#Saigon people

[mothmiso]

Vietnam (2) (3) (4) by AAcerbo

[2othcentury]

The Independence Palace, the former presidential palace in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, c. 1988

[postcard-from-the-past]

Chetty people from Saigon, modern-day Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

French vintage postcard, mailed in 1905 to Paris

[holyvirgilscriptures]

my litmus test on whether or not you're qualified to talk about southeast asian political issues is based on whether or not you understand miss saigon

[daydadahlias]

i’m crying you did NOT gaf about LH1 😭

oh i loved LH1 !! I think it's an absolutely bonkers insane piece of art but it's not really an album that I can listen to tbqh and i do not say that in a derogatory way at all. it just sends me into absolute hysterics every time and that's not very productive for me, so i dont really listen to it (just bc i genuinely can't handle it) and, because of that, im not personally chomping at the bit for LH2 (even if I know a ton of people are) because I just know that I, Jess, am not the target audience for it and i shouldnt have to pretend that i am

[nickdewolfarchive]

Saigon, Vietnam 1995

Honda culture

Photograph by Nick DeWolf https://www.flickr.com/photos/dboo/183086704

[princealigorna]

I hope Eva Noblezada gets a happy role next

Because between Kim in Miss Saigon and Eurydice in Hadestown, she's already proven that she excels at playing the woman who you know isn't going to have the happy ending but you root fir anyway.

[curiosity-killed]

Fic writer asks: 14, 16 or 27 (whichever haven't been asked yet). If all have been asked: minus 2 from all of them and see if those numbers work 😂

XD i appreciate the strategy here

14. If you could see one of your fics adapted into a visual medium, such as comic or film, which fan fic would you pick?

oh this is hard. I feel like while I love writing for storytelling, I also just genuinely love the vehicle of writing/language so it's not super intuitive to me to think of switching the media of any of them? Ironically, I think I'm probably more into the idea of an adaptation of the fics I like the least XD

So with that in mind, I think the letters of your name could be a fun movie maybe? and through the desert could be adapted pretty well to a comic format

16. At what point in the process do you come up with titles?

it depends but usually pretty early on. I do sometimes get to the point of posting on AO3 without a title, but it's relatively uncommon. A lot of times I sort of organically decide on a title in the process of writing a fic; sometimes I have a title before I have a fic; and oftentimes I pick a poem to use as a title either while writing or when I go to post.

27. 25. Have you ever upset yourself with your own writing?

I have but it's not like...common. I am more likely to work myself out of upset through writing and I tend not to be very affected by my own writing—see: the time in childhood where I read an injury description from my own story to my dad and made him nauseous while i was just like >:D hehehe. With more time between writing and reading it, I am usually more affected but for 90% of the worst scenes I've written, I'm the person doing it with a completely unbothered mien (or cackling to myself lol). I might make myself a little sad, but yeah, ya girl compartmentalizes like a container store

fanfic asks

[housebody]

just found out theres a musical about the tiananmen square protest and that on top of there being a musical about marcos' dictatorship that just opened up is truly doing my fucking head in

[ghost-of-you]

I just saw someone say with their whole chest that slide on is better than anything on 5sos5. And usually I am on the side of the bonus track, because 5sos has some gems hidden as bsides and rarities. But not this time. That song does not fit the album. I don't even believe that's a 5sos5 rejected track. That sounds like a wfttwtaf rejected track. But even when put next to wfttwtaf, I like the ones we have a lot more.

[mothmiso]

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) (2) (3) by Levana Una Laitman

[asiawalecka]

Ho Chi Minh JAN23

[samuelwatterson]

Lion Drummers

After living in China and Vietnam for almost 8 years, I have seen these Lion dances many times, I feel as excited as a child when I catch one. The tradition is 1500 years old, they bring good luck. In Vietnam the Lion performers are normally teenagers, they have a strong sense of fun, as a teacher I know having a good sense of humour is essential (though sometimes I forget). The drumming was…

[forfunandfandom]

This moment was beautiful. I knew what they were going to do as soon as the water turned to poison.

Viet Nam was colonized on-and-off by China for around 1,000 years. During that time, the story of Hai Bà Trưng was one of the few stories of heroism that survived to the modern time. At the end of their rebellion, they committed suicide by jumping into a river rather than be captured (Chinese records said they were captured and beheaded, but I chose to believe the Viet records).

While the story of this event wasn’t perfect, I appreciate a story revolving around Viet heroes.

