Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 504 - Why Did Vietnam’s Billionaires Study In Europe, Not America? - Thuy Duong

Transcript

504 - Why Did Vietnam’s Billionaires Study In Europe, Not America? - Thuy Duong · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast.
• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today I have Tui Zoon from Czech Republic.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Tui Zoon runs a podcast called Vietcast out of the Czech Republic and I welcome you here today.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hi everyone and thank you for having me.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today, I wanted to ask you about your work in the media space in the Czech Republic and your work at Vietcast and the art exhibition that you plan on having.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: But first of all, before we get into all of that, I want to talk about your family's origin story because it's very different from the Vietnamese American diaspora.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: in America because the migration pattern from the 80s from your family is very different from the families that went to the United States in the 70s and 80s.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So can you tell me a little bit about that?
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: My family came here exactly 30 years ago.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: We had an anniversary a week ago.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was exactly 30 years when I came here.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: But for my parents, it was actually the second time they came to check out because they studied here in 80s.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then they had to come back to with them
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: studying and working here.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, in the end of 80s, they came back to Vietnam, but in the middle of 90s, they came back because, you know, the economic situation in Vietnam was not really good, and they tried to give us better life, better education, so they decided to come back.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is there a lot of Vietnamese people in the Czech Republic, at that time?
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: That time, I think it was not so many as now.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And actually in the 90s, there was the second wave of Vietnamese migration to Czechia.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So since then, I think a lot of Vietnamese people came here in 90s.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you spent some time in Vietnam at all, did you grow up?
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because you're Vietnamese when we spoke Vietnamese.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like perfect Vietnamese.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was born in Vietnam and I was seven when we moved to Czechia, so I started a second grade in Vietnam.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I knew that time I knew too right in Vietnamese, but like most of Vietnamese kids that time I had a Czech nanny, we called her like grandma.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I spoke only check or mostly check and I forgot with Amiz a lot and when I was like 15 or 16, I took some with Amiz classes to learn more with Amiz and to learn to write again.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Got it.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's when
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I meet people from the Eastern Europe part of the world, Vietnamese people.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like rediscovering a new cousin that we have, that we didn't know about.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is a very recent thing for me.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't really know that there were so many...
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Vietnamese people living in Czechia or Poland or Germany, but what I've realized is the history of our parents migration is very different from your, you know, from what, and so when I think about our long loss cousins, I think about, you know, it's one of those things
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because we don't know about them, but I wondered throughout the years, the last 51 years, do they think about who we are because we're the older cousins who left.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder what the perception is of Eastern Europeans because it's a very different structure of people that left and we'll get into that in a little bit.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I really wonder about what the
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we can start with the difference between Vietnamese in America and Vietnamese in Europe, we can say that most of people in most of Vietnamese in Czech Republic are from the North and it's the North of Vietnam.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, North of Vietnam.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Vietnam, and they came here on based of bilateral contracts between Czechoslovakia, that time, and with them.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And to communists, countries help each other.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So,
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: most of Vietnamese here in the Czech Republic are from the north of Vietnam and the difference is you came from the south, right?
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, most of you most of Vietnamese in America came from
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I was a kid, the perception of my Vietnamese cousin and relatives in Vietnam was like, yeah, they are so far from us and we were like two different groups of...
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: to different communities, absolutely.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: But now we travel to Vietnam more often like every year or every other year.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And thanks to Facebook or FaceTime, we can check online every day together.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we are more connected each to either.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that being from the north of Vietnam between a bilateral agreement, just to explain it to my audience, because I didn't know about any of this before either.
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what you're saying is there's a bilateral agreement which two communist countries have agreed that we're gonna bring four next-change students, we're gonna bring workers into each other's countries and it's kind of like,
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's no, there's no one way the way the United States was in the 70s and the 80s, you can only leave, well, they escaped the country of Vietnam and they never really got to go back for the first 15 years.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody really went back.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there were some people that went back.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: But for the most part, Vietnamese Americans from the South,
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: were not able to go back to Vietnam.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there was a sort of built-in anger, hatred, resentment towards the northern communist regime that took over the south.
