Following the musical works of Thịnh Suy means always being on alert for sudden song drops, sometimes without even a cryptic social media status update as a harbinger. Thịnh’s latest creation, ‘Tự,’ came to be in a similar fashion: the vocal version was unveiled in August, while a few days ago, another version with a rap verse by Datmaniac came out.

Thịnh Suy is the stage name of Bình Định-based musician Đỗ Quốc Thịnh. Right from his debut song ‘Một đêm say’ (A Drunken Night) in 2018, Thịnh had already made a splash in the scene thanks to his earnest sounds that navigate the indie-pop crossover with effortless ease. Thịnh Suy’s music is characterized by simple and contemplative lyrics delivered with similarly frill-less vocals. In ‘Tự,’ Thịnh Suy and long-time producer Lazii brought to the table his staple thoughtful songwriting, but with an added layer of mesmerizing spirituality.

The song title itself is a wordplay as the word “tự” can mean independent and self-sufficient, or a temple, hinting at the track’s surprisingly theological leaning. Thịnh sings about a feeling of existential instability one often faces upon returning to their hometown after living elsewhere — something he would probably know firsthand, having moved to Saigon for college and then returned to Bình Định. Everything seems recognizable, but somehow that sense of belonging is waning.

The song's visualizer, produced by Thành.

The instrumentation begins with three reverberating strikes of temple bell, followed by rhythmic mõ (wooden fish) clanks, a flute lead-in, and finally recurring guitar. Here and there, the wooden percussion would return alongside the flute to anchor the song to its Buddhist leaning, while drums come in at the chorus with layers of other organic sounds like bamboo and temple brass. It’s also interesting to note that the song’s climax is entirely dedicated to instrumentation without vocals. It’s impossible to resist being drawn into this complex sonic ambiance.

According to Thịnh, the rap part by Datmaniac wasn’t planned at the beginning, but first came to be just as wishful comments in conversations with Lazii. They approached Đạt with the idea, and the rapper immediately wrote a verse, recorded it, and sent it back. Datmaniac is also no stranger to writing from deeply personal reflections, so his verse added depth and texture to ‘Tự.’ At the end, the instrumentation is once again taken into overdrive, this time with a sample of Buddhist chant.

Overall, while Thịnh Suy’s songwriting has always been solid and open-hearted, the arrangement and production can be sparse at times, with guitar as the only accompaniment. ‘Tự’ presents a more stylized, entrancing, and atmospheric version of Thịnh Suy’s music that might deserve further experimentation.

To sum up:

• Type: Single
• Release date: October 2026
• Lyrics: Reflective and sincere like a diary entry
• Danceable: Interpretive dance fodder
• Cryable: If you miss home enough
• Karaoke potential: Might bring the mood down but who cares

Score: 86/100

“Clip-clop, clip-clop.” So goes the sound of the water buffalo hooves pulling a wagon through the highlands against the magenta sky of an unending sunset. The wagon is guided by a nameless driver, and onboard are three travelers: a veteran referred to as “the Man” and two other younger men.

A train coasts by in the distance, but its sound is muted. On the wagon, the Man reminisces. He recalls having been on what seems to be the same wagon years ago with his father and sister. He recalls his time as a soldier during the war and the death of his comrade. He recalls other strange occurrences too, like the story of a young woman who would give birth to babies born old and the banyan tree in his village, where bodies of the dead that had died far away would magically return. Yet, other moments simply emerge to the surface, adrift, untethered to any one person’s consciousness in particular. “Clip-clop, clip-clop.” The Man wonders where he is, and where he is headed. But like the march of time, the wagon continues to voyage onward without care — except that they almost appear to be out of time altogether, timeless.

Elsewhere, in a world more akin to our own, a blind man with hypersensitive ears named Bào hears the sounds of a wagon growing louder each day. There, in Phan Village, in the mountainous province of Thái Nguyên in Northeastern Vietnam, we find the unravelling of a grand generational family feud over secret buried treasure in the hills behind the village. The patriarchs of the two rival families, Old Trường and Trình, both possess knowledge of strange instructions for what must occur for the treasure vault to open: a second comet must appear; a third grave must be dug and, with it, the death of a member of either family; as well as the final appearance of the mythical half-dog, half-lion Nghê that must ultimately be beheaded.

Nguyễn Bình Phương

Nguyễn Bình Phương’s The Young Die Old is an eerie, fantastical novel whose chapters alternate between these two ontologically distinct yet entwined worlds. Originally published in 1994, the novel was translated by Khải Q. Nguyễn and made available in English this year. The book, as with Phương’s other novels, has often been labelled as magical realist — magical realism being a novelistic tradition which fuses the surreal into the quotidian, most closely associated with Gabriel García Márquez and other Latin American writers. It is a term, however, that the author is careful to qualify, as he does in an interview with Mekong Review that was re-published to coincide with the English translation of the novel.

“The atmosphere and the supernatural haze in The Young Die Old don’t come from Latin America. Those temples and the Nghê are oriental, with their history that spans thousands of years; they didn’t come about a few decades ago, when Latin American literature was introduced into Vietnam,” Phương remarks. “The magical features in my novel are all Vietnamese.” A prominent novelist and poet, Nguyễn Bình Phương is the recipient of numerous major domestic literary awards such as the Vietnam Writers' Association Award in 2021 and the Southeast Asian Writers Award in 2022.

The Young Die Old is a novel that is greatly opaque. Despite its centrality to the plot, the feud over the buried treasure is not explicated until well into the novel, an affair that most members of either rival family too remain unaware of. It is also not clear how exactly the two worlds of the Phan Village and the buffalo wagon and its characters are related (and that they are to begin with is also unclear until well into the book). The novel is at once chaotic and meticulously crafted. Seemingly strange and arbitrary details and accounts, often having to do with the complicated tangling of relationships between the novel’s numerous sprawling characters, fall into place only retrospectively. But even then, the piecing together of fragments does not automatically crystallize but rather takes much effort, at times both tantalizing and dizzying, on the part of the reader. Readers may likely find themselves searching for a moralistic takeaway, perhaps because of how much the story of Phan village has the feel of a folktale (“Some time ago…” begins the story), yet the novel does not at all easily lend itself to allegorical readings. Perhaps in this sense, I feel that the novel’s opacity exists not as a mystery to be solved but rather to be felt. For despite the intricate inner logical workings of the novel and its almost rhizomatic plot, what is perhaps most distinctive about the novel is its quite odd, unique affective texture, one whose architecture is built and sustained by the uneasy overlay of its two para-ontological worlds.

Some titles in Nguyễn Bình Phương's bibliography

To start, it needs saying that the world of Phan Village is absurd, despite it being the world that is at least seemingly more aligned to our intuitions of time and space. Much of this absurdity, to be specific, has to do with the notable lack of psychological interiority exhibited by its characters. If interiority requires friction, the wrestling with depths of the self and the world that resist easy comprehension, there seems to be none of that in Phan Village. Rather, its characters are much too easily moved by greed, fear, anger, love, lust — their desires much too fickle. Old Trường marries his cousin after he is told to do so. A man transmits gonorrhea in order to take revenge. Old Trường’s granddaughter Loan moves on from one lover to the next with remarkable casualness. And in a particularly striking scene, a woman comes to the house of the blind man Bào with plans to murder him but instead falls in love and stays the night. The next day, Bào, who throughout his life had sulked over his inability to sleep with women, is asked by Liêm whether he had “shagged” the woman and realizes he “forgot” to do so. At no point are any of the characters particularly puzzled by their feelings and actions or the eccentric development of events — and if they are, they quickly move on. The men and women of Phan Village simply feel what they feel, think what they think, do what they do. And the result is a kind of absurdity that goes beyond merely the surrealism of magical realism.

Such absurdity, I find, is actually quite comical — though only from a step or two back. For despite all the moments of amusement and even humor of watching events unfold in bizarre ways, they quickly dissipate under none other than the weight of the Man’s grief and sorrow on the buffalo wagon. It is a sorrow that, in many ways, looms timeless: the sorrow of others, of the dead, of the land and the bruised sky made witness to the madness of mankind. As arguably the sole character in the novel that exhibits much interiority at all — for he ponders, sits with the past — the sorrow that engulfs the Man is superimposed above all, including the ludicrous drama of Phan village. The result is a deeply unsettling alloy of dissonant affective registers that is perhaps best described as bordering on tragicomic.

The book's Vietnamese cover

In the afterword, translator Khải Q. Nguyễn suggests the “Soundless” chapters be read as demonstrating “scepticism of violence, and, perhaps to another level, scepticism of the past where the collective past conflicts with the individual’s experience and memory.” He suggests that such modes of scepticism offer a “glimpse into the Vietnamese mentality in the years before and after Đổi Mới.” And indeed, there is good reason to read Phương’s work as a postwar novel: it is after all, at least in part, a novel about war written in the aftermath of four wars over the course of a century. Yet, at the same time, the themes that the novel engages with could be said to be much more existential. In The Young Die Old, we find the ever-absurd predicament of human life, perpetually propelled and hijacked by reckless forces of greed, love, lust, hatred, and more that in turn give rise to events at times head-scratching and at others outright stomach-dropping. The stuff of farce, one might even say, were it not for the timelessness of it all.

On a recent ritual walk around my suburb, I was held up by the sight of a middle-aged man with his “fur kid.” I introduced myself and when he heard the word “Vietnam,” his eyes lit up and with a smile as he tumbled out the words: “The Mekong Delta. Ducks.”

“It is teeming with ducks there,” he continued. “Their quacking still echoes in my mind.”

A gaggle of feathery friends. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Ducks in the yard

With canals and tributaries meandering through endless paddy fields and shady villages, the Mekong Delta is a paradise for ducks. Almost every house has ducks in their yard. So did my maternal grandma. She raised ducks for death anniversaries, for the Tết holidays, and for every other occasion. Like Mekong people, ducks excel at improvising. Her ducks usually heaped their nest with layers of dried banana leaves beneath a thick clump of banana trees. When she was tired of eating duck eggs, either hard-boiled or as omelettes, after 28 days, she would see fluffy pastel yellow ducklings waddling behind their mom to the nearby ponds for their first swimming lesson.

My mom raised ducks too in order to cut the grocery bill and earn some extra money. But her ducks never had a chance to lay eggs. As soon as they were fat, she would take them to the market. She carried them in two tight hand-woven reed bags, three on each side. They would lie quietly on top of each other with their heads sticking out and eyes wide open, seemingly resigned to their fate of being slaughtered and plucked. Those she didn’t take would end up on our table.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

One of my chores was to feed our ducks twice a day. Watching them gobble their food and then waddle away with satisfaction was like watching a sold-out event. Their diet included duckweed or finely chopped morning glory stems and leaves mixed with rice bran powder and water. But their favorite food was rice snails which they ate so fast that snails had no time to breed in the pond where my mom rounded them up. They were not allowed to wander in the yard because they’d furiously peck at anything along their way. On occasion, my father hand-picked snails for them from the rice paddies. They gobbled up as many of the shelled gastropods as they could and even fought each other for them. Then, contented, they would lie down under the thicket of banana trees by the pond. The glowing water with the promise of shrimps and insects no longer alluring to them.

