with its injustices abroad. Korea must recognize, apologize, and compensate for its war crimes in Vietnam. All of it is long overdue.

'Chuyện Của Pao' Turned a Historic H'Mông Home in Hà Giang Into a Tourist Attraction

2026-03-13T11:00:00+07:00

The photos don’t do it justice. That’s what you’ll often hear from people who visit Hà Giang to cruise its famed highway loop.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Roads ribbon down the sides of unhemmed cliffs and a seemingly endless rise and plummet of mountain peaks skewer the soft, cloud-filled sky. Careening around curves reveals fields that have erupted in flowers and everything is covered in vegetation that exposes the inadequate range of the word green. One can see the stars and taste the rich soil whisked off fresh harvests.

Like photos, my words cannot accurately capture the immensity of the area’s beauty or the perspective one gains while traveling there. Hà Giang was one of the few major tourist spots in Vietnam that I had not yet traveled to during my seven years living here and I was thus eager to experience it this past fall. While I was confident the landscape would astound, I feared finding an area straining under the weight of overdevelopment like Sa Pa, Đà Lạt or Phú Quốc. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to discover that the region is not yet inundated with large resorts, exploitative tour groups or locals who had altered their lifestyles in drastic ways to appeal to outsiders’ notions of adventure.

Photos by Alberto Prieto.

While there is of course development in the province that caters to the many who come to travel the loop, it is less invasive than I had expected. Quaint homestays are still operated by families who grew up in the area and prepare delicious meals in rustic kitchens before joining travelers at their living room table to toast homemade rice wine. When I woke early in the morning, I watched farmers lead their buffalo out to graze, elderly women stoke fires beside the stacks of wood collected to last the approaching winter, and throughout the day, people of all ages, occasionally in ethnic minority attire, trudged along the highway; their backs laden with collected crops.

The house at the center of it

The house. Image via Đài Phát thanh và Truyền hình tỉnh Hà Giang.

Besides the incredible views, harrowing roads, and friendly people I met on the journey, and not counting the truly strange 500 million-year-old trilobite fossil presented on the path up to the Lũng Cú Flag Tower, the site that left the most lasting impression was a traditional H'Mông house in Lũng Cẩm village in Hà Giang’s Đồng Văn District directly off National Highway 4.

Photos via Bắc Giang Newspaper.

During the colonial period, the area produced mainly opium plants in addition to corn but has since transitioned to rice, buckwheat, flowers, fruits and corn. Built in 1947, this particular house owned by a wealthy H’Mông family provides a good example of traditional architecture with a wooden gate standing in the middle of the stone fence that circles a spacious courtyard surrounded by fruit trees. The home’s foundation, base and porch are made from local green limestone while the support columns and trusses are wooden and the walls are earthen. The large attic space is still used to dry corn and other crops and the four-generation family continues to live and work inside, though their activities now include attending to the hundreds of tourists that visit every day.

Fields of flowers and various crops grow on the plateau beneath rising gray-faced mountains. To reach the house, one must walk beneath a gate announcing the Lũng Cẩm Tourism Village and pass dozens of stalls selling dried fruits, nuts, herbs, roots, seeds, grains and mushrooms. Intricately sewn H'Mông dresses, blankets and scarves hang beside a woman selling buckwheat cakes. Local beer, shredded bamboo and honey are all sealed in bottles to be transported away and gifted as souvenirs. The tour buses pulled over beside the road during my visit attest to its popularity, and during the peak buckwheat flower season in the fall it’s reported that upwards of 1,000 people visit per day.

Movie poster via IMDB.

The particular home would not have been established as a tourism site if it were not for the movie Chuyện của Pao (The Story of Pao) which premiered in 2006 and won numerous awards including four Golden Kites and was introduced at the 2007 Cannes International Film Festival. The house at the end of the pathway was used as the main filming locale for the movie.

Chuyện của Pao focuses on the namesake character, a young H'Mông woman raised by her father’s first wife, but born to a different woman in accordance with the culture’s patriarchal traditions and expectations. She is reaching adulthood while navigating her family’s complex unhappiness when tragedy strikes at the movie’s onset.

Movie still via Zai Tri.

The difficulty of life in Hà Giang looms throughout the film as characters are constantly plodding through fields burdened with manual labor to scrape together a livelihood. But a gentle lute song drifts through the cold air, bringing a tinge of sweet tenderness to the movie thanks to the joys of youth and the first pangs of the mature romance Pao is pursuing. While technological limitations make the film look older than it really is and fail to capture the area’s natural grandeur, and the slow pacing and art-house style may turn off some viewers, it is a masterful and heartbreaking work of acting and writing that everyone should watch.

When May became Pao

“A cold wind blew in from the mountain, the old pear leaves were falling with a soft rustling noise as they landed on the stone gate.”

This quote is not a description of the movie, but rather the final line from 'Tiếng đàn môi sau bờ rào đá' (The Sound of the Liplute Behind the Fence), the short story by Đỗ Bích Thúy that Chuyện của Pao is based on. Films may represent a more popular form of storytelling than novels nowadays, to say nothing of short stories, but like film industries all around the world, Vietnam has long looked to literature to find core narratives and characters for films, as is the case with Chuyện của Pao.

'Tiếng đàn môi sau bờ rào đá' won the 1998-1999 short story prize in Văn nghệ Quân magazine and has been reprinted in her collections of stories with an English translation forthcoming in a collection of female authors that I was able to get an advanced copy of. Despite the characters all having different names (May becomes Pao in the movie, for example), the fundamental setup of the story is the same. May must face the infrequent arrivals of her biological mother to the home where her father and his wife, the woman that raised her, live. Meanwhile, a young man in the area woos May by playing his lip lute on the other side of her home’s wall. Only 10 pages long, the suspenseful story succeeds thanks to its tight plot and fully realized characters with clear but complex motivations. The unforgiving realities of filial expectations and fates beyond one’s control are exacerbated by the harsh climate where crops must grow on farms where “rocks rose to the surface of dirt that held seeds awaiting germination,” an apt metaphor for how people develop in the story, as well.

Đỗ Bích Thúy (right) in her hometown. Photo via Văn Hoá Doanh Nhân.

Reading 'Tiếng đàn môi sau bờ rào đá' and then watching Chuyện của Pao reinforces my belief that short stories make for better source material for movies than novels. Simply, novels contain too much stuff for a film to hold. Putting aside the challenges of capturing internal monologues and omniscient narrators able to offer sweeping expositions, novels feature too expansive of plots with too many characters. Upon viewing a movie based on a novel, audiences typically focus on what was removed, simplified or altered, as well as what characters and scenes looked different from what they had imagined. While relying on a short story instead doesn’t solve all of these issues, it does help.

Chuyện của Pao doesn’t omit major elements from the story, but rather adds significant ones by including a dramatic third act that is set up by a new opening scene. Faced with more choices to make that occur across a larger span of time and geographic region, the characters reveal different elements of themselves. One will have a different view of Pao’s mother, in particular, and the work’s greater commentary on patriarchy, after watching the film compared to the story. This is not to say that one is somehow better than the other. But rather, the stories they each tell are well suited to their formats and equally pleasing. I’d suggest consuming both if one has any interest in either, though start with the story first.

Given evolving understandings of cultural appropriation and increased discussions of the concept, both here in Vietnam, and abroad, it's worth touching on the fact that the story and the movie are the works of Kinh people yet focus on the lives of H'Mông individuals. Đỗ Bích Thúy was born and raised in Hà Giang in a hamlet consisting of Kinh, H'Mông and Tày families and many of her stories, spread across more than twenty books, focus on the diverse lifestyles and cultures in the region. One of her closest friends, Giàng Thị Thương, became the foundation for May in 'Tiếng đàn môi sau bờ rào đá.' When she became a writer, she was intent on presenting the resilience of the woman who raised but did not give birth to Thương, just like in the story.

Recent photo of Giàng Thị Thương via Báo phụ nữ.

When I asked Đỗ Bích Thúy about the subject of cultural appropriation, she explained in Vietnamese via email: “I was born and raised among Hà Giang’s ethnic minorities, even though I am not an ethnic minority. I see myself as part of their community and I appreciate and am proud of our traditional cultural values. I use these values in my creative works as a way to promote and introduce the beauty of my community to others; at the same time I also hope that members of my community feel proud of what we have.”

Meanwhile, the film stars Đỗ Thị Hải Yến who was raised in Hanoi while Hải Phòng native Ngô Quang Hải wrote and directed. Đỗ Bích Thúy had no involvement in its making, and she was happy to enjoy it like an audience member without expectations. And while there was seemingly no backlash at the time regarding the film lacking the involvement of people inside the community and culture it focuses on, it is worth noting that a 2022 film titled Khu rừng của Páo (Pao’s Forest) stars a H’Mông actor in the lead role, pointing to the possibility that notions of representation are changing in the industry.

The legacy of Pao and May in Hà Giang

While most Vietnamese tourists are likely familiar with Chuyện của Pao, I doubt that many come to Lũng Cẩm Village because of their appreciation of it. Rather, the spot offers a convenient place to stretch their legs, take some selfies and buy some unique souvenirs. A few photos from the filming days hang on the wall with minimal signage, but otherwise, there is little that would lead someone to watch the movie after visiting. Unfortunately, the story the movie was adapted from is even less present. Visitors have claimed that local tour guides mistakenly told travelers that the film was based on a work by Tô Hoài. A sign even featured a misprint in the story’s title that was recently corrected with expanded details about the writing.

It’s useless to bemoan how infrequently people read. Rather, my energy is better spent being proactive and looking for small opportunities to entice people to pick up a book. Hà Giang, a locale that needs little promotion, is an obvious place to do so. Independent of the story, be it the book or the movie, it's a great place to visit, but with the characters fresh in one’s memory, it takes on a much greater weight. I was able to feel a slightly more significant understanding of the experiences and endurance of the people working and living in the area. Whatever tiny glimpse the works of art afforded me helped provide a sense of connection and appreciation, which is a main reason we travel, after all.

Looking for a happy ending

While the characters end the film and story in very different places, their futures are open-ended in both. Upon completion, the viewer or reader is gifted the opportunity to imagine their futures and fates, one of the most satisfying elements of a work of fiction. I asked Đỗ Bích Thúy what she thought might happen to the characters after the story’s conclusion and she shared: “I always hope my fictional characters have a happy ending in their lives, because even though they are fictional, they carry with them figments of real people living lives filled with more misfortunes than luck, more sadness than contentment.”

If I had read the story when it was first published over twenty years ago, I certainly would not have imagined that a representation of the home May lived in would become a tourist destination. But one can now question if such a third-wall-breaking moment would represent a happy ending for the fictional May and her family. Given the financial resources and opportunities that tourism has ushered into the region along with improved living conditions, it's reasonable to assume the characters’ lives would be better now than at the conclusion of the stories.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

As an outsider, it's not my place to offer a definitive judgment about any net positive or negative to the area as a result of increased tourism as seen in places like Pao’s home. I asked Đỗ Bích Thúy about the matter and she explained that in her hometown, “people place their hope on tourism as the most important solution to grow the economy. There’s nothing wrong with that. I was born and raised in Hà Giang so I know firsthand how rough and daunting life here can be. Wherever the wind of tourism sweeps past, the material life of people will change for the better. But along with benefits are more losses. The most obvious loss is transformations in local customs, ways of life, agricultural methods, languages (because they will start speaking Kinh Vietnamese), loss of traditional costumes, architecture, etc. — in short, it’s an erosion of traditional values. Every day, they are going away, little by little… With every step of tourists, a gust of wind will form, sweeping away all the tangible and intangible values, things we once thought are indestructible after years of formation, but are actually quite fragile. They take centuries to create, but only a few decades to be destroyed. And once they’re gone, it’s very hard to get back.”

She continued by stressing the importance of sustainable travel that can balance the preservation of cultures with improving living standards. With that in mind, perhaps the most responsible and satisfying way to travel to Hà Giang is to read 'Tiếng đàn môi sau bờ rào đá' and then watch Chuyện của Pao. Certainly doing so will result in a richer, more intimate experience if one does journey there.

This article was originally published in 2023.

Hẻm Gems: Inside a Modernist Abode, O Phương’s Bún Bò Harks Back to Huế Flavors

2026-03-13T10:00:00+07:00

“O” is the affectionate way central Vietnamese call their sisters and aunties. For children of Central Vietnam like me, it has taken root in me like the most natural anchor of home. Sometimes when I’m out and about, glimpses of the accent of my hometown would pull me back home.