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the people that left to Eastern Europe like your family,
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, you know, scholars and people who went to school and college and universities in Eastern Europe.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the sentiment towards Vietnam is very different from the sentiment towards Vietnam from the Vietnamese American diaspora.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Very very different.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, exactly, as you said, that people who left Vietnam and went to US, they may never came back to Vietnam or many, many years later, but Vietnam is from the north of Vietnam
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: up to eight years and then they came back to Vietnam like to bring the know-how to Vietnam.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the sentiments is absolutely different and the people the Vietnamese who came from Czechia back to Vietnam were welcomed by the other in Vietnam and there was no bad feelings about that.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So interesting, you know, and when I think about they were welcome back, it kind of puts me at a, I'm in Wonderman and I'm in a maze about that sentiment.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's amazing to think about, like, oh, no, these were just, you guys were gone temporarily to study and to bring back,
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: know how and you know because there's a bilateral agreement, so the people that went to Czechia just came back and said oh by the way this is what we studied and you know I think um the founder of Vincroop is from Poland right he Ukraine Ukraine oh wow I did not know that so he
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the second, which is Vietnamese, Mr. Nam, I don't know how the full name.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Also studied in Ukraine or in Russia.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: So most of these successful entrepreneurs in Vietnam came from Europe or from Russia.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it would be really difficult for someone came from US back to Vietnam to succeed like they did.
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: right, right.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: That makes sense now.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I never thought about that.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I think we're just beginning to learn.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just beginning to learn.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how the rest of the audience who's listening.
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe there's a lot of people who understand it.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe they don't.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm just beginning to understand the depth and the relationships between the founder of the group and all of these FTP, all of these bigger companies.
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: As I'm beginning to learn it and study the journey, you know, I'm so grateful to meet people like you who are the, you know, second generation of the parents or arguably you're 1.5 of the parents of Vietnamese diaspora in Eastern Europe.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot for us to learn and understand why the founders of these major big successful companies come from the Eastern European countries.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let's talk a little bit about your work before we get into the art exhibition.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to know what motivated you to start VITCAS, which is your podcast and check you.
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, after more than 20 years living in the church Republic, I still heard some people check people saying, you are a close community.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know anything about you, but I thought that's not true because our generation grew up here.
• 11:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are well integrated.
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: We know check.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can speak fluently, check.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we have a
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: a lot of check friends and I don't feel like we are close community.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I wanted to change that.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the idea was to start a podcast sharing some interviews with Nami's living in the Czech Republic and share their stories, what they do, what they feel,
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: what they like and uh not just introduce um they work but also introduce them as a person you know so uh i thought it would be a nice way to introduce uh with nami's diaspora to check majority so i started uh the podcast uh bit cuz and uh yeah that's that's simply the the idea behind it
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do you think your work at the podcast has changed the views of checking people about Vietnamese people in Czech Republic?
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can say I change the chicken view like in general because, you know, it's to, I can talk about the whole society, but in my, like my friends or my audience on, uh,
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: a YouTube or link in or some other social media, they appreciate those interviews and they really appreciate information about Vietnamese community because there's a lot of information they never thought that could be related to our diaspora and it opened their eyes so they they appreciate a lot.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell me some of the differences and some of the similarities between your community and the Polish Vietnamese or the British Vietnamese or the German Vietnamese?
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is there sort of any correlation in the differences of similarities?
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know that's a very general question, but I'm looking for different ideas behind the characteristics of the check-in Vietnamese population.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think the biggest difference is that Chekia is a small country, so we are more connected each to other, comparing to Germany, for example, Germany is much bigger than Chekia, so maybe in Chekia there's about 100,000 Vietnamese people.
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think in Germany, there are even more Vietnamese living there, but because the country is so big, they don't have the closed connection that as we have here in Czechia.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the community is much more stick together and we often have some festivals, for example,
• 14:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Chung Tu for kids or some other and when with them is from Poland or from Germany came here Come here.
• 14:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: They really appreciate it.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our community here is very close Stick each to other and we we spent a lot of time together
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we also have supper market which is like in in US you have little cycle right it's like a little with the mistown in the in the middle of in California so we have a supper market in Prague and it's very unique you have
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most of services like barbers, massage, food and very authentic food and when Vietnamese from Germany or from Poland come here, they are amazed how many food we have here.
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like you can have the blood pudding here.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good, good hell.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we call it thick gang here.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, in the north, we call it thick gang.
• 15:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I'm talking about two different things then.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Who'd hell is the blood cube of pork?
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Cooked pork cube.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then thick gang is the duck blood on the dish, right?
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you have thick gang in the wall and in super center?
