Arts & Culture - Saigoneer

From the Mind of 'Mekong Review' Comes ‘Yellow,’ a New Lit Mag Focused on SEA

2026-06-09T14:00:00+07:00

“Cooped up in my apartment-cage in Tân Định, I created, with scissors and glue, dummy after dummy of a cosmopolitan rag positively pumping with scandals and half-truths. I was having a lot of fun dreaming of a magazine that I would never be able to do. And buried somewhere in that detritus on the floor—advertising cutouts and newspaper clippings—was Yellow … Once I knew I had the name, the magazine more or less made itself, as though the name determined the rest, ie, form and content,” writes Minh Bui of the birth of Yellow, his “what-do-I-do-after-Mekong Review magazine.”

Mekong Review holds a special place in the hearts of many Saigoneers. Filled with insightful reportage, book reviews, photography, and a smattering of fiction and poetry, the full size newwprint magazine focused on the Mekong Region. Since its founding in 2015, it provided a platform to writers and topics that are otherwise overlooked, particularly in a large, delightfully tactical format. For a variety of reasons, it has been much harder to find new issues of the Mekong Review in Vietnam during the past few years, and Minh sold it in 2022, leaving avid supporters to wonder what he would do next. Yellow is the answer.

Minh Bui Jones opens the Mekong Review a month before the idea for Yellow. Photo by Vi Nguyen via Yellow's Substack.

Modelled on Granta and Freeman's, Yellow, which will be published twice a year, made its debut in early May. Each issue will feature fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from award-winning authors and emerging writers from Southeast Asia and beyond, centered around a theme as announced by each title. The first issue is “Parents.”

In the first issue’s Letter from the editor, Minh shares a heartwarming experience of finding comfort on an impromptu visit to his mom’s favorite city, and concludes: “That’s one of my ‘parent stories.’ We all have one, or more. Not all of them are happy, as some of the stories in this collection attest. But, for better or worse, as Anjan Sundaram writes, they make us who we are. Welcome to Yellow. I hope the magazine speaks for itself. And I hope it speaks to you, dear reader.”

“Parents” contains 11 stories and one photo essay with a diversity of styles, voices, and topics, as is characteristic of the literary magazine format. Best absorbed slowly, piece by piece, some stories might not connect with you while others strike a deep chord; that hodgepodge nature is one of the particular joys of the genre. Inherent in that diversity is the sense that each entry on the table of contents shimmers with the unknown, and nothing in one piece will clue you in as to what follows. In this way, reading a literary magazine is a bit like opening packages.

Saigoneer won’t spoil the experience by offering any greater detail about what awaits in stories about Indonesia’s last dugong hunters, a son who connects with his mother via old recordings of Vietnamese theatre plays, and one of the architects of Malaysia’s modern history education. Or, as Minh offered in typically self-deprecating fashion, on the journal’s Substack as “Sweet, sad and poignant stories about parents. Like I said, boring, predictable lit mag.”

More information about Yellow, including how to subscribe and find copies, is available on the journal’s website.

On Reading Ocean Vuong and Thinking About the Sniff Kisses of My Family

2026-06-07T21:00:00+07:00

Having always been a little brother, I had to learn to be a big one when I was 10 years old. In the midst of the confusion of this new role, I found myself pressing my nose to this newborn’s head and inhaling as hard as I could. This “sniff kiss” was not an action I invented. Rather, it was an instinct forged through mimicry: I started noticing from this point that my father and grandmother both did the same thing to me.

As a kid from the diaspora, I lost myself in thoughts over one poem I could relate to within my deepest senses. It's written by renowned Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong, titled ‘Kissing in Vietnamese.’ I felt for the first time that there might be something bigger than me behind this peculiar habit that I thought was idiosyncratic. Vuong shares his experience with those sniff kisses, which he contrasts with western ones and their flashier display of affection. But this modesty makes the intimacy not less intense, as described in this part of the poem:

“When my grandmother kisses, there would be
no flashy smooching, no western music
of pursed lips, she kisses as if to breathe
you inside her, nose pressed to cheek
so that your scent is relearned”

In researching my heritage to get to root of this habit, I have found that those kisses seem to be typical of Vietnamese people, anchored in the culture. Another aspect of the kiss that is shown here is that it’s usually done by family elders. There are similar customs in many Southeast Asia, according to a study that uses lexical semantic typology through “smell/kiss colexification” to demonstrate that the practice is unique to this region. It actually was a culture shock for European colonizers when they came to Southeast Asia, and many mentioned the quirk in their writings.

The entry for “hôn” (kissing) in the Annamite-French dictionary by Jean Bonet (1899). The description reads: “The olfactory kiss (by inhaling strongly through the nostrils as the Annamites do).”

For me it was never really about my cultural background; rather, it was a vital tool to feel and express affection in my own way. My feelings for it were straightforward: I liked the purity of inhaling the scent of my loved ones, as a way to sense them over and over. At the same time, as Vuong captures in his poem, the kiss could be fierce, born from an endless worry for those dearest to me that can only be soothed by this reassurance of life.

The sniff kiss had become so visceral for me that its cultural implication wasn't clear to me for a long time. It turned into a blurry concept in my mind, midway between an expression of love and a physical scent. The eccentricity of the quirk convinced me it was something my family and I made up, regardless of any country’s traditions. Even now, each time I tilt my head towards my grandmother, so she can sniff my forehead, I am reminded that in all of us there are dormant customs whose existence is beyond us.

Lê Phổ, ‘La Maternité,’ circa 1940s.

It is up to us to uncover these hidden parts of our heritage by noticing that, be it over time or from a significant event, it is actually an inherited behavior. It might be hard, or even futile, but I find it beautiful that through an autoethnographic process, we can dig out an ancestral link from within each of us about how we love.

“My grandmother kisses as if history
never ended, as if somewhere
a body is still
falling apart.”

Meet Th.ink Room, the Tattoo Collective Bringing New Life to Old Artworks and Onto Skin

2026-06-07T10:00:00+07:00

Tattoo Therapist, dr.99hz, cd.cadao, goc.viet, Solarist and Baby Nepotism: listing the artists that call Th.ink Room home feels like shouting out the members of a rap clique. Indeed, tattoo artists, more than any other visual artists, are akin to rappers in their use of pseudonyms, so to employ a common hip-hop refrain, Saigoneer became interested in Th.ink Room because “game recognize game.”

Like Saigoneer, the studio, or “art hub for art lovers from all over the world” as they describe it, is dedicated to gathering inspiration from Vietnamese architecture, design motifs, flora, fauna, and history; preserving traditional artwork; telling stories about and through niche passions and forefronting creative expression, united by, as Phi (@tattoo.therapist) puts it, “the ethos of an ever-curious observer, and an ever-diligent maker.”

For such a permanent end result, tattooing too frequently involves an impulsive or careless process and experience. Phi founded Th.ink Room in 2023 to actively work against both, emphasizing, “we care about the whole experience, starting from your connection to the tattoo you are getting and its origins to your artist to how you feel after you leave.”

Phi (tattoo.therapist) and their designs.

I experienced the studio’s thoughtful approach first-hand last year after seeking out Phi’s detailed black line work. Having grown up in Russia, they were heavily influenced by Europe's golden age of illustration (circa 1880s–1930s). With that inspiration in mind, they developed their signature style while studying art in the UK, but upon graduation, they encountered a market that had little interest in it; clients had moved from print books to websites and wanted color and full images without backgrounds and/or animation. Fortuitously timed requests from friends for tattoo designs introduced the possibility of becoming a tattoo artist.

Golden age of illustration examples: ‘Then There Came a Wind So Strong that it Blew Off Curdken's Hat’ by Jennie Harbour (left) and ‘Reigning Death’ by Robert Montenegro (right).

During that visit, Phi explained the carefully curated design of the District 1 space. Situated in a classic, low-slung residential block partially repurposed for commercial use, the lobby’s raw clay color calls to mind pottery and the shaping of inspiration into tactile ideas. Clients then proceed to the stark red interior room, where those ideas are metaphorically fired and become permanent. The back garden — where artists and clients hang out before, during, and after sessions — meanwhile, embodies the calm and welcoming vibe that transcends the space. Tattoo artists, with their impressive talent in an art form that, despite increasing mainstream acceptance, continues to carry a hint of rebellion or danger, can be intimidating, but everyone at Th.ink Room is a sweetheart, which contributes to an effortlessly relaxed vibe.

The Th.ink Room lobby and studio space.

So much work; that's Vietnam

A man catching a dragonfly in a tree, a physician checking for a pulse, a hand-pulled wedding procession, a rural notice-board demanding “commit no nuisance,” and 15 types of shoes: these are amongst the thousands of woodblock images produced by 19^th-century French ethnographer Henri Oger and his local team. Saigoneer had written about the work several years ago and recently noticed selected images appearing on Th.ink Room’s Instagram page as available tattoos.

Original Henri Oger images (top) and Vũ's (@goc.viet) tattoo designs (bottom).

“This is what started it all. I really liked it and was like, who did this?” Phi noted while showing some Oger illustrations that they had come across in an artwork anthology. Inspired to find more, they sought out a tattered copy of his work at a local book shop. “Actually, I nerd it out so hard on this,” Phi said while flipping through illustrations. “Look at that guy, he's wonderful!” they continued while pointing to one of the images and explaining how the single slim volume contained hundreds of illustrations and thus inspiration “So much work; this is just Vietnam,” they concluded.

Some of the books kept at Th.ink Room.

While online resources help the Th.ink Room team explore their interests and sources of inspiration that range far beyond Vietnam, when it comes to local topics, antique shops have been a part of their process since the beginning. “We used to drive Trần Nhân Tôn Street, which is an antique street, and they have books there as well. We'd look through things that we thought would make good tattoos, and it sort of became a tradition,” Phi explained of early field trips with Trung (@dr.99hz).

Designs and final work by Trung (@dr.99hz).

Those books now get handed over to Vũ (@goc.viet), a young artist whom Phi had mentored at the studio. “I have materials available from books, and I take designs out of them to make tattoos. I research the contexts: which time period they belong to and how the characters are drawn,” Vũ explained of the works he makes and shares on the Instagram account goc.viet, a name that he explained as “here ‘goc’ means both ‘perspective/corner’ and ‘roots/origin,’ so that people will know who we are — we are people born here and we are Vietnamese. And most of the designs I explore are from within Vietnam, even just a certain corner of Vietnam is fine.”

Vũ at work.

Works by Oger and his team, those collected by Nguyễn Thị Thu Hòa, various unfortunately uncredited drawings, such as ones in the margins of revolutionary South Vietnam: the Struggle newspapers from the 1960s and 1970s, or classic Đông Hồ prints — all require alterations to become suitable tattoo designs. Because of their age and printing methods, details are often lost, so Vũ needs to research the image’s purpose, background, and the conventions of the time it was produced to fill in details such as facial expressions and hand positions while making adjustments for line widths to suit the tattoo medium. Within the laborious examination of what to adjust and how, there is also room to include some personal touches. For example, I had requested a portion of the classic Thầy Đồ Cóc (toad teacher) đông hồ and Vũ adjusted its skin texture while Phi advocated for it to have a bigger butt and more impressive steam coming off the tea kettle. Comparing the original and the finished tattoo makes the final product feel like both a matter of preservation and a conversation between artists across time.

Example of full Thầy Đồ Cóc đông hồ and Vũ's completed tattoo.

More than simply creating works that he hopes will attract customers, Vũ’s recycling of past artists is a matter of pride. “I am Vietnamese, so when I see those images, they remind me of the things my grandparents or parents told me — things I had only heard about before. But today, seeing them in these books, I find them very interesting, yet no one had [made tattoos from them] before. This style of imagery has also been around for a very long time, but no one has developed it further; people just let it be forgotten. Over time, I want to convey it and let everyone know more about the activities of Vietnamese people in the past; these are things that will remain and continue to exist.”

Vũ's designs based on collected đông hồ illustrations.

In addition to his goc.viet account, Vũ operates the vznary account where he posts original artwork that shares some resemblance to his archival pieces but also allows him to explore other impulses. Th.ink Room considers it important to differentiate between tattoo artists (nghệ sĩ xăm) who design original pieces and tattoo technicians (thợ xăm) who execute already existent designs, while emphasizing that one is not better or more valuable than the other, and they both require mastery of different, difficult skills.

Sample issue of South Vietnam in Struggle newspaper (left) and Vũ's tattoo designs based on the periodical (right).

When using outside images, technicians must be extremely careful, though. Phi has noticed that many in Vietnam and abroad are eager to follow trends and fads and will thus steal ideas and exact designs from living artists who are still around and able to make a living from creations that are incontestably theirs. Not only is such behavior unethical, it's also unneeded. “Here lies an enormous, beautiful graveyard of past illustrators and printmakers whose work is brilliant but lost. Many of these can be reworked into tattoos as a humble nod to our past masters, giving them a second life in a world that is getting further and further away from print,” they conclude. In such instances, the Th.ink Room team makes every effort to provide citations, including source, date, and artist when possible, that they include on their Instagram and share with the clients along with assurance they will never repeat the design on anyone else. Of course, this material cannot be included in the tattoo itself, and thus it’s up to each individual to share the story behind their ink.

Finding inspiration for styles vast yet distinct

Ngọc feeds goats, the team hangs out in the zoo, Vũ holds a flower, and Trang imitates a statue in Tao Đàn Park.

Fostering warm, memorable experiences, a core mission of Th.ink Room, requires members of the team to genuinely like and appreciate one another, a truth attested to by how frequently they gather outside of the studio. “We spend days together,” Phi said of their routine field trips. “We sit in the same space, but are drawn to different things in those spaces and the different textures.”

Examples of photos the team sends one another.

In addition to these trips to the park, the zoo, interesting buildings, and corners of the city with particular energies, they are frequently sending photos and links to one another, serving as “each other's eyes.” Animals, ducks, and dogs get sent to Trung; prints and illustrations on vases or ceramics go to Vũ; and Vietnamese architectural elements, patterns, and motifs go to Trang (@cd.cadao).

Trang at work.

“At first, [my style] stemmed from the fact that I just liked ethnic patterns because I spent some time going to the highlands and saw the people there embroidering very beautiful patterns on their clothing. Later on, as I worked and learned about the meaning of these patterns and about the different ethnic groups, I found it very interesting, and I could learn a lot more about the culture, and about the specific techniques,” explained Trang of her handpoke designs. Her method of engaging with past artwork is less one of ethnographic preservation and more a matter of finding inspiration. Ethnic minority embroideries and motifs mingle with organic elements, typography and architecture to become wholly original works. “I draw inspiration from everything — I could listen to a song, read a poem, or read a newspaper… Then it comes along with my memories, my emotions, my own thoughts, and inadvertently, it becomes relatable to everyone.”

Able to offer explanations and academic sources for many of her influences, Trang creates work that is, according to Phi, “very well researched; she can speak about it in a lot of detail.” Of course, no one needs to know the context, details and story behind an image to appreciate it, let alone permanently put it on one’s body, but Th.ink Room believes there is intrinsic value in knowing more. It’s a matter of curiosity about the world. “I don't think there's anything wrong with not being curious, but I think it just makes things better; you just end up learning more,” Phi explained.

Trang's (@cd.cadao) flash designs surrounded by finished pieces.

One of Saigoneer’s illustrators can surely speak on the story behind the tattoo she got from Trang, having selected one based on our logo, which was meticulously scouted before being selected several years ago. And while currently Saigoneer only boasts three tattoos from Th.ink Room artists, there is a trend amongst clients for more. As Vy (@babynepotism) explained, some regular guests have gotten work from each Th.ink Room artist and many that come for guest residencies. Members of the team have also begun experimenting with collaboration on single works. The first piece Vy had done, for example, involves Trang’s patterns and vegetation alongside Trung’s butterflies and bees. Meanwhile, Vũ and Ngọc have begun collaborating on ideas that combine his archival pieces with her coloring.

Vy's collaborative tattoo from Trang and Trung (left) and a collaborative design from Vu and Ngọc (right).

This collaborative ethos extends to Th.ink Room’s lobby, where, alongside the collection of archival texts and various books and zines, are products from local creators for sale. Dyed fabrics, buttons, prints, and photos, as well as random items that members of Th.ink Room make, are available, as well as pro-Palestine fundraiser pieces. The eclectic shop space reflects Th.ink Room’s desire not to be seen as only a tattoo studio, which is underscored by its name. While it includes “ink” it doesn’t explicitly say “tattoo,” and the large Thinker statue at the entrance suggests a different way to interpret it. Such versatility coincides with the space hosting art, music, and community events.

The Th.ink Room team.

Th.ink Room’s perspective on art, originality, and creativity seems particularly relevant today when AI is upending not just how artists make money, but society’s relationship with creativity in general. It seems to me that too many people are eager to outsource their creativity to computers that gobble up sources for commodification while individuals abandon the curiosity that compelled them to make or appreciate art in the first place. While Phi may have concerns about AI, they are not worried about creativity. “Our collective culture is unimaginably rich. I do not personally believe that creativity is dead or ever will be; you can see how vast yet distinct it has always been, by looking back.”

A (Literally) Brief History of Vietnamese Representation in 'Mean Girls' (2004)

2026-06-05T11:00:00+07:00

Written by Saturday Night Live alum Tina Fey and premiered in 2004, Mean Girls is often heralded as a sharp, self-aware comedy that was ahead of its time, yet still holds up surprisingly well today. Alas, its depiction of Asians has aged a little more poorly, even though at the time of its release, the Asian representation was shockingly accurate for its time, despite some haphazard characterizations.

In Mean Girls, a previously home-schooled Cady Heron was plopped back into an American high school after 12 years in Africa. The film follows her fish-out-of-water experiences as she learns how to navigate the complex politics and shenanigans of high school.

For Vietnamese kids with limited exposure to American culture like me, this premise was incredibly helpful because we were all Cadys ourselves: all wide-eyed and bushy-tailed to explore American school culture.

