Understanding the Ethnic Minorities of Vietnam

Feb 03, 2025

Thank you for reading this third part in a series about the Ethnic Minorities of Vietnam. If you haven’t read the other two parts, I would suggest starting there. Some of this information builds upon itself. 1

H'Mông and Dao Group Origins

The H'Mông and Dao (pronounced Yao) originate from the Yangtze River Basin in China and migrated into Southern China. The H'Mông populated the current provinces of Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Guangdong and Hubei while the Dao populated Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi. The Chinese call the H'Mông Miáo (苗). The Vietnamese call these people Mèo, as do the French on early 19th to early 20th century postcards.

These groups speak languages primarily from the Sinitic language family, but have many words which originate from the Austroasiatic, Kra-Dai (Tai-Kadai), Austronesian, and Tibeto-Burman language families. They seem to borrow a bit from everyone, but use Chinese as their core language. Unlike Vietnamese that only has six tones, H'Mông has as many as 12 distinct tones. YIKES! (The makes Vietnamese tones simple by comparison.)

A little over 1.8 million people have ancestry originating from these tribal groups. They migrated out of China in the late 18th to early 19th centuries and currently occupy an area ranging from Southern China, Northern Vietnam, Laos, Northern Thailand and Myanmar.

Sino-Tibetan Language Family

The Sino-Tibetan groups had their origins in China. Initial immigration began in the 10th century. The largest group of these Chinese migrants are called the Hoa, the Vietnamese name of the Han Chinese people. This name originates with the Huaxia people who lived in the central plains of China along the Yellow river, prior to the Warring States period of 475–221 BCE. By the Qin dynasty (where the Western name for China is derived), these people started to think of themselves as one nation.

“Initially, Huaxia seems to have been a somewhat elastic cultural marker, referring neither to race nor ethnicity nor any particular country but rather to ‘civilized,’ settled, literate, agricultural populations adhering to common ritual standards, in contrast to ‘barbarians.’” 2

The Hoa are the largest of the nine recognized minority groups who make up nearly 750,000 of the 992,000 Sino-Tibetan minorities living in Vietnam. Unlike the other Sino-Tibetan groups, this group does not have a specific migration period because there have been many periods of Hoa immigration to Vietnam. The Vietnamese have several interesting names for this group. They are called Tàu, Ba Tàu or Người Tàu. Occasionally this group is even called Khách meaning guest. The word Tàu means ship to describe their method of travel from China. The word Ba in Ba Tàu means three, for the three lands the Vietnamese emperor appointed to the first Chinese who were allowed to migrate to Vietnam as the Tang Dynasty was collapsing. These appointed lands were; Cù lao Phố (an island in the Đồng Nai river a little north of Saigon), Chợ Lớn (a city near Saigon that grew quickly to join with Saigon to form Ho Chi Minh City) and Hà Tiên (on the southern coast near Cambodia). Người Tàu simply means people from a ship.3 There have been subsequent waves of immigration of the Hoa, including large waves before and immediately after World War II, but Vietnamese may still use the thousand year old name “Tàu” when discussing this group.

It is interesting to note that while the Hoa only make up around 0.78% of the population of Vietnam, they made up approximately 11.5% of the immigration to the US. There are a couple reasons for this. First, they were a primary target of the Khmer Rouge as this genocidal army made incursions into the Mekong Delta from 1975-78. I have heard rumors of entire Chinese villages being wiped out when the Khmer Rouge arrived. There are several horror stories of the 3,157 civilians executed in Ba Chúc, An Giang Province or the occupation of Thổ Chu Island where 528 civilians were killed.4 A second reason for the mass immigration is because much of their property was seized when the Vietnamese government reunified.

The Sán Dìu migrated from Guangdong, China in the 17th Century. They believe so strongly in animism that they do not dig wells for fear of “hitting the veins of the dragon” and offending the genies. They have a population of over 180,000 and live near the Guangxi border in the Northeast.