Quán O Phương found me in a similar way. In the middle of a relentlessly congested street, the familiar “O” from the shopfront drew me in. Huế foodies often tell each other that, away from home, whichever eatery is brave enough to use “O” in the name might be one with authentic flavors worth checking out.

Quán O Phương is located at a quiet corner where Điện Biên Phủ intersects with Trương Quyền streets, inside an old house designed in the southern modernist style. The dining space has a nostalgic ambiance, featuring tall steps, windy corridors, and walls covered in wash rocks. Wide window frames welcome sunlight inside, weaving through wrought iron bars in common Asian patterns like clouds, waves, and the character for “blessing” (福/Phúc). The house’s layout is typical of a courtyard residence, including a small pond in front and rows of bamboo providing a natural rustling canopy. The calm atmosphere makes it hard to believe that this is just a bún bò restaurant.

As Duy, the founder of O Phương, tells me, during his time in Saigon for work, far away from home, he greatly missed the life and tastes of Huế. In hopes of appeasing his own homesickness and other Huế migrants in the city, too, he founded this place. The “O Phương” in the name is inspired by none other than his wife, a Huế lady who was also his childhood sweetheart. The name evokes a coziness, as if this is not a restaurant but a home kitchen welcoming every visitor in for a generous meal.

Bún bò is always the standout representative whenever Huế cuisine is mentioned. It epitomizes the precision and specificity with which Huế chefs approach their culinary creations. O Phương’s menu naturally revolves around bún bò, featuring a clear broth simmered with spices and bones, moderately chewy rice noodles, tender beef slices, and chunks of crab cakes — all presented in a pretty rooster bowl. Sprinkle a little pickled shallot on top, and the essence of Huế is ready for your enjoyment.

“O Phương retains the original flavor profile of bún bò in Huế without adjustments,” Duy shares. “The broth is simmered for 14 hours alongside Huế’s distinctive mắm ruốc tép that’s pungent but not overly fishy.” Other ingredients include sa tế chili oil, pepper powder from Gio Linh, seafood from the Tam Giang Lagoon, and alliums from Lý Sơn Island. Most particularly, the food is cooked inside an aluminum pot with a belly and a small opening — a unique utensil for bún bò.

Apart from the classic bún bò soup version, the restaurant offers a southern-style bún bò “remix” version that’s eaten dry. The broth is provided on the side instead of being ladled into the noodle bowl that’s already seasoned alongside the protein toppings. Shrimp paste, chili oil, rau răm, and onion slices play the supporting role too.

If you’re in the mood for something else, other Huế specialties serve as great options for palate cleansers: bánh bột lọc wrapped in lá dong, bánh ướt tôm cháy, bánh bèo chén, etc. According to the owner, the dumplings are made using shrimp caught in the Tam Giang Lagoon (tôm sáo). This variety thrives in the brackish waters of the lagoon and thus possesses the qualities of shrimps from both freshwater and saltwater. Despite the small size, tôm sáo are chewy, sweet, and thin-shelled. Once cooked, the flesh turns an attractive shade of scarlet, which lends well to its role as the dumpling filling.

Last but not least, diners will also find a number of Huế snacks in the menu, such as roasted hyacinth bean tea and a bean-based chè that’s both fragrant and sweet.

Memories of Huế return to me in droves as I sit in the atmosphere of Quán O Phương. From faded sets of tables and chairs, bamboo furniture pieces, a vintage tea cupboard, to the paper lanterns and phoenix paintings on the walls, everything sings of the cultural heritage of Huế and Central Vietnam. While waiting for the food to arrive on our table, I heave in a whiff of incense, listen to the soft melodies in the air, and the rustles of bamboo outside the windows.

To sum up:

Opening time: 7:30am–9:30pm
Parking: Bike only
Contact: 0933654343
Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
Payment: Cash, Transfer
Delivery App: ShopeeFood

O Phương - Món ngon sông Hương

162 Điện Biên Phủ, Xuân Hòa Ward, HCMC

How Vietnam's Muslims Celebrate Ramadan, Eid Al-Fitr in Mekong Delta's Châu Đốc

2026-03-10T15:00:00+07:00

Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, yet Vietnamese Muslims represent as little as 0.1% of the country’s population. Most are ethnic Chăm, while a few are foreigners and a few converts. After traveling to Châu Đốc in An Giang Province, where the majority are located, I was mesmerized by the unique cultural mix this community represents.

I visited a few times during Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. Muslims around the world celebrate this holy month by praying during the night time and abstaining from eating, drinking, and sexual acts between sunrise and sunset. In 2019, Ramadan finishes on June 4, with Eid al-Fitr taking place on June 5. It is believed the Quran’s first verse was revealed during this period of the year.

At the end of Ramadan, the Chăm Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr, which translates literally as the “break-fast festival,” by wearing new clothes, visiting relatives and gathering food. Kids play with candles and new toys while young people stay up all night. Many also choose to get married during the festival.

In Châu Đốc, wedding celebrations go on for three days. People visit the family of the bride and groom to congratulate them, enjoy traditional green tea and eat snacks. On the final day, the groom goes together with his family and friends to the bride’s house for a celebration. It lasts for hours and culminates in the announcement that they are now husband and wife.

The following photos represent the daily life of the Chăm people during Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr:

Sunset over the Mekong River in Châu Đốc, where many families live in floating houses.

Family restaurants could be found around the village

A Việt-Muslim family.

Old people waiting for the sun to set before breaking their fast.

Kids and young men playing traditional games just before the sunset.

The backyard of a mosque where people get together to play games.

Men gathering together to break their fast.

Men and women gather to pray Taraweeh, an extra prayer that is usually only performed during the nights of the holy month of Ramadan.

The night is the only time when Muslims can eat and drink during the month of Ramadan so fried food and nước mía stalls open late.

Kids play with candles during the night.

Joining the bride or groom’s family to drink green tea and to congratulate them during the three-day wedding celebrations.

The bride and groom in their house finally announced as husband and wife.

This article was originally published on Urbanist Hanoi in 2019.

How Did Vietnam Start Celebrating International Women's Day on March 8?

2026-03-05T12:00:00+07:00

In the hyper-commercialized world we now live in, it might be impossible to associate anything but overpriced flower bouquets and corporate sponsorships with International Women’s Day (IWD), but the widely celebrated occasion actually has a rich history of over 100 years of the women’s rights movement.

March 8, known as Ngày Quốc Tế Phụ Nữ in Vietnamese, was officially codified by the United Nations as IWD in 1975, but the idea for a day for women started brewing way before in 1910 during the International Socialist Women's Conference in Copenhagen, when German journalist Clara Zetkin and other delegates put forth the idea for a yearly “Women’s Day,” though no specific date was mentioned.

On March 18, 1911 — the 40^th anniversary of the Paris Commune — the first widely recognized IWD event took place in Europe, where over a million Austrian, German, Swiss, Polish, Dutch, and Danish women took part in marches and meetings.

In Petrograd, Russia, on March 8, 1917, women textile workers took to the street to demand the end to WWI, food shortages, and Tsarism, igniting the start of the February Revolution (due to a previous calendar system in Europe, March 8 was February 23). March 8 continued to be celebrated by Bolsheviks as IWD to remember the beginning of the revolution.

The march in 1917 that sparked the February Revolution. Photo via Bảo tàng Hồ Chí Minh.

In 1922, the then-communist Zetkin worked with Vladimir Lenin to formally establish International Women’s Day on March 8 as a communist holiday of the Soviet Union. From then, IWD started to be widely adopted by other communist nations and the communist movement worldwide, including in Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, and, of course, Vietnam.

Due to IWD’s roots in socialism and official link to communism, the US and many members of the Western Bloc remain icy to the day for most of the 20^th century, though in recent decades, following the UN’s recognition, it is starting to appear on the festive calendar of more countries.

In Vietnam, the earliest evidence showing IWD observation points to a letter from Hồ Chí Minh, published in Nhân Dân newspaper on March 8, 1952, to commemorate Hai Bà Trưng’s death anniversary and International Women’s Day. In the address, he showed his respect for the female soldiers who sacrificed themselves for the revolution, as well as those whose children and husbands were fighting in the war.

[Top image via Euro Maidan Press]

Hẻm Gems: Bánh Canh Hẹ Is Phú Yên's Homage to Chives and the Sea

2026-03-05T11:00:00+07:00

Ever since I was a kid, I have had a general dislike towards vegetables, but green onion has always been an exception. I regard green onion as a garnish that can lighten up the whole dish, and it seems like whenever it’s absent from my cơm tấm or xôi mặn, I will instantly lose my enthusiasm to eat. But during my teenage years, my affection for scallion was challenged for the first time, when I encountered a photo of Phú Yên’s bánh canh hẹ online.

I was taken aback by the bold presentation of the dish, the dizzying amount of greenery was too much for me. From time to time, I would come across photos of bánh canh hẹ on the internet, and the weirdness of the dish made me think it was just a gimmick, so I never thought about trying it.

Chopped chives and Phú Yên-style bánh canh are two main components of bánh canh hẹ.

Fast forward many years later, bánh canh hẹ came up once again during a discussion meeting for Saigoneer’s two-week noodle content chapter, where I learned that Phú Yên’s bánh canh hẹ is a popular Central Vietnam delicacy with a humble beginning. It is made of cheap and accessible ingredients from the region. The noodle is made of Phú Yên’s local rice, the broth is stewed from fish in the province’s coastal areas. The green color of bánh canh hẹ comes from Phú Yên’s local hẹ, a thinner version of green onion that emits a lighter and distinctive aroma. According to locals, the excessive amount of chopped chives is used as an alternative for other vegetables and also to ease out the broth’s fishy smell.

The menu at Bánh Bèo Cô Mai hasn't changed even after the family relocated from the central coast to Saigon.

After learning more about the dish, I realized that I was unfairly judgmental towards it, missing out on a unique regional specialty. So I thought it would be a good idea for me to try it out to see what it’s all about. An eatery named Bánh Bèo Cô Mai Phú Yên was recommended due to its popularity among Saigoneers.

Bánh Bèo Cô Mai is located on Hoa Sứ Street near the Phan Xích Long food heaven. We arrive at lunchtime and it is already quite crowded. Luckily, we still get the chance to have a quick chat with the waiter to find out about the place’s history.

Home to chives and bánh bèo.

According to him, Cô Mai is run by a Phú Yên-born family, and it was first opened in Saigon about seven years ago, but before that, the family ran an eatery at the foot of Nhạn Mountain in Tuy Hòa, the capital city of Phú Yên. The menu at Cô Mai, identical to that of the old place, consists of three Phú Yên specialties: bánh canh hẹ, bánh bèo and bánh hỏi.

When asked about the cooking style of the dishes, he tells me about the family’s efforts to keep the tradition going. “We cook in the exact same way as we did in our hometown. There is no change at all.”

Bánh canh hẹ is an easy-to-eat but flavorful snack suitable for any time of the day.

When able to observe bánh canh hẹ at close range for the first time in my life, I was amazed by its unique visual and surprised by its simplicity. The copious amount of chopped chives creates a layer of vibrant greenery on top of the broth, below, there are fried fishcake patties, boiled quail eggs and a slice of black mackerel — all very familiar toppings. Add in some chili slices and we have a simple, yet colorful and distinctive-looking, Phú Yên specialty.

Taste-wise, the unique flavor of bánh canh hẹ is mainly due to the broth. It has a very subtle fishy aroma that doesn’t affect the overall taste. Combined with the delicate scent of Phú Yên’s local chives, the mackerel slice and the fish patties, the soup offers up a pleasantly light and sweet flavor that makes me feel like I am dining near the ocean.

Cá thu fillet is one of the toppings.

The main starch is a type of rice flour noodle that is thinner and less chewy than that in regular Saigon bánh canh dishes such as bánh canh cua. Upon tasting, I am treated with Cô Mai’s well-cooked noodles with a soft and supple texture that’s enjoyable to chew and makes you want to keep slurping.

The seafood toppings present me with two polar opposite qualities. The mackerel chunks have a tender and fatty texture. In contrast, the fried fish cake chunks are chewy with a sweet aftertaste. Dipping these toppings in the store’s provided fish sauce mixed with minced chili can enhance the overall dish's oceanic feel.

Even though we come here for bánh canh, both its bánh bèo and bánh hỏi are equally delightful.

The bánh bèo and bánh hỏi are side dishes. One order of bánh bèo is served in 10 small bowls, likely meant to be shared among many people. The starches of bánh bèo and bánh hỏi are sprinkled with chives oil, pork floss, fried bread crumbs and fried shallots. The highlight of these two courses is the accompanying sweet-and-sour fish sauce.

