The Light of the Capital

This book contains three classics of Vietnamese documentary social realism, which epitomize the urban transformation of the colonial era. The first work is Tam Lang's reportage, 'I Pulled a Rickshaw' (1932), which offers a unique account of the Hanoi rickshaw trade. Also set in Hanoi is Vu Trong Phung's reportage, 'Household Servants' (1936). It provides a vivid portrayal of those people who, like 'bees and ants', swarmed from the countryside to the city hoping to find sundry work as domestics, maids, and wet-nurses. Generally regarded as the first modern Vietnamese autobiography, Nguyen Hong's 'Days of Childhood' (1938) takes us into the northern provincial town of Nam Dinh. It tells a haunting story of downward social mobility and provides an unsurpassed account of the ancient family system under modern stress.

Stark, searing, and socially aware, these works offer compelling inside views of urban life in an era that is fading from living memory but that has now become, after a long period of war and revolution, a reference point for the rapid urban development that Vietnam is experiencing again today.