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, last year when I was in Sapa, I met a group of Vietnamese who came from America from the USA.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they came here just because they were craving for it.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when they were traveling to Europe, they decided that they have to stop by in Prague just to have to get going.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And are there other check in people that eat the gang in as far as they just really Vietnamese people?
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most people don't eat it because it's for European people.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's to, you know, they're different.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: They are not used to it.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, and even as a congeneration of with them, we don't eat it.
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, in the US too.
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Second generation, like me, most people do not go near it.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's most of the older people that eat it.
• 16:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And even older people like my mother now grow up making it for the family, but she will not eat it at a restaurant because she doesn't think that it's clean enough to eat.
• 17:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I love it.
• 17:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's one restaurant that makes it in Little Psychon,
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so let's come back to the differences, yes, I think this thing that I mentioned are more the biggest differences between Vietnamese and Czech or Vietnamese in Germany.
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, why, well, because Germany has a
• 17:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: a big country, but, you know, it's just that it forms the culture differently when you have the amount of space that's spread out and you don't have a concentration of Vietnamese people together.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't really help keep the culture together, correct?
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we have, in check out, we have also a lot of clubs or, you know, groups that, like, the elder aunties, they have clubs or classes after school classes, where they teach Vietnamese kids how to sing or how to dance with Nami songs.
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to the big community here with Names Kates, have changed to learn more about Vietnamese culture.
• 18:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they can connect to their roots, better than kids in Germany or in France, I think.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it important for,
• 18:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Vietnamese people in Czechia to remain or kind of continue their culture or does the second third generation really doesn't really care.
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think our parents, the first generation still try to connect us to the Vietnamese culture.
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it very depends on your family, how much your parents teach you about Vietnamese culture.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some parents are too busy with their work and they don't have time to explain and to teach you.
• 19:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: A person.
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, my parents, my mom always tried to teach me some Vietnamese traditions with not many songs, and she explains a lot to me.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I feel still a strong connection to Vietnamese roots.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that there's a huge population of Vietnamese Americans parents that really don't care about the continuation of the culture.
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: They are now Americans because they got here to America sometimes when they were 12 years old, 15 years old.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were young enough to become...
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: really Americans.
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so they don't really have the need to pass on their culture, the Vietnamese culture, to their children.
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's lost, completely lost.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I used to get a I used to get offended at that.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But now I understand, like everybody has their path, and it's okay, they have an American culture, and it's deeply American, and they don't identify with the Vietnamese as much, but sometimes they're children.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll look into, you know, hey, we look different.
• 20:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: We come from a different place.
• 20:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's this Vietnamese thing?
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then they go back to Vietnam and then they start to discover a way to me.
• 20:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a whole hundred million people in Vietnam that have traits that are similar to us and, you know, cousins in America.
• 20:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so they begin to research and begin to listen to podcasts like yours in mind.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I follow a few people from America or Canada who came back to Vietnam because they wanted to understand the roots and they wanted to reconnect to Vietnam and Vietnamese culture.
• 21:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think in Europe, there's a very similar tendency, but maybe we still have more chance to learn with this culture even living in Europe.
• 21:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's different too because your parents don't have a, typically, generally speaking, don't have an antagonistic opinion about
• 21:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, leaving the country or the government of Vietnam, your parents are, you know, in line with, with, you know, the benefits of becoming, you know, having bilateral contracts with the host country that you're in, whereas I think Vietnamese Americans are parents are adamantly
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: refusing to take part in the reconstruction or the rebranding rebuilding of the new Vietnam, because it's like, that's not our people, our people left.
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's a totally different perspective oftentimes.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's a very,
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: interesting crossroads with where we are with the second generations, third generations of Vietnamese American diaspora.
• 22:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Vietnamese European now, the growth and the differences are very interesting.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, talking to a film director like Du Jean, and you know, he's been on the podcast
• 22:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: check in Vietnamese filmmaker and talking to him, there's a lot of funny things that he observed about coming to the US, coming in LA in New York with me, and you know he'd cracked these jokes and you're like, wow, I had no idea you didn't see it though, you know, it's very different.
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm really grateful that my parents always reminded me our roots and you know as you said that some people who went to America when they were 12 and then they they they felt like American and they
• 23:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: maybe even didn't think about coming back to Vietnam.
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: But at our home, my parents always thought that maybe someday we can come back to Vietnam or maybe not, but they still remind it, you are Vietnamese.
