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Ly May Hanh - a 22-year-old woman used to be a tour guide and interpreter for owners of fruit shops in Lao Cai City. By interpreting the number of goods, converting Chinese yuan to Vietnamese dong, or concluding contracts, Hanh could earn a handsome sum of money. Hanh kept thinking that the local economy could not grow further if people in her place kept doing farm work, selling brocade items and medicinal products. She said that every time a passenger coach dropped by, around 20-30 Dao people dashed forward, some offering brocade and others selling medicinal plants to the visitors. Some days, they were scolded and driven away by visitors. Having chances to expand her knowledge, Hanh thinks that tourism will help the locals reduce poverty and no longer be afraid of suffering poor harvests. However, when she introduced her plan, the people there laughed and said there is no need to work as tour guides as they already earn good money selling medicinal products. Faced with disagreement, Hanh continued to do her best to talk to each person to convince them to do tourism with her. As the result, the Ta Phin Community Tourism Cooperative was founded in 2019. Unfortunately, when COVID-19 hit and left the tourism sector hibernating in Sa Pa, the co-op struggled to stay in business. However, this is also an opportunity to prepare for a strong comeback. Thanks to the cooperative, people now have a common voice and have started working together on tourism, so they no longer have to compete on prices and services. After joining hands to do tourism, the sense of community among the local people is enhanced, adding they have changed awareness about environmental sanitation and improved their service quality. By doing wholehearted tourism, the cooperative not only preserves the culture of the Dao people but also brings more and more visitors to Ta Phin Hamlet and creates a steady income, especially after Vietnam reopened its doors to international visitors post-pandemic.

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Thinking back to 2018, Ly May Hanh said that every time a passenger coach passed by, around 20-30 people of the Dao, an ethnic group in Vietnam, rushed forward, with some offering brocade and others selling medicinal plants to the visitors.

Some days, they could not sell anything.

When visitors are nearing Ta Phin bamboo forest, a tourist hotspot in Ta Phin Hamlet, Sa Pa Town in northern Lao Cai Province, a cool breeze comes up as a welcome relief to them especially after they have had to cross a bumpy trail with rocky mountains on one side and a deep abyss on the other.

The sounds of forest birds twittering and leaves rustling mingle with admiring voices of the young visitors.

Looking at Hanh's smiling face when she tells her stories about the bamboo forest and the culture of the Dao people in Ta Phin, little does one know that this 22-year-old woman used to be a tour guide and interpreter for owners of fruit shops in Lao Cai City, the provincial capital.

By interpreting the number of goods, converting Chinese yuan to Vietnamese dong, or concluding contracts, Hanh could earn a handsome sum of money.
Talking the locals around
"I received VND500,000 [US$22] for each hour of working as a Chinese interpreter in Lao Cai City," Hanh said.

"I worked three to four hours a day.

"My main job was helping fruit shop owners interpret the quantity and prices of commodities, or contracts.

"By 2019, I had to go home to get married.

"Around half a year later, although I had a baby, financial woes plus leading a confined life at home prompted me to go to Lai Chau and Lao Cai to work as an interpreter and get paid VND600,000 [$26] per day."

During the half-year period at home, Hanh kept thinking that if people in her place kept doing farm work, selling brocade items and medicinal products, the local economy could not grow further.

Having chances to travel to many places and meet many people, Hanh thinks that tourism will help the locals reduce poverty and no longer be afraid of suffering poor harvests.

However, when she introduced her plan, the people there laughed, saying, "May Hanh, you're thinking too far. We already can earn good money through the sale of medicinal plants and brocade, there is no need to work as tour guides."

"Getting rich by doing sustainable tourism sounds great, but not everyone understands how to jointly grow," Hanh said.

"When joining training classes, I know that not everything being sold at a high price is good.

"Developing tourism while making sure to preserve our identity and culture values is definitely sustainable in the long run."

In 2018, Hanh said that every time a passenger coach dropped by, around 20-30 Dao people dashed forward, some offering brocade and others selling medicinal plants to the visitors.