Killing ducks for meat and more

Despite not building emotional bonds with her ducks, Mom would perform a ritual when slaughtering them. She would pat its head and whisper, “Come back in another life form, my dear” and then pluck a speck of feathers from the duck’s throat, just below its head, to offer a space for her to make a small incision. She would deftly cut through that featherless spot with a well-used knife she always kept sharp between butcherings.

As she made the incision, she would direct the flow of scarlet into a white ceramic rice bowl containing a smattering of sticky rice. As the last drop plopped into the basin of blood and rice, she would carry the duck carcass to the pot of boiling water that I was responsible for. The duck’s lifeless head would flop from its body of waxy white feathers.

I was distressed to witness the slaughtering of a duck that I had fed daily for months. I could clearly remember each one when they were still bundles of yellow fluff and how they happily come waddling towards me each time I approached with food.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Silence hung in the air between Mom and me in those moments. When resources are scarce there is no waste and each part of the duck was used with respect: from its heart, gizzard, liver and intestines to its feathers, head and feet, and, of course, blood. The feathers were put aside to dry in the sun and later placed in a plastic bag to be sold to ve chai buyers. Those women would tour through houses and villages on their old rustic bicycles, seemingly always during our lunch hour when we were taking naps. As they pedaled we would hear them call out: “Any recyclables and duck feathers for sale?”

Lost in the pantheon of duck cuisine

Once a year, when yellow mai flowers bloomed, Mom cooked pork belly stew with duck eggs. We would wait the entire year to savor the Tết food. She explained, “It is worth the wait. If we eat it every day, we will not cherish it and look forward to it anymore.” She would simmer hard-boiled duck eggs and pork belly in an ocean of coconut water for hours. When cooked off, the coconut water turns into a soft golden glow which is rich and sweet and makes both eggs and pork golden brown as the eggs became crunchy and the pork tender.

But other than this once-a-year speciality, Mom had an unfixed duck menu I assumed no Michelin-starred chef could imagine. Sometimes, she would cook duck curry with a generous pinch of turmeric, chunks of carrots and sweet potatoes and a sea of coconut milk. Sometimes, she would do braised duck with caramelized coconut sauce, fish sauce and a mountain of ginger. It tastes gingery, which is very pleasant. The secret of this dish is the two cuts of ginger: the thin strips for chewy texture and spicy flavor, and the minced for faster seasoning.

Duck meat is categorized as yin (tính âm) in traditional cooking for its cold properties, so it must be cooked with ginger known as yang (tính dương) ingredients for their hot properties in order to achieve hot-and-cold equilibrium. It sounds mythical. However, both are used in every home for as long as my great-great-grandmother could remember. They complement each other perfectly like the white and the black in the yin-yang symbol. Ginger must be cut on a wooden chopping board to enhance maximum flavor. This applies to garlic too. She taught me so, and I took tremendous pride in sharing it with my husband who loves to put ginger and garlic in every dish we cook.

The duck blood spilled into the uncooked sticky rice? That mixture would be boiled into blood pudding. Mom would boil the thickened blood in the broth of any dish she cooked such as congee, curry and stew. When cooked, it is firm like a pie and has a chocolate color. Duck blood pudding is mottled white with sticky rice which provides a slightly sweet flavor and chewy texture. We ate it with duck meat and fish sauce with minced ginger.

Occasionally, Mom made duck congee for a family treat. At that time, our home was a bustling hive of activity. She chased the fattest duck, butchered it in half, and submerged it in a pot of boiling water with roasted rice. Once the duck was tender, she placed it on a plate to cool and then cleaned every speck of meat off the bones. My sister and I would dash around the garden to chop a young banana stem and pick rau răm for banana stem salad. The salad would be tossed with the meat she tore earlier. It would be served with warm duck congee and the dipping sauce of fish sauce and fresh minced ginger. I polished off duck congee like a hungry wolf and wished Mom would cook it again the next day, as did other family members.

Roast duck served at a Saigon eatery. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

The dish I liked best was the roast duck which Mom only did on my paternal grandma’s death anniversary. She brought ducks she slaughtered to a nearby roasting shop. To munch the roast duck, we first waited until the incense sticks on the ancestor altar — where my grandma always offered a tight smile in a plum red velvet áo dài she never wore in her life — burnt into ashes. It was crispy and succulent with golden brown skin and pink aromatic flesh. After chomping down one big piece, I would lick my fingers so clean that they almost disappeared. The aroma of roast duck always lingered on for hours after.

Ducks on show

At the open-air markets that bustle with a rainbow of exotic fruits and vegetables and a cacophony of noises and scooter horns, the ducks’ loud whistling guide people to their world. The choices are practically unlimited, from free-range ducks to confined ducks of all kinds. There are mottled ducks, Muscovy ducks, Grass ducks, Pekin ducks, and more. People can buy fresh naked duck carcasses with all their internal organs intact lying on big trays that look like giant water lily leaves. Or people can choose a decent live duck and come back to fetch the bird at the end of the shopping trip.

As a single person in the city, half a duck suited me fine for two days. An entire duck would take me further, but, without a refrigerator in the dripping humidity, it would become a mossy frog before I could finish it! I would ask the duck lady to dismember my half into bite-sized chunks. She did so with a deft snip of her well-used but scalpel-sharp scissors. On the days I failed to ask her to butcher the bird, I would end up hacking it to pieces with my mostly unused knife.

To save time, I made braised duck too. Like my mom, I seasoned the meat with caramelized coconut sauce, fish sauce and, of course, two different types of ginger. Then I let it simmer with a lid on and went about my business. By the time I heard sizzling sounds, I knew my braised duck was cooked.

Trứng vịt lộn

Next to the duck ladies sit the egg ladies. Baskets of eggs in all shapes and colors full to the brim await fussy housewives. There are chicken eggs, duck eggs and quail eggs; freshly laid or fertilized. The latter are always duck eggs and quail eggs.

Trứng vịt lộn being prepared on a Saigon street. Photo by Brandon Coleman.

Fertilized duck eggs (trứng vịt lộn) are considered a healthy and nutritious treat. They are believed to be rich in iron, calcium and even Vitamin C. There is no scientific research on this, but the maxim is passed down from generation to generation. No young Vietnamese wants to miss out on the street delicacy on a night out.

As high school students, my friends and I usually conducted a trứng vịt lộn challenge. The winner was the one who ate the most trứng vịt lộn. The reward they received was simply our applause, a kind of appraisal that was of greater importance than that of our teachers and parents. By the time my friend, the winner, was able to bolt six, I had just started to peck at the second, which turned out to be my last. After the challenge, I thought I would not go near trứng vịt lộn for a year. Its richness and creaminess remained on my breath for hours. However, in a week, I found myself gnawing trứng vịt lộn again with my friends.

Here is how we enjoy trứng vịt lộn: first, we crack the larger end of the egg with a teaspoon. Next, we peel back the broken top, just enough, and suck the sauce gently. Then we continue to peel off the shell. The hardened yolk interlaced with cooked blood vessels appears. Scooping it out with a teaspoon, we dip it in a mystifying sauce of salt, black pepper, smashed red chilies and lime juice. We munch on it with some rau răm. A burst of flavors explodes in our mouth: the yolk is crunchy and chewy and creamy; the sauce is hot and salty and sour; the leaves are peppery and spicy and minty. Our mouths are on fire and our sinuses are clear. Now the eyes of a nearly developed duckling are staring at us. But it barely disconcerts us. We have another bite. Its developed bones are so soft.

Trứng vịt lộn eaten in Saigon. Photo by Cao Nhân.

Ducks talk

Ducks have become part of Vietnamese culture both in cuisine and figuratively. My mom is a walking dictionary of duck idioms. Before my brother popped out and "rescued" her from further pregnancy, she felt sorry for my dad for being surrounded by girls, while he felt left out by his friends who all had at least one son to carry on the name of their families. When we could not help our dad with labor that required a man’s strength, Mom would tease us with a giggle: “The house is full of vịt trời (wild ducks).”

When I consistently did not follow her advice, she moaned: “Talking to you is like pouring water over a duck’s head (nước đổ đầu vịt).” Interestingly, English people use a similar phrase: “Like water off a duck’s back.”

When she saw that I was confused by something she said she would complain that I listened to her stories “like a duck listening to a thunderstorm (như vịt nghe sấm).”

If I was slow in doing something she would scold me: “‘Come on! Don’t walk like a duck (Lạch bạch như vịt bầu).” And to encourage us kids to study hard for a better life, she announced: “I promise you, if you don’t study hard, you can only work as duck herders.”

Being duck herders is not easy. They have to move thousands of ducks from paddy fields to paddy fields which are bare after the harvest. The fields promise a paradise of crabs, rice snails, insects and grain for ducks. When the sun dips into the horizon, herders round-up happy ducks for a rest. Their feet are wet and painted in mud all the time. They sleep under the stars, or a rickety hut if lucky, beside the ducks to make sure that none get lost or sick. Plus they have to collect the eggs the ducks lay as they go. And for all that effort they receive a modicum of income. Understanding that, us siblings announced in unison that we did not want to be farmers, let alone duck herders.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

To return to the friendly passer-by who happened to bring me home, a home away from home. He told me, “I will visit the Mekong Delta again.” But he swore, “I won’t eat embryo eggs again. Never again.”

Sympathizing with his unpleasant foodie experience, I said, “In early December, Taste Atlas released a list of ten disgusting street food. Trứng vịt lộn was second in the list.”

“You see!” he smiled in agreement.

Out of the blue, I heard an incessant quacking aloft. Two Egyptian geese were flying above, probably on the way home as the curtains of silk darkness were about to close.

A wave of nostalgia enveloped me. I missed the happy Mekong ducks. And my mom.

The top graphic features a photo by Bill Yeaton via Smithsonian Magazine.

After a decade writing and gathering materials, Hien recently published her debut album, “Trăng Qua.”

“Trăng Qua” is a record that was 10 years in the making. Some initial song ideas came up in 2015, while other new songs were started in 2025. The album wasn’t constructed from a fully formed concept right from the beginning. Instead, Hien wrote the tracks one by one, polished them across different times in her life, and only came to realize their common thread after a while.

During the creation of the album, there have been many changes in the life and musical artistry of Hien. Born Nguyễn Thanh Hiền in Budapest into a Vietnamese family, Hien moved to New York a few years ago. Her life experiences pass through three languages and cultures. Vietnamese is the language of family and heritage; Hungarian is closely connected to her formative years in Budapest; and English has become the language of daily life and creativity while she lives in the US.

The album cover.

To Hien, the extended period making “Trăng Qua” also gave some old compositions a chance to revisit a past version of herself.

Hien describes her songwriting process as “quite simple”: she begins with the sound, then the melody, and finally the lyrics. Still, over the decade, the person behind that process has changed.

