CULTURE OF HO CHI MINH CITY

A Chinese pagoda in District 5

Over hundreds of years, with the vicissitude of history, the world’s various cultures seemed to have found a common place to converge in Saigon-HCM City. The city has been gradually turned into a non-discriminating community, a cultural kaleidoscope, for people from almost every corner of the world, regardless of race and ideology.

Atheism and theism were all absorbed, blended and “Saigonized” into the Vietnamese cultural background – the revolutionary refinement. All the cultural flows converged and supplemented each other to produce a unique “common home” with a wide-ranging characteristic e.g. Vietnamese-Chinese-English-Indian-Russian-Korean-American-French-Japanese, and more.

Saigon, depending on individual appraisal, is sometimes called “Saigon Potpourri”, “Multi-faced Saigon”, and “Amalgamated Saigon,” all to describe the uniqueness of this lively and colorful city. 

1. In 1698, Lord Nguyen Phuc Chu sent Garrison-General Nguyen Huu Canh on an inspection and conquest expedition to the Saigon region. This was a strategic step of the Nguyen dynasty, aiming to expand the court’s influence southward with gradual colonization. The coastal culture of the central region Vietnamese came with the expedition southward, then took root in the Saigon areas. The coastal ways of life had, for centuries, tempered these Vietnamese into hardened but flexible pioneer-soldiers, people who had to struggle to make a living in the narrowest and most arid part of Vietnam. These early soldier-pioneers were adventurous, hard-working, and brave, had good adaptability and above all, were dreamers of a better life, all the merits needed for the hardship of colonization. Long-standing skills were brought to the new land as well, the most notable being wood and stone carving, the fame of which had been manifested in the building of fortresses and royals’ palaces in Hue Citadel under the Nguyen dynasty. Local food specialties were brought along with the expedition and stayed throughout the centuries. Quang noodle (prepared with rice flour noodles), Hue beef-soup vermicelli (hot and spicy), and Hue tre (pork skin and galingale wrapped in leaves and paddy straw) can still be found in Saigon. In general, Vietnam’s central region culture was part of Saigon’s tradition right from the dawn of the community.
2. A little later in the same period, Chinese culture started to arrive with defeated Ming troopers and court dissidents who failed in their uprising against the ruling Manchurian. In this new refuge, those uprooted Chinese, like working bees with their ancient cultural nectar, started to establish their own settlement quarters which then developed into Cholon, Saigon’s Chinatown. One particular trait of Chinese communities all over the world, Saigon’s Chinatown is no exception: commercial activities, importing and exporting and light industry always rank first of all professions. From the early days in Saigon, the Chinese were quick to figure out the principles of the “market economy” and therefore took to the catering for societies’ demands in accordance with consumers’ needs and whims. Thanks to these Chinese traders, merchandise was put into circulation and distributed through the import-export activities. Today, almost everything can be found in Cholon, not to mention the food and foodstuffs prepared by Chinese chefs. In other words, to fully enjoy food you have to eat in Cholon. It is not that you can find all the specialties, all the delicious dishes of the world and the southern region in Cholon but it is the eating ambience – good cooks, exciting atmosphere, the generosity, the hospitality that Cholon’s Chinese show during eating sprees – now also a trait of southern Vietnamese. Ancient residential quarters or at least their relics, can be found in Cholon, such as the famous Lord and Lady’s Shrines, the various schools of martial art, the homes of Lion and   Kylin dancing teams…Truly, Cholon is a typical Chinese community with a full range of activities reflecting the characteristic of the Saigon Chinese.
3. In 1861, French colonialists invaded and occupied Saigon in their effort to break the “closed door” policy of the Nguyen dynasty. By then, Saigon had already established its own local ways of life by people coming from the southern plains, the coastal central region and various Khmer and Chinese communities. The trading with China and India had brought religious and philosophical ideas that complemented the existing Buddhism and various schools of ethical thought. Along with French colonialists, Western civilization flooded Saigon. Positive elements were brought by doctors, explorers, architects, engineers, and Catholic missionaries who came with the French legionnaires, the back-up force for the colonial rulers. The essence of French culture took root and bloomed in novel and exotic fields like technology, philosophy, religion, art, archeology, literature, culinary art, to the highest Western standards.
4. The Dien Bien Phu victory (May 7, 1954) marked the downfall of French colonialism in Vietnam. The Geneva treaty temporarily bisected Vietnam and urged the historic migration from the north to the south. In fact, northerners had come to the south long before this event but the 1954 migration was the opportunity for the northern plain civilization to move to Saigon. Settlements of the uprooted northerners like the “Ong Ta” area changed the face of Saigon with their northern style well-organized communities. But the generosity of the southerners enabled them to adapt to the northerners’ discipline, a new trait for Saigonese. Most notable was the model of setting up communities by their common profession, allowing for the easy establishing of a professional association or vocational society, to help protect each other in the fight against the control of the market by “foreign corporate sharks”. Food wise, Saigonese now had on their menu specialties like pho, steamed meat rolls, spring rolls, green rice flakes, cakes, and drinks like green tea, kudzu dried powder and the hookah pipe for smoking. For fashion, the “ao dai”, a modification of the colorful and unique “four-piece dress” of northern girls, made its debut about this eventful period. This dress then contributed its part in the enriching of Vietnamese culture and in the enlivening of the Vietnamese characteristic in the then pro-Western fashion trend in Saigon. It seemed that at this point the breath of the northern plain civilization started to blend in with the way of life of Saigonese.
5. Saigon in the period of a divided Vietnam. Late in the fifties, taking advantage of the weakened and shaky French colonialism in Indochina, American imperialists pushed the French aside and moved into southern Vietnam. Saigon then bore the brunt of the American-style of life. During this period, new notions and new schools of thought clashed with old ones, creating a state of complicated cultural disorder. However, Saigon had undergone and been tempered throughout decades of unrest and was competent in sorting and adopting essential quality from the new wave of cultural concepts to enrich its age-old experience. In short, having undergone the two modern-time conflicts with powerful opponents, Saigon had to face stressful challenges but was able to retain its own cultural characteristics.
6. Emerging triumphant on April 30, 1975, Saigon had the honor of being named Ho Chi Minh City in 1976 and started a new cycle of transformation. The adopting of new Socialist concepts was not without difficulty but the flexibility of its aesthetic attributes allowed Saigon to gradually establish itself as a new cultural and economic beacon for the country.

