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Are the vietnamese immigrants and vietnamese americans largely ethnic vietnamese or are they overseas chinese from Vietnam?
I have met lots of vietnamese who are actually of chinese extraction, and been to many "vietnamese" that are actually run by people who can speak a dialect of chinese. They identify themselves as vietnamese or vietnamese chinese.
Does anyone know what the percentages are? Are these chinese vietnamese actually a small percentage of the vietnames diaspora? Also do they tend to move to different areas? Like do the ethnic vietnamese live in certains states or communities, and the chinese vietnamese in other areas.
Given that China occupied Vietnam for hundreds of years, I would assume many vietnamese have chinese blood.
My experience in the US is that there are Chinese Vietnamese and Vietnamese Vietnamese. Chinese VN tended to be the merchant class and therefore run many restaurants and businesses both in the US and Vietnam. I believe the chinese VN tended to be from Saigon (now HCMC) as it was the commerce center of VN while the communists tended to be from the north like Hanoi and were "true" Vietnamese.
I think Chinese being commerce oriented is pretty common throughout Asia (Malaysia, Phillipines, etc)
For example, the Sriracha guy/founder is Chinese Vietnamese. Also Charles Phan, who is founder of the popular Slanted Door restaurant in San Francsico is also Chinese Vietnamese. I believe Phan is a Chinese Vietnamese last name
My VN friend told me the Vietnamese who fled Vietnam and who moved to the city of San Francisco were Chinese Vietnamese while the Vietnamese Vietnamese tended to live in San Jose.
I dont have any hard numbers or stats for this, just my observations and anecdotes from friends..
Quote:
Originally Posted by NJ Brazen_3133
Are the vietnamese immigrants and vietnamese americans largely ethnic vietnamese or are they overseas chinese from Vietnam?
I have met lots of vietnamese who are actually of chinese extraction, and been to many "vietnamese" that are actually run by people who can speak a dialect of chinese. They identify themselves as vietnamese or vietnamese chinese.
Does anyone know what the percentages are? Are these chinese vietnamese actually a small percentage of the vietnames diaspora? Also do they tend to move to different areas? Like do the ethnic vietnamese live in certains states or communities, and the chinese vietnamese in other areas.
Chinese Vietnamese does not mean an admixture of the two. It means their ancestors were ethnic Chinese who immigrated to Vietnam. And clearly the fact that you're interacting with them now means somewhere down the line, they left Vietnam and immigrated again. Many of the diasporas took place after the war.
In Vietnam, ethnic Chinese are a minority. Ethnic Chinese are present to varying percentages through out Southeast Asia as minorities and are usually merchants and business people. You can easily tell a Chinese from a native Malay in Malaysia or Indonesia or Philippines obviously. The appearance is markedly different, and they do not look like they are the same race and are not.
As for Vietnam, the northern ones look more Chinese and in the south, they look more Malay/Thai.
Singapore is a Chinese majority country. I know Singapore immigrants to the US and they declare themselves as Chinese Americans publicly and in official forms. This is a Chinese woman of Singaporean nationality who played Jackie Chan's sister in Shanghai Knights
Chinese Vietnamese does not mean an admixture of the two. It means their ancestors were ethnic Chinese who immigrated to Vietnam. And clearly the fact that you're interacting with them now means somewhere down the line, they left Vietnam and immigrated again. Many of the diasporas took place after the war.
In Vietnam, ethnic Chinese are a minority. Ethnic Chinese are present to varying percentages through out Southeast Asia as minorities and are usually merchants and business people. You can easily tell a Chinese from a native Malay in Malaysia or Indonesia or Philippines obviously. The appearance is markedly different, and they do not look like they are the same race and are not.
As for Vietnam, the northern ones look more Chinese and in the south, they look more Malay/Thai.
Singapore is a Chinese majority country. I know Singapore immigrants to the US and they declare themselves as Chinese Americans publicly and in official forms. This is a Chinese woman of Singaporean nationality who played Jackie Chan's sister in Shanghai Knights
I am actually aware of the overseas chinese in southeast asia. I am more less just referring to what is considered the Vietnamese Diaspora in the americas
Last edited by NJ Brazen_3133; 03-31-2014 at 05:08 PM..
Most Vietnamese boat people were not ethnic Chinese (Hoa) at all. In the first wave in 1975, they made up 14 percent of the refugees. About 40% of all Chinese-Vietnamese in the U.S. today arrived between 1979-1981. In 2013 the Hoa made up around 11.5 percent of the Vietnamese American population of over 1.7 million.
Source:
Trieu, M.M. (2013). Chinese-Vietnamese Americans. In X. Zhao, & E.J. Park (Eds.), Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History (pp. 305-310). Santa Barbara, USA: Greenwood.
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