Most Saigoneers who spent their formative years in the 2000s and 2010s probably grew up amongst the aisles of bookstores, not because we were particularly bookaholic, but because they were pretty much the only third place around with free air-conditioning.

When I was growing up, coffee shops seemed more like places where adults conducted business deals, and I couldn’t afford them anyway. Tạp hóa corners could satisfy snack cravings, but had no seats, so before the advent of convenience stores, I sought solace in the brightly lit, paper-scented, somewhat dusty shelves of bookstores: FAHASA locations, Nguyễn Văn Cừ, Minh Khai, Xuân Thu, Cây Gõ, amongst others. Just simply being in close proximity with books sparked my first interest in reading — much love to the staff at my district FAHASA back then for seeing us on the floor engaging in intense đọc cọp and turning a blind eye.

In 2026, many major bookstore locations are facing a decline: in April, Cá Chép Bookstore bid farewell to readers after 13 years in the business and shuttered all locations; PNC also announced the closure of a 44-year-old location just last month. Changing consumer habits and rising operating costs were the most common reasons given.

Still, it might be too hasty yet to deduce that Saigoneers have stopped reading: they are still into books, but a new generation of readers have turned their attention to the more intimate and personalized book-shopping and reading experience at independent stores. The indie bookstores featured in this article each offer slightly different stock, but share some similarities: their presence is made known via word of mouth and social media reviews; and they seek to satisfy not only a need to buy books, but also a space to read them.

1. Pages of Passion

L6, 35 Nguyễn Văn Tráng, Bến Thành Ward, HCMC

Photo by Jimmy Art Devier.

Hidden on the sixth floor of an old apartment in central District 1, Pages of Passion is perhaps the most impressive entry on this list in terms of growth. Thảo and Huy, the store’s owners, started selling books online in 2024 as a passion side project to assuage their corporate burnout, but eventually quit their jobs to operate the physical store full-time. Since Saigoneer’s first visit in mid-2025, when the space only hosted shelves of new and gently used books, Pages of Passion has flourished into a mini community of book lovers, with a quiet cafe dedicated to reading, and a small space for talks and workshops.

Pages of Passion focuses solely on English-language titles, and while you can find universally respected classics here, the owners do a sterling job curating both new and obscure titles, including a diverse Vietnam-specific section featuring works by Vietnamese authors or written about the country. Full disclosure: Pages of Passion has a small shelf housing titles that have been highlighted in the Saigoneer book review series Loạt Soạt. Check us out!

Photos by Jimmy Art Devier.

Read our interview with Pages of Passion here.

Contact: Website | Instagram

2. InBook

25A Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, Sài Gòn Ward, HCMC

InBook had its start in Hanoi, and recently expanded to Saigon in the form of a two-floor space above a stylish cafe. Lan, the founder, studied in France and used to work on a few projects translating books from French into Vietnamese. She established InBook first as a way to introduce more children’s literature to her daughter, but the store’s library has slowly expanded over time.

The bookstore specializes in brand-new books written in French and English. My visit showed a sizable collection of literary classics and genre fiction, including YA, romance, and crime. The French section features a lot of children’s literature, too. If you’re in search of less-mainstream titles, InBook might not be a place to look, but I do appreciate that it also has a dedicated space for translated works of Vietnamese origin, as well as an area with free beverages to read. Besides, one shelf is reserved for “storekeeper’s picks” with thoughtful reviews that are hand-written — a cozy addition.

Contact: Website | Facebook

3. Bá Tân - Sách cũ Thư viện

451/22 Hai Bà Trưng, Xuân Hòa Ward, HCMC

Photos by Cao Nhân.

Bá Tân carries with it the towering book piles and nostalgic old-paper musk of the used bookstores of our childhood, but with a commendable level of organization and cleanliness. This is one location of a few that its founder Lê Bá Tân has tirelessly worked on for the past years. Tân majored in History in college and taught it for a few years; by complete chance, he inherited a friend’s substantial book collection and started posting photos of the titles to give away on social media. Queries from strangers began to come, so he answered the call of the universe by becoming a vintage book seller.

Photo by Cao Nhân.

The store focuses on used Vietnamese-language books, comprising two sections: one that sells by the kilos, and the other features “like new” gently used books. Bá Tân has one of the largest and most eclectic inventories of the list, with everything from rare first editions of literary classics to comic books and manga sets. The price is very affordable and the staff is knowledgeable, should you be looking for anything specific.

Photo by Cao Nhân.

Read our profile of Tiện sách Bá Tân here.

Contact: Website | Facebook

4. Hiệu sách Mùi Của Giấy

41 Street No. 9, Trung Sơn Residential Area, Bình Hưng Ward, HCMC

This bookstore has the most poetic name of the five: Mùi Của Giấy means “the scent of paper.” The book storage space can be a little claustrophobic, but is well-maintained and overall quite comfortable for browsing. The stock is mainly in Vietnamese though I did spot some new arrivals in English; it might be a bit hard to navigate the small space, but there’s a website of available titles and the two staff members are always happy to lend a hand. By “staff members,” I meant the human ones, because the feline staff is extremely illiterate — I give them a pass because they are so friendly and welcoming. For those who can’t wait to enjoy their latest finds, Mùi Của Giấy has space for reading and even a drink menu for refreshments. I’ve obtained their royalty card and can’t wait to find out what five drink stamps or three book stamps would get me.

Contact: Facebook | Website

5. Emtrangtri Bookstore

451/50 Hai Bà Trưng, Xuân Hòa Ward, HCMC

I first discovered Emtrangtri on social media and thought the space looked cool, so I decided to pay it a visit. As I made the turn into the 451 alley, I quickly realized that it was based in Bá Tân’s hẻm as well, just a few doors down. I am so jealous of this alley’s residents, living with two bookstores within walking, nay crawling, distance!

Emtrangtri is a mysterious new find in the list, occupying only one living room at a residential house. Upon entering, I was greeted by a female bookkeeper who was eating chips out of a bag while lounging on the sofa reading a book and listening to Laufey. I knew immediately that I had found my people. This was exactly what I look like reading at home. The store inventory focuses on thrifted books in English, Vietnamese, and French. The selection is facetiously obscure. With any given author, you won’t be able to find their Top 3 most famous books. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice? No can do, you will take Northanger Abbey, and you will like it. According to the staff, they personally thrifted each book to put on the shelf.

All in all, the books are moderately priced, if on a slightly high side, but I have to say that the curatorial taste is impeccable. Every title seems esoteric but very interesting; I want to read all of them. There are cozy armchairs and sofas to read, even if you don’t buy anything. I will be back. Maybe with chips.

Contact: Instagram | Threads

More ambitious and self-assured than ever, Saigon Soul Revival (SSR) embraces their own sound and its many influences on their latest album, “Chốn ta về.”

Having made a name for themselves over the last decade by reviving and reinterpreting the eclectic music of 1960s and 1970s Saigon, Saigon Soul Revival’s third full-length album is grander and more polished than the work that earned them initial praise and attention. Steadily growing beyond the covers of beloved nhạc vàng songs that first brought them together, “Chốn ta về” witnesses the group confidently wielding disparate influences, instruments, and approaches that bridge Vietnamese and western traditions.

Saigon Soul Revival playing live in studio at l’Antipode in Rennes, France, during Trans Musicales 2024. Video via KEXP YouTube.

No singular genre or influence defined the time period Saigon Soul Revival pays homage to. Psychedelic rock is perhaps most prominent, but it's punctuated by soul, funk, blues, ska and surf rock. The assemblage acquires new dimensions via local tastes, rhythms and instruments. One of the greatest pleasures of listening to a Saigon Soul Revival record is the surprise that accompanies recognizing how different tracks bring the disparate sonic traditions together. Some seamlessly blend them, such as on standout ‘Trúc xinh,’ where Nguyễn Thị Hải Phượng’s đàn tranh slithers behind the electric guitar before the two instruments trade off taking the lead during an instrumental breakdown. It’s even more holistic on ‘Khúc tình yên vui,’ which features ska and psychedelic rock elements underpinned by Chăm musical references. 

Even on tracks that foreground a single style, Saigon Soul Revival’s penchant for cross-cultural pollination produces an exhilarating sum of its parts. The reggae instrumental ‘Lý qua dub,’ for example, begins with an extended đàn tranh and đàn bầu duet before giving way to plodding bass and drums. Similarly, the aptly named ‘Chachacha ngây thơ” interjects Vietnamese into the Cuban 4-4 beat via a chorus with repeated “anh hãy” following the familiar “cha cha cha” refrain and a subtle allusion to ‘Saigon ơi’ in the final trumpet portion. 

Saigon Soul Revival. Photo by Nghi Ngo courtesy of the band.

Unlike their first album, which featured primarily covers, the only non-original song on “Chốn ta về” is Mộng Long’s ‘Hoạ mi ca,’ which the band puts their own spin on with the help of local virtuoso Đinh Nhật Minh’s sáo trúc (bamboo flute). Similarly, Vietnam’s most prominent jazz saxophonist and jazz club luminary Trần Mạnh Tuấn provides a boisterous solo to ‘Ơ kìa, em ơi!’ Such support by guest musicians signifies that even as Saigon Soul Revival indulges their own creative impulses, they remain deeply connected to the musical cultures surrounding them. 

Whether foreigners at raucous shows here in Vietnam or attendees at the band’s festival appearances abroad, SSR has always attracted listeners unable to understand the Vietnamese lyrics. Members of the band have noted that this reality simply adds another means for appreciating their work, as the vocals become an instrument to intuit rather than understand. Indeed, one doesn’t need to know ‘Độc huyền cầm oán khúc’ is sung from the perspective of a young widow reflecting on her children to feel the longing and despair in Nguyễn Anh Minh’s voice, as reinforced by a wilting đàn bầu. Conversely, listeners don’t need specifics to pick up on the exuberant determination of ‘Ta về với ta’ as conveyed through Minh’s vocal delivery, Nguyễn Khoa Đăng’s enthusiastic keys, and Indy Laville’s soaring guitar solo. Moreover, Minh’s laughter to close out ‘Tình điên’ makes the entire situation’s absurd tragedy obvious. 

Cover design by Dan Ni with illustration by Phương An.

More than 40-some minutes of solitary streaming, “Chốn ta về” arrives as an opportunity to experience in person. The band is embarking on a world tour with stops in China and Europe after a few Vietnam dates, including September 19 in Saigon. Meanwhile, a behind-the-scenes documentary is complete and ready to be shared with fans. Physical records are also available, with gorgeous mid-century Vietnamese modernist graphics by Dan Ni and Phương An that feature the Cubist influences which emerged from the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine, informed by local printing techniques.

What's That Saigon Soul Sound? documentary feature film trailer. Video via Cake Collective YouTube.

Shortly after Saigon Soul Revival formed in 2016, German DJ and music producer Jan Hagenkoetter asked them to perform at the release party for  Saigon Super Sound Vol 1, where they helped young Vietnamese discover forgotten local musical histories while allowing foreigners to better connect with the modern-day culture. Since then, and in the process of making “Chốn ta về”, as Laville notes in the documentary, the band discovered their own sound. When considering their place in the evolving traditions of global pop here and abroad, Hagenkoetter remarked that they might now be creating music that inspires future generations.

To sum up:

• Type: Album
• Lyrics: Simple and catchy
• Danceable: Very
• Cryable: A few songs if you're really sensitive
• Karaoke Potential: If your friends are cool

Score: 84/100

After forays into the worlds of reality TV and cinema, Vietnam’s folk pop princess Phương Mỹ Chi has returned to her roots with a fresh new full-length album, pioneered by the lead single ‘Thiên đường với người thương’ (lit: In heaven with my beloved).

‘Thiên đường với người thương’ is a rare track in Chi’s oeuvre that makes a romantic narrative its focal point. Across her song library, the Saigon singer-songwriter has predominantly created music with expressed intentions to promote Vietnam’s cultural and literary wealth. Still, in the new single, while the story might heavily feature a romance, Vietnamese culture — especially that of the Khmer ethnic group — also shines, but in every other aspect of the production, including production and costume design, lyrics, and song arrangement.

To be clear, Phương Mỹ Chi is not of Khmer descent, she is Kinh Vietnamese, though she shared that, to ensure the production is as accurate as possible, she consulted professors of the College of Southern Khmer Language - Culture - Arts and Humanity of Trà Vinh University.

Khmer is one of the oldest ethnic groups to have settled in continental Southeast Asia. Today, Cambodia is home to the world’s largest population of Khmer people, followed by Vietnam and Thailand, each with over a million people. In Vietnam, Khmer communities concentrate in the Mekong Delta, with Sóc Trăng and Trà Vinh provinces making up over 60% of Vietnam’s Khmer population.

The video story follows the connection between the two main characters, played by Chi and actor Bảo Định, from childhood to old age. They formed a kinship when she was a little trainee dancer, and he was learning to play traditional instruments. The childhood sweethearts eventually professed their love as young adults, culminating in a boisterous wedding. The music video ends with the husband, now at the end of his life, alone on the river where they once traversed together as a couple.

The narrative is rather uneventful and simplistic, but what makes ‘Thiên đường với người thương’ stand out is its inclusion of Khmer culture in quite a number of ways. The lyrics include the Khmer-language line “បងមានស្រឡាញ់អូនទេ?” (Anh có thương em không? / Do you have feelings for me?), in addition to other Mekong- and Khmer-specific cultural elements like boat races, cá kèo, and mắm me.

The cinematography takes viewers into the mesmerizing sights and colors of Vietnam’s Khmer community through scenes recorded at famous landmarks in Trà Vinh and An Giang provinces in the Mekong Delta, such as Ao Bà Om, Cỏ Thum Pagoda, Vàm Ray Pagoda, Trà Sư Cajuput Forest, and palmyra palm fields in An Giang. Meanwhile, Khmer dance performances made up a significant scene filmed inside a local community center, while Khmer wedding traditions and ceremonial clothing were replicated for the couple’s matrimony.

Watch the music video of ‘Thiên đường với người thương’ below: 

Images via Facebook page Phương Mỹ Chi. 

“Tombe la merde; tu ne viendras pas ce soir [Shit is falling; you’re not coming tonight]”: an outburst of laughter and applause would inevitably fill the room as my dad, in his deep, mellifluous voice, put his own profane twist on Salvatore Adamo’s ‘Tombe la neige.’ This track, like ‘Paroles… Paroles…’ by Dalida or Christophe’s ‘Aline,’ are widely known and adored in both France and my family in Vietnam. My childhood unfolded against these rhythms, melodies, and lyrics, whose origins were so far removed from me, both temporally and geographically.

After my 15 years in French school in both Hanoi and Saigon, French, alongside English, gradually became the primary vehicle of my thoughts and interactions, in and outside of school. Only recently did I discover that my family’s entanglement with French music dates back four generations, and that it is embedded within a much larger context of French instrumentalization of music as a colonial tool in Vietnam.   

Four generations ago, my ancestors — like many Vietnamese households under French rule — spoke the imposed language of administration, business, and higher education, fluently. In the mid 19^th century, my paternal great-grandfather served as Minister of Education under Emperor Bảo Đại. The ministry operated on a bilingual basis, with French dominating as the language of official communications and decrees. He was also a scholar who worked closely with French texts. My maternal great-grandfather translated and interpreted for the French administration, while his wife sold silk to French buyers. Outside of work, French culture followed my great-grandparents home primarily through classical romantic compositions unaccompanied by lyrics. I’ve always assumed that the presence of French music in Vietnam was an organic cultural residue from colonization, but the discovery that French musical education in Vietnam was a colonial strategy came as quite a shock. 

My paternal great-grandparents, Phạm Quỳnh and Lê Thị Vân

My maternal great-grandmother who did business with French textile buyers

French music as a “civilizing” tool

The genesis of French music in Vietnam can be traced back to the early 20^th century. French musical performances began as early as 1883, shortly after the conquest of Hanoi. Military troops sought entertainment in impromptu musical shows, which eventually became more formal musical and theatrical concerts. At the time, only private instruction of western music was available to residents of Hanoi. It was not until the 1920s that official calls for a music school intended to instruct locals were made. The colonial administration realized something crucial: it would be impossible to foster a new generation of Vietnamese — a class of “Francais de couleur,” or Frenchmen of color — without French-organized and -operated schools. This context favored the implementation of French musical pedagogy, set to accompany French academic training, in Hanoi.

