Part of the “Roots & Fruits | Childhood” series - reflections on how early environments shape who we become, often quietly.
Roots: a generation who mistook fear for discipline, believing obedience built character.
Fruits: a child who learned truth over comfort, resilience over recognition.
After a few good years running our family’s food stall, the construction workers who filled our tables finished their jobs and moved on. Business slowed to a trickle. Around that time, a new wave swept through our countryside, chicken farms.
It was a clever model for those with little to start with: companies provided chicks, feed, equipment, even loans. Farmers raised the chickens and handed them back. Profits came after deductions, small, but steady. A lot of our neighbours joined in, it was like a wave, making headlines and we could see small elevated structures everywhere in the countryside. So my mother joined too.
For the first year or two, she followed the system. When there are a lot of supplies without sufficient demand, the values go down. The company started to reward less and less money to the farmers, eventhough the chicken cost in the market just keep increasing. At that point, she already had few years experiences under her sleeves.
And one day, she quit. She ran those farms herself, sourcing chicks, food, vet, and outlets, all by herself, with some family help. By the time I started secondary school, she had found her rhythm.
My mother wasn’t someone you could measure by her body or her past. She went through the war with one and a half legs and only a fourth-grade education. But she had an extraordinary mind for timing, precision, and nerve. While others stayed tied to contracts, she grew her farms to hold sixty or seventy thousand chickens at once. In a few short years, the woman who once juggled pots and pans at a food stall became one of the largest independent farmers in our province.
People called her “Bà Ba Gà”, the Chicken Lady.
By that time, no one would call us poor anymore. What she truly built though wasn’t just wealth, it was self-worth forged from defiance, endurance, and quiet logic. For the little girl me, what I learnt was that strength doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it limps, learns, and builds its own way out of limits.
#TimeCharm is a memoir series drawn from a Vietnamese childhood shaped by post-war life and the double lives it required.
Dr Ha Nguyen is a materials scientist and systems analyst writing on geopolitics, policy, and the long aftermath of power. She publishes ImpactLine (cross-scale systems analysis), ShardSediment (historical accountability), and TimeCharm (memoir drawn from a Vietnamese childhood shaped by post-war life).