~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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Back for Tet, Vietnamese expatriates see changed nation

HO CHI MINH CITY - With the government trying to lure them back, record numbers of overseas Vietnamese are returning to Vietnam to celebrate the Lunar New Year, which begins tomorrow. Most are stunned by how quickly their homeland is changing.

They arrive with vivid, sometimes idealized childhood memories of quiet downtown streets where people wore pajama-style clothes, rode bicycles and shopped at simple sidewalk groceries with mangoes and papayas stacked outside. Some of that old country still exists, but it is being eclipsed by a new Vietnam in which trendy young people sport the latest fashions, an army of motorbikes shares the streets with a small but- growing fleet of Mercedes Benzes, and upscale shops peddle $1,000 Swiss watches.

Even Vietnamese visitors who have made previous trips to Vietnam are surprised by how much the place has changed in just the past two or three years. The economic boom has brought back some of the decadent, bourgeois trappings of the old Saigon that "Uncle Ho" and his cadres fought against. But for all the economic progress, Vietnam remains one of the poorest countries in the world, with many of its 80 million citizens mired in rural poverty. Even for people at the bottom, however, things have been getting better. Per capita income has risen to $438 a year, up 45 percent from five years ago.

Overseas Vietnamese are helping fuel the country's economic changes. They are opening hundreds of businesses and wiring more and more money to their Vietnamese relatives, much of which arrives during Tet, as the New Year's holiday is known.

The three-day celebration will be marked by large family gatherings, lots of traditional food and rituals intended to bring good fortune in the year to come. (This will be The Year of the Goat, and it's a propitious time to have children.) Vietnam's government seems increasingly eager to welcome home the overseas Vietnamese. In the past year, authorities have simplified visa and customs procedures, passed a law enabling overseas Vietnamese to buy houses for the first time, and begun phasing out the two-tiered airline prices that required overseas Vietnamese and other foreigners to pay a 40 percent premium for a seat.

"We're trying to make it easier for overseas Vietnamese to come back," said Nguyen Viet Thuan, deputy chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Committee on Overseas Vietnamese. "The government considers overseas Vietnamese an inseparable part of Vietnam." It wasn't always so. For many years after the war, the government regarded Viet Kieu, as overseas Vietnamese are known here, with deep suspicion. Wartime hatreds were slow to recede, and many officials here feared that overseas Vietnamese, many of them ferociously anti-communist, would return to their homeland and plot to overthrow the government.

The old suspicions haven't completely faded, but the raft of new Viet Kieu-friendly legislation passed by the government suggests Vietnam is growing more serious about reconciliation. And with good reason: Viet Kieu have opened or helped open more than 700 businesses in Ho Chi Minh City, creating thousands of jobs in the process. They are playing a key role in the nation's fledgling technology industry. And last year, they wired $2.4 billion to friends and relatives in Vietnam, up 20 percent from the previous year.

"Every year, the amount of money sent to Vietnam by Viet Kieu is increasing," Thuan said, stressing that the $2.4 billion figure includes only money sent through official channels such as banks and agencies. According to some estimates, the total could be as high as $4 billion. Roughly 340,000 of the world's 2.7 million Viet Kieu visited the country in 2002, up 10 percent from the previous year. As many as 40 percent of those visitors arrive around Tet, which for Vietnamese is like Christmas, New Year's and Thanksgiving rolled into one.

"There are so many motorbikes, and there are so many stores," said Sang Chau Phan, a 37-year-old San Jose, Calif., resident who goes by his American name, Sean. "They sell everything." The many Viet Kieu who swamp Ho Chi Minh City at this time of year hang out at places such as Windows, a popular downtown cafe. Among the crowd was Kim Ta, 34, a San Diego manicurist making her eighth visit to Vietnam since 1992. She feels much more welcome in Vietnam now than she did on her first visit, when she had to tell authorities whenever she traveled anywhere.

"It's better now," Ta said. "It's a lot better." For Ta, who has become quite Americanized during her 24 years in the United States, the Tet holiday has lost some of its allure. "It's not a biggie," she said. But many of the Viet Kieu arriving to celebrate the New Year have grown tired of spending the holiday in the United States, where they had to make do with plastic Tet trees and a few even ate burgers instead of the traditional food that everyone eats here.

"Tet is a special time for us," said Dan Nguyen, 35, a San Jose, Calif., airline pilot who will celebrate the holiday with about 35 relatives in Ho Chi Minh City. "And it's a much bigger celebration here."

By Ben Stocking - The Seattle Times - January 31, 2003.