During lunch, Cady is introduced to the geopolitical map of the school canteen, where cliques are divided into different tables like world sovereigns. Amongst the Plastics, Unfriendly Black Hotties, and Sexually Active Band Geeks is the Cool Asians, spearheaded by its leader Trang Pak and deputy Sun Jin Dinh.

Trang Pak (Ky Pham) in red tank top and Sun Jin Dinh (Danielle Nguyen) in black shirt with pink letters.

This is where Mean Girls first failed its Asians: while both characters are Vietnamese, their names are a hodgepodge of Vietnamese and Korean names. I have to give the casting credits for hiring actual Vietnamese to play them, however: Ky Pham plays Trang Pak and Danielle Nguyen plays Sun Jin Dinh.

Trang Pak caught making out with Coach Carr.

Later in the film, we discover that the rumor that Trang made out with Coach Carr is, in fact, true and he was grooming her. I have mixed feelings. Nonetheless, the film’s top Vietnamese representation comes later, during a group therapy session in the gym where the girls are encouraged to have a heart-to-heart to make peace.

Trang Pak: Tại sao mày giành các anh của tao quài dzậy? (Why do you keep stealing my men?)
Sun Jun Dinh: Mày chỉ có ghen vì mấy thằng con trai thích tao nhiều hơn thôi (You’re just jealous because they like me more.)
Trang Pak: Làm ơn đi mày, hông dám đâu? (Please, don’t even.)

This obviously failed the Bechdel Test, but I found it delightful that the lines were delivered in Vietnamese, and fairly decipherable Vietnamese at that. I suspect the actresses improvised the lines themselves, because Tina Fey cannot be trusted with writing for non-white characters.

However, this is where Mean Girls failed its Asian the second time: Trang’s second line was mistranslated in the subtitle as “N****, please,” making her look like a racist for no reason.

On Shooting an Entire Movie on 35mm Film: The Curious Case of 'Quán Kỳ Nam'

2026-05-31T11:00:00+07:00

“Let’s go to Vietnam!” declared Sabrina Baracetti, president of the Far East Film Festival (FEFF) in Udine, Italy, as she wrapped up her introduction for Leon Lê's Quán Kỳ Nam (Kỳ Nam Inn). Sitting in the Teatro Nuovo, watching Quán Kỳ Nam unfold for the first time, I felt an overwhelming surge of pride.

Quán Kỳ Nam does exactly what Baracetti promised: it does not showcase the hyper-modern, rapidly developing Vietnam of today; rather, it captures a deeply tactile Vietnamese essence, distilled down to the flicker of a single oil lamp or the hum of a rusty electric fan. Sharing this experience with an international audience, I felt a profound connection to how our people were portrayed with kindness, sensitivity, and a resilient sense of community, bonding to rebuild a post-war nation. Crucially, Leon allows his characters to be beautifully flawed. They are petty, guarded, and endearingly humane. These are people tentatively navigating the unfamiliar terrain of peacetime, having spent years bracing for the worst. All these quiet, lingering conflicts are gently woven through a forbidden romance between a young, rising intellectual and a widow tied to the former regime.

Quán Kỳ Nam actress Ngô Hồng Ngọc (second from left), director Leon Lê (second from right) and Far East Film Festival's Vietnamese programmer, Nguyên Lê (far right).

Nguyên Lê, the Vietnamese programmer for FEFF, notes that he seeks films “where the essence is local but the expression is global.” As he rightly pointed out, Quán Kỳ Nam “does precisely this.” It takes the universally understood geometry of a love triangle and embeds it within the highly specific context of 1970s Vietnam. It makes the mundane, quiet moments of human existence feel entirely refreshing, captivating international audiences without ever resorting to tired, exoticised tropes.

But the fervor surrounding Quán Kỳ Nam in Udine did not stem solely from its narrative heart. Much of the heat generated by the film was a triumph of pure craft: it marks the first Vietnamese feature in two decades to be shot entirely on 35mm analogue celluloid.

The struggles of pioneering

As the 35mm celluloid process constantly evolves, it is no longer the fragile art form of decades past. While it remains a revered staple in major industries in Hollywood and Europe, prized for its unique texture and grain, the reality in Vietnam is starkly different. For feature-length cinema, it has been 20 years since a production was shot entirely on 35mm. In television, the gap is even wider. The local industry migrated to digital over three decades ago, leaving analogue equipment either hopelessly outdated, broken down, or entirely unusable. This infrastructural void posed a monumental challenge for Leon Lê and his team.

Recalling the genesis of the project, Leon acknowledges the sheer luck of securing unwavering support from his financial backers right from the start. “I knew that with the budget I had, I was going to shoot on film,” he explains. “The reason the investors agreed to support the project was mostly that they loved my first film, Song Lang. They fully understood that a project like Quán Kỳ Nam is extremely risky commercially.”

However, securing the generous funding to shoot on analogue film only solved half the battle. While financially possible, it was practically impossible logistically. The infrastructure simply did not exist. At least, not until director of photography Bob Nguyễn (Quán Kỳ Nam, Song Lang) proved it could be done. This required working from the ground up.

“The DOP had to train the rest of the crew,” Leon remembers. “Young filmmakers haven't worked with film, haven't practiced with it, don't know how to load film, and don't know how to attach the magazine to the camera. The DOP had to put them through a training process.”

The education extended far beyond the film set. “Then we had to collaborate with a film developing lab and teach them,” Leon adds. “They were used to developing 35-exposure photo rolls, so how do you develop a five-minute reel? But I was very confident in my team.”

So, driven by the uncompromising dedication of Leon and his crew, Vietnam finally has a new 35mm feature, offering a deeply textured, organic cinematic experience that cuts through years of crisp, sterile digital imagery.

A still from Quán Kỳ Nam.

A celluloid renaissance or a lone exception?

Leon remains resolute in his commitment to the medium and expresses unwavering faith in his team for future 35mm projects. “For all my upcoming projects, I still plan to shoot on film and continue to develop and scan in Vietnam,” he reveals. His confidence lies in local ingenuity: “Generally speaking, Vietnamese people are very smart. They tinker with things out of curiosity and eventually figure it out. It's just that they are hesitant, so they haven't done it yet. But if they want to, they can.”

Yet, Leon harbors no illusions that his personal obsession as an auteur will revolutionize the wider Vietnamese film industry. “There will be crazy people like me who want to do it, but to call it a recovery or renaissance of celluloid — probably not,” he admits. He believes a problem also lies in the current state of mainstream Vietnamese cinema: “Looking at the Vietnamese film market right now, it's still struggling. The timeframe of a production from concept to scripts, casting, shooting, post-production, release... they do it so quickly and carelessly. How could they invest in [analogue filmmaking]? It's both risky and costly. You have to love the outcome and love the process to be able to endure it.”

Nguyên Lê echoes these concerns regarding the state of the industry, noting the friction between analogue filmmaking and modern Vietnamese sensibilities. “It is unfortunate the format is more costly and time-consuming in a society more careful with our spending and our timing, and in a culture that has a tendency to treat the latest as being the greatest,” he observes.

However, the programmer remains hopeful about the ripple effect of Leon Le's uncompromising ethos. He predicts these formats will “live on” in the short film arena, citing Chín (Ripe) as a recent example, or that the rigorous storytelling methods of Leon and his crew will be “studied and carried over,” ultimately “paving the way for higher quality, more internationally competitive productions.”

Listening to their reflections leaves me with a lingering sense of unease. The stark divide between independent and commercial filmmaking in Vietnam is undeniable. They are funded differently, crafted differently, and targeted at entirely different demographics. To succeed domestically, mainstream commercial products often rely heavily on familiar character tropes and highly specific cultural shorthand, what Nguyên terms “doubly-local expression.”

This approach stands in direct opposition to Nguyên's “local essence, global expression” attribute that makes Quán Kỳ Nam so universally translatable. Until the wider industry learns to bridge this gap by placing artistic rigor over rushed, hyper-localized commercialism, Vietnamese cinema will, unfortunately, continue to struggle to secure its rightful place on the international stage.

The looming threat: AI, VFX vs. The soul of cinema

In Quán Kỳ Nam, eagle-eyed viewers might occasionally spot modern architecture lurking in the corners of street scenes or looming in the distance during rooftop shots. When asked about this, Leon is refreshingly blunt. “I really hate VFX,” he admits. “Because there are special effects done practically that look absolutely amazing compared to VFX. Especially with those action and martial arts movies in Hollywood right now, they abuse VFX so much, and it looks very fake. So, not everything new is good; it has to be appropriate.”

And his philosophy works entirely for the world of Quán Kỳ Nam. For an international audience, these modern anomalies easily go unnoticed. More importantly, attempting to digitally patch these details to perfect the “vintage” illusion would be disastrous. A rough, modern VFX job would glaringly stand out against the rich, organic grain of the 35mm film, completely ruining the meticulously crafted, authentic 1970s Vietnam they worked so hard to build.

To my mind, VFX should be a tool used to enhance a filmmaker’s vision, not a synthetic bandage used to cover mistakes or cut corners in production. But the creeping reliance on Artificial Intelligence is far more insidious; it is an unacceptable intrusion into the creative process that is already pushing genuine artists out of work. We are currently witnessing a dangerous era where AI is being hastily embraced for cheap commercial gain, all while legislation painfully struggles to catch up with the harm being done to genuine artists.

Yet, when asked about the threat of AI replacing filmmakers, Leon remains resolutely confident. “They can never do my job,” he declares. For him, the creative process is intrinsically human. Only he possesses the vivid, visceral memories of his mother and aunts visiting his grandfather at a post-war re-education camp, the exact memories that served as the primary, direct inspiration for the character Kỳ Nam. There is no technology in the world, present or future, capable of synthetically recreating that level of lived trauma, personal emotion, and artistic vision.

Ngô Hồng Ngọc (left), director Leon Lê (right) at the Far East Film Festival.

However, programmer Nguyên offers a sobering reality check regarding the wider Vietnamese industry. “I don’t believe other filmmakers share Leon’s sentiments, but I do hope to be proven wrong,” he notes. “As I noted in my essay and industry report for this year’s FEFF, many stages of the cinematic creative process in Vietnam right now feature AI, with some finding it a gift from above and others deeming it a hasty shortcut.”

The human resistance

Leon's observation on the mainstream Vietnamese machine is entirely valid, yet there is a sliver of hope he might be overlooking. We are currently witnessing an infiltration: a new wave of independent filmmakers successfully making their commercial debuts. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ recent regulation changes, strictly mandating human authorship for any Oscar submission, serve as a monumental, institutional pushback against generative AI.

Ultimately, cinema is a medium built entirely on human vulnerability. I wholeheartedly echo programmer Nguyên’s resounding final sentiment: “Give me imperfect films with soul — and I like quite a few! — any day.”

Photos courtesy of Far East Film Festival.

Tracing the History of 'Hello Vietnam,' the Overnight Sensation From Europe

2026-05-29T14:00:00+07:00

Most people who have flown with VietJet are probably familiar with the song ‘Hello Vietnam’ or its Vietnamese version ‘Xin chào Việt Nam.’ As it's often played during landing, tourists might mistake the song for a cute jingle of the company, but the meaning behind the song lyrics is much more nostalgic. It’s about a person of Vietnamese descent longing for their ancestor’s homeland, a place they’ve never been — a story that can certainly strike a chord with many Vietnamese people. Few know, however, that this song was originally a French-language song, one that was almost never released.

‘Hello Vietnam’ achieves the rare feat of being widely recognizable among Vietnamese today, even though it originally emerged from the diasporic community.

The song cover.

Perhaps this accomplishment should not be surprising, as the song seems specifically crafted to appeal to Vietnamese sensibilities: nostalgic lyrics on a melancholic melody were the framework of many other widely acclaimed songs in Vietnam. Even though the lyrics describe the feelings of a person who’s never been to Vietnam, the longing can resonate even with Vietnamese people who never left the country, whether towards their hometown or a version of Vietnam from another decade.

“Want to see your house, your streets. Show me all I do not know.
Wooden sampans, floating markets, light of gold.”

The sheer love and curiosity for Vietnam, along with descriptions of its wonders make the song an easy choice for anyone who wants to convey patriotic pride. This may explain why it sounds familiar even to people who have never heard of it. The exposure to the music is huge: it's featured in travel companies’ commercials, videos on social media, and background music in cafes.

The story behind the creation of ‘Hello Vietnam’ actually began in Belgium, where its original singer, Phạm Quỳnh Anh, was born. Her parents are Vietnamese immigrants. Her father went to Belgium to study and her mother was a political refugee. Always a talented singer, at 13, she participated in the Belgian singing competition TV show Pour la Gloire and won with a terrific cover of Celine Dion’s ‘The reason.’ This achievement convinced her that a career in music might really be a possibility: “Pour la Gloire all started with a bet between my father and me. He was like, ‘Yes, you’ll make it,’ while I was thinking, ‘I won't even get past the first auditions.’ And that's just how it happened; I didn't really realize what was going on at the time,” Quỳnh Anh recounts in French.

Phạm Quỳnh Anh.

In 2005, her career took off, as she became Marc Lavoine’s protégée. Marc Lavoine, a famous French singer most known for his karaoke classic ‘Elle a les yeux revolver…’, was looking for a voice to feature in ‘J’espère,’ a new duet. He was convinced by Quỳnh Anh's performance: three takes during the audition was enough. Following this duet’s success, Quỳnh Anh went along with Lavoine on his tour to many countries.

Being close to Marc Lavoine provided a pivotal boost to Quỳnh Anh, even more so as Lavoine wrote her some songs, which were never released — one of which was called ‘Bonjour Vietnam.’ When learning that the song was written by a white French man, one can feel weirded out at first by the lyrics, notably the description of the character’s physical traits. It was however written at the request and supervised by Quỳnh Anh.

While working on a potential album, she felt the need to sing about her roots, and as such, asked the lyricist Yvan Coriat to write about Vietnam. The text was allegedly too long, which is why she later reached out to the seasoned Lavoine to transform the text into a song, with music by him. The Vietnamese-Belgian singer was immediately charmed: “I tried it, and it worked instantly. It’s amazing because they’re European, yet they recreated an Asian atmosphere so well. I feel very lucky to be surrounded by talented people who help me express myself.” She says in a French interview in Vietnam.

Marc Lavoine.

How ‘Bonjour Vietnam’ reached stardom was its own story: a demo leaked on the internet, and quickly spread throughout the diaspora. By Tết 2006, the song had already blown up all over the world, usually paired with a fan-made video montage of Vietnam. This unexpected instant hit made Quỳnh Anh famous around the globe among Vietnamese diasporic communities. The song never had an official release, and yet she started receiving offers to perform live in many countries like Canada, the US and Australia. Spurred by the global attention, it behooved her to release an English version, translated by Guy Balbaert, called ‘Hello Vietnam.’ This version gained a wider audience in Vietnam, while solidifying her fame among the English-speaking diaspora.

In 2008, she performed ‘Hello Vietnam’ on Paris by Night, which cemented the ubiquity of the song in the diaspora. At the end of the same year, she was able to set foot in the forever longed-for Vietnam in the lyrics, thanks to the popularity of the song, via a short tour in the country.

The original version in French performed by Phạm Quỳnh Anh.

There is a some undeniable poetry in the fact that everything seems to have led Quỳnh Anh to the country of her roots. Starting with her meeting with Marc Lavoine, which resulted in the creation of a song where she sings about how much she would like to go to Vietnam. Then the fact that the song got a self-made fame of its own. And finally, the English translation reached Vietnam, bringing her there as she wished for in the lyrics.

“One day I’ll touch your soil.
One day I’ll finally know your soul.
One day I’ll come to you.
To say hello… Vietnam.”

Nowadays Quỳnh Anh’s musical career has gotten much more quiet, she kept her studies a priority throughout this success, and now it seems to be a historical period, as she has begun new chapters of her life. But the popularity of ‘Hello Vietnam’ is as strong as it has ever been: many translations to Vietnamese helped the song gain a new audience. The budget airline VietJet decided to play a mix of the English and Vietnamese versions as landing songs and a welcoming gesture. This has increased the song’s popularity even more, though it has also inspired a sense of overexposure for frequent domestic travelers. The history of ‘Hello Vietnam’ is usually forgotten, obscured by its reputation as a mere commercial jingle, but it was once a heartfelt wish to reconnect with a homeland one hears about so much but has never encountered.

The Little Moments of Stillness on Hanoi Streets via Artist Hoàng Hiền's Illustrations

2026-05-27T14:00:00+07:00

Whether they're from Saigon, Hanoi or Đà Nẵng, urbanites in Vietnam have all grown up amid the chaos of local street culture, where the pulses of civic life churn with every vendor, family business, and gig worker. "Moment of Stillness," a collection of colorful illustrations by artist Hoàng Thanh Hiền, was born of the artist's keen observations of the familiar scenes in her immediate surroundings.

Hanoi streets are notoriously busy and hectic, but when one actually sits down to focus on each moving part in that busy puzzle, they would immediately notice the charms and vivid liveliness of things that we often overlook while going about our life. Each artwork in Hiền’s illustration project zooms in and isolates an element from the street scene in Hanoi, and highlights it with her artistic sensibility.

“The bikes carrying seasonal fruits, the food carts, the corner vendors selling iced tea, the trees and traffic signs that double as helmet or raincoat racks,” Hiền shares with Saigoneer via email. “Perhaps, with the forces of development and convenience of modern society, sidewalk vendors have become something associated with disorderliness and complications. But I want to redraw those images with a gentle palette. A moment of stillness for people whom I think are dealing with a lot of hardships.”

Mobile fruit sellers, a deliveryman waiting for pickup, rideshare drivers on bikes, a sugarcane juice cart: the subjects of Hiền’s illustrations are mostly small business owners and gig workers who spend the majority of their workday on sidewalks. The human figures are all faceless, perhaps in line with how most of us perceive the people we brush past on the street, but each scene is portrayed using cheerful color choices to celebrate the small moments rather than dismiss them.

Observing daily moments and illustrating them have become an escape for Hiền after the many hours spent at her day job. While drawing has been her favorite pastime since she was four or five years old, she graduated with an unrelated degree and then started working. “After many years, I still drew, wanted to draw, and constantly thought about art, so I quit and started learning art from the beginning,” she says. “ I got another job and, fortunately, met seniors who are very patient with me and believe in me. So I’ve been working while studying since.”