“‘Trăng Qua’ has had more time to mature,” Hien shares. She mentions “Bloom,” the EP she released in 2021, as a stepping stone before she transitioned to the full-length album. “I’ve matured — I became a mature woman and a mature artist,” she explains. “I’m very glad to have put some of these songs down for a while, as once I return to them, I could listen to them with a fresher perspective. I’m also much bolder in my creative choices. I stopped chasing perfection and let the production be more rustic and authentic.”

Hien describes her songwriting process: starting with the sound, then the melody, and finally the lyrics.

For songs that have been kept on the back burner for years, taking them out for polishing does not mean retaining how they were first created. Hien believes that letting go of one’s older versions is a natural part of growth.

“Letting go of my old selves is really not difficult, because I simply have grown out of them. It’s a part of growth, of creating a space for someone you’re becoming.”

Those changes are clearly shown in Hien's treatment of her musical materials. “Trăng Qua” swings between electronic, ambient, and pop, employing elements from different influences, specifically bolero, chèo, cải lương, Hungarian Romani folk music, Latin bolero, Bulgarian choral music, R&B, and hip-hop.

Hien wasn’t hung up on recreating traditional elements as is, but picked those that she feels a pull towards, including melody, vocal technique, arrangement, rhythm, and emotivity. She then incorporated them into her own music-making process.

‘Trăng tàn trên hè phố’ (lit: the moon wanes on the street) is Hien’s first-ever release in Vietnamese, which made over a composition by Phạm Thế Mỹ using bolero, drum and bass. In ‘next to you,’ she integrated a sample from ‘Xa mối tình đầu’ (lit: away from my first love), also known as ‘Đoạn tái bút 2’ (lit: postscript no. 2) composed by Tú Nhi and Bằng Giang. In ‘through this phase,’ another segment from ‘Tình thư hạ vị’ (a chèo classic) performed by Minh Thu and Khắc Tư becomes part of an electronic track.

At the photoshoot for “Trăng Qua.”

Hien’s own relationship with Vietnam was formed in a similar way. She grew up in Hungary in a Vietnamese family instead of spending her formative years in Vietnam. This background resulted in a certain distance that always exists in how she connects to Vietnamese culture and music.

The music video for ‘Bloom’ documents the life of young girls in the matriarchal community of M’Nông people. Stories about family, roots, culture, and nature continue to be crucial themes in Hien’s music.

“I will never experience Vietnamese culture exactly like someone who was born and grew up there, speaking Vietnamese as a native tongue,” she explains. “But that distance also gives me an alternative perspective. It lets me realize, respect, and appreciate things that someone who grew up in Vietnam might deem obvious.”

Hien doesn’t see this distance as something to hide in her music. On the contrary, it’s become a part of how she explores her heritage: “I still have many things to learn about Vietnam, and I think that constant discovery is also a part of my music.”

One aspect of this journey comes from her family, especially her grandfather Trần Tượng Tư, a cải lương performer hailing from Bạc Liêu in the Mekong Delta. He could play đàn nguyệt, đàn nhị, guitar, and violin and worked at the Trần Hữu Trang Cải lương Theater in Saigon, and then the National Cải lương Theater in Hanoi.

In her childhood, she spent summers with her grandparents, so she can remember how he spontaneously played cải lương on the guitar. Years later, Hien hunted down some of his old recordings and added a segment of his guitar work into ‘trăng ơi,’ a track on the album. Hien sees this as a way to continue making music with her grandpa, even though they come from different musical periods.

The music video for ‘Jetplants’ is constructed from VHS footage of Hien’s family archive, spanning three locations and multiple generations.

Her family story also directly appears in ‘Jetplanes,’ the 15th track of the album. It reflects the journey to find new homes and the experiences of someone living away from home, a reference to how her family left Vietnam for Hungary and how she left Budapest for Brooklyn.

The music video is constructed from old VHS footage of her family, filmed in Vietnam and Hungary. 1992 scenes in a small town near Hải Phòng show her father’s side of the family, while those in Hanoi chronicle family meals, Tết celebrations, birthday karaoke sessions, and her maternal grandparents. The footage in Budapest shows a small family and Hien’s childhood friends.

These video snapshots not only help illustrate the song’s visual side, but also tell the story of places and people that have a role in Hien’s personal narrative, from Vietnam to Hungary and then the US.

“Trăng Qua” features lyrics in Vietnamese, Hungarian, and English, sometimes in one song. For Hien, each language is connected to a different part of her life, but they coexist in one album formed in Brooklyn.

Singing in Vietnamese was a skill she had to relearn. She used to feel self-conscious about singing in Vietnamese before deciding to bring it to her music. The track ‘Trăng tàn trên hè phố’ is the first step in that journey, followed by many other instances where Vietnamese shows up across the album.

Hien doesn’t look at Vietnam as someone who has learned everything about the place they belong. It’s a continual process of discovery via family, language, music, and inherited memories.

“Trăng Qua” pieces together songs from different periods of Hien’s life. Some had their start when she was still in Budapest; others were finished when she moved to America. In between them were many shifts in living arrangements, language, music, and even the self.

Following the album release, Hien hopes to return to Vietnam for a month during Tết to perform.

“Trăng Qua” is available on Bandcamp on major streaming platforms.

“Echoes of Tonkin: Vietnamese Modern Art” opens in Hong Kong to challenge reductive narratives and clichés about 20^th-century Vietnamese art.

“Modern Vietnamese art cannot be traced to a single origin, nor reduced to a simple story of influence,” write exhibition co-curators Trần Đình Thục Đoan and Leah Đỗ in the catalogue’s opening. Spanning 1905 to 1960 and including works by Albert Cézard, Victor Tardieu, Léa Lafugie, Joseph Inguimberty, Alix Aymé, Lê Phổ, Vũ Cao Đàm, Mai Trung Thứ, Phạm Hậu, and Nguyễn Gia Trí, the exhibition is arranged chronologically not to suggest a linear progression but rather to showcase a collection of individual artists working independently in a collaborative atmosphere of adoption and adaptation. 

Notably, the exhibition begins before the 1924 founding of the École des Beaux-Arts, the French-led school in Hanoi that produced some of Vietnam’s most well-known 20^th-century artists. In doing so, “Echoes of Tonkin” stresses that while the school precipitated a dramatic shift in the country’s artwork, there already existed a rich visual culture with talented artists across mediums. Moreover, while the school formalized training and offered resources, there had long been exchanges between French and Vietnamese artists as exemplified by Albert Cézard’s 1905 work, ‘Scène du Vietnam’ (Scene in Vietnam).

‘Scène du Vietnam’ (Scene in Vietnam) by Albert Cézard.

Adding more complexity to the established narratives of art development in Vietnam is the exhibition’s inclusion of two Chăm statues dating back to the 9^th and 10^th centuries. They serve as reminders that long before the French or even the Kinh occupied parts of Vietnam, another culture with a rich and meaningful relationship with art thrived. 

Chăm sculptures (artist unknown). 

The statue of Ganesha reveals the deviations of religious traditions amongst cultures in the region. The Buddha, meanwhile, points to overlap, as does Lê Phổ’s ‘L’illumination de Bouddha’ (Buddha's Enlightenment), which applies creative interpretation of traditional imagery. Painted on silk in 1947 in the wake of World War II and personal hardships, the curators explain that it is “not merely an illustration of religious history but a message of  hope amid the world’s escalating political turmoil.” 

Lê Phổ’s ‘L’illumination de Bouddha’ (Buddha's Enlightenment)

In addition to silk and sandstone, the exhibition includes oil paint on canvas, terracotta and lacquer. This later medium allows for particularly interesting rumination on the changes in art at the time. Nguyễn Gia Trí’s 1960 ‘Bateaux dans la baie d'Halong’ (Fishing Boats in Ha Long Bay) presents the transition of the medium from a decorative craft to one of ambitious painting. Created seven years into his exile from his home in Northern Vietnam, Nguyễn Gia Trí’s work is one of deep emotion rendered with subtlety and technical ambition.

Nguyễn Gia Trí’s 1960 ‘Bateaux dans la baie d'Halong’ (Fishing Boats in Ha Long Bay)

Similar technical skill is forefronted by Vũ Cao Đàm’s ‘Tête de femme’ (Head of a Woman). Uniquely talented in both sculpture and painting, Vũ Cao Đàm produced works that introduce the familiar theme of idealized female figures. The sculpture was created while in exile, and the act of idealizing a female face with pristine features and headdress represents “not an aesthetic choice but memory made visual,” as described in the illuminating catalogue, which relies on significant research to describe, date, and situate the pieces in the artist’s individual lives as well as the cultural and political developments of the time.  

Vũ Cao Đàm’s ‘Tête de femme’ (Head of a Woman)

While limited in number of pieces, “Echoes of Tonkin: Vietnamese Modern Art” is expansive in its aims to reconsider and redefine people’s understanding of the nature of influence and advancement at the time, alongside interests. When asked to elaborate on what “familiar assumptions” the exhibition challenges, Pascal de Sarthe, who founded the gallery in Paris in 1977, explains, “The idea that Vietnamese modern art is essentially decorative: graceful young women in áo dài on silk, made to please a French and later an international clientele. The market has encouraged this image, because those works sell well. But it hides the ambition, the variety and the intellectual seriousness of these artists. A second assumption, closely related, is that the story belongs to a handful of painters who settled in France. The reality is much richer, and much of it happened in Vietnam.”

Photos courtesy of De Sarthe Gallery.

“Echoes of Tonkin: Vietnamese Modern Art” is open from now until November 21 at de Sarthe Gallery in Hong Kong.

Vé số ticket number 984430 yields a magenta fish contorting atop a ghostly image of an apartment high-rise in Tân Phú in “The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams – Topographies of the Unseen,” an art project by photographer Christian Berg. The experimental project, available to view in full online, employs computer technology to combine photography, numerology, and mythology and playfully reimagine how one visualizes Saigon.

The image produced by lottery ticket No. 984430

The process to achieve the surreal images is relatively straightforward. Berg purchased 100 vé số tickets from local vendors and created an algorithm to randomly assign a fixed and repeatable number to coordinates on a map of Saigon, the city he has called home for nearly 20 years. He then traveled to the locations and took photos with the rule that he wasn’t to get off his motorbike. The last two digits of each lottery ticket would determine an AI-generated creature inspired by Albrecht Dürer's famous 16^th-century works.

“The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams – Topographies of the Unseen” online interface.

Selecting Dürer, a fellow German, was meaningful to Berg for several reasons. While he first considered using Đông Hồ paintings, he said being mindful of cultural appropriation and his positioning as an outsider was important. Moreover, Dürer was one of the first artists to produce and sell prints of his work, providing a fruitful entry point for the discussions of art, commerce, technology, and ownership that exist at the forefront of current-day discussions of creative production. In addition to selecting an animal, the algorithm Berg designed uses the vé số number to select a color and 3D spatial orientation after pixilation. The resulting images aim to offer aesthetic intrigue while suggesting the overlap of the spiritual world and the tangible one via vé số's relationship with numerology and cosmic beliefs. 