The Ngái people first arrived in Vietnam in the 10th century, according to the Annals of the History of Vietnam, but they claim to be indigenous. Their original home was in Quảng Ninh, but they later moved to Hai Phong and after the Geneva Conventions of 1954, many moved south to Ho Chi Minh City. Sometimes, the Ngái are grouped with the Hoa. These are a seafaring people and many live in boats along the coast and have traditionally made their living off of fishing. A Ngái village is typically one boat who drops anchor and a group of other boats who tie themselves to this anchored boat. In recent times, they have been known to relocate to land, building houses on stilts either directly above or on top of the water surface and are now known to practice agriculture, but are still primarily known as fishermen.

Today, Ngái fishermen work in large fishing collectives collecting as much as 50 tonnes of fish in a trip. In the 1999 survey, the Ngái people numbered nearly to 5,000, but saw their numbers drop to a little over a thousand in the next 2009 survey. By 2019, their numbers have climbed to a little over 1,600. What happened to them? Wikipedia is silent about their disappearance, but we see an entry on the Chinese Nùng Wikipedia page that mentions many of them fled as refugees to Western countries following the 1975 reunification.5

The Hà Nhì originated and still live near the Yunnan border in Northwestern Vietnam. They arrived in Vietnam around 200-300 years ago. There are over 25,000 Hà Nhì living in Vietnam and 1.7 million of their cousins still live in Yunnan. Vietnam only has a small population of these people, with Myanmar, Laos and Thailand each having much larger populations. Their oral tradition states that they originate as part of the much larger Yi people, who number over 9 million in China.

The Phù Lá people are a very small ethnic group with a little over 12,000 in Vietnam and only 4,200 living in China. In China, the Phù Lá are classified as part of the Yi people.

The La Hủ people are another mountain dwelling people living near the Yunnan and Laos borders. There are nearly as many La Hủ living in the US as live in Vietnam. In China, they number 720,000 while in Vietnam they only number a little over 12,000. They also have much larger populations in Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. During the Laotian Civil War, the La Hủ people sided with the US against the communist Pathet Lao. Many of these fighters fled to neighboring Thailand to seek political asylum when the Pathet Lao won.

The Lô Lô came to Vietnam from Yunnan in two migratory phases: in the 15th century and again in the 18th century. They currently live near the Yunnan and Guangxi borders of China. They are considered to be a subgroup of the Yi and number under 5,000 people. They are animistic and their customs strictly forbid any destruction of the forest (where they claim the genies of the Earth live).

The Cống people only number a little over 2,700 and live near the Yunnan and Laos border in Northwestern Vietnam. They are also called the Phunoi people in Laos and Thailand. Larger populations of these people exist in those two countries, but the total population of this group only numbers around 40,000 across all three countries.

The Si La people are another very small minority, with only a little over 900 people in Vietnam and an additional 3,100 in Laos. They live near the Yunnan and Laos border in Northwestern Vietnam

Other Minorities

The groups I have discussed so far have been officially recognized as ethnic groups by the Vietnamese government. There are two additional groups that haven’t been given minority status. These are the Malabar or Chà Và and the descendants of the Europeans, Americans and Koreans. Unlike other ethnic groups that have a shared culture or language, these groups are not united by tribal or linguistic ties and do not have an ancestral home in Vietnam.

The Malabar and the Chà Và

Originally, the term Malabar specifically meant people living in the Malabar region along the coast of South West India. As people of India spread to other countries, the term expanded to include other people from the British Indian subcontinent, which extended from Burma (Myanmar) to Pakistan. Many of these people likely migrated from the Malabar coast during the four famines from 1865 to 1896. Once an Indian population became established, other people joined the community from other regions of the British commonwealth. 6

Over time, another name, Chà Và, started to be used in Vietnam for people of South Asian descent. Originally Chà Và specifically referred to the people of Java, but Vietnamese mistakenly started calling everyone with dark skin by this name. There were large neighborhoods in Saigon and Cholon, with a Chà Và neighborhood in Chinatown where you can still find many of their mosques and even a bridge between district 5 and district 8 named after the place these people once lived. 7