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You may have Czech citizenship, but look at you in the mirror.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have
• 23:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: different eyes, different hair and if you go to check people and tell them hey I'm check they can smile but they think you are not check you know so I was raised in this way and
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: When now nowadays if anyone asks me do feel more like check or more like with Names I say I feel both I'm both I'm all both check and with Names and I think that's fine Yeah, and I'm happy and I'm proud that I have two cultures in me
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I get asked that too, you know, you feel more Vietnamese or more American.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel 100% American because I can participate in 100% of any cultural activity that happens in America.
• 24:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe not sports because, you know, I don't follow sports too closely.
• 24:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I could feel, whenever I'm in any American situation, I feel 100% able to blend in and I don't feel a lot of place.
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when I'm in Vietnam, I feel 100% comfortable as well.
• 25:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I speak the language and it's just an issue of finding where the comfort spots are for us.
• 25:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, and very funny thing is that we have kids.
• 25:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: My kids are eight and eleven.
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now they are asking me, mom, are we with the me so check or both?
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they even they are starting to think about it.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm very happy that they see the difference.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were born in
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: middle of Europe, but they still realized that they came from our parents or grandparents came from Vietnam.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when we travel to Vietnam, they like it and they can speak with them so that's a huge advantage.
• 25:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Huge advantage.
• 25:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that makes a big difference to how you
• 26:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, it started two years ago when, um, um, uh, you know, uh, check, um, uh, there are check sensors around the world, even in Europe, there's a check center.
• 26:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, uh, two, two years ago, um, they were, uh, going to open check center in Hanoi.
• 26:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, um, diameter of check center in Hanoi, contact me.
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she wanted to learn with
• 26:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: some simple words and some basics in Vietnamese so I teach her and then she introduced me to her friend who is a photographer and Shepangah who did the first exhibition about Vietnamese in Czechia in 2008.
• 26:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's 18 years ago and she said that she would like to make the second exhibition about Vietnamese people but now she would like to take photos of the second generation.
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that was the idea and then we started I put my team together and then we started to
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: to call to people to introduce them the the project and invite them to join and that's the basic idea and the message of our exhibition is like we, you know, because in, in, in check-up, most of our parents are having convenience show.
• 27:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's called Vecherga, or they use to sell some things on the market.
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: So check people sometimes see as like the people who are running the Vecherga, the convenience show.
• 27:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the second generation there's a lot of doctors, lawyers, artists, and we move forward and we have some different professions.
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we want to introduce to check majority that we move on, and the second generation is more involved to check society, check people, and even we have
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: society.
• 28:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what we want, that's what we want to introduce to people.
• 28:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.
• 28:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's so fascinating that Czech has centers all over the world.
• 28:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why do you think that they do that?
• 28:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once more please I didn't understand.
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Czech Republic has centers, like when I was in New York when we went to the Czech center and now you're like, oh, they're all over the world.
• 28:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Tell me a little bit about why the Czech Republic would do that.
• 28:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I can kind of guess why they do it, but I want to know why would they do that and where would they get the funding sources and what's the point of all of it?
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a strategy how to
• 29:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just basic of the idea is to export check culture to the world or maybe sometimes to import different cultures in Czechia.
• 29:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And also it's maybe one of diplomatic tools when you go abroad and want to, you know, to connect to people, you introduce like a magic smetana Antonin Votac, who wear a check of composers, very famous check of composers.
• 29:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you are like classic music or people who like classic music,
• 30:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: other check artists who are famous in the world.
• 30:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a way how to start connection with your partner in a world.
• 30:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like a tiny country that has so much intention on how to
• 30:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: put out that energy of that culture into the world.
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because when you go to the Czech Center in New York, it's a really well-built place.
• 30:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has a theater inside of it.
• 30:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has all of this history.
• 30:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the people there, there's not just one or two people running it.
• 30:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a team of people who are paid to kind of push the Czech culture into the world.
• 30:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's part of Czech diplomacy, these Czech sensors, and they are some very rich entrepreneurs who are Czech, and they are very proud of Czech culture, so they want to support these Czech centers, and they donate really a lot of money, so that's how these Czech centers can work and run and do their activities.
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you love the, and I'm assuming that you love
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: we both love the Vietnamese culture, but we also love our other culture, you probably love the Czech culture and I love the American culture very much, right?
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's so random that we land it in different parts of the world.
• 31:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We could have landed in Poland, we could have landed in South Africa,
• 31:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: not the allegiance or the alliance of our culture make such a big difference and who we become.
