Beyond little Hanoi

An inside look into one of the country’s most prosperous immigrant communities

Ha Thanh Nguyen has vivid childhood memories of her immigrant family’s hard-knock beginnings in the Czech Republic. After relocating here in 1997, her father and mother abandoned their former career paths in law enforcement and health care to take up roadside retail, a humble trade that gives most members of the local Vietnamese community their start. Each day of the week, they would wake up at 3 a.m. to travel to “the stalls,” where they would purvey cheap Chinese textiles for the following 14 hours, rain or shine.

As they searched for new business opportunities, the Nguyens and their relatives relocated constantly, leapfrogging among north, south and Moravian towns like Chomutov, Zábřeh and Hřensko. Ha Thanh, like many of her peers, was often left with Czech caretakers when her parents stayed overnight at the outdoor markets to avoid long commutes.

“The second generation tends to have it tough,” Ha Thanh says. “We lived through that path of assimilation alongside our parents, and those experiences, good and bad, definitely left their mark on us.”

For the 20-year-old, life nowadays seems at least a generation away from the one her family led in the 1990s. Now a scenography student at the Prague Film and TV Academy (FAMU), she recently began appearing on national television. Her role in Ordinace v Růžové zahradě, a widely followed soap opera, makes her one of few Vietnamese to have appeared in local mass media. Her achievement has been duly noted and welcomed by thousands of her compatriots, but Ha Thanh herself shrugs it off.

“I’m not representing the Vietnamese community. My main worries were, does this work with my school schedule or not?” she says. “A female Asian actress is still a rarity in the Czech Republic, even though things have progressed and the Vietnamese are becoming more visible. My role is still always about racial themes, never about the individual. I understand this interests people, but I myself don’t feel the need.”

With her nonchalant sense of independence, Ha Thanh helps illustrate the quiet integration of one of the country’s most successful immigrant groups. Statisticians estimate some 57,000 Vietnamese currently reside here, while tens of thousands more live in illegality. Compared with similarly prominent populations of Slovaks, Ukrainians, Poles and Russians, the Vietnamese stand out with their successful record of integration: They hold more permanent residencies, have the most children and are the most successful on the employment market. Around 93 percent of the working-age community has jobs, and though a majority still runs small textile or corner market operations, many are becoming doctors, lawyers, corporate business owners or academics.

Each year brings an estimated 4,666-strong wave of newcomers, creating a spectrum of business opportunities for more established Vietnamese catering to the specific needs of their compatriots.

Opening up for business on a recent morning, vendors at the SAPA Asian market in Prague 4-Libuš folded heaps of Chinese-made warehouse clothing into tidy displays. Growing since 1999 on the premises of a former meat-processing plant and chicken farm, the sprawling complex breathes a distinct South Asian vibe that has earned it the nickname “little Hanoi.” Youths in bamboo hats wheel carts of fresh fruit and juice between produce and meat shops selling everything from sweet basil to fertilized duck eggs, while men breakfast on steaming bowls of traditional noodle soups at prefab corner diners before heading off to work.

Tented textile stalls take up most of the complex, but it is the array of Vietnamese-language signs advertising services in translation, visa help, air travel, telecommunications and legal aid that underscores SAPA’s “city within a city” reputation.

Hieu Bui, 49, says between 50 and 60 customers approach him daily at his tiny agency, Hieu Bui Travel, to wire money home via Western Union, typically in regular payments ranging from $500 to $1,000.

“They usually come here for work and need to help out their families at home,” he says. “Eight years ago, I used to sell textiles, but then I saw a demand on the market.”

Given the low profit margins collected by typical SAPA textile vendors, the steady flow of customers in Hieu’s office points to the community’s dedication to frugality.

“I’m here morning to night, but I can’t say we make much money,” says Nguyen Thu Thiet, 38, who has lived in Prague for 10 years. Straightening hundreds of Chinese-made sock pairs into orderly mounds, she says most of her customers are befriended Vietnamese clothes sellers who have shops downtown. Starting her own business took seven years of saving up and building contacts.

“After paying the rent for the stall and the warehouse price for the merchandise, my husband and I have just about enough to feed our children,” she says.

According to the latest World Bank data, each Vietnamese living abroad sends an average of $2,250 home each year. Dollar remittances to Vietnam reached $9 billion in 2011, or 8 percent of the country’s GDP.

The first waves of Vietnamese immigration to Czechoslovakia date to the late 1950s, when groups of child refugees from the Vietnam War were placed here. The following decades saw the development of bilateral cooperation in science and technology, drawing hundreds of students seeking skills in fields ranging from engineering to textiles or food production. By 1985, some 19,350 Vietnamese citizens resided here, according to Eva Pechová from local NGO La Strada.

The communist era also saw the emergence of a black market with cheap Asian-made goods, which arrived in the country by the plane load, unchecked by customs officials. Though contemporary police and media reports continue to link the Vietnamese to smuggling and counterfeiting as well as drug sales, only a negligible portion of the population takes up these activities, according to Pechová.

The community is also currently in the spotlight amid the ongoing government hunt for methanol-tainted alcohol, but its representatives say this is unwarranted.

“The only case of alcohol tampering by a Vietnamese was recorded in Cheb [west Bohemia] and it did not involve methanol,” says Marcel Winter of the Czech-Vietnamese Society.

The existing distrust between the Vietnamese community and the authorities is both a cause and effect of the community’s reticent nature, Pechová says.

“The Vietnamese are convinced the community can resolve its internal issues on its own more effectively than local law enforcement, without harming its reputation.”

Indeed, much of the community’s success in the Czech Republic can be attributed to the tight-knit collaboration of its members.

In a tiny, file-crammed office near the entrance of the SAPA market, established translator Binh Smržová describes how she assists her compatriots with a basic but seldom-discussed custom. When a member of the community dies, Buddhist tradition requires their remains be returned to the land of their ancestors. If the entire family of the deceased lives in Vietnam and lacks the funds for cremation and air transport, the locals step in to help.

Three years ago, when a migrant worker died at a local hospital after attempting to hang himself, Smržová arranged the cremation and brought the urn with her to Hanoi. “Our home in Vietnam is 150 kilometers from this family, but I could not bring the urn home with me because that would bring bad luck,” she says.

In the end, an acquaintance of the deceased man’s family met Smržová at the airport in Hanoi. The urn was placed in the family’s hands right on Dec. 31, narrowly meeting the traditional requirement that the remains be returned before the turn of the year.

“We became good friends after that,” Smržová recalls.

By Markéta Hulpachová and Tomáš Rákos, The Prague Post
Published on 26 September 2012