A surprise dessert: đậu xanh sương sáo.

Overall, my first experience with Phú Yên’s bánh canh hẹ was a success. Cô Mai’s cooking is so good that I even came back a couple more times, and what I notice from my revisits is that the store seems crowded around the clock, which is an indirect statement of the eatery's food quality. So, if you’re craving a light noodle dish that evokes the essence of the sea, you can’t go wrong with Cô Mai’s bánh canh hẹ, made just the way locals like it.

To sum up:

Opening time: 7am–9pm
Parking: Bike only
Contact: 0937 638 918
Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
Payment: Cash, Transfer
Delivery App: ShopeeFood

Bánh Bèo Cô Mai Phú Yên

54 Hoa Sứ, Ward 7, Phú Nhuận, HCMC

Life on the Streets of 1978 Hanoi in Black and White

2026-03-05T09:00:00+07:00

In August 1978, I visited Hanoi as part of an educational tour organized by a professor from La Trobe University in Melbourne. I was a high school history teacher at the time and an avid photographer. I walked the streets of Hanoi and took many photographs of everyday life in the city, and until now, these photographs have remained unpublished.

A pedicab driver seeking business in Đồng Xuân.

Beyond our tour group, I saw no other westerners in Hanoi, and there was little western photographic documentation of life in Vietnam in the immediate post-war era. Economic conditions were difficult for the citizens of Hanoi and only improved after 1986 with the Đổi Mới reforms.

In many respects, Hanoi in 1978 appeared to have changed little since the war years. Saigoneer, for example, has published heritage photographs taken by German photographer Horst Faas of Hanoi in 1973 in the aftermath of heavy bombing by the US (Linebacker 11). My photographs feature some similar street scenes. The tram network had changed little; it was ageing, heavily patronized, and invariably featured young children clinging onto the external rear carriage. Many people travelled by bicycle, and some utilized pedicabs.

Tram travel in Hanoi.

Working lives were difficult for most Hanoians, often involving hard, physical labour. Consumer goods were rationed, and everyday living included crowded and shared family accommodation. But despite these hard times, today there are some older Hanoians who look back on the historical Bao Cấp Era with a degree of nostalgia for the comradeship and for having lived through and experienced such hard times.

Have a look at a selection of the photos below:

Bicycle travel was very common.

A moment’s relaxation for a pedicab driver.

Laboring in the city.

Traveling on a lake (left), exercising by a lake (center) and working in a local shop (right).

Typical living accommodations in the city.

Portraits of children in Hanoi.

Portraits of older citizens on the streets.

Welcome to the New Age of Mass-Produced, Enshittified Plastic Bánh Giò

2026-03-04T13:00:00+07:00

Do you always remember the first time you tried a new food? With common staples like hủ tiếu, bún riêu or cơm tấm, that might be difficult, but I can recall exactly the first time I had bánh giò: it was from a bike vendor with a very distinctive northern-accented street call of “chưng, gai, bánh giò.”

Like its siblings bánh chưng and bánh gai, bánh giò is a dish of northern descent, albeit one that has integrated seamlessly into the national snack landscape over the past decades. Today, one hankering for something simple but filling can seek it out anywhere at any time, but when I was a child in the 1990s, northern vendors on bicycles would be the most common way to get our hands on a bánh giò.

On the back of a rickety bike that had definitely seen better days rested a huge plastic rucksack that felt hot to the touch. Inside, rows of leaf-covered bánh sat waiting for their turn to explore the outside world. As he briefly unfurled the bag to pick out bánh giò with tongs, the steam turned my glasses foggy and filled my nostrils with the familiar grassy scent of banana leaves.

A classic bánh giò is made up of a rice-based dough coating a filling of pork, shallot, and mushroom.

Those neatly wrapped leaves would become a clean surface to enjoy your bánh giò, its glutinous wobbly rice dough, its peppery pork filling, and its pearly quail eggs. The best case scenario should involve a spoon, but I have, on occasions, raw-dogged a bánh giò with just my hands and trusty teeth. There is no shame, because bánh giò is not a food designed for decorum and fancy cutleries.

I think bánh giò can do no wrong. As an adult man, I have to admit one is not enough for a full lunch, so you can always eat two or three if you so wish. However, to me, it is irrevocably the perfect snack made for the moments in life when you’re peckish but don’t want a whole bowl of phở: for breakfast; as an after-school, pre-dinner ăn xế; or especially as a stomach soother after a night out drinking.

Bánh giò makers are still around today if you know where to look, but the most accessible way to get them is no longer mobile vendors, but convenience stores. Thọ Phát, Saigon’s very own bánh bao maker-turned-entrepreneur, started mass-producing a version tailored for the convenience of modern retailers, and those leaf-wrapped pyramids began appearing in steamers at FamilyMarts and Circle K’s, further consolidating its role as a convenience, hearty, filling snack.

A maximalist “full-topping” version of bánh giò in Hanoi, featuring various types of sausages and pickles.

In December 2025, the company announced that it would sunset the old leaf-wrapped bánh giò version and switch to a new plastic mold, effective immediately. The reasons given included improved hygiene, convenience, and shelf life. The plastic version retains the pyramidal silhouette, and similar food filling, with a meagre banana leaf square at the bottom that can fit neatly in the palm of my hand. I personally think the mass-produced version, leaf or plastic, has never held a candle to bánh giò by independent makers, but it has taken a turn for the worse after the removal of leaves. Their grassy aroma contributes significantly to the eating experience and their broad surface helps the content retain moisture; without leaves, the dough is stodgy, monotonous, and miserable.

It is perhaps histrionic of me to decry something as seemingly simple as the recipe change of one company. After all, traditional bánh giò are still coming to life every day from kitchens from north to south, and a plastic makeover might not spell the demise of a time-honored delicacy, but it is still very clearly yet another example of the enshittification of modern life that’s unfolding right before our eyes. Shrinkflated chocolate bars, paywalled app features, synthetic fibre replacements in clothing, and now plastic bánh giò — these are all signs of corporations making our lives worse for the sake of profits.

Thọ Phát's bánh giò with plastic packaging.

I haven’t seen our bánh giò bike vendor in 10 years and now satisfy my cravings with ones from a store specialized in northern foods on Nguyễn Thiện Thuật. He could be too old or too sick to continue the work, but I suspect the disappearance of mobile vendors is not limited to my neighborhood, but part of a much bigger shift in the country's economic pattern. It is an incredibly challenging time to operate a small business in Saigon, with stringent recently introduced tax policies, harsh sidewalk-clearing campaigns, and less disposable income from consumers in general all squeezing the profit margins dry and driving out smaller players.

I don’t know about you, but I think it is high time I seek out a nice bánh giò in this trying time. I will drive to my favorite shop, park my bike, and ask for their biggest one with the most banana leaves around it, to make up for the leafless abomination I just ate for the sake of research.

Hanoi Breaks Ground on Sports Complex With World's 2nd-Largest Stadium

2026-03-03T14:00:00+07:00

Hanoi is currently building the country’s largest sports complex that’s hoped to become Vietnam’s go-to location to host international events and tournaments.

On December 19, as Tuổi Trẻ reports, state officials broke ground on the Olympics Sports City at a 9,171-hectare patch of land south of Hanoi. Vingroup is reportedly behind the massive project with a price tag of nearly VND926 trillion (US$38 billion).

According to Vingroup, the complex is separated into four segments of A, B, C, and D. Zone B will be the cornerstone of the project, where major sporting infrastructures are based, including the Trống Đồng Stadium, Global Aquatics Arena, Vietnam Sports Tower, and E-Sports Arena.

An artist's rendering of the complex and the zones.

The remaining zones comprise residential compounds and other supporting facilities, including a hospital and research center. The complex will house about 751,000 inhabitants and is estimated to finish in 2035. Officials greenlit the project in hopes that it can host regional and global sporting events like the Asian Games and Summer Olympics.

Of the amenities in the list, the Trống Đồng Stadium is perhaps the most talked about since it was announced. Like the name suggests, the stadium’s design is inspired by the Đông Sơn bronze drum and chim Lạc, figures with major archaeological importance in Vietnamese history.

At the moment, the land is still mostly for agricultural purposes.

The oval stadium is planned on a 48-hectare plot at a maximum capacity of 135,000 seats, over three times more than Mỹ Đình Stadium’s 40,000. Once finished, Trống Đồng will surpass India’s Narendra Modi Stadium (132,000) to be the world’s second-largest stadium, just behind North Korea’s Rungrado 1st of May Stadium (150,000). While the exact estimate is unclear, local media reports that construction on Trống Đồng is expected to finish in 2028–2030.

Images via CafeF.

A Brief History of Ông Đồ, Vietnam’s Scholars Whose Calligraphy Is Highly Sought After

2026-03-02T14:00:00+07:00

To say that Tết gathers together everything most beautiful in Vietnamese culture would not be an exaggeration. More than a threshold between the old year and the new, it is also a time when people feel they can return to, and relive, the traditional values that define them.

It is there in those year-end markets, where one searches for the familiar flavors of home. It is there in the square bánh chưng, shaped like the earth, and the cylindrical bánh tét, round like the sky. These are humble offerings, yet deeply reverent, placed before one’s ancestors. And on the afternoon of the 23^th day of the last lunar month, families erect cây nêu (tall bamboo pole) in front of their homes. A small wind chime hangs from it, trembling in the breeze as a quiet gesture meant to ward off misfortune.

Whenever strips of red paper begin to appear along Hàng Mã Street, I find myself thinking of ông đồ who once wrote characters on dó paper. What does the person who comes to ask for a character truly seek, if not something beyond a few strokes of calligraphy? And what does the giver offer, if not something beyond a flourish of black ink?

Silk robes and scholar caps

In the Confucian civil service examination system, candidates who passed three rounds and earned the degree of Tú Tài, a licentiate-level qualification, were known as “ông đồ.” Many never entered official service. Those who advanced only through the lower examinations would continue preparing for higher rounds such as thi Hội (the metropolitan exam) and thi Đình (the palace exam). In the meantime, they often supported themselves by teaching, hence the name “thầy đồ,” literally "scholar-teacher,” or by writing on commission.

Ông đồ reading, 1915. Photo by Léon Busy.

In the book Traditional Vietnamese Customs, compiled by Toan Ánh, a passage reads: “Elementary learning had no state-run schools, yet in every village there were a few ông đồ who taught children. Books were handwritten, as printed books were very expensive. Every ông đồ kept a small library, and students copied their lessons from the master’s books…”

Being recognized as an ông đồ required more than just wearing a traditional robe and knowing how to write. The title was reserved for those who possessed both literary skill and wisdom. Even if they had not achieved high academic honors, they maintained their integrity, lived honestly, and followed tradition. This was because, in earlier times, education was seen as a way to learn not only how to read and write but also how to be a person of virtue. The scholar was a symbol of intellect and character in society. People revered them not just for their elegant brushwork but for their clear conscience and steadfast values.

Tấm tắc ngợi thiên tài: / Praise for his genius:
Hoa tay thảo những nét / His gifted hand sketches strokes
Như phượng múa, rồng bay / Like phoenixes dancing, like dragons flying
— ‘Ông đồ’ by Vũ Đình Liên

In the past, people sought out ông đồ when they needed “special scripts” (xin chữ) or someone literate to help with formal documents. This gave rise to the tradition of requesting and giving calligraphy. During festivals and especially at Tết, students and those devoted to study would ask for specific characters as a way of absorbing good fortune and intellectual blessing.

There was an unspoken etiquette to asking for a script. The petitioner would bring a modest offering such as betel and areca, tea, or tobacco, and come to the scholar’s home. The scholar, in turn, had to be solemn and respectful, giving his art only to those who truly valued the written word, rather than those merely pretending to be cultured.

Ông đồ on the street of Hanoi, 1913–1917. Photo by Léon Busy.

Characters were written in calligraphic form and rendered on many styles on sheets of red paper. Red, in eastern belief, is the color of luck and auspicious beginnings. The writer would let mood and instinct guide the brush, shaping letters into forms that were sometimes striking, sometimes unexpected. Each character that emerged beneath the scholar’s hand was more than a work of calligraphic art. It carried temperament, personality, feeling, and the distinct creative imprint of the individual who wrote it.