The title “Moment of Stillness” refers to the snapshot of street moments that Hiền collects while walking around Hanoi, but on the other hand, it also started from a need for her to take a break from drawing for work. “One day, I felt like I was illustrating like a machine. I illustrate at work, for my jobs every day. Everything runs smoothly and everybody is satisfied, but suddenly I stopped feeling that joy when I draw,” she shares. “A product finishes and another one comes right along; I don’t know how things began to flow so fast [...] So I started doing art just for myself in my free time.”

With a simple goal to reignite that happiness while drawing, she began with the simplest things that are right around her: “A dry leaf on the street, a fold on my clothes, a muscle of human anatomy… everything can become a story. I want to return to finding beauty in simple things like that. Gradually, I started paying more attention to our sidewalk space and its daily life.”

It might be a bittersweet time period for anyone making a living on Hanoi’s pavements or harboring great affection for the city’s vibrant informal economy, as a sidewalk-clearing campaign is sweeping through local streets, aiming to make them neater and safer for pedestrians. Independent art projects, like “Moment of Stillness,” will serve as an indelible documentation of the street moments of our collective memory.

Hailing from Hải Dương, Hiền herself has been in Hanoi for 10 years through her education and career. Creating art about Hanoi has encouraged her to observe where she lives more instead of being a mere passerby.

“I think each person has a different Hanoi. An old cart can be someone’s way to make a living. It seems like there’s everything on the sidewalk: necessities, food, clothes, even haircuts. Fruits, bánh mì and coffee in the morning and iced tea and skewers in the evening. The space on the pavement might look messy, but operates rhythmically with its own symbiotic negotiations.”

To view more of Hoàng Hiền's artworks, visit her Behance page here.

Dispatch From Udine: Vietnam's Cinema Reaches the World Stage While Rooted in Local Culture

2026-05-24T14:00:00+07:00

Vietnamese cinema experienced a watershed moment at the 28^th Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy.

Long recognized as a vital European hub for Asian film, the festival’s 2026 edition, which ran from April 24 to May 2, went beyond mere representation, turning into a platform where Vietnamese narratives commanded attention and critical acclaim. Four Vietnamese films were selected for screening: Leon Lê’s Quán Kỳ Nam (Ky Nam Inn), Hàm Trần’s Tử chiến trên không (Hijacked), Bùi Thạc Chuyên’s Địa đạo: Mặt trời trong bóng tối (Tunnels: Sun in the Dark) and Phan Gia Nhật Linh’s Đại tiệc trăng máu 8 (Blood Moon Rite 8).

The festival's reception confirmed a shift in momentum. Bùi Thạc Chuyên's Địa đạo won both the Mulberry Award for Best Screenplay and the Crystal Mulberry audience award, marking the first time a Vietnamese film has won even one award in the festival's history.

The success extended beyond the screen. Two ongoing film projects were selected for the Focus Asia in-production industry sidebar program: Dear Sơn An, directed by Bùi Kim Quy (produced by Varan, Vietnam, and A Company Film, Germany) in its All Genres Project Market 2026, and Chớp bóng (Picturehouse), directed by Nguyễn Võ Nghiêm Minh (produced by Girelle Production, France, East Films, Vietnam, Add Oil Films, Singapore, and Daluyong Studio, Philippines) for the Far East in Progress 2026 initiative.

Industry insiders at the festival noted that films finding audiences and projects securing international partnerships signal the transition of Vietnamese cinema from the margins to the global stage.

The more local we stay, the further we can travel

For decades, international perceptions of Vietnam were shaped by external narratives. As FEFF curator and consultant Nguyên Lê points out, the country was often reduced to a jungle backdrop or a conflict zone in American-led stories.

When it comes to defining or understanding Vietnamese cinema, there have historically been two approaches, Nguyên notes: “Any film about Vietnam is either a documentary or a film about the war that is told from an outsider perspective.” This means they are stories about Vietnamese but not told from a Vietnamese perspective.

Thus, what is happening now is a vital reclamation of perspective. Vietnamese filmmakers are reframing narratives from insider perspectives. Bùi Thạc Chuyên highlighted how even language reveals this divide: “In the US perspective, they call it the Vietnam War, but from the Vietnamese perspective, they call it the War against Americans. It is the first step to really show that this war is very complex. It's not only a conflict between nations and forces, but also between ideologies, and between the same Vietnamese who follow different factions.”

For Chuyên, whose research for Địa đạo spanned over a decade, storytelling is inseparable from personal exploration. “I don't really think of how I would tell the story or where the story can reach,” he explains. “Whenever I make a film, it's also a discovery. I'm discovering myself, and I'm discovering about the topic as well.”

Bùi Thạc Chuyên at the festival.

Phan Gia Nhật Linh sees this moment as a turning point in global awareness: “I think the world is telling so many stories, but they haven't heard a story from Vietnam yet. And for years, our story was told by Americans, Chinese, and Koreans. And now we have a new generation of filmmakers who can make really good films. So now we start telling our story, and the world can now hear our story.”

This search for authenticity is also echoed by filmmaker Leon Lê, who actively avoids the exoticization or fetishization that international markets sometimes demand. In Quán Kỳ Nam, he handles memory and the legacy of French colonialism in Saigon with artistic restraint, allowing the story’s context to unfold naturally rather than explaining it outright.

The shift towards representation and genre

One of the most striking aspects of contemporary Vietnamese cinema is its expanding range. Where earlier filmmakers often faced strict political and commercial limitations, today’s generation is experimenting more freely with form, genre, and subject matter.

The rise of horror and folklore-based storytelling is particularly significant. In the past, supernatural elements in Vietnamese films often had to be rationalized or explained. Now, filmmakers are embracing the mystical and the unknown as legitimate narrative tools. Local folklore, such as the figure of the Vietnamese vampire known as Phí Phông, is being reimagined for modern audiences. These stories differ markedly from western or even other Asian interpretations of similar themes, offering something distinctly Vietnamese while still appealing to global genre fans.

At the same time, representation within narratives is evolving. Traditional war films have often centered on male protagonists and action-driven plots. In contrast, newer works are increasingly foregrounding women as central figures. This shift reflects a broader recognition of women’s roles in Vietnam’s past and present, particularly in times of conflict and resilience. By reframing these perspectives, filmmakers are diversifying their stories and also challenging long-standing cinematic conventions.

Phan Gia Nhật Linh speaks to the audience.

Stylistically, the industry is becoming more versatile. From comedies like Đại tiệc trăng máu 8 to action-thrillers like Tử chiến trên không, Vietnamese cinema is no longer confined to a single identity. This diversity reflects both creative ambition and a growing understanding of audience expectations. Even when working with adapted material, Linh emphasizes localization, “I choose stories that haven’t been told in Vietnam before, and then I adapt them to fit our context. That’s why the industry is growing. It’s also why audiences are choosing Vietnamese films over foreign ones.”

Industry challenges and the path forward

Despite these achievements, the Vietnamese film industry remains in a state of flux. Rapid growth brings both opportunity and instability, and sustaining momentum requires more than creative success. “The Vietnamese film industry today is like a fireworks show. It looks spectacular from a distance, but once you get up close, there are things to consider. Because, as you know, just like in real life, standing right under the fireworks carries a risk of fire. It’s very unstable and fraught with danger,” says Nguyên Lê.

One of the most pressing challenges is infrastructure. While filmmakers are producing compelling work, the systems needed to support international distribution and promotion are still developing. Festivals like FEFF play a crucial role in bridging this gap, but long-term success will depend on building consistent pathways to global audiences.

Another challenge lies in defining the audience itself. As the industry becomes more vibrant and diverse, questions arise about who these films are ultimately for. Domestic viewers have different expectations than international ones, and balancing these perspectives is not always straightforward. There is a risk that in trying to appeal to global markets, films might lose the very specificity that makes them unique.

Yet many filmmakers see this as a false dilemma. The emerging consensus is that authenticity is the key. Stories that remain grounded in local culture, language, and experience are precisely what attract global audiences seeking something new. As filmmakers continue to explore their own histories, experiment with new forms, and connect with audiences both at home and abroad, they are reshaping not only how Vietnam is represented on screen, but also how it participates in the global cinematic conversation.

The success at the 28^th Far East Film Festival is a signal. Vietnamese cinema is finding its voice, and the world is beginning to listen.

Photos courtesy of Far East Film Festival.

Short Story Collection 'Gills' Pieces Together a Raw and Complex Portrait of Saigon

2026-05-22T09:00:00+07:00

Saigon’s landscape looks dramatically different from how it did three or even two decades ago. As the country’s economic powerhouse, Saigon has seen rapid urban development: new highrises like Landmark 81 and the Bitexco Financial Tower that now define the city’s skyline, new urban infrastructure like the Ba Son Bridge and Saigon’s first metro line, as well as the city’s expansion into areas like District 7’s Phú Mỹ Hưng and District 2’s Thủ Thiêm. If the west has long viewed Saigon under the shadow of war, it is clear that such a rigid frame fails to contain the Saigon of today, whose entropic inner life seems to constantly overflow; with motorbikes onto sidewalks, loud honks through windows, and rainpour over Saigon’s riverbeds.

Tuan Phan’s newly published short story collection Gills: and Other Stories primarily takes place in the backdrop of this Saigon. A set of 10 short stories written in unassuming and measured prose, it is his second book following his memoir Remembering Water, where he, as an adult who returns to live in Saigon, reflects upon his childhood departure from Vietnam as a refugee and his family’s subsequent returns.

Tuan Phan. Image via author website.

In line with the themes of his first book, a significant chunk of Gills center the lives of Việt Kiều. Such stories dwell in the space of the in-between and serve to capture the brushing encounters between those who have left and stayed, between memory and reality, past and present, strangers and family.

In the opening story ‘At the Bánh Mì Stand,’ the owner of a bánh mì stall named Khanh converses with a hungry and jetlagged Việt Kiều who has just arrived in the hours before early dawn after a long flight. His second story, ‘The Việt Kiều Casanova,’ also features a Việt Kiều, though this time a vulgar womanizer who visits the same gift shop every week with a different girl. In ‘Short-Term Rental’ — the only story to take place outside of Vietnam — a Vietnamese American teenage boy visits his father in Houston over the holidays, where he navigates the fractures left by his parents’ separation, as well as the increasing disillusionment with the American dream. And in ‘Photographs,’ narrated in the second person, a Việt Kiều visits her aunt who repeats stories behind photographs she has kept of him and his father, who, in his last visit, told the same stories “almost word for word.”

As is perhaps clearest in this last story, there is a certain kind of nausea to many of these moments, where a spiraling abyss opens up between worlds that reveal their distance precisely via their proximity. Yet, in others, one feels surprisingly comforted by the fact that the misunderstood, wandering gaze across such seemingly irreparable gaps is, at the very least, returned.

It would be a mistake to define Gills as solely a meditation on the experience of the Vietnamese diaspora, for the focus of the greater part of the collection lies elsewhere: namely, the class-ridden social fabric of Saigon.

It would be a mistake, however, to define Gills as solely a meditation on the experience of the Vietnamese diaspora, for the focus of the greater part of the collection lies elsewhere: namely, the class-ridden social fabric of Saigon. The stories that depict this occur in the overlooked folds of Saigon’s socioeconomic order. In ‘A Clean Record,’ for instance, we see the struggles of an elderly man navigating a system of openly corrupt, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, seeking to acquire appropriate paperwork in order to begin driving for Grab. If the old man represents the economically precarious in Saigon — who live in informal, “illegal” homes, who make a living by working in a gig economy characterized by low pay, unstable income, and harsh working conditions — other stories offer glimpses into the other end of Saigon’s socioeconomic order. ‘Selling Sài Gòn,’ for instance, tells the story of Trang, a luxury apartment realtor dating a moneyed yet unambitious boyfriend, who has to navigate the murky waters of having to close a deal with a famous celebrity client named Liêm, who is clearly bent on using his leverage to get with her. In bringing together stories set in widely different settings across Saigon’s socioeconomic strata, Gills offers a damning portrait of Saigon’s class hierarchies in which multiple realities, each absurd in their own ways, co-exist with one another in unsettling and maddening ways.

Nowhere is this more viscerally rendered than in ‘Reusables,’ the most dramatic and gripping of Tuan’s stories. Set during the COVID-19 pandemic, it tells the story of Lâm, a recycler in need of money to treat his dog, who has accidentally swallowed something he shouldn't have from a pile of junk in District 7. Upon being persuaded by his friend Tèo, together they embark on “find[ing] new owners for” (Tèo’s euphemism for stealing) condenser units sitting idle by a BMW dealership in “Korea Town” — a plan that turns south upon being confronted by a celebrity named Liêm (presumably the same character from ‘Selling Sài Gòn’), who, it turns out, had previously been mired in controversy for ripping off flood victims. Indeed, there is something quite bizarre about the whole scene, where we find Lâm’s economic despair juxtaposed against the eerie tranquility of the neighborhood that is arguably Saigon’s most affluent. It is here that Tuan becomes most explicit with his critique of the class-stratified order of contemporary Vietnam:

The fact was, and the fact always was . . . in this long pandemic, it’ll be the already rich bosses, the ones that run dealerships, the ones that get kickbacks and bribe money for construction projects needing their signatures to begin, the ones that buy BMWs for their kids to wreck, that’ll not only survive this lockdown but get even richer. [...] And it’ll still be the little people like me and Tèo, the grandmothers selling grilled corncobs on the street or the homeless kids hawking lottery tickets, that get fucked. Every fucking year. Forever into infinity.

In a well-known passage from his Theses on the Philosophy of History, the German philosopher Walter Benjamin critiques the ugly underbelly of what we call progress. In offering a reading of Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, a monoprint of an eccentric angel figure, Benjamin reimagines Klee’s angel to be “the angel of history,” who, though desperate to gather and restore history’s wreckage piling before him, is helplessly swept forward by the ceaseless “storm of progress.” The story of Lâm is the story of those who have been left behind by a vision for progress that is as idyllic as the picturesque scenery of Phú Mỹ Hưng — for Lâm too stands before history’s ever-piling wreckage — except that he, unlike Benjamin's angel of history, has to sift through it for reusable scraps.

The book cover

Tuan’s collection takes its title from one of its stories, ‘Gills,’ which stands out from the rest as the only magical realist piece. It tells the story of two siblings, Liên and Tú — children of a loving mother and a crass, abusive father — who one day discover gills just below their ankles after the water recedes from flooded streets. In this engrossing reimagination of Saigon's monsoon season, the two children revel in their ability to swim through the city during its submersion under rainwaters — that is, until their father finds out and eventually devises a way to exploit their peculiarity.

Reading ‘Gills,’ one cannot help but contextualize the story within the planet’s ever-worsening ecological crisis, especially given that with it, extreme flooding will only become more common. Yet, it is unclear what exactly is to be the takeaway from the story (which of course is not in and of itself a problem). In an interview with Texas Tech University Press, Tuan describes ‘Gills’ as a “hopeful story,” a yearning for the younger generations to “have the capacity to be resilient.” Here, however, I find it difficult to agree with the author, for hope and optimism seem naive in the face of the global capitalist economy’s unwaning consumption of fossil fuels. Resilience implies coping, and coping implies that we have no choice but to accept the ecological crisis — and that, we cannot accept.

What opens as a fleeting snippet of an interaction by a bánh mì stall at early dawn expands, story by story, and slowly crystallizes into an intricate and dynamic portrait of contemporary Saigon.

I thus find that the most compelling reading of ‘Gills’ is not as an allegory of the environment, but rather as a kind of literalization of the different and uneven ways that the residents of Saigon move and breathe through the city and its spaces. It is a theme that runs through the broader collection, which is perhaps why I find ‘Gills’ an oddly wonderful title for the book. ‘A Clean Record,’ for instance, ends with the elderly man stuck in traffic, suffocating in the heat and diesel exhaust. In ‘Reusables,’ Lâm walks his dog through a lusciously green golf course in District 7, which he is able to access only because of the lockdown. In ‘Selling Sài Gòn,’ Trang moves through a world of luxury apartments that literally exists in a different atmosphere, skyhigh above the rest of the city. In many ways, Gills makes obvious what we all intuitively understand: that what we singularly call “place” is in no way singular, but rather a pluralistic formation of different material and phenomenological spheres — a beautiful thing, no doubt, were its contours not drawn so brutally by class.

In many ways, Gills: and Other Stories reads like an exercise in world-building. What opens as a fleeting snippet of an interaction by a bánh mì stall at early dawn expands, story by story, and slowly crystallizes into an intricate and dynamic portrait of contemporary Saigon, within which different smaller worlds recursively overlap, collide, and coalesce. In this sense, there is something special about reading the collection in Saigon, where the reader may find themself subsumed into exactly such a confluence of worlds — specifically, of the text in front and the world around.

Against a backdrop of Vietnamese diasporic literature that often overlooks the complexities of modern-day Saigon, Gills feels like a breath of fresh air.

Copies of Gills will arrive in Vietnam eventually, while people outside of Vietnam can order from Texas Tech Press directly as well as find the audiobook version on Amazon and Bookshop.

Whale Worship: Exploring the Role of Whales in Vietnam's Coastal Lore

2026-05-22T08:00:00+07:00

In 1799, the ferocious Tây Sơn army forced the first Nguyễn Emperor, Nguyễn Ánh, and his troops to flee to the sea. While making their escape, a great storm engulfed the retreating army. As their ship’s mast shivered and the hull shuddered, threatening to break it into splinters, a great whale rose from the depths. It lifted the emperor's boat and carried him and his men to safety. To thank the animal, Ánh bestowed upon whales the official title of "Nam Hải Cự Tộc Ngọc Lân Thượng Đẳng Thần," which was shortened to Cá Ông, or “Lord Fish.”

