Continuum: Vietnam

Back in 1992, Vietnam Television operated from run-down studios on Giang Vo, with limited funding and outdated equipment. Staff would monitor foreign news channels and record single-voice voiceovers for imported programs. In one studio, presenters Ngoc Tram and Thanh Hung were preparing to record; both seemed shy in front of my camera, while their colleagues found my presence amusing and burst out laughing as I took photos. When I met Ngoc Tram again in 2024, the transformation was striking. She is now retired, and VTV has become a well-funded, state-of-the-art broadcaster, complete with a new, impressive headquarters.

At 83, Y Tring needed her daughter’s support to help her down the steep path to come and meet me. Though age has stooped her and the years have left her feet gnarled and tough, her spirit shone through: beneath a blue woollen hat and a faded blue t-shirt, tangled with beads, rosary and crucifix around her neck, her deeply lined face lit up in a wide smile as she received a photo from 1992 of her sons Bluc and Ung as young boys. Tring gripped my hands, radiating warmth and gratitude. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I don’t have any photographs from when they were young, this means so much.”

When I first met Mr Pai in November 1992, he was 34 -- a spirited White Hmong musician, carrying his khen Hmong as he returned from a village wedding. The piped bamboo instrument, with its haunting tones, is at the heart of Hmong musical tradition, and Pai played it for me that day, dancing, spinning, and gliding with infectious energy. In 2024, we met again. Pai still kept his khen, though time had caught up with it; the instrument was broken, silent. Pai's spirit, however, was undimmed. Even without music, he cradled the khen and moved through his familiar dances, singing out revolutionary songs and reciting poems, his artistry finding new ways to endure.

Highway 17 in Bac Ninh is a bustling four-lane road today, but in 1992 it was a potholed, bumpy track with sparse traffic. Passing the hamlet of Guot that year, I came upon a crowd gathered for the official reopening ceremony of Dien Quang pagoda. There, I photographed Nguyen Quy Dien, recently retired after 30 years of military service. When I returned to Guot in 2024, the transformation was astonishing. The landscape—and the pagoda itself—had changed beyond recognition: once a modest, single-storey structure, Dien Quang had become an impressive multi-building complex, set among manicured gardens fit for an Instagram feed. I found Mr Dien still living nearby with his wife. Now 82 and mostly blind in one eye, he welcomed me warmly, a gracious host, embodying quiet resilience amid a dramatically changed world.

Binh Da was the home of champion firecrackers in Vietnam and it was a sensory whirlwind each Tet and on special occasions before the 1995 ban. In January 1993, I witnessed the bustling main street and alleys crowded with stalls selling loud, smoky firecrackers, a cacophony and haze unlike anything I had experienced. That day, we purchased firecrackers from Mr Nguyen Van Son. Though the firecracker trade ended abruptly, life went on. In late 2024, I returned to find Mr Son once again, sitting with him in his home as he smoked thouc lao and shared vivid stories about the glory days of firecrackers and his two decades as an army driver. The resilience and warmth of his spirit remain powerful reminders of a vanished era.

Jerai woman Hyuih stands proudly, clutching a photo from 1992 that shows her three sons—A Truen, Y Thuau, and Y Then—alongside her elder nephew, A Mruon. This portrait bridges past and present: Hyuih’s family and fellow villagers have called these ancestral riverside lands beneath Chu Mom Ray mountain home for generations. In recent decades, however, Ka Du has been transformed. Economic development and migration have brought new faces, new infrastructure, and new cash crops -- reshaping daily life and traditions in ways Hyuih could scarcely have imagined when the old photo was first taken.

On my first visit to Ia Pia, a remote Jerai village in Gia Lai province, in 1992, I was welcomed by the chief, 65-year-old Mr Kpa Ieng. He spoke little Vietnamese and lived in a simple stilt house, its steps carved from a single tree trunk. The floor was spread with handwoven jute mats, and lining one wall were 25 large earthenware jars of ruou can, a year’s supply of the traditional communal rice wine, reserved for special occasions. At one end of the house, tobacco, maize, and beans dried above the smoky fire. During our conversation, I was shown a crossbow and the imposing skull of a wild forest cow. “You have to know how to shoot the cow, otherwise it goes completely wild,” the chief said with a knowing smile. By 2022, Mr Kpa Ieng had passed away, but his widow, the elderly Ro Lan Lat, still lived there. When shown the old photograph, she sat quietly, gazing at her late husband, lost in memory and thought.

In 1992, just outside Kontum, I visited the Bahnar village of Kon Ro Bang II and photographed a shy young girl I nicknamed “Grasshopper Girl”, as she played with a large green grasshopper. The village at that time clustered around its aging Nha Rong, the traditional communal house with its soaring, sail-like roof standing at the heart of village life. Three decades later, in 2022, I found Grasshopper Girl once more. Now 42, her name is Y Yon. Though the Nha Rong still stands, the once-rural village has been absorbed into the growing city of Kontum. Where wooden houses once stood, modern concrete homes now line the alleys. But some things endure: Y Yon’s joy was infectious as she showed her childhood photograph to friends and family, dissolving into fits of laughter. It was a genuinely happy reunion, a bright moment amid all the changes.