France Nuyen and Vietnamese Identity
By wchung | 22 Feb, 2025

Upon reading an article about the legendary Eurasian actress, France Nuyen, I found that a few details contained in the article about her quite contradictory to what I’ve learned and could perhaps be erroneous.

First of all, I do know that her last name originally was “Nguyen” and the letter “g” was omitted by herself consciously so that it would be easier for Westerners to pronounce. This fact leads to the erroneous info included in the article that said she had come from mixed parentage, born to a French mother and Chinese father. She is Eurasian and her mother was French. But her father was Vietnamese. I know many Vietnamese are of Chinese descent, but when a Vietnamese carries the surname “Nguyen” it’s not very likely. Of course, looking far enough back all Vietnamese are of Chinese descent, but the surname “Nguyen” is about as Vietnamese as you can get. That’s like saying “pho” is a Chinese noodle soup or that our modern-day written Vietnamese language in alphabets is a recent modifioation contributed by the French.

Just for the record, I’m not one of those Vietnamese nationalists that would like to take credit for the achievements of other Vietnamese. It’s more complicated than that with me. You see, I am also Eurasian, twice-over. My mother is Eurasian and was born in Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and French father. I was born during the Vietnam War and my father is an Anglo-American. Like Ms. Nuyen, I have dealt with issues of racial identity. I can understand why she feels she is just French and not Vietnamese, because she was brought up in France and her unhealthy relationship with her Vietnamese father, from what I gather. For many Eurasians like me, we’ve had to struggle with our own identity. Fortunately I have come to peace and realize that the healthiest way of dealing with this issue is accepting all of your ethnicities. I’ve realized it’s okay to do so and that there is a group of people like myself as we Eurasians are a product of history. As for Eurasians from Vietnam or of Vietnamese descent, there were the French-Vietnamese Eurasians from the colonial era. Then after that, came the Eurasians of my generation born to American fathers during the Vietnam War. That’s why it is important to acknowledge correctly that Ms. France Nuyen is of French-Vietnamese descent and Eurasian, because her ethnic mixture represents a part of history. To say she is Chinese and French is false and does not pay tribute to such history. The same would apply to Nancy Kwan who is also Eurasian of Chinese and Scottish parentage. How would Chinese-British Eurasians feel if an article had indicated falsely she was of Vietnamese and Spanish descent, or for that matter, Indonesian and German, etc. I hope you get my point here as I’m scrambling about the races. Most would know that such parentages in accordance to history would be most likely be paired as French-Vietnamese, Dutch-Indonesian, British-Chinese, German-Japanese, Spanish-Filippino, Portuguese-Chinese, etc.

12/23/09, 8:30 PM