Vietnamese boat people (Vietnamese: Thuyền nhân Việt Nam) were refugees who fled Vietnam by boat and ship following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. This migration and humanitarian crisis was at its highest in the late 70s and early 80s, but continued well into the early 1990s. The term is also often used generically to refer to the Vietnamese people who left their country in a mass exodus between 1975 and 1995 (see Indochina refugee crisis). This article uses the term "boat people" to apply only to those who fled Vietnam by sea.
The number of boat people leaving Vietnam and arriving safely in another country totaled almost 800,000 between 1975 and 1995. Many of the refugees failed to survive the passage, facing danger from pirates, over-crowded boats, and storms. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, between 200,000 and 400,000 boat people died at sea. The boat people's first destinations were Hong Kong and the Southeast Asian locations of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Tensions stemming from Vietnam's disputes with Cambodia and China in 1978 and 1979 caused an exodus of the majority of the Hoa people from Vietnam, many of whom fled by boat to China. (Full article...)
Image 6Hanging fishing nets in the Cu Đê River, just before it merges with Da Nang Bay
Image 7Water puppetry, lit. "Making puppets dance on water") is a tradition that dates back as far as the 11th century when it originated in the villages of the Red River Delta area of northern Vietnam.
Image 8Dong Ho painting is a line of Vietnamese folk painting originating in Đông Hồ village (Song Hồ commune, Thuận Thành District, Bắc Ninh Province.
Image 9Hồ Chí Minh attended French Communist Congress in Marseilles in 1921 under the name Nguyễn Ái Quốc.
... that Trần Lập was involved in Vietnam's first internet copyright lawsuit?
... that Charles Larson became one of the first Americans to teach African literature, after working in Nigeria for the Peace Corps to avoid the Vietnam draft?
... that Don Luce led a group of Americans to a secret part of a South Vietnamese prison where inmates were kept in squalor in what were called "tiger cages"?
... that the owner of the bus service connecting the two largest Vietnamese-American communities in the United States was the target of an assassination plot by a competitor?
... that wushu athlete Nguyễn Thúy Hiền was voted the best Vietnamese female athlete of the 20th century?
Image 5A trio of Vietnamese musicians performing together. The man on the far left plays kèn đám ma, the man in the middle plays the đàn nhị and the man on the right plays the trống chầu. (from Culture of Vietnam)
Image 1319th-century manuscript of "Mysterious tales of the Southern Realm" (Lĩnh Nam chích quái), a copy of 15th-century original tale. (from Culture of Vietnam)
Image 14A Kinh Vietnamese woman with blackened teeth. (from Culture of Vietnam)