Images corresponding to lottery numbers 359927, 521951, 233240 and 485496 (from left to right).

“Once you make the game, you can make your own house rules,” Berg told Saigoneer of the two-year project. He thus skipped tickets that yielded coordinates that would send him into the middle of the ocean. Similarly, he weighted certain locations to ensure that the visually diverse center of the city would receive more attention than the somewhat homogeneous outskirts. 

“The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams” comes as a logical next step after Berg’s “All the Places I have Lived” project. For that one, he trained AI on photographs he had taken of all the Saigon neighborhoods he has called home and then had the computer generate images for each. The glitches and errors, including impossible shadows, nonsense signage, and illogical physics, speak to the fallibility of memories as well as falsehood’s place in feelings of nostalgia. 

Two photographs from “All the Places I have Lived.”

“Stop playing it safe,” Berg’s supervisor advised as he was formulating the project as part of his PhD coursework at RMIT Melbourne’s School of Art. For the majority of Berg’s time in Saigon, he has practiced conventional photography as a documentary photographer, commercial photographer, and lecturer at RMIT Vietnam. This PhD program allowed him to go beyond his comfort zone and discover what he could learn via experimentation and adoption of new, sometimes radical techniques and schemes. Particularly, the system he devised forced him to act counterintuitively and put together ideas and images that he normally wouldn’t, and in the process discover new means of creative convergence. 

In its application of AI, the project reflects Berg’s larger approach to technology. While an ardent supporter of human creativity and credit, he says one cannot just shut themselves off from the existence of new technologies. He explains to his students that “The hardest and most important lesson is to be curious about the world,” and that “saying no outright is not the approach of a curious mind.”

“The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams – Topographies of the Unseen” as featured at the RMIT's Vietnam Festival of Creativity & Design.

The place of AI in art is and will continue to be the subject of intense debates. Projects like “The Lottery of Forgotten Dreams – Topographies of the Unseen” serve as not only examples of what can be done, but also how curiosity is driving artists to play with it. 

The joy of reading, for most of my life, had been primarily grounded in the joy of learning, feeling, and thinking through words, independent of medium. That is, until college, when I found myself repeatedly longing for Thursday mornings, when the week’s freshly printed student newspaper would arrive neatly folded and stacked, ready to be spread over the dining-hall table like wrapping paper. I came to realize then that the joy of reading was not simply about words; it was also about the tactile touch of paper and of the inexplicable satisfaction of flipping through pages bigger than my hands could reasonably manage.

When it comes to the pleasures of the tactile, material dimensions of reading, nothing, in my opinion, surpasses print magazines. Reading a print book offers the soft touch and the wafting scent of paper that digital versions cannot replicate, but even books with the most beautiful covers are inevitably too wordy (or most often, exclusively so) on the inside. Magazines, however, swirl ideas, illustrations, and images alongside the words, all brought together to life by the beat of color. As we become ever more subsumed by a digital world increasingly cannibalized by AI, print mediums like magazines can only become more precious.

Excerpt from Issue 2, where the focus is Vietnam and Singapore.

For such reasons, I was elated to recently find out about the existence of MARG1N, a print-only Southeast Asian film magazine based in Cambodia — the discovery of novel magazines in the region is always a delight! For cinephiles in Vietnam and across Southeast Asia in particular, MARG1N will surely be a treasured find, for there exists nothing quite like it for devoted filmheads. Supported by the Cambodian film production company Anti-Archive, the project is envisioned to consist of five issues, with each issue focused on a pairing of two or three countries in the region under a particular theme. The upcoming third issue, titled “Cosmos,” is set to release later this year, exploring the titular theme across the regions of Brunei, Thailand, and Timor-Leste.

The core team behind the magazine consists of three members: filmmaker and editor-in-chief Savunthara Seng (Thara), based in Cambodia; Alyssandra Maxine (Max), based in the Philippines; and graphic designer Sonich Touch, who was previously based in Cambodia but has recently relocated to Spain. As Max recounts in an interview with Minh Nguyen on Public Parking, the origins of the project trace back to when Max and Thara first connected on Letterboxd, where Max corresponded with Thara about how to pirate Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz’s eleven-hour film Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004).

Excerpt from Issue 2, where the focus is Vietnam and Singapore.

Given this history, it was perhaps natural that the theme of the first issue, published in 2024, would be piracy, focused on Cambodia and the Philippines. Titled “pirate.lov3r.2024.mkv,” Issue 1 brings together a cacophony of voices and perspectives, from filmmakers, artists, critics, and mourners of DVD stores, presenting piracy as something more than simply “an open secret” — tabooed, given its unlawfulness and illegitimacy; yet open, given its ubiquity. “Name me one Filipino filmmaker whose film education did not involve piracy,” writes Khavn De La Cruz in the opening piece, who describes piracy as “a form of film preservation.” The theme of piracy highlights well MARG1N's general approach to engaging with film not simply as a form of art that exists in the abstract, but as one lives and breathes through dynamic social formations, like piracy markets and DVD stores for instance, for which Phnom Penh, as with the Philippines, is a “notorious haven,” as Thara writes in the introduction.

Issue 2, titled “Traces,” focuses on Vietnam and Singapore. The subjects covered in the second issue are diverse, but all possess qualities shared with that of the trace: spectral, fleeting, fragmentary. In “Regarding Latent Cinema,” Daryl Chong reflects upon unfinished films within the context of Singapore. In “Minor Observations of Trần Anh Hùng’s Trilogy,” Lanah Chu offers fragmentary, bullet-pointed reflections of Hùng’s widely celebrated films, perhaps more aptly described as poetry than prose. In “Cinemas Are Battlefields,” TN Đan goes through public archives in Singapore to present the history of cinema bombings in Vietnam from the 1940s through the 1970s. In “Microbecinema,” Grace Song writes of the parallels between microscopy and cinema as a means to reflect more broadly on microcinemas and independent film screenings. The issue also contains a visual script, a letter, and a comic strip.

Excerpt from Issue 2, where the focus is Vietnam and Singapore.

Readers may find the specific combinations presented in each issue as surprising. But as the editors described in their interview with Saigoneer, the pairings are an intentional choice. Rather than pursuing what might be clichéd pairings — such as Thailand and Cambodia, for instance, given the geopolitical context — the MARG1N team tries to bring together countries without significant shared histories in order to “force” histories together in surprisingly productive ways. “When the countries are unified under a theme, we expose how similar we all are, despite very different forms of government and culture,” Thara remarked.

The idea of marginality behind the name of the magazine is core to the identity of the magazine. I sometimes find the notion of marginality to be somewhat tricky. If what is considered marginal cannot but be relational — namely, marginal to some other center or core — who is to say what constitutes such a core or center? To what and to whom, to be concrete, is Southeast Asian film marginal? As the MARG1N team points out, certainly to the “West” — especially given the sheer difference in available resources for the film industry and culture across geographies — but also to the “Asian” canon. As Thara explains, “When the West refers to Asian cinema, it’s only a couple of countries talked about as if representative of the whole of Asia.”

Excerpt from Issue 2, where the focus is Vietnam and Singapore.

But even within Southeast Asia and within specific countries, there exist internal dynamics of centers and peripheries, given Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines’ status as the “powerhouses” of the film industry within their region. But zooming in even further, Thara explained: “Even in the festival circuit, when the art house crowd refers to Thai cinema, for example, they think of only one name or representative… but it’s not just Apitchapong. The margin is spread throughout.” 

Importantly, the magazine also conceptualizes marginality as a mode within film criticism as well. “When we imagine film criticism, we think of a kind of serious academia. We try not to do that because film criticism is also an amalgamation of other things, like poetry, visual essays, photography, collages,” Thara commented. “When combined together, they create dissonances and discourses that make a film magazine a film magazine. What is film criticism? It’s not just The New Yorker or MUBI. It can be more.” Remarkably, in reading the magazine, marginality does not feel as though it merely exists on the margins, but rather as permeating and dispersed across multiple layers, through and through, like dense rings of trees. Key to this quality is the magazine’s sustained attention to marginality in its various forms without, necessarily, the kind of self-marginalization often found in discourses on the subject.

Excerpt from Issue 2, where the focus is Vietnam and Singapore.

During our chat, Max described MARG1N also as a project to produce “cinematic memorabilia.” As one might expect from this vision, MARG1N’s magazines are gorgeous, with a distinctive style that I would characterize as simultaneously eclectic and dreamy. The MARG1N team emphasized that the visuality and materiality of their magazines are a huge part of their identity and the reading experience they try to emulate, via unconventional formatting of texts, play with fonts, as well as the scattering of images, textured and granular. Indeed, some of my favorite pieces were those that were heavily visual, including Nguyên Lê’s “Season of Changes” in Issue 2, in which he writes about re-tracing scenes from Tony Bui’s Three Seasons (Ba mùa, 1999) in present-day Saigon. Accompanying his commentary are pairs of photographs for each location re-traced: a still shot from the film alongside a photograph of the same place in the present day, taken at a similar angle. 

I read MARG1N’s issues in the form of digital review copies, and I can only imagine what it must be like to hold and read the magazines in print, a feeling I dearly miss living in a city where English-language print magazines are difficult to come by. The element of print “completely changes what is written,” Thara remarked, reflecting upon the place of print in the age of AI. As he astutely put it, “the digital almost becomes dated when you really touch the pages.”

Images courtesy of MARG1N.

The MARG1N team have told Saigoneer that a limited number of copies of Issues 1 & 2 will be available at Dogma Collection in Saigon, beginning mid-October. One can find more detailed information about the availability of copies in other parts of Southeast Asia on their website.

On the pastures of slow cinema where Andrei Tarkovsky, Tsai Ming-liang and Theo Angelopoulos reside, Phạm Thiên Ân's debut feature, Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng (Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell), has made its mark as a notable entry for its distinctly Vietnamese vistas, tones and essence.

To see myself crying while watching Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng — which Ân is credited as director, writer and editor — is something I never thought was possible. When the film's lead, Thiện (Lê Phong Vũ), indulges an elderly woman (NSƯT Phi Điểu) in a chat about presence and reincarnation, all I could do was let the tears run. Maybe it was because of Madame Điểu's delivery, a perfect balance between impassioned and dignified that convinced me that everything is more reality than senility. Maybe it was because she echoed my late bà ngoại's belief that a person's return to this harsh plane after they have exited it, should that happen, could be a chance to save others from hardship.

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is an expansion of Phạm Thiên Ân's previous award-winning short.

In a way, the newest Caméra d'Or winner Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng is a return. The expansion of the 2019 short film Ân made, 14-minute Hãy Tỉnh Thức Và Sẵn Sàng (Stay Awake, Be Ready) won an award at Cannes as well. Yet, in the Bảo Lộc native's second and lengthier exploration of his world, more details are available. This version of the motorbike crash now specifies who has died, Thiện's sister-in-law Hạnh, and who has survived, Hạnh's young son Đạo (Nguyễn Thịnh). This version now has a proper central perspective, introduced in a tragicomic manner embedded in so many of life's designs — Thiện has to stop his massage session short of its “happy ending” because of the call about the accident.