A word worth a thousand in gold

The old saying “nhất tự thiên kim,” meaning “one character [is] worth a thousand gold pieces,” is associated with Lü Buwei, as recorded in Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian. The powerful Chinese chancellor once hung his book at the capital gate and offered a reward of gold to anyone who could add or remove a single character. His authority was so immense that no one dared step forward to revise it. Over time, the phrase became a classical allusion to writing of exceptional value.

Beyond its physical form, the written character is a means by which humanity preserves memory, opens understanding, and connects across time. That is why words are likened to gold. Dr. Cung Khắc Lược, a veteran calligrapher, explains: “Thought, emotion, and the inner life are always expressed through language, through vocabulary, through text. A single character written on a page, a word from the heart and mind offered to another, is worth a thousand gold pieces. It surpasses material wealth.”

Ông đồ stationed in front of Hương Pagoda, Hanoi, 1995. Photo via Flickr user lonqueta.

Over the years, the practice of asking for characters has grown more widespread, becoming a cherished custom each time Tết returns. From the mountains to the delta, regardless of wealth or status, anyone who comes with sincerity may ask for a character.

Each brushstroke carries a particular wish or intention. One might request Cát Tường (auspiciousness) or Như Ý (fulfillment) to pray for peace within the family. Others ask for Phát, Lộc (prosperity, fortune), or Tài (excellence) in hopes that their work will prosper and unfold smoothly. Young people often request for Chí (resolve) or Đắc (achievement) as a way to steady themselves in the face of hardship.

The ritual is no longer bound by the formalities of the past. The giver need not be an elderly scholar in traditional robes with silvered hair and beard. There are now modern calligraphers, western-trained writers, and women who are taking up the brush.

The art, too, has moved beyond black ink on red paper. Characters are carved or brushed onto wood, stone, bamboo, silk, or brocade. Seal script, clerical script, regular script, cursive, running script, every form has its place. Along city streets and in temple courtyards, people queue patiently for characters that unfurl across the page like phoenixes in flight and dragons in motion, a beautiful custom that feels inseparable from the first days of the new year.

Modern calligraphic masters come from all walks of life. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Dedicated “scholar streets” have also emerged to honor this traditional custom. In the north, the Temple of Literature is widely regarded as a symbolic “village of examination candidates.” In the south, the practice of asking for calligraphic characters dates back to the 17^th century, when the Nguyễn lords expanded southward to develop new territories, followed by waves of migrants from the north and central regions. It was not until the late 17^th century, however, when Chinese communities began settling and cultivating the areas around Biên Hòa and Đồng Nai, that the custom truly flourished. The long coexistence of different cultures has, in subtle ways, shaped the distinctive character of this southern tradition.

Today, more than half of the calligraphy masters are students of classical Sino-Vietnamese studies or simply lovers of the art. Those who come to request characters span every age group, social background, and profession. This is not a fleeting trend. I see it as an act of cultural transmission. Whatever changes in form or setting, the essence of the custom remains intact. The person holding the brush pours care and craft into every stroke. The one who asks comes with respect for learning and for the traditions that have shaped it.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

[Top image by Léon Busy.]

From Dark to Dawn, an Early Morning at Hội An's Duy Hải Fish Market

2026-03-01T15:00:00+07:00

At 3am, Hội An’s streets resemble dog-gnawed pork bones, licked clean of all scent and viscera. No light, no noise, no movement. But that’s the time you must venture out to witness the Duy Hải Fish Market in action.

After you cross the Cửa Đại Bridge leading away from Old Town, you’ll turn into a warren of homes and notice the first signs of activity. A few motorbikes rumble in the distance, some homes have lights on, and finally, on the tiny streets that lead to the water, small restaurants and coffee shops emerge, brightly lit against the lampblack dark. In a simple wooden-walled shop playing bolero, middle-aged men slap playing cards onto plastic tables filled with phin filters and drinking glasses. Their workdays are already over and it is time to relax now that they are back on firm ground. At the docks, women are just beginning to work as sanguine light clots on the horizon.

A fish market is a testament to the messiness of making things work. All-purpose plastic bins and baskets fill with fish, their mucus-slick scales shimmering on the cement like dropped costume jewelry. Women weigh, sort and separate the catch before selling them to the wholesalers who will take them into town for use in restaurants and grocery stores. These are family operations: the women work in concert with their fathers, husbands or brothers who steer the boats towards the dock. This is not a place for fashion. Mismatched pajamas. Stained sweatshirts and tattered hats are the ad hoc uniforms for those crouching in knee-high rubber boats, occasionally splashed by the water seemingly trickling everywhere. Fish blood and exhaust linger in the air.

While removed from the immediate action, the commotion is no less intense on the water. Duy Hải’s handful of docks service a good number of boats coming in from the sea, and smooth coordination is required to bring them in efficiently and without collision. The conventions governing the order and procedure of their arrivals is beyond outsiders, instead it operates with a mysterious mathematics not unlike the currents themselves: we don’t understand it, but we trust it.

The sun is not up yet, but its rays foretell its entrance.

Streaks of yellow and orange ward off the curtains of dawn.

Frayed and tangled nets with stained floats and bobbers pile on the boat decks. Weather-battered wood boasts brightly colored, peeling paint; the familiar eyes at the front are chipped and fading. A sluice of salty muck, algae, oil, and sweat lay a damp sheen to every surface. Only the ocean surface below or the cloud cover above hints at purification, some clean future; a hot shower, and the clear broth the catch will accompany

Collecting fish from nets.

Freshly catch sea creatures are sorted by types and sizes.

As 6am nears, there is little end to difficult work to be done, but the daylight ushers in a new hazard: tourists. With matching paint jobs and helmets, motorbikes near the dock, and camera-gripping visitors descend on the scene. The men transferring fish to shore, and the woman shouting prices and preferences to each other must now be mindful of the interlopers. Duy Hải, like many sites of traditional activity, has now become a spectacle for foreigners and locals alike. It’s a good time to depart. And looking back from the bridge, the chaos imperceptible, a hint òf the day’s heat already draped on the mountains in the distance, we are reminded of the peculiar, frail shuffling our species does along the hem of the great oceans.

Saigon Approves Plan to Extend Metro Line 1 to Long Thành International Airport

2026-02-26T12:00:00+07:00

Plans for eventual metro access to the Long Thành International Airport are taking shape.

With Sagion’s new international airport having already received its first flight and regular operations expected to begin in the middle of this year, authorities are moving forward with plans to establish access via urban railway. Notably, this month, the Hồ Chí Minh City People’s Council approved a resolution to extend the currently operational Metro Line 1 to Long Thành International Airport under a public-private partnership.

The need for rail access to the airport is obvious, as current transportation options are limited. Travel via the HCMC–Long Thành expressway, National Highway 1, and National Highway 51 already experiences congestion that will be exacerbated by airport traffic. Conservative estimates place current travel time at 2–3 hours.

Đồng Nai Province will be the executing agency for the recently approved line extension, set to run 41.4 kilometers across three sections. Beginning at the Suối Tiên Station, it will stretch 6.1 kilometers to the Đồng Nai provincial administration center, then 28.2 kilometers to Station SA, which is planned to connect to the Metro Line 2 Bến Thành–Thủ Thiêm section, and then 7.1 kilometers to the airport. Implementation is expected to last from 2026 to 2029.

The extended line is designed to operate at 110 kilometers per hour in the open and 80 kilometers per hour in tunnels. Funds for the plan, which is estimated at more than VND60.26 trillion (US$2.29 billion), include VND3.41 trillion for site clearance in Đồng Nai and VND915 billion in HCMC.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Thaco announced ambitious plans to have the metro line from Bến Thành to Thủ Thiêm and a connecting railway from Thủ Thiêm to Long Thành Airport operational by 2030. Authorities have yet to decide on who will implement or fund these projects, but Thaco, an urban development and residential real estate company, is preparing for the responsibility, as evidenced by the addition of a Railway Project Investment and Construction division.

Plans for the portion of Metro Line 2 extending from Thủ Thiêm to Long Thành Airport. Image via VNExpress.

Of course, these plans and proposals, including a direct connection to Tân Sơn Nhất, are nothing new, with discussions of them going back at least a decade. Dates for opening operations have similarly been offered and revised over the years, alongside vigorous calls to speed up implementation. In the meantime, a robust expansion of bus lines is in the works, with seven proposed lines connecting to urban hubs alongside various road, bridge and overpass embellishments.

[Top image via HCMC Tourism Magazine]

A Rare Album by Photographer Bruno Barbey Brings Us Back to Tết in 1994 Hanoi

2026-02-25T11:08:35+07:00

What do you remember most about the 1990s? Do you remember the fashion, the old-timey technology, or the lack of traffic? And if you were just a wee child, do these memories stay with you?

This collection of candid shots, taken by French photographer Bruno Barbey in Hanoi right during Tết of 1994 (Giáp Tuất), would teleport you to a simpler time of rudimentary new year decorations, sharp suits, and some particularly dope sunglasses.

Have a closer look below:

A lady sells paper toys outside Ngọc Sơn Pagoda.

Strips of firecrackers on sale at an army supply shop, Mơ Market.

Posing with Tết decorations.

A couple next to Tết ornaments in Hoàn Kiếm.

Children frolic in toy vehicles.

Young Hanoians enjoy phở at a stall outside Ngọc Sơn Pagoda.

At Hàng Da.

On a Tết ride.

An older couple pose for a picture at Ngọc Sơn.

Tiny shops in the Old Quarter.

On the side of Long Biên Bridge.

On a dimly lit street.

Photos by Bruno Barbey via RedsVN.

Review: 'New Wave' Documentary Is a Surprisingly Personal Dissection of 1980s Nostalgia

2026-02-23T10:00:00+07:00

Melodic synth-lines and steady electronic drums. Today, the signature sounds of new wave music feel perhaps a bit old and outdated. During its high point during the 1980s, however, new wave was hailed as music of the future.

Vietnamese new wave, or new wave for short, is a genre of music that can be best described as Vietnamese American eurodisco. Characterized by a blend of synth pop and disco beats, the music most often covers famous eurodisco hits from abroad. In fact, the term new wave had originally been a bit of a misnomer. The name stuck around when eurodisco music, especially in its burgeoning phases, was miscategorized under the label of UK New Wave in record shops across Little Saigon.

As Elizabeth Ai describes in her book New Wave: Rebellion and Reinvention in the Vietnamese Diaspora that accompanied the release of her documentary film, new wave “electrified” a whole generation of Vietnamese American teenagers during the 1980s. Specifically, new wave was revered by the so-called “1.5 generation,” referring to the generation of Vietnamese American refugees who were born in Vietnam but grew up and came of age in the US. For the 1.5 generation — lost trying to navigate a new life between America and Vietnam, neither to which they felt like they wholly belonged — new wave offered a new way of life. It was a way of rebelling and reinventing against and of expectations and identity categories of what it meant to be Vietnamese, Americans, refugees: seeking refuge from war, yes, but also from the refugee experience itself.

New wave embodies the broad-minded, quixotic, and highly individualistic spirits that guided youths from the 1980s.

Unfortunately, the popularity of new wave is now largely subdued. But those who experienced new wave during its height seem to be unable to forget the excitement, fervor, and zeal that it incited within the Vietnamese diaspora.

About the film

The documentary New Wave is directed by Elizabeth Ai, a Chinese Vietnamese American Emmy-winning producer and filmmaker. It was originally released in 2024, and has so far only been available for watching through screenings. Good news for us, starting late spring of this year, the documentary will be available for the public. Ai’s team recommended following socials for details to be released in the near future.

Interestingly, while the film project began in 2018, initially with research and outreach work and eventually moving onto filmwork, with the COVID-19 pandemic, filming unexpectedly came to an abrupt halt. While filming was on hiatus, Ai’s team started an Instagram page to crowdsource archival material. Saigoneer featured the project during this phase back in 2022, read our previous article here. Now, the instagram page has been taken over with promotional content for the film, but the montage of crowdsourced photos, depicting Vietnamese American youth during the 1980s and their stories, still remains available for public view.

The poster of New Wave the documentary.

As it should be obvious by now, new wave and its history is the central topic of Ai’s film: the origins of the music, the story of its rise in popularity amongst the Vietnamese diaspora, the ascent of its poster child Lynda Trang Đài into stardom, as well as its punk subculture scene: edgy clothes, electric hair, and late night dancing and partying. In describing her childhood memories of her aunts and uncles listening to new wave music, Ai captured the subculture of new wave succinctly.