The “mission civilisatrice,” the narrative that masks exploitation of colonies as the humanitarian and ethical duty of imperial powers, was the chief justification of French colonization. If the construction of urban infrastructure — buildings, bridges, transportation networks — is often cited as successful “civilizing” efforts, France quickly saw that material embellishments alone failed at molding Vietnamese “with French tastes and habits[,] whose success would encourage the rest of the Vietnamese public to assimilate.”

An excerpt of L’Avenir du Tonkin from April 25, 1925 includes a review of a music recital performed by the pupils of “l’Institut Musical de Hanoi.” Albert Poincignon opened the Institute in 1913 before opening the Conservatory of the Far East in 1927. This review contains the names of (some) participants of the recital: no Vietnamese names appear in the review, which suggests that there might not have been any Vietnamese students.

In 1927, efforts to establish a rigorous and formalized French/Western musical education in Hanoi amounted to the creation of the French Conservatory of the Far East by Albert Poincignon, a customs official for the colonial administration and private music instructor. Its explicit purpose was “to alter the sensibilities and tastes of the Vietnamese.” Although some colonialists believed Vietnamese to be “unmusical and incapable of appreciating western aesthetic traditions,” others saw in Vietnamese an “innate musicality” and instrumentalized this as a means for drawing the Vietnamese majority closer to the French. Thus, formalized French musical pedagogy began in Hanoi with rigorous piano lessons accompanied by intensive training in western musical history and theory.

Initially, the conservatory taught French pupils and a minority of wealthy Vietnamese students; by 1930, the latter had outnumbered the former. It was a short-lived institution, but ultimately achieved its goals with the help of societal forces: knowledge of western classical music became not only trendy, but a marker of belonging to an elite class. My great-grandparents did not have to be enrolled at the conservatory to experience this phenomenon firsthand: their musical taste and sensibilities had indeed been altered, and would be passed down to my grandparents.

My grandparents were born in Hanoi in the 1930s, when French music was just growing in popularity across the country. My maternal grandmother grew up taking private piano lessons and learning western musical theory before becoming a pianist and teaching the curriculum herself after 1954. In the 1930s–1940s, French music maintained a strong presence within urban culture in both North and South Vietnam, particularly amongst the elites and bourgeoisie. At the same time, Vietnamese musicians and composers began embedding French and other western musical elements into tân nhạc, or “new music.” It was in this musical context that my paternal grandfather was completing his study of Medicine in French, before joining the revolution as a military doctor shortly after 1945. In his adolescence, he enjoyed western classical music, which continued playing in his house long after independence, throughout my dad’s childhood.

My maternal grandmother playing the piano (she was in band practice).

When French melodies took on Vietnamese identities

In 1954, Vietnam was officially divided into North and South Vietnam, and a musical split followed. During the 1950s and 1960s, Saigon became a cosmopolitan musical hub where French, American, and Vietnamese musical cultures intermingled and flourished. By the mid 1960s, French artists such as Dalida, Christophe, and Françoise Hardy were well-known amongst the youths of Saigon, far from my family. This decade was also considered to be the golden age of Vietnamese adaptations of French songs: ‘Tombe la neige,’ ‘Histoire d’un amour,’ ‘Viens m’embrasser,’ ‘Bang Bang’ all took on new local lives, respectively becoming ‘Tuyết rơi,’ ‘Chuyện Tình Yêu,’ ‘Lại gần hôn anh’ and ‘Khi xưa ta bé.’ The lyrics of these French-language classics were all rewritten in Vietnamese by Phạm Duy, who is regarded as “the most prolific, varied, and influential of all the tân nhạc composers.” Decades later, I would rediscover these songs, first in French, then in Vietnamese, but more on that later.

These French singers have all had their songs refashioned into Vietnamese tân nhạc hits.

Meanwhile, Hanoi saw French popular music, and some of the Vietnamese tân nhạc that it influenced, gradually succumb to heavy censorship. In the north, the Vietnamese government promoted revolutionary and patriotic music to boost morale during the war — a genre often known as nhạc đỏ (red music). Simultaneously, tân nhạc, deemed a threat to public morale due to its sentimental and nostalgic qualities, was restricted. Surprisingly, French and western music survived the restrictions through conservatory training: classical music continued to be taught and performed, while Vietnamese composers incorporated western compositional techniques into revolutionary songs.

It was during this great musical split that my maternal grandfather served as head of the Cinematography Department, under the Ministry of Culture. His job granted him frequent trips to both Saigon and international destinations. My mom recalls how more often than not, my grandfather returned with CDs of French medleys he either purchased abroad or smuggled in from the south. Thus, my mom grew up to the notes of classical French music and the voice of Dalida, a voice I would grow up to know all too well.

French language skills were not passed down from my grandmother to her daughter, except musically. With no knowledge of the language, my mom knows all of the words to her favorite French pop songs; still today, she sings them, in near perfect pronunciation, instinctively. In comparison, my dad’s childhood saw significantly less French influence. It wasn’t until 1973 that he truly encountered French music, playing on the TV in the Soviet Union, where he studied. When he came home in 1979, western music, and French music in particular, was widely accessible across the country. His homecoming, as is true for his contact with French music in Vietnam, was brief. In 1982, my dad taught himself French while interning in Strasbourg. There, his encounters with French songs multiplied, deepening his connection to and appreciation for them. When he returned home for good, he continued listening to those songs and eventually passed them down to me.

Christophe, Don Hồ, and Thế Sơn perform Christophe’s ‘Aline’ in French and Vietnamese (Paris by Night, Volume 54).

Fast forward to the 2010s, the years of my childhood. Before the age of MTV and the hegemony of American pop princesses, my musical consciousness was largely dominated by Paris by Night. Specifically, the voices of Bằng Kiều, Elvis Phương, Tuấn Ngọc, Thanh Lan left a lasting impression on me, or rather, were insisted upon me. Whenever they came onto the TV screen, my parents would praise not just their voice, but their skillful rendition of French songs. I grew up with these songs in both languages, then quickly forgot about them until my high school years. During this period, my household saw a renaissance of French music, but this time with the original French lyrics. One sunny afternoon, I was passionately screaming “Et j’ai crié, crié, Aline!” with my parents in the car when something strange occurred: I began to remember distant Vietnamese words being sung to this same melody. Where are these songs from? Are they French or Vietnamese? My parents' inconsistent answers fueled my confusion.

Thanh Lan and Elvis Phương performing a medley of French songs (Paris by Night, Volume 50).

As it turns out, they’re both. Many Vietnamese adaptations of French melodies have become so popular in Vietnam that they have taken on lives of their own, almost entirely distinct from their French blueprints. In the couple of decades before and after 1975, the distinction between French pop classics and their Vietnamese adaptations might have been very clear in people’s minds. But today, decades after the golden age of tân nhạc, these Vietnamese adaptations no longer exist strictly as a version of pre-existing French songs, but as staples in their own right. Thus, one would be correct in referring to ‘Aline’ as Christphophe’s song, and also as Phạm Duy’s ‘Gọi Tên Người Yêu.’ Perhaps it is for this reason that I feel rather awkward when receiving comments such as “You must be at least half French” or “You’re as French as our kids,” when I revealed my familiarity with classic French pop. The French adults in my life understood this fluency, in addition to my command of the language, as marks of some “Frenchness” that 15 years of French education must have instilled in me. 

The excessively congratulatory tone of the remarks felt misplaced. Their speakers conditioned me to subconsciously view knowing these French songs as a testament to my achievement of becoming “French” in their eyes; I was proud because it seemed like the only appropriate reaction to such praise. Today, my feelings about the same compliments are much clearer: I do not view my perceived fluency in French culture as any achievement, for I never aspired to it. I recognize the history of the songs that my family and I cherish and acknowledge the French influence on those melodies, but I refuse the narrative that they signal any “Frenchness” in me.

In my mind, these tracks’ Vietnamese identities far predate my awareness that they had originated elsewhere. I inherited them as artifacts of both Vietnamese culture and my own family history, so these “compliments” deceived me into thinking that these songs were merely remnants of French culture. This narrative underplays my relationship with these songs as a Vietnamese person; more crucially, it ignores that these songs have Vietnamese lives. These melodies have travelled far and wide; they began as pieces of inherited culture, and eventually underwent significant transformations by Vietnamese talents who made them their own.

“Expat is a racist as hell term” — this is the take of Misan Harriman on the popular internet show SubwayTakes. The reasoning goes that the term expat, short for expatriate, is racist because it is applied to migrants unevenly. Along this line, Mawuna Remarque Koutonin writes in Silicon Africa: “Africans are immigrants. Arabs are immigrants. Asians are immigrants. However, Europeans are expats because they can’t be at the same level as other ethnicities. They are superior. Immigrants is a term set aside for ‘inferior races.’”

The argument goes that “expat” is designated for white Europeans and westerners and carries a certain kind of prestige and privilege that is made inaccessible to other peoples who are labelled “immigrants.” Similar sentiments can be found surrounding the recent controversy of a Bali-based, Dutch-run run club’s alleged discrimination against locals. As one Instagram comment on an Al Jazeera post reads, “They are not expatriate[s]. They are immigrants. Please don't label people of color as immigrants and call white people as an expatriate.” Or, as Fred Wissenk remarks closer to home in Vietcetera (though he appears to suggest we call all foreigners expats), “If you’re white, people automatically label you as an expat. I disagree with that.”

The Bali run club that allegedly discriminated against locals. Photo via The Guardian.

Yet, to accuse the term expat of racism is much too reductive and obscures nuance, for the simple reason that there exist plenty of non-white expats who are labelled or identify as such. Thus, the assumption that expats are white may itself constitute a kind of whitewashing, not just of the present but also of the past, overlooking, for instance, the history of South Asian expatriates in East Africa whom the British brought for colonial civil service positions. More broadly, it is also worth questioning whether words can ever be inherently racist, for the meaning and significance of words inevitably vary with context. This is to say, of course the term expat can be racist when wielded in racist ways — for instance, when one calls a white person an expat and an Arab person an immigrant, even when they occupy similar class positions and professions — but cannot be seen as an inherently racist term for the fact that “expat” denotes no single stable type of migrant, its use, meaning, and scope dependent on context and geography.

Defining the expat

Indeed, the expat is a notoriously slippery term, not only because there exist discrepancies between formal definitions of the term and everyday usage, but also between those who identify as versus those who are labelled as expats. So, what even is an expat? How should we understand the category in Vietnam? And what distinguishes an expat from an immigrant or a migrant? The Cambridge Dictionary offers the following definitions.

• Expatriate: “someone who does not live in their own country”
• Immigrant: “a person who has come to a different country in order to live there permanently”
• Migrant: “a person that travels to a different country or place, often in order to find work”

Firstly, what differentiates the expatriate from the migrant is that expats move across countries, while the movement of migrants may be either inter- or intra-national. “Migrant” is thus treated as the broadest migration category, hence why academic literature will describe the expatriate as a type of migrant. Yet, in practice, expatriates are often considered not as a subset of migrants, but rather a category separate from migrants, as is made evident when a Việt Nam News columnist follows up his use of the word “migrants” with the parenthetical comment, “sorry, ‘expats,’ this is you.”

On the other hand, the primary differentiating factor between expats and immigrants is presented as the intention of the duration of stay. An immigrant intends permanent residence, while duration of stay is undetermined and unspecified for expats. Yet, common and practical usage of the term, both within general publics and in academia, deviates substantially from such definitions — most often, what is meant by expats are none other than “rich, educated, developed elites,” whereas all other migrants are seen as immigrants. Still, even this definition appears to be imperfect, for as Sarah Kunz explains in her book Expatriate: Following a Migration Category — which has been indispensable in writing this article — those who are labelled and/or identify as expats often vary significantly in socioeconomic class, whose professions range from “diplomats and CEOs, to English teachers, humanitarian volunteers, yoga teachers and unpaid interns further down the socio-economic ladder.” Kunz describes of the expats she met during her fieldwork in Nairobi: “some lived luxurious lives while others barely made ends meet, and yet others relied on support from families ‘back home.’”

A foreign teacher in Hanoi. Photo via Tuổi Trẻ.

To complicate things further, there is also the fact that the equivalent to the term “expatriate” often does not exist in other languages. For instance, an equivalent to the term “expat” does not really exist in Vietnamese. Arguably, the closest substitutes that exist are “người nước ngoài,” which simply means foreigner, or “người tây,” meaning westerner — though we should note that there also exists a term for migrants, “người di cư.” Neither does a translation for expat exist in Korean: expats residing in Korea are commonly referred to as “oekuk-saram,” which again simply means foreigner. While the French cognate expatrié or expatriée has similar connotations to English, the dominant meaning of the Spanish cognate expatriado or expatriada is one of exile, or those banished from their home country — which is in fact what “expatriate” denoted prior to the 20^th century in English as well.

But even within the English language, the term does not travel the same across geographies. For instance, in the US, one notices that the term expat is rarely used, for which there may be two reasons: one, the country’s dominant narrative of itself as a “land of immigrants,” and two, the fact that the US is much harder to simply come into and stay in the way that many expats do in other countries. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are the Gulf states, where all foreign workers, ranging from the heavily exploited construction workers to high-ranking corporate managers, are called expats — arguably in order to restrict a sense of belonging for non-citizens who make up significant portions, or even a majority, of the population. As for Vietnam, it seems that distinctions between expats and immigrants are rarely made — though as we will see, this does not mean that the expat functions neutrally in Vietnam either.

Workers in Dubai. Photo via The New York Times.

Because of the term’s polysemy, to call “expat” inherently racist is rather reductive. Alternatively, a better way to understand the category is not as racist per se, but as racialized. To expand upon the notion of racialization, there is an important distinction to be made between describing a concept as racist versus racialized. An imperfect but useful example to think about is that of the concept of the human. Certainly, the human is a racialized concept. Here, we might think about how Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawing, ‘Vitruvian Man’ — which depicts a white, male, able-bodied person — is often invoked as the “classical ideal” or “universal model” of “Man.” And it is, of course, furthermore true that the concept of human is deeply intertwined with racist histories of violence and subjugation in which various colonized peoples were, and continue to be, denied the label of human as rationalization for such violence. But does that mean the concept of the human is itself racist? Debatable, but I think that most people would argue no. It may be useful to think about the term expat along similar lines: not racist per se, but racialized, normatively white — as well as, we should add, classed (obviously) and gendered (as evident in the fact that an “expat wife” is often not herself referred to as simply an “expat”). 

A brief history of the expat

The racialized nature of the expat is rooted in the history of empire and capital of the 20^th century that have shaped the category. We may understand the historical development of the expat in the 20^th century through three paradigms. To start, there was first the colonial expatriate, the likes of British colonial officers in India — or, as Anne-Meike Fetcher more vividly caricatures, “the British gentlemen who, after prolonged exposure to the tropical climates of South or South East Asia, suffer from world-weariness, alienation and alcoholism, as they are portrayed in the novels and short stories of Anthony Burgess, Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham.”

Servants around a British general and his guests in Bangalore. Photo via The New Statesman.

But with the wave of successful anti-colonial movements that swept the formerly colonized worlds following the end of World War II, expats came to mean something different. With the fall of European colonial empires rose to power a new global empire, namely that of the US, which dominated and shaped the world through both military and economic dominance. And central to the ascent of the US empire was the rise of US multinational corporations (MNCs), which emerged as powerful actors in the international political economy through their control of the flow of foreign direct investments. The rapid growth of US MNCs increased demand for a “new breed” of expatriate workers that would soon replace their European colonial predecessors: that is, the intracompany assignee transferred abroad for temporary periods of time for purposes of overseas management of operations.

Following the shift from the colonial expatriate to the corporate expatriate, the emergence of the next new model of the expat came in the 1980s and 1990s with the advent of neoliberalism, characterized by, in big-picture terms, minimal government intervention domestically and globalization and free trade internationally — the defining outcomes of which have included worsened inequality, decimation of the public, cuts in welfare, deregulation of worker protections, and the atomization of individuals.

