How Vietnamese snow saw the recording and stayed in Belarus
In life, it happens that because of the case, you have to move for an indefinite period. But our hearts will always be at home. Or it may turn out that a foreign land after some time becomes the owner of the house.
Vietnamese Van Thin Nong, 64 years old, has been living in Belarus for many years and is not going to leave anywhere, because here he has a family, children, grandchildren, a job and a home.
— Why did you decide to come to Belarus?
— Because I studied well at school and wanted to see snow. People are cold and so on. And initially I came just to look at the snow, at the Russian winter. In Vietnam, there is no snow, there are tropics.
When I arrived, I was 18 years old, Belarus was still part of the USSR. He came to Moscow, then they were distributed to Minsk for study.
— What were you doing here?
— I studied for almost 6 years. When I was still a student, everything was forbidden in the USSR. It was impossible to earn extra money, he hid from his parents, from friends. In the evenings, someone unloaded wagons with salt, someone worked as a loader in the store … And then I liked fartsovka, or speculation. I bought things in one place for one price. Then jeans, jackets, watches, chewing gum were relevant. We bought these things from foreigners who came to the USSR as tourists. They took cheap, and in the hostel they sold more expensive. The Komsomol members of such people increased, but I still continue to be in the group of black marketeers.
But after a while, I want to not just resell things, but make them myself. Decided to make jeans. For example, you buy jeans for 100 rubles, and resell for a maximum of 110-120. And in order to earn more, it was necessary to sew. That is, you buy materials: fabrics, density, buttons, threads. And when you sew yourself, the cost becomes not 100 rubles, but 40 in total. There are more benefits. I started walking around asking for jeans to be sewn for them. This is how I earn money, in black.
– How was a foreigner treated in the Land of Soviets?
– Good at first. why? Because when I arrived, we had a war with America in Vietnam. And Vietnam defeated America. It was 1975, and in 1976 I came here. All students looked at the Vietnamese as heroes. So they were treated very well. They were also treated well in studies, because the Vietnamese always studied well, always took first places in groups. It was only when we graduated from the institute, then there was already a different attitude.
Why did you decide to stay?
– I fell in love with a Belarusian. And I decided to stay here to build a family. Vietnam was then a very poor country. We didn’t have anything. When I studied in Vietnam, there was not even an iron, spoons, forks, we ate with chopsticks. I stayed in Belarus, we fell in love with each other too much, I didn’t want to leave.
– What did you do after?
— I worked at a thermal power plant for 2-3 years. When Gorbachev came to power, politics changed here. So, these jeans that I sewed at night can now be sold legally. Then I decided to quit this job at the station and study at home. He sewed trousers, jackets and took them to shops. This was my first business. The second was the purchase of Belarusian motorcycles and tractors and their sale in Vietnam, but this was already done after the collapse of the USSR. I did this for about 5 years, until I got tired of it, and I did not do another thing. He transported starch from Vietnam to Belarus.
– What are you doing now?
— I still do starch. Of course, there is a difficulty, because there is a crop in one year, but not in another. I drive in Minsk is sold from Vietnam.
– How is your family? “I have a big happy family. Wife Marina, two sons, Andrei and Cyril. And there are already two granddaughters, one of which is 2 years old. I myself built a house for us, where I now live with my wife and her mother. Children already live with their families, but often come to us outside of Minsk. I do not regret that I stayed here, because here I found happiness.
Anna Kotova
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