Outskirts of hue

A new day starts at 2:30 a.m. for Hiep and her four housemates who rent a small apartment tucked away down a Saigon alley. They need to make tofu pudding in time for 6 a.m., when they loads pots full of the hot dessert onto their bicycles and off they go to the inner city to find customers. At the same time, around 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) north, Quyen loads duck embryos and chicken eggs onto the back of a motorbike and travels from the outskirts of Hanoi to the Old Quarter in the downtown district of Hoan Kiem. Everyday, tens of thousands of vendors leave their rented apartments in big cities for busy streets to pay off debts and keep their families in the countryside afloat. They are the faces behind telling statistics that have been troubling policymakers for years: migrants and unofficial workers. Official government data from 2015 showed that migrants aged between 15 and 59 made up 17.3 percent of the country’s population of 90 million. The majority of them work in the … [Read more...] about To street vendors in Vietnam’s biggest cities, sidewalk is a lifeline

Every year, as the Lunar New Year nears, blossoming trees announce the arrival of spring in Vietnam. Across the country, family members reunite, exchange new year greetings, decorate their houses and pay gratitude to the gods and deceased relatives. Though Tet (Lunar New Year) is undeniably the most important festival in Vietnam, some of its traditions and customs have become burdensome, notably the practice of burning votive paper offerings. The practice is followed by the majority of Vietnamese people, where over 70 percent of the population are either atheists or follow folk religions, according to statistics provided by the U.N. in 2014. Vietnam’s folk religion bears many similarities to that in southern China, where followers worship the thần, or gods and spirits, who range from bygone national heroes and natural deities, to simply ancestors. The votive paper offerings, which are burnt throughout the year during special religious occasions, but mostly during … [Read more...] about Should Vietnam abandon custom of burning paper offerings?

By day Nguyen Thi Hoa sold conical hats on the streets of Hue in southern Vietnam, at night she funneled secrets to North Vietnam army handlers who were poised to launch an audacious assault on the city that would reshape the Vietnam War. Hoa was part of the Perfume River squad, a top-secret female combat unit formed in 1967 and bound by the North Vietnam's propaganda slogan: "When the enemy comes to your home, even the women should fight". Deployed deep in enemy territory, the covert 11-strong unit played an instrumental role in the 1968 Tet Offensive despite most of them being in their teens. The offensive, whose 50th anniversary will be marked on January 31 with an official ceremony in Ho Chi Minh City, swung U.S. public opinion decisively away from the anti-communist fight, ultimately leading to the American pullout. Women were integral to the North's battle against American "foreign invaders", working mainly in non-combat roles for most of the war as spies and guides, … [Read more...] about Behind enemy lines: Vietnam’s female spies who helped change the war