In Vietnam, the neoliberal turn took shape in the form of Đổi Mới, which opened the country up to foreigners. As a precursor to the third type of expat that would follow the corporate expat, it is illuminating to take a look at the example of the multinational oil company Shell and the corporate restructuring they pursued in the 1990s. As Kunz details, with the neoliberal turn, Shell expats “got increased ‘choice’ and ‘flexibility’ but also found themselves more precarious and unequal. Payment structures were increasingly tied to individualised performance, implying greater inequality among expatriates and an emphasis on competition instead of the harmony thus far nurtured and expected.” While since at least the 1950s Shell expats understood themselves as part of and embedded within a larger “Shell family,” in the 1990s, the “company man” was re-fashioned into “individualised and disembedded global ‘expatriates’” — or in other words, neoliberal subjects.

Travel writer Mark Hudson and his friends at the Majestic Hotel in 1992. Photo via Saigoneer.

The new individualized, global expat was to be an early harbinger of the rise of what academics call the “self-initiated expatriate” (SIE) — a globally mobile worker who moves abroad without necessarily being told to, often highly-skilled. This includes, of course, the “digital nomad”-type professional, as well as English-language teachers, travel influencers, freelancers, and more. To clarify, SIEs did not replace corporate expatriates per se, who of course still exist — rather, they displaced the corporate expatriate as the dominant model evoked by the term “expat.” In many ways, SIEs are fundamentally neoliberal subjects in their reproduction of neoliberal ideology, in that their espousal of an international lifestyle often masks and obscures the fact that the feasibility of such internationality is itself ordered in uneven ways globally — dependent on, say, the strength of one’s passport or the feasibility of navigating borders and immigration systems, in addition to access to capital. As Kunz poignantly writes, “The self-styled international person, who possibly even rejects the label expatriate, in their performance of a celebratory and ‘border-blind’ internationalism… arguably has the markers of a tragic figure that is possibly well-intentioned yet hubristic, invested in rereading structural privilege as individual achievement.”

A view of Thảo Điền, a hub for expats in Saigon. Photo via Vinhomes.

Despite the association of the SIE with internationality and thus diversity, the SIE arguably remains racialized as white. For Kunz, this seeming contradiction must be understood via neoliberal ideology. Specifically, she suggests that the category’s “conceptual multiplicity and malleability” — its inclusion of “contingent insiders” of other backgrounds — helps to mask its largely racialized nature and in maintaining “a guise of a borderless internationality” that is in reality asymmetrically structured by persisting colonial and neocolonial relations, as much as the project of neoliberal globalization would want to have us believe otherwise. It is for this reason that criticism of the term expat as designated for white people is so common, despite the fact that non-white expats exist. From this view, the logic of (select) inclusivity of the category of the expat functions in the same way that the neoliberal celebration of “multiculturalism” and “DEI” by corporations functions to mask and obscure the violently racial nature of racial capitalism on a global scale.

The expat in Vietnam

The broad picture of the historical development of the expat from colonial to corporate to self-initiated expats offers a compelling account of the historically racialized nature of the expat, at least globally. But in Vietnam, the expat cannot be seen as racialized straightforwardly as white, given the significant population of East Asian expats. In fact, in 2025, a majority of the country’s officially counted international workforce — which, granted, is not the same as the population of expats, but is nonetheless illuminating — were from either China, South Korea, or Japan. Very tellingly, a Vietcetera article titled “Expats’ View On Working In Vietnam” features six expats, at least five of whom are not white, whose professions range from managers to yoga and ESL instructors. 

The opening ceremony of a Coca-Cola manufacturing plant in Hà Tây Province (now Hanoi) in August 1995. Coca-Cola is one of the earliest American MNCs to arrive in Vietnam following Đổi Mới. Photo by Hoàng Đình Nam via Instagram page @tonkin.jpg.

Yet, this does not mean that the expat in Vietnam is unracialized — it is more so that different types of expats are racialized differently. Here, it is useful to contrast the article cited above with another series of expat profiles, “Expats In Ho Chi Minh City.” While the former features majority Asian expats, the latter features overwhelmingly “western” expats. It is no coincidence that the article that features majority Asian expats focuses on the topic of work, while the profiles that feature majority western expats focus more broadly on the expat experience and lifestyle. This is because, in Vietnam, the two archetypes of “business” expats and “lifestyle” expats are “racialized” differently, as (East) Asian and Western respectively.

As one study of Korean expats in Saigon notes, interviewees often referred to their stay in Vietnam as “a long-term business trip” — which runs counter to what we might expect of “western” expats, by contrast. Thus, it is not exactly that race is irrelevant to the category of expat in Vietnam, but rather that the logic of race operates differently and unevenly, given the huge proportion of FDI from other Asian nations like Korea, Singapore, China, and thus the business-skewed orientation of Asian expats. The so-called “expat community” in Vietnam is thus in fact not singular — as Fred Wissink, the producer of the “Expats In Ho Chi Minh City” series writes of Korean expats, “they’re very closed off. It’s a 100,000-person strong community, but they’re all in District 7… They have their own group and don’t have to deviate outside of it to do business or live comfortably. Outside of the Korean community, there’s an estimated 50,000 expats in Saigon.” In line with our comments above, what we find here also is a kind of inter-expat stereotyping, for of course it is not true that “all” Korean expats live in District 7 nor live secluded from the rest of the city.

View of Phú Mỹ Hưng, often referred to as Saigon’s Koreatown. Photo via VnExpress.

While it may initially seem like, in Vietnam, the term expat is inclusive of all foreigners, two examples make clear that the expat by no means operates as an innocent category in Vietnam either. There are two instances that make this evidently clear.

Firstly, while it is true that the country has long been a country that has exported rather than imported “unskilled” labor, there still exists a notable population of manual laborers from abroad, specifically, from China. As anthropologist Nguyễn Văn Chính explains, while it is unclear what percentage of 33,000 Chinese contracted laborers in Vietnam are manual workers, it is commonplace for Chinese contractors in northern Vietnam to hire workers from China for several reasons, including ease of communication in Chinese and the relative ease of mobilizing workers from cities just across Vietnam’s northern border. Most of these laborers work illegally on short-term contracts, usually between three months to a year, though some stay up to ten years. Surely, according to dictionary definitions, most of these migrant workers should be considered not as immigrants but rather expats. Yet, at several moments in his study, Chính refers to them as “immigrants” — very telling moments of how “expat” remains a category both racialized and classed. 

As much as 90% of thermal power plants in Vietnam are built by Chinese contractors. Photo via UNDP.

Our second example concerns the most prominently covered naturalization of a migrant in Vietnam in the media: specifically, the story of Kenneth Atkinson, a British entrepreneur, who, after three decades of living in Vietnam, finally naturalized to become a Vietnamese citizen in 2025. Interestingly, the media coverage of his naturalization on Tuổi Trẻ and VnExpress does not once mention words like “immigrant” or “immigration.” The former is in fact categorized under the “Expat Life” column and the latter article is tagged with various tags containing the word “expat.” With respect to both Kenneth Atkinson and Chinese manual laborers, the point isn’t that the former is an expat and the latter are immigrants, but to point out “edge” cases in which the terms are not in fact wielded neutrally. 

Naturalized citizen Kenneth Atkinson at the launch of his memoir in September 2025. Photo via VnExpress.

At the end of the day, popular discourse around expats and racism tends to be reductive and obscures a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon of “expats.” But even with a more nuanced understanding of the category, I think that there is a strong case to be made for the abandonment of the term altogether, given how confused and confusing the term remains. In opposition to abandoning the term, some may feel that the term “expat” may still be salvageable if used as a category to identify those who already possess a certain level of privilege. Yet, the problem with such a proposal is that what is intended as identification of privilege may in reality inadvertently constitute bestowal and/or reproduction of privilege and status, especially given that it is rarely possible to determine someone’s “level” of privilege in any straightforward way. Given this mess, it may be best that we abandon using the term altogether.

Mỹ Anh has come a long way since becoming the runner-up of The Heroes in 2021. Five years later, now with a full-length album and a spectrum of singles and extended plays under her belt, the Hanoi-based artist has proven to be one of the most dynamic singer-songwriter-producer of her generation.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Mỹ Anh, to me, is her ability to move seamlessly between Vietnamese and English, no doubt a key characteristic that sets Gen Z apart from Vietnam’s previous generations of musicians. A firm grasp on English allows young Vietnamese to gain much more knowledge of the world, and bring those nuggets of wisdom into their creative works. Similarly, Mỹ Anh’s music, right from her debut single ‘Got You’ (2020), is strongly influenced by R&B, soul, and blues, something she also brought to her latest release, ‘Pieces of Me’ — a collaboration with Japanese soul artist Nao Yoshioka.

‘Pieces of Me’ is a '90s-inspired R&B track that’s mainly driven by keys and percussion, but lifted by the vocal layers of Yoshioka and Mỹ Anh — the former leads the vocals with classic soul techniques while the latter adds an airiness and softness to the lyrics. I find it unexpectedly delightful that Yoshioka’s voice bears some resemblance to Mỹ Anh’s; in a way, a more mature and seasoned version, but they’re singing to each other and reassuring the other self that these “pieces of me” are precious and worth treasuring.

Yoshioka and Mỹ Anh, at a glance, have quite different backgrounds: they belong to different generations; one is Japanese, the other is Vietnamese. Yet, their journeys with music share striking similarities. Yoshioka dropped out of high school and moved to New York alone to chase her dream of being a singer. Mỹ Anh was accepted to the Berklee College of Music in 2020, but, on the cusp of the global pandemic, she decided to remain in Vietnam to develop her own music. Both artists are also pursuing R&B and soul in English, creative choices that often struggle to find footing in the mainstream at home.

It was this sense of isolation that inspired the lyrics of ‘Pieces of Me,’ which express a sense of relief and epiphanous reckoning at finding pieces of self after struggling to live with expectations and seek validation. “I kinda like this so far. Never knew life’s this chill. Feel like I can breathe,” Yoshioka’s verse chants, before she belts out the first line of the chorus. In the chorus, the singers perform alternate lines in succession, as if in conversation — Yoshioka is passionate and empowering, while Mỹ Anh is more grounded.

‘Pieces of Me’ was released in May 2026 as a single, and later included in Nao Yoshioka’s latest album, “self.” The track comes with a visualizer on YouTube featuring the pair’s adventures around Hanoi — sipping phở on the sidewalk and vibing in a coffee shop — it’s like Yoshioka sings: “Never knew life’s this chill.”

To sum up:

• Type: Single
• Lyrics: Simple but empowering
• Danceable: Very
• Cryable: Not really, maybe a single tear of joy
• Karaoke Potential: More for the shower

Score: 75/100

Thom Nguyen utilizes portraiture and depictions of mushrooms and organic objects to explore the concept of limerence in a solo exhibition at Permanently Closed Gallery in Thảo Điền, beginning Friday, August 28.

Limerence describes “an intense psychological state of obsessive longing for another person ... characterised by intrusive thoughts, emotional dependency and a powerful desire for reciprocation. Unlike ordinary attraction or infatuation, limerence involves obsession, emotional volatility and disruption to daily life.”

Thom approaches the term through a distinctly queer lens. The exhibition's works concern themselves with intimacy and imperfection as observed in the moments when longing becomes fixation. His typically colorful and confident oil works depict the beautiful and grotesque results of projection and idealization. Tasteful nude images are not committed to fantasy or reality, while a selection of mushrooms and other organic materials hint at the transformation and decay inherent to an emotion of intense romantic desire and fixation. 

Work from Thom Nguyen's previous exibition, Nước | Water Resistance. Photos via Thom's Instagram.

Born in Saigon and raised in America, Thom held his first solo exhibition in Vietnam, “Nước | Water Resistance,” at A. Farm last year. That collection of oil paintings, sculptures, installations, and fashion works considered queer bodies in the context of water’s ability to shift one’s identity.

Scenes from ACHI's Peach Garden at Permanently Closed. Photos via L'Officiel.

In 2026, Thom expanded his artistic practice to curation and community development with the establishment of Permanently Closed Gallery with his husband, Michael Bell. The gallery space is devoted to providing a platform for emerging queer artists and has presented several projects including Nothing to See Here, Nothing to See There, ACHI's Peach Garden, Lyon Nguyen's performance SWEET, and Yellow Fever's The Scent of Pipe.

The opening reception for LIMERENCE will be held on Friday, August 28 from 5pm to 9pm. The exhibition remains open through September on Friday–Sunday at 1–6pm.

If you spend a night wandering along Bùi Viện Walking Street and its dense concentration of bars and clubs, you will almost certainly hear the same sound spilling from multiple directions: fast, pounding basslines layered with Vietnamese pop melodies, punctuated by dramatic buildups and explosive drops. If you fall into the right algorithm on TikTok, you might encounter these same sounds circulating as background audio. This music is Vinahouse. Its ever-presence in both physical and digital spaces makes it one of the most recognizable yet least critically examined musical forms in contemporary Vietnam.

Though saturating everyday life, Vinahouse occupies a marginal position within dominant hierarchies of musical taste. The genre’s cultural significance becomes most visible when examined within queer nightlife in Saigon. Particularly, through the practices of queer collectives such as Bung L0n, the genre is reclaimed from the musical hierarchy that valorizes western electronic dance music (EDM) and becomes a vehicle for belonging and local queer expression. By tracing how Vinahouse circulates through urban soundscapes and queer nightlife spaces, and listening to the perspectives of those within that scene, we can better understand Vinahouse's role in solidifying collective identity and queer sociality in a rapidly transforming urban environment.

Young people in Saigon out and about in 1994. Photo by Ed Kashi.

Vinahouse emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a localized adaptation of Euro-American house, trance, and hard dance styles, shaped through remix practices, pirated media circulation, and club cultures in rapidly urbanizing major cities in Vietnam. The genre quickly became embedded in everyday celebratory contexts such as clubs, weddings, and informal parties. Despite its widespread popularity, Vinahouse is often framed within Vietnamese cultural discourse as lacking refinement, originality, or artistic depth.

Quỳnh Chi is an enthusiast of Vinahouse, whose listening practices also sparked my interest in the genre; she shared the same understanding: “It’s almost implicitly taught that Vinahouse is something that you’re not meant to listen to — much less to enjoy — as a middle-class person.” Queer nightlife in Vietnam occupies a similarly ambiguous and precarious position. While homosexuality was decriminalized relatively early and public attitudes have gradually shifted, queer social spaces remain shaped by discretion and episodic visibility. Nightlife venues and temporary events, especially in Saigon, therefore, have become crucial sites where queer communities negotiate safety, intimacy, and belonging. Within these spaces, music plays a central role not only in entertainment but in structuring bonds and enabling forms of self-expression. In these contexts, Vinahouse is reworked as a locally grounded sound of belonging, transforming the dance floor into a key site of queer social life in the city.

A gathering of queer Vietnamese in 1990. Photo by Catherine Karnow.

Reclaiming the local

Amid Vietnam’s rapid post–reform urbanization in the 1990s, during which a Vietnamese urban culture was being developed, EDM was hastily reshaped to fill the gap in the local urban music scene. Indeed, Vinahouse borrows heavily from global EDM structures while remixing V-pop melodies, bolero, and lyrical references into its core. The genre first became a staple music of Đôn Chề (Dolce) culture — a “marginalized” subculture distinctive of its aesthetic, specifically fashion. However, with its rhythms spilling out of neighborhood cafés, wedding tents, and roadside speakers, the music registers less as a discrete musical choice than as part of the ambient soundscape in Vietnam. This mode of circulation, alongside the digital one, produces a form of musical intimacy grounded in repetition and recognition.

Dancing in the club in Vietnam in the 1990s.

What critics dismiss as derivative can instead be understood as an important aesthetic resource that prioritizes familiarity and recognizability. Saigon’s dense club economy, informal venues, and relatively flexible social atmosphere have allowed hybrid musical forms to flourish. Yet even here, Vinahouse remains stigmatized within “elite” club cultures that privilege techno and other globally valorized electronic genres. Mainstream discourses repeatedly contrast “white” or “western” electronic music, often associated with seriousness and sophistication, with Vinahouse — labeled as trẻ trâu (childish) or bay phòng (drug-party music). 