There was this DIY, scrappy aesthetic that revolved around the music they were listening to. I think the beautiful part of it is that it's a hybrid culture they created; the youth who lost their homeland didn't quite identify as Vietnamese-only anymore, and they were so new to America, and they weren't accepted by Americans, so they had to figure out an identity all their own. I think that was what made this subculture so unique, the music was neither American or Vietnamese, and it sounded like the future with its synthesized instrumentation.

New Wave’s story is no simple periodization of the music. Instead, the film intimately follows and weaves together the lives of a few central figures to paint a lively and dynamic picture of the inner life of new wave. There is, for one, Ian Nguyen, better known as DJ BPM, a prominent new wave DJ who, as a teenager, against the disappointment of his strict father, fell in love with new wave both for its futuristic sound and its new possibilities for “cool.” Then there is Lynda Trang Đài, dubbed by some as the “Vietnamese Madonna,” who pioneered new wave and became massively popular and idolized through her appearances in Paris by Night covering popular eurodisco hits. And finally, there is Elizabeth Ai herself; as well as her aunt Myra, who took care of Ai growing up in the absence of her mother, who was too busy hustling to provide for the family. For viewers both familiar with new wave and entirely new to it, the film’s intimate documentation of the inner lives of insiders of the world of new wave is deeply captivating. Together, their lives come to form a vibrant mosaic image of the world that is new wave.

Lynda Trang Đài was a key figure in the new wave movement.

That said, compared to Ian and Lynda whose lives have long revolved around new wave, Ai’s connection to new wave is arguably far sparser, anchored primarily in childhood memories of listening to the music blasting in her teenage aunt Myra’s car. Why, then, is Ai’s personal story and history figured so prominently in the film? Ai herself could not anticipate her intimate link to the narrative when she first embarked on her project: “Initially envisioned as a documentary focused on the 1980s new wave scene, the project deepened as I explored stories and archives, which unexpectedly reopened old wounds and broadened the emotional scope of the film.” She elaborates:

During the filming journey of this documentary, I encountered a profound transformation in my relationship with the participants, which became one of the most intriguing and moving aspects of the process. Initially, I saw myself strictly as the filmmaker and viewed them as subjects, maintaining a professional distance. However, as we progressed, this distance gradually diminished. The participants, first-generation Vietnamese Americans, openly shared their traumatic experiences with me. They spoke of the heavy burdens they had carried for years: stories of displacement, loss, and resilience. As they shared, I realized that despite being a second-generation Vietnamese American, our experiences were not so different. I, too, had been carrying a significant amount of emotional baggage, perhaps unconsciously. There was a moment when it no longer felt right to merely document their stories without acknowledging my own. It seemed unfair to ask them to reveal so much without addressing the truths within myself.

In perhaps the most memorable sequence of the film, realizing she can no longer avoid confronting the painful fact of her mother’s absence during her childhood, Ai finally reaches out to reconnect with her mother, with whom she has long had no contact out of anger and resentment. And in finally confronting her mother, Ai realizes that she has misunderstood much of her own mother, that she had not known much of what caused her mother to act the way she did. Thus, what began as a film about a music genre ends up transforming into something much more intimate and personal.

A confession

Admittedly, I had never heard of new wave before watching Ai’s documentary. And given my lack of personal connection with the topic, I anticipated that my enjoyment of the film would be limited. Beyond such expectations, however, the film was a real joy to watch — in large part due to the personal aspects of the film that transcended the narrow scope of new wave, no doubt, but also, because the film left me with much to think about.

What exactly? Perplexingly enough, a quote, written in a substantially different context from New Wave, by Ta-Nehisi Coates in his book The Message. “We have a right to our imagined traditions, to our imagined places, and those traditions and places are most powerful when we confess that they are imagined.”

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Ai.

At one point in the film, Ian Nguyen describes his adolescent immersion in new wave, “the music was innocent, but the scene we were in was not.” The scene was not innocent in that it harbored alcohol, drugs, sex. The music was not, in that it didn’t — after all, the music was just music. It is certainly a compelling and intriguing characterization of the dichotomy of new wave, but I also think that it is one we can further complicate.

Consider, for instance, the film’s portrayal of Lynda Trang Đài. For many in the 1.5 generation, Lynda was an icon of glamor, freedom, and possibility, exemplified when Ai’s aunt Myra remarks, “She was everything I wanted to become.”

But if Lynda embodied perfection for many, the film also reveals the many ways in which Lynda’s personal life is in fact far from perfect. We see, for instance, the ways in which Lynda struggles to juggle multiple jobs (including running a sandwich shop) to financially support her extended family — all of which, at one point, causes her to miss her son’s graduation ceremony.

The irony is difficult to ignore. The star who promised escape for so many children from the dysfunction of overworked parents is herself trapped in a similar cycle. I mention all of this not to taint Lynda Trang Đài, but rather, in light of all of this, to raise the question: what, then, could innocence mean for new wave music when the craze over new wave had so often been inseparable from the craze over Lynda Trang Đài?

Vietnamese New Wave found its start in VHS and cassette tapes containing covers of trendy English-language songs of the time.

The film’s brilliance lies in this: far from simply romanticizing new wave, the film humanizes the phenomenon, from its past to its present, from its devout followers to its poster child, laying bare all its messiness and complexities. The larger picture is far from perfect, but we feel love for it all the more because of that. If there is anything innocent about new wave, it is this care for it.

To return to Coates: “We have a right to our imagined traditions, to our imagined places, and those traditions and places are most powerful when we confess that they are imagined.” New Wave reminds me of these words because, in a way, the film feels like a confession of such imagining. “My truth was just a story I created to protect myself,” says Ai, reflecting upon the narrative she has constructed for herself to fill in her mother’s ellipses.

The same can be said of new wave more generally, too. If new wave subculture was driven by “rebellion and reinvention,” as goes the subtitle of Ai’s book, surely such reinvention also constituted a kind of imagining and reimagining. And New Wave shows us that, indeed, such imagining is most powerful when confessed because it is there, in that confession, that we can be most honest without letting go of the selves we’ve built.

Every Bánh Chưng Season, Vietnam’s Lá Dong Capital Comes Alive With Harvest Frenzy

2026-02-13T12:00:00+07:00

On the patches of sandy soil by the river in Kim An Commune, Thanh Oai District, Hanoi, there’s a tiny village named Tràng Cát, where dong leaves have been embedded in local history, memory, and economy for centuries. Right in local courtyard, these broad green leaves were transformed into bánh chưng, ready for Tết feasts across the country.

For about 600 years until now, generations of Tràng Cát villagers have grown up amongst emerald fields of dong. Dong (Stachyphrynium placentarium) is a grass-like plant that’s closely related to ginger. The leaves are bright green, wide, and durable, and thus are very suitable to wrap food in traditional dishes, especially bánh chưng. In Tràng Cát, dong grows thick in yards, alongside old brick walls and village paths where farmers and children tread every day to go to work and school.

Tràng Cát Village in suburban Hanoi.

According to several village household’s genealogical documents, right when the community was first established in the 16th–17th century, locals were already clearing land to cultivate dong. Back then, only the prettiest, most flawless leaves were used to make bánh chưng to offer to emperors. Initially, the plant was only grown at home, but gradually, land plots not fertile enough for other cash drops were all turned to dong fields. Today, the village’s 500 households all cultivate this special leaf.

Tràng Cát has about 30 hectares of dong fields.

About 30 hectares of dong fields now span everywhere in the commune. Irrigated by the Đáy River, Kim An’s sandy soil is particularly nourishing to dong, thus Tràng Cát’s leaves are nationally famous for their broadness, waxy surfaces, and bright colors. When wrapped and cooked, bánh chưng here carries an appealing shade of green and gentle leafy aroma. It’s not a coincidence that, even though dong can grow anywhere, many bánh chưng makers still seek out Tràng Cat leaves.

Tràng Cát’s leaves are nationally famous for their broadness, waxy surfaces, and bright colors

Leaves are harvested year-round in the village, but the volume only really balloons when Tết nears. From the 10th to 25th day of the last lunar month, the entire village enters crunch mode for the busiest time of the year. Harvesters meander in between tall dong shoots to pick the best leaves. Then, they carefully slice off right above the node to prevent tearing or breaking the stalk, while ensuring that the plant could bud out new leaves after Tết.

Dong leaves are sliced off carefully.

Tall dong plants grow close to one another.

During peak periods, each household could gather up to 10,000 leaves a day. Once cut off, they are washed and tied into bundles of 100, before being separated into tiers depending on purposes. Smaller leaves are reserved for bánh tét while medium-sized ones are for bánh chưng wrapped using molds. Only the biggest, prettiest leaves are used for traditional hand-wrapped bánh chưng. Each bundle could fetch VND60,000–250,000 depending on the tier.

Arranging leaves after harvest.

To dong farmers like Phạm Thị Tuyết, growing this leaf is both more familiar and less strenuous than rice or other cash crops. Dong can be harvested all year, not just for Tết, yielding 3–4 batches. The plant is also quite low-maintenance: just water regularly and the leaves would pop out again. Her working schedule during Tết seasons often starts at 7am and ends at 5pm with around three hours of lunch break. “Before Tết, every person in the family must work together to cut and pack the leaves,” Tuyết explains.

Tâm, a local, washes the leaves.

The leaves are washed before being packed.

“Dong is very easy-going and accommodating. They’ll sprout new leaves when one is cut, so we can do this year round. A few previous storms knocked them down, but they still lived and gave us new leaves,” Tâm, a leaf harvester, shares.

Harvested leaves are grouped by size and appearance.

Tràng Cát’s leaves are shipped to every corner of the country.

When the leaves are gathered, farmers focus on sorting and packing: one person cuts, one person counts, one person washes, and one person categorizes. I left the village, but couldn’t stop thinking about the incredible vigor of the dong plant — it won’t stop growing, no matter how many times its leaves were cut off.

On the Cusp of a Modern New Year, Reflections on a Simpler Tết Past

2026-02-13T10:00:00+07:00

Every year, as the pages from my block calendar peel off, bringing me towards another Vietnamese New Year, my mind once again fills with nostalgia about an old Tết. Tết in my memory begins with my childhood in a small house nestled under a coconut grove on the outskirts of Bạc Liêu in the Mekong Delta. Those were days of hardship, yet my parents worked hard so that Tết could bloom magnificently for all of us.

Born into the Year of the Buffalo (1973), I grew up during a time when poverty was common among Vietnamese people. Those who survived the war struggled to make ends meet. Everyone I knew didn’t have much to eat all year round, and children had to do all types of odd jobs to help put food on the table. Like all my friends, for the entire year I looked forward to Tết because it was the only time when we could eat good food and receive a new set of clothes, and even some lucky money.

A time to shed old leaves and apply new paint

In my memory, Tết preparations started months before the lunar year’s end. In September, my father tended our pond to make sure that our fish would be ready for Tết. We planted chilies, onions, cabbages and leafy vegetables, which my mother and I would bring to the market to sell in order to buy the many necessities for our celebrations: pork, dried green peas, sticky rice, dried shrimp, fruit, firecrackers, and offerings for the ancestors’ altar. If we were lucky, there would be enough money left for my parents to buy each of us — their three children — a new set of clothing.

A few weeks before Tết came, my father studied the weather patterns, talked to his friends and decided on the day to pluck the leaves of our apricot tree, mai. I watched in amazement as the barren tree started to sprout countless green buds which grew fuller and fuller as Tết drew nearer. My father monitored the watering and fertilizing of his tree every day to ensure they bloomed at the exact right time. As was true of the peach flowers we used to have in the north, if our mai blossoms bloomed brilliantly during the first day of Tết, our family would be blessed for that entire new year.

Regardless of how poor we were, Tết was the time to look and feel good, so every year, about two weeks before it arrived, we scrubbed and painted our house. My brothers and I moved our wooden and bamboo furniture out to the front yard and gave it a good wash, splashing water at each other while we worked. We then crawled into our most tattered clothes and covered our walls with a white paint we mixed ourselves using limestone powder and water. We laughed and joked while we worked, feeling happy as the gleaming white spread under our hands.

A family in Sa Đéc in the Mekong Delta with rows of apricot trees that are stripped off old leaves. Photo by Andy Ip.

After the house was scrubbed and cleaned, I spent hours helping my mother prepare a special pickled dish using onions and scallions we bought at the market. They had to be fresh, still attached to their leaves and roots. More importantly, they had to be bite-size. Bringing them home, we washed any dirt and mud away, then soaked them overnight in water diluted with ash I collected from our cooking stove (we cooked mostly with rice straw or tree branches during those days). The ashy water helped tame the onions and scallions so that the next morning they no longer made my eyes weep when I peeled off their outer layers to reveal their glistening whiteness. Sitting side-by-side with my mother in our front yard, I talked to her about our plans for the New Year, about the food we would cook, and whom my parents had chosen to be the first person to step into our house on the first day of Tết.

