The Jar­mark Europa open-​air market was orig­i­nally founded by mem­bers of the Viet­namese intel­li­gentsia, uni­ver­sity grad­u­ates and doc­toral stu­dents who in the early 1990s seized an oppor­tu­nity to make a fast buck from street trad­ing. It was the best stu­dents from North Viet­nam who were offered schol­ar­ships to the Soviet bloc. The next wave of Viet­namese immi­grants came to Poland for eco­nomic rea­sons at the begin­ning of this cen­tury. What will happen to the Warsaw Viet­namese after Jar­mark Europa has been closed down? Many of them, dis­cour­aged by Poland’s harsh immi­gra­tion laws, are return­ing home. What does the assim­i­la­tion of Poland’s largest ethnic minor­ity really look like?
Asians are believed not to assim­i­late well. On the other hand, they are well-​organised; they have their polit­i­cal organ­i­sa­tions, civil asso­ci­a­tions, news­pa­pers, schools, and a copy of Hanoi’s One-​Pillar Pagoda, a Buddhist temple, built near the 10th-Anniversary Sta­dium. The better-​educated Viet­namese have been assim­i­lat­ing more rapidly; as grad­u­ates and stu­dents of Polish uni­ver­si­ties, they are the socio-​cultural, and often also eco­nomic, elite of their com­mu­ni­ties. The Polish Viet­namese, whose number has grown from about fifty in the 1960s to some 30,000 today, belong to a three-million-strong dias­pora known as Ng˝ời Việt Hải Ngoại (Over­seas Viet­namese), or occa­sion­ally as Ng˝ời Việt Tự Do (Free Viet­namese).

The Sta­dion era and wild trad­ing are draw­ing to an end. Viet­namese ven­dors are moving to shop­ping cen­ters in sub­ur­ban areas like Ursus and Wólka Kos­sowska. Many of them are head­ing back to Hanoi. As one wan­ders through the Viet­namese cap­i­tal, one can spot numer­ous restau­rants, book­stores, or car show­rooms run by ex-​vendors from the sta­dium in Warsaw. How has their expe­ri­ence of Poland, of his­tory, been? The polit­i­cal, civic, or pri­vate deci­sions of return­ing Viet­namese emi­grants reflect the atti­tudes and per­sonal dilem­mas of the last twenty years in Poland. Van, a screenwriter, cannot work in his orig­i­nal pro­fes­sion; he believes the Viet­namese choose Poland because of its Sol­i­dar­ity past and its role in bring­ing about the end of Com­mu­nism. He is very sorry to see them arrive in Warsaw and so quickly become dis­il­lu­sioned with the unwel­com­ing atti­tude of the Polish author­i­ties. Tuong divides his time between Wólka Kos­sowska, a new trad­ing center on the out­skirts of Warsaw, and Hanoi; he is not a member, he won’t say a bad thing about the Com­mu­nist Party. Karol says he will go back to Poland in 2011 only to renew his pass­port and iden­tity card and then imme­di­ately come back. Together they are cre­at­ing a ‘Little Warsaw’ in Hanoi.  They speak fluent Polish, spend time in a Polish-language book­store, and they know of a modern hous­ing estate, ‘just like Żelazna Brama in Warsaw’, being built in Hanoi. As one watches this rapidly devel­op­ing coun­try and its elites, at least some of which have ties to Poland, one won­ders to what extent the Polish expe­ri­ence, the expe­ri­ence of free-for-all cap­i­tal­ism and democ­racy, will allow them to crit­i­cally exam­ine — and find a place for them­selves in — modern-​day Viet­nam, given its polit­i­cal regime, dynamic eco­nomic growth, and con­trolled chaos and charm.

There is one other, unex­pected and tragic, Viet­namese theme to the Sta­dium. On Sep­tem­ber 8, 1968, during the national harvest-​festival cel­e­bra­tions, one Ryszard Siwiec immo­lated him­self in protest against the Warsaw Pact’s inva­sion of Czecho­slo­va­kia. Siwiec chose a form of protest vir­tu­ally unheard of in Euro­pean cul­ture. His inspi­ra­tion prob­a­bly came from the protests of Bud­dhist monks against South Vietnam’s reli­gious poli­cies. In June, 1963, a monk named Thich Quang Duc doused him­self with gaso­line and set him­self on fire in the middle of a busy inter­sec­tion in Saigon. The images of a figure in lotus posi­tion being con­sumed by flames cir­cu­lated around the world. Siwiec’s tragic self-​immolation, in con­trast, was quickly and com­pletely hushed up. The sig­nif­i­cance, rea­sons, and form of his act were noted only some twenty years later.

A panel dis­cus­sion in Kry­tyka Poli­ty­czna and video screen­ing of doc­u­men­ta­tion from Viet­nam, was held on Decem­ber 16, 2007. Par­tic­i­pants included Ngo Van Tuong, Viet­namese activist and jour­nal­ist, Prof. Paweł Boski, inter­cul­tural psy­chol­o­gist, and Joanna Warsza, cura­tor. The panel was mod­er­ated by Adam Ostolski.

Chosen arti­cles and reviews:

Sybille Korte, Katze odel Nudel­mas­chine, "Berliner Zeitung" 23.11.2007

Julia Slater, Spread­ing the Swiss Word in East­ern Europe,Turk­ish Weekly, 11.03.2009

Daniel Miller, Sta­dium X, Frieze, 15.05.09