• 31:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it does, it does offer a blueprint on who we are actually as a third culture kid, right?
• 32:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're we're you and our both we have third cultures is you and the Vietnamese culture check.
• 32:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: and the Vietnamese culture formed at their culture.
• 32:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then my upbringing is an American and the Vietnamese culture brings in a third culture.
• 32:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell me a little bit about
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: the idea of a third culture or do you live in more of a binary?
• 32:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Vietnamese here at home, and then I'm check on the street.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: But do you in your head exist as a third culture person?
• 32:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because American Vietnamese, Vietnamese Americans, we do have that.
• 32:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: third culture and we create new words from our third culture.
• 32:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: We create rap from our new third culture.
• 32:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of things come from the third culture of being Vietnamese American and does that happen for you.
• 32:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think we also have the third culture.
• 32:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And for example, when before I met my husband, I thought that I would like to marry someone with Amiz, but Amiz, who was living here since his childhood, because he would understand me.
• 33:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't think that I would understand or if I had only check husband, maybe it would not be so so we would understand each other so well.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I couldn't also marry someone like Vietnamese, Vietnamese, traditional Vietnamese from Vietnam.
• 33:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So
• 33:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think we can call ourselves like the third culture because we are mixed and we are influenced by both cultures so for example when I told to my husband at home we sometimes speak English, sometimes check, sometimes with dummies or we mix both languages together and we understand each other
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a common thing with Vietnamese Americans, we mix it.
• 34:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the benefit of having that kind of playful sort of mixing is that it's a shorthand whenever we meet other Vietnamese Americans across the country of the United States, it's a big country.
• 34:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you can kind of share it.
• 34:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now on the internet, obviously there's a third
• 34:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: culture you see in Instagram and you know like guys like sub-knock, you know, they have these funny videos or they make memes that as a third culture we really understand and it spreads across the world to Australia to Britain because they're also English-speaking cultures that consume some of the same pop culture that we do here in America and it's just really fascinating
• 34:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: to watch that.
• 34:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now to know that this is happening in Czechia, Czech Republic, it's such a beautiful thing that, you know, the Vietnamese culture is becoming its own thing everywhere that we end up in the world.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely, you know, when we were asking during our organization, the exhibition planning, we also asked people, what do you think that defines you as a second generation?
• 35:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is typical for a second generation of Vietnamese living in Czechia?
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they often mentioned that we are mixed
• 35:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: cultures and one funny thing they mentioned was that they use chopsticks to cook even the when they cook, check kinetically, which is dumplings.
• 35:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dumplings are very typical
• 36:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cook, we always use chopsticks, so this is one of example where you can show or you can see why or how we are influenced by both cultures.
• 36:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: What is the future
• 36:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: the trajectory of the work that you do.
• 36:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: What would you like to see more of in the podcasts that you do to view casts?
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: What are you looking to achieve in the next few years?
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would be nice if we have more listeners and viewers and I hope that people will understand with us more and more and they will accept us as a part of Czech society, you know, when we go somewhere and we say we are
• 37:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: How to check and with Names or we are when we say I am a part of Czech society, and they will welcome us like yes, you are So you don't think that you're being welcomed or Vietnamese are being welcomed so openly yet
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, maybe in Prague because, you know, I'm living in Prague and so there's a lot of foreigners here and now I think nowadays we are will come but when I go back to the north to my to place where my parents live they still have
• 37:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: a little bit suspicious or maybe they still look down on us, you know, like when I go to the doctor, they, when they call, um,
• 37:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: check a woman they call her differently and when they call me they call it also a little bit differently.
• 38:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes I still see and feel the difference but it's not like they wear races just they look down on us a little bit.
• 38:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.
• 38:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's different words that are being
• 38:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like when it was last week, I think when I went to the doctor and there was another lady they call her with her title like, you know, in check when you have title you can call her
• 38:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, Mr. Mr.
• 38:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Professor Novak, for example.
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I also had a title, and it was written in my cart, but they called me just Ms. Nguyen, and they didn't use my title, which in Czechia or in Czech language, if you call someone with their title, it's more polite and more respectful.
• 39:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you call only with name, it's like, yeah, you are just ordinary person.
• 39:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you call someone with title, it's more like, yeah, you show respect.
• 39:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Wow, so subtle.
• 39:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 39:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that is why I do the work that I do too.
• 39:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's exactly what you're talking about.