Many hours of squatting on low stools to prepare our pickled dish always made our backs sore, but as we spread the peeled onions and scallions out on thin tin trays to dry them in the sun, we felt happy to watch the white alliums grin back at us. They looked like flowers that had sprung up from the earth, like the purest type of beauty. While waiting for them to dry, I gathered small twigs to start a fire in our kitchen while my mother measured and mixed vinegar, sugar and salt into a pot.

Once it cooled, we poured the pickling liquid over our onions and scallions, which we had arranged artistically into glass jars. From time to time, I would help my mother carry these jars out to the sun, to make sure that our pickled onions and scallions would "ripen" in time for Tết. They always made the perfect side dish, to be savored with dried shrimp, sticky rice cakes, and boiled or stewed meat; their fragrant sour-sweetness melting in our mouths.

The week before Tết was the busiest, but also the happiest. One of the most exciting events was to drain our pond to harvest our fish. We had no motorized pump back then, only a bamboo bucket we connected to two strong ropes and took turns swinging to get the water out of the pond. Our hands would grow tired and hours passed before we saw fish jumping up and down, trying to escape the increasingly shallow water. Our pond was not large, but large enough to reveal different secrets each year. Besides the tilapia fish my father farmed, we also often found mullet, catfish and perch.

For quite a few years, I was not allowed to go into the drained pond to catch fish with my two elder brothers. Standing on the pond’s bank, I burned with jealousy as I watched my brothers jump around in the mud; their faces blackened, their teeth gleaming in the sunlight as they cheered and laughed. Each time a fish was captured they would scream with excitement, lift it high into the air while it wiggled madly, and then throw it on the floor.

My job was to scoop the jumping fish into a bamboo basket and release it into a large tin bucket filled with water. Sensing that I was unhappy, my parents would tell me that catching fish with your bare hands was not a task for a small girl like me. Of course, they were right. My brothers’ hands were often injured. One year, a catfish pierced its sharp thorn into my brother’s finger. He ran into the house and when I found him half an hour later, he was under his bed, clutching his hand to his chest, crying like a baby. I laughed at him so hard, but a few months later, I too was stung by a catfish’s thorn. The pain pierced into my bones, so hot, deep and searing, that I could not help but crawl under our bed and bawl like a newborn as well.

Candied coconut by any other name

Tết would not be fully ready without mứt dừa, a type of candied coconut ribbon. As someone with "monkey genes" who could climb well, I was tasked with the responsibility of picking several fresh coconuts from our trees. Our small garden was filled with fruit trees, and my favorite were the coconut trees that spread their protective arms over our house, singing us lullabies by rustling their green leaves against our tin roof. These coconut trees bore plenty of fruit all year round. I quickly got up to the top of a tree, leaned my body against the biggest leaf and selected the coconuts which gleamed with several golden stripes on their dark green skin. The flesh of these coconuts would be perfect: not too thin and not too crunchy. Hanging on to the tree with one hand, my other hand would swing a sharp knife to chop the chosen coconuts from their stems. They made happy thumping noise as they kissed the ground.

Just like catching fish for Tết, preparing candied coconut ribbons was a joyous family event. My father and brothers chopped and then peeled away the thick outer layers of the coconuts. We then drilled holes through the hard shells, tilting the fragrant juice into a large bowl. Later, my mother would reward each of us with a glass of delicious coconut water. The rest we would be put aside to make thịt kho trứng — pork and eggs stewed in coconut juice — an essential Tết dish that's common in the Mekong Delta.

Braised pork and bittergourd soup are two popular Tết dishes. Illustration by KAA Illustration via Behance.

Making candied coconut ribbons was fun, but it was also a test of our skills and patience. After separating the white coconut flesh from its hard shell, we peeled the brown, inner-skin away, then shaved the coconut flesh into thin, long ribbons that we dipped into hot water. After draining them, we mixed them with white sugar. Our neighbors often added food coloring to make red, pink and even green coconut ribbons, but we preferred ours to be white and natural.

After a few hours, when the sugar had completely dissolved into the ribbons, I would make a low fire in the kitchen for my mother to cook the coconut ribbons in a large frying pan. To help the sugar crystallize, she occasionally stirred the ribbons with a long pair of chopsticks, giving them an equal amount of heat while not breaking them. My job was to keep the fire very low, so as not to burn my favorite Tết dish. It was the most delicious job as I only needed to put out my tongue to taste the sweetness of Tết in the air. About an hour later, we would have a basket full of long, curly coconut ribbons, crystallized in their fragrance.

The craft behind bánh chưng

As the mai tree’s golden flowers started to bloom, a breeze would sweep across nearby rice fields and waft to my nose, whispering that Tết was about to knock on our door. With this aroma in the air, we made traditional sticky rice cakes, or bánh chưng. Bánh chưng is a must-have for northern Vietnamese during Tết. My parents, who had uprooted themselves from the north and planted themselves into the soil of southern Vietnam during the late 1970s, embraced their northern heritage by making bánh chưng every year while our southern neighbors prepared bánh tết.

Both of these sticky rice cakes use the same ingredients, including sticky rice, dried green peas and pork. However, bánh chưng is wrapped with lá dong (phrynium leaves), which grow abundantly in the north, while bánh tết is wrapped with lá chuối (banana leaves) which you can find anywhere in the south. In addition, bánh chưng is square and thick, while bánh tết is long and round. Lastly, while bánh tết can have a “sweet” version (made with sweetened bananas), bánh chưng only has a savory version that includes pork and green peas.

The night before the important day of making our bánh chưng, I helped my mother soak dried green peas overnight to remove their skin. We also soaked sticky rice and separated good grains from the brown and yellowish ones. My brothers squatted in the yard as they helped my father split bamboo stalks into thin, flat strings. These strings would be used to tie the leaves around our cakes. My mother explained that bánh chưng needed to be boiled for hours, so plastic or nylon strings would not be healthy.

Once these tasks were complete, my father would ask me to help him cut down lá dong leaves from our garden. When we moved south, he searched all over for dong plants, which were hard to find and harder to grow in the tropical climate. With these plants growing in our garden, we felt we had brought with us a part of our ancestors’ village. We cut the precious leaves from their stems, piled them up gently, and brought them to our yard to wash away any dirt and insects. We took care so that no leaf was torn. Softening them under the sun or over hot coal, we set them aside.

On a large working area, my mother spread out a clean, large straw mat. Onto the center of the mat we placed the dong leaves, bamboo strings, bowls of the drained sticky rice, dried green peas and marinated pork. As we had no fridge, my mother had to wake up at five that morning to go to the local market to buy the best pork available. It needed to be fresh, with a precise balance of lean meat and fat. Bringing it home, my mother washed and cut the pork into large pieces, then marinated it with freshly ground pepper, fish sauce and salt.

One of the extraordinary things about my father is that except for boiled or fried eggs, he can’t cook, yet is a master at making bánh chưng. While my mother, brothers and I struggled to form our bánh chưng into square shapes, using wooden molds to guide us, all my father needed was his bare hands.

He started by arranging several lá dong leaves on to the mat and placing a layer of sticky rice, green peas and marinated pork on top, which he then covered with another layer of green peas and sticky rice. Covering his artwork with several more lá dong leaves, he folded the four sides, tugging the leaves into each other so that they made a perfect square. He then tied the square cake with the bamboo strings he had made with my brothers.

Tranh Khúc Village in Hanoi is known for their special bánh chưng.

My father explained that the strings had to give space for the rice and dried green peas to expand when they cooked. Yet they had to be tight enough for the rice not to spill out. He said that in northern Vietnam, where the weather was cold around Tết and families didn’t have refrigerators, bánh chưng would be released immediately into deep wells after they were cooked. Resins from the lá dong leaves, once meeting the cold water, would form a thick protective layer over the cakes. The wells would act as refrigerators, keeping the cakes fresh for weeks.

My father was so famous for his bánh chưng-making skills that many of our relatives and friends often asked us to make bánh chưng for them. While there was a lot of work involved, we did not mind since it would be more economical to make and boil over 30 bánh chưng at one time, sufficient for seven families and for the entire duration of Tết.

After we were done with wrapping the bánh chưng, my mother took out a gigantic pot that she had borrowed from our rich neighbor. The pot was large and expensive, thus in our whole neighborhood, there was only one family who could afford it. Families took turns borrowing the pot to boil their bánh chưng and bánh tết. The owner was happy to lend it because although we were financially poor, we were rich with generosity towards each other.

For the boiling of bánh chưng, my brothers dug a hole in a corner of our garden and my father started a fire with the biggest logs he could find. It takes up to 10 hours for the bánh chưng to cook, and therefore, this was the only time all year that my brothers and I were allowed to stay up all night to look after the fire. We huddled against each other in the dark, telling scary ghost stories that made us giggle and huddle even closer to each other. In the early morning, we scooped out the small bánh chưng, which we wrapped ourselves, and had them for breakfast. They tasted delicious, even though they looked shameful compared to my father’s perfectly square cakes.

The last night of the year

My father knew a lot about bánh chưng because he is the eldest son of my grandparents. He also knows a lot about the rituals of worshiping ancestors because Vietnamese ancestors are believed to "follow" the eldest son from north to south. On the last day of the old year, my father carefully cleaned the family altar and arranged a special display, which included an incense bowl, a pair of bánh chưng, fresh flowers, a bottle of homemade rice liquor, and fruits of many colors. My mother and I cooked special Tết dishes, such as boiled chicken, glass noodle soup, steamed fish, stewed pork and eggs, fried vegetables, and orange gấc sticky rice.

We offered our food to our ancestors around 5pm on the family altar, and after allowing our ancestors to "eat" this sumptuous meal for several hours, we gathered and enjoyed the best food of the year. The cutting of my father’s bánh chưng was a ceremony by itself; after untying the bamboo strings and peeling away the outer leaves, we arranged the strings across the cake’s green surface. Turning the cake upside down, we held the two ends of each string, pulling them towards each other, thus cutting the bánh chưng into square or triangle pieces. The taste of my father’s bánh chưng still remains in my mouth today; fragrant and savory. It tasted perfect, together with the pickled onions and scallions which my mother and I had prepared.

After cleaning up, I would clutch my mother’s hand as we walked to a nearby pagoda. Holding burning incense in front of my chest, my eyes closed, I would pray to Buddha to bless me with lots of lucky money that year. As I was never given any pocket money during the rest of the year, Tết was my only chance to gather savings, which I kept in a clay pig on my bookshelf. If I had enough lucky money, I would be able to buy a new book.

Returning home from the pagoda, I would see that my brothers had hung our firecrackers on our front door, anxiously waiting for the time to set them on fire. I wish I had joined them then, because firecrackers would be banned a few years later, hence the disappearance of this long and special tradition. But at that time, I helped my mother as she hurried to set up a tray of offerings, laden with fruit, flowers, liquor and incense. I carried the tray with her to our front yard and lit the incense. Watching how long my mother prayed to heaven, I sensed how important this ceremony was to her and to our family. I felt that all the gods were coming to join us, and my ancestors were also present.

Chúc mừng năm mới

Finally, the New Year approached with the faint sounds of firecrackers from far away, then moving closer and louder towards us. My two brothers would fight for the right to ignite the firecrackers, while I stood, frozen in fear, my hands over my ears.

We woke up very early the next morning, with yellow mai flowers brightening our living room. Smoldering incense filled my senses, and my happiness soared. Firecracker remnants rested like a blanket of pink and red on our front yard. We were not allowed to sweep anything away during the entire first day of the New Year, so as not to chase our luck away. I admired this red and pink carpet all day as it was twirled up by a dancing wind or rested peacefully under the gold, yellow and white chrysanthemum and mai flowers.

I put on my new set of clothes for Tết that I had wanted all year long, while my brothers burned left-over firecrackers in our front yard. When my parents were ready, they called us into the house, handing each of us a red envelope containing our lucky money. We would bow our heads, wishing them health, luck, success and happiness, before busting out of the house, waving the red envelopes on our hands.

But we were not allowed to go into any neighbor’s home unless we were specially invited. One's luck for the whole year depended on the fortune and character of the first person to enter one's home on the first day of the New Year. My father often chose a senior neighbor whose children were successful and who had a gentle and cheerful personality. The neighbor would often come before 7am on the first day of Tết, bringing my parents lots of good wishes and a red envelope for me, since I was the youngest member of the family.