Some days, they were scolded and driven away by visitors.

"I have to chat with each person to persuade them to do tourism with me," Hanh continued.

"In my spare time, I help young people learn about Confucian culture and patterns on Dao costumes to introduce them to visitors."
Spreading sense of community for tourism development
As shared by Ly Ta May, head of the Ta Phin Community Tourism Cooperative, people now have a common voice and have begun working in tourism together so they no longer have to compete on prices and services after the cooperative was founded in 2019.

Instead of hiking the price of the traditional Dao herbal baths and lowering that of homestay services, they have common rules to follow when offering tourism services.

After joining hands to do tourism, the sense of community among the local people is enhanced, May said, adding they have changed awareness about environmental sanitation and improved their service quality to attract more visitors.

Being endowed with beautiful landscapes, Ta Phinh is also known as the kingdom of herbs. Local kids aged 7-8 join their parents or grandparents in picking herbs on farms.

The locals have incorporated these precious herbal remedies into the tourism development model.

"There are herbal remedies for bathing, treating diseases, relaxing, and restoring health such as keng pi diang," Hanh said.

"This is a precious medicine so we want to share it with domestic and foreign visitors."

Besides being home to a wide array of herbs, Ta Phin has attracted more and more visitors, especially after Vietnam reopened its doors to international visitors post-pandemic.

Thanks to the locals' efforts in preserving the beautiful landscapes and ancient houses, incomes are more stable, with some managing to build new houses.

"I work as a secretary and tour guide concurrently so it was hard at first," Hanh shared.

"Some young guides in the hamlet are charming and skillful but they are not confident.

"They don't prefer Vietnamese tour groups, explaining that Vietnamese visitors are demanding.

"There was a time when a group of tourists were visiting the bamboo forest, it rained suddenly. Many people blamed me for not updating the weather forecast news."

Such difficulties are now over. Hanh just hopes to welcome more visitors so that people can have better income.

Many young people are trying to finish their study at junior high school level to pursue a tourism career, as they all know that the career will help them have a stable income and preserve the culture of the Dao people, Hanh said, with a radiant smile.

Founded in 2019, the Ta Phin Community Tourism Cooperative was struggling to maintain operations when COVID-19 broke out and left the tourism sector in Sa Pa in hibernation, as this mountainous tourist hotspot became deserted.

However, this is also an opportunity for the cooperative to perfect its tourism services and make preparations for a strong comeback in this year's travel season.

By doing wholehearted tourism, incomes have gradually stabilized.

The cooperative now has 38 members, mainly women, and is divided into five groups in terms of homestay services, local guides, Dao herbal bathing services, the traditional craft village, and mountain trekking.

Each household has a person aged over 18 as a core member.

Some households even have two to three young members.
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vietnam life - young vietnamese woman endeavors to preserve dao culture

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Young Vietnamese woman endeavors to preserve Dao culture

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Thinking back to 2018, Ly May Hanh said that every time a passenger coach passed by, around 20-30 people of the Dao, an ethnic group in Vietnam, rushed forward, with some offering brocade and others selling medicinal plants to the visitors. Some days, they could not sell anything.

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Some people think young people should follow the traditions of their society. Others think that they should be free to behave as individuals. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

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Some people think young people should follow the traditions of their society. Others think that they should be free to behave as individuals. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

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Tradition is a set of ideas or values that have existed for a long time, handed down from the oldest generations to the youngest ones. It has always been a necessary part of our life. However, to the rising generation, acting on your own wish can define yourself as an individual. Despite the belief that the young should adhere to their community’s culture, several people think that they should be allowed to act as they want. From my perspective, behaving independently might outweigh the act of conforming to traditional cultures.