This story, apocryphal as it may be, is not the only such tale of cetacean rescue in Vietnam. Indeed, people up and down the country's coast tell modern-day stories of whales saving stranded fisherman. Mùi, the caretaker of a whale graveyard in Phước Hải Village near Vũng Tàu, for example, told me through an interpreter of a time in 2016 when a whale saved his life. He had been out drinking with a friend and on his trip home, their boat capsized. As the waves pushed him beneath the surface, he thought he was about to die. Suddenly, a large whale appeared under him and supported him on its broad back, shifting and rolling as Mùi lolled and floundered in the current. When eventually the whale steered the elderly man to the safety of another ship, it came as no surprise to Mùi, as he is a devout worshiper of Cá Ông.

A painting featured in Vũng Tàu's whale temple.

The silent guardians of the ocean

I first learned about Vietnam’s whale worship tradition thanks to a single-sentence caption on a photograph that had been entered in a national art contest. I’ve always been enamored with these ancient, intelligent and spectacularly foreign creatures and was curious to learn more about a religion devoted to them. Some of my friends who are native Saigoneers said they were vaguely aware of it, but didn’t know the particulars nor anyone that actually practiced it. The internet offered some information, but to get a better understanding, I needed to venture to the sea.

I traveled about 20 kilometers from Vũng Tàu through a small town and down a construction-ravaged coastal road to a stretch of sand near the sea. After passing beneath a welcome banner, I arrived at a large sand field dotted with mounds topped by tombstones. This rather remote spot is a whale graveyard, one of dozens in the country.

A woman arranging offerings in the whale graveyard in Phước Hải Village.

A woman — who was placing flowers, fresh fruit, glasses of rice wine and lit incense at each grave — paused to talk with me. She explained that she comes from a family of fisherman, and leaving offerings at the graves of the Ông lụy (whales that have washed ashore) and praying to Cá Ông at the site’s temple help to ensure prosperous catches. The fishermen usually work far out in the open ocean in international waters near foreign coasts, so giving offerings also helps to ensure safe journeys.

Mùi, the old fisherman who was rescued by a whale, has managed this graveyard for the past seven years and explained that whales don’t just physically intervene to safeguard against drowning. He recounted an instance of local fishermen working illegally in Indonesian waters. Foreign authorities had appeared in the area and the men were certain they’d be arrested. They shut off their lights and began frantically praying to Cá Ông. Miraculously, they evaded capture and continued on to a very lucrative catch. Mùi stressed that while whales were instrumental in defeating Chinese invaders centuries ago, they are not nationalistic. Rather, they will rescue anyone in need. For example, Mùi recently heard a story about a whale saving an American ship and bringing it to Russian shores. He also added that praying to Cá Ông can bring one good health and luck in finding a husband or wife.

Cá Ông as mortal beings

During her extensive research on whale worship in central Vietnam, scholar Sandra Lantz encountered numerous tales similar to the ones that Mùi shared. For example, around 1950, a man named Ly was fishing outside Phan Thiết when an unexpected storm threw his small ship into peril. He quickly began praying to Cá Ông and sprinkled salt and rice into the water as an offering. Within five minutes, the storm retreated, hovering ominously nearby. A whale then came to his boat and shepherded it to within sight of a nearby mountain and safe anchoring.

Lantz also found in her studies a belief that Cá Ông helps fishermen who perish at sea by returning their souls to shore. If the men’s souls can't make it to land, they will forever wander the open ocean as ghosts, but once brought ashore they can attain eternal peace.

Science offers an alternative to acts that are interpreted as instances of cetacean altruism. During storms, whales face difficulties navigating waves and benefit from leaning against boats, using them as steadying fulcrums. Even with the assistance, sometimes the efforts to stay afloat exhaust the animals to the point of death, upon which currents drag their corpses into the shallows. Similarly, whales will often fight predators not out of any devotion to people, but out of instincts to protect their own young.

The Phước Hải graveyard is home to more than two dozen mounds of varying sizes, each containing the body of a whale that has washed ashore near the tiny village. Each year, as many as 20 whales end up on the beach in the area. In whale worship, there is no specific distinction made between whales and other cetaceans such as dolphins and porpoises, and there have been virtually no scientific studies in Vietnam to ascertain which marine animals live in the area. Most of the animals villagers find are rather small — up to 1.5 meters in length — according to the woman I spoke with, so it’s likely that many of them are not technically whales. Moreover, there was at least one tortoise buried in the graveyard, brought in seemingly out of reverence, though not specifically associated with the religion.

A large burial mound in Phước Hải Village whale graveyard.

One grave in Phước Hải stands out from the rest. An enormous whale washed ashore on December 28, 2017. Mùi claims it was more than 10 meters long, while the woman giving offerings estimated it was closer to 7 or 8 meters. As far as anyone can remember, the 10-ton creature was the largest to have ever arrived in the village, and required a crane to bring it to its current resting place. Similarly sized whales have recently appeared on beaches in other areas of Vietnam as well.

Mùi explained that during its long life, that particular whale had saved many ships throughout the area, not just in Vietnam, but in Thailand, Myanmar and even Russia. However, after it failed to save an overloaded ship during a large storm, it committed suicide. Intentional beaching is, sadly, how Mùi claims the whales find themselves on the village’s shores. Having been unsuccessful in an attempt to rescue a human, they commit suicide out of shame or grief, according to lore.

Alter dedicated to Cá Ông at the Phước Hải Village whale graveyard.

Ông lụy are given elaborate funerals typically reserved for humans. People play drums and offer various fruits, meats, liquor, ghost money and flowers. Lantz notes in her research that Ông lụy are placed in bamboo coffins lined with red paper. Before being interred, the coffin is paraded through the streets so people can offer their respects. Whales have even been rumored to visit harbors during these funeral ceremonies to give a final send-off to their deceased brethren. If a whale is too large to move to the graveyard, and a crane is not available, some villages will elect a guardian to watch over the Ông lụy until the meat has rotted off its bones and can be more easily transported.

According to some believers, the first person to find an Ông lụy is bestowed with great luck, but only the elderly should bury one, because a human soul that the whale may have brought ashore might still be restless and seek to inhabit a young body. Each grave is marked with a tombstone that lists the date of burial for a given whale, as well as the boat or person that originally discovered it.

Cá Ông altar in Phước Hải.

Ông lụy remain buried for three years, a period during which locals like the one I met tend to their graves: replacing offerings and saying prayers. Much like humans, the whales receive anniversary ceremonies 49 and 100 days after their initial burials. Once three years have passed, the bones are dug up and meticulously cleaned. Unlike Vietnamese people’s disinterred remains, which are sometimes kept in the homes of family members, the whale bones are transported to nearby temples, called Lăng Ông, that are specifically reserved for whale worship.

Altar base filled with cetacean bones.

Whale mausoleums

I visited the Lăng Ông in Phước Hải, which rests in the middle of the village just a few blocks from the whale graveyard. In one small room, an altar dedicated to Cá Ông festooned with flowers and incense contains two elaborately carved whale statues and the fully articulated skeleton of an undetermined cetacean. A scrum of bones, including at least a dozen intact skulls, fill the altar’s hollow, windowed base. In addition to the altar room, an impressive multi-room structure serves as a community gathering site as well as a place for whale worshipers to pay their respects. A large platform in the center elevates a huge, freshly painted wooden whale statue.

Entrance to the Vũng Tàu temple dedicated to Cá Ông.

The temple is not dissimilar to many located on coasts throughout the country, including one in the middle of Vũng Tàu itself that I also visited. According to its management board documents, the temple was built in 1824, while emperors Thiệu Trị and Tự Đức provided for it with three dynastic investiture decrees in 1845, 1846 and 1850. In addition to two glass cabinets impressively crammed with large whale bones, it also houses an enormous, almost fully articulated whale skeleton and a huge wooden whale sculpture. Several paintings depict whales blurring the boundary between myth and biology.

Thứ Hải, a monk at the Vũng Tàu whale temple.

Thứ Hải, the resident monk at the Vũng Tàu Lăng Ông for the past 20 to 30 years, explained to me that everyone in the area knows the power of Cá Ông and comes here to pay their respects and ask for prosperity. I talked to him beside a wall covered in aging photographs. The sepia snapshots offered glimpses of whale funerals and festivities going back decades.

In addition to the elaborate funerals, whale worshipers hold annual festivals to honor the marine mammals. The three-day events, which take place on different dates in different villages according to the lunar calendar, feature offerings, prayers, boat races, music and, in some cases, theatrical performances. Different communities celebrate in slightly different ways, but each allows citizens to pay their respects to Cá Ông, pray for loved ones lost at sea, and take a break from normal work schedules. People often wear their finest traditional clothing, decorate their boats and place colorful banners and flags around the city.

Like followers of most other religions, whale worshipers believe in a variety of superstitions. Lantz claims many adherents follow dietary restrictions that forbid the eating of Cá Ông’s assistants — swordfish, shrimp, sucking-fish and giant squid — as well as dog meat, because dogs frighten whales. Similarly, fisherman should not wear jewelry made of claws or teeth as those objects would scare a whale attempting a rescue. If a woman enters a Lăng Ông while menstruating, some believe whales may not save her family’s boats.

At Phước Hải Village whale graveyard manager Mùi (left) and his friend Ngọc (right).

I asked Mùi about the particular dietary restrictions and he compared them to Buddhist practices of only eating vegetarian food on certain days of the lunar calendar — some believers choose to follow this, and others don’t, with room for personal interpretations. He did add, however, that people are careful not to offer chickens to Cá Ông. He wasn’t entirely sure why, but theorized it dates back to ancient times when the calling of a rooster signaled people to venture into the fields, which left their villages vulnerable to invasion. Hải, the Vũng Tàu monk, downplayed the idea of forbidden foods or offering requirements at his temple, claiming that whale reverence comes with no such demands.

Whale worship vs. whale protection

The origin of Vietnam’s whale worship remains unknown. Some scholars have proposed it was introduced in the area by 4^th century seafaring Chăm and 10^th century Khmer people in southern Vietnam. Hindu animist beliefs which influenced early Chăm religions may have helped elevate whales to the status of gods in coastal areas.

Buddhism also offers an explanation. According to one legend, upon witnessing the plight of poor fishermen who were dependant on the tempest-plagued South Sea, Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva tore her cassock into pieces and threw them across the ocean. Each piece turned into a whale tasked with rescuing distressed fishermen. Upon noticing that the newly created creatures were rather small and unable to withstand severe storms, the Avalokiteshvara gathered elephant bones from the forest and gave them to the whales. This made them strong enough to complete their duties, and also gave them their Vietnamese name, cá voi — literally: elephant fish.

If whale worship’s past is unclear, its future is equally uncertain. As younger generations move from fishing villages to large cities and abandon their ancestors’ trade, there are concerns that they will also abandon the religion. Additionally, the radical development of Vietnam’s coasts thanks to roads, housing and tourism projects threatens the very structures that support this tradition. Moreover, climate change is shifting local tides and making the graveyards more difficult to bring whales to.

Whale spinal bones at Phước Hải Lăng Ông.

Mùi, for his part, disagreed that cultural and socioeconomic changes could result in the demise of whale worship. He explained that people here are proud of the practice, and even if they are no longer fishing in the village, they learn how to properly honor Cá Ông from their parents, who learned it from theirs and presumably will pass it on to future generations. Hải echoed this belief and professed to not having witnessed any decline in worshipers in the Vũng Tàu temple. Still, it’s hard to imagine the fervor or dedication of current practitioners withstanding generations divorced from ever seeing, let alone being saved by, whales.

While pre-Đổi Mới policies resulted in the shuttering and destruction of some whale temples, Vietnam's leaders have recently taken steps to ensure this unique practice continues. For example, in 2013, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism recognized the whale festival in Cần Giờ District outside of Saigon as an example of intangible cultural heritage at a national level. Twelve regional festivals in Đà Nẵng received similar recognition in 2016. Perhaps out of respect for the locals’ beliefs, or for its potential as a tourist attraction, Quảng Ngãi Province’s Lý Sơn District has plans to restore a 24-meter-long, 300-year-old whale skeleton and exhibition center with an investment of VND10 billion (US$437,000).

Whale skeleton displayed in Vũng Tàu.

It is easy to romanticize an obscure ancient beliefs and apply modern or idealist values to them. It would be nice to categorize whale worship as a form of nature worship committed to the plight of cetacean species and the biological health of the seas. Nothing, however, suggests its adherents are concerned with, or even aware of, the cataclysmic decline of global whale and fish populations, let alone solving the problem. Mùi claims he has not witnessed a change in the number of whales that wash ashore or a decline in fishing productivity, but his anecdotal observations are hardly definitive, especially in the face of mounting outside evidence. While governments around the world have established hunting moratoriums for many whale species, which has led to minimal increases in populations, their numbers remain decimated thanks to the massive whaling industries of previous centuries.

Perhaps more troubling is the reality that whales, dolphins and porpoises die as a result of the very activities humans request their assistance with. Cetaceans hunt the same fish that people are after, so many of the whales that wash ashore have not, in fact, committed suicide, but instead drowned at sea after becoming tangled in nets.

As I sat sharing shots of rice wine with Mùi, I couldn’t help but be conflicted over whale worship. On the one hand, as a great admirer of whales, I too profess a deep and profound respect for the incredibly intelligent and emotionally astute animals and consider them worthy of our time and offerings. But does the religion not also encourage human’s anthropocentric inclinations at the expense of the natural world? Can a person profess to love and honor a creature while doing nothing to protect it? Should we really want these majestic creatures to kill themselves as acts of penance for not rescuing us? Eight billion humans inhabit this planet, but how many whales remain?

Ultimately, it is not my place to say. After speaking with Mùi, I visited Cá Ông’s altar and lifted a strand of incense while praying for the survival of the whales, a prosperous future for the village, and my own private successes — aspirations that don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The joss stick’s smoke wafted apart in the air, like a whale song echoing into silence as it navigates up from the murky depths.

This article was originally published in 2018.

Exploring Vietnam’s Dynamic, Diverse Artist Residencies [Part Three: Hanoi]

2026-05-12T13:14:00+07:00

When you mention puppets to someone in Vietnam, they will immediately think of water puppets. And if not this traditional art form, frequently relegated to tourism activities, then they will think of children’s entertainment. But Vietnam is in fact home to a small but devoted group of people involved in contemporary puppetry and object theatre because, as TồLô Puppet Theatre Company puts it, the genre holds “magical, unexpected, and sometimes grotesque possibilities.”

Saigoneer’s three-week jaunt across Vietnam to visit the art residences participating in the GoSEA program taught us a lot about the potential and particulars of providing artists with the time and space to create. Host institutions in the south introduced us to the different atmospheres and ethos that each residency can foster, while stops in the central region revealed different approaches to residency outcomes. Our trip to Hanoi supported these observations while underscoring how residencies can cater to different genres of art and production processes.

Local traditions mingle with international movements at TồLô Puppet Theatre Company

There is no confusion about what art form TồLô Puppet Theatre Company focuses on; it’s right there in the name. The group was founded by two Hanoi natives: Linh Valerie Phạm, who studied experimental puppetry and theatre in the USA, and Trần Kim Ngọc, a performer, juggler, and musician who graduated from The Vietnam Circus School and worked with the Việt Nam Circus Federation for nearly a decade before touring with Làng Tôi (My Village). Given their backgrounds and experience with collaborative performances at festivals and events around the world, it’s of little surprise that the residency hosts artists interested in puppetry and adjacent arts that can be integrated into puppetry, such as music, dance, and film.

The pair had just welcomed their first child when we visited, so one of the group's members, Linh Khánh Nguyễn, showed us around the apartment unit in a modern skyrise that serves as both a rehearsal space and lodging for residency participants. She showed off the stunning langur puppets that a visiting artist from Singapore had crafted during his stay before donning the giant trash puppet that TồLô uses in “Thổ địa,” a performance that tackles environmental issues. When staging the show across the region, they sometimes feature a sound artist, emblematic of contemporary puppetry’s ability to embrace tangential art forms.

Linh later brought us to the workshop across town where the team crafts puppets for their own shows and for outside groups, including a massive rat made for the United Nations International School. The array of woodworking and sewing equipment and heavy-duty lacquer tools also allows them to hold workshops with residency participants. Visiting practitioners can also lead and participate in artist talks, field trips, and studio sharing alongside unstructured discourse. TồLô’s knowledge of traditional Vietnamese puppetry, including water puppets, and their relationships with local artisan communities, is of unique value to international artists.

Interest in puppetry, not experience, however, is what matters. Linh, for example, was trained as a physics teacher with an interest in dance, and merely found puppets intriguing during one of the group’s many community activities that aim to spread the spirit of Phá Rối – playful, daring, and joyfully unruly. “I see this company as a community itself; everybody has come from different backgrounds: The circus, puppetry, physics … But when people come here, we can share those differences but also the similarities between us,” she said. “Together we can create something. It brings a sense of belonging when you can contribute what you have to the project and to this community.”

Accomplished photography accompanied by an ice-cold beer

Linh Phạm in the Matca office with a photo from a past show on the window.

Of all the residencies Saigoneer visited, Matca likely has the strongest name recognition. And even if you don’t know it by name, you have probably seen some photos taken by its co-founder, Linh Phạm, in The New York Times and elsewhere. “When I started photography over a decade ago, I was looking for some sort of channel that I could learn the craft from; I was looking for resources that I could inherit to learn from and grow,” he said of the origins of Matca.

Upon attracting a significant domestic and international following, Matca expanded in 2019 from an online repository of resources to a physical space within sight of Hồ Chí Minh Museum alongside a publishing imprint through which they produce their own books. The photographers, artists, curators, writers, and researchers who attended exhibitions, workshops, and talks expressed interest in more involved opportunities to exchange and learn from the Matca team, leading to the organic establishment of the residency program.

Upon entering Matca’s office, visitors will immediately notice the bookshelves wrapping around the room. “As photographers, we just love the medium of books,” explains Hà Đào Matca’s managing editor and program coordinator, and esteemed artist who works with photography and moving image. Amongst the more than 700 photobook titles are a significant number focusing on Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Keeping them is a matter of “preserving legacy; for education purposes as well, because some of these can be used in workshops as reference,” Hà explained.

