Huong’s speech at Asia Society, New York, 2004.
                                    

I have a shop in Hanoi. It is small, but it means everything to me.
It is a an embroidery business that my mother built nearly 40 years ago.

 Now she has passed it on to me and now my daughter has joined me in the business.

 While I was growing up, life was hard.  The wars in Vietnam made our
lives very difficult for 40 years.  Our family, like everyone else, had to
figure out a way to stay alive. For us,  luckily, embroidery was the answer.

 Embroidery is a skill that all women in Vietnam once had.  My mother was
a pioneer: she built a business making embroidered pillow cases and
handkerchiefs.

 She made them for people who were getting married. She made pillowcases
with two embroidered doves and the initials of the couple intertwined.

 During the war years , everything was rationed: food, rice, and fabric – three
meters per person a year. Our family didn’t have extra fabric, so people
would bring us cloth.  We would embroider pillow and handkerchiefs with
birds and flowers and loving words such as hanh phuc (happiness), trung thuy
(faithfulness) doi cho (waiting for you) and mai mai (eternal love.)

We made the handkerchiefs for soldiers.  They put them in their shirt
pockets and walked south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, all the way to South
Vietnam. For many men, this was a one-way trip.
 A woman who gave a soldier a handkerchief was sending him off with all her
heart.
 It was not a simple gift: it was a symbol of commitment, like an
engagement ring.
 The handkerchiefs had the tears of the person left behind.  And it had the
tears and blood of the one who went on one way-journey, of sacrifice, and of
death.
Sometimes, soldiers might lose their handkerchiefs and they would go back,
looking, looking and hunting for the handkerchief.

 ‘Tang Anh mot tam khan nay’ (I give you, my love, this handkerchief)

 ‘De lam ky niem nhung ngay xa nhau’ (So you can remember when we are apart)

‘Nhung ngay song chung’ (So you can remember the days when we were
together)

 This was the foundation of our family business. After the war ended in
1975, we built it into what it is today.

After many years of struggling to recover from the war, the economy of
Vietnam is growing rapidly – at the rate of 8% for the past decade. We are
part of that recovery and we did it through intuition, hard work and good
timing.

We have our shop in Hanoi , and we do wholesale business around the world.

It takes a lot of dedication  to do this work. I have the help of several
hundred people I employ in Tu Van village, where the embroidery is made. 

And I have a loyal staff at the shop in Hanoi who are my family. We have worked
together for years.  If you treat your employees with love and respect, they
will work hard, be partners and they will feel pride and ownership in the
business too.  This is also the secret of building an enterprise whether in
Vietnam or America.

 Some of you have been to my shop.  You know quality is also the
basis of my business.  Every item that I sell must meet the highest
standards.  Everything is made as if it were being made for me and I am a
perfectionist.  I wear the clothes made for Tan My.  Come to my shop and I
will show you my favorite clothes.

 Embroidery is an art.  It requires patience and precision.  And it
must be made with love.  When you acquire clothes from Tan My, you are not
just wearing a piece of cloth.  You will carry with you the heart and soul
of the artisan who made the handkerchiefs for soldiers 40 years ago.

Thank you.