First and foremost, adopting society’s traditions can bring people a source of manners lessons, or moral values. It is considered that people are products of the values and norms of the society they lived in. Tradition can influence every part of an individual's life as it affects the way they dress, eat, express their daily routine, and interact with others. Therefore, when youngsters follow traditional values, they can become more self-disciplined and well-behaved in every way of life. For instance, Vietnamese children are always taught to be deferential to their older family members, which will make a strong connection in their family and also in their social life. We cannot deny the importance of traditional beliefs provided when children and adolescents concur in following them.

Despite the above-mentioned view, I would side with those who choose to behave independently as they can arrive at their way of life. There are some traditions in the form of social biases that are detrimental to people, especially women. Gender inequality happens widely in Vietnam’s remote and inaccessible areas due to the antiquated ideas of ethnic traditions by their ancestors; for example, most of the Vietnamese ethnic minority women are responsible only for child-bearing and child-rearing, they cannot have the right to choose what they do to their bodies and their lives. As a human, I think everyone should have the chance to make decisions by themselves without the assessment of their society’s traditional beliefs. Furthermore, people can express the characteristics that make them one of a kind in society by having freedom in their behaviors. To illustrate, the young can wear dresses based on their interests without carefully considering that traditional customs are necessary for specific events such as the Tet holiday. This may lead to the opportunity of developing their own styles at their discretion, which will contribute to their unique identity.

In conclusion, while pursuing traditions brings us many moral values, I believe that youngsters should act upon their own spirits as long as they would behave rationally and appropriately.

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When people move to another country, some of them decide to follow the customs of the new country. Others prefer to keep their own customs. Discuss both views.

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When people move to another country, some of them decide to follow the customs of the new country. Others prefer to keep their own customs. Discuss both views.

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Culture is the soul of a nation, the representation identity of every country in the world. However, thanks to globalization, many people tend to leave their countries and settle down in other nations. Despite the trend of cultural integration, there are several cultural conflicts that exist. Some immigrants attempt to adapt to the custom of that country, while others preserve their old national customs. I would discuss both views in the following paragraph.

On the one hand, endeavoring to integrate with totally new and different customs will give you a comfortable life. It can not be denied that the first step that is troublesome, each place has its language and ritual, which might be drastic differences from your original culture, but if they have been through culture shock, they would not only make friends but also enjoy its festivals as indigenous people. Moreover, when they are getting used to the cuisine of that place, they would avoid some diseases, which relate to the digestive system. According to research by WHO in 2010, 10% of people who have not been acquainted with eating sushi suffered severe abdominal pain due to eating sushi in the wrong way.

On the other hand, the culture will be preserved if people bring their own customs to other regions. It is obvious that immigrants have to integrate without assimilating. Passing down their custom from generation to generation, remembering where they belong to and what their identity is, all of which indicates great gratitude to their predecessors. Furthermore, it also contributes to the cultural diversity of that country, in which the citizens are tolerant of each other with different cultural values. For example, there are many Vietnamese immigrants settling down in California, the USA, where Little Saigon - a small mall that sells products resembling Ben Thanh market in Viet Nam.

In conclusion, when you become familiar with the new condition, you will live comfortably by creating new relationships and avoiding some diseases. Nevertheless, preserving their own customs is not only showing gratitude to their ancestors but also creating a cultural variety for the new area they live in.

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1. hand/pass something down (to somebody) (phrasal verb): to give or leave something to somebody who is younger than you
e.g. These skills used to be handed down from father to son.
2. define yourself (as something) (v): to describe or show the nature or range of somebody/something
e.g. He defines himself as an independent.
3. adhere to something (v): to behave according to a particular law, rule, set of instructions, etc.; to follow a particular set of beliefs or a fixed way of doing something
e.g. Staff should adhere strictly to the safety guidelines.
Synonyms: follow | comply | obey
4. conform (v): to behave and think in the same way as most other people in a group or society
e.g. He refused to conform to the local customs.
5. norms (n) [plural]: standards of behaviour that are typical of or accepted within a particular group or society

social/cultural norms
e.g. She considered people to be products of the values and norms of the society they lived in.
6. youngster (n): a young person or a child
7. self-disciplined (a): able to make yourself do things you know you should do even when you do not want to
e.g. The entrance exams served to weed out all but the most motivated, self-disciplined, and hardworking students.
8. deferential (towards somebody) (a): showing that you respect somebody/something, especially somebody older or more senior than you

e.g. He was always deferential towards his mentor.

