What Does Southbound Mean to You?

Chloe and Eddy Hsu

She is in her early thirties, and rather than world-weary indecision or negativity, her personality comes across as natural and at ease. She can’t lay claim to any dazzling academic background or social connections, yet she is a manager at a large listed fiber company in Vietnam. Besides managing a team of dozens of people, she is the one and only Taiwanese staff member among nearly 1,000 employees. Her name is Chloe Hsu. How has this special Taiwanese woman carved out this place for herself?

A niche career

In a private home somewhere in Taoyuan, an otherwise simply decorated space is adorned with countless historical documents from Vietnam. We have come to visit Chloe Hsu during one of her brief vacations back home in Taiwan, and find her and her father Eddy seated together at a large table. It is in fact Eddy Hsu who should come first in the story of how his daughter ended up working in Vietnam, and amidst the fragrance of tea he tells us about his unusual approach to educating his children.

A representative example of the original Go South Policy of the Taiwanese government, Eddy Hsu went to Vietnam in 1992 to start a business there, and stayed for ten years, then left to spend more time with his children. With his unique outlook on life, he figured: “I don’t need to do what others are already doing.” His attitude towards education and his children’s future was the same, and he encouraged them to follow their own paths and find their own niches. When Chloe Hsu began studying at Yuan Ze University, her father recommended that as her second foreign language she study Vietnamese, which was not a popular subject among students. Moreover, ­every summer vacation he arranged for his daughter to go for a long stay at the home of a Vietnamese friend.

This approach to education naturally influenced his daughter. After graduation Chloe, who had willingly developed a strong attachment to Vietnam, focused her attention primarily on the job market in Southeast Asia.

As sales manager, Hsu is responsible for the entire com­pany’s sales operations. Before she landed the job, her boss made a special point of meeting with her parents during a business visit to Taiwan. She and her father explain that Vietnamese culture is strongly influenced by Confucian thought, and the Vietnamese place great emphasis on family and relationship-defined obligations as well as etiquette and interpersonal relations. We can see something of this attitude in the fact of the boss’s personal visit to Hsu’s family.

Having worked with Vietnamese for so long, Hsu has developed her own thinking about managing them. “Vietnamese have a strong sense of dignity, and even as you talk about substance, you also have to take into account their pride.” If your management skills are ­below par, when you openly criticize your subordinates you will be unconvincing, and they will become harder to manage. “But conversely, Vietnamese respect and admire people who are more capable than themselves. If you are capable, then even if you criticize them face to face, although they will lose face, they will accept your ideas and ultimately do what you ask.”

This remark echoes the observations of many Taiwanese businesspeople who have worked in Vietnam. They generally say that Vietnamese have strong personalities and a strong sense of dignity along with a powerful element of playing the hero.
 

From businessman to collector

While Chloe Hsu’s understanding of the Vietnamese national character has helped her to be an effective manager there, her father’s deep knowledge of the historical origins of Vietnamese culture is rare among Taiwanese outside of academia. When we reach a break in the conversation, Eddy Hsu leads us out of the living room and up the stairs. Walking along a corridor that looks like a museum gallery hung with calligraphy and paintings, we finally reach a small room on the top floor with a sign reading “Hsu’s Archive” hung on the wall.

Eddy Hsu has a second identity as a collector of historic and cultural artifacts from Vietnam. After nearly 30 years of collecting, he has more than 3,000 items including imperial proclamations, memorials to the throne, documents, old books, officials’ hats, and official seals. Such a rich collection far surpasses that of many international academic institutions. These treasures have attracted visits from many scholars and have incalculable cultural value for Vietnam.

As for how Hsu transformed from focusing on making money as a businessman to becoming a collector whose mission in life is to gather together Vietnamese cultural and historic artifacts, the story begins with his relocation to Vietnam to start a business. After Vietnam took its first steps towards reform and opening in 1985 and began to welcome foreign investment, Hsu, who had failed in business in Taiwan, went to Vietnam at the invitation of a friend, bringing with him US$2,000, in search of an opportunity to turn his fortunes around.

