During my second visit to Vietnam, I was frustrated by my limited proficiency in the Vietnamese language, which I felt hindered my connection to my mother’s homeland. This experience led to the creation of the Long Live Tourism! Useful Souvenirs: Chopstick Bags, which playfully addresses the irony of consuming a foreign culture — such as its cuisine — without engaging with its language.
The project involved designing chopstick bags featuring a map of Vietnam with demographic excerpts from a popular travel guide on one side, and a multilingual phrase guide in Vietnamese, English, French, and German on the other. Each bag contained a pair of bamboo chopsticks and was distributed in tourist cafés in Hanoi, later featured in my Laundry Days installation, and offered at Vietnamese restaurants in Berlin, subtly critiquing the oversimplification of cross-cultural engagement and communication while transforming an everyday object into a symbol of longing for connection with “the other.”
Chopsticks, commonly provided in East Asian restaurants as practical utensils, often come with simple, disposable paper covers. In this project, I transformed the standard chopstick wrapper into an informative souvenir — a tool for cultural engagement. By elevating the disposable chopstick bag to a combined language and history guide promoting the entire country, the initiative served as a tangible expression of my ongoing exploration of identity. By inserting itself into the communal dining experience, it encouraged connections between diverse cultures. Through this performative act, I confronted the complexities of cultural consumption, acknowledging my position as both participant and perpetual outsider.
Produced in collaboration with Nguyễn Mạnh Thắng.