Matca’s residency allows individuals interested in photography as a practice and critical inquiry to engage deeply with the book collection as well as receive guidance in navigating a city that is rich in tradition and inspiration but difficult to understand intimately. Moreover, residency participants can access formal opportunities, including portfolio critique sessions, promotion via online platforms, introductions to local artists, curators, and cultural organisations, and optional public activities such as artist talks, workshops, and exhibitions.

For all the rigor and prestige associated with Matca, the entire team is quite laid-back and fun. “Having a community is just like having another best friend,” Linh said of the atmosphere they aim for. “You can share ideas and bounce back things that you've been thinking about or been very obsessed about.” While noting that the residency has private Airbnb accommodations and plenty of space for solitary reflection, he added that the most impactful moments of the residency often occur on the open-air rooftop, surrounded by plants, sipping ice-cold beer.

The intangible influence of nature, devastation, and development at ba-bau air

“Around 50km from the center of Hanoi … between agricultural life and industrial life, you come here, you are inside the garden,” interdisciplinary artist and curator/producer Linh Thảo Đinh said as a means of introducing ba-baur air’s physical location. That one-and-a-half-hectare permaculture garden (B.E.E Garden) with hundreds of native species planted for study and cultivation contains the residency’s simple structures that serve as living areas and shared spaces to work, research, experiment, eat, and relax. Most spectacular is the multifunctional Mường community house, which embodies the vernacular architecture, oral cosmologies, and material traditions of the ethnic minority group that lives in the area and of which Linh is a member. This unique environment that occupies a space simultaneously curated and at the mercy of outside influences invites research-led, ecology-minded, and cross-disciplinary artists.

In contrast to Matca and TồLô’s focus on specific art forms, ba-bau air embraces practitioners from a wide range of disciplines who can find inspiration in blooming pomelo trees, granite mountains rubbled for building materials, and the slow march of Hanoian lifestyles into a countryside that has been historically home to Mường communities. More important than what kind of art one makes is how they make it at ba-bau air. The spacious, relatively remote location fosters quiet rumination and self-motivated hours to ask context-specific questions and grapple with difficult answers, not work for final products but ongoing understanding and creation.

In addition to comfort with free time to explore materials, engage with local knowledge, and reflect on output, ba-bau air stresses the importance of openness to guidance. As an experienced and active participant in the region’s art world, familiar with the nuances of local cultures and histories, Linh takes an active role in providing residency participants with access, understanding, and research resources to inform their creative inquiries.

While ba-bau air is removed from Hanoi, it's not disconnected. Thanks in part to Linh’s connections with artists, galleries, and institutions in the capital, residency participants can explore the local art scene through organized visits, exchanges, and public programs. Linh hopes such collaboration can lead to an art festival in the near future, and in the meantime, the field trips into the surrounding countryside provide a wealth of insight and experience, particularly for international artists in search of an immersive environment that would otherwise be difficult to integrate into. But most importantly ba-bau air makes room for collaboration and artistic exchange in informal, unscripted moments. “We eat together, we share the same space together, and that's were maybe some magic happen,” Linh says before noting it's where “duyên” exists.

This concludes Saigoneer’s three-part focus on artist residences. You can read part one (Saigon and Đà Lạt) here and part two (Huế, Hội An and Đà Nẵng) here.

An Ode to Saigon’s Chò Nâu Trees

2026-05-08T09:00:00+07:00

It’s too cold for chò nâu to grow where I’m from, but we still gave it an English name: dipterocarp.

It’s too cold for chò nâu to grow where I’m from, but we still gave it an English name: dipterocarp. Dipterocarp. Say it. Aloud. Dipterocarp. That subtle folding and fumbling of lip, tongue, teeth, precise flexing of thousands of muscles, tendons, cells? It’s far simpler than the efforts the great tree endures to gather water into its roots and coax it up to its canopy.

When walking Saigon’s streets, one only gets a good look at a chò nâu's drab trunk and a craned-neck view of their leaf-filled canopy 30 meters above. But those fragile upper limbs clutch delicate white flowers brushed with pink accents as subtle as a butterfly’s whispering wing strokes. You’ve just never seen them. It’s as if the trees are telling us: my fragile petals and soft fragrances are not meant for you; you would ruin them with your human attempts at appreciation.

But the trunk isn’t drab. Fissures, flakes, flecked scabs and multi-color scales: a complex crust akin to a river delta rich with sediment, silt, species. Can you really look at one and not recognize the beauty of an algae bloom, a shrimp spawn?

Jean-Baptiste Louis-Pierre was born on La Réunion off the coast of Madagascar to a family that made a fortune off sugar. But the business went bankrupt when the government emancipated the plantation’s slaves, and Louis-Pierre was forced to drop out of school, drifting from one colonial post to another before landing in Saigon, where he introduced European aesthetics by lining the streets with chò nâu he gathered in the highlands to protect pasty French skin and indulge foreign concepts of nature.

White spray paint stencil numbers grace nearly every chò nâu in the city, allowing authorities to identify which ones need to be trimmed for power line maintenance or be removed so their roots don’t undermine pavement construction or burst buried water pipes.

Tree #11: Saigon’s chò nâu are older than telephone wires, older than chainsaws, older than nylon, polyester and penicillin. Older than motorbikes, bubble tea, bánh tráng nướng and selfies, older than airplanes and the defoliants they dropped.

Tree #152: When the districts erupted in gunfire, casings clattered against the chò nâu trunks that soldiers took shelter behind. Their shade was balm to destroyed buildings, bombed roads, ruined bodies. They’re right there in the background of the grainy documentary footage. No one notices them.

Tree #78: Saigon’s chò nâu are younger than wind chimes, younger than fireworks, younger than kites, xích lô, and spit-roasting. Younger than áo dài, rice wine and cồng chiêng, younger than walking alone at midnight, feeling great pity for oneself before looking up and finding solace in the immensity of nature.

Tree #187: In regions that experience regular seasons, chò nâu flower and fruit with great precision, but in Saigon’s Mobius strip-climate, their cycle is chaotic, their branches bursting into bi-winged seeds that twirl down like surreal snowfall perhaps no more than once a decade.

Tree #45: First day of Tet, confetti strewn across exposed roots like music drifting across a peaceful cove. What is a concerto to a coral reef? What is the Lunar New Year to a chò nâu?

Tree #123: Imagine the rings inside this tree. They are nothing like the golden rings the chả cá seller on Tôn Thất Đạm wears because she trusts money on her fingers more than in a bank; not like thuốc lào smoke rings blown in the idle hours at the bus depot waiting to take the long journey back to the highlands; and not like the rings of traffic that circle the roundabout where Trần Hưng Đạo points triumphantly towards the shore his spirit guards.

Tree #7: Mostly water with organic solutes: urea, creatinine, uric acid, carbohydrates, hormones, fatty acids, pigments, mucins, inorganic ions including sodium, potassium, chloride, magnesium, calcium, ammonium, sulfates and phosphates — after seven beers with a long walk ahead, I am grateful for the city’s stance on public urination and honored that some element of my makeup will seep through the soil, slip into the tree’s roots, shimmy up its cellulose veins and nourish so little as the tiny tip of a leaf.

Tree #61: In the same way women no longer darken their teeth, we no longer ferry the Saigon River with poles firm as folk rhythms. Bridges cannot span shores clotted with trees. The stumps’ exposed rings on Tôn Thất Đạm resemble the whorled prints of a fingertip robbed of its ability to feel. I stand beside one and like a phantom limb, feel an ache of abandoned shade.

Tree #154: To grow a chò nâu, remove the tips of a seed’s wing and soak it in water for one–two hours; place the seed beneath a thin layer of sterilized soil; in three–four days the seed will sprout; in one year it will reach one meter tall; for its first three-four years it will prefer shade, and then sunlight for the rest of its life; during its life it can reach 40 meters tall; it will outlive you and everyone you love.

Tree #36: To get at one’s viscous resin, one must bore a hole, and let it slowly seep out, the way a child’s closed fist opens in sleep.

Tree #42: Uses for chò nâu include paint, varnish, glue, baskets, boxes, panels, kindling, printing ink, tick repellent, laxatives, diuretics, stimulants, antiseptics, charcoal, perfume fixatives, teeth-blackening agent and caulk for the waterproofing of boats.

Tree #167: Epiphytes attach themselves to trunks by tucking into nooks. These leafy air-sippers, thirsty mist-drinkers do not harm the chò nâu nor benefit it, and thus are like barnacles to a whale or the average human to society as a whole.

Tree #99: Chò nâu speak in a language consisting of photosynthesis and respiration, roots, rhizoids, sap and pollen. Our translators are horrendously overwhelmed, yet undeterred.

Tree #58: Driven by some absurd childhood desire to own a dinosaur, I recently purchased a bird. A Japanese white-eye. Its vibrant green feathers would put a chò nâu's lust for photosynthesis to shame. After six days of furiously flinging its body against wooden cage bars, it escaped. I watched with happiness. I hope it made its way to the zoo: a chò nâu roost, its only hope.

Tree #211: They did it while the city slept so as to not draw attention that would distract from what they were doing. Hugging the trees was a communion between human and plant, not a statement. The authorities looked on, waiting to intervene, and yet, what wrong was being done?

Tree #103: Hunched against its trunk in plain daylight a shirtless man dozes, a needle beside his arm. What do chò nâu know of addiction? Can we find a parallel in their thirst for groundwater, the way their leaves crave carbon dioxide, their urge to be pollinated?

Tree #121: Authorities transplant a few of the trees that are culled for the sake of infrastructure. No survival rates are reported. Is it not easier to uproot a person? To, as my friend Quế Mai says: “Eat each breeze that comes...learn to grow new buds…shudder to bloom… grow my fruit from my bleeding roots”? Surely as a man born and raised on a landmass devoid of chò nâu, I must convince myself this is possible.

Tree #6: Walking down Lê Duẩn, a summer wind releases a torrent of helicopter seeds — the nutlets twirl down and flop uselessly on the concrete. Unable to take root, their fibrous wings slump like the dorsal fins of killer whales depressed in captivity. Something inside me keels the same way.

Vietnamese Painter Một Quả Tắc Creates an Intimate and Gentle World on Silk

2026-05-07T10:00:00+07:00

Silk is an inherently finicky, demanding medium. Yet from the very first encounter, Quế Hương had chose to embrace its temperament and has devoted herself to it for nearly a decade.

Recently, Saigoneer had the opportunity to visit Quế Hương’s living space, which also serves as her creative studio. Greeting us right at the doorstep were her two feline assistants.

Photo by Jimmy Art Devier.

Quế Hương’s love for painting blossomed in childhood and grew stronger as she studied Fine Arts at the University of Fine Arts in Hồ Chí Minh City. While searching for her own artistic identity among various materials, silk chose her, perhaps it was her patience that ultimately won silk over.

When asked about her artist name, “Một Quả Tắc,” Hương explained, “It is just a random name without any particular meaning. Among the larger citrus fruits such as pomelo and orange, tắc is the smallest. And I see myself as still very green and small as well.”

Quế Hương. Photo by Jimmy Art Devier.

The journey of a young artist is rarely strewn with roses. Graduating right as the pandemic erupted, Quế Hương faced the crossroads of careers. She even considered setting aside her brushes to find a stable office job. “Thankfully, at that very time, I had the fortune to meet an art collector who bought some of my paintings, giving me more confidence to pursue this path.”

‘Mơn man’ (Caress)

‘Méow’

Looking at Quế Hương’s works in exhibitions or on social media, you'll be immersed in a gentle realm of grasses, trees, flowers, small animals, and youthful maidens. Her sources of inspiration are never far away. They may be self-portraits, the most ordinary moments of daily life, the people closest to her, or, at times, some strange ideas that suddenly take hold in her mind

The two silk paintings currently in progress that Saigoneer observed offer a clear example. One shows a small cat lounging contently across its owner’s lap in a green floral dress. The other captures a pair of cats in a playful tussle. Each painting feels like a diary entry that Quế Hương has recorded and preserved on silk, allowing those memories to endure. Even when they find new owners, the works are likely to evoke recognition or hold personal meaning for whoever takes them home.

‘Mấy đôi giày đã cũ của tôi’ (My old shoes)

‘Hái sao cho em’ (Picking stars for you)

“I’ve never felt bored, discouraged, or wanted to give up on silk painting, because there are still so many ideas I want to explore and so many things I want to paint.”

This persistence has earned Quế Hương multiple awards and a unique place in the art community. In September 2024, she marked a major milestone with her first solo exhibition, “Xôn xao” (Flutter). The show featured 15 paintings with a poetic color palette, creating a serene space where viewers could escape the chaos outside and lose themselves in her dreamy realm and her meticulous technique.

Silk painting ‘Lập xuân’ (Spring beginning) displayed at the “Xôn xao” exhibition.

Learning the silk painting process

By following Quế Hương through each stage of her work, one comes to truly appreciate the intensive care and labor this art form demands.

‘Xoxo’

The silk fabric used for painting is different from silk used for clothing. It is thinner, has a rougher texture, and is usually coated with a thin layer of glue. If needed, the artist can wash some of it away to make the fabric softer. After securing the silk, she builds a wooden stretcher frame of any size she desires. “One time, I made a frame so large it wouldn’t fit in the apartment elevator, so I had to carry it up the stairs. Later, when taking the painting to an exhibition, I had to ask muscular guys to help carry it down the stairs again,” Quế Hương recalled with a smile.

Silk being coated with glue.

Next, she must stretch the silk onto the frame herself, secure it with pins, and apply glue. “During this stage, I usually have to put the two cats away so they don’t run around and get fur on the painting. Even so, while painting, cat hair still easily sticks to it, so once the paint dries, I use a lint roller to clean it.” When the silk frame is ready, Quế Hương selects her idea, sketches, draws the details, and applies color. She mainly uses watercolor, but also incorporates gouache and Chinese ink when needed.

‘Bật một bản nhạc nhé’ (Let's put on some music)

She added: “Silk painters often work standing at a flat table. I used to do that too. It was so tiring on the neck and legs! Luckily now I have this easel that I can tilt, but it still causes back pain and sore knees.” Despite that, because she loves her craft, Hương still paints diligently for hours on end. “When I get too tired, I just massage myself or go to a parlor!”

Finally, Quế Hương mounts a layer of fabric on the back of the painting. It is usually a smooth fabric with minimal texture so as not to alter the structure and image on the silk. Depending on the “mood” of the painting, she chooses light, dark, or neutral backing fabric. “For dark paintings, I’ll choose gray or black fabric. For warm-toned paintings, I use white. I don’t always add backing fabric though. Some pieces I leave as they are, depending on the aesthetic.”

‘Lặp’ (Repeat)

The recent resurgence of interest in silk painting among young people is an encouraging sign. For Quế Hương, it’s not only a personal joy but also an opportunity for this traditional medium to be reinterpreted in more diverse artistic languages.

“I also want to travel more to recharge and gain new inspiration. Besides that, I hope more people will get to know me as a silk painter,” Quế Hương said, her eyes sparkling as she looked out toward the sunlit balcony.

Photo by Jimmy Art Devier.

To learn more about silk painting and Quế Hương's art practice, visit her Instagram @motquatac.

Exploring Vietnam’s Dynamic, Diverse Artist Residencies [Part Two: Huế, Hội An and Đà Nẵng]

2026-05-06T13:52:00+07:00

A subtle shimmer inherent to the seashells encrusted around its eyes makes Lân Sư Hồ shiver with life and appear as if it will leap out of the warehouse and prance into the ocean where its coral skin once grew.

Standing beside the statue that Tường Danh conceived of and created at AirHue, the residency’s founder, Thanh (Nu) Mai, explained how he encourages artists to “just dream big.” It is then his job as a producer to “adjust and work with them to make the best version of it.”

While visits to artist residencies participating in the GoSEA program in Saigon and Đà Lạt introduced Saigoneer to a range of atmospheres and ethos that artist residences embody, as we discussed in part one, exploring several in the central region helped us understand their aims and approaches to producing work.

Intention, outcomes, and expertise promoted at AirHue

Another work by Tường Danh realized at AIRHue.

“I think our team's ambition is to build really good works that can stand on themselves; we're very fortunate to be in a city where the historical meets the contemporary,” explained AirHue’s in-house curator, Nguyễn Minh Ngọc. Their balance of focus on specific outcomes and embrace of Huế’s unique heritage of arts and crafts is possible because of Thanh and Ngọc’s experience. With more than 20 years of collective involvement in arts management and operations, they have the skills and knowledge to actively steer artists in fruitful directions. Beginning with detailed proposals, the team questions, suggests, guides, and hopes to inspire during weekly meetings to help each artist best realize their vision in a way that is realistic and coherent with the art world, financially and otherwise. “The creative process is very much like participating in a world-building process with the artist, and the thing about world-building is that it's non-exhaustive; there's always more. And the creative process is very much [about] pushing against the limits,” Ngoc summarizes.

Until now, this arduous creative process takes place primarily in and around a classic Huế home in a small neighborhood a few kilometers from the city center. Fruit trees offer shade beside large statues created by past residents and friends, illustrating the emphasis on finished work ready for public exhibition, open studio, or talk by the time the residency ends. Complete with private studios, bedrooms, and shared kitchen and dining room, it's a home base for artists as well as a site of connection. The garden serves as a community meeting point that hosts lectures, film screenings, experimental sound sessions, and workshops, from artists in residence and outside practitioners. And since our visit in March, AirHue announced the opening of a secondary residency site in Kim Sơn artist village, an area known for our much beloved Lê Bá Đảng Memorial Space and Nguyễn Văn Hè’s Art Barracks, which we are excited to check out.

Time spent working individually and with the AirHue team is enhanced by opportunities to learn from the city’s rich legacies via guided visits to local workspaces, artisan villages, and artist studios, alongside meetings with University of Huế students and faculty, depending on needs and interests. During our visit, for example, we travelled to a local artist’s home to learn about and even experiment with a form of paper art he’d invented.

Shortly after we left Huế, Tường Danh’s Lân Sư Hồ was boxed up and shipped off to Saigon, where it went on exhibition at Galerie Quynh as part of a show curated by another former AirHue resident. Such visibility and successful presence in the art world underscore that the big dreams artists develop at the residency are indeed achievable.

