After all, how can we not have something to say about what we do for most of our waking hours?  As time went on, however, I came to understand that these conversations were about more than passing the time or practicing my Vietnamese.  I came to treasure these conversations for the way they provided a window on how real human beings were living incredible processes of change at a particular moment in Vietnam’s history, yet at the same time revealed experiences and values that resonate across time and space to speak to all of us.

Beginning in 2010, I began challenging my students to have these sorts of conversations in a more structured way, and Project Kiếm ăn was born.  As we said in our introduction to the project,

• Translated literally from Vietnamese, “kiếm ăn” means “forage” or “look for food.”  In addition to describing what every living creature does to survive, it’s also a slang term for working.  By using this term, we want to emphasize that no matter what the outward form, every occupation shares the same basic concern of making a living.  That means that the people we interview as part of this project are not just CEOs and factory managers. They’re garbage pickers and mobile phone saleswomen, advertising executives and sex workers, motorbike parkers and rice farmers, promotion girls and drug dealers.  All of the interviews are intended to help us develop a better understanding of the reality of working in Vietnam today, and through that, a better understanding of the reality of living in a period of incredible change in the nation’s economy, society, and culture.

 

Over the course of two years, we conducted more than 150 interviews, and made many of them available on a project website in both English and Vietnamese. It’s a living brings together some of the best interviews from Project Kiếm ăn with photographs by Mai Huyền Chi. The result is a remarkable window on ordinary life in Vietnam today, and a testament to the millions women and men who get out of bed in the morning – or work through the night – not just to provide for themselves and their family but to make the crazy beautiful place called Vietnam possible.

Source: gerardsasges