The trend of global integration has seen Saigon implement the renovation policies that originated from the Party’s sixth National Congress in 1986. Consequently, Saigon-HCM City has had the opportunity to demonstrate its refinement and to invite other countries to come in with open dialogue and cultural cooperation. In the new millennium, Saigon-HCM City is going to be the gateway for talks and cooperation and certainly be in direct contact with new cultural inflows from all over the world. Once again, Saigon might have to show its ability to withstand culture shocks and to learn from the experience to improve its own ways of life.

Saigonese at a flower festival

Saigon in the pre-modern and modern eras became a big cultural and economic center within Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Has a 300-year culture formed a distinctive character for “Saigonese”?
Gia Dinh Thanh Thong Chi, a book written in 1820 by Trinh Hoai Duc, has this to say: “The Gia Dinh area (the historic name for what is now the Ho Chi Minh City region) has a vast land area and a lot of food, so people like living in luxury and care little about saving. People come from different areas, and each family has its own practices. The land is near the sun and the climate is hot, so people respect faithfulness.” The next paragraph says: “Gia Dinh has a southern location, so there are many determined and courageous people who respect faithfulness and despise wealth. Beautiful women are also abundant.”
John White, an Englishman, visited Saigon in the early 1820s. In 1824 he published in London A Voyage To Cochinchina, where he gives some impressions of Saigonese: “Many women are beautiful and have a fair complexion. Their deeds are very attractive but there is nothing indecent.” After taking a walk, he wrote: “We are very pleased with what we see and we bring along the best impressions of the people’s custom and disposition. The considerateness, kindness and hospitality we see have reached beyond all what we have so far observed in Asian countries, which makes it impossible for us to imagine that such a nation could be different.”
In 1937, writer Ho Bieu Chanh, who enjoyed fame in the south for his very southern-style writing, described a night market in Saigon: “At big shops, people gather into a big crowd. Boys have a glossy hair; girls have bright red lips; old men hold a cigarette in their mouth and release smoke; a woman leads a group of her children, with an older child running ahead and a younger one following her calling to each other noisily; a group makes its way to buy shoes; another group hurries indoors; well-dressed people are with casually-dressed laborers. Everybody looks cheerful…”
Like Hanoi, Saigon-HCM City is a melting pot. Hanoi is the capital, which had four districts for people from different areas to make a living. Ancient Saigon was also a melting pot. Phu Bien Tap Luc by Le Quy Don says Lord Nguyen encouraged wealthy people from Quang Nam, and the central and northern midland, to go south to reclaim the land from the forest and set up villages. Early migrants to Saigon were wealthy people, poor people suffering famine and crop failure due to war, craftspeople and merchants who sought a place for business, troops, designated officials (most of them were being disciplined by the State), criminals in exile, rascals, and even criminals . So migrants to Saigon were more diverse than those moving to Hanoi. 
Trinh Hoai Duc also says in his book that not only Vietnamese but people from other countries gathered in the area. Saigon is at an international crossroads and is not far from shipping routes between north and south as well as east and west. With a diameter of about 2,500km, Saigon is a central point of Southeast Asia and is close to East Asia. Trinh Hoai Duc wrote: “In Binh Duong and Tan Long districts, inhabitants are crowded; streets, markets and houses are side by side; and people speak languages like Cantonese, Hainanese, Western languages, and Thai. Ships come for trading, with hundreds of kinds of goods. Saigon is a big city in Gia Dinh. Nowhere else in the country can match it…”
If Hanoi is an introverted city, Saigon is both a metropolis and an international port with a tendency of openness. In the mid 1800s, Pallu de la Barriere, a Western visitor to Saigon, remarked: “Thousands of boats gather by the river bank and create a small floating city. Annamites, Indians and Chinese, and some French and Tagal (Filipino) soldiers walked to and fro, which created a strange scene…”