In the shadows of monoculture forests, A Sông fosters research and dialogues

Descending a mountain outside Đà Nẵng, the vibrant collage of leaves, vines, bushes, and shrubs comes to a sudden stop, replaced by rows of uniform tree trunks. When looked through, they resemble bare pencils lined up in a factory, a far cry from the lush nature one imagines when staring at the green cliffs from a distance. Covering vast swathes of land in Hoà Phú, the western mountainous region of Đà Nẵng, the harvested acacia is used to make woodchips, paper, furniture, and housing materials. But the unnatural forests are at risk of fire and contribute to landslides and floods. Moreover, when a complex and interconnected ecosystem is removed, an entire chain of organisms vanishes, as evidenced by an eerie lack of bird songs. The impact on human communities is no less devastating.

Xuân Hạ, a cross-disciplinary artist, organizer, and founder of A Sông, a collective of photographers, visual artists, performance artists, curators, and filmmakers, perhaps best known to Saigoneer readers through their Nổ Cái Bùm travelling contemporary art week, grew up near these monoculture plantations. She began exploring them more closely as part of her ongoing research-based and community-focused inquiry and recognized broader ecological and historical patterns of relationships between human societies and natural ecosystems that could inform her art practices. She also formed relationships with local knowledge holders, including environmental experts, social workers, artists, and members of the Cơ Tu ethnic minority group, who are the area’s long-term inhabitants and likely descendants of an indigenous culture. In the process, she became familiar with Toom Sara Village, a recreational space built with support from Cơ Tu individuals.

2024 Nổ Cái Bùm photo by Tống Khánh Hà.

A Sông’s residency program, a natural extension of Xuân Hạ’s research, incorporates Toom Sara as a base of exploration for visiting artists. True to A Sông’s ethos of collaboration and community dialogue, she envisions the artist residency can connect practitioners with worlds beyond familiar art spaces and systems. “I want to show artists here that there is another way outside of institutions to do art; I want to soften the boundaries and encourage artists to engage more with social work, ecological systems, and life experience beyond galleries.”

Xuân Hạ. Photo via Heritage Art Space.

Artists working across genres who are open to exploring these concerns through non-artistic forms of knowledge, particularly indigenous practices and community-based ecological wisdom, will receive support from A Sông’s dedicated team and the networks they’ve cultivated, which include researchers, scholars and artists in studios, museums and libraries within Đà Nẵng. Field trips into the forest, workshops, collective meals, and public sharing sessions, such as open studios, further integrate residency participants into local discussions.

A Sông’s residency is just beginning, but their long-established connections and the successful artistic pursuits of collective members will help ensure visiting artists have illuminating, productive stays. The program is not overly concerned with final outcomes, and while Xuân Hạ hopes for open studios or events upon their conclusion, the larger hope is that enduring dialogues and relationships are formed and knowledge gained for long-term artistic investigations.

Honoring Hội An’s heritage, Kyara Arthouse functions as a trading post of arts, ideas, and inspirations

While A Sông encourages artists to look to the mountains and the communities impacted by environmental degradation, Kyara Arthouse introduces residency participants to Hội An’s rich legacy of arts, crafts, and creative ideas as informed by its history as a regional trading port. As part of Asia’s maritime trade routes, Japanese merchants arrived in Hội An searching for, amongst other items, kyara, a Japanese word for the highest grade of agarwood, or trầm hương. The precious, resin-laden ingredient used in incense, perfume, and traditional medicine gives Kyara Arthouse not only its name, which is hand-painted in Chinese name-seal characters by local artist and calligrapher Ngô Đức Chí across the building’s noren curtains at the entrance, but also explains why several agarwood trees grow in the lush private garden between the Thu Bồn River and the purpose-built art space, creating a clear connection between the residency and the city’s history of exchange.

Hội An’s heritage of cross-pollinated art forms, materials, and sources of inspiration is visible throughout Kyara, including the gallery space’s permanent collection, which includes a growing selection of paintings, prints, artifacts, and textiles from across Asia. Kyara operates as a boutique Airbnb when artists are not in residence, and the private bedrooms and communal spaces contain a thrilling assemblage of original works, particularly lacquer, gouache, and ink from Phạm Ngọc Sỹ, who is the father of Phạm Ngọc Trâm, the residency’s co-founder. We were particularly excited to see an early collaboration with Boris Zuliani from the nearby Một Mét Studio, which showcases the 19th-century wet plate collodion photography process in a unique series of 10 portraits honouring the team of workers who built the house and shaped the aesthetic of the interior’s upcycled wooden furniture and fittings. The riverside trading post for creatives works, Trâm notes, because “as artists you are like curious children, you want to see more of the world. You ask questions, you try new things, you meet new people.”

Trâm, a graduate of Hanoi’s famed University of Fine Arts, the direct descendant of the L'École des beaux-arts de l'Indochine, focuses on silk embroidery, natural fibres, and textile arts with a particular interest in illuminating their significance in Vietnam’s history in her on-site Meo Meo Atelier studio. Meanwhile, the space’s other co-founder, James Compton, is a writer with a multi-disciplinary background in the arts as well as biodiversity conservation and natural resource trade. Their collective appreciation for Hội An’s history, nature, and art allows them to support writers, painters, sound-artists, film-makers and curators who are in search of a focused residence retreat combined with opportunities to engage proactively with central Vietnam. The residency outcomes and duration are flexible, including presentations of works and practice by visiting artists

“I think what artists need the most for the creative flow is space,” James shared when asked about what about Kyara appeals to artists. “It's not just a room. Some artists need an environment, say, an apartment with a lot of artists around. Some artists need the right amount of inspiration and interruption, and they can find at Kyara where art grows and flows … we have enough space and we have a good balance of interaction and separation.”

Trâm then chimed in to emphasize the role of nature. “In art school, we were taught that nature is the best art master. And here in Hội An you have the mountainous area … the river, the islands, the sea.” As the late afternoon sun started to sink towards the river meandering behind the bamboo grove where she sat to show her tapestry, it all made sense. ”Nature, landscape, animals, birds, reptiles, natural dyes, natural fibers; all the ancient wisdom that shows how people in the past understood and lived with nature can be found here in everyday life.”

Saigoneer’s look at artist residencies will conclude soon with a trip to Hanoi and lessons in how the programs can cater to niche communities and practitioners. You can read about our visits to Saigon and Đà Lạt in part one here and our trip to Hanoi in part three here.

Into the Earthy, Quirky World of Kramahan's Accessories and Clothing

2026-04-29T14:00:00+07:00

We paid Nhật, the founder of Kramahan.Clothing, a visit on a windy day in Saigon. This room in the heart of the city has many functions: a living space, a working studio, and also a showroom displaying a huge collection of colorful knick-knacks. If you’re in search of uniquely made little things, this place might be an exciting stop to drop by.

Minh Nhật created the accessories and clothing items for Kramahan himself. On his workbench lies a number of wooden blocks, assorted strings, stones, and key chains — all waiting their turn to transform.

Few people know that, before embarking on this creative journey, Nhật graduated with a Chemistry degree from the University of Science and spent 3 years working in cosmetic product development. His career’s watershed moment came after visiting weekend arts markets, where he recognized the immense potential of tiny but interesting accessories. Once it was decided, Nhật returned to Cambodia, where he was born in 1988, to source clothing and checkered scarves.

“I only started the shop as a hobby, but it was unexpectedly successful. I would haul a big bag [of products] to the market and return empty. I got ‘greedier’ and started opening a kiosk every weekend. About six months later, I quit my job to run the kiosk full-time,” he tells Saigoneer.

The childhood creative spark that grew into a flame

After a time doing reselling, he noticed that sales started winding down, and realized that it might have been time to create his own items.

This wasn’t a random decision. At one point, Nhật considered applying for architecture college, as he’s had a penchant for the arts since he was a little boy: “When I was little, I was quite energetic. We didn’t have playdough at the time, so I dug up actual clay to make figurines, and my mom loved it.”

During the years in the chemistry lab, that artistic inclination only went into hibernation. Sometimes, he would hand-make a card for close friends, but never thought that one day it would turn into a career.

The reawakening of an old passion, coupled with a newly formed link with his second home, Cambodia, resulted in the name Kramahan. According to Nhật, “krama” means checkered scarf in Khmer while “han” is a shorthand for “hand” or “handmade,” a nod to the rustic nature of his creations.

In his workshop, Nhật dabbles in a little bit of everything: coloring, sketching, carving, drilling, sculpting, sanding, knotting, etc. He also learned pottery and knitting to enrich his accessory items. Fashion-wise, his designs are based on linen and brocade, produced by textile workers in small batches.

Interesting items for the curious

Just a glance at Kramahan’s inventor, one will encounter a colorful world crafted from Japanese, Cambodian, or even Thai influences.

Looking closer, customers can probably sense the dedication behind Nhật’s works. He meticulously handles small details and spends time balancing out the shapes and finishes. Beside a sense of personal branding and visual language, Nhật could also employ his chemistry training in how he uses colorants.

Nhật's designs.

With a motto to make items that are aesthetically pleasing, distinctive, and just a little quirky, Nhật aims to make things that he himself must feel drawn to. Whichever pieces that don’t quite satisfy those criteria, he never puts on the market. As the items are all hand-made, each version has its own life and even two earring pieces don’t resemble each other 100%.

Everything can disappear into nature

This is also another philosophy that Nhật abides by. He shares: “I sometimes walk around the city to collect wooden chunks, left behind by the municipal park maintenance department, to use as carving materials. Later, I also ordered better wood stocks like sandalwood and lim, which could push up the prices a bit, but I’ll always disclose to buyers the original sources of the woods.”

To Nhật, each travel experience is also a great opportunity to source crafting materials, like shells or unique pebbles. Everything carries the potential to be turned into wearable art.

“When picking strings to make necklaces or key chains, I would test out the material using heat. If it’s not 100% cotton, I would say no. I hope that everything I create can return to the earth and disappear into nature. Only when there are no alternatives, I would turn to materials that are harder to decompose,” he explains.”

At the moment, Nhật focuses mainly on highly practical designs at affordable prices, though he still nurtures dreams to create more abstract and complicated pieces. In the future, it’s hard to say for sure where Kramahan would go, but many surprises might be in store for Nhật, just like how, back then, his childhood artistic streaks dovetailed with his Cambodian roots to compel him to start Kramahan.

US Presidents, Russian Mascot, and Tintin: The Surprising History Behind Vietnam's Dog Names

2026-04-22T12:00:00+07:00

As Vietnamese society progresses, dogs and cats’ role in our families have gradually elevated to worthy life companions instead of mere animal help in previous generations. While the archive of pet names today seems endless and every day you can easily bump into pets bearing hilariously human names, tasty food dishes, or glorious adjectives, the naming conventions of Vietnamese domestic animals in the past had recurring themes that directly correspond to the cultural and historical atmosphere of when they were coined.

The simplest and most timeless way to name dogs in Vietnam, today or in the past, is still after their coat color. Popular examples include Vàng (yellow), Nâu (tan), Mực (black) or Vện (swirly). Vện is a distinctive coat pattern often seen on dogs related to the Phú Quốc ridgeback, one of a few dog breeds native to Vietnam. The earliest record, and probably most famous dog, from this naming formula was Cậu Vàng, the treasured companion of Lão Hạc in Nam Cao’s titular short story from 1943. This formula, sadly, also spawns the name Xà Mâu, a name often used to describe dogs afflicted with skin diseases that result in patchy skin and fur.

Cậu Vàng as depicted in a 2021 film adaptation of Lão Hạc.

Starting from the 1960s all the way until the decades immediately after the war against the US, a cheeky new naming convention emerged: dogs were named after American politicians with prominent involvement in the war. The most common ones were Giôn (Lyndon Johnson), Ních or Mích (Richard Nixon), and Ki, Kiki, or Kít (Henry Kissinger). In writer Nguyễn Quang Lập’s personal essay ‘Con chó Giôn của tôi’ (My dog, Giôn), part of the essay collection Ký ức vụn (Fragmented Memories), he reminisces about his most favorite furry friend growing up:

“His name was Giôn, meaning Giôn Xơn [...] When we first brought him home from Aunt Thé’s house, the family called him Giôn Xơn, but it proved to be hard to say, some said Giôn Giôn Giôn, some called him Xơn Xơn Xơn. He was as small as a banana blossom, eyes wide in confusion. A week in, he still didn’t know what his real name was, so we agreed to call him just Giôn.”

These were fascinating expressions of passive aggression that were also short and vague enough for plausible deniability. In today’s social climate, it is a little bizarre to think of anyone naming the beloved fur babies they pamper and care for after something so entrenched in wartime bitterness, but one could look into the role that animals once occupied in the typical Vietnamese household for a possible answer.

Across Vietnamese history, any animal kept at home usually served a specific utilitarian role to justify its husbandry: water buffaloes ploughed the field, chickens laid eggs, ducks gave feathers, etc. Dogs protected the home and cats hunted rodents; they often weren’t seen as pets or family members. These clear HR boundaries might have provided sufficient emotional detachment for people to engage in some sassy name-calling.

The popularity of the comic series Tintin helped Milou become one of the most common dog names in Vietnam. Image via Studio Brillantine.

Anecdotally, with every new decade, the prevalence of Giôn and Ních seems to have waned, perhaps due to their very glaring non-Vietnamese spelling. Ki and Kiki, however, are still going strong — dare I say, because, removed from their historical origin, they sound rather… cute? After the war ended and as quality of life in Vietnam improved, our family structure opened up to welcome more dogs and cats as life companions, and their naming convention also shifted to reflect this changing dynamic.

From the 1970s until now, there are increasingly diverse and affectionate ways to name pets: after a favorite food or fruit like Quýt, Mì, Bánh Bao (because people love food and their pets); just a dude’s name like Huy, Minh, An (because people see pets as their children); or after a wish of wellness like Lạc, Lộc, Như Ý. Descriptive names based on appearance, of course, are timeless — like Vàng, Cam, Nâu, Xù, Bông, Béo, Vằn, and more.

Misha, the mascot of Moscow 1980, on a stamp. Image via Wikimedia.

There are, still, two common names with cultural significance that arose during this time period. Firstly, Mi Lu, Lu Lu or Lu originated from Milou, a white Wire Fox Terrier in Les Aventures de Tintin. This French-language comic was one of the most iconic European series of the 20^th century, documenting the thrilling global adventures of Tintin, a Belgian reporter, and his dog Milou. Legally dubious Vietnamese translations started circulating pre-1975 and continued throughout the 1980s, as part of the rise in French-language cultural products in Vietnam at the time, which brought Lucky Luke, Schtroumpf and Tintin to local readers.

Lastly, one less common but fascinating Vietnamese dog name with surprisingly European origin is Mi Sa or Misa, local versions of Misha, the official mascot of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. Misha is a cuddly bear designed by children’s illustrator Victor Chizhikov, widely deemed the first character from a sporting event to achieve major commercial success. Moscow 1980 — and by extension, Misha — was also historically significant to Vietnamese because it was the first Olympics in which Vietnam participated after the war ended, even though we didn’t win any medals.

5 Quixotic Books About Vietnam for When You're Craving a Little Quirky Read

2026-04-21T10:00:00+07:00

There are too many good Vietnamese books to recommend, let alone read.

If you search around online, you’ll find some pretty good lists to steer you to works translated from English and written by diasporic writers. There are also a few publishers who focus on the genre, such as Curbstone Press’ now-completed Voices From Vietnam series, which featured several Saigoneer favorites, including An Insignificant Family by Dạ Ngân and The Cemetery of Chua Village by Đoàn Lê. The newly established Major Books recently released Water: A Chronicle by Nguyễn Ngọc Tư and the first English version of Making a Whore by Vũ Trọng Phụng.

Popular works by authors like Bảo Ninh, Ocean Vuong, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai are recommended, rightfully so, all the time. But what if you are looking for something a little stranger, lesser-known, or quixotic?

Saigoneer has assembled a list of quirky, off-kilter, or overlooked books to supplement the familiar titles for you. While unlikely to occupy a bookshop’s limited selection of Vietnamese literature, they can all be tracked down and are very much worth the effort.

1. McSweeney’s 78: The Make-Believers

This doesn’t look like a book*. The Make-Believers arrives in the form of a cardboard cigar box with a lid featuring seven brooding figures smoking cigarettes. Opening it reveals a back lid depicting three more writers, also smoking cigarettes, as well as three pieces of literature. The smokers are all members of DVAN, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network, a multi-genre collective. In 2023, ten members met in France for a writers residency, and this collection, edited by Thi Bui and Vu Tran, captures the spirit and conversations of their time together and serves as an introduction to the group and Vietnamese diasporic writers, in general.

When the music industry was operated via physical CDs put out by record labels, an occasional sampler disc would be released with a track or two from each artist on a single label as a means of introducing the cohesive sound or ethos shared by the label as a whole. The main 182-page The Believers book functions much this way for DVAN. Self-described as spanning “from highbrow to lowbrow, proper to naughty, logical to absurd, and painful to funny,” it's a great way to acquaint yourself to the energy, styles, and concerns of some of the diaspora’s most accomplished writers.

A heart-wrenching story of regret tinged with ghosts set in Đà Lạt by Vu Tran; a collection of politically charged poems by Bao Phi; and a snapshot of life within early 2000s American rave culture by H’Rina DeTroy are amongst the standouts. The box, beautifully illustrated by Thi Bui, of The Best We Could Do fame, also contains a hilarious glossary of broken Vietnamese as understood by Doan Bui; and a separate collaborative poem with lines from each resident assembled by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, DVAN’s co-founder along with Viet Thanh Nguyen. Like the best label samplers CDs of the 2000s, not every piece will be your jam, but at least a few will play on repeat inside your head, and you’ll have an easy way to get an overview of a larger scene.

*Technically, this is a special edition of a literary journal, but it features a book-length selection of short stories, essays, and poems, and literary journals deserve more love.