Phạm Thiên Ân (middle) is a Bảo Lộc native, so he decided to base the story in his home province.

I must admit, explaining this film is not easy. Attempts to simplify and provide clarity can also be means to reduce and demystify it. There's a flow, simultaneously factly and divine, across all these following points, but I have to break it up so it might make sense: Thiện's journey from Saigon to Lâm Đồng Province to return Hạnh's ashes prompts him to relive matters that can make, or even have made, him somewhat aimless and reserved. He finds himself in an environment where faith is strong and the people's investment in it is unwavering. He again sees his girlfriend, Thảo (Nguyễn Thị Trúc Quỳnh), but in the robes of a nun. He also finds out where his brother, Đạo's father, is located.

It's best to enter Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng equipped with the connotations behind the transformation a cocoon undergoes, as well as Ân's implication behind the imagery; he told French newspaper RFI in Vietnamese that the pupa within is “similar to a person's soul.” This is because Ân has really focused on the searching aspect of Thiện's soul-searching. This, in turn, validates how the endpoints of plot threads can be absent or undefinable. It even embeds time's immunity to manipulation to the runtime. Through Ân's vision, I get to see that, while Thiện and Đạo are the film's emotional hooks and the setting's enlargers, its anchor is in the navigating of concepts that humans have understood or have yet to. Perhaps that would explain why when Đạo asks Thiện where his mother is now, Đinh Duy Hưng's camera doesn't focus on nephew and uncle but instead the luminous hands of the alarm clock.

Thiện (Lê Phong Vũ) embarks on a journey to deliver his sister-in-law's ashes from Saigon to Lâm Đồng.

Speaking of the camera, I'm of the opinion that it also does more than its brethren in more conventional films. It doesn't just observe, but also gathers life. Per foreign critics and previews abroad, Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng is an Eden of long takes, some featuring the most delicate tracks or pans as if they are imitating the winds of Vietnam's ethereal highlands. But even if the camera prefers to be stationary, it understands that dynamism and energy still exist through other bystanders, sounds and naturalism. Hưng's cinematography seems to be capturing existence as opposed to scenes.

Consequently, it feels apt to call everything that makes up Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng — from technical aspects to its narrative themes — as “vessels” more than “components,” as they seem so willing to become secondary to grander, yet-established concepts. This seems to correspond better with the film's vision and an awareness of a higher power that, the closer to the end of the 182 minutes, I stop rationalizing and just accept. It's not that I have given up, but instead, I'm listening to the film. It seems to be advising me to be humbled by greater forces, named and unnamed or seen and unseen.

Catholic paraphernalia is often spotted in the movie, even though Yellow Cocoon focuses more on spirituality and faith than religion.

Does this necessarily make the film religious in design? Not necessarily, even when figures of Mary, Jesus and crosses are prevalent. In a memorable shot that might also be a nod to Tarkovsky's also nature-rich Solaris, a son of God figurine, submerged, is seen resting beneath brushing grass blades. There's also the feeling that, despite heavenly presences on walls at ceremonies, on shelves, above doors and the like, none of our characters has an overt or devoted connection to them.

This “giving in” nature also allows the illusory to cohabit and gain prominence. In one stunning sequence that epitomizes Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng's dedication to aural excellence, Thiện rouses himself from sleep and wanders around under the heavy rain and darkness. Is this still Lâm Đồng, or a drenched purgatory? A camera that normally stays or trails now moves as if sentient. Is it as confused and exhausted as Thiện? Then comes respite, assuming the form of a tree with white butterflies as its leaves and flowers. Is this a variant of the unburnt bush that Moses comes across? The film doesn't answer this, it just moves on. 

Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng might not appeal to casual viewers due to its long running time and slow pace.

Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng will alienate viewers because of its respectful ambiguity. They might wonder why Ân seems to adore the bumps and sounds along the road that surround Thiện's Honda Astrea more than the ride's point or resolution. They might register the elderly lady's words as, as Thiện was warned, elderly speak. I can't fault them for these interpretations, as the film does not ease itself into the deeper matters that the footage truly represents. Unlike the also lengthy Japanese Oscar winner Drive My Car, that also deals with deciphering one's place in life, everything in Yellow Cocoon, but especially its characterization, starts out as deep and naturally contemplative. In his performance as Thiện, I feel that Vũ shifts between uncertain and passive, as if it's the result of him being ever-prepared for the moment the camera and narrative focus on something else besides him. But when I pick up on the idea that Thiện is meant to be an avatar of Ân, Vũ's acting makes sense. As mentioned earlier, Thiện has been on a search, and not once has life stopped to confirm, deny, explain or guide him after he has gained or lost a thing. With that in mind, what gets portrayed is more human being than dramatic character.

Overall, Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng gives me more confidence to interpret the gray that characterizes life. I hope its appreciators will feel the same, even if they might be hard to find. Aside from being a captivating and heartfelt experience, the film allows me to feel fine to never know where a stream starts and ends; I can just lie in it, with both ears underwater — just like Thiện — and know that there is a flow. Sometimes it's enough, the ability to view much of the world free from absolutes, from what one “do know” and “don't know.” Seeing as reality has yet to open itself to this notion, could this be the hardship my bà ngoại was referring to? If I do return, let me be your hero and break you out of the limitations that are cocooning you.

Photos courtesy of JK Film.

This article was originally published in 2023.

The story begins in 1996. Before leaving for a month-long journey to Vietnam with 30 other Norwegian teachers, I had searched through books and online sources for hidden stories and overlooked places, an interest born from my experiences teaching Vietnamese refugees in Norway in the late 1970s and 1980s. One name caught my attention: the artist Nguyễn Thế Khang, who had conceived an ambitious plan to recreate Hanoi’s 36 Old Streets in a monumental lacquer work. The day after I arrived in Hanoi, I was welcomed into his home at 47 Triệu Việt Vương.

Khang was 74 years old at the time. He received me politely, but his excitement quickly overtook the formalities. Within minutes, we were standing before sketches for his great project: a vast visual reconstruction of Hanoi’s 36 streets set in approximately 1850, before French colonization. The work was to be created in sơn mài.

The scale was extraordinary. The completed work was planned as 16 large panels, together measuring 1.70 by 10.08 meters. A raised decorative border, filled with motifs illustrating important historical events and characteristic features of Hanoi’s culture, would run around the sides. The work would also include inscriptions in classical Chinese characters and in Vietnam’s old Nôm script. With the frame included, the total size would exceed 22 square meters.

Author Olaf Husby (left) and Nguyễn Thế Khang (right) in his Hanoi home in 1996.

Khang intended to use coromandel lacquerware, a technique with origins in China wherein several layers of black lacquer are applied to a prepared wooden surface. Once the lacquer has dried, the motifs are carved or incised into the surface, then colored, gilded, or inlaid with decorative materials such as mother-of-pearl. The images emerge vividly from the dark background.

Khang unrolled a sketch about a meter and a half long. Soon the table was covered with scenes from everyday life in old Hanoi: city gates, houses, markets, trees, canals, boats, bridges, monuments, temples, and pagodas. In its completed form, the work would show around 400 low buildings and approximately 2,000 people from all layers of society — working, bargaining, conversing, attending ceremonies, or practicing popular forms of religion and devotion. The detail was so extensive that even this vast work required simplification. Hàng Đào Street, for example, had once contained 120 houses; in Khang’s reconstruction, only 25 could be shown.

Reconstructing old Hanoi

The preparation was painstaking. Khang had spent years studying the period around 1850 and collecting information about a world and its customs that had largely disappeared. The tools, techniques, and working practices that once defined streets such as Hàng Bạc, Hàng Đào, and Hàng Bông had faded from living memory. Detailed information about architecture, clothing, and daily life had also become fragmentary.

Khang stressed that the work should be accompanied by a carefully prepared catalogue, placing the historical scenes, the structure of the Old Quarter, and the cultural references in a broader context. Much of his knowledge came from his history studies at Thăng Long Private School, one of Hanoi’s oldest educational institutions. His history teacher had been Võ Nguyên Giáp, later general and commander-in-chief of North Vietnam’s forces. After leaving school, Khang continued to study old Vietnamese and French texts about Hanoi.

Khang's lacquer work up close.

Nguyễn Thế Khang described his own style as neoclassical, though he had no formal art degree. As a child, he became familiar with embroidery and gilding and later developed his skills in modern artistic circles, becoming known for his lacquer and silk paintings. His artistic career truly began after he retired from the Vietnamese postal service in 1980, at the age of 58. At first, he copied Chinese calligraphy, but the rise of Vietnamese national feeling during and after the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979 led him toward older Vietnamese traditions, especially depictions of folk festivals.

“I will begin the work in six months, in October 1996,” he said as he rolled up the sketch.

But there was one problem: money. The project was so large that he would have to hire assistants. To pay them, he had already begun selling his private works, pieces he loved and had never intended to put on the market. Even that would not be enough.

I was completely captivated. To my eyes, the proposed work was unlike any Vietnamese lacquerware I had seen before. Khang noticed my enthusiasm and asked directly: “Can you help me find funding?”

He had calculated the amount precisely: US$78,200. The sum would cover completion of the work, wages for two assistants, exhibition equipment in Hồ Chí Minh City and Hanoi, media promotion, and the printing of 1,000 high-quality catalogues.

When I left 47 Triệu Việt Vương, I carried with me notes, sketches, photographs, and written material that I could use in my search for support. In Khang’s own English version, the project was titled “The 36 Old Street Quarter of Hanoi in the XIXth Century.”

The search for funding

I returned to Norway in early April 1996 and immediately began looking for financial support. Raising half a million kroner from colleagues, friends, and acquaintances was out of the question. I knew no art patrons with a special interest in Vietnamese art. Norwegian artists’ organizations responded positively but could offer no concrete advice.

Then an opportunity appeared. In 1995, Vietnam’s prime minister Võ Văn Kiệt had visited Norway. At the reception dinner, Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland had spoken of strengthening cooperation with Vietnam and announced that Norway would open an embassy in Hanoi in 1996. Diplomatic relations between Norway and North Vietnam had already been established in 1971.

Nguyễn Thế Khang.

In August 1996, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) announced a funding programme for cultural cooperation with developing countries. At the same time, it was announced that the Norwegian embassy in Hanoi would open during Brundtland’s return visit to Vietnam on October 8, 1996.

Suddenly the timing seemed urgent. I sent all the material on Nguyễn Thế Khang to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to Jens Kjell Otterbech, newly appointed ambassador to Vietnam. Since there was so little time to prepare and process a formal application, I suggested that a direct Norwegian grant to Khang’s project would be simpler. It would also be a meaningful way to mark Norway’s new presence in Hanoi.