During Tết, families in Saigon gather at flower markets to pose for photos, buy new plants for their home, or just simply to soak in the festive ambiance.

Around noon our house would be filled with greetings from relatives and neighbors. Everyone visited the house of everyone else in the neighborhood. We served our visitors green tea and candied coconut ribbons. Our family members took turns visiting the houses of relatives and friends, making sure that someone was always home to greet and take care of unexpected visitors. Snacks and food were served around the clock.

All the food my mother and I had spent many hours preparing came in handy; even though we were discouraged by traditions from cooking during the first day of the New Year, we could always serve our guests a good meal with our bánh chưng, stewed pork in coconut, as well as pickled onions and scallions. When the cooking resumed on the second or third day of Tết, we would make sweet and sour soup with our fresh fish, and serve our guests the ripest vegetables from our garden. From our home flowed an endless river of chatter and laughter, while I would occasionally sneak into my parents’ bedroom to count how much lucky money I had received.

Thinking back, I realize that my parents were very strict in raising me and hardly ever showed their emotions during our daily lives. It was only during Tết that I saw their tender sides. Tết also allowed me to be a bit naughty and not be scolded or punished, and it allowed me the rare privilege of accompanying my parents whenever they visited their friends.

Many Tếts have gone by, though my memories from one particular Tết remain vivid. My mother had taken me to visit one of her good friends who lived on the other side of the rice fields from us. I remember the vast rice fields spreading their green arms out towards the horizon as we walked. The sun was setting, tilting light onto my mother’s long, black hair. Flocks of white cranes rose up, dotting the blue sky with their flapping wings. We walked among the singing of rice plants and the perfume of a spring that embraced us from all directions. I wished then that I could go on like that forever and ever beside my mother.

These days most Vietnamese families, including my own, no longer celebrate Tết the traditional ways due to all the demands of modern life. Still, regardless of how busy we are, we set aside time to enjoy Tết with our loved ones. Families are united for Tết, and friends who may not see each other for the rest of the year will meet and enjoy a meal together. Perhaps Tết is important for all Vietnamese because it reminds us of how happiness can derive from our cultural heritage, and how wonderful it is to stop running after our material desires, at least for a few days, and enjoy what we already have.

This article was originally published in 2020.

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is the internationally best-selling author of The Mountains Sing and Dust Child. She has received many literary awards in Việt Nam and internationally, including the Lannan Literary Awards Fellowship for a work of exceptional quality and for its contribution to peace and reconciliation. A version of this article was originally published in Vietnam Heritage.

A Damaged Masterpiece Reveals How Much We Take Our Cultural Heritage for Granted

2026-02-12T11:00:00+07:00

A once-damaged national treasure remains on view as if nothing had happened, while other works are displayed with little context — what does this tell us about how art museums preserve Vietnam's cultural heritage and shape our art history narratives today?

A few weeks before the Tết holiday, the Hồ Chí Minh City Fine Arts Museum feels much more lively than usual, as it does every year. From the entrance and spiral staircases of the almost 100-year-old heritage building, young local visitors pose in áo dài for new year photoshoots, while foreign visitors pose in nearly every corner. Only a few pause to look closely at the artworks scattered across different rooms of the main building, which house a collection of modern artworks by mostly southern artists before and after 1975.

Washing a lacquer masterpiece with dish soap

Passing the central hall with sculpture on the second floor, visitors turn left into a dim corridor that leads to one of the museum’s national treasures: the renowned 1989 lacquer masterpiece ‘Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc’ (Central, Southern and Northern Spring Gardens) attached on a wall in its own separate air-conditioned room dedicated to maestro painter Nguyễn Gia Trí (1908–1993).

Nguyễn Gia Trí (1908–1993). Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc (Central, Southern and Northern Spring Gardens), 1989. Lacquer on board. 200 x 540 cm. Collection of Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum.

Opposite to the masterpiece, the late painter’s tools and materials are displayed behind glass, alongside some pencil and watercolor sketches. Yet, no context is provided to explain the significance of the materials and techniques of this masterpiece. In the painting itself, twenty women dressed in their own traditional outfits and áo dài across the country’s three regions gather to celebrate the spring festival at a temple, surrounded by nature and a lively atmosphere of peaceful time. Signature red lacquer dominates the composition; eggshell inlay and gilded gold are integral to the whole painting’s surface. Nguyễn Gia Trí spent nearly 20 years completing the work with the assistance of his students: from 1969 when the country was still in the midst of war, to 1989, during the country’s transition through the Đổi Mới (Reformation) period.

Nguyễn Gia Trí’s personal items and painting tools at Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum.

The first impression from most visitors entering the room was amazement. Someone paused and asked: “Nguyễn Gia Trí… you mean, the old D2 street?” before proceeding to pose for photos from different angles. Other visitors, especially foreigners, walked back and forth in front of the work, squinting at the wall text, only to find a few lines of artwork description and the artist’s biography. Despite initial admiration, some began to express slight confusion while sensing that something was off about the national treasure. In certain areas, layers of black lacquer appeared worn, the gilded gold darkened or worn out, and the eggshell inlay looked fragmented, disrupting the fluidity of the details. Importantly, despite the dominant lively red tones, some colors in the details had undeniably faded.

“This painting must have been damaged once before. Look at this layer of paint over there. It’s already worn out, and the colors are so dark and pale now,” a Vietnamese visitor said to his group of friends after carefully viewing the artwork. The masterpiece remains on the wall, celebrating spring as prayer for the country to endure war and move towards reunification. Yet, a sense of quiet conflicted feeling emerges. Something feels off, and no one seems to know, or remember, the damage that had changed the work permanently.

Details of Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc (Central, Southern and Northern Spring Gardens) at Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum.

‘Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc’ made major news headlines in early 2019, after it was found to have suffered major damage after being taken off for cleaning in December 2018. It was later revealed that the damage had been treated with sandpaper, bột chu (a polishing powder) and even… dish soap — perhaps the last material that one would expect in artwork conservation. The incident sparked outrage among the art community and authorities, with many online articles calling out the carelessness and lack of accountability, and an urgent demand for the national treasure to be repaired with special care.

According to painter Nguyễn Xuân Việt, one of Nguyễn Gia Trí’s few students who understands the master painter’s techniques well, the reinforcement work could only restore about 80% of the painting. The damage done to the materials on the surface, however, cannot fully be reversed. In other words, while the painting survives materially, the original spirit has been lost. Nearly seven years later, now in 2026, the partially repaired work has returned to public view, as if nothing had happened. Visitors are left with no choice but to accept this reality of an artwork that has once been damaged, with little acknowledgement of what was lost, with minimal context beyond the familiar narratives of national pride and historical symbolism.

Visitors pose with artworks.

Beyond one damaged painting

Leaving the room for the artwork and heading back through the corridor, one would notice the contrast is quite intriguing: while 20 female figures celebrate spring within the ‘Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc’ masterpiece, young visitors rush to take their pre-Tết photoshoot with camera equipment, tripods, and even reflector boards filling the balconies and spiral staircases. Some film TikTok videos along the balconies, some even fall asleep on the benches, while foreign visitors navigate through the crowd, trying to understand the paintings with little context.

Perhaps, the national treasure lost its soul due to the damage caused by a lack of accountability, just as the museum’s function also seems to be fading. Much of the collection has become a secondary background to most visitors, shaped by an incohesive narrative and absence of context that discourages deeper engagements, or even minimal attention, towards the artworks and their historical significance. While it is rather unfortunate that most guests only connect with the venue on a surface level, one could attribute this visitor behavior both to individual apathy towards the arts and the current conditions of a national-level institution, where conservation has been treated lightly, and artworks are bound to a one-sided narrative without sufficient explanation.

The museum interior and Tết photoshoots.

This raised further questions about the state of other artworks in the museum: limited government funding for acquisition, conservation and daily operations; the high temperatures and humidity of Vietnam's climate; and architectural and spatial challenges. This does not take into account the fact that the plot where the museum sits is at risk of sinking due to the construction of a high-rise next door.

At this moment, the concern is no longer solely about why and how an artwork was damaged. It projects a bigger picture about the current state of cultural heritage preservation in Vietnam, as well as the key players' struggle to foster awareness and create meaningful narratives that accurately represent Vietnam’s art history and cultural heritage in Saigon, as it’s difficult to move beyond the nostalgic “time capsule” of the turbulent past amidst changing times. This feels especially urgent in the age of cultural tourism and social media, when the demand for art consumption among the younger generations is increasing, alongside the growing number of tourists visiting the country.

The looming construction project next door once caused the collapse of the museum's northern gate due to subsidence.

A state-owned art museum serves the role of researching, preserving, and presenting artworks that reflect a nation’s cultural heritage and collective memory, reflecting the development of techniques, aesthetics, and art education — more than just holding what remains and survives from the past. In post-colonial and independent Vietnam, museums have played a central role in nation-building narrative, through a constructed national (art) history that features revolutionary artists. Still, the decisions that shape these narratives are not within the public’s control, but with institutions and authorities. What remains in our control, however, is how we acknowledge and respond to the limitations in how our culture and history art is treated and presented, how we engage critically with art history, and continue shaping our own narratives in the present and future, beyond the museum walls and across different platforms.

Supporting our local art museum does not simply mean purchasing a one-day ticket to briefly view the works, then move on with photo ops. It also means showing up with awareness: asking why our institutions and art ecosystem still remain underdeveloped, whether we are truly comfortable with how the narratives are framed, and how we appreciate our history and the masterpieces left behind by those before us. The costly lesson of a damaged national treasure, perhaps one among others yet unnoticed, reveals structural issues that remain unresolved. Still, the growing interest in traditions, art, and culture suggests that there is still hope for public engagement and discourse.

Hidden within the wall text in front of ‘Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc,’ a line from Nguyễn Gia Trí in 1979 reads: “Sáng tác ví như một bát nước, ta đổ tràn đầy, rồi những gì còn lại, ta giữ và phát triển / Painting and creating can be compared with the brim-full bowl of water, one retains all that remains and develops it.”

What remains after the damage and partial restoration is not the physical artwork itself, but the responsibility of those involved, and how we remember, question, and preserve what is left.

Recognized as a national treasure in 2013, ‘Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc’ is now on view in the permanent collection of Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum. More information about the masterpiece and museum admission can be found on this website.

In 'Đêm Giao Thừa' EP, a Đàn Tranh Artist Offers Novel Twists on Nostalgic Tết Sounds

2026-02-10T11:00:00+07:00

Indie đàn tranh artist Brian Bùi has just released Đêm Giao Thừa, an EP containing energetic covers of three classic Tết songs and an original track that pays homage to styles from the 1960s and 1970s.

Layering elements of bolero, psychedelic cumbia, samba rock, and cha-cha-chá, the 13-minute extended play blends nostalgic sounds and rhythms with fresh perspective to create a new feeling for the season. “While the EP draws from the past, I also experimented with guitar effects on the đàn tranh and introduced South American genres that hadn’t yet been popularized in Vietnam during that era. Đêm Giao Thừa celebrates the start of a new year, as well as a new direction for my music that represents who I am in this moment,” he explained on the project's page.

Video via Brian Bùi's YouTube.

Brian switched from the violin to the đàn tranh as part of his exploration of traditional music, a way to connect with his cultural heritage. He studied the đàn tranh with Vân-Ánh “Vanessa” Võ while pursuing a degree in music composition at the University of the Pacific and later with NSƯT Nguyễn Thị Hải Phượng as part of the Master of Arts degree he is currently pursuing at Berklee Online.

Photo by Chiron Dương.

Đêm Giao Thừa is is currently available on all major streaming apps, and he is touring in support of it in the United States through March.

This Tết, Learn to Wrap Bánh Chưng in One of Hanoi's Oldest Villages

2026-02-09T08:00:00+07:00

Much like the peach blossom or the lucky money envelope, bánh chưng is a staple part of Tết.

It is a Vietnamese tradition for families to wrap and cook their own bánh chưng, a tradition that I have never experienced. I have no idea how to make a bánh chưng, and so this year, I want to change that.

My wife hails from làng Hồ Khẩu, one of Hanoi's oldest villages. Situated where the Tô Lịch River once met Hồ Tây, the village used to be famous for its paper. Now, the river is covered and the water is polluted, so the paper craft is lost. Lucky for me, the art of bánh chưng still survives here.

