What Does It Mean to Be Vietnamese?

In Vietnam, being Vietnamese is often described in poetic phrases: “yellow skin and red blood,” or “descendants of dragons and fairies.” These words come from our myths, reminders that we are tied to something ancient, proud, and unbroken. In historic moments, being Vietnamese has meant marching in the streets, waving flags, reliving the days our country claimed independence, the days our grandparents paid for with their lives.

But when I close my eyes, being Vietnamese feels less like a grand parade and more like something ordinary. It’s the weight of a warm bowl of rice in my hands. It’s slurping noodles on a pavement stool in the heat of a summer afternoon. It’s opening my mouth and letting Vietnamese spill out without needing to translate or thinking if the verb is at the right tense. It feels like the cool side of a blanket, familiar and safe. It’s also chaos. It’s the roar of motorbikes at a junction in Hanoi. It’s the steam fogging up the kitchen as I rush to finish dishes before the cúng cơm deadline. For me, being Vietnamese is a blend of calm and chaos, like a small fishing boat rocking on the sea: steady, but never still.

Pride, performance and belonging

Living abroad, the question of identity feels heavier. On TikTok, I see people waving flags, joining patriotic challenges, choreographing pride into 30-second clips. Sometimes I wonder if I should join in. Is that the measure of belonging now, likes, shares, and hashtags?

A family member once asked me, “Why haven’t you done anything online to show your pride?” I drafted a reply I never sent: I speak Vietnamese fluently. I share my culture and history whenever I get asked. Why should I need one event to prove it, when I live it every day?

But silence is costly. When you don’t join in, it can feel as though you’ve failed a roll call. Not “Vietnamese enough”. Yet leaning too far in the other direction carries a different risk. I live in the UK, and here my identity is already flattened into a single word: Vietnamese. Or sometimes not even that, Chinese, Thai, Filipino, depending on who is guessing. If I perform my “pride” too loudly, then perhaps that becomes the only thing I am allowed to be.

That is the paradox: too little pride, and I appear detached from my roots; too much, and everything else about me disappears. Either way, part of me is erased.

Hiding and reclaiming

I know what it feels like to hide. Before I ever arrived in the UK, I chose the name Lily so landlords would reply to my emails. At Gatwick, Lily stepped forward, introducing herself to every stranger. Even now, my partner calls me Lily, though he knows my legal name. Slowly, I am beginning to reclaim it, introducing myself more often as Ly, carrying a piece of home in a name that feels like mine again.

I have also wrestled with my place within the Vietnamese diaspora. I actively avoid certain communities here, especially those tied to illegal migration. Their stories in the headlines were filled with tax evasion, scams, or weed farms, destroying the value of my passport and many more's.

But I also know many who arrived the same way decades earlier, and who built the businesses that keep my culture alive in the UK. Thanks to them, I can buy the chilli sauce of my childhood, eat at Vietnamese restaurants, or get my nails done by someone who speaks the same language as my mother.

That contradiction is hard to untangle: pride and shame, love and resentment, knotted together. Perhaps it comes from the Asian instinct to be humble, to actively point out "imperfections" that people might never notice because "what would people say"...

So what am I, really?

For me, being Vietnamese is not about waving flags or posting hashtags, nor is it about living up to someone else’s checklist of “Vietnamese enough.” It is not one dramatic gesture or a single performance tied to a date on the calendar.

It is in the small, everyday things. The way Vietnamese flows from my mouth without thinking if the verb was in the right tense. The way I explain my country to others so it isn’t reduced to 3 words: war, cheap, exotic. The way I stay politically neutral when people online argue over who “fled” Vietnam after the war and who “chose” to leave, knowing that history is more complicated than any binary.

It is also in my choices. Living here, I once hid behind “Lily” because it was easier. Now I am learning to step forward as Ly, to let my name carry its own weight, even if it is mispronounced. It is the way I choose which communities to engage with, balancing pride in the businesses that sustain our culture with unease at the headlines that stigmatise us.

Being Vietnamese, for me, is not a fixed identity but a negotiation. Between pride and shame, visibility and invisibility, memory and reinvention. Some days it feels like a burden; other days, like an inheritance.

One day, if I have children, their version of Vietnamese will be different again. I do not know what it will look like, but I know what I will pass on: the rhythm of our language, the memory of making family feasts at my grandmother’s house, and her honey roasted chicken recipe (if I'm lucky).

Perhaps that is what being Vietnamese really is: not one label, not one performance, but the constant work of carrying contradictions and choosing, every day, what to keep alive.