Queer nightlife scene in Saigon provides a crucial site for reclaiming Vinahouse from these hierarchies. Within these spaces, the genre’s local specificity becomes an asset rather than a stigma. Trí Nguyễn (a.k.a. Smoothie Boiz), a co-founder and DJ of Bung L0n, described a conscious shift toward incorporating Vinahouse more centrally in his sets as a way of asserting the Vietnamese-ness within club spaces otherwise dominated by transnational sounds. This move is not framed as a rejection of global club culture but as a modification of it within a local context. In fact, early Bung L0n events relied more heavily on techno and international styles; only later did they start to incorporate Vinahouse.

Đôn Chề is a subculture rooted in fashion, street life, and social media trends.

“After a while, we were like, ‘we are Vietnamese, why don’t we play this type of music more’… [Because] each of our parties has a theme relating to Vietnam, and having no Vinahouse in our parties is not okay,” Trí said, “we felt we were missing something.” When Vietnamese tracks were introduced, he observed that there was a “kind of difference with the participants, people seemed to enjoy it more, or felt a greater sense of familiarity… People [became] more in rhythm.” Reclaiming the local, then, is less about cultural assertion than about affective resonance. 

Queer sonic kinship

Bung L0n emerged after COVID-19 as a nightlife collective responding to a perceived lack of inclusive spaces for queer communities in Saigon. Founded by a small group of friends with little background in DJ–ing and party organization, the collective is one of the few existing underground parties geared toward members of the LGBTQ+ community such as Vấp Cục Đá and Gái Nhảy. However, Bung L0n deliberately avoids claims to a specific “community,” Trí said, instead trying to “make it so that when people come, they feel comfortable being themselves, not constrained,” because “ở đâu vui nhất, ở đó có bê đê” (where it is hot, the queers hit the spot). This refusal of overt politicization is itself significant. As dance floors are often romanticized as inherently liberatory spaces — obscuring the gendered, sexualized, and racialized exclusions that structure access to nightlife — Bung L0n’s approach acknowledges the constraints without reproducing them. The result is an environment where queer visibility emerges through atmosphere instead of declaration.

An event organized by Bung L0n. Photos by @captain_____bipolar via Instagram page bung_l0n.

As a participant of multiple queer raves, Linh Phạm sees Bung L0n events not only as spaces of care and intimacy, but also “spaces of becoming”: extravagant dress and makeup, and bodily expression allow participants to safely inhabit identities that may not be possible in everyday life. The queer raves become “transcendental” spaces, but also “liminal.” The experience of exclusion often felt by queer individuals in heterosexually dominated nightclubs is not produced solely by sound but by its atmospheric and spatial by-products as well. When scenes relocate or are reworked — as in the creation of queer nightlife spaces — these atmospheres shift, and gatekeeping boundaries are redrawn, allowing different bodies to feel welcomed rather than deterred. Crucially, this process of becoming in queer spaces is collective.

While those spaces often valorize individuality, Linh emphasized that “individuality [brought into Bung L0n] is interconnected.” Individuality is experienced as relational, with diverse expressions coexisting within a shared platform. Vinahouse generates this platform by providing a common cultural language that anchors differences. When a familiar Vinahouse track appears unexpectedly within a set, the dance floor response “shifts noticeably,” said Linh — participants sing along and become more energized, transforming individualized dancing into collective vocalization. These moments are explosive not because of technical virtuosity but because of shared “sonic memory.” This interconnectedness emerges because dancing is simultaneously an individual and collective act. The dance floor becomes “one organism” when individual musical experiences merge into a shared collective experience, allowing clubbers to feel both immersed in themselves and part of something larger — akin to spiritual or religious experiences.

Vinahouse’s timbral and lyrical familiarity enables listeners to feel connected not only to the music but to one another. However, this kinship is not automatic but carefully cultivated by performers and organizers. Trí emphasized the importance of selection and balance, noting that excessive Vinahouse can alienate some listeners, while too little undermines the collective’s local grounding. This curatorial practice reflects an acute awareness of the genre’s contested status and demonstrates how kinship is produced through labor rather than assumed.

The pulse of belonging

The affective power of Vinahouse in queer nightlife spaces is inseparable from its sonic materiality. Tempo, texture, and volume work together to shape embodied experience. Vinahouse’s high BPMs and predictable structural patterns create cycles of tension and release that resonate with buildup and drop sections in EDM; the latter returns listeners “home” after a period of suspension, intensifying pleasure through contrast.

In queer raves, this return re-anchors bodies in shared cultural space with the reintroduction of familiar melodies and lyrics following extended techno passages. Texture plays an equally significant role. Dense bass frequencies layered with melodic lines invite tactile engagement, encouraging listeners to attune not only to sound but to vibration and movement. Such a tactile immersion blurs distinctions between self and crowd, and fosters levels of embodied intimacy. Volume further intensifies this experience by collapsing distance. Vinahouse is often described as “louder” and more “bustling” than other electronic genres, a quality that Trí identified as immediately signaling “Vietnamese house.” This loudness is not merely auditory but social. It demands participation.

Bung L0n's anniversary event. Photos by @ilang.tmp via Instagram page @bung_l0n.

Therefore, the traits of musical spaces are often less about sound itself than about the atmospheres it produces. In Bung L0n events, sonic qualities of Vinahouse contribute to an atmosphere of inclusion by drowning out self-consciousness and social surveillance, allowing queer bodies to move without constant self-monitoring.

Perhaps most importantly, Vinahouse negotiates the relationship between Vietnamese cultural identity and queer expression in ways that challenge dominant narratives. Queerness in Vietnam is frequently framed as western or foreign, while Vinahouse is often understood as stubbornly local, even anti-western. The convergence of queerness and Vinahouse in nightlife spaces destabilizes both assumptions. In other words, their confluence unravels an inherent antithesis: on the one hand, as Chi put, Vinahouse — being excessive and positioned outside the ordinary — is in and of itself “queer”; on the other hand, queer communities in Vietnam are eager for a local and unique grounding in place of Western norms of sexuality and club culture.

Vinahouse thus has become a means of “localizing western club culture” into something distinctly Vietnamese rather than derivative, said Linh, with whom Chi and I also shared a Vinahouse playlist on Spotify. These moments of localization are not primarily ideological, as ideologies tend to recede inside the rave, replaced by what Chi described as “embodied,” “carceral,” and “more felt” experience. Yet the effects are nonetheless political, allowing participants to inhabit queerness without disavowing cultural belonging. In this sense, Vinahouse within queer nightlife unsettles both the cultural hierarchy of music and the societal hierarchy of sexuality, demonstrating that queer expression in Vietnam does not need to be sonically western to be legible or meaningful, and that Vinahouse can function as a medium through which queer belonging is not only performed but locally grounded, sensorially felt, and collectively sustained. At the same time, the genre does not resolve the tensions between the socially constructed cultural hierarchy and sexual marginalization, but it renders them temporarily livable. Its significance lies not in transcending stigma but in dwelling within it, transforming what is dismissed as low, repetitive, or unserious into a shared language of joy, recognition, and care.

Bidding goodbye to central Hanoi, I took the National Road 21B to reach Tế Tiêu Neighborhood, a small community in Đại Nghĩa Township of Hanoi’s Mỹ Đức District. This fertile patch of land by the Đáy River is the cradle of a unique form of traditional folk art: Tế Tiêu puppetry.

As water puppetry (rối nước) is a better-known art form in Vietnam, sometimes, Tế Tiêu’s version is referred to as rối cạn (land puppetry) to differentiate the two.

On the day of my visit, the puppetry troupe was preparing for a show in the afternoon for a tour group, but the temple courtyard was bustling with activities right from the early morning. Someone was busy setting up the stage, another was arranging chairs, and technicians were testing the sound. In a room next door, rows of wooden puppets were hung neatly, awaiting their turn in the limelight.

The Tế Tiêu puppetry troupe comprises about 20 members, including some who are over 60.

Some time later, troupe members returned from the field. They parked their bike outside and swiftly began changing into their performing costumes — brightly colored áo tứ thân and áo dài with accompanying headscarves. Every day, they are seasoned farmers hard at work cultivating plants in the field, but once on stage, they transform into masterful artists whose every movement is in sync with the actions and emotions of the puppets.

Lão Trượng, the opening character of Tế Tiêu puppet.

“Does someone like me need to announce my presence?” a deep, robust voice boomed out from behind the stage. In front, Lão Trượng appeared in his crimson robe, silvery beard, and measured steps. In water puppet shows, the narrator is Chú Tễu, but in Tế Tiêu shows, the narration is done by an elderly man, the symbol of the village’s most respected generation.

Phạm Công Bằng, an artisan and the leader of the Tế Tiêu troupe.

After the show, artisan Phạm Công Bằng sat down with me to retell the centuries-old history of Tế Tiêu puppetry, a rich tradition that’s not only valuable because of its artistry, but also how it anchors the soul and collective memory of an entire community.

Rối cạn, the cultural root of Tế Tiêu ancient village

In Vietnam, puppetry is closely linked to an agrarian way of life. It is how farmers express their love for life, the nation, and the people; their wishes for a content life; and their faith in kindness. Water puppetry is no doubt the most famous form, but land puppetry, despite being lesser-known, has also existed for hundreds of years.

Getting ready for a performance.

Tế Tiêu, as a region, is a historic land where early Vietnamese settlers founded villages. They cleared jungles to create farms and established cultural practices. According to local elders, puppetry has been here for over 400 years thanks to Trần Triều Đông, a court mandarin. In 1573, he relocated here to form a village, teaching the people to cultivate rice, creating the art of puppetry, and passing it down to community members. Since then, this art form has taken root here as a crucial part of the people’s treasured pastime.

Tế Tiêu puppetry has witnessed many ups and downs too. Wars and separations nearly wiped out its existence, but in 1965–1960, it was slowly restored and thrived thanks to the efforts of veteran artisans like Lê Năng Nhượng and Phạm Văn Bể. From many small groups, the official Tế Tiêu puppetry troupe was formed in 1956. The troupe still maintains around 100 plays today and thousands of puppets controlled by around 20 members.

Interacting with members of the audience.

Artisan Phạm Công Bằng told me, back then, puppetry existed alongside nature and followed the rhythm of the harvest season. A puppetry show wasn’t an ostentatious occasion. Once the harvest was over and farmers had more free time, villagers gathered at temple courtyards on full-moon nights. Before electricity was invented, kerosene lamps and moonlight were the only light sources illuminating those get-togethers. Puppeteers didn’t make a living from performing; they were just farmers entertaining one another. During the day, they worked in the fields, but at night, they retreated behind the curtains to put on shows. That’s why Tế Tiêu puppetry is considered a highly socialized art form.

After hundreds of years, puppetry is still a highly socialized art form.

After hundreds of years, the structure of puppet shows has changed: spectators are mostly tourists while performances are put on at tourist attractions, but that communal spirit is still mostly intact.

An amalgam of many art forms

Tế Tiêu puppetry is the combination of many different artistic skills, including puppet craftsmanship, staging, puppet control, singing, spoken words, and music. What’s more, many puppet plays are directly adapted from materials of chèo, tuồng, quan họ, and hát văn — many other genres of folk performances — to create puppet shows both diverse and recognizable.

There are many steps in the creation of a puppet.

According to Bằng, the creation of a puppet involves many steps, all of which require a high level of intricacy. Firstly, artisans choose a suitable type of wood to form the puppet body, often fig or jackfruit. Then, they carve out the body details; specific characters need to look a certain way. Once the physical form is done, body parts are assembled alongside control sticks in a way that produces movements as smoothly as possible. Then comes the beautifying stage when the puppet is painted, drawn on, and decorated to complete the character’s appearance and unique personality. Once that is done, outfits are created for the puppets. Finally, after a few adjustments, it can make its stage debut.

Buồng trò is the stage wings.

The main plays featured in Tế Tiêu puppetry often originate from real-life events and figures, such as historical characters, traditional customs, and spiritual lore. The background could include elements of agrarian life like rice paddy fields, rice milling, field ploughing, areca nut harvesting, water buffalo, and chickens. The source materials can include historical episodes like Thánh Gióng’s resistance against Ân forces (China’s Tang Dynasty) or the story of how Lý Công Uẩn moved the capital from Ninh Bình to Hanoi. Everyday activities like festivals, religious ceremonies, cultural activities, fruit collection, swings, palanquin procession, and wrestling are emulated using puppetry’s dynamic movements and colors. Each trope also carries didactic messaging to spread moral lessons and warn against vices and crimes.

A wrestling scene.

In order to best communicate the message and soul of the play, performers are expected to fully grasp the role of each puppet and the flow of the narrative to use the appropriate movement for each moment. The most common ones are walking, standing, arm-raising, head-turning, holding props, etc. Harder ones consist of emotional expressions, such as fright, joy, or sadness. Together, they form the “life” of the puppet. Mastering this life emulation requires not only flexible control, but also a deep understanding of each play and each character.

An equally crucial component of the performance is music and dialogue, guiding the emotions and rhythm of the play — sometimes it’s urgent and compelling, at times, it’s gentle and reverent. The orchestra accompanying the troupe includes percussion instruments like base drums, snare drums, and cymbals; and string instruments like đàn nhị and đàn tam. Depending on the play, performers  sing melodies from different genres, from common folk songs, spoken poetry, to tuồng, chèo, hát văn, and quan họ.

Nguyễn Văn Thuyết, the đàn nhị instrumentalist in the troupe.

The guardian of Tế Tiêu puppetry

In the field of land puppetry, perhaps the most well-known figure is Phạm Văn Bể, considered by many as a “walking dictionary” of puppetry and the soul of the troupe. Since he was eight, he had already shown great passion for puppets and then spent his entire life with this art form. He was well-versed in every step of the way from puppet making, scriptwriting, staging to instructing and performing.

Bể’s son is artisan Phạm Công Bằng, who grew up amongst the thuds of puppets being carved from wood blocks and the sounds of đàn nhị and drums. “It was his life story that inspired me to follow the family trade,” he shares. Bằng remembers vividly the elation when he held the first puppet he crafted himself in his hands. It was Thạch Sanh of the famous folk story Thạch Sanh–Lý Thông. His first performance took place when he was just 12 years old.

Standing in the stagewings, artisans could hear every laughter, every round of applause.

At the time, despite being the smallest and youngest member, he insisted on joining. Those formative experiences cultivated within him an affection for his ancestor’s lifework. After Bể passed away, the troupe lost a crucial pillar, but to Bằng, the work to keep it going is important as it encapsulates the collective memory of an entire community. “Standing in the stagewings, artisans can hear every laughter and every round of applause. When my hometown’s legacy is introduced to more people, I feel motivated,” he explains.

For someone who’s in charge of the Tế Tiêu troupe’s operation today, Bằng’s biggest concern is how to protect it from obsolescence, so that Tế Tiêu puppetry will continue to exist in the everyday life of villagers, and one day could become a unique tourist attraction for travelers.

Đồng nát translates to “junk; broken materials,” but it is also a term used in northern Vietnam to describe the recycling workforce, 90% of whom are elderly women, that operate in a nation that produces 68,000 tons of solid waste every day.

The short film, Mud Below, Sun Above, opens with this information displayed across moody scenes of gray, dilapidated Hanoi. It then quickly moves beyond impersonal statistics to the individual experiences of scrap collection via Bể, a 64-year-old woman who earns a living moving door to door to collect recyclables.

Viewers are given the mundane details of her trade, including the arduous effort of scraping labels from liquor bottles, alongside her reflections on changes in society as understood via trash materials produced. The intimate look at a difficult but dignified life provides essential human elements to truths of commerce, production and lifestyles that are all too frequently framed via cold statistics.

Mud Below, Sun Above comes from Hanoi-based Dutch filmmaker Kate Villevoye, who Saigoneers may remember from her previous work, Mr. Cường's Banyan Tree. After a successful run at several international film festivals, her latest work is being hosted by Aeon Video. 

While the movie doesn’t directly pose questions, let alone answers, it humanizes an important issue and should inspire viewers to understand their surroundings and their impacts upon them with greater respect and appreciation.

Watch the video in full below:

Video via Aeon.