2. Wetland Plants of the Mekong Delta

Did you know the Mekong Delta is home to 698 different species of plants? You can read the names of each one, marveling at the pretty sounds such as Ipomoea triloba and Digitaria setigera in Wetland Plants of the Mekong Delta. After a brief but instructive 40 pages introducing the region’s water and soil characteristics and the plants that occupy the region, you'll find a listing of the scientific name and group type for all 698. Then, it's page after page of gorgeous, glossy photographic plates of plant species. Numerous images of different plant parts — such as stamen, flower, fruit, pistil and leaf — are presented along with a sentence of notable characteristics and their habitat.

Intended mainly for scientists and researchers, Wetland Plants of the Mekong Delta may function best for average readers as a coffee table text. The photos do feature the Vietnamese names along with scientific ones, making it perhaps the most niche vocabulary study tool available.

And if you’re like me and draw pleasure and inspiration from plants, having the a verticle cross section of a Canalavia lineata in reach is a particular gift. Saigoneer’s favorite botany illustator, Phan Thị Thanh Nhã, contributed several works to the text. It's a travesty that all our daylight hours are not adrift in a melaleuca peat swamp, but at least we have this book brings tidings from those magical realms. And next time we visit, we will be able to identify a few plants, much to the chagrin of any non-plant nerds you are traveling with.

3. Down and Out in Saigon: Stories of the Poor in a Colonial City | Haydon Cherry

Few people associate fun with academic texts, but this work by Hayden Cherry offers a thrilling opportunity to picture turn-of-the-20^th-century Saigon like no other work. Pushing back against conventional efforts to understand history through significant dates and powerful figures, Cherry identifies six regular individuals to explain what average life was like in the colonial capital.

Relying on archival documents, including police records across several languages, he provides conjectures for what decisions were made by a prostitute, a Chinese laborer, a rickshaw puller, a Catholic orphan, an incurable invalid, and a destitute Frenchman. Readers are left with an overarching understanding that, within the turbulent time period, much was beyond the control of society’s lower and middle classes, while happenstance and the whims of the elite reverberated across the populace.

Even though 1900s Saigon was only a few generations ago, the time period feels utterly impenetrable compared to the present landscape. While it is a quick and light read, as far as academic texts go at least, what I appreciate most about Down and Out in Saigon is how intimately it renders the realities of living then. It can be difficult to imagine yourself as a colonial authority or a rich landowner, yet when entering the experiences of ordinary citizens, it's possible to envision yourself there and thus discover Saigon anew. It’s bold to say, but to best understand Saigon today, you should pick up this book and go back 130 years.

4. Parallels | Vũ Đình Giang

This list could use a novel, and this is a strange one! Parallels by Vũ Đình Giang, translated by Khải Q. Nguyễn, upends expectations from the beginning. Perspective shifts between characters and epistolary interludes while surrealism creeps in through a series of bizarre behaviors, such as attempts to drown the sun in a crude sluice made with cleaning supplies or plans to murder an adopted puppy. And just when you get the sense the book is content to list on via a nonlinear series of depictions of urban ennui, violent incidents whose veracity cannot be questioned take place. It becomes a revolting examination of humans’ propensity for evil.

Parallels is frequently presented as the first modern homosexual story published in Vietnamese. Hearing that, in a relatively conservative environment, you might expect the book to take a restrained, understated approach to discussing gay sex, but it’s graphic and intertwined with violence. These lurid elements, combined with the experimental writing style is a perfect contrast to many of the popular novels that adhere closely to conventions and deliver near-Disney-esque levels of family-friendly entertainment. It’s nice to be reminded that not all books that make it from Vietnam to the world play it safe, and some have the potential to shock and challenge as well as entertain.

Read Saigoneer’s full review of Parallels here.

5. The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam | Michael G. Vann and Liz Clarke

Do you like to learn about the selfish cruelty of colonialists and root for the oppressed Vietnamese who employ trickery to outsmart them? Want to do it while looking at colorful illustrations? The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt, an entry in Oxford University’s Graphic History series, which tells intriguing and largely unknown stories with a comic style, is one of those elusive works that is as educational as it is enjoyable.

The core of the book’s pleasure rests in the story itself. France’s empire-building involved “modernizing” Hanoi in western terms, and the transporting of Parisian elements resulted in some unintended consequences. Plague-carrying rats ran rampant via the newly constructed sewer system that connected to the private dwellings of rich French residents. Colonial officials responded by offering a bounty on the rats as issued per submitted tail (dealing with an entire corpse was deemed undesirable by authorities). Inevitably, locals would simply cut the tails off rats so their revenue stream would continue to breed and even open rat farms outside of the city.

The graphic novel provides a great lesson in hubris and unintended consequences that applies to contexts far beyond colonial Vietnam. But it should be particularly interesting if you are interested in the nation’s history as its filled with asides and anecdotes, including the story behind the statue of liberty that once stood in Turtle Lake. Clever layout decisions, such as including rendering Vietnamese dialogue red-bordered speech bubbles and French in blue to show how the two groups lived side-by-side yet maintained only a minimal understanding of one another, enhance the experience.

Following the graphic novel, there are extensive prose sections that delve into the primary sources used, offer historical context for those not familiar with Vietnamese history and, most interestingly, a “making of” discussion that reveals how the book was envisioned and completed, offering a powerful guide for how to find and tell stories that make history engaging, which is something Saigoneer can certainly get behind.

Read Saigoneer’s article about The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt here.

Exploring Vietnam’s Dynamic, Diverse Artist Residencies [Part One: Saigon and Đà Lạt]

2026-04-21T09:40:00+07:00

What is an artists-in-residence program? This simple question arose repeatedly when Saigoneer explained to friends and peers that we would spend three weeks traveling throughout Vietnam, visiting the nine local art residencies taking part in the GoSEA program.

While groups and activities similar to art residency programs emerged alongside art academies in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe, the concept solidified and gained popularity in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the west. Broadly understood as an arrangement where a host institution provides an artist with time, space, and resources to pursue their work in a new environment, they have a range of aims, including supporting artists with professional development and the creation of new or ongoing work, as well as fostering cultural exchange and community enrichment. During our trip, we learned that residencies can prioritize and approach these goals in drastically different ways while catering to unique types of artists in diverse contexts.

Rare Sea: a central hub plugged into Saigon’s energy and history

“I've identified needs in the community and opportunities for exchange. And ultimately, although a gallery would be cool, having an arts organization made more sense,” explained Luke Schneider of the motivations to found Rare Sea with Nguyễn Trà My earlier this year. While Rare Sea has gallery space to hold exhibitions, it has room for much more. The organization hosts exhibitions, public programming, workshops, professional development events, and an international residency program in a classic tube house on Đặng Thị Nhu Street, just two blocks from the Fine Arts Museum.

"the forest lives as unfinished film reels" works, from left to right, by Aliansyah Caniago, Hoàng Vũ and Rab.

Saigoneer readers may be familiar with Rare Sea thanks to its first exhibition, ”the forest lives as unfinished film reels.” Once we’d passed through Aliansyah Caniago’s first-floor installation, which includes a haunting dwelling constructed with 35mm reels, and stopped on the second floor to see Rab's ink on silk maps depicting the dissaperance of tigers and listen to Hoàng Vũ’s soundscapes that incorporate the noise recorded during the construction of the building’s facade, the Rare Sea team showed us around the rest of the building, which includes shared studio space overlooking the city.

Rare Sea co-founder Luke Schneider.

“The studio space is not only where they [the artists in residence] practice making art, but also where they meet people and shape how they move around in the residency,” explained Lại Minh Ngọc, the residency’s coordinator. Movement is a key component of the Rare Sea residency program, as artists working across all mediums are expected to get out and engage with Saigon and its many layers of history, culture, and communities. “It's very important for them to have a starting point and then when they are done exploring, we have a space that they come back to and then reflect on their research and their practice,” she said.

"Rare Sea's studio space (left) and a portion of the second floor that can be used for additional studio space or for exhibitions and events.

Rare Sea’s strong connection with the local art scene and wealth of research knowledge enables the curatorial and technical teams to guide artists who are self-motivated and arrive with project goals that are open to the transformative influence of Saigon and its inhabitants. Rare Sea arranges field trips, studio visits, and events. While there are no expectations regarding final outcomes for residency, Rare Sea anticipates collaborative works, co-curated events, exhibitions, film screenings, readings, and workshops that reveal the invention, reflection, and discovery each artist underwent. The program emphasizes introducing international artists to Vietnam while raising the visibility and opportunities for Vietnamese artists. Such cross-cultural exchange, Luke explained, “can be quite beneficial for the artist in the sense that it's a stepping stone and a learning experience … that puts them in a position to then go on and do something else.”

Phố Bên Đồi achieves art through institutional collaboration in Đà Lạt

After visiting Rare Sea, we traded Saigon’s sprawling snarls of traffic and a vibrant international art scene typified by themes of departure and return, loss, recollection, and reinvention for Đà Lạt’s peaceful, pine-covered hills and somber, solitary vibe that calls to mind Khánh Ly’s romantic renditions of Trịnh Công Sơn songs. There, we met with Nguyễn Trung Hiền, the founder of Phố Bên Đồi Creative Studio. Having been born and raised in the city, he has watched with concern as it expands beyond its infrastructure limits at the expense of its small-town charm and inspiring serenity.

Greenhouses, farms and windmills comprise the outskirts of Đà Lạt

“Đà Lạt has long been known as a city of education, research, and leisure, with a cool climate year-round and a rich, diverse agricultural landscape. Its population includes migrants and indigenous communities, creating a culturally diverse environment,” Hiền explained. “Today, creativity has become central to Đà Lạt’s sustainable development, creating opportunities for artists and experts to come together and contribute to the city’s future.” This future, Hiền believes, can best be achieved through local and international partnerships. Since its founding ten years ago, Phố Bên Đồi has worked with the British Council, UNESCO, L'Institut français, and Goethe-Institut, as well as the city’s People’s Committee, and various corporate sponsors to create a wide range of public programs across music, visual arts, and architecture, including one of our most beloved public mural projects.

Nguyễn Như Bảo Khánh, Phố Bên Đồi’s manager, helps conduct a youth orchestra (left) and Phố Bên Đồi’s founder Nguyễn Trung Hiền (right)

Their recently launched artist residency program aligns well with Phố Bên Đồi’s goals and resources. They are situated in a more than 600-square-meter physical location that includes event and working spaces, studios, an art gallery, a live music venue, a ceramics workshop, a STEAM experience space, a library, and a cafe with an art shop. This gives artists who want to engage with the community opportunities to lead and participate in research, performances, discussion panels, workshops, and development programs with a particular emphasis on connecting with young people and university students. Because Đà Lạt was officially recognised by UNESCO as a Creative City in the field of music in 2023, Phố Bên Đồi is particularly interested in hosting musicians, music educators, and music researchers. Residency outcome goals are flexible, but collaboration is key. “When talking about the outcomes of a residency,” explained Phố Bên Đồi manager, Nguyễn Như Bảo Khánh, “what we value most is the connection between artists and the community. That is the core idea behind our motto, ‘Art Connects Us.’”

From left to right: Phố Bên Đồi's co-working space, a partnering ceramics studio, cafe, and multipurpose space.

Rigorous art achievement amidst Cù Rú’s creative chaos

Just down the road from Phố Bên Đồi stands its aesthetic opposite. Cù Rú occupies a former plot of agricultural land that has been repurposed as a bar, partially contained in an old greenhouse. Visitors are met with sensory overload as a cavalcade of oddities occupies every direction: paier-mâché head with glowing LED, single golden sandal, windchimes hanging from a broken fan, busts of military figures, traditional glass paintings, plastic bus station benches, stone statues, birds nest filled with ping pong balls, a disco ball transformed into a helmet, literary magazines, knockoff Disney toys, and countless paintings, sculptures and ceramics. Behind the bar are rows of jugs and bottles filled with rượu and local fruits and herbs. The back garden ungoverns itself into a tangle of weeds in the distance. Many know of Cù Rú, rightfully so, as a quirky bar essential for quixotic folk in search of acceptance and good times. It’s also home to a thriving artist residency program.

Art is always on display at Cù Rú as well as found objects and in-house distilled rượu. Works in the center by Karina Kristina titled MULTIFACED

Cù Rú opened in Saigon because members of the Sao La artist collective decided it was more fun to turn their apartment into a bar and invite friends over than it was to go out. “Cù Rú is a space where friends, artists, and people who love art can come to meet and have fun. It’s a place to find joy,” said Nguyễn Kim Tố Lan, a multidisciplinary artist and Sao La cofounder. The move to Đà Lạt in 2020 gave Cù Rú more space to host events and distill alcohols, while providing the Sao La Collective with additional space to create art and invite artists to join meaningful conversations while uncovering inspiration in the city's cultural, material, ecological, and social fabric.

At all hours of the day, Cù Rú exudes a calm, accepting vibe.

Artists from a wide range of disciplines, backgrounds, and goals typically work for a month or two in one of Cù Rú’s three private studios. Access to lacquer, ceramics, and wood-metal workshops allows them to experiment, exchange, and develop projects in the fresh air of a nature-oriented environment. Casual meetings with local artists and shared meals, as well as planned workshops, talks, and presentations, deepen their connections with the location and its communities. “The idea here is that during your stay, you don’t need to feel pressured to produce a finished work immediately. What you gain are new experiences and perspectives that are different from your home environment,” Lan summarized.

Artwork on display in one of the three studios by Nguyễn Kim Tố Lan (left) and Dương Văn Tốn (right).

Such a laid-back ethos and embrace of casual hours doesn’t mean Cù Rú isn’t rigorous, however. Canvas streaked with stunning acrylics, delicate ceramics comprised of carefully collected sediment samples, silk paintings, and mixed media works on display from past and current residents are testaments to the level of skill and dedication the space attracts. The works were bathed in shifting lights and splashed with music on the night of our visit. Lan sat on the floor for her first-ever DJ set as part of a scheduled music night. Guests danced, bartenders poured rượu cocktails with ingredients like fermented tobacco and mountain plum, and resident artists showed off their work to new friends in the background. The entire scene exemplified what Lan had told us earlier: “If artists come here with flexibility, a sense of humor, and an open mind, they will fit in well … This place is open to everyone, as long as you come with a friendly and positive spirit.”

Cù Rú and Sao La co-founder Nguyễn Kim Tố Lan is an artist across many genres including laquer, acrylic, ceramics, and in this case, live music.

The southern leg of Saigoneer’s exploration of Vietnam’s artist residencies revealed how diverse they can be in terms of vibes, resources, and structure. Visiting residencies in the central area expands on these observations in part two, while part three looks at Hanoi to considers the variety of mediums that the residencies cater to.

Far From Vietnam: A 1967 French Anti-War Film Grapples With Its Own Contradictions

2026-04-18T21:26:38+07:00

French cinema experienced a creative renaissance in the 1960s with arguably the most influential movement in its history, the French New Wave. Intellectuals within this movement strived for new techniques to tell stories in ways never seen before. Most of them were socialists who were against the American war in Vietnam.

While the filmmakers were often at odds with the general public on many topics, in this situation, both sides' views were aligned. French society viewed the intervention as aggression against Vietnamese people’s right to self-determination. After the escalation in 1965, public opinion was strongly on the Vietnamese side. Therefore, when Robert Bozzi, a Parisian gallerist, organized an operation to send medicine to Vietnam with the help of many artists, it was rather surprising that local cineasts were silent.

Bozzi pointed out the matter to his director friend Chris Marker, who then decided to create a project for Vietnam. Always seen as separate from his contemporaries because his works resemble those of an essayist rather than a director, Marker might be less famous than some of the most renowned directors of this period. He would progressively work on the relationship between political engagement and art throughout his filmography. Loin du Vietnam (Far From Vietnam), the cinematic work that was born of this initiative, is no exception.

The film poster.

Loin du Vietnam is hard to classify. Marker gathered a group of more than 150 cineasts, intellectuals, technicians, and historians to work on the film voluntarily, including Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais who served as directors with him. At first, the project was intended to be a cohesive piece of work from every participant, but it evolved into an 11-chapter movie released in 1967. A militant essay criticizing the US intervention in Vietnam, it goes further than simple political commitment and mixes fiction and documentary to offer different perspectives on the event, going from historical review to personal, intimate thoughts.

War of the rich against war of the poor

The entire film's perspective on the war is established on the outset via an opening voice-over sequence:

“On one side, the United States of America, the largest military power of all time. Since 1965, the start of the escalation, the Americans have thrown over a million tons of bombs on North Vietnam, more than those launched on Germany during World War II. A country whose 200 million people spend more on wrapping paper than 500 million Indians spend on food has many resources to give its army. Every morning in the gulf of Tonkin, the aircraft carriers of the 7th Fleet are filled with bombs. It’s a war of the rich. On the other side, it’s the war of the poor, that of 17 million North Vietnamese and their compatriots in the South who fight for their independence. They are the poorest but not the weakest. They are the least in number, but not the most alone.”

Still from the film showing Vietnamese soldiers.

The contrast described here is even more striking in the images: the US, armed with boats filled with rows of bombs, dominates the hostile environment of the sea with metallic and mechanized power. After this shot, the Vietnamese blend into the fields with their clothes covered with leaves, trying to use their surroundings as an advantage. The message is clear: the scale of the war is not balanced. But the stakes are where the true fundamental unfairness of the war lies, as stated shortly after the previous quote: North Vietnam fights to claim “the right of the poor to create, for progress, a society based on something besides the interests of the rich,” whereas the US fight to “show the world that revolutionary struggle is a dead end.”

The disparity of resources, which emphasizes the cruelty of the one-sided aggression, is illustrated by Joris Ivens, who had just released an acclaimed documentary on North Vietnam at the time, in several chapters of the film. In the first chapter, entitled ‘Bomb Hanoi,’ he shows footage of the shelters people in Hanoi have learned to develop in response to the incessant bombing. Buried along the roads, the cement tubes were mass-produced using casts in wooden molds, designed to be accessible shelters that civilians could find easily and quickly in case of sudden raids. Ivens captured the unexpected serenity found on Hanoi streets, acknowledging that “by living with them, one becomes calm like them. And certain of victory.” The unbothered will is poignant, even more so when one realizes that this is the calm before the storm, which is the next shot. The loud sounds of the sirens interrupt the tranquil atmosphere, and everybody seeks refuge in the shelters. And yet, amid this chaos, some are still confidently walking through the streets.

