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Tinh Vy, Tran From Urban Society to Urban Literature: The Case of Vietnamese Literature by Young Writers in Ho Chi Minh City 2000 – 2015 From Urban Society to Urban Literature: The Case of Vietnamese Literature by Young Writers in Ho Chi Minh City 2000 - 2015 Of the Urban Literature in Vietnam: Concept and characteristic On the occasion of the conference on Southern Literature 1954-1975, a literary critic Nguyen Hung Quoc exposed the implication of the term “urban literature”, which was used preferably in the South Vietnam. He questioned the inaccuracy of the term by analyzing the popularity of the term used not only in the South but also in the North1. According to him, Vietnamese modern literature has been attached with print culture and mostly taken place in cities. Most publishing companies locate in cities which reside professional writers and readers. Prior to 1945, writers and poets sent their works to Hanoi or Saigon for selling. The same in the South before 1975, though writers Nguyen Van Xuan or Phan Du lived in Da Nang, Vo Hong or Quach Tan in Nha Trang, their writing were published in cities. In other words, the print culture and commercial demand are all features of urbanization and citizenization. In this sense, Vietnamese literature could be seen as urban literature in its general meaning, which was not only used in the South of Vietnam. However, why was literature in the North never termed as urban literature like that of the South? The answer is very simple. The term has been used to distinguish the urban literature from a rural literature (văn học nông thôn) or a Southern liberated literature (văn học giải phóng miền Nam). The latter was built up by writers migrated from the North to the South and resided secretly in mountainous areas which were called „liberate‟ areas (vùng giải phóng). Hence, the urban literature in the case of Southern Vietnam referred to the function rather than the nature of its literature. Thanks to its political connotation, there were waves of protest by the Southern writers against the usage of this term. An illustration of this was the objection of the writer Nhat Tien2 to the used-to-be column “Southern Urban Literature‟ on the website www.vanviet.info. To inherit and nurture the entire achievement of Vietnamese Southern literature 1954-1975, Vietnam Independent Association (Văn đoàn độc lậpViệt Nam) invited writers and readers to feedback for the opening of the so-called column Southern Urban Literature on their websites www.vandoanviet.blogspot.com and www.vanviet.info. In response to the campaign, a diaspora writer in the USA Nhat Tien questioned to the editorial board of the definition of the urban literature (specifically replied by email to a poet Hoang Hung). To him, the term „urban area‟ impliedly excluded the rural parts in the South of Vietnam, which was considered to belong to Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Even, in its broader understanding of this exclusion of the rural part from the urban part, it also meant that all people in rural villages had stood up under the leader of National Liberation Front of South Vietnam3 against the Republic of Vietnam regime. Therefore, in Nhat Tien‟s viewpoint, the term „awakened‟ the smells of contempt, disdain, even the hatred caused by a lot of cultural ingredients from the North. And as “the sinners carrying the US court as minions of US puppet” in name only, the Southerners have been uninterruptedly discriminated for years, right after the war. He thought that there has never been existed the so-called Southern urban literature but entirely literature and art works of the Republic of Vietnam across the whole territory, from rural to urban. He and other scholars, intellectuals, artists contributed to the whole Southern culture and literature. The arguments of the critics Nguyen Hung Quoc and Nhat Tien contributed to my limitation of the defining the urban literature in the South of Vietnam. I am definitely not going to conclude the Southern contemporary literature in a political sense of excluding the rural parts; thereby denying the literary achievements of the Southern writers in the Republic of Vietnam. Instead, my understanding of the Southern urban literature (especially emphasized on Saigon, or later Ho Chi Minh City) bases on these features: 1 Nguyen Hung Quoc, Southern Literature or Southern Urban Literature?, http://www.voatiengviet.com/a/van-hoc-mien-nam-hay-van-hoc-do-thi-mien-nam/2586357.html, accessed 15th August 2016. 2 Nhat Tien, Is there Southern Urban Literature? https://nguoitinhhuvo.wordpress.com/2014/07/14/co- hay-khong-mot-nen-van-hoc-do-thi-mien-nam-nhat-tien/, accessed 31 August 2016. 