Word: kieu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...boardrooms and at its noodle-soup stands. Thieu and his older brother Nguyen Trong Thang were known not just for their wealth?their private company boasted estimated revenue of $60 million in 2002?but for who they are. Born in Vietnam but raised in France, the brothers are Viet Kieu, as people who fled the country following the fall of Saigon in 1975 are known. Once reviled as traitors, Viet Kieu are now seen as resources, even patriots, for their access to foreign capital and Western business and technical expertise. The Hanoi government courts them with preferential tax rates, relaxed...
...Since 1987, when the government first opened its doors to them, more than 150,000 Viet Kieu have returned to work for multinational corporations, nongovernmental organizations or themselves. There are more than 700 Viet Kieu-owned enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City alone. Phil Tran's animation company, Glass Egg Digital Media, is one of them. But, says the 39-year-old whose family departed Saigon when he was 12, "There's always been tension between those who stayed and those who left." Many Vietnamese see returnees as carpetbaggers who escaped the lean 1980s and now flaunt their wealth. Viet...
...Kieu Viet Lien started at less than zero. She was born in prison in 1974. Her mother had been jailed as a Viet Cong agent. They were not released until April 1975, when North Vietnamese forces overran Saigon. Lien was schooled in the city, renamed Ho Chi Minh City by the victors. When she was 18 she got lucky: her application for a visa to study fashion in Australia was accepted. After three years in Melbourne, she went to Canada in 1996 for two years and then spent a year in Paris. There she fell in love with French style...
...government is ambivalent about the flood of Vietnamese who have been returning from America since Washington normalized relations with Hanoi in 1995. It welcomes their dollars, yet is wary of their politics. But if any revolution is coming from these returning Viet Kieu, as the overseas Vietnamese are called, it will probably have to do with transforming the lifestyles and expectations of younger Vietnamese...
Nguyen Quang Huy sees a lot of Viet Kieu in his bar, the Hot Club. "The younger ones we can get on with," he says. "It is the older ones who are difficult sometimes, with their memories of before." He is leaning against the counter, drinking a Corona and watching one of the bands he is promoting. They begin with a love song. Huy frowns. "Now that could be a problem for us if the police come in." The song is by a Vietnamese band in the U.S. "Not allowed here." More than anything, Huy wants to make money. Fast...