He began selling Japanese cosmetics through dedicated counters in Vietnamese supermarkets. Riding the tide of economic development, his business prospered. However, spending most of his time traveling around inspecting his operations, Hsu felt far removed from his native place, and he got the idea that he wanted to read something written in Chinese characters. “In 1995, at a secondhand bookshop on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Road in Saigon [Ho Chi Minh City], I bought a copy of Michuan Wanfa Guizong [an old Daoist text] for about 20,000 Vietnamese dong [about NT$50].” He remembers the time, place, and purchase very clearly.

In days gone by officials in Vietnam wrote using Chinese characters, switching over to a romanized writing system only during the French colonial era. As a Taiwanese, Hsu was naturally able to read Chinese, but few people in Vietnam today have this skill, making such historical documents inaccessible to them. Back then, when Hsu was looking at old books on second­hand book stalls, he didn’t have much understanding of Vietnamese history. But he thought to himself that even if he did not read these old texts himself, they would fetch a high price back in Taiwan.

Because Hsu was liberal with his money, he quickly caused a stir among booksellers, who hurried to get intro­duced to him by their peers. Although at that time the market for Vietnamese artifacts in Taiwan was far less active than that for Chinese objects, and moreover Hsu naturally had concerns about the authenticity and value of the artifacts, the Chinese characters and the under­lying culture they revealed still made his heart flutter.

Hsu’s landlord at the time, Nguyen Phu Huy Quang, noticed his growing interest in culture and history and lent him two books: One was The Tale of Kieu, a classic work of Vietnamese literature and a national treasure, and the other was An Outline History of Vietnam. Flipping through the history book, Nguyen told Hsu of his family background: It turned out that this guy who played French billiards with Hsu, who sat with him in his courtyard eating beef tripe and fish heads and drinking beer and cola, was actually a descendant of the Nguyen Dynasty, the last imperial family of Vietnam before the French conquest. Moreover, his great-grandfather was Prince Cuong De, an activist in the anti-French independence movement who spent a short time in Taiwan. Learning about these serendipitous connections, Hsu was dumbfounded and felt as if called by destiny to immerse himself in Vietnamese history.

The soul of Vietnam in artifacts

The more artifacts Hsu collected, the more his curiosity grew. Each time he returned to Taiwan he would hunker down in the rare books rooms of libraries to search for information and to read documents. Following the trail of information he found, he would head out and do field research, then come back to reassess his own collection, a process which raised many questions in his mind. “It was like filling in one pit and then digging another.” However, today Hsu has can confidently recite the names of Vietnam’s historical dynasties and the reign titles of its emperors, and has detailed knowledge of the years, ink, inscriptions, wording, paper, and watermark patterns of imperial edicts.

Hsu has many interesting stories to tell of how he acquired various items as he traversed the long, narrow land of Vietnam visiting secondhand book stalls, flea markets, and rural homes. He once rescued a woodblock engraving made for printing paper money from a ­farmer’s wife in a village near Danang, who was using it as a kitchen cutting board. This artifact, which Hsu surmises is at least 400 years old, includes an engraving of Lac Long Quan, seen as the progenitor of the Vietnamese people, with phoenix heads and dragon bodies. He also acquired a bronze tablet dating back to 1797, inscribed with an urgent communication on troop deployments issued by military leaders of the Tay Son Dynasty during a conflict with the emerging Nguyen Dynasty, which he bought from an ordinary citizen in the Tay Son District of Bình Dinh Province in central Vietnam who had dug it up in a field.

Each and every artifact Hsu collects is part of the record of Vietnam’s tortuous history and carries indelible sorrows from the past. Regime changes in turbulent times (such as the French conquest and the Vietnam War), the change in writing systems, and many years of emphasis on economic growth with scant regard for the preservation of cultural assets, have meant that if Hsu had not seized the opportunity to collect such artifacts, these important heritage assets that are part of the collective memory of the Vietnamese people would have disappeared even faster.

In the end, Eddy Hsu has never been able to bear to sell a single item from his collection. It is as if he has taken on a responsibility imposed on him by destiny. He says, “In these things, there is the soul of Vietnam.”
 

