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A Glass of Nostalgia: Viet Nam’s “Newtro” Café Craze 

By Lina Jeong 

(Asia Today Viet Nam correspondent; Ph.D. candidate in History, Viet Nam National University, Hanoi)

Viet Nam is an emerging Southeast Asian market whose economic growth began in 1986 with the introduction of a set of reform policies known as “Đổi Mới,” meaning rejuvenation. However, many people in Viet Nam still harbor nostalgic feelings for the “ration economy,” which how seems like a dark dawn just before sunrise. Cộng Cà Phê, a café franchise that has also become popular in Korea, features designs inspired by this period, with similar cafés continuing to emerge in Hanoi. The age of the “ration era-café” has arrived. 

   In Viet Nam’s early years as socialist state and planned economy, most economic activity was dictated by the central government. This period is roughly defined as the years immediately following the country’s reunification in 1975, from 1976, when the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam was founded, until late 1986, when the Đổi Mới reforms were introduced. Commodities, including rice, meat, milk, sugar, nước chấm (Vietnamese fish sauce), and cotton (for sewing one’s own clothes), all had to be obtained by exchanging ration coupons at state-operated distribution centers. 

   However, largely cut off from the Western world after multiple wars in the 20th century, Viet Nam had no way of producing all necessary commodities on its own. On designated days, distribution centers had long lines. Commodities were not only in short supply but could also be of poor quality. Milk, often yellow because it had spoiled, had to be boiled before drinking. If pork supplies ran out, households were given rice bran to raise pigs. There were households that went without pork for an entire year because they could not raise pigs themselves and their food stamps were useless. When truly strapped for supplies, some people would use the “brick method.” They would leave a brick to mark their place in the line at one distribution center, then go to another to receive goods, before returning to the brick to obtain even more.

    The ration era was a time of widespread shortages. Because it was impossible to live on food stamps alone, the search for alternative ways to make a living resulted in the sprouting of a private economy that eventually led to the Đổi Mới reforms. A commonly used Vietnamese expression to describe this transition is “cái khó ló cái khôn,” meaning “necessity is the mother of invention.” 

   Nowadays, many distribution offices, which always used to be full of people waiting with ration tickets in hand, have now been converted into coffee shops. Even the counters where customers pay for their beverages are replicas of the former distribution office windows. The wooden tables resemble the low, backless wooden stools (which doubled as tables for meals) of an era in which having a dining table for a single plate or cup was a luxury. Drab plastered walls; propaganda leaflets that are yellowed with age but whose titles (which often included the words “Marx” or “Lenin”) are still legible; the staff’s simple khaki uniforms; chipped glass and iron cups that clatter when set down; sewing machines and typewriters, displayed on shelves, that are so old that they are no longer sold; and the old songs that are played—all of these things turn back time by 40 years to a Viet Nam that was full of bicycles instead of today’s motorcycles. 

   The ration era-cafés that are popping up throughout Hanoi are popular with customers of all ages. For those who are middle-aged or older, the cafés bring to mind memories of difficult times that are nevertheless precious because they are of one’s youth. For young customers, the cafés offer an experience of a “new” Viet Nam that they never experienced but their parents are intimately familiar with. Ration era-cafés are unique because they embody both a retro style, evoking nostalgia for the past by those in their 30s to 50s, and a “newtro” style, a reinterpretation of retro and vintage aesthetics, by those in their teens and 20s. This seamless mixture of past and present is also a characterization of Viet Nam itself, which still reveres the memory of Ho Chi Minh by hanging his portrait and red banners with commemorative yellow inions in classrooms and streets, while also moving forward as one of the world’s fastest-growing market economies, as illustrated by its increasing number of skyscrapers.

This content of this article may differ from the editorial direction of the ASEAN Culture House Monthly.