Top image via Kate Villevoye's website.

Using her keen observation and sensitive art intuition, Minh Phương creates a colorful realm through her brushstrokes, with dynamic human figures, animals, florals, fruits, and familiar street antics. Using striking visuals as trusty companions, she expresses a hearty affection for mankind and life itself, as well as local culture and self-compassion.

Living beautifully, dorkily

Minh Phương, best known by her social media handle Phuongsongdep, is a multimedia illustration artist from Hải Phòng but based in Saigon. Her art is distinctively colorful, and imbued with a cheekiness evident of Phương’s openness to her emotions and desire to “live beautifully.” Besides personal projects, brand collaborations and art fairs, Phương’s oeuvre also includes cover arts for popular musicians.

Artworks from Phương’s coaster collaboration with Tired City.

When asked about the meaning behind her quirky internet personality Phuongsongdep — which translates to “Phương lives beautifully” — she laughs: “Well back then I thought it was whimsical and impressive so I kept it, but now there’s a bit of pressure, because you can’t always live beautifully.” She nonetheless decided to stick with it because “I want to live beautifully, kindly, lovingly, and especially I want to live with beauty.”

Minh Phương and her artwork.

Phương often depicts her subjects with rounded edges, like cherubic girls, plump cats, or even plushy flowers. Her fantasy world seems to be in constant flux: the foliage sways in the wind, the water swirls, while dewdrops bounces. There, little school children dance with the fruit vendor, while sun-shielded commuters topple after stray dogs do drive-bys. Phương tends to anthropomorphize her subjects, giving lively expressions to fruits and vegetables, which can blush, smirk, pout, or wink. She is steadily building up a whimsical world using a sweet palette, creating a charming sense of dorkiness.

Phương’s artistic world is filled with colors and plumpness.

Beside portraying the modern society, Phương is also lending that characteristic sense of whimsy into time-honored cultural icons. When she was working on the “Manifest Money” collection, beside well-known prosperity deities like Thần Tài, Thổ Địa, Phương included the images of lesser-known mythological figures like Thiềm Thừ, a three-legged frog symbolizing stability; and Tỳ Hưu, a kirin-like creature with no anus, so it can only absorb fortune without letting it out. All four mythological characters become softened and childlike in Phương’s artistic interpretations.

Manifest Money.

“Dorkiness is also a form of coolness”

This declaration is not something that came natural to Phương. Coolness is an attribute often associated with edginess and aloofness. As someone fond of sweet palettes, she couldn’t identify with the quality, but as she gradually became more aware of her own personal style, that definition shifted: “Perhaps the patriarchy led me to believe that cuteness is not cute, but I really think that how bubblegum pink I am could be a form of coolness too.”

Phương also experienced periods when doubts made her reluctant, and a tendency to overthink overwhelmed her rest. So she drew, as way to communicate with her inner self and a form of meditation. The mind is a garden for different varieties of flowers. Stressful flowers are sharp and monotonous, but flowers of contentment are fluffy and vivid. When the garden started taking shape, she felt at peace lying there to observe and understand it.

Phương’s garden of the mind.

Loving the self, the people, and sharing that love

Having been through bouts of self-doubts, Phương wants her art to become a rest stop for the mind, welcoming kindred friends. It is often said that the arts have the power to connect, and artworks can help not only their creators but the audience members. Case in point, Phương’s pieces were once been used in an art therapy project, spreading the joy of creating art to the public.

“Friendly Reminder” is a collection of postcards she created with the initial purpose to remind herself of her self-worth, but it has touched many other like-minded souls. According to Phương, a number of buyers use them to decorate their rooms as little encouragement, while others use them as gifts. Every time somebody writes her a message recounting how they felt consoled by the artworks during melancholic times, she loves what she’s doing a bit more: “The artwork is more meaningful if it can reach more people instead of existing alone.”

Friendly Reminder, a collection of postcards.

Nurturing moments of stillness

To an artist, a eureka moment can come quite spontaneously, and forcing something out can worsen the artist’s block. Even though Phương agrees that creativity can’t be rushed, she also doesn’t encourage procrastinating a piece for too long, as it can extinguish the creative fire. She observes that some young artists don’t feel comfortable with showcasing their work. Even though they have artworks, they’re still waiting for a higher level of perfection. To Phương, this is a vicious circle because our standards and skills are continuously improving. The longer one waits, the longer the art stays shelved, and the growth is not acknowledged. Therefore, Phương encourages anyone who does art, or any trade, to set a timeline for their work, publish it, close the page, and embark on the next endeavor. The next one is almost always gonna be better.

To get to the deadline in a timely manner, Phương often tries to create an environment conducive to idea formation. She goes on walks, observes, and records images that appear in her mind. Perhaps that’s merely to satisfy her artistic whim and might not be rigorous enough, but it is still a form of practice.

Phương used to treat each artwork as a brainchild, always striving to push it to perfection. Right now, however, she allows them to live their own life out there, while she focuses on herself. They exist as milestones in an artist’s journey, but can’t expand anymore. The artist, however, is an ever-changing entity, capable of producing those milestones. “I need to know how to accept that my ability is always reaching forward to feel comfortable creating,” she shares.

Phuongsongdep’s artworks can be found at art stores like Tired City and OHQUAO. Visit her Instagram @minhphuong.work for to view more.

What is culture? For someone who writes for an arts and culture publication, you’d think I’d have a quick and clean answer, but the more I ruminate, the more I realize it comes down to a sloppy assemblage of habits, ephemera, and minutiae: eating preferences, holiday attire, styles of sneezes, methods for counting on one’s fingers, variety of fruits to gift and an endless string of social norms. Pile enough of these choices together, and you end up with a distinct culture.

If one were to thus try and compile the many disparate points that comprise Vietnamese culture, one must make space for ngồi chồm hổm. As its oft-used English equivalent, “Asian squat,” attests to, the style of crouching low to the ground, perfectly balanced without a chair, is common across Asia broadly. Still, it is such a frequent sight in Vietnam, evidenced by the many social media posts foreigners make about it, that we should consider it an element of Vietnamese culture.

For illustrative purposes only and not guaranteed anatomical accuracy.

In these online discussions, westerners often admit to being wholly unable to chồm hổm. If you take a poll of your foreign friends and co-workers, you’ll likely find this to be true. But why? While there are plenty of theories as to why foreigners rarely can, it has less to do with the minor differences in body types and anatomies across ethnicities, and more to do with practice. To squat, one must have flexible ankles. Kids have these and thus are observed across cultures to be rather good at squatting. But unless one practices regularly, the body, like the mind, naturally becomes less flexible, and the ability is lost. This might explain why many Vietnamese of all ages can squat: they have plenty of practice when washing vegetables, fixing a motorbike, waiting for the bus or simply playing games on the floor when they don’t want to get the seat of their pants dirty.  

Squatting used to be a popular way to enjoy noodles in Vietnam (left). Photo via kevintruong.vn.

Sugarcane vendors are seen squatting on a Vietnamese street in 1950 (right). Photo via Vietnamplus

Of course, not all Vietnamese can chồm hổm, because of habits or physical shape. And perhaps, as the nation continues to develop away from the actions typically associated with squatting, even fewer will be able to. This shift would coincide with some local perception that chồm hổm is an inherently uncouth or rural activity best left back in the nation’s poorer eras, despite its potential positive health effects. This view may be exacerbated by the pose's resemblance to the posture one takes to defecate when no western toilet is present.

Proof of my squatting prowess from an early age.

I would consider the disappearance of the squat to be a great cultural loss. But I am biased. For inexplicable reasons, growing up very much white in America, I would chồm hổm at all times: while playing videos games, while studying in my school desk, even seated at  the family dinner table. While this caused much consternation amongst my teachers and parents — “Knees off the able,” my Dad would repeat several times per meal — I never grew out of it. And now, at least until my Vietnamese advances beyond that of an uncoordinated middle-schooler, chồm hổm is what most allows me to feel like I can fit in within Vietnamese culture. Not to mention, it’s far more comfortable and convenient than any chair I’ve yet to find. 

In the last four to five years, ancient Vietnamese costumes have gained more visibility, becoming a welcome sight among young locals thanks to the efforts to reproduce and promote historic fashion from a number of designers, brands, and interest groups that appreciate the country’s history and traditions.

Great Vietnam is made up of such individuals. Founded in 2019 and officially going into operation in 2020, the group focuses on researching and reproducing clothing that was worn in Vietnam hundreds of years ago. A few costumes they produce have been featured in the art show “The Quintessence of Vietnam” at Grand World Phú Quốc (2021); the photo-video project “VIETNAMESE? REALLY?! – 1000 Years of Vietnamese Fashion” (2021) in collaboration with the Vietnam Centre; and the exhibition “The Resplendent Vestiges” in Sydney, Australia (2019).

The video project "Người Việt Xa Lạ" by Vietnam Centre featuring costumes made by Great Vietnam.

From individual struggles to a collective effort

Great Vietnam comprises young Vietnamese who love culture and creativity and aim to make their reproduction of ancient clothing as historically accurate as possible. The three core members are 28-year-old Vũ Đức and 33-year-old Trương Tuấn Anh, who are in charge of designing the costumes; and 36-year-old Đoàn Thành Lộc, a researcher of Sino-Vietnamese culture who provides expertise on the accuracy of the clothes and handles customer feedback.

Đức has a degree in political science and Tuấn Anh is a research fellow that focuses on space technology. Despite the seemingly irrelevant backgrounds, the two share a passion for cổ phục, or ancient Vietnamese clothing, which drew them together to found Great Vietnam in 2019.

Inside Great Vietnam's Hanoi showroom with their works on display. At the time of writing, the showroom has been closed.

That was after they both made personal attempts to research and promote what they knew about the clothes: Tuấn Anh learned, designed and sewed traditional patterns by himself and joined the Hoa Văn Đại Việt project; while Đức created cartoon characters wearing historic royal clothes and published them on a Facebook page named Anh Hoàng.

Vũ Đức tells Saigoneer: “On our individual journeys, when it came to ancient clothing, we all encountered challenges, and when we realized that even the official sources sometimes delivered incorrect information on this type of clothing, we decided to become the ones who make it right. That’s how Great Vietnam was born. Step by step, we reproduced the costumes, and at some point, it became something we do together.”

Áo phụng bào, based on the real version worn by Empress Dowager Từ Cung, the mother of Emperor Bảo Đại. Featured: headwear by Phượng Điển. Photo by Bạch Như.

They realized many Vietnamese love the country’s ancient costumes, but often mistake the majority of replica designs available in the market for the real thing. This shortcoming applies to áo dài (narrow-sleeved tunics, considered the national costume of Vietnam since the Nguyễn Dynasty), áo tấc (wide-sleeved tunics, used on important occasions), áo nhật bình (special vestments reserved for women of high status under the Nguyễn Dynasty), and áo bào (round-collared robes for feudal-era mandarins).

Young Vietnamese wear ancient costumes as part of the parade event Bách Hoa Bộ Hành. The walk was joined by many historical interest groups and individuals, including Đông Phong, Great Vietnam, Hoa Niên, Thủy Trung Nguyệt, Quê cực, and Đại Nam Chân Ảnh. Photo by Ann Anh with retouching by Bạch Như.

“It has not changed since the ancient costume 'movement' by young people started five years ago,” Đức says. “That’s the reason why we want to recreate the ancient costumes, to run Great Vietnam — as one of the key players in the process of changing awareness of ancient Vietnamese costumes.”

Lộc joined the team later, after he was approached by Đức. “I decided to collaborate because of the good vision Great Vietnam wanted to pursue, which is to create patterns and textures as historically accurate as possible,” Lộc says. A scholar with more than 10 years of studying and doing research abroad on Sino-Vietnamese culture, Lộc has access to source texts written in Chinese from China, South Korea and Japan.

Costumes of Nguyễn Dynasty court guards recreated by Great Vietnam. On the right is the reference image taken by W. Robert Moore in 1931.

“A lot of people say that what was written about Vietnam in Chinese texts is not accurate, which is a perspective I would really like to criticize,” he says. “Not everything China says about Vietnam is wrong and inaccurate, especially things that were written hundreds of years ago.”

He relies on documentation both in and out of the country to deduce what ancient clothing items should look like, Lộc says. “It has to be a two-way process, with exogenous and endogenous variables. We have information in our books, historical records, from statues in pagodas, temples, and communal houses, as well as in documentation of family trees or handwritten books from the older generation...That is one source. I then compare them with foreign sources. That is the scientific method we use. We never completely rely on only one source.”

A video featuring áo mãng lan, a tunic often worn by court guards or military mandarins of the Nguyễn court.

Promoting Vietnam through cultural products

Art producers and practitioners are the people Great Vietnam aims to collaborate with, since the group thinks art is a great way to reach out to a wider audience to promote Vietnamese culture through costumes.

A few examples of robes and costumes for female members of the court.

“Our target customers are those that are carrying out large-scale art and cultural projects such as stage performances, movies, or festivals because they have high demand for ceremonial clothing and have great potential for promoting an authentic traditional culture,” Đức explains. “Despite the scarcity of such customers in Việt Nam, through our activities, Great Vietnam hopes to gradually encourage people and organizations to think about and carry out such projects.”

The group also produces and supplies costumes to retail customers. They do everything themselves, from making designs and patterns to measuring and cutting the clothes.

A young couple in Vietnam wore ancient costumes for their engagement ceremony. Albeit not very common, historical costumes have increasingly been selected by culture-minded individuals in Vietnam for their betrothal. Photo by Jamex Production.

“In this field, it’s difficult to find experienced partners, so we have to actively research, think, and learn from scratch,” Đức says. “In terms of supplies, Great Vietnam looks for both modern and traditional sources. Apart from stages that need modern materials such as designing, printing, sewing, etc. For other techniques such as embroidering, carving, weaving, it’s compulsory for us to reach out to craft villages, especially when making silk costumes.”

Vạn Phúc, La Khê, Bưởi, Nha Xá, Nam Cao, Mã Châu, and Tân Châu are some traditional craft villages that the group often visits. The process of producing a set of ancient costumes is the same as any other type of clothes, Đức explains. He is responsible for designing the decorative patterns, while Tuấn Anh is mainly in charge of drafting the sewing patterns.

Áo nhật bình created by Great Vietnam, based on a real version worn by Princess Mỹ Lương, photographed in 1931.

“First we would sit down together and decide whether the costume will have patterns on them or not, and whether the patterns will be embroidered or printed,” Đức elucidates on the process. They will then create a sewing pattern and send it to manufacturers, who will cut fabrics and follow instructions on the pattern to produce the clothes.

Photos of their products and feedback from clients are often posted on the Great Vietnam 大越南 Facebook page. Included in each post are detailed descriptions of the costumes and references to the texts from which they learned about the meaning of each pattern and accessory. But behind this thoughtful presentation is a lot of hard work put into finding credible documentation and making sense of them.

Three other áo nhật bình prototypes created by Great Vietnam.

“The artifacts available in the country were either so poorly preserved or hard to access due to barriers in cultural management, so those available outside the country, albeit scarce and scattered, were the ones we placed our expectations on,” Đức shares. “Because of this, our work in the last three years is like sailing against the wind, with almost no support, or struggling to get support, the type of struggle that we thought we shouldn’t have to go through. But also because of it, we got used to finding solutions ourselves instead of relying on unreliable connections that might affect our eagerness to research and learn.”

Mãng lan tunic worn by court mandarins. "Mãng" is a four-claw dragon, a motif often seen on costumes for court officials. Mãng is lower than "Long," a five-claw dragon that's highest in level and is only used in costumes for the king.

Not undermining the authorities’ role in preserving cultures, Lộc and Tuấn Anh both think there should be a collaboration between the state government and private companies to better promote ancient clothing. Lộc tells me: “Both sides should find a common voice and agree to cooperate. The government has an advantage in terms of literature and law. Private units have strong teams and good knowledge. They really should collaborate.”

“Personally, I hope historical researchers and the government will pay more attention to preserving traditional costumes and culture. That is what we should really aim for at the moment.”