Boys playing beside solo sidewalk bomb shelters, Old Quarter, Sommer Mark, May 1968.

The original footage captured by Ivens shows the power imbalance, like a modern David and Goliath. Even though the opposition has overwhelming power, resilience is the key to victory. The parallel with the myth is pushed even further by the voice-over: “On the American side, the same ignorance of the adversary. American society has a principle: the poorest is always the least equipped. Poverty can be the basis of moral strength superior to the rich aggressor and America doesn't understand this.”

War as a spark of polarized reactions

To emphasize how the conflict was relevant to citizens around the globe, Loin du Vietnam features footage from outside Vietnam. William Klein effectively offers a perspective of the war by manifesting it through people’s emotions. A renowned street photographer, he adopted direct cinema aesthetics, which entail hand-held cameras and portable sound systems to capture the raw emotions in different live demonstrations.

William Klein

As the only US citizen of the group at the time, Klein had the opportunity to travel there to film without being asked too many questions. His footage of the demonstration on Wall Street on May 1, featured in the second chapter entitled ‘A Parade Is a Parade,’ offers nuanced perspectives to the project. It was originally an anti-war parade in the famous New York financial district, as can be read on the signs of demonstrators walking the picket line: “The rich get richer, you get drafted.” But Klein goes further, and true to direct cinema’s aim to represent reality, he stands in between the demonstrators and the crowd of traders gathered for the occasion, who boo the protesters before screaming “Bomb Hanoi” in unison.

More than just a figure behind the camera filming both sides, Klein was also an instigator, provoking heated debates, as shown in the last chapter of the movie called ‘Vertigo,’ which focuses on the famous parade led by Martin Luther King on April 15, 1967. This was one of the biggest demonstrations for peace, gathering more than half a million people from various socioeconomic backgrounds to march from Central Park to the United Nations. This variety gave the director room to spark discussions, some of which were very heated. Klein decried the war through the initiation of debates, trusting that, because the war is so unjustified and absurd, his ideas would eventually prevail.

Photo shown in the movie, taken during the April 15, 1967 anti-war demonstration in New York.

Manichean war in a complex world

While it’s represented as an unjust American intervention against the self-determination of the Vietnamese people, this war is embedded in a complex geopolitical situation. The film acknowledges this history in the didactic fifth chapter, ‘Flash Back,’ which starts with the First Indochina War. The chapter doesn’t shy away from how French colonialism precipitated and contributed to the US’s imperialist involvement. The parallel between those two imperial aggressions is shown historically: documentary footage and a voice-over bring up important moments of colonial history in Vietnam, but end up in comic strips fighting each other. This technique is clearly inspired by the Situationists, whose influence was at its peak at the time of the movie. The Situationists were a political group merging avant-garde artists and far-left militants. Their particular aesthetic, called le détournement, involves using footage of comics, ads and movies and changing the context to protest against capitalist societies and the effects of over-consumerism.

Situationist International using the détournement, text by Raoul Vaneigem and image by André Bertrand, 1967. Sarcastic comic image used to address culture as a commercial product in capitalists societies.

This connection to a niche political movement serves as a reminder that the movie is directed by a group of French intellectuals and self-described Marxists outside of the general public. While their perspectives represented an undeniable part of the western opinion on the American War, they didn't reflect the whole of it. Most of this group was already against imperialism during the era of French colonization and the First Indochina War. Amongst the average French layperson, anti-war views only started becoming more popular during the decades of the American War in Vietnam.

In January 1948, a survey included the question “What were the most important events of 1947?” and so few French respondents were aware of the Indochina War that it was grouped in the “Other” category — which amounted to 6%. In 1966, however, when queried about the American involvement in Vietnam, 41% of the people disapproved, four times higher than the 10% that showed approval.

The film becomes more ambiguous in Alain Resnais’ chapter ‘Claude Ridder,’ which portrays a fictional French bourgeois intellectual performing a long monologue about his struggle to support Vietnamese people. This character, meant to be despised, speaks his mind in brutal honesty about his contradictory feelings. He’d love to support the Vietnamese people wholeheartedly, but cannot fully put himself in their shoes. For example, he explains his turmoil about the war by drawing an inevitable connection with his past experience in World War II as a member of the Resistance against Nazis:

“The Germans were monsters, no visceral problems. I still feel a kind of animal panic when I hear German spoken. Then I remember the last days when suddenly, near a small village, we ran into an American armored division. The Jeeps, the heavy artillery, the tanks, chewing gum, 1944. We were rather happy to see them arrive. After all, we had no ammunition, I owe the Americans my life. I will always love them. Until the end of time, I’ll continue to kill Germans and love Americans. Except the Americans are the Germans of the Vietnamese. Everything gets complicated.”

A still from the ‘Claude Ridder’ chapter showing Alain Resnais’s fictional character, who can also be found in his movie Je t’aime, je t’aime (1968).

He feels that, as a French person, it’s almost hypocritical to protest after the long history of colonization, that it’s futile to just “protest” from the other side of the world, while people give their lives in battle. He also feels that it's reductive to focus on the Vietnam War while a lot of other people also face violence and aggression. All of this piles up into an overwhelming sense of being ill-equipped to address the issue that his intellectual morals can’t disregard, and creates visible uneasiness towards a situation that should be simple.

This character can be seen as a fictional mirror of the directors, and a stand-in to voice their dilemma: they want to capture the war truthfully, but in order to do this, they need to take a step back and look at themselves picturing the war.

Letting the war ‘invade’ us

The fictional representation of bad faith created by Resnais raises the question of the role of the outsiders, full of their own biases, in a war, and how art can tackle the complex subject. This necessity in maintaining a critical distance to wonder about the role of everyone in the conflict is what leads to the deepest layer of the movie. Godard tries to answer this question in a chapter called ‘Camera Eye,' where we can exclusively hear him reflect. The footage feels at first even more off topic: it is mostly him behind a huge camera, and we almost can’t even see his face. The topic is clear: as a French director, why is it important to protest against the American war in Vietnam?

Jean-Luc Godard

Godard begins his monologue with what he would have filmed, if he could have gone there: he wanted to describe how a cluster bomb impacts a naked body or the effect of defoliation on humans, and more. However, the director was not able to go there to execute these ideas; he tells us he asked Hanoi for authorization, but was refused. He is very humble about it, yet we can feel a touch of pain while he explains that he agrees with this refusal, because his ideology was still vague, and more than anything, falsely generous. It cannot come from the bottom of his heart, as he hadn’t experienced it: “It seemed difficult to address certain topics, to speak of bombs when they don’t fall on your head.”

Building on this idea, he chose to “let Vietnam invade us.” This means seeing it as a symbol, “Vietnam” here is not the country, but a more general image of resistance. The “invasion” means realizing the importance of the conflict, and that it’s not alone. Many other countries are facing imperialism, and Vietnam is a synonym of resistance when the director quotes Castro about the importance to “create two, three, many Vietnams.” It also implies creating a Vietnam inside each one of us, and resisting the oppression that applies to us: for Godard, it was against the economics and aesthetics of American cinema which he deemed to have corrupted the global cinema landscape. As a cineast, he viewed “being invaded by Vietnam” also to involve talking about it and picturing it in movies. Which is why he told us about mentioning Vietnam in his other works, to diffuse Vietnam — the symbol of resistance.

Fan footage of a Fidel Castro interview used in the movie.

This movie is 11 chapters long and offers many different perspectives on one of the most prominent conflicts of the century. Its original run in the few cinemas that agreed to screen it was cut short by protests orchestrated by an armed far-right group, followed by numerous bomb threats. Since Loin du Vietnam was restored about 10 years ago, the film has remained under the radar, almost impossible to watch. Now, 60 years after it first aired, the war in Vietnam has been extensively covered in media products from a wide range of sources. However, the clarion call against aggression in Loin du Vietnam is just as relevant today as it was in 1967. More than a simple documentary about the Vietnam War, it provides deep reflections into global oppression and how its affect our society at large.

Loin du Vietnam (Far From Vietnam) is available for viewing in full on YouTube.

'Making a Whore' Is Both Less and More Revealing Than Its Reputation Suggests

2026-04-12T14:00:00+07:00

For the first time, Vũ Trọng Phụng’s novel Làm đĩ is available in English. Originally published in 1936, the novel has been translated by Đinh Ngọc Mai under the title Making a Whore and was released last year by Major Books, an independent publishing house dedicated to making Vietnamese literature more available for the English-speaking world.

The highly prolific writer Vũ Trọng Phụng is perhaps best known for his satirical novel Số đỏ, or Dumb Luck — a scathing critique of westernization, or “Europeanization,” and the rise of the bourgeoisie class in colonial Vietnam. Many Vietnamese are no doubt familiar with Dumb Luck, as an excerpt of it is featured in the official literature curriculum for Vietnamese high schools. He was praised by the historian Peter Zinoman in the introduction to Making a Whore as “widely considered twentieth-century Vietnam’s greatest writer,” and his literary influences on future generations have far outlived his own short-lived life, which tragically ended at the young age of 26 due to tuberculosis.

At the time of its publication, Making a Whore was highly controversial amongst critics and intellectuals, the debate having been whether Phụng’s novel “should be denounced as pornography or praised as a bold contribution to science and sex education.” For readers today, nine decades after the novel’s original publication, the debate may strike as a bit silly. Making a Whore is neither as sexually explicit nor raunchy as some popular novels of today, nor is the novel really that informative when it comes to offering practical sex education. Nonetheless, the novel offers us acute perspectives into the fascinating discourses on gender and sexuality of late colonial Vietnam.

Image via Facebook page Mộng Tình Lâu.

In his own introduction to the novel, Phụng explains that the purpose of his novel is “to urge moralists and parents to care for their children’s happiness and to pay attention to what corrupt prejudices still consider dirty: that is, sexuality.” As one of his more widely acclaimed novels, the new translation marks a major step forward in expanding the horizon of English-language readership and scholarship on Phụng and his complex views on sex, gender, and colonial modernity.

The story

Making a Whore begins with two friends — the narrator and his longtime friend Quý, who has come to visit — embarking on a night out in town and eventually ending up at a licensed brothel. There, the hostess asks them to wait in a room for their prostitute to arrive. To their surprise, the prostitute who arrives is none other than Huyền, a girl that Quý had obsessed over in high school, who was adored by everyone for her beauty, her seemingly innocent yet sophisticated mannerisms, and her noble family background.

The two friends thus abandon their original purpose for coming to the brothel entirely and begin inquiring into Huyền’s life, their central curiosity being how a girl like Huyền, “well-groomed, well-behaved, well-raised, the daughter of a judge, the niece of a doctor,” could end up in such a place. “How come the Creator let such a marvel of nature fall from grace without batting an eye? How did society let someone go off the rails without a shred of regret?” asks the narrator.

What follows is Huyền’s story told in the form of a novel manuscript within a novel, structured into four chapters: “Puberty,” “Into the World,” “Married Life,” and “Debauchery.” As Huyền’s life progresses through the respective stages, her “sexual crisis” increasingly spirals out of control. Despite the fact that, by the very structure of the novel, readers follow Huyền’s story already well aware of its ending, the sequence in which Huyền’s life unravels is alluring at every turn. The novel is highly accessible, relatively short for its genre, and its tone and style rather straightforward and blunt. On some level, the novel’s plot — as well as its characters — at times feels a bit absurd, but that is part of the novel’s charm. For it is through such absurdity that Phụng satirizes the “sexual chaos” of late colonial Vietnamese society.

Repression and westernization

Who or what is to be blamed of Huyền’s corruption? For Phụng, the answer is two-pronged: the lack of proper sex education for adolescents and the influences of westernization.

Reflecting back on her life journey, Huyền remarks, “puberty, a rotten environment, and unsavoury company, all fused into a flawed education system that eventually threw me to the wolves.” Seemingly drawing on Freud’s notion of the “return of the repressed” — whose psychoanalytic theory greatly influenced Phụng’s novel — Phụng urges readers to understand Huyền’s sexual “perversions” later in life as the direct effects of her repression conditioned by her improper sex education and adults’ stigmatization of the topic of sex. As a child, deeply curious about her mother’s pregnancy, Huyền asks how babies are born, to which her aunt answers “through the armpits,” only before her father aggressively disapproves of her question and orders her to go away. Without proper sex education, and fueled by the burning lust typical of adolescence, she is left to explore her sexuality via other means: physically, through masturbation; and theoretically, through a book on the “science” of sex. The irony is that the adults themselves — responsible for the intense shaming and stigmatization that conditions such repression — freely indulge in bodily and material pleasures, often in plain sight in front of their children, and often in morally corrupt ways, as in the case of Huyền’s own father, who engages in adultery.

But it is not just the lack of sex education that is to blame. For Phụng, it is also westernization and its culture of materialism. In one telling moment, Huyền remarks that, in some sense, her “corruption” began with “a pair of white trousers” — which at the time, was considered the hallmark of a “modern” woman’s look. According to Huyền, what began as an insignificant pair of white trousers opened the way for a slippery slope of increasingly western and liberal ways of socializing, all of which eventually resulted in debauchery, corruption, and prostitution. As Phụng summarizes his views succinctly:

The meeting of East and West on this strip of land has strongly influenced our material lives. What could be more absurd than having accepted the new lifestyle, which includes theatres, cinemas, modern clothes, dancing houses, perfumes, and waxes, which are conditions that make humanity more and more SEXUAL, but at the same time not recognising the need to propagate the issue of education about SEXUALITY, in order to teach future generations how to sex ethically, to sex honestly, and to sex in a way that will not cause harm to your race?

Here, it is worth noting that the title Making a Whore is a significant departure from the title that English-language scholarship had traditionally used, To Be a Whore. In Vietnamese, the verb làm can mean both making and to be. The change in the verb is significant in that it reflects Phụng’s general attitude towards the sexual corruption of late colonial society, as demonstrated above. For Phụng, a “whore” is not something that someone simply chooses to be, but rather “made” by factors larger than any one single individual.

Analytical failings

While Making a Whore certainly contains elements that were ahead of its time — such as, importantly, its refusal to depict prostitutes as simply flat-charactered victims, as many others during his time had — his novel also contains key analytical flaws that are worth highlighting.

The Vietnamese-language cover of a previous edition of Làm đĩ.

The first centers around “corruption,” a concept that organizes and structures the entire novel. But what does that word really entail? What specifically makes an act “corrupt”? Part of what is so difficult in trying to determine what Phụng means by “corruption,” or his theory of sexual morality, is that he seems to draw from a hodgepodge of various disparate influences. As Peter Zinoman notes, “Ideas drawn from Freud, modern sexology, and traditional and neo-traditional Sino-Vietnamese discourses about sex commingled in his thinking, making it difficult to attach a meaningful label to his approach to this issue.”

For instance, the “educational book” that Phụng reads in lieu of proper sex education relies on the theory of yin and yang to denounce masturbation as obstructing harmonious equilibrium. “Those who perform the act will think it is identical to copulation, but in fact, copulation between men and women requires the harmony of yin and yang to facilitate blood flow and prevent hygienic mishaps. In the case of masturbation, only yin or yang energy is present; therefore, blood flow remains obstructed.” What we thus have is a concept of “corruption” that seemingly resists a coherent framework. Is masturbation corrupt in the same way that debauchery is corrupt, or even in the way that prostitution is deemed corrupt?

But on some level, the amorphous quality of what is meant by “corruption” may be precisely the point. “Corruption” is perhaps best understood not as any analytically well-defined, objective category, but rather as an expression or reflection of Phụng’s own ideals for Vietnamese society. Ultimately, it is more useful to grasp the term not for what it means, but rather for its ideological function — that of policing sex and gender specifically under a kind of civilizational anxiety.

If prostitution is “wrong,” it is not because it is somehow sexually “corrupt,” but because of its exploitative conditions under gendered capitalism. It is worth asking if Huyền would have still ended up a prostitute had she lived under a different socioeconomic system.

The other major way in which Making a Whore is analytically confused is in its treatment of materialism. As discussed, Phụng directs much of the blame of Huyền’s said “corruption” — epitomized by her prostitution — to materialism, as a force of westernization. But here, Phụng fails to differentiate between the two distinct concepts of “materialism” and capitalism — the former of which should be understood as the cultural and ideological manifestation of the latter. Without revealing too much of the novel, while materialism does indeed lead Huyền to act in increasingly “corrupt” ways, what ultimately pushes Huyền into prostitution is not corruption via materialism per se, but rather economic necessity. In other words, what ultimately pushes Huyền into prostitution is the economic system of capitalism — which, through the brutal violence of colonialism, expropriated and dispossessed the population at large, foreclosing conditions for relatively self-sufficient subsistence. Or more specifically, what is responsible is capitalism paired with an existing structure of patriarchy that severely curtailed women’s socioeconomic freedoms. If prostitution is “wrong,” it is not because it is somehow sexually “corrupt,” but because of its exploitative conditions under gendered capitalism. It is worth asking if Huyền would have still ended up a prostitute had she lived under a different socioeconomic system.

Making a Whore is analytically messy and full of tensions and contradictions. I outline this, however, not to dissuade readers from picking up the book, but because I think that what makes a book like Making a Whore such an engaging and fascinating read is precisely its multitude of tensions and contradictions, and the ways in which they reveal much about its own time. In this sense, the analytical flaws in the book are the direct product — which is to say, a critical perspective into — an extremely dynamic and formative time in Vietnam’s national history when deeply difficult and important questions were being debated and unfurled in real time: a time when gender norms were clashing intensely against notions of modernity, a time when the independence movement was fractured across nationalists and communists who disagreed on the subject of capitalism. If there is a reason to read Making a Whore, it is not for the answers it offers to the questions it raises, but rather for what it reveals about the very terrain or horizon in which such questions were being raised and debated.