What’s more, the story turns their deaths into an heroic act. As opposed to two desperate women committing suicide, this time, they sacrificed themselves to save countless people.

It’s an ongoing theme in FGO that being summoned gives heroes a chance to be more than their legends. Hai Bà Trưng’s legend is ultimately a tragedy. Thăc said it herself that she doesn’t feel like a hero because they ultimately failed to make a lasting change. Viet Nam continued to be colonized long after their deaths.

Even so, their rebellion gave the Viet people a sense of pride that we did stand up against our oppressors. To this day, there are streets, schools, hospitals, etc. named after Hai Bà Thưng.

The event story calls them “new” gods, but they died in 42 AD so their legend is around as old as Jesus. They are very old heroes, though not as old as Dagon, which is the point. Hai Bà Thưng stood in the middle between the far ancient past (Gilgamesh’s era) and the modern era (Tesla’s era and after). They are old enough to feel disconnected from what modern Viet Nam is now, which is why Thǎc feels like she didn’t have much effect on history, yet they are not so old that they feel forgotten and twisted. There’s a big street in Saigon named after them, so they are very much still remembered, unlike Dagon who feels bitter at being forgotten.

I had my doubts when this event seems to start out as a comedy, but I like how it pulled together, leading to that beautiful scene pictured above.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[BBC is UK State Media]

Truong My Lan is charged with taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. Prosecutors say $27bn may never be recovered.[...]

The evidence is in 104 boxes weighing a total of six tonnes [!!!]. Eighty-five defendants are on trial with Truong My Lan, who denies the charges. She and 13 others face a possible death sentence.

"There has never been a show trial [sic] like this, I think, in the communist era," says David Brown, a retired US state department official with long experience in Vietnam. "There has certainly been nothing on this scale."

The trial is the most dramatic chapter so far in the "Blazing Furnaces" anti-corruption campaign led by the Communist Party Secretary-General, Nguyen Phu Trong.

A conservative [sic] ideologue [sic] steeped in Marxist theory, Nguyen Phu Trong believes that popular anger over untamed corruption poses an existential threat to the Communist Party's monopoly on power. He began the campaign in earnest in 2016 after out-manoeuvring the then pro-business prime minister to retain the top job in the party.

The campaign has seen two presidents and two deputy prime ministers forced to resign, and hundreds of officials disciplined or jailed. Now one of the country's richest women could join their ranks.[...]

Although Vietnam is best known outside the country for its fast-growing manufacturing sector, as an alternative supply chain to China, most wealthy Vietnamese made their money developing and speculating in property.

All land is officially state-owned. Getting access to it often relies on personal relationships with state officials. Corruption escalated as the economy grew, and became endemic.

By 2011, Truong My Lan was a well-known business figure in Ho Chi Minh City, and she was allowed to arrange the merger of three smaller, cash-strapped banks into a larger entity: Saigon Commercial Bank.

Vietnamese law prohibits any individual from holding more than 5% of the shares in any bank. But prosecutors say that through hundreds of shell companies and people acting as her proxies, Truong My Lan actually owned more than 90% [!!!] of Saigon Commercial.

They accuse her of using that power to appoint her own people as managers, and then ordering them to approve hundreds of loans to the network of shell companies she controlled.

The amounts taken out are staggering. Her loans made up 93% [!!!] of all the bank's lending.

According to prosecutors, over a period of three years from February 2019, she ordered her driver to withdraw 108 trillion Vietnamese dong, more than $4bn (£2.3bn) in cash from the bank, and store it in her basement.

That much cash, even if all of it was in Vietnam's largest denomination banknotes, would weigh two tonnes.[!!!!!][...]

David Brown believes she was protected by powerful figures who have dominated business and politics in Ho Chi Minh City for decades. And he sees a bigger factor in play in the way this trial is being run: a bid to reassert the authority of the Communist Party over the free-wheeling business culture of the south.

"What Nguyen Phu Trong and his allies in the party are trying to do is to regain control of Saigon, or at least stop it from slipping away.[...]

faster growth in Vietnam almost inevitably means more corruption [sic]. Fight corruption too much [sic], and you risk extinguishing a lot of economic activity.

10 Apr 24

[countriesgame]

Please reblog for a bigger sample size!

If you have any fun fact about Vietnam, please tell us and I'll reblog it!

Be respectful in your comments. You can criticize a government without offending its people.