Produced for VnExpress
Traceurs, freerunners defy law of urban jungle
Hanoi youth are finding creative expression in the disciplines of parkour and freerunning, cultivating both brain and brawn.
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HUE N.
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
$350 - $400 / Day
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Thanh Hue is a Vietnamese photographer currently based in Ho Chi Minh City. Her focus is on documentary photography and human-centered issues, specifically private living spaces. Hue began her career documenting groups that spontaneously migrate and lived in residential areas in Hanoi in 2019. After graduating at the Academy of Journalism and Communication in the same year, she worked as a photo correspondent for VnExpress - the most read Vietnamese newspaper and covered news and lifestyle stories. In late 2020, she joined Reuters as a locally based stringer, covering news around Vietnam. Her works have been seen in Reuters, The Washington Post, US News,... among others.
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Floating lives in the capital
For the past 20 years, the boat anchored along the Red river has been the home to hundreds of migrant workers from Ba Vi, a district on the outskirt of Hanoi. Moving to the capital with the hope of earning a living, they rented a small space on the boat with a low rent of 10,000VND (~0,44USD) a day per person that includes clean water, which is much cheaper than that on land. From 50 to 70 people share the living space on the two-level boat, tied to an iron staircase on the Red River bank by a rope. Cheap rent means low living quality; on the edge of downtown Hanoi surrounded by luminous streets, they have been living without electricity for decades. In the evening, few outsiders can tell from the flickering light source of battery-powered bulbs that there are people living on that boat. 27 years is a period long enough for a person to move on to a new stage in life. Within that time, Hanoi has transformed radically, with new buildings and infrastructures incessantly sprouting up. Yet the boat that dates back to 1992 remains unchanged, continuously providing shelter for generations of workers migrating from Ba Vi to the capital city to make ends meet. Married couples move to Hanoi with a view to supporting their children back home, and many children drop out of school to come here and help contribute to their family income.
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Life in the Boxes
Faced with high living costs in the Hanoi capital, uncontracted migrants from adjacent provinces, most of whom work as porters or small retailers in Long Bien or Dong Xuan market have resorted to shabby accommodation built by locals, many of which are unfinished but already rented out at a lower rate. Cheap rent means low living quality. Each room with 2 to 5 people resides in a boxy bedroom occupant range from 800,000 VND to 2,000,000 VND a month. In a tight space that can accommodate only a bed and a few necessities, each family figures their own way to give their temporary residence a homely feel, be it placing a flat board upon some bricks to make a bed or taping a wedding photo on an unplastered wall. Without a window, the only thing that connects the room with the world is the entrance door. Though spontaneously built up with impermanent properties, these spaces have existed for decades, along with the increasingly rapid growth of low-income worker communities from adjacent provinces. As time goes by, perhaps such spaces have become a home, not only a dwelling place but also an anchor for their lengthened stay in this city.
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