3 The National Liberation Front (or given the name Vietcong by Western sources) was a political organization which fought the United States and South Vietnamese government. It had its own army, People‟s Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam, and a network of cadres who organized peasants in the territory it controlled. During the war, the communist spoke of the Vietcong as an insurgency indigenous to the South while the US. and the South Vietnamese government considered this group as a tool of Hanoi. 1 Tinh Vy, Tran From Urban Society to Urban Literature: The Case of Vietnamese Literature by Young Writers in Ho Chi Minh City 2000 – 2015 - Saigon as the metropole in its history - Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) as the center of „reading culture‟: the development of the publishing companies, the highest rates of selling books in Vietnam, the condensed residency of young writers and readers and so on. - Especially, the popularity of the „urban topics‟ reflected in writing by young writers, such as the portraits of the urban space (especially Saigon) and of the urban lives, such as the loneliness and alienation of young people. The term „young writers‟ refer to authors who were mostly born after 1975 and who currently live in Ho Chi Minh City. 1. Saigon as the metropole in its history Urban is defined by multiple criteria; among them was the economic structure. In particular, an area called urban based on the industrial economy and commerce. While many researchers have pointed out the agriculture culture in Thang Long-Dong Do-Hanoi4, Gia Dinh was a land of trade when the Nguyen Lords formally established the Vietnamese sovereignty by appointing Nguyen Huu Canh to build up Gia Đinh province in the South Vietnam in 1698. Although Gia Đinh, an administrative center in the South, was the old-model urban established by the Nguyen Lords, it just lasted only in 1.5 centuries. The period of French suzerainty marked the beginning of modern Saigon since 1859. In the beginning, construction work in Saigon was on a reduced scale, mostly because of the French‟s pending the occupation and pacification of the northern and central parts of Vietnam. Since 1990, there have been construction projects on transportation or communications as the result of prospering commerce in Saigon5. Chinese businessmen, serving as intermediaries to distribute products and to collect raw materials for export to France, made Cho Lon became more prosperous than Saigon. Consequently, roads were caused to appear to connect two cities. Rail linkages connected Saigon with the central and the North Vietnam. Direct land and sea communication were strong. The rapid economic development attracted people from many areas to come to Saigon, made the city more merry and bustling. Having become a crossroad of French culture and cosmopolitan, the city‟s outlook was conditioned as the mini France in Vietnam: boulevards with tree-lined, streets were widened, restaurants, clubs or restaurants were opened everywhere. The city, at that time, was soliloquized as the Pearl of The Orient6,7. Along with the rapid growth of the city was the opening of factories governed by the French. Farmers became more impoverished, pushed into factories and formed working class in Saigon. The features of urban clearly emerged, such as class conflict between capitalist and workers, rich and poor people‟s conflict, the matter of impoverishment, the problem of crimes and so on. More importantly, the cohesion in community under blood ties, which built up noble families in Thang Long, did not exist in this new urban. After the Geneva Agreement in 1954, which divided the North and South Vietnam at the 17th parallel, Saigon became the capital of the Republic of Vietnam. The wave of refugees from the North Vietnam and many displaced persons drifted to Saigon added heavy load to this city8. However, during the period from 1975 to 1986, Ho Chi Minh City under the leadership of the communist regime seemed faded its „urbanity‟. Since 1986, the government created the „socialist-oriented market economy‟ as a product of economic reforms (Renovation period). It helped to boost the country‟s economy and to replace the centrally-planned economy with a state-owned economy. Consequently, the writing activity of authors became more relaxing though the publishing activity was still controlled by the government. 4 Thu Tứ (2015), “Thôi một nước quê”, Hồn Việt, (1), p.11-13. 5 According to the monograph prepared by James E. Bogle. AIP, Dialectics of Urban Proposals for the Saigon Metropolitan Area, January 1972, p.10. 6 According to James E.Bogle‟s monograph, in 1865, the population of Saigon was estimated 8,000 and rapidly rose to 33,000 in 1897. It reached to 67,000 in 1913 and 143,000 in 1926. The arrival of Chinese to Cho Lon to escape the Sino-Japanese War before Word War II made Cho Lon become the most prosperous business center in Saigon. By 1939, the overall population of Saigon and Cho Lon was about 540,000.

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