Among the first foreigners who migrated to Saigon in the largest number were Chinese, whose offspring are now part of Vietnam’s population and who are referred to as Vietnamese of Chinese origin. They were from coastal parts of southern China, including peasants, craftspeople, traders, mandarins and soldiers. They came to Saigon for many reasons, mainly to settle in a new land because they did not like their government. Chinese immigrants contributed to the establishment and development of ancient Saigon as well as the creation of a Saigonese character. The elements of Chinese culture in the southern culture are different from the northern culture because of the impact of these Chinese immigrants. Trinh Hoai Duc wrote: “Gia Dinh is a newly exploited land of Vietnam. Our migrants, in conjunction with Tang people, Europeans (French, Britons, etc), Khmers, Javans, and Malays, live together in a concentrated and complicated manner.”
The first Vietnamese migrants to the south did not live in solitude. Saigon-Gia Dinh, before the big settlement push began in 1689, was not deserted. Ancient inhabitants are remembered by some minority groups in the southeastern region like Khmer, S’tieng, Ma and Chau Ro. This has been agreed upon by historians, archaeologists and ethnologists. Vietnamese migrants lived with these minority ethnic groups for a long time in their early days of settlement. Cultural exchanges between Vietnamese and other communities contributed to forming the Saigonese from the very early days.
One of the factors in creating the Saigonese is the geographical environment of Saigon. Hanoi and Hue people are different because of the differences between the natural and geographical conditions of Hanoi and Hue, between the Red River and Huong River, and between a center of the northern delta and a hilly land in the central region. Saigon is near the equator and has a tropical climate with hot temperature and high humidity, so this is convenient for plants and animals to grow. Saigon has two seasons: wet and dry. As it is on the borderline between the southeastern region with its mountains and hills and the Mekong Delta with its plains, Saigon has high land in its north and lower land in its south and southeast, with many rivers, streams and swamps. The Saigon River is a young river, linking Saigon with the sea. Thanks to the Saigon River, Saigon remains a port convenient for shipping even though it is more than 60km from the sea. Saigon River and the system of canals and streams in the city are affected by the tides. The natural environment of Saigon has strongly influenced the lifestyle and character of Saigonese. 
It is difficult to answer clearly what Saigonese, Hanoians and Hue people are like. Trinh Hoai Duc and Nguyen Dinh Chieu described Saigonese as “respecting faithfulness and despising talent wealth.” Hanoians, Hue people and Saigonese are all Vietnamese. To some extent, Saigonese and southerners are not very different in their character from people in the other main centers. But a study of Saigonese does show that the natural, social and historical conditions of the Saigon area have crafted a people with distinctive characteristics

Cai luong actors

The harmonious combination of Vietnamese culture and the characteristics of the Oriental and Western cultures is the art of cai luong, a traditional form of opera of the south of Vietnam, especially Saigon. A study of this art form gives some understanding of the mix of these three cultures.
Cai luong came into being less than 100 years ago. In its infancy, cai luong was under the decisive influence of two forms of stage performance: the Vietnamese traditional tuong, a form of opera, and French modern drama. The Vietnamese tuong bears the characteristics of the Asian stage with scenarios and plays for self-expression, French drama is typically European, with Aristotle-style works. Therefore, cai luong also has two different kinds of plays but both have the same source of music. The music styles for cai luong are densely national and can express all kinds of moods of the characters, enabling the artists to sing and gesticulate in the Vietnamese or French styles. 
During its process of development, music styles for cai luong have been supplemented with folk music. When it was in contact with China’s Guangdong opera and Western modern music, cai luong selectively absorbed and nationalized some to enrich the current sources of music. As well as adopting modern music styles, the cai luong band uses modern musical instruments. Vietnamese artists renovated the Western violin, mandolin and guitar by making concave frets to create new tones and melodies. To date, the concave-fret guitar is the main instrument for cai luong and it has become a national instrument of Vietnam.
In HCM City, you can enjoy the art of cai luong at theaters or in weekend musical programs on television.