Costumes as a cultural trademark

Despite having only been in the business for a few years, Great Vietnam is serious about their work. Their goal is to keep reproducing ancient costumes — from simple to intricate, from the latest dynasty to earlier ones — and fill the gap in documentation and knowledge about them in the country. They also hope that historical clothing will be studied carefully, treated with respect, and that their honest reproductions will help the next generations appreciate the past culture more.

Mãng bào, often worn by court mandarins.

Đức shares: “In Vietnam, the process of reviving ancient costumes started slowly and did not receive enough attention, but that’s not how it’s done around the world, because traditional artworks such as drawings, carvings, and embroidery show the depth of local culture. If we continue to not pay attention, we don’t really know our culture.”

Lộc has a rather unusual vision for the revival of ancient clothing: "I hope people will wear them to bars, pubs, luxurious international events, and on planes. Let’s consider them, even though they are a bit loose, a bit baggy, a bit untidy. They’re called ‘ancient’ but they don’t belong to dead people. So don’t just wear them to go to temples, pagodas, or the Temple of Literature, or the Imperial City of Huế."

“Their name is ‘ancient clothes’ but they are not old. Let’s consider them as just a style, and take advantage of it. Only then can ancient clothing endure and exist in our daily life. If we only wear them to temples and pagodas and traditional ceremonies, they will just stay there, they will not evolve.”

Photos courtesy of Great Vietnam.

This article was originally published in 2022.

Despite its humble beginning as something worn just for convenience’s sake, đồ bộ has entered every minute of life in the Mekong Delta as a staple fashion choice that’s both flexible and colorful. Đồ bộ means “set outfit” in Vietnamese, a type of female casualwear made of soft, thin fabrics that often comes in a top and long bottom combo. They’re sometimes referred to as “Vietnamese pajamas,” but these comfortable sets can be worn at any time of the day and even outside, not just reserved for sleep like pajamas.

It’s Sunday morning in my hometown. The power is suddenly out. Our home is devoid of any usual sounds of the electric fan or water pump. The rooster’s lonesome cock-a-doodle-doo pierces through the dew-drenched garden. I carry the basin of laundry to our washing yard beneath the banana trees, where the giant pot sits, holding alum-free fresh water that my mom filtered a few days ago. This is my favorite washing spot, because it receives all the cooling breeze from our pond. The air is filled with a soothing aromatic mix of fabric softener, early morning sun, fresh hay, and new alluvium from the nearby river.

I carefully weave each clothing item onto a hanger and arrange them onto the clothesline, leaving them to dangle in the breeze. The line is right next to the veggie patches, so the scene always looks like something out of a picture book. The winged beans are flowering on the trellis; their lilac flowers pop out in between green leaves craning out into the sun; nearby, the gourd blossoms are bright yellow; beneath, the water morning glory shoots are still holding the night dewdrops. Amongst the emerald, lilac, yellow palette of nature, my mom’s navy đồ bộ stands out with its flowery pattern of red, yellow, and pink. Another features tiny floral motifs sprinkled all across the textile; one has neat rows of black polka dots on white; while the third set has stripes of sienna, purple yam, and teal.

I am enamoured with my mom’s outfits, even though I rarely muster enough courage to wear them in public. Only on a few home visits do I manage to try on the sets she finds pretty and saves for me in her wardrobe. Perhaps I’m not yet used to seeing myself in đồ bộ, and living in the city, I don’t have many chances to enjoy them. I guess I feel a little awkward in this vibrant fashion genre.

Nonetheless, one would only need to step into a local market to find an eclectic “universe” of dynamic đồ bộ. From U-30, U-40 sisters to older aunties, everybody wears them with ease. They wear đồ bộ with platform slides, crab claw clips, string bags, and, of course, the classic plastic market baskets. Outside market trips, đồ bộ can also be spotted in coffee shops, at the school gate during pickup time, or even during raucous livestreams and trendy TikTok dances filmed hastily in the front yard.

Everybody is embracing đồ bộ with open hearts today, thanks to a slew of modern modifications that have improved upon the designs compared to years ago. My mom says that about a decade ago, đồ bộ was only confined to loose clothing created and worn purely for ease of movement. Nowadays, đồ bộ retailers boast a smorgasbord of styles, from short to mid-length to no sleeves, from lacy trims to heart-shaped necklines. The level of craftsmanship and silhouette diversity have also been improved to be as flattering as possible to wearers of any age.

Perhaps the most welcome improvement was the advent of new materials such as cold spandex. During the peak of the hot season, this cooling fabric provides both lightness and coolness to the skin. Its minimal wrinkling and fast-drying properties are also beneficial for wearers who are busy doing heavy labor all day.

Attending a countryside wedding is a great opportunity for one to witness how the ladies break out their most treasured đồ bộ outfits. Their appeal doesn’t lie in the number of compliments they can solicit, but their ability to stay stylish and put-together even after a whole day cooking and prepping ingredients. Right from the moment the first light of the day arrives, everybody has gathered to help out with wedding preparations: some butcher the poultry, others peel veggies and pick herbs. A while later, those silhouettes move into their position next to the pot of porridge or broth, nimbly seasoning and stirring while sometimes wiping their hands on those very outfits. When the guests arrive, they will be greeted by those đồ bộ, and then the aunties will head back inside to clear the table and wash dishes. It’s probably because the wearers themselves are energetic, whatever they put on will take on the same energy — no frills, no fussiness, just pure countryside dynamism.

Đồ bộ are not confined to the kitchen or the market. They could be cooking up a storm in the morning, and in the afternoon, being cuffed up to wade through water channels and paddy fields. Sometimes you’ll even spot them climbing up towering coconut trees, each movement breezily supported by stretchy elasticity. By the river, they set up fishing nets; during low tide periods, they hunch down in sandy swamps to dredge for clams. Đồ bộ is as resilient as the people who wear them, enduring every kind of harsh weather without complaints.

One time, I was loitering in the kitchen while Mom was making canh chua. Its steam filled the air. I asked, quite randomly: “Mom, why is it called đồ bộ and not đồ bông [floral outfit]?” She was holding a ladle full of hot broth close to her mouth as she blew at it gently to cool it down enough to taste. “What đồ bộ? The one I’m wearing? Well, the top and bottom are cut from the same cloth, so people call it that.” That’s countryside vocabulary for you — everything all started with “that’s just what people say.”

Sometimes I see đồ bộ as miền Tây’s unofficial uniform. From the well-off to laborers in the field, their dressers are bound to feature a few sets. The southern region is too sweltering and humid for stiff formality in daily fashion, or sharp distinctions between clothes to “wear at home” versus “wear outside.” Every day, the same outfit can be worn to cook lunch and sweep the floor in the morning and then to visit a neighbor for some delicious gossip in the afternoon. Is that not yet another piece of evidence of that famous Mekong way of life? Laidback, flexible, and free-spirited.

I have always been curious about the origins of đồ bộ in history. Alas, internet searches and questions to my grandma and mom yielded nothing concrete. The only thing I know for sure is that, since I was little, I have already watched mom tailor her own đồ bộ. She often purchased floral fabrics from the local market and spread them across a spacious wooden plank. A triangle of tailor’s chalk in hand, she sketched the layout and then cut out shapes using a pair of sharp scissors. I was amazed just seeing everything take shape from the sideline. In the evening, after dinner, she would sit down at the table and continue cutting and sewing.

During a time when retailers were rare and making one’s own clothes was more convenient, each đồ bộ was a product of care. Back then, my grandma’s clothing used to be mostly thick cotton in dull colors, usually solid without patterns; living in a period of scarcity meant durability was prioritized over everything else. Bright colors, florals, and patterns only started showing up in my mom’s adulthood — a positive correlation with our society’s better financial situation. Once a set was finished, mom would meticulously fold it to save for grandma or my aunties. Each outfit was treasured like luxury goods.

Over the years, our rustic sewing machine was pushed into a corner of the house, enveloped by a layer of dust. Now, at the market, everything is available for instant purchase without any additional labor involved. Still, no matter how diverse the styles get and how instant shopping has gotten, the gist of đồ bộ remains intact like the early days — a symbol of a timeless sense of practicality and simplicity that has helped endear it to everybody, even in a new era.

Folklorist and anthropologist Nguyễn Đổng Chi dedicated decades to weaving a significant portion of Vietnam’s folklore tapestry. He collected, researched, and rewrote over 200 Vietnamese folktales from all corners of the country. His work, initially scattered across five volumes published individually and consecutively over 25 years, appeared as a complete anthology in 1982. Guided by a comprehensive treatise of Vietnamese folktale, Chi’s Kho tàng truyện cổ tích Việt Nam (Treasury of Vietnamese Folk Tales) might be daunting for readers drawn to Vietnamese folklore but disenchanted by rigorous academic discourse.

Major Books’ Treasury of Vietnamese Folk Tales: Volume 1, released in March 2026, offers a condensed and curated version of Chi’s seminal work in English. For the first time, international readers can indulge in his version of 11 classic Vietnamese tales. Readers might uncover a new appreciation for familiar tales, such as ‘The Battle Between Sơn Tinh and Thuỷ Tinh’ (Sơn Tinh Thủy Tinh), ‘The Tale of the Betel, Areca, and Slaked Lime’ (Sự Tích Trầu Cau), and the infamous ‘Tấm Cám,’ widely known as the Vietnamese equivalent of Cinderella; or discover new stories about ancient customs. This edition, focused on presenting the folktales to amuse and delight, is ornamented by Jeet ZDũng’s illustrations. Inspired by Vietnamese artisans, ZDũng’s visual interpretations are as playful, textured, and immersive as the tales they bring to life.

Fairy tales and the women in them

Treasury of Vietnamese Folk Tales: Volume 1 is an ambitious project. It promises multifaceted Vietnamese female characters, and to honor Vietnamese cultural heritage through Vietnamese storytelling traditions. Offering glimpses of our culture through short, punchy, and surprisingly funny tales, it appeals to readers with varying expectations. Love stories, rivalries, happy endings, tales of revenge, historical legends, animals, deities and Vietnamese customs: this compilation truly has something for everyone to enjoy. It fulfills its promises through whimsical visual elements, subtly thought-provoking stories, and skillfully translated folk rhymes that sound as catchy as the original Vietnamese versions of my childhood.

Inside front cover

Mother Liễu Hạnh watching corrupt male travelers from above

Initially, I struggled to reconcile the anthology’s bold claim to spotlight “the women of Vietnamese folklore—not damsels in distress, but as heroes, tricksters, warriors, and sometimes even villains,” with its opening title, ‘The Battle Between Sơn Tinh and Thuỷ Tinh.’ The tale is a classic: two men, in this case, the Mountain God (Sơn Tinh) and the Sea God (Thuỷ Tinh), battle for the hand of Mị Nương, the daughter of Hùng Vương. While the two gods wreak havoc on the villages, the princess disappears from the narrative. How can an absent female character be even remotely layered and complex? This contradiction perplexed me, but ultimately had a useful effect. Unable to find Mị Nương in her own love story, I diligently searched for women in subsequent tales and kept them at the forefront of my mind as I read. Perhaps this was the anthology’s goal all along: to make readers consider women in every story, making us focus on their presence or lack thereof.

Sơn Tinh and Thủy Tinh

As promised, the collection offers autonomous female characters with colorful personalities over its 10 remaining tales. ‘Mother Liễu Hạnh’ is a fun and empowering story that follows a woman who does what she wants — and gets away with it splendidly. The Jade Emperor banishes his unruly daughter Liễu Hạnh from Heaven. In the mortal realm, she becomes famous for her beauty and the merciless pranks she plays on corrupt male travelers. One such traveler, the Crown Prince, tempted by Liễu Hạnh’s mythical beauty, plans to visit the tavern and kidnap her. Acting mostly in self-defense and self-entertainment, Liễu Hạnh transforms into a peach tree. As he prepares to bite into the irresistibly “ripe, round peach sagged from a low branch,” she turns it into disgusting maggots before vanishing into thin air. I giggled at this seemingly random act of punishment all while acknowledging its creativity — turning oneself into a rotting peach sure is an unusual way of chasing away unwanted suitors. This supernatural fruit seasoned a tale of reversed gender and power dynamics with a healthy dose of whimsy.

Love stories, rivalries, happy endings, tales of revenge, historical legends, animals, deities and Vietnamese customs: this compilation truly has something for everyone to enjoy.

In ‘Tấm Cám,’ we follow Tấm through her death and subsequent reincarnations. Her final transformation into a magical golden fruit, quả thị, discreetly raises an interesting discussion on domesticity and female autonomy. One day, an elderly woman comes across the lonesome fruit; unaware of Tấm’s residence within it, she brings the fruit home. Every day, as soon as the woman leaves for work, a tiny Tấm emerges from the fruit, grows back to her default size, cooks, cleans, then climbs back into her refuge. But surely such mystical potential would inspire more adventurous quests than housework? The spilling of fantasy into daily domestic life is very characteristic of Vietnamese folk tales, as Nguyễn Đổng Chi observed. Though Tấm’s confinement to domestic duties can be read as an affirmation of traditional gender roles and gendered division of labor, I find that quả thị nonetheless symbolizes a renewal, or a new life for Tấm. She enters a domestic space that strictly excludes her abusive stepmother and sister.

Shimmering art direction

As readers navigate the multitude of worlds contained in Treasury of Vietnamese Folk Tales, Jeet ZDũng’s textured artworks transform each page into an immersive reading experience. Visually, the book opens into a universe of its own: shimmering gold fonts and deep, dark, jewel-toned illustrations in gold frames jumping out of crimson pages pull you into a regal world of ancient magic — flipping through the pages, I felt like a lost kid who had accidentally stumbled upon an old relic locked away and accumulating dust

Inspired by “Vietnamese sculpture, lacquerware, ceramics, and folk paintings,” Jeet ZDũng brings each folktale to life through diverse and textured illustrations. The illustrations are contained in geometrically irregular boxes and fun shapes that resemble fragments of crystal or puzzle pieces. For instance, his depictions of the Sea God and the Mountain God blend sharp and rounded shapes, as well as warm and cold colors, creating intense contrast that feels fitting for a mythical clash

Tấm and the giant, golden thị

ZDũng imagines many scenes in black and gold, occasionally adding muted colors. Such drawings add allure to tales that many already know, prompting readers to visualize old stories in new shapes and shades. In ‘Tấm Cám,’ the luminous quả thị glitters against a black background — the humble fruit looks more luxurious than I have ever imagined. This melancholic mood further mythologizes the fruit, corresponding nicely with the importance of this golden symbol.

Constrastingly, ZDũng’s illustrations can also be bright, bold, and colorful. His version of the betel leaf, areca nut and slaked lime stands out against the anthology’s generally somber visuals. The neon-green heart-shaped leaf against a bright red square with a gold frame is simple but effective in evoking that childish wonder so crucial to one’s enjoyment of fairy tales. 

The betel lead, areca nut and slaked lime

The fisherman in “The Water God’s Daughter Is In Love With The Fisherman”

Meanwhile, the drawing of tall turquoise scallions sprouting between and over two tiny dancing characters playfully introduces the tale ‘Who Will Buy My Scallions? Or The Magic Potion.’ A few pages later, one cannot help but smile at and let their attention linger on the sight of one tiny, compact man carrying these same giant scallions before two other tiny, compact characters.

Familiar stories, with a little something new

As a Vietnamese reader who primarily reads in English and is on a quest to refamiliarize herself with Vietnamese literature, I was delighted by this anthology’s ability to not only preserve, but add to, the wit and humor of the tales I grew up loving. An example is the humorously concise final sentences that condense entire legends in curiously straightforward terms in most of the tales. In ‘The Battle Between Sơn Tinh and Thuỷ Tinh,’ the final line casually unmasks the turbulent and tedious romantic rivalry as the origin of Vietnamese monsoon season: “This time of year, when the two gods clash, is known as the monsoon season.”

‘Who Will Buy My Scallions? Or The Magic Potion.’