On September 12, Khang was received by Ambassador Otterbech in Hanoi. Soon afterwards, I received his report. He had presented the project, brought documentation and a large sketch, and had been told that he should not worry about the application deadline. The embassy would contact Oslo, since it could not make such a decision alone. The conversation had been friendly, and the ambassador had promised to visit Khang’s home and workshop.

I felt relieved. The matter, I thought, had reached the right people.

But by then Khang’s ambitions had grown. He had begun planning a private gallery where the work could be exhibited. Property prices in Hanoi were rising quickly, and he believed action was needed. He estimated that US$200,000 would be required to construct a five-story building with modern facilities. It would contain rental space, living quarters, exhibition rooms, a gallery, a lacquer-painting studio, and a handicraft workshop.

Khang regarded the plan as an excellent investment. The building, he proposed, would belong to the Norwegian embassy, while he would supervise and manage it. If he sold the monumental lacquer work, he would repay the investment to the Norwegian government and create a second, slightly different version for a private museum.

That was the last correspondence between Nguyễn Thế Khang and me. I felt I had done what I could. As for investing in Hanoi’s real-estate boom, that was far beyond anything I could take part in. Eventually, I accepted that the project had not received Norwegian support. Little by little, the story slipped into the background.

Panel of Khang's ambitious work.

What became of the work?

Almost 30 years later, as I was preparing to return to Vietnam, the question suddenly came back: What had happened to Nguyễn Thế Khang’s great project?

An online search produced little, but one result was invaluable: an interview with Khang published by VnExpress on February 22, 2001 under the title “The Fate of the Largest Painting of Hanoi.”

After eight years of work and a budget of VND300 million, the work had been completed. Khang valued it at VND1.2 billion, four times the production cost, but because the intended buyer was the Hanoi Department of Culture and Information, he had reduced the price by half.

Completed panels of Khang's ‘The 36 Old Street Quarter of Hanoi in the XIXth Century.’

The painting had been exhibited in central Hanoi during the celebration of the 990^th anniversary of Thăng Long–Hanoi in 2000. After the exhibition ended, it was placed in storage while a professional committee considered whether the city should purchase it.

Opinions were divided. A purchase would recognize the artist’s dedication, but might also provoke criticism from the professional art world. Khang’s artistic competence had been questioned. Some professionals regarded him as an amateur. There was also a broader question: should the work be considered art, or handicraft?

Khang held firm on the price and suggested that he was prepared to sell the work elsewhere, even abroad, if the Hanoi authorities did not buy it. The situation was made more painful by his declining health. He was seriously ill and needed costly weekly treatment. He seemed caught between bureaucratic hesitation and personal hardship, while the fate of his life’s work remained undecided.

A second VnExpress article, published on May 9, 2001, reported that Nguyễn Thế Khang had died during the months of waiting. His family argued that the authorities should respect his wishes and purchase the work. A government representative expressed sympathy and praised the painting’s ability to recreate the atmosphere of the past. Yet the size of the work remained a serious obstacle. There was no suitable place for permanent display.

Searching for the painting

A cafe at 47 Triệu Việt Vương next to Nguyễn Thế Khang's former home.

So this past summer, in Khang’s spirit, I booked a hotel on Chân Cầm Street — the “street of stringed instruments” in Hanoi’s Old Quarter — and began searching for museums or exhibitions where the panels might now be displayed. I found no trace. I would have to search more directly.

Number 47 Triệu Việt Vương, Khang’s home, was only half an hour away on foot. The house number led to a quiet courtyard. Next door was a modest café. When a young employee brought my iced coffee, I asked in clumsy Vietnamese whether she knew the former resident, Nguyễn Thế Khang. I wrote down his name, the words “painting of Hanoi’s Old Quarter, 36 streets,” and made a rough sketch. She opened Google Translate and showed me one word: “Wait.”

When she returned, I understood that she had learned from a neighbor that Khang had a son named Nguyễn Thế Duy. She had neither an address nor a phone number. It was a step forward, but still far from the goal.

Then Trịnh Lan Hương, a creative director in Hanoi, became interested in the search. Soon she was in contact with Nguyễn Thế Duy, who confirmed his relationship to Khang. We visited him after a drive from old Hanoi, where he greeted us with warmth. The family’s artistic talent had clearly been passed on: Nguyễn Thế Duy was an established musician, and his apartment resembled a gallery, filled largely with his own works. Among them were lacquer paintings bearing Nguyễn Thế Khang’s signature.

Nguyễn Thế Khang's signature on one of his many works kept at his son's home.

When asked about the lacquer panels, Duy kept us briefly in suspense, then opened the website of Old Streets Gallery. The entire artwork appeared before us. It was not 16 panels, but 21. The two outermost contained texts; the other 19 depicted old Hanoi in panoramic form, stretching from Hàng Than to Hàng Khay and from the Red River to Hàng Gai and Hàng Quạt.

But where was the original? The answer came quickly: it was on display at Hồng Ngọc Fine Art, 110B Ngọc Hà, in Ba Đình District.

Hồng Ngọc Fine Art, 110B Ngọc Hà - the current site of Nguyễn Thế Khang's great work.

Rediscovery

Stepping into Hồng Ngọc Fine Art on a warm April day was pleasant. The shop made a strong impression, with embroidery, clothing, sculptures, gold, silver, and gemstones. But our goal was near the entrance, beside ordinary souvenirs. On a long wall behind a counter hung the panels, next to a sign announcing “the largest lacquer ware [sic] artwork in Vietnam,” titled ‘36 Streets of Thang Long Hanoi in the 19th Century.’

Unfortunately, the presentation did not do justice to the work. More than 15 meters long, it almost disappeared among large photographs and goods aimed at tourists. The glossy lacquer reflected the shop interior. A wide counter prevented viewers from seeing the work as a whole or moving close enough to study the details properly. Some documents offered supplementary information, including translations of the text panels written in Chữ Nôm.

The current presentation of ‘The 36 Old Street Quarter of Hanoi in the XIXth Century.’

We had rediscovered the artwork, but had our task really been completed? We wanted to contact its owner, who, according to Nguyễn Thế Duy was an art lover who had admired Khang’s work for many years. After Khang’s passing, he convinced Khang’s widow to sell it to him, and he displayed it in his shop. A series of personal events led to him no longer owning the shop nor living in Hanoi. Our attempt to make contact with the current owner absorbed us, but we did not succeed. For now, our questions remain unanswered.

Still, we did not want to leave the story of this unexpected journey — what Vietnamese people often call duyên, or fate — unfinished. The journey became a thread, weaving together my connection with the land and people of Hanoi in particular, and Vietnam more generally.

And perhaps the journey does not have to end here. Now that the story has been told, other doors may open — not only for us, but for the wider public. Our hope is that one of them may lead to an exhibition space more worthy of Nguyễn Thế Khang’s vision: a place where the public can encounter the original work, explore it through digital technology, and learn more about old Hanoi through a carefully produced art book. In the meantime, it remains available for interested visitors able to look past the unsatisfactory presentation and witness a spectacular work of vision and dedication.

“Tình ca thành phố vịnh,” the first album by Hanoian indie group Lope Dope, might come out at the end of summer in August, but its wealth of city pop exuberance and tropical cheer is enough to power any listener through the dreary rainy season and upcoming winter.

Lope Dope is a five-person band that initially connected via a large collective of like-minded creatives in Hanoi. Like most musical groups that formed during the pandemic, they struggled with finding a time and space to practice amid ever-shifting lockdown policies, but nonetheless, they persevered, and the first single ‘Vô vị’ (Bland) was officially released in 2021.

Their second release, the single ‘Đêm thành phố’ (City Night) came out in 2022 to enthusiastic reception by listeners and even went viral on TikTok. The momentum allowed them to perform on stage at a few music festivals and youth events to spread their characteristic funk and city pop passion.

In August 2026, Lope Dope dropped their debut record, “Tình ca thành phố vịnh’ (Love Songs From the Bay City), a full-length album featuring nine tracks and one bonus track, ‘Đêm thành phố.’ Albeit originating from Japan, city pop is now an internationally recognized and loved genre all over the world, Vietnam included. A full-fledged city pop album in Vietnam is not unheard of, as Phùng Khánh Linh has done so before with “Citopia,” but if Linh confined the genre to one album, Lope Dope is pursuing city pop and funk full-time, at least for the time being.

The music video for ‘Vịnh người cá.’

“Tình ca” is conceptualized around a fictional city, the titular Bay City, and every song contains narratives, characters, and places that expand on the fiction. Across the 10 songs, Lope Dope creates a tropical world filled with crashing waves, swaying coconut trees, and the ever-present incandescent sun. It reminds me a lot of “Timely!!”, the 1983 album by Anri, in both atmosphere and subject matter, so I am instantly endeared by “Tình ca.”

The album opens with ‘Vịnh người cá’ (Mermaid Bay), the music video for which is an adorable love story between a mermaid and a downtrodden pilot. It’s the song with the most mythological storytelling of the album, setting up both the backstory of the fictional world and the sonic tone for the album. The ending returns to ‘Đêm thành phố,’ the successful hit from 2022 that was arguably the first spark that jump-started this adventure.

The animation for ‘Chuyến du hành vũ trụ,’ a tribute to Georges Méliès.

“Tình ca” has a well-thought-out overarching theme and story that are executed decently. Lope Dope is assured in their vision and stays faithful to it across the tracks — the album’s biggest strength. I could imagine vibing to these sunny tunes while on the bus traveling along the coast in Phan Thiết, Nha Trang, or Đà Nẵng, staring deep into the ocean hoping to find mermaids. The listening experience is seamless, with the tracks blending in and out harmoniously, though this seamlessness is also its shortcoming. The songs don’t differ enough from one another, in lyric content, vocal performance, or melody, so I could doze off mid-trip and wake up not sure which song I’m on.

As a whole, the album is charming, indulgent, and infectiously cheerful, like a summer fling. But, unfortunately, like a summer fling, it also comes up short in depth and emotional weight. Nonetheless, as a debut record, “Tình ca thành phố vịnh” by Lope Dope is a strong showing that demonstrates the group’s personality, vision, and great potential. They not only paid tribute to city pop, but also embodied its aesthetics and spirit well.

To sum up:

• Type: Album
• Release date: August 2026
• Lyrics: Cheerful, story-driven, and earnest
• Danceable: Twerking-on-the-beach level
• Cryable: No, if anything, it will prevent crying
• Karaoke potential: Perhaps, if the lyrics are more available

Score: 68/100

Joshua Nguyen lists himself as many things on his Instagram bio — a writer, a PhD student, a boba snob. He received his MFA from the University of Mississippi, where he is currently studying for his PhD.

He has been widely published and won the prestigious 2021 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry for his debut collection of poetry, Come Clean. Like his Instagram bio, the collection is multi-faceted. Traditional poetic forms exist alongside a poem about a post-flaming hot Cheeto trip to the bathroom, for example. Yet, it all fits together in a way that is resonant and profound.