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is exactly the reason why and some people doesn't bother them.
• 39:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I understand, you know, it doesn't bother some people.
• 39:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: we notice it and it just not sit well on the inside.
• 39:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that might be an extreme to some people in America.
• 39:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think the reason why we do this work, the culture work, is to make sure that people know like there's a human being on the other side that experiences the differences in the title structure that should not be different.
• 40:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It should be the same for
• 40:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know I'm glad to hear that about, you know, you weren't.
• 40:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I can also mention another example for when I help one Vietnamese family to buy very premium real estate in the central of Prague, when we started the process, they look down on us, and they even ask, do you even have money to buy this?
• 40:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because it's very expensive, you know?
• 40:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were looking down on us.
• 40:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But in the end of the process, when we finish up,
• 40:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: everything they thanked us and they they really appreciate that we were very professional everything was okay and they yeah they praised everything and appreciate cooperation with us.
• 40:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I hope that in the future for example when my kids start a new business check, check
• 41:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: and respect them.
• 41:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 41:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because I mean, I don't know if that problem will ever go away.
• 41:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think it's just, even in Vietnam, if you think about it, we have 53, 54 ethnic minorities that don't even get the same respect that, you know, in the king, you know, the indigenous tribes of Vietnam don't get the respect.
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think even when you think about,
• 41:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: different neighborhoods in Vietnam.
• 41:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's every time you have people, there's going to be some tribal distinctions.
• 41:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's going to be a distinct difference that separates whether it's class, money, education, the way you look, beauty, beauty people, not beautiful people.
• 42:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think there's always going to be this separation, and I think that it's a, you know, especially when we're looking at cultures like Czech and American versus, you know, Vietnamese people who want it to be put on a, just, if you don't do the work of the culture, a letting people know who we are, that day never comes, that we get the respect, our children won't get it.
• 42:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
• 42:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And even when you're doing the work, even when there's thousands of people in America, like me, Vietnamese Americans or Chinese Americans, Korean Americans, black Americans doing the work, you still have the majority, you know, trampling over and overlooking, you know, the different communities of color.
• 42:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's important that we always do the work of letting people know, hey, we're, you know,
• 42:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
• 42:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Talking about other Asian cultures, it came to my mind that, for example, K-pop is very popular nowadays.
• 43:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they also, like in America nowadays, is K-pop very famous.
• 43:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: trending, and when K-pop demon hunters got Oscar, they were very happy that maybe that was one of the first movie, Korean movie that got Oscar, right?
• 43:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they were reminding that it's still important to show our Asian culture to the world.
• 43:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mixing huge difference.
• 43:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: 15 years ago, I think it was very difficult for Vietnamese men to date white women.
• 43:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: white American women.
• 43:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was almost, yeah, it's very different.
• 43:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now with K-pop and BTS, you could see it all over the internet.
• 43:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just much easier for an Asian young man to date outside of his ethnicity.
• 44:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's a beautiful thing.
• 44:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a wonderful thing that K-pop and BTS and all of these Korean boy bands have really opened up the doors for
• 44:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: for a different type of experience for young Asian men in America.
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the world, I think it's a great thing to very positive thing.
• 44:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 44:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can see this trend in Europe as well.
• 44:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you know what is interesting in Czechia, when we have some mixed relationships, like Czech and Vietnamese relationship, it's more common when the woman is with Names and the man is Czech than... Yeah.
• 44:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of reasons for that.
• 44:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that they're, yeah.
• 44:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's American in America too.
• 44:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of reasons.
• 44:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think when I was growing up the Vietnamese men that were growing up in America, my age a little bit older, were very upset and angry about that.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think a lot of it has to do with multiple reasons.
• 45:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just one reason, but it's multiple reasons.
• 45:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think oftentimes what we don't talk about as a community, a Vietnamese community is that this idea is at you, right?
• 45:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: This idea of patriarchy.
• 45:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: is repulsive to Vietnamese women or any Asian woman like why would we want to why would we want to marry our father's you know patriarchal ways right like that makes no sense for and I don't think it's talked about enough Vietnamese women marrying like white or outside the culture the more I speak about it the more I realize I am even
• 45:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: part of that patriarchy.
• 45:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am ingrained with my father and my uncles, my grandfather's patriarchal viewpoints about women.
• 46:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's oftentimes misogynistic.
• 46:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's, we look down on women as a society.