This brief addition of crucial information abruptly de-dramatizes the genesis of monsoon season as common knowledge. ‘The Tale of the Betel, Areca, and Slaked Lime’ is summarized in a similar punchline that reads as an afterthought: “And that is why Vietnamese people have the custom of chewing betel.” In ‘Tale of the Sand Crab,’ readers are briefly told that the protagonist “turned into a sand crab which rolled sand into little balls to fill up the sea day in and day out” after his death. We are given only a brief second to make sense of this ending before the narrative concludes on oddly placed fun fact about an entirely different animal from the story — geese: 

“The lore goes that geese do not eat shrimp because they are grateful of the latter’s sacrifice on their ancestors’ behalf in the olden days. They also say that geese have a white crest on their heads as a sign of mourning for Dã Tràng and their gratitude for him having saved their lives.”

I was also amused by the straightforward translations of rhymes that make this edition’s ‘Tấm Cám’ particularly enjoyable. I expected lyrical verses that match the grandiose character of fairy tales, but the tea vendor’s sing-songy imploration, in simple monosyllabic English, is as catchy as I remembered it in Vietnamese. Tấm, reincarnated as various entities, delivers her fair share of rhymes to her stepsister who has replaced her as the Prince’s wife.

Catching Cám doing the Prince’s laundry, Tấm, as a golden bird, sings “You dry his dresses, dry with poles; don’t dry on hedges, you’ll rip holes.” This uncomplicated translation, which does not over-poeticize rhymes with which many Vietnamese children grew up, does a nice job at emulating the original Vietnamese verses. My favorite rhyme of the anthology must be Tấm’s final threat to Cám, which she utters as a loom: “Crock-a-crock-et, / You take my husband, / I’ll gouge your socket.’” The effective use of onomatopoeia sent shivers down my spine; it's as frightening in English as it was in Vietnamese when I heard my mom say it to me at bedtime over a decade ago. 

Unlike Nguyễn Đổng Chi’s original anthology, which meticulously records, analyzes and categorizes Vietnamese folklore as a genre, Major Books’ Treasury of Vietnamese Folk Tales: Volume 1 builds a whimsical and beautifully illustrated world that is accessible to various kinds of readers who, like me, might find their expectations met in surprising ways. These 11 short stories might not provide elaborate explanations of Vietnamese customs, or underscore the historical significance of certain legends and myths, but they make for a perfectly delightful introduction to the intricate tapestry of Vietnamese folklore. Subtly informative, this collection blends knowledge of Vietnamese culture into an entertaining mix of mundane and epic moments, whilst making sure that rhymes and essences are not lost in translation.

Illustrations by Jeet ZDũng, courtesy of Major Books.

The rich, bluesy ‘Tại vắng anh,’ written by Tuấn Khanh, was performed by Carol Kim this past November at Saigon Jazz Revival's inaugural concert in New Orleans. 

A heart-wrenching rumination on lost love as captured via birds that forget how to sing, the track benifits from Carol Kim's textured voice and aching saxophone solos by Amari Ansari. It was released by Saigon Jazz Revival, a project dedicated to reviving Vietnam's lost jazz era while fusing old Saigon style with contemporary New Orleans, connecting Vietnamese and diasporic music lovers through shared appreciation of sonic legacies.

At the November show in New Orleans when the video was filmed. Photos by by Kim Ha.

“A lot of recordings from before 1975 have disappeared or are hard to find. Coming across them is like a portal into history. The musical influences in Saigon at that time created these tracks that have this very unique multi-cultural energy that's so similar to what contemporary music in New Orleans feels like,” explains director and project-founder Marion Hoàng Ngọc Hill.

‘Tại vắng anh’ performed by Saigon Jazz Revival and Carol Kim. Video via Saigon Jazz Revival YouTube.

‘Tại vắng anh’ is the second track to be released from the Carol Kim concert after her rendition of Phạm Đình Chương's ‘Đón xuân.’ Of that work, Hill explains, “I heard Carol Kim’s song ‘Đón xuân’ for the first time, and I had this wild emotional reaction to it! This song was recorded in Saigon in 1971, which is in every way a traditional New Orleans jazz song and a Vietnamese tune about Tết and spring all in one song. With a whole Latin breakdown section in the middle. So cool!”

Saigon Jazz Revival founder Marion Hoàng Ngọc Hill.

Hill's discovery of that song while working on a film, surrounded by her jazz musician friends, eventually led to Saigon Jazz Revival and Carol Kim being brought to New Orleans for the show. Kim is also scheduled for an August 29 show in Chicago. Meanwhile, artists including đàn tranh musician Brian Bui and vocalist Đồng Lan will be coming to hold summer workshops. Further on the horizon, the group aims to release a full album of original music in 2028 with a variety of performances along the way.

Photos courtesy of Saigon Jazz Revival.

One may be surprised to learn that Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Sympathizer was rejected by 13 out of 14 publishers before its eventual publication. He describes in an interview why he believes his novel was rejected by all but one publisher he submitted to: “I knew in writing the novel that I was deliberately not doing what I was supposed to do as an Asian American writer, which is [...that] you have to end on a note of Americanization. You have to end on an embrace of the American dream, explicitly or implicitly. And the novel does not do that.” He comments elsewhere along similar lines, “I refuse[d] to subscribe to dominant American narratives and mythologies that allow someone like me a very narrow space to speak.” 

Such a “narrow space” is precisely what Vietnamese-Australian writer Nam Le, known for his widely received short story collection The Boat, seeks to question and subvert in 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem. The book — witty and experimental, each poem numbered and themed, meant to be read as constitutive of a larger whole — engages with a question that he has long grappled with, namely, “what it means to write as a writer that will always be described as a Vietnamese writer, or a hyphenated-Vietnamese writer – whatever you want to call that.” Early on in the collection, he writes:

Whatever I write is
Vietnamese. I can never not —

The statement, at once a liberatory realization and a curse, neatly encapsulates the book’s premise. There is nothing that makes his poems “Vietnamese” other than the fact that he is himself Vietnamese — ultimately, “Vietnameseness” does not lie in some kind of essence. Yet at the same time, this does not prevent the fact that whatever he writes will inevitably be branded as “Vietnamese,” a label that carries with it certain expectations and baggage — that is, at least in English.

Nam Le. Photo via Simon & Schuster.

The collection’s first poem, titled [1. Diasporic], opens with the following lines. 

In English, mind You. 
You dink I writee Yiknamee?
Shame on You.
It was Your violence dumbed me.

In these opening lines, Le centers the disabling violence of the English language, accompanied by its racist caricature of a Vietnamese (or some Asian) accent. Such violence of English recurs throughout the book. In [10. Reclamatory: 1], we find similar racist language, 

Me chink but not so fast with
console or condemn, me chinked,
self-chinked in pidgyhole & niche,
notch cranny-hole creft crack —

And in the next poem, [11. Violence: Anglo-linguistic], Le more explicitly details the abhorrent nature of English.

Appetitive, omnivorous, expansionary.
Atonal, with smashed-together consonants,
It wants it all.

Empire and industry. Science, technology, narratology.
Transaction. One language to rule them all.
Billions strong.

Later, he juxtaposes the violence of English against the liberatory potential of Vietnamese.

[...]
English with its mind of closed grids
Demands

Answers — data, declension, denomination.
But Vietnamese answers: ‘I am all these things.
Or any.

‘I am openness, manyness at once, entelechy.
Your grammar is violence. Your way is narrow
Exaction.

English demands, while Vietnamese opens space for refusal, freedom. It is along such lines that Nirmala Devi titles her review in ArtReview of Le’s book as “Rage Against the English Language.” She writes, “this collection is driven by rage and violence. Anger against the violence of the English language with its rules that, in effect, force users to make categorisations.” 

Yet, if Devi’s characterization of Le’s collection is correct, why, then, in a different essay of his does Le write the following? “English is my second language, my better language. It’s the language better suited to my way of thinking — which was conditioned by it to think so. (It takes a mongrel, maybe, to know a mongrel…) I’ve never felt unwelcomed in it. Which is more than I can say for every place it’s spoken.” Safe to say that this does not sound like a man “raging against the English language.” What went amiss?

The problem is that to read 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem as a polemic against English is reductive, and overlooks the ways in which many of Le’s poems are not meant to be read at face value — though it is not at all clear, as we will see, which ones exactly. For me, it was only by the 20^th poem in the collection that I began to fully suspect this was the case. Titled [20. Titrative], the poem consists of three lines.

Unself-consciously?
Ha ha!
Too late.

And too late indeed. In raising the question of unself-consciousness, the poem forecloses its possibility. Clearly, the poem possesses a kind of self-consciousness both performative and playful. But if that is the case, might the same be true of other poems in the collection?

In this respect, poem [26. Evasive] is most interesting. The poem consists of two erasure poems (one of which only semi-blacks out the underlying text), accompanied by a subtitle in capital letters, “ERASURE RHYMES WITH ASIA.” With regards to the subtitle, Le makes a peculiar comment in The Guardian.

What I would hope readers would get from the ludicrous rhyme of ‘Asia rhymes with erasure’ as a subtitle for a poem is that there is a tongue firmly in cheek in these moments. [...] I wanted to be able to say: ‘Look at this, this is ridiculous! Look in the mirror!’ to both writer and reader and myself. And at the same time sort of recalibrate, retune that way of writing, that way of reading: to hopefully see it again, anew.

It is easy to see the “ludicrousity” of the line upon reading Le’s own thoughts about it. Of course, Asia does not rhyme with erasure! But at the same time, without his help, how are we supposed to tell? After all, if poetry consists of, well, poetic language, the reader might as well take “rhyme” to mean something non-literal — I, for one, certainly did. “ERASURE RHYMES WITH ASIA” is fascinating because to take the line seriously itself constitutes an enactment of the violence described in the very line itself. In other words, the conflation of Asia with erasure itself perpetrates a kind of orientalist discourse that renders “Asia” inaccessible, obscure, mystic. If Asia is indeed under erasure, for/to whom is it rendered invisible? Certainly not Asians living in Asia?

All of this, in an odd way, reminds me of a story the South African comedian Trevor Noah once told about a friend who was “accidentally racist.” As he tells it, while he was walking on the street with a group of white friends, a stranger yelled in their direction, “hey, you monkey!” Immediately, one of his friends turned to Trevor Noah and apologized. To commit the sin of over-explaining a joke — the crux of the story is of course that, in apologizing to Trevor Noah, his friend already assumed that the term “monkey” was directed at him. One might note that something similar is at play in “ERASURE RHYMES WITH ASIA,” in that the line invites “accidentally” orientalist readings. Such capacity to produce (mis-)readings is arguably one of the most distinctive features of Le’s poems.

In a much-circulated essay titled “Blunt-Force Ethnic Credibility” from Astra Magazine, Som-Mai Nguyen critiques a kind of linguistic fetishization commonly found amongst Vietnamese diasporic writers.

There’s a jazz-hands half-nelson device I dislike in diasporic literature and criticism. Writers extrapolate from orthographic coincidence and sprinkle in non-English words to assert unearned authority. I tire of variants on: in Vietnamese, a tonal language, ma can mean many things. The author rattles off ghost, mother, tomb, horse, code, accompanied by the suggestion that this phrenologically means something. These claims are in-group sleights of hand, smugly announcing, without real evidence, that the author has exotic cultural knowledge the outsider cannot fathom. If you know, you know.

Som-Mai Nguyen’s point is that diasporic writers’ invocations of Vietnamese tonality and diacritics often function as a mechanism for producing “blunt-force ethnic credibility,” a kind of automatic authority granted to ethnic authors on the basis of identity alone. Funnily enough, in [15. Dire critical], Le appears guilty of exactly the thing that Som-Mai Nguyen critiques above.

Here, we find Le too invoking the hackneyed example of the tonal variations of ma to imbue Vietnamese with a kind of mystic quality inaccessible to English. Though perhaps not. Is it that the poem is simply another instantiation of the object of Som-Mai Nguyen’s critique — or is it self-consciously parodying it? Earlier in the same poem, Le writes, 

All in the tone.
Give us each day our diacritics — our low and high, fall and rise, our horns and holds:
Flat we are without.
(You like that, no doubt.)

He continues:

Give us our dấu sắc, huyền, ngã, hỏi, nặng:
For ours is not your flat euphony
Your squeezed, frictioned speech
But full mouth music.

Here, again, assimilation to English is presented as a kind of violence that flattens, that which deadens the fullness of Vietnamese and its tonality. But what follows after prompts us to question such a reading, for in the “full mouth music” of Vietnamese we find: “Tripping of water over stone-carved lingas // Rising tang of early season mango in the mouth // Trill of moonlight and wind on silk curtains / or reflected sunlight, prismatic, on rice paddies along the Baie d’Along.” Mangoes, moonlight, silk curtains, and rice paddies. Are these objects not almost too clichéd, too perfectly oriental, to be read as “unself-conscious”?

Perhaps. But in [35. Reclamatory: 2], Le complicates our reading once more. 

As the poem points out, “moon and jade and silk” have been deployed millennia before the advent of French colonialism, and thus cannot be merely reduced to "orientalist" tropes. Perhaps, then, what was actually orientalist (accidentally so) was none other than to have read “Rising tang of early season mango in the mouth / Trill of moonlight and wind on silk curtains” as a parody of orientalism in the first place.

Though, yet again, perhaps not. After all, that the images now associated with orientalism have existed “millennia before” does not annul the fact that, well, those images have indeed been appropriated into orientalist imaginaries. In the end, it remains impossible to tell with full certainty what is meant to be taken as tongue-in-cheek and what is not — and that appears to be precisely the point. 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem is arguably best understood as a staging of the seeming inescapability of clichés, stereotypes, and tropes, in which parody and the parodied become indiscernible. As writer and translator Lina Mounzer writes of clichés that seem to ever-lurk “at the edge of one’s awareness”: “[Y]ou write towards them, or against them; you write to subvert them or mock them or indulge them or skirt around them altogether, but they are always there.”

Surprisingly, the collection contains 37, rather than 36 poems, contrary to what the title suggests. In the last stanza of the final poem of the book, titled [37. Post-racial / -glacial], Le writes. 

In this ecopoetic imagining of a post-racial world, words do not “need mean more than itself”: things just simply are — and there, perhaps, “Vietnamese” too need not signify anything more than “Vietnamese,” whatever that may mean. Yet, in utter contradiction with the poem, for me at least, Le’s use of the word “escape” already signifies more than it need mean: namely, Le’s own background of having come to Australia after having “escaped” Vietnam. Is it I who, in this last instance, collapsed the poem’s utopic vision for a post-racial world? Perhaps. But if the word “escape” has already escaped, it is also because the landscape of racist, orientalist, ethnic clichés and tropes has already escaped me — us — too, its edges always just in sight, just out of reach.

As part of the current crackdown on intellectual property infringement, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security recently took down a major network of websites providing illegal anime streaming.

As Tuổi Trẻ reports, on July 1, the Economic, Corruption and Smuggling Crime Investigation Police Force (C03) charged seven people for alleged copyright infringement, four of whom were arrested and also charged with money laundering.

The police investigation shows that, from 2020 until April 2026, five members of the group created over 100 websites hosting and providing streaming service on over 26,000 series and movie titles without permission from IP owners. Their operation had allegedly earned approximately US$12.85 million (VND308.4 trillion) in ad revenue before being shut down just a few months ago.

The streaming websites went through several name changes over the years, but the most current iteration was HiAnime, a well-known media archive with features similar to Netflix.

According to the police, members were paid by foreign advertising companies in cryptocurrency, which was laundered through intermediaries before being transferred to their personal accounts at local banks. They also purchased cars and real estate to hide the true origins of their earnings from authorities.

C03 carried out the crackdown based on intelligence from US organizations, local media reports, including the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Motion Picture Association (MPA) and Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE).

Vietnam has been intensifying efforts to squash piracy and reinforce intellectual property rights in the past months in direct response to complaints from the United States Trade Representative (USTR), which applied the “Priority Foreign Country” status on Vietnam for the first time in 13 years in April 2026.

The designation Priority Foreign Country means that USTR has 30 days to determine whether a formal investigation is warranted. Ambassador Jamieson Greer moved forward with the decision in May, announcing: “While Vietnam has recently taken some steps toward addressing IP concerns that the United States has chronicled over many years in USTR’s Annual Special 301 Report, IP infringement in Vietnam continues to impair the competitive position of U.S. innovators and creators. We need to see Vietnam resolve these long-standing concerns, including on a range of IP enforcement issues, in a manner that is sustained and that deters future IP infringements.”