To get a feel for Joshua’s poetry, check out one of the many videos of him reading poetry on YouTube. His start in writing began in Houston through the Meta-Four Houston Youth Slam Team which comes across in the rhythm of his poetry. A 2015 video from Button Poetry of Joshua performing his poem 'Christ-like' really embodies this. There are waves of chaotic crescendo in the performance, matched by moments of slowness and intentional silence.

The poetry in his debut collection begins on the title page: "Come Clean." There is a line break between the words which are, perhaps, an invitation to come over and clean something. Or they are a confession, the author coming clean about some secret. Maybe it is instructions for a sexual act, come first, then clean later. Reading the collection reveals the title can be all of these and more. It is just where Joshua’s eye for poetry and pun begins to shine.

The collection is divided into three sections. Each begins with bracketed quotes from songs by Japanese American singer-songwriter Mitski. The song quotes are accompanied by Polaroids of the author, wearing only underwear and engaging in cleaning rituals — kneeling as if in prayer before the bathtub, sweeping a floor with a white dustpan on the ground, kneeling while cleaning a toilet. These photos are somehow simultaneously spiritual, domestic, erotic, and silly. They fit well within the collection. Marie Kondo makes similar repeated appearances throughout the collection.

When pop culture meets lục bát

Joshua's work explores a lot of themes. There is trauma. There is humor. There is food. And perhaps most prominently, there is family. The dedication reads, "for my family," and family is a constant. Even before the table of contents, there is a poem, 'Save Me, Marie Kondo.' It depicts a family gathered around a dying relative. The images are beautiful and haunting. “My father cries a sound / I will never hear again.” There is real grief in this poem. There are other family poems as well. 'My Brother Explains Driving,' 'My Father Explains Unemployment,' 'My Mother Explains Universal Healthcare,' 'My Sister Listens to Run River North for the First Time.' Family members appear in poems even when not referenced in the titles and they are one of the constant refrains the poems return back to.

Another constant is American lục bát, a poetry form of Joshua’s invention. Lục bát is a poetry form most certainly familiar to a Vietnamese audience. It is most famously represented in The Tale of Kiều. The name of the form gives us insight into its rules. Lục is the Sino-Vietnamese word for the number six. Bát is the Sino-Vietnamese word for eight. Thus, lục bát are created with alternating six and eight-syllable lines.

In the notes section of Comes Clean, Joshua sets out the rules for his American lục bát. After clearly explaining the rules, he cheekily adds, “of course, these rules may be adhered to as tightly or as loosely as one would like.” This non-strict adherence to form is what makes reading his American lục bát especially fun. Take for example, the first stanza of 'American Lục Bát for Peeling Eggs':

The first four lines alternate between six and eight syllables like one expects in a lục bát. They follow the expected rhyme scheme as well. The sixth syllable of the first line (“eight)” rhymes with the sixth syllable of the second line (“take”). Then the eighth syllable of the second line (“spot”) rhymes with the sixth syllable of the third line (“pots). In the notes, the author notes that it is this “[the] internal rhyme that helps to drive the poem forward.”

What makes Joshua's American lục bát so wonderful to read is the spots where the poem breaks from the form in unexpected ways. In the stanza above, the last line is clearly not six or eight syllables. Yet it feels complete and right. Through breaking form, the poet has created something new, fresh, and delightful.

There are poems that feel like they hark back to Joshua’s beginnings in poetic performance. 'Marie Kondo Is My Hero: A Lesson on Clothing' feels like a poem aching for performance.

The poem continues, spreading out across the page, some words massively spaced out, guiding the reader on the pace of the poem and where to let the words breathe. Then, in the poem’s final section, a paragraph beginning:

"& & & 2010 a a again all an angeles are as as as as be be black blue board boxers brother bunk bed but but but can can can can’t carpet circuit coach collapse…."

This section works through most of the letters of the alphabet, building to utter cacophony until the words fade from black to gray on the page. Then, only two columns remain on the page, one on the left, one on the right. The left one, a list of colors. The one on the right, people. These, too, are in alphabetical order.

Many of the poems deal with sexual trauma. Many also deal with humor. This seems right. It fits more with how trauma persists throughout life, how it isn’t just limited to the event. And similarly, how a life with trauma is not only a life of trauma. There are also moments of joy and curiosity. The collection portrays a well-rounded view on life as a whole.

Some of the poems are hard to read because of their rawness. However, it is their beauty that makes them worth visiting. 'Wisconsin Has a Place in My Heart & I Just Want It to Let Go' addresses trauma directly:

The poem goes on to show the speaker pinned underneath their cousin. It collapses until a singular bracket before opening back up again, slowly building up. The poem is quiet and solemn.

'Bunk Bed,' a prose poem, depicts the speaker, thirteen years old, receiving oral sex from a much older girl. The pain and discomfort of the speaker is clear. The collection’s titular poem, 'Come Clean,' calls back to these incidents. It re-examines them through memory and addresses a new incident — an unwanted happy ending massage paid for by an uncle while in Vietnam.

The author also intersperses this conversation of sexual trauma with Asian identity and Asian American identity. 'After I Was Mistaken for the Stripper while Delivering Barbecue to an All-White Bachelorette Party' is one such instance and an example of how Joshua often adds humor to terrible experiences. It starts: "If I had a stripper name, it would be pork loins. Marinated in my mother’s seasoning, I am mostly bone, but my butt is meaty. My neck is long, but you can still love me, if you want to brisket."

The simple act of verbing “brisket” allows for the continuation of the meat metaphor and a hilarious play on words with the word “risk it.” It’s hard not to laugh reading it. The poem ends:

The concrete imagery here at the end of the poem is also wonderful. The focus on the boots brings us into the speaker’s eye, showing us their head is down. It makes the reader feel the discomfort of being unfairly and unwantingly objectified. The fact that the cowboy boots are jewel-studded is an all too perfect detail placing us clearly in the South, perhaps Texas.

'Exhaustion [But Every Time Leela Rose Kisses a Random Asian Man in the Street, a New Stanza Begins & the Amount of Words between the Boxes Increase by One]' is another example of a poem dealing with sexual assault and Asian identity. This poem directly references a disgusting incident where Leela Rose, a white Internet personality, forces herself upon Asian men in Japan. She believes she is somehow helping them by showing a white woman that finds them attractive. The incident rightfully was heavily criticized online and even spurred the writing of a HuffPost think piece.

There is an understandable and justified anger in the poem about the incident. This is amplified by being in a collection dealing with the ramifications of sexual trauma. As the title says, the words between the boxes in each stanza grow. Like many of Joshua's poems, this allows the language to grow in volume.

This is one of the most powerful poems in the collection in the way it cries out in rage and pain. The poem itself is like a reaction video. It is so intimate and raw it feels as if the reader is sitting next to the speaker, listening to their pain, witnessing a relived trauma, only able to watch.

Joshua also seems interested in the more banal parts of life. 'Speak Quotidian to Me' is a list of aphorisms — some funny, some sad. Each one is a fascinating meditation on its own, but as a list they vibrate off each other, leading the reader through a journey of highs and lows. Here are three:

'Self-Portrait as the Hand Towel Which Hangs Above the Toilet' also examines the seemingly normal or quotidian. It does something magical that is true art. It takes the simplest of objects and turns it on its head in a way that forever changes the reader’s relationship when seeing that object.

As the title states, the poem is about a bathroom hand towel. However, it is not an ordinary bathroom hand towel. It has dreams and aspirations. The towels talks to us, the reader. It tells us “No, it was not my choice / to do this type of towel work.” And later, “Yes, I gaze at the most vulnerable: / the backs of long strained necks, the backs of skulls that haven’t been held, / the back of ears that never listen to my advice.” The towel admits to feeling “lonely.” And in a beautiful poetic turn, it reveals its aspiration to be a kitchen towel. The turn is unexpected. It is the type of poem that makes us feel sorry for our own bathroom hand towels. It makes us wonder, what do our hand towels think?

Joshua Nguyen performing 'My Father and I Trade Bedwetting Stories.'

The collection is interesting in that many of the poems use traditional or neo-traditional forms. There’s a haibun, a ghazal, and a duplex, a form created by Jericho Brown. There are also poems that are stunningly experimental. Among these is 'Google Calendar for My Imposter Syndrome.'

The poem shows a week of the speaker’s life, painstakingly planned out, in the form of a screenshot of a Google Calendar. It gives deep insight into the life of the speaker. There are sections on when to work out and when to call their mother. Beneath the titles for many of the activities are descriptions.

On Monday, the speaker has to attend “Intro to Grad Studies” from 6 to 8:15pm. It’s described as “How Not To Sound Stupid Talking About Dead White Men.” On Tuesday the speaker has set aside two hours at night for “Comments For Other Poets Who Are Better Than Me.” On Thursday, there are four hours set aside for “Thesis Hours.” Layered directly on top of this four-hour slot are other activities the speaker will do—“Sweep” “Vacuum” “Mop” “Organize Your Organizers.” It’s clear the speaker will not be working on their thesis.

There is a neurosis to the planning, an attempt to use scheduling as a cure for impostor syndrome. There is also a sense of deep self-consciousness. It’s also very relatable.

These more experimental poems are a welcome addition to a collection so interested in form. They are not incongruent, but instead, lend to a greater poetic world that Joshua is creating with his mix of contemporary takes on traditional forms. The collection is a huge success with a profound resonance. While it tackles many difficult subjects, it does so with such nuance and beauty that the poems ache to be read, not just once, but many times over.

This article was originally published in 2021.

For those in the US, the book is available through the publisher, The University of Wisconsin Press, as well as independent bookstores including Square Books, the bookstore in Oxford, Mississippi, where the author lives.

Embedded in the street call of rươi vendors is the conjuring of autumn, when delectable cuisines from across the land of Vietnam come together on a dinner table.

Rươi vendors’ calls, similar to the prized worm itself, only appear for a brief time during the fall, particularly from the 9^th to the 11^th month on the lunar calendar when, as the owner of Hưng Thịnh, a famous chả rươi store in Hanoi, described: “The sky is above and the rươi are wiggling below.” Rươi is the Vietnamese name for palolo worm, an unsightly, two-inch-long sea creature that's the key ingredient of chả rươi, an omelete dish with tangerine peel, herbs, minced pork, and of course, chunks of rươi.

The seasonal appearance of rươi has been well-documented in Vietnamese literature. Vũ Bằng, a renowned journalist and writer, wrote fondly about the call of rươi vendors in a chapter specifically dedicated to rươi in his book, Miếng Ngon Hà Nội.

Vũ Bằng's depiction of the call of rươi vendors evokes the cultural imagination of Hanoi as an abundant culinary feast. The notion that plump and fresh rươi is mere footsteps away from the door of your home paints an all-too-comfortable picture about how a subset of Hanoians used to live. But all of that seems to be a memory of a distant past: the vivid and high-pitched sound of rươi calls in past Hanoi seems to have disappeared. 

Live rươi sold in big duct-taped boxes. Photo via AFamily.