Her Northern Journey

Tran Thi Dao

As Taiwanese have headed to Southeast Asia in search of entrepreneurial opportunities, some Vietnamese have journeyed the other way, from Vietnam to Taiwan. One of these people is Tran Thi Dao, from Dak Lak Province. Her 12 years in Taiwan changed her life, and she has never ceased to miss Taiwan. When we go to District 6 of Ho Chi Minh City to meet with Tran, bringing the regards of old friends, her face lights up with a smile.

From caregiver to painter

In basic Mandarin Chinese, Tran tells us her life story: Her parents died when she was young, and with eight siblings to feed, she quit school early on and started working to support them. Before coming to Taiwan, for a time she ran a successful coffee wholesale business in her home province of Dak Lak, which is a major coffee growing region. However, cashflow problems forced her into bankruptcy, and after selling three houses she was still deep in debt. With nowhere else to turn, she happened to see on television that there were job opportunities in Taiwan.

In order to repay her debts, Tran gritted her teeth and left her three children in the care of her older sister, while her husband also left their home area to work, leaving her family scattered. She came to Taiwan in 2002, and having previously been a nurse, she became a caregiver. “It was very hard work, but I gave it my all and endured,” she says. Caregiving is a 24-hour-a-day job, and she always had to be there at the side of her elderly client. There was little free time to have fun or make friends, and her limited Mandarin and the fact that most older people around her spoke in Taiwanese made communication difficult. She missed home badly, but to get her life in ­order, she persevered.

It was at that time that a friend gave her a Vietnamese-­language copy of 4-Way Voice, a monthly news digest for migrant workers in Taiwan, which not only helped her deal with her homesickness but also made her aware that they accepted submissions of writings or images from readers. Tran, who had enjoyed drawing and painting since she was a small child, sent a work to 4-Way Voice, and to her suprise it was published, which gave her a great deal of encouragement. Thereafter, whenever she had a break at work she would devote herself to art. “I used the time that I had previously spent brooding about my life to paint, and this made me feel a little better.”
 

A caring network for migrants

With resilience and optimism, Tran seized the chance to reinvent herself. Thanks to the boost to her confidence from 4-Way Voice, she continued to paint ceaselessly and became a frequent award winner at art competitions, while also showing her works at exhibitions across Taiwan. At one event, she met Chang Cheng and Liao Yun-chang, the couple who founded 4-Way Voice. “They treated me as warmly as if I were their own family.” She was very moved. As she submitted her work to a growing number of exhibitions and won more and more awards, word of this “migrant worker and painter” spread like wildfire. Even Tsai Ing-wen, who was at that time running for president, asked to see her, and a pharmacist from Changhua named Chen Xihuang offered to give her financial support to buy professional-grade art supplies.

“That was when I decided to send my children to school in Taiwan.” Tran felt grateful for the kindness of Taiwanese people. Although under the terms of the Employment Service Act she was compelled to leave Taiwan after working here for 12 years, she arranged for all three of her children to study in Taiwan, thus keeping alive her connection with the island. After returning to Vietnam, she carried on working in healthcare while also continuing with artistic creation. Ultimately, she became a member of the Vietnam Fine Arts Association and received her credentials as an artist from the Vietnamese government.

After Tran’s eldest daughter graduated from Tunghai University, drawing on her experience of living in Taiwan, and taking advantage of Vietnam’s economic potential, she founded her own study-abroad and travel consulting firm in Ho Chi Minh City. Today Tran, whose financial situation has markedly improved, serves as a lecturer for the firm, sharing her thoughts about her experiences working in Taiwan.

In the building where we interview Tran, the front office is used by her daughter’s company while the meeting room in the back is lined with large paintings. Our eye is caught by one that shows migrant workers from various countries praying together, which includes a portrait of Chang Cheng. “The work that Chang Cheng does is very meaningful. As for those of us who are migrant workers in Taiwan, we also pray for Taiwan’s wellbeing and eternal peace.” The sincerity and warmth that are revealed in Tran’s paintings also appear in her speech. Her almost unimaginable optimism enabled her to take advantage of the opportunity in Taiwan to turn her life around.

