Nguyen Thi My Huong graduated from Hue University’s College of Education in 2002 and came to Taiwan in 2005 to pursue a master’s degree in Chinese Literature at National Sun Yat-Sen University. After completing that degree in 2008, she continued on to doctoral level, finally receiving her PhD in 2016 after eight years of hard graft. Over her 11 years of study in Taiwan, besides earning her two postgraduate degrees she published 11 conference papers and four journal articles, and in the meantime also acquired a Taiwanese husband and a lovely daughter.

She also has 15 years’ experience as a teacher of Vietnamese and has worked with Vietnam-based Taiwanese companies on industry‡academia projects. It was these experiences that led to publisher Linking Books seeking Huong out and asking her to write two books on business Vietnamese, designed to meet the needs of businesspeople in Vietnam and with an emphasis on practical and efficient language.

Practical and efficient could also be an accurate portrait of Huong herself. She grew up in a family that was of scant means, but very close and mutually supportive. Her mother, an ele­ment­ary school teacher, was the family breadwinner. Her father, meanwhile, had been injured in the war, but with the meager state support not enough to raise children on, he turned to farming. Huong is their eldest daughter and worked her way through university, earning enough to pay for tuition and living expenses while also saving a little to send home to help her younger siblings pursue higher education and lighten the load on their parents. “My little sister graduated with a medical degree, and my little brother also completed university. Now both of them have good jobs, which is a huge relief for me,” she says.

Nguyen Thi My Huong and her daughter on a visit to Vietnam to holiday with Huong’s family. (courtesy of Nguyen Thi My Huong)

Tackling clashes of culture head-on

Huong’s academic journey, though, was far from a smooth one. In Vietnam, she studied Chinese at Hue University’s College of Education. There the focus had been on learning the language itself, but when she came to Taiwan, her attention turned to Chinese literature, focusing more on artistic forms of linguistic expression. The two are so thoroughly different that it was just like starting over. The doctoral program in Chinese Literature at National Sun Yat-Sen University is famously tough. “If it hadn’t have been for the support of my husband and our wonderful daughter,” says ­Huong, “I probably wouldn’t have been able to get through it.”

She took on the challenge head-on with two doctoral dissertations, “The Naturalist Poetry of Nguyen Trai” and “A Study of Trinh Hoai Duc’s ‘Can Trai Thi Tap.’” Her choice to study Nguyen Trai (1380–1442) and Trinh Hoai Duc (1765–1825) was motivated by their cultural and historical significance—both are just as famous for their poetry as they are as political figures. “Both had a huge influence on future generations through how they passed on and evolved Vietnamese literature,” she says.

Nguyen Thi My Huong makes her own teaching aids to help train Vietnamese language teachers for Taiwanese elementary and middle schools. (courtesy of Nguyen Thi My Huong)

Taiwan’s first Vietnamese cultural center

Language cannot exist in a vacuum. To learn it well, you need to also understand the cultural pulse that gives it life. In her role with the Vietnamese Studies Program at National University of Kao­hsiung’s Department of East Asian Languages and Literature, ­Nguyen Thi My ­Huong has worked with the school to set up a Vietnamese Cultural Center. Initially, the center suffered a lack of funds, and so ­Huong paid for various Vietnamese cultural items out of her own pocket, including nón lá farmer’s hats, farming tools, and traditional clothing. In addition to these, ­Nguyen Van ­Khanh, former rector of VNU University of Social Sciences, which is National University of Kao­hsiung’s sister school, kindly donated 1,200 books in Vietnamese. And so Taiwan’s first Vietnamese cultural center was born, giving Taiwan-based readers a better place to learn about Vietnam.

So how can you tell if you’ve learned Vietnamese well? One important way of evaluating that is through public language proficiency exams. Up to 2013, Taiwan had no Vietnamese language certification that was offici­ally recognized by Vietnam. As director of the Center for Vietnamese Studies at NUK, Nguyen Thi My Huong had repeatedly been in contact with VNU University of Social Sciences and Humanities, which hosts Vietnam’s official language proficiency test, to organize a test for Taiwan. In 2013 she finally obtained authorization, and now anyone in Taiwan can take the official Vietnamese Proficiency Test. This has been an enormous boon to exchange and employment opportunities between the two countries.

Nguyen Thi My Huong worked hard to set up a Vietnam Cultural Center, creating a place where students can learn about and experience Vietnamese culture.

Dedicating their skills to public service

“Language isn’t just a tool for communication, but also for life,” says ­Huong. School is just the start, and students need to prepare early for their careers after the classroom. From her long-term observations as an educator, ­Huong has found that 20% or more of college students today are from low-income households. In a class of 12, that means three are likely to be from such circumstances. The Kao­hsiung City Social Affairs Bureau defines a low-­income family as one with an average monthly income of less than NT$12,941 per person. Moreover, among these young people living in poverty, those from single-­parent families account for more than 15% of students each year. To help such students have opportunities to develop, Huong helps them secure corporate sponsorships, or grants from the Ministry of Education or other public bodies, as well as seeking out chances for them to study or intern in Vietnam.

Drawing from her own experience, ­Nguyen Thi My Huong encourages her students to put their language skills to use in the civil service, not only inviting past students to share their experience of preparing for the Civil Service Special Examination for Immigration Personnel, but also working with the National Immigration ­Agency’s Kao­hsiung City First Service Center to get students intern­ships with the agency. Every year the special exams for Vietnamese­-speaking immigration personnel lead to ten people being hired, and the top five of these are consistently ­Huong’s students. In fact, so strong are their performances that one time it was actually the top six.

By playing an active role in public affairs and in fostering industry–academia cooperation with Taiwanese businesses in Vietnam, Nguyen Thi My Huong has become an important player in exchange between Taiwan and Vietnam.

A bridge between worlds

Huong also encourages her students to challenge themselves by getting involved in other lines of work. Each year, she invites former students to come and share their experiences of working in Vietnam.

Among them have been two particular success stories—Wu Jun­sheng, a responsible student and excellent learner, who has shone in his work in Vietnam for a Taiwanese employer, and Lin Ci’en, who earned a Vietnamese-­language tour guide license and now works as a guide for a travel agency. These students’ experiences have somewhat mirrored those of Huong’s own siblings, escaping the shackles of poverty to take to the skies in success.

Having married into a Taiwanese family, integrated into Taiwanese life, and become a capable user of both Chinese and her native Vietnamese, ­Nguyen Thi My ­Huong has become an important bridge between her two homelands. She leads a simple life. Beyond her home life, she has committed herself to teaching, public affairs, and industry‡academia cooperation. Like the lotus, Vietnam’s national flower, she has grown from humble circumstances to set down resilient roots and bring brightness and color to the world around her.