Deep in the twisting alleys of the village, I come to the house of Đinh Thị Hòa. Her family has been making bánh chưng for almost two decades now, and she was happy to have me for a lesson.

Hòa just passed her middle age, yet her spirit is as young and jovial as anyone. Every other sentence of hers is accompanied by laughter. She learned how to make bánh chưng from her parents, who used to tell her: “If you don't make it, then you won't have anything to eat.”

Now she supplies bánh chưng for the village. “I do it to serve the community,” she laughs. “Now every house is so cramped, nobody has the space to do it. I see people's need and I try to help them.” A bánh chưng operation can take a lot of space. And not only does Hòa's house has a yard, hers is big enough for two fruit trees, one rose apple and one lêkima.

Under the lêkima's shade, Hòa arranges various buckets and basins. A huge water tank stands nearby, filling two concrete barrels that were once personal bomb shelters. Here is the first workstation I see from the gate: a wet kitchen where all bánh chưng's components are prepared before wrapping.

A typical bánh chưng is made up of five components: dong leaf, rice, mung bean, pork, and bamboo strings; each component is meticulously prepared. The leaves have to be soaked for three days then scrubbed clean to prevent mold. The rice and beans are also soaked and washed with multiple waters. Hòa's motto is: “We only sell things we would eat at home.”

Once the rice is cleaned, it is mixed with salt to add flavor. Mung beans are steamed then set before a fan to cool. “The beans must be cooled before wrapping,” Hòa explains, “otherwise they will sour everything.”

The beans fresh out of the steam pot are darker (left) than the cooled ones (right).

The wrapping station is inside the house, where Hoàng Thanh Thái, Hòa's sister-in-law, is in charge. Thái has also been making bánh chưng since she was a kid, she is so adroit that each bánh only takes a few moments to be wrapped. I have to ask her to slow down so I can take a picture of each step of the process.

First she lays down two leaves as the outer layer, on top of which goes a square mold. Then she lines the sides and the bottom of the square with leaves, the greener side facing inward. Then she puts in one bowl of rice as the first layer, next is a scoop of beans, then a piece of pork, another scoop of beans to cover the meat, and one more bowl of rice on top. Afterward she folds the inner leaves to a tight square, then the outer layer is wrapped and tied with the bamboo strings.

Afterward, fold the inner leaves to a tight square, then wrap the outer layer and tie it with bamboo strings.

Thái is gracious to let me try. I'm surprised to learn how much force it takes to wrap everything tightly, I also fumble with the strings and have to ask Thái for help. She ties the knots with one hand.

I ask Thái what is the secret to a good bánh chưng. “Oh that's hard,” she laughs. “I think there's no secret. We just choose good rice, good beans, and good meat.” For rice, her family uses the famous nếp cái hoa vàng cultivar. The beans must be crumbly after steaming, and the ideal pork for bánh chưng comes from the pig's belly, which has both lean and fatty parts.

The leaves are important, too. Thái's family uses leaves from dong, a plant similar to banana but is found mostly in the forest. The leaves must be of the right age, not too old and not too young, in order to give the bánh chưng its signature color. Her family is making 400 bánh chưng this year, which need 2,000 leaves.

“Every other year I make a lot more, but my husband just passed away this year so I make fewer now,” Thái shares. Her husband, Hòa's little brother, was in charge of the third station — boiling — and without him the family can't handle the usual 800–1000 orders.

The family boils bánh chưng with firewood, the good old-fashioned way to make bánh chưng dền, which means “supple and delicious.” Under the rose apple tree, Thái's son lays down some bricks for a makeshift fire pit, then he puts a huge pot on top. The pot can hold 60–70 bánh chưng at a time. After stacking the bánh, he fills it with water then his aunt, Hòa, lights the fire.

There are three phases to the boiling process. First, the fire must be roaring to bring the pot to a boil. Then, a stable and constant flame is needed for the pot to simmer for 12 hours. Finally, toward the 10^th or 11^th hour, the fire is reduced to a smolder.

While the fire crackles merrily, I ask Hòa about Thắng, her little brother. Before, each person in the family was in charge of a part of the process: Hòa prepared the ingredients, Thái wrapped, and Thắng boiled. But this year, Thắng had a stroke and spent two weeks in the hospital before he was gone. “It's very sad,” Hòa says, her cheerfulness dampens. “This year we keep making bánh chưng for some comfort, otherwise it's just too sad.”

Thái is determined to keep the tradition, too. “I will do this for as long as I can,” she says, “if it's only me then I'd only make one pot.” To fulfill the orders, this year, her family will need to boil seven pots, it is 4pm when the first one begins. I leave the house and return at 6am the following morning to see the final part of the process.

After 12 hours of simmering, the bánh absorbed a lot of water. When they are taken out, they must be cleaned then pressed to force the excess water out. Thái arranges the bánh chưng on a table then sets three water jugs on top; they would remain like that for another six hours before delivery. Thái leaves the house to buy more meat for the next batch, another pot is already on the fire.

The family has only three days to finish all the orders before the new year; everybody is catching a moment of rest before continuing this marathon. The sky is still dark, all is quiet, the sweet aroma that is distinctive of bánh chưng fills the air. As I sit there watching the fire, a thought — a feeling — swirls in me: Tết is here.

This article was originally published on Urbanist Hanoi in 2022.

A Brief History of Ngựa, a Non-Native Animal Vietnam Has Made Its Own

2026-02-08T15:00:00+07:00

Are horses a Vietnamese animal?

In terms of whether horses are part of Vietnamese culture, just look around. While examples might not tumble to the forefront of your mind, once you start looking for them, you’ll notice horses everywhere.

Thánh Gióng Statue at Ngã Sáu Sài Gòn. Photo by Shing Chan.

Trần Nguyên Hãn Statue. Photo via SGCP.

Thánh Gióng, the legendary boy who vanquished invading Chinese troops, did so atop a metal horse. He is honored along with his majestic steed by a statue at Phù Đổng Roundabout. Similarly, 15^th-century General Trần Nguyên Hãn, was depicted on horseback in Quách Thị Trang Square. The statue was removed when the public space was dismantled for the metro construction, though there have been plans to reinstall a new version, which will again place a horse front and center in the city.

‘Ethereal Horse,’ lithograph, Lebedang. Image via Mutual Art.

Horses are not just for public display, as many people, or their grandparents at least, have paintings of a herd of horses triumphantly running across a river hanging above their living room couches. Meanwhile, a trip to any gallery or museum reveals that horses provide inspiration to visual artists across styles and time periods, as underscored by “The Horse in Visual Art,” an exhibition with more than 60 pieces that opened this year at the Hanoi Fine Arts Museum. Artists like Lebedang are said to be drawn to them because of the animals' innate desire for freedom as well as their ability to endure arduous labor alongside humans. The most circulated artwork to feature them in Vietnam was surely on the back of now-defunct currency.

Image via Smithwick Numismatics.

You’ll also discover horses in humble domestic spaces. If you snoop around bathroom medicine cabinets, you might notice them on a variety of men’s health and virility products owing to horses’ perceived strength and stamina. And, while no major Vietnamese fashion brand or corporation uses them as a logo, the Year of the Horse has ushered in a plethora of brands to use them in advertisements, promotions, packagings and promotions.

Products for energy and virility utilizing horse imagery. Photos via Central Pharmacy and Lazada.

Horses have made their linguistic mark here as well, particularly in idioms such as “cưỡi ngựa xem hoa,” (riding a horse to admire flowers); “một con ngựa đau, cả tàu bỏ cỏ” (one sick horse, the whole stable refuses grass), and "đường dài mới biết ngựa hay” (only a long journey reveals how strong the horse really is). Horses are also popular in songs, be they nostalgic movie soundtrack hits or ballads like ‘Lý Ngựa Ô,’ that a miền Tây uncle might pick out for karaoke.

A horse employed in the 1960s. Photo by Thomas W. Johnson.

A horse-drawn carriage outside Bến Thành Market in 1938. Photo by Eli Lotar.

Even though you can easily spot depictions of and references to horses in your daily life, it's rare to encounter the living animal here. This wasn’t always the case. Not too long ago, horses were an important part of the economy. In colonial times they were used as pack animals and for transportation. Even after the advent of motorized vehicles, they were a practical and more affordable means of delivering materials and people.

A horse pulling an advertisement for a movie showing. Photo via 2Saigon.

If you spend any time in photo archives, you’ll see horses pulling carts laden with construction goods, city dwellers, and even roaming through the city to advertise products and theatre performances. And while their days of pulling carts in Saigon have long since passed, they continue to do so in parts of the Mekong Delta, especially within Khmer communities. While certainly in their last days as a functional replacement for trucks or motorbikes, there are hopes that horse carriages can serve tourism purposes. The lullaby-esque clop-clop-clop of horses pulling carriages with colorful curtains in the countryside can provide a romantic nostalgia to citydwellers.

Horses used in An Giang in 2020. Photos via Tuổi Trẻ.

In addition to practical cogs in the urban machine, horses have been sources of entertainment in Vietnam as well. Particularly, District 11’s Phú Thọ Horse Racing Ground was a popular place for gambling and high society fraternizing since its construction by the French in 1923. Still recognizable on maps after its 2011 shuttering, the race track was amongst the largest in Southeast Asia. While horse racing may be gone, a niche community of equestrians around the country keeps and rides horses, often in accordance with the international prestige accompanying the expensive hobby.

Phú Thọ Horse Racing Ground between 1964 and 1969. Photos via Flickr user manhhai.

Taking all of that into account, I think we can indeed consider horses to be part of Vietnamese culture. But are they from Vietnam? Short answer: no. All domestic horses are believed to descend from populations in the western Eurasian steppe in modern-day Russia 4,000 years ago. Breeds changed and adapted as they spread across the world, including those used in military campaigns by people from Mongolia and Southern China. Researchers believe that is how horses first entered Vietnam about 800 years ago, resulting in the development of the ngựa Bắc Hà breed found in Northern Vietnam today. This small squat variety is well-adapted to rugged terrain and agrarian labor. Easily recognizable by their diminutive stature, they recently caused a stir online when used by police in parades.

Vietnamese police atop Bắc Hà horses in 2020. Photo via Chào Hanoi.

For hundreds of years, these horses were integrated into Vietnam’s militaries. During the Lê Dynasty, for example, an emperor in southern Hanoi ordered all the children of mandarins and nobelmen be skilled at horse-mounted archery, with cavalry proving critical for battles against Song China, Champa, and Khmer kingdoms. War horses were also relied upon by the later Nguyễn dynasty. You can observe remnants of the culture that surrounded these horses today in the form of statues in Huế and a particular style of hat, nón ngựa, produced in Bình Định that was sturdy enough to wear while riding and also fashionably designed for aristocrats.

Horses were used during the Nguyễn Dynasty, including as royal messengers, as pictured above. Photo via Thanh Niên.

Horses may roam in the memories and relative margins of Kinh society, but within northern mountainous communities, they occupy a far more central position. The regional spring markets that operate for H'Mông, Tày, Nùng, and Dao communities to gather, celebrate the new year, and buy and sell goods, including horses, evolved organically to include horse racing exhibitions. Over time, these smaller races, which, for a while, included rifle shooting elements, became centralized and organized as a tourism product and a means of preserving culture. Authorities have designated the Bắc Hà Horse Racing Festival in Lào Cai as a National Intangible Cultural Heritage. These festivals provide visitors with an opportunity to enjoy thắng cố, a H'Mông horsemeat stew that incorporates all parts of the animal along with mountain herbs and aromatics.

The Bắc Hà horse race. Photo by Xuân Phương for Vietnam Coracle.

For H'Mông communities, horses are more than race animals, sources of labor and food. They play a role in spiritual beliefs as well. Death is frequently understood as a white horse that comes to bring a person to the afterlife when it's their time. For this reason, a wooden horse is traditionally buried with a person who has passed. Horse statues are also seen on the tombs of people from H'Mông and other highland communities.

For festivals, ethnic communities adorn their horses with traditional costumes. Photo via Du Lịch Bắc Hà.

So, can we consider horses to be a Vietnamese animal? Wild horses are essentially extinct, with a single very small population of reintroduced horses surviving in Mongolia. If you ever see a herd of horses living freely in nature, it is not really wild, but rather a feral group descended from a domesticated breed. Thus, all horses as we know them exist because of humanity’s collective efforts and activities. Perhaps any society or nation that has developed a unique culture with and in response to them should be able to claim them.

A Bắc Hà horse in Lào Cai used by the H'Mông community. Photo by Flickr user Manfred Sommer.