Lee Ju Pao

Not a typical second-generation immigrant

People often have stereotypical ideas about migrant workers, long-term immigrants, or the children of immigrants. But Lee Ju Pao, who is currently studying in the Graduate Institute of National Development at National Taiwan University, does not fit these stereotypes.

The tall and slender Lee’s mother tongue is Mandarin Chinese, but she is also fluent in Vietnamese. Like many second-generation immigrants, Lee’s case is typical insofar as she has a Vietnamese mother and a Taiwanese father.

“I’m the child of a multicultural family.” Lee says that her father is a traditional Taiwanese man, while her mother’s family came from northern Vietnam and only moved to Ho Chi Minh City in the south after the Vietnam War. Living there, her “half-Vietnamese, half-Taiwanese” ancestry and the north Vietnamese accent she picked up at home both made her deeply aware that she was in a small minority.

This situation originally left her feeling confused, but that changed when anti-Chinese protests broke out in Vietnam in 2014. Taiwanese were caught up in the trouble, and in order to protect herself Lee, who was then still a student, deliberately spoke only Vietnamese with her classmates outside of her school (where the classes were in Mandarin). “That’s when I discovered how important it is to be able to declare your identity.”

After graduating from high school and returning to Taiwan to attend university, unlike many immigrants or their children she was not reluctant to reveal her identity. “You’re Vietnamese?” “How come your Chinese is so good?” Faced with so many questions, when she studied in the Department of Political Science at National Taiwan University, while making a report to her class she honestly and openly stated her identity. She figured that rather than being secretive about it, which would leave her open to being labelled by others, it was better to be above board and proactively take control of her right to interpret her identity for herself.
 

A quiet social revolution

Traveling frequently between the two countries, Lee has little trouble adjusting, and in fact has noticed that Taiwan and Vietnam are not without things in common, such as similarities in their languages and the Confucian foundations of their cultures, meaning that there should be more opportunities for dialogue between the two. Therefore, while still in university she founded Foodeast, an event planning company that focuses on Taiwan–Vietnam interactions.

We meet again with Lee at the Lawrence S. Ting School in the Phu My Hung area of Ho Chi Min City. It is a combined middle and high school founded and run by a Taiwanese company, but that mainly recruits Vietnamese students. As part of a trip organized by Lee, a group of likeminded young second-generation immigrants from Taiwan is visiting the school at the time. With their vitality and artlessness, they freely switch back and forth between Mandarin and Vietnamese, making it seem like this is their “home court.”

Besides being fluent in more than one language, Lee Ju Pao says the most remarkable thing about these children from multicultural homes is their empathy. Influenced by two cultures, they can readily understand the differences between the two countries’ cultures, economic conditions, public attitudes, political principles, and diplomatic circumstances. However, to turn these advantages to good account they need to develop an identification with and understanding of (in most cases) their mother’s nation. To promote this, in 2023 Lee founded the New Immigrant Youth and ASEAN Development Association. This was the origin of her project to lead her comrades on a trip to Vietnam.

A second-generation immigrant with motivation, a sense of mission, and passion, Lee is filled with the fearless initiative and confidence of youth. She says that issues affecting the children of immigrants are often subsumed under issues related to immigration, but as they grow older, the next generation should have the ability to speak for themselves. “We’re grown-ups now,” she says straightforwardly. This was her main reason for founding the association: She hopes to integrate resources on behalf of second-generation immigrants and empower them while providing them with a channel to speak their minds.

As interactions between Taiwan and Southeast Asia grow ever closer, Taiwan’s second-generation Southeast-­Asian immigrants, who best understand Taiwan’s qualities, can well represent the island in extending a hand of friendship overseas. They are also well placed to engage in people-to-people diplomacy. Lee defines herself as “a bridge builder between two countries.” She adds with energy, “But I know that the people who will really build this bridge are the young people on both sides.” She hopes that thanks to the existence of these second-generation immigrants, Taiwan can become more rounded, tolerant, broadminded, and empathetic. What they can do is to light the flame of a quiet revolution in society.

For more pictures, please click 《Taiwan–Vietnam Migrations—Building Lives in Other Lands》