Japan is also another party with a vested interest in Vietnam’s anti-piracy efforts. In July, Kyodo News reports, the Japanese government presented plans to use official development assistance (ODA) to support 10 developing nations’ efforts to curtail piracy of Japanese anime, games, and manga. These include Southeast Asian infringement hot spots like Indonesia and Vietnam.

According to Kyodo, government data shows that last year, Japan suffered JPY10.4 trillion in losses from illicit media sharing and fake merchandise. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which is in charge of ODA, will start determining local needs in August and supporting funds are expected to be available from April 2027.

Top image via Lao Động.

In recent years, CÚT LỘN has cemented themselves as one of the most recognizable hardcore punk bands to emerge from the Vietnamese underground scene.

Photo by Cá koi lang thang (@cakoilangthang)

Propelled by electrifying performances and an ability to constantly reinvent themselves, CÚT LỘN continues to develop an increasingly radical sound throughout a fairly long career, especially when considered in contrast to the relative youth of the scene. “Dzữa,” their latest album, is steeped in a noise-driven physicality infused with raw energy tinged with a poetic sensibility that marks a shift away from the trash-inspired experimentation that initially defined them. Breaking away from the spirit of their early days, when they embraced a messy aesthetic that didn’t take itself too seriously, they have refined a more direct sound that emphasizes sincerity and a sharp awareness of the world around them, rather than the aggressive, hyper-masculinity so often found in the genre’s canonical imagery. This approach reflects a generation of young people who are seeking emancipation not only through alternative forms of expression but also by creating imaginaries that break free from the stereotypical constraints that could stifle the underground scene itself. I met with the band ahead of their European tour to discuss, amongst other things, their artistic evolution, their perspective on the Saigon music scene, and how touring around the world has broadened their horizons

Quang Sọt (far right) and Sergey (in back). Photo by Martin Kong.

Quang Sọt and Sergey are the two founding members still active in the band they formed in Hanoi in 2018. Quang Sọt is the lead guitarist, while Sergey took up the drums out of necessity. “To be honest I just was very annoyed that I could not find a good drummer for my band,” he noted.

They were joined by Nguyên Lê on bass, who was then working as a sound engineer for concert venues in Hanoi. Nguyên Lê responded as a joke to an online ad from the band, which was looking for a bassist at the time, but ended up joining the band permanently and hasn't left since. In 2021, they moved to Saigon, but it wasn’t until 2024 that Vui Qá, the current lead singer, finally joined the band. He, who at the time had no experience as a frontman, caught the rest of the band’s attention by taking the stage, grabbing the mic, and performing ‘Graffiti Song’ in such a memorable way that there was no hesitation in making him a permanent member of the lineup. The band’s spontaneity is thus evident even in how they’ve integrated members as they’ve evolved, demonstrating their intuition even in recruitment. This approach seems to have paid off, as they now consider their lineup to be solid and unchanging.

Quang Sọt in action. Photo by @saxichuongduong.

In their beginning days, CÚT LỘN stood out for their performances and music videos, in which they wore Pikachu costumes. The group played up a silly, unserious image that quickly set them apart from other bands. As they matured, the group shifted direction, taking themselves more seriously and embracing complex emotions that could no longer be reflected through the symbol of the juvenile mask, which, moreover, gets unbearably hot during live performances.

“We had so much fun in the first like five years when we were playing crossover trash midi hardcore but then we felt like we reached a point that firstly the Pikachu costume doesn’t fit the band anymore,” Nguyên Lê explains.

This decision to abandon the disguise allowed them to grow out of a style they had come to find limiting and to explore new creative territories.

The Pikachu era. Photo courtesy of CÚT LỘN.

As they mature, their music grows increasingly dark, and the album concepts — always centered around the image of the egg — reflect this transformation. While the band’s name reflects the embryonic nature of the group at the time of its creation (cút lộn is a fertilized quail egg), the title of their second album, “Bắc Thảo” (century egg) reflects a sound that has darkened over time and gained a more intense flavor.

The allegory of the egg is carried forward in the title of their latest album, “Dzữa,” which is intended to reflect a shift stemming not only from their increased maturity but also from their perception of the world around them. The album’s sound aims to reflect an era of crisis, where culture, the economic system, and politics seem to be falling apart. Hence, the image of the trứng dzữa, an egg that is nearly rotten but still edible and whose interior is in a state of decay and parts of which are shattered, mirrors the universe poetically described through the lyrics written by Vui Qá.

The album, which is particularly refined, was nonetheless a painful process for the band members, who were heavily occupied with other commitments at the time. From this constraint emerged a creative process in which the members worked in layers. One of them would arrive with an initial demo, after which the rest would come together to add new touches one by one and reorient the song’s emotion as they went along. Thus, if the first draft was a block of raw aggression, the second musical layer would seek to bring more poetry to the song, and so on, adding complexity to music they were determined not to let become dull and monochromatic.

Once the instrumental part was finished, the musicians would get Vui Qá and take him to Bomb’s place — a key sound engineer and true pillar of the local hardcore scene — so he could start writing lyrics, and then they’d doze off while he began recording his vocals. This piecemeal modus operandi is also reflected in their visuals, the music video for the title ‘Cà Phê Sáng’ was created exclusively from concert footage filmed on a camcorder by videographer Vinatapes, who then glitched the footage to achieve a look that captures the spirit of decay they convey in their music.

Cà Phê Sáng (Official VHS Video). Video via CÚT LỘN's YouTube.

Although firmly rooted in the local scene, the band aspires to expand its reach internationally and has already toured East and Southeast Asia, including Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, China, etc. Countering anticipated cultural differences, these trips have instead allowed them to anchor themselves in the crossover nature of an international community whose values transcend borders, and the encounters made during these trips have comforted them in sharing common anti-establishment core values with their peers.

“For this kind of community, I think it is the same everywhere. Every tour feels like we met friends, because this spirit is international.” Vui Qá says.

While the tours entail significant expenses, the group is able to offset these sometimes substantial investments through the sale of merchandise, wherein they can expand their creative expression not only via clothing but also through unusual items like a hot sauce bearing the band’s image, which, incidentally, was delicious.

The band's hot sauce Cayvailon. Image courtesy of CÚT LỘN.

Experiencing major scenes abroad allows them a newfound perspective on the state of the Saigon punk scene, which they have observed evolve since its inception. They are pleased to see that in recent years, the number of bands has increased dramatically, accompanied by an ever-growing audience. This development is part of a broader trend of expanding subcultures in Saigon, which often interact with one another due to the still-small size of these circles — a permeability that is part of the charm of Saigon’s underground scene.

But young people’s growing interest in these alternative forms of expression is hampered by the economic difficulties and pressure faced by clubs and concert venues, which have been closing one by one in recent years, foreshadowing a period of struggle in the years ahead. While the DIY tradition fosters solidarity within the community — particularly through the sharing of equipment — CÚT LỘN laments the lack of access to quality venues and sound systems, revealing the significant strain on Saigon’s music venues.

CÚT LỘN at a live gig. Photo by Martin Kong.

At the time of writing, CÚT LỘN is getting ready to embark on a European tour. They are profoundly grateful for the opportunity to travel to so many countries and reach such a milestone, and the response to the tour announcement has been overwhelmingly positive, revealing a level of enthusiasm from an international audience that the band itself hadn’t anticipated. But, beyond the apparent glamor, a tour like this is extremely exhausting for an independent act, and Quang Sọt — the only driver with an international license — will be handling the tour van in addition to performing at every show, sometimes playing back-to-back dates in different countries for five days straight. He adds nuance to the positive reactions received following the tour announcement, clarifying that he doesn’t want to use it as a way to “show off,” and above all, doesn’t want CÚT LỘN to be reduced to being one of the few Vietnamese artists to have pulled off a large-scale tour in Europe. For him, this tour comes at a time when the entire band is fully convinced of their artistic prowess, and traveling represents an opportunity to connect with new audiences and share their musicianship around the world.

“We really know where we are. We know where our music is. We want to share it,” he summarizes.

CÚT LỘN's European tour poster.

“Remember to write that we’re nerds!” Vui Qá tells me as we’re concluding our interview. Indeed, CÚT LỘN’s approach to being hardcore resides in the attitude of not trying to act according to the tough tropes usually found in these genres, preferring to appear as true as they are. They want to walk in front in the audience with a genuine attitude, embracing their individual offstage personalities. It is this feature that sets their performances apart from the conventions of hardcore punk. While some bands focus on perfecting their attitude and stage presence, the members of CÚT LỘN are primarily concerned with having fun on stage and delivering a nerve-racking performance, increasingly blurring the line between themselves and their audience. Their style is noisy and distorted, and raw energy is their main focus, as that is what remains fundamental to them, far beyond the lyrics or even the compositions. Their motto is that they have nothing to prove on stage, no matter how nerdy they look, and that’s what gives them such a unique and poignant presence. I believe this is what it means to be a punk in the current era: embracing being cute while maintaining a sincere approach without trying to perform another persona. And this approach proves to be infectious and liberating in a context where opportunities for cathartic expression are becoming scarce.

“If you happen to pass by Huỳnh Mẫn Đạt Street in Hồ Chí Minh City
There’s a strange bar with a Mekong theme
Where cải lương is performed every Saturday, a piece of our hometown heritage
Beside the show, you’ll have a chat with Đờn Ca Đó Đây troupe
A Mekong corner in the middle of skyscrapers”

This intriguing invitation appeared on my social media, a whimsical suggestion in the middle of Saigon. As someone who grew up to the sounds of Mekong Delta folk melodies, I was immediately curious of the promise of a đờn ca tài tử experience inside a city bar. Upon doing more research, I learned that the venue was just one of many spontaneous stages of Đờn Ca Đó Đây, a collective of young Vietnamese who found one another in their quest to promote the beauty of southern đờn ca tài tử arts in the mid of Saigon.

From random encounters to a borderless space for đờn ca

As a performance art form, southern đờn ca tài tử has been around for over a hundred years. This genre of folk performance had its start in the ceremonial orchestral music from Huế — which originated from court music itself — but under the influence of folk music in the south. At first, it followed musicians and artists from the central region as they emigrated to the south, and then was adapted to the local culture. Đờn ca tài tử reflects the sentiments, spirits, and living circumstances of communities living in this new land of natural resources. The end of the 19th century was the apex of đờn ca tài tử, when melodies, compositions, and techniques were created and systematized in documentations, becoming a comprehensive wealth of folk art that has continued to exist alongside southern Vietnamese.

A đờn ca tài tử troupe in Saigon in 1911. Photo via Wikipedia.

I managed to arrange a phone call with Đỗ Thanh Phong, the leader of Đờn Ca Đó Đây, on an afternoon when I was visiting my hometown in the delta. I sat on the deck in the back of our homestead, with a placid river and thickets of swaying mangroves in front of my eyes, as I listened to Phong’s stories. Our conversation flowed in and out amid the rustling breeze and memories of a đờn ca lover living in Saigon. These contrasting settings somehow meet in the middle, where these melodies ring.

Members of Đờn Ca Đó Đây.

Although Phong is quite busy handling tasks at his own office job, he still channels as much effort as he can to sustain folk arts. Phong himself can play đàn tranh, or Vietnamese zither, on a novice level, and is tasked with connecting collective members, envisioning group directions, and helping to maintain cohesion without losing freedom.

True to its name, Đờn Ca Đó Đây was born of impromptu performances.

Phong reminisced about the early days at Lê Văn Tám Park in Saigon, where they first convened to play together: “Back in the days, we often met at the park. Right in between busy streets and crazy traffic, there was one corner where the mood turned contemplative thanks to the music and vocals. A few instruments and a few music lovers can carve out a very distinctive space for art.”

A practice session at a cafe.

From such rustic setups, Đờn Ca Đó Đây gradually took shape. Members come from different walks of life: a teacher, a worker, an engineer, a student, etc. Albeit not professionally trained, they all share a passion for đờn ca tài tử and cải lương. The collective found one another first via social media, and then started organizing offline meetings from the beginning of 2025 at the park. In March 2025, the group became more organized and began performing at casual venues like eateries, schools, exhibitions, and especially bars, bringing a novel experience to listeners.

A show by Đờn Ca Đó Đây at Hai Tô Bar.

Many key members of the group’s current roster were recruited from chance encounters. Phong recalls: “I got to know one of them when he was just in 11th grade in Đồng Tháp, via his practice videos on TikTok. We started chatting about instruments. When he moved to the city for college, he asked to meet me. When we met, I recognized his musical talent straight away, so I connected him with other members. Since then, he’s been in charge as our music expert, establishing the musical identity of the group, in addition to musical arrangement and editing our content.”

Another member who works as a teacher for his day job can make use of his pedagogy skills to facilitate the group’s school outreach programs. He is tasked with writing the script, planning the content, and executing it in a way that’s accessible and educational so the knowledge can reach the school children.

Promoting the art of đờn ca tài tử to the younger generation at their school.

Right from the name Đờn Ca Đó Đây, the collective is very clear about their operation philosophy. It can be loosely translated as “performing here and there,” reflecting the group’s “nomadic” nature. They can perform at a range of different venues and not just on stage, for anyone who is interested enough to listen and connect. Music then, can transcend the confines of a one-way performance to be a two-way interaction. The performers and the spectators are brought closer.

A contemporary language to chronicle an age-old art form

Đờn ca tài tử was not an intentional destination ifor many collective members, but it managed to find them again by evoking their childhood memories, such as the quiet evenings watching TV with their family members or festive gatherings at the village temple. Even without professional music training, these formative experiences have fostered a fondness for đờn ca tài tử within them. During the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, when everything came to a standstill, some found time to explore this connection deeper and transition from merely consuming to learning, practicing, and even creating.

Regarding đờn ca tài tử, they are aware that the art form’s biggest barrier is the public’s stigma. Đờn ca tài tử and cải lương are usually thought of as sentimental, obsolete, and inapproachable. Nonetheless, they believe that these are not inherent to the music, but could be the result of the execution and communication, so they try to present đờn ca using a language of the modern society. The performance content is adjusted to reflect more familiar social issues like career pressures, urban ailments, and the mental state of young people. The execution is also refreshed to fit each venue and its audience.

During interaction sessions, even audience members can join in.

The performances at local bars have been especially acclaimed for their high interactivity. Each night is written separately, so actors can improvise their script to fit the particular bar.

Besides, the group has been writing new lyrics based on traditional melodies like lý so they depict the contemporary state of southern provinces. These compositions showcase the cultural, geographical, and social shifts today while retaining the structure and spirit of the original version. Phong showed me a paragraph lionizing VĨnh Long after the national province merger, set to the tune of ‘Lý Đêm Trăng’:

In another video, Phong gives an example of how the group interacted with the audience, via these news lyrics sung in the tune of ‘Lý Chim Xanh”:

Connecting a community of đờn ca enthusiasts

Sustaining an independent folk music troupe is not a cakewalk. Phong explains: “Where to perform and interact with the audience is the biggest struggle. Official venues don’t prioritize grassroots performers, so our activities are often spontaneous and fully independent. Besides, the older generations are still quite wary of our new approach to this old art form.”

A performance at the “Thanh Kiều” exhibition.

Despite the hurdles, the positive reception from Saigoneers is a crucial factor motivating Đờn Ca Đó Đây. Phong proudly tells me about a woman in Đồng Tháp who messaged to gift them sets of brown áo bà ba to boost the authenticity of the performances.

After sharing the clips online, another fan sent over a pack of southern checkered scarves. Not long after, someone else donated more colorful áo ba ba so the group “don’t look so monotonous.” And just like that, clothing items like áo dài, khăn đóng started arriving from across the country to keep their morale high.

Phong also met a Việt Kiều visiting from years abroad at a performance, which moved him to tears, and invited them overseas to participate in cultural exchange programs. On the other hand, right at rustic venues like in public parks, many older uncles and aunties would stop by to listen to music and tear up seeing young people being in touch with folk music.

Through every time they perform, Đờn Ca Đó Đây has learned that the true value behind their music is not dependent on how it’s performed but whether it’s performed with sincerity and if it can bring people together. Đờn ca tài tử and cải lương will continue to exist in any space in the future if that spirit is treasured and sustained.