How we're using the Vietnamese ethnic savings scheme 'Hụi' to buy back our cultural heritage
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Giovedì, Luglio 6, 2023
Poverty, Small business, Partnership, He (letter), Housing, Violence, Crime, Exhibition, Private law, Fall of Saigon, Culture, War, Myth, Holiday, Australian, Viaduto do Chá, Sydney Opera House, Museum, Lifting, White Australia policy, First Nations, Policy, System, Aunt, Sydney Opera House Trust, Tourism, Drug, Entertainment, Health insurance, Auction, Footscray
This clandestine loan-savings scheme was a way for low-income Vietnamese refugees to buy their first family car, start a small business or make a home deposit.
Key Points:
- This clandestine loan-savings scheme was a way for low-income Vietnamese refugees to buy their first family car, start a small business or make a home deposit.
- They survive today in rural areas and overseas diaspora communities who have struggled to secure bank loans and legal credit.
- It is interesting that multiple cultures across the Moana-Pacific use the term “Hui” to describe a collective gathering or negotiation.
Vietnamese diaspora
- With this mass intake, fragmented resettlement programs and unreliable social and legal services compounded the realities of post-traumatic stress and poverty.
- The outer suburbs where our families could afford to live – Cabramatta, Footscray, Richmond, and Inala – quickly gained a reputation for gang violence, becoming infamous as the drug-riddled Vietnamese ghettos of the eastern seaboard.
Collective sharing
- Class affiliations meant people could reconnect through well-established social networks to form tightly regulated Hụi clubs wherever we resettled.
- Monthly payments could range anywhere between $200 and $5,000, depending on the risk tolerance and income bracket of each club.
- These collective savings schemes were risky, with no legal recourse if members decided to Dựt Hụi, or “do a runner”.
- Intrinsically collective and self-determined, Hụi encourages unexpected forms of cultural agency and mobilisation beyond institutional permission or containment.
Playing the Đông Sơn Drum
- The Đông Sơn Drum is an ancient ceremonial instrument woven into the mythology and identity of Vietnamese people.
- These drums are held in colonial museums and ethnographic collections the world over.
- We had the quick cash to purchase a Đông Sơn drum when it came up at a local estate auction.