On a Saturday afternoon, I spent a couple of hours walking through Thanh Hà Market, Ô Quan Chưởng and Đồng Xuân Market to retrace the sound of rươi calls in the hope that I might find some insights into where this call has gone. I secretly wish that the rươi that I encountered looked a bit more like sandworms from Frank Herbert's Dune. However, instead of gigantic, tube-like and having impenetrable armour, the rươi that I saw at wet markets and food stalls were tiny, flat creatures at the mercy of Hanoian ladies’ swift hands. Out of the box and into the frying pan. They are certainly not the most attractive creatures on Earth.

In a distinctly Vietnamese cardboard box with blue duct tapes, the rươi specimens collectively wiggled their six-centimeter slimy bodies on top of one another. It must be some sort of bizarre joke from mother’s nature that their colors are subtly reminiscent of bàng leaves, with fiery red and a dark shade of green; and that their bodies are covered in miniature hairs that bring to mind those of rambutans.

Despite rươi being one of the less visually engaging critters, chả rươi and rươi vendors alike could not help but urge me to take photos of the rươi. The cashier at Hưng Thịnh told me to point the camera toward the rươi box, not forgetting to highlight the worms' freshness, plumpness, and “good-for-publication-ness.” Some vendors at Hưng Thịnh markets also proudly advertised that many young kids like taking photos of the rươi. Other rươi vendors were even under the impression that I approached them to make content for TikTok. 

The people I met on my walk seemed divided as to whether or not the vendors from Vũ Bằng's writings still roam the streets of Hà Nội . The first seller I spoke to, a lady at Thanh Hà market, didn't recall hearing the sound of rươi vendors on local streets for the longest time: “Nowadays, people only sell rươi in stores. It’s rare to find street vendors these days.” She tucked her hands behind her back shyly when I asked if she could replicate the sound of rươi vendors, but then she smiled and happily hummed: “Ai mua rươi ra-à mùa.”

Is there a distinction between a rươi vendor and a poet? In a single call, the vendor manages to use consonance and alliteration — the “m” in mua, mùa, and the “r" in “rươi,” “ra" — to create a rhythmic effect in her call. By playing with the accents and modifying stresses with “ra" and “mua,” she infused music into her call. Simple in its effect, yet complex in its undeniably rich cadence, the call of rươi stands out among the eclectic corpus of Hanoi sounds. 

While I was more than happy to hear the sound for the first time on Hanoi streets, I also wondered why it was that the call for rươi has gradually disappeared. Her theory was that the demand for live rươi is no longer as high as before. In the olden days, rươi vendors would carry their gánh across neighborhoods after their main session at the market to showcase the leftover rươi to local families, enticing homemakers — especially the women of the households — to purchase them in time for dinner preparation. It’s hard to imagine that happening nowadays with the changing social landscapes of Hanoi.

That afternoon I arrived in Hưng Thịnh, a famous chả rươi spot in Hanoi. Here, for VND75,000, you can get the bigger portion with rươi visible on the surface while the VND45,000 option tastes more like your standard cutlet. As she scooped out delicious, sizzling pieces of chả rươi from the hot oil onto a plate, I struck up a conversation about street calls. Unlike the lady at chợ Thanh Hà, she offered a different perspective on rươi vendors: “It’s not so much that rươi vendors and their calls have disappeared,” she said. “It is because they only appear on specific roads near the Old Quarters, where there would likely be more customers willing to buy rươi and process the rươi themselves.” 

While walking across Đồng Xuân Market, I did pass by a rươi street vendor, đòn gánh on her thin back and bamboo baskets full of rươi before and in front of her, but she was passing by in silence. All around me, the noises of construction drills and motorbikes filled the atmosphere.

My brief search for the sound of rươi vendors’ calls ended up a meditation on what tiếng rao really means for Hanoi, for Saigon, the rising cities of Vietnam that are constantly negotiating between rubbles of its past and the high-rise buildings of the present. As the soundscape of urbanity — full of unattractive, dull, deafening noises — pervades our daily lives, the nostalgia of tiếng rao reminds us of a distant era when our hometown was more intimate and poetic.

This article was originally published in 2023.

From August to October, art organizer Rare Sea brings a diverse group exhibition to Saigon, featuring artworks by six young artists: Lê Đ. Chung, Lê Nguyễn Minh Như, Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai, Huyền Dương, Thanh Tùng (Ches) and Sophia Mai Brown.

The event, titled “fiction, fraction” (tích, tách, mảnh mơ), is curated by Lại Minh Ngọc and An Trần. It brings together several pieces in a number of visual mediums, including oil painting, lacquer, hand-printed practice, silk and paper.

Sophia Mai Brown is an artist based in New York City, working in drawing and printmaking. Brown maps interactions between the natural and the built world, connecting real landscapes with imaginary inhabitants.

‘Saigon River’ by Sophia Mai Brown. Photo by Phạm Hồ Chí Quốc.

Huyền Dương is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is drawn from personal experiences and everyday events. Trained in oil painting, she works across traditional materials — including textiles, papermaking, and printmaking — as well as digital tools, circuit bending, and toy making.

‘A Handsome Duck and Falling Angels’ by Huyền Dương. Photo by Phạm Hồ Chí Quốc.

Thanh Tùng is a multimedia artist based in Hồ Chí Minh City, Vietnam. His practice is rooted in observations of everyday street life in Vietnam, where urbanization continually reshapes landscapes, ecosystems, and indigenous belief systems.

‘Amphidromus dohrni’ by Thanh Tùng (Ches). Photo by Phạm Hồ Chí Quốc.

Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai employs various mediums such as drawing, installation, documentary film, video, and journalism to highlight issues spanning from personal narratives to broader themes of history and migration.

‘The taste of memory’ by Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai. Photo by Phạm Hồ Chí Quốc.

Lê Nguyễn Minh Như is among the few young artists in Vietnam who approaches Vietnamese silk painting through mineral pigments, rethinking a medium that has been closely tied to the aesthetics of transparent watercolors over the past century.

‘Unpredictability’ by Lê Nguyễn Minh Như. Photo by Phạm Hồ Chí Quốc.

Lê Đ. Chung lives and works in Đắk Nông. With a multidisciplinary practice that includes painting, sculpture, installation, video, and performance, Đ. Chung examines everyday events as well as working with historical and counter-historical narratives.

‘following the stone wall and we found an electric generator…’ by Lê Đ. Chung. Photo by Phạm Hồ Chí Quốc.

Images courtesy of Rare Sea.

Visit Rare Sea at 3 Đặng Thị Nhu, Bến Thành Ward from August 8 to October 4 to experience “fiction, fraction.” The exhibition is open 10am–6pm, Tuesday–Sunday with free admission.

“This passion for lions is in our blood. Many, many kids in the past dropped out of school or quit work just to go,” said Bành Chí Hùng, owner of Saigon’s Thuận Anh Hãng lion dance costume studio.

Unlike in the central region, where múa lân (lion dances) are most associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival, in Saigon they tend to be biggest during Tết. Still, the weeks leading up to the fall holiday keep him quite busy. Nearly all his waking hours are occupied by completing orders. Amidst this packed schedule, he invited Saigoneer to his Bình Hưng Hòa ward home studio to witness the process and some of the traditions lost.

Hùng (right) works alongside his team on the ground floor of his home, where nearly every wall and corner is occupied by lions.

Bamboo, rattan, and wire are meticulously assembled for the head’s frame before rice paper is glued on and left to harden before being hand-painted. The entire process takes up to five days, with another two required for the costume’s body. In total, they sell for VND5–7 million to buyers throughout the city and country, as well as overseas to France, the US, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, and elsewhere. 

Careful planning and frame construction are essential to ensure the final lion meets client expectations.

Once the surface is completely dry, the color is added by hand.

Having spent practically his entire life surrounded by múa lân, Hùng has been able to observe trends and preferences in design shifts along with improvements in material quality. Newer lion head models have much lighter frames that are easier to lift. New glues are easier to paint on and thus allow for more intricate details and a wider range of vibrant colors. An influx of foreign influences has added Malay, Chinese, and Hong Kong patterns as well as facial features. But for Hùng, not everything new is better. “I prefer the traditional one more. The traditional one, looking at it, gives you a vintage lion feel.”

New designs are more colorful and complex than those Hùng grew up with.

While he has his preferences, Hùng must acquiesce to customer requests which can include new elements like stainless steel teeth and horns, and LED lights. One consistent feature remains, however, in the importance of the eye-dot. On an auspicious day, Hùng and his team make offerings and perform the dotting the pupil in the center of the eye. Anyone can take a lion home, but before it is truly ready for a dancing performance, especially in the south, it must receive the ceremony to ensure it has “spiritual energy, the soul.”

A head awaiting its important eye dot.

Completed heads ready to be delivered to customers.

“If my stuff is beautiful, people will copy it. If they see my stuff isn't beautiful, who would bother copying it?” quipped Hùng when surrounded by the colorful lion heads and costumes he has been making for nearly three decades. “The more people learn, the more people copy, the more valuable I am. Thanks to that, I must be proud of what makes you jealous of me, right?” he said with the confidence one deserves after international prizes and more annual orders than he can process.

While overshadowed by the lions, Ông Địa plays a crucial role in all performances and Hùng makes these masks as well.

Hùng makes somewhat traditional and more experimental versions.

While Hùng is one of the city’s most revered lion-head craftsmen, it wasn’t creating the costumes that first drew him in: “Honestly, when I was small, whenever I heard the drum beat, I would run out to watch. It's always been like that at home, hearing the drum beat, running out into the street to see where the drum was, where they were dancing.” His first and true passion is múa lân. After performing for many years, he began making costumes to use himself as mentored by previous generations. As he’s gotten too old to perform now, he focuses solely on crafting them as his business. 

Performers nowadays rise to platforms far taller than in the past.

In the olden days, múa lân was a more creative, unique undertaking. “In the past, everyone had their own style. Now it's an international style,” with all teams in competitions and performances performing “the exact same routine.”

While they take the art seriously, the performers are not preparing for a fight.

As well as a standardization of rhythms and dance steps and an increase in the height of dance platforms, múa lân has lost a rambunctious violence that was once associated with it. Hùng explained that teams in a competition wouldn’t always be content to settle the matter through dance alone. “Two lion teams would meet, the drummers would hype things up, and they would fight — literally brawling. But if they played a respectful bowing drum cadence, both sides would bow to each other politely, and nothing would happen,” he said with a clear fondness for the rowdy moments. With a wistful tone he added, “All those brawls happened back then, but now they're gone. Today, official permits are even issued for sanctioned competitions.”

While it's just practice, the heights remain real and dangerous.

While Hùng’s costumes are frequently used in international competitions, they are also used for the year-round ceremonies that accompany grand openings, weddings, and other celebrations. The groups that perform these must be ready at any time if hired and thus practice year-round to remain ready. 

Without crowds, the practice sessions lack pomp, circumstance and glamor.

After numerous rainouts, we were finally fortunate enough to watch the team practice. Watch some shots of the team in action below:

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 to 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 has 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 handwritten — 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 loyalty 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 Hodson 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