You can still find Ấn Độ cà ri restaurants (Indian curry) around Chinatown today. In a 1937 census, there were approximately 3,000 Indian descendants living in Vietnam. By the 1950’s-60’s, there were an estimated 3-4 thousand Malabar in the Saigon area. In 1963, following the coup d'état and assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem, many of these people returned to India, leaving around 1,000 people today.8

The Children of American Soldiers

Of the children left behind when the US quickly departed from Vietnam following the war, there are an estimated 200,000 children and their descendants that remained in Vietnam. Approximately 26,000 of these children and their 75,000 relatives have been relocated to the US, but many remain in Vietnam due to being unable to provide the necessary immigration paperwork required by the US Embassy. These descendants of soldiers often face discrimination. They are given derogatory names such as “children of the dust” because they are a reminder of a time everyone would prefer to forget. 9

There are reasons to forget these children. Some were the children of rape or short term flings. Others were children of the 58,220 dead soldiers who were never able to claim their children. Many were left in orphanages with no documentation to help them find their fathers as they entered adulthood. Some families destroyed information about the father following reunification due to the fear of being labelled a “collaborator” by the new government. Now they are left behind, too poor to afford DNA tests and pay the costly attorney fees necessary to navigate the US immigration system. Charities try to help, but many don’t even put a drop in the bucket for the hundreds of thousands who remain. 10

In addition to American troops, the South Koreans provided the second largest force from a foreign army with 320,000 troops. They left their fair share of war babies behind too. Other countries only had relatively small forces in Vietnam, so we don’t hear about those stories as often. 11

It is unlikely that these children will ever be claimed. Many of their fathers have already died long ago due to hard living from unresolved PTSD. Of those who remain, many are on the verge of death due to advanced age. If something is not done soon, these children will probably never be claimed.

Children of Expats

There is a similar group to the children born from the colonial period through the Indochina wars. These are the children of mixed families where one parent moved to Vietnam from abroad and fell in love with a local Vietnamese citizen and had children.

In Vietnam, there is a strong Russian community who tend to work in the oil industry or Russian tourist industries who have decided to make Vietnam their home. I know of a few Russians who have never been to Russia and only know Vietnam as home.

There are other families I know of who come to Vietnam to teach English or provide a service the local economy cannot provide. Frequently these young professionals fall in love and marry a local citizen. These couples have children and many of them live in expat communities in some of the larger cities. It is not legal in Vietnam to be a dual citizen, so these children are born as a Vietnamese citizen to later petition dual citizenship later.

Sometimes the story isn’t quite as romantic when a tourist might come to Vietnam and fall in love with a local woman, but economic or cultural differences keep them apart. These women are left behind to raise the child by themselves with or without the support of their foreign “spouse”. It is hard to get reliable figures on how many of these children exist because the Vietnamese government will simply leave the fathers name off of the official birth certificate if he is not present. These children are considered fully Vietnamese on the birth certificate, but are only given rights to become a citizen of the father’s country if the father chooses to file the appropriate paperwork with their home country to give the child their citizenship. I know of some people whose fathers died or disappeared before getting around to filing the proper paperwork.

It is hard to say how many of these children exist in Vietnam, but if we combine the figures from the Vietnam war until today, it is safe to assume hundreds of thousands of children of Western ethnicity live in Vietnam.

In the next article, I will discuss a controversial theory introduced by a college professor who goes by the pen name Le Minh Khai. He believes that much of the history of Vietnam before the Chinese occupation was made up to promote Vietnamese nationalism around 1,000 years ago. I will explain the theory and show what evidence supports his claims.

Highlands versus Lowlands, an introduction to the Ethnic Minorities of Vietnam

Postcards from Vietnam

Jan 19

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Holcombe, Charles (2010). A history of East Asia: From the origins of civilization to the twenty-first century. Cambridge University Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-521-73164-5.

https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chúa_Nguyễn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_Americans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian–Vietnamese_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Nùng