Synonyms: respectful | courteous
9. adolescent (n): a young person who is developing from a child into an adult
10. concur (v): to agree
e.g. Historians have concurred with each other in this view.

11. arrive at sth (phrasal verb): to succeed in deciding on or finding sth, especially after discussion and thought
e.g. They finally arrived at an agreement after three hours of talks.
Synonyms: succeed | reach | accomplish

12. a/the/somebody’s way of life (idiom): the typical pattern of behaviour of a person or group
e.g. She loved the Spanish way of life and immediately felt at home there.
13. bias (n): a strong feeling in favour of or against one group of people, or one side in an argument, often not based on fair judgement
e.g. Employers must consider all candidates impartially and without bias.
14. detrimental (to somebody/something) (a): harmful.
e.g. Emissions from the factory are widely suspected of having a detrimental effect on health
Synonyms: harmful | destructive | negative | damaging | bad
15. antiquated (a) (of things or ideas): old-fashioned and no longer suitable for modern conditions
e.g. The committee has recommended that all antiquated legal procedures should be simplified.
Synonyms: old-fashioned | obsolete | out of date | outdated
16. assessment (n): an opinion or a judgement about somebody/something that has been thought about very carefully
e.g. • The city hired them to do a structural assessment of the damage.

• his assessment of the situation
Synonym: evaluation
17. one of a kind: the only one like this
e.g. My father was one of a kind—I'll never be like him.
Synonym: unique

18. at somebody’s discretion (idiom): according to what somebody decides or wishes to do
e.g. There is no service charge and tipping is at your discretion.

19. rationally (adverb): in a way that is based on reason rather than emotion

e.g. She argued her case calmly and rationally.

Synonym: reasonably
20. settle down (phrasal verb): to start to have a quieter way of life, living in one place

e.g. When are you going to get married and settle down?

21. integration (n): the act or process of combining two or more things so that they work together

e.g. The aim is to promote closer economic integration.

22. adapt (v): to change your behaviour in order to deal more successfully with a new situation
e.g. The company was able to adapt to the conditions and enhance its position.
Synonym: adjust
23. endeavor (v): to try very hard to do something
e.g. He endeavoured in vain to escape the situation.
Synonym: strive
24. integrate (into/with something) (v): to become or make somebody become accepted as a member of a social group, especially when they come from a different culture
e.g. They have not made any effort to integrate with the local community.

25. troublesome (a): causing trouble, pain, etc. over a long period of time

Synonyms: annoying | irritating

26. ritual (n): a series of actions that are always performed in the same way
e.g. She objects to the ritual of organized religion.
27. drastic (a): extreme in a way that has a sudden, serious, or violent effect on something
e.g. The government is threatening to take drastic action.
28. culture shock (n): a feeling of being confused and worried that somebody may get when they visit another country or experience a different way of life or set of attitudes, because the experience is so different from what they are used to
e.g. She experienced great culture shock when she first came to Europe.
29. indigenous (a): belonging to a particular place rather than coming to it from somewhere else

e.g. the indigenous peoples/languages of the area

Synonym: native

30. digestive system (n): the series of organs inside the body that digest food
31. abdominal (a): relating to or connected with the abdomen
e.g. abdominal pains
32. assimilate (v): to fully understand an idea or some information so that you are able to use it yourself
e.g. Some people can only assimilate change gradually.
33. predecessor (n): a person who did a job before somebody else

e.g. The new president reversed many of the policies of his predecessor.

34. tolerant (of/towards somebody/something) (a): able to accept what other people say or do even if you do not agree with it

e.g. He has a very tolerant attitude towards other religions.

35. ancestor (n): a person in your family who lived a long time ago

e.g. His ancestors had come to America from Ireland.
Synonym: forebear