Andrew Lam New America Media
SAN FRANCISCO — Nguyen Qui Duc, a Vietnamese refugee who became an American radio host and the author of the memoir Where the Ashes Are, has found yet another incarnation in his mid-50s: Bar owner and art curator in Hanoi, Vietnam. Why would he come back to the country from which he once fled? “Home is where there’s a sense of connection, of family, of community,” he said after struggling to find a single answer. “And I found it here.”
Duc is one of nearly 500,000 Viet Kieu — Vietnamese living overseas — who return to Vietnam yearly, many only to visit relatives, but others increasingly to work, invest and retire. The majority of the people who return are from the United States, where the largest Vietnamese population overseas resides. Indeed, 35 years after the Vietnam War ended, the Vietnamese diaspora is now falling slowly, but surely, back into Vietnam’s orbit.
Not long ago, a Vietnamese overseas had little more than nostalgic memories to keep cultural ties alive. During the Cold War, letters sent from the United States could take half a year to reach their recipients in Vietnam. Today, however, 15 years after the United States normalized diplomatic ties with Vietnam, and three years after Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization, Hanoi is but an 18-hour flight from Los Angeles, and Vietnamese at home and overseas chat online, text message one another, talk on Skype or call each other on the cell phone. Tourism from Vietnam to the United States, too, is increasingly the norm. Hanoi is even considering granting dual citizenship to the Viet Kieu to spur further repatriation.
Vietnamese overseas are playing an important role in Vietnam’s economic life. According to Vietnam’s Chamber of Commerce, in 2008, despite the slowdown in the world economy, Vietnam received overseas aid of more than $7.4 billion. The Vietnamese government said that the diaspora is reducing poverty and spurring economic development. Official development assistance pledged to Vietnam in 2008 by international donors was $5 billion; the overseas population contributed $2.4 billion more.
“But the overseas influence on Vietnam is for more than just remittances,” said Duy Tran, a Viet Kieu businessman visiting Vietnam from Los Angeles. Nguyen who was once a “boat person,” a common term for Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s, said he left Vietnam because his cousin sent home photos of her new life in America showing sports cars and high-rise buildings and wealth Vietnamese Americans. “I followed her footsteps. I knew if she could become successful, so could I.”
Vuot bien, the Vietnamese phrase meaning to escape or to cross the border, became a household word in the 1980s, Nguyen said. “Everyone wanted to vuot bien and come to America.” Now? “Now,” he said, laughing, “now I’m back to invest in real estate.”
The irony is that in the 21st century many are now looking at Vietnam as the next big investment opportunity. Vietnam’s economy is second only to China in term of growth in Asia. Victor Luu, who fled Vietnam a day before Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) fell to communist tanks on April 30, 1975, has become a successful software engineer who participated in several start-up companies in California’s Silicon Valley. In 2006, he returned to his hometown and founded Siglaz, a software company with more than 50 employees. In his new office in a tall building in an area near the airport called E-Town, Luu could see the runway from which his plane full of panicked refugees took off 35 years ago. Of his workers, he said,” They are a very quick learner, and they have a lot of these Ph.D.s, went to Russia studying, and came back with very high degree in math, artificial intelligence. And these are the people that end up in our company. “ Then Luu added, I fully believe in Vietnam. The future is here. And I want to help it happen.”
Diep Vuong, a cum laude graduate of Harvard University with a degree in economics, left Vietnam as a boat person in 1979, but came back five years ago to help fight against human trafficking in her home province, An Giang in the Mekong Delta. “I always remember my mother saying to us that we were born Vietnamese for a reason, and it is up to us to figure out what that reason is,” said Diep.
As the rich-poor gap in Vietnam has widened considerably with the growth of Vietnam’s economy, human trafficking has become a problem. Vuong’s programs are part of the Pacific Links Foundation effort to empower young women, provide education, skill training, scholarship and shelter to those at risk. “Increasingly, Vietnamese Americans are playing central roles in the philanthropy sector,” she said. “As for me, I can’t just sit and do nothing. Any of those girls being sold to Cambodia or China could be a cousin, or a child of an old friend.”
Yet there’s another form of Viet Kieu contribution that is not so tangible, but arguably just as important. Nguyen Qui Duc’s bar, Tadioto, a three-story narrow, tube house on Trieu Viet Vuong Street in Hanoi, has become a gathering place for artists and writers and intellectuals — expatriates and locals alike. Avant garde arts pieces hang on the wall or stand alone in the middle of rooms, including a green mannequin lying in an open glass coffin reminiscent of Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. “I think I am pushing some envelopes. I am talking about issues that are generally not talked about, like human rights, like democracy.”
Visitors to Tadioto include people from diplomatic community, including some ambassadors and human rights workers.
“Public space is not yet what it should be in Vietnam,” Duc added. “I’m aiming to change that — to bring real dialogue between different people.”
Each week at Duc’s bar, Vietnamese-American poets and writers share their experiences with their Vietnamese counterparts. And with more Viet Kieu coming home to work and invest, that dialogue will continue only to grow and, who knows, might very well spur the new direction of the country.
NAM editor, Andrew Lam, author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diasporareturned to Vietnam with the Newshour, to follow the lives of several Vietnamese Americans.
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