• 46:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's, you know, it's part of Asian culture.
• 46:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so why would any Asian or Vietnamese woman want to be with that stereotype, right?
• 46:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I understand that part, you know,
• 46:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we always say that you don't marry only the man, but you marry the whole family, so it's a big difference.
• 46:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: huge difference that even in the North, that idea of Velam González to be a daughter-in-law.
• 46:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: It comes with, oh my God, you're going to be a slave and in the husband's family.
• 46:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is just a well-known fact for Northern culture.
• 46:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: My mother's in Northern culture, so from the North.
• 46:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So she talks about this constantly when I was growing up about being a daughter-in-law.
• 46:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not, and then when you become a mother-in-law and you have a daughter-in-law in the north, then now you become part of this patriarchal system that puts down your new daughter-in-law because you have a son, and that's why it's just such a disturbing way of life.
• 47:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was living with my mother-in-law for 90 years, so I know exactly what we were talking about.
• 47:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I hope it wasn't too bad for you.
• 47:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we are fine now.
• 47:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: We live separately now, and it's much better.
• 47:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there is another thing to that, in America there was actually laws in the early days and early 1900s that prohibited,
• 47:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Asian men from marrying white women.
• 47:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: It didn't go the other way around.
• 47:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was just Asian men could not marry white American women.
• 48:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was in the law books that was so when you have all of these stereotypes and then you see it on the TV screen, you begin to understand that there
• 48:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: if you're a white American or a Vietnamese American, it's huge.
• 48:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: But things are changing and I'm celebrating and I'm happy to see things change.
• 48:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not perfect yet, but I think the work that we do constantly talking about it raises the awareness of people that are going through it, like in other states.
• 48:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in California, we have strength in the population.
• 48:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have a lot of Vietnamese Americans in California, so it creates a different type of resistance
• 48:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and exactly as you said, it's changing.
• 48:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not perfect yet, but it's changing.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think like, for example, when my kids, my daughters, when they grow up and when they got married, I think they won't...
• 49:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: experience the being consso as I did.
• 49:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it will change a lot.
• 49:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Very different.
• 49:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 49:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it better change because it's just such an outdated system.
• 49:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure back then there were reasons for why these systems were in place.
• 49:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It probably made sense because I mean, let's
• 49:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: By the time that she became a mother-in-law, the power returned back to her and a very fair and balanced way from that perspective, like you live a lifetime this way and then you live the other half of your life as a mother now of your sons.
• 49:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, but then, you know, it's just such a brutal way of living.
• 49:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't need to live that way anymore because a grigarian society of farming and agriculture probably had to kind of like have that way of life, but we don't live in that way anymore.
• 50:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think very big advantage of our generation is that we talk about those things.
• 50:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: We talk about our emotions and we don't hide it.
• 50:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's why we can change it.
• 50:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we can decide to not to put all those, or all these traumas to our kids.
• 50:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we decide here it ends.
• 50:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: with our generation.
• 50:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now let's move on.
• 50:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's great that we can share and we talk about it.
• 50:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Susan, thank you so much for opening up and sharing your path in check Republic today.
• 50:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really enjoyed it.
• 50:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we're can the audience find your podcasts and the exhibition Little Hanoi.
• 50:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Where can we find more information?
• 50:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, withcast is on YouTube or Spotify.
• 50:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you can just look for withcast, CZ, and you can find it.
• 51:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you are around a crack from the June 18th to July 11th, just stop by in Hollashow, it's got a sheet of, or you can visit our website,
• 51:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you can find all the information or follow our Instagram.
• 51:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a little handle next generation and you can find all the information about the exhibition.
• 51:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we have also several site events.
• 51:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: accompanying the exhibition like a meet up or story nights and even a performance visiting the wind.
• 51:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if you are around Prague in this in this time so just come to visit us.
• 52:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: We would like to we will we call welcome you.
• 52:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Susan, thank you so much for that.
• 52:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I look forward to, you know, obviously any time you have something in the future to come on back to the podcast.
• 52:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I look forward to your introductions to more of the checking Vietnamese community and having them on to the Vietnamese podcast.
• 52:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the Vietnamese American diaspora can know more about our cousins in Czech Republic.
• 52:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we look forward to that.
• 52:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you, and I really appreciate that we can talk today about Vietnamese community in Czechia, and yeah, thanks for having me.
• 52:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was very fun and I enjoyed it.
• 52:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Likewise, thank you again.