Vietnam Chinatown young generation breathes new life into Hoa heritage
發佈日期: 2025-12-17 22:40
TVB News
Ho Chi Minh City is home to Vietnam's largest Chinese community.
This fifth episode of our series "Visions of Vietnam" spotlights how young people in its Chinatown work to rekindle interest in Chinese-Vietnamese culture.
Walking through Cholon in Ho Chi Minh City -- often described as "Little Hong Kong" -- shop signs and street vendors are filled with familiar Chinese characters.
Nearly half of Vietnam's estimated 900,000 ethnic Chinese, known locally as the Hoa, reside in Ho Chi Minh City.
Growing up in this Chinatown, Kwong My Thien, a third-generation Hoa, has helped her country rediscover this neighbourhood, which has been a living archive of migration, memory and identity.
Eight years ago, she launched a social media page "Cholon Downtown" -- becoming one of the earliest content creators in Vietnam to document the rituals, language and customs there -- and preserve vanishing trades.
She said," We are trying to show everybody in Vietnam, especially the young people. Like us, to know, to understand that about the Chinese culture. It's very important and very interesting so they can know about the culture, so they can find interest."
Her mother believes such documentation fills an important historical gap, to be passed on to next-generation Hoa.
She says no one used to record these things in Vietnam and more are starting to feel proud of our Chinese culture too.
My Thien's work has drawn attention to vulnerable elders in the community, including the "Six Sisters of Cholon."
All in their 60s and 70s, they have relied on one another for decades, surviving by collecting cardboard.
They say life has been very hard but now, more people care about them and bring them rice, meaning they don't have to worry about
going hungry and it really makes them happy.
More than half of the Chinese community here are Cantonese, and the rest hail from Hainan or Teochew.
And because most of their daily life rely on Cantonese, most of them will have to speak the language as well.
