Expatriates eager to promote homeland images

      Nguyen Nga, who has lived in France since the age of 10, has never forgotten her Vietnamese origin and has devoted herself to promoting her homeland’s culture for years, throughout her university studies.
Every lunar New Year festival, the daughter of the Vietnamese motherland has held performances of folk dances and love song duets. She has also compiled a collection of bilingual, illustrated children’s books of fairy tales in Vietnamese and French. It is a body of myth that not only helps children of Vietnamese origin to further understand their ancestors’ culture, but also opens up a window on a different culture for French children.
On a return trip to Vietnam , she built a small museum called “Maison des Arts” (House of Arts) in Hanoi , drawing a large number of foreign visitors. The museum has employed a team of skilful interpreters to introduce Vietnamese culture to the guests from abroad.
Nga is not the only example of a Vietnamese overseas bringing images of her home country to the world. A Vietnamese-German painter, Doan Thanh, has used her skills to portray a simple and peaceful Vietnam with people of gentle character, through portraits of ethnic minority girls and scenes of Northeastern forests, heavy with dew.
Her pictures have been exhibited across Germany and several other European countries, winning accolades from her colleagues.
Composer Nguyen Thien Dao has been living in France over 50 years with a deep love to the motherland of Vietnam. His patriotism has inspired him to compose numerous epic and lyric songs full of images of his native land, touching millions of hearts.
From his first work, “Fatherland Stronghold” to his most recent, “Soul Waves” composed for the 990 th anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi, his entire opus has reflected his passion for the place of his birth.
Truong Thi Quyen chose another way to express herself--through culinary arts, to promote her native land’s culture abroad. Her Little Asia restaurant in Brussels offers a number of delicious Vietnamese dishes. The Vietnamese-Belgian has used Vietnamese traditional arts in decorating her restaurant, where lotus images are engraved on the walls, painted on household utensils and embroidered on traditional tunics worn by the waitresses.
Her book of over 80 dishes popular in different parts of Vietnam at once sparked a fever for Vietnamese foods in Belgium . Pork paste, rice noodles (called ‘pho’), steamed rolled rice pancakes and beef noodles of the former imperial city of Hue have breathed new life to Brussels citizens.
In the book’s foreword, famous chef Peter Goossen wrote that Vietnamese foods are the most elegant and diverse in Southeast Asia as they are mostly cooked from fresh materials, with a good quantity of fresh vegetables, and the scent of dill floating in the air.
She aims to eventually publish an English-language cookbook on Vietnamese cuisine for foodies across the world. But, for the immediate future, Quyen is to publish a book on 50 Vietnamese dishes with medicinal value, letting people know that Vietnamese foods are both delicious and healthy.