His name means bravery, and that’s what it took for Nguyen Van Dung to talk about life in “the third world” — a reference in Vietnam not to poverty but to the gay and lesbian community.
At age 41, he has decided to lay bare almost everything in a tell-all diary called Bong, a slang term for homosexuals, written by two local journalists after more than 300 hours of taped interviews with him.
Dung is sure many people here won’t like his memoir, which has triggered both praise and criticism for its often explicit recollections of sexual adventures and relationships with other men. But Dung says it was high time to try to change attitudes in Vietnam.
“I don’t want to be famous,” he told reporters. “Being famous means being notorious, and the price you pay is high. But to achieve my goal, I had to sacrifice my privacy. It wasn’t easy. It was a fierce struggle for me.”
Very few gay people publicly come out in Vietnam. Homosexuality is still a largely taboo subject in the communist, traditionally patriarchal country, long ruled by Confucian mores and Buddhist beliefs.
The book had a modest first print run of 2,000 copies. But the fact that it was published at all is considered by many here a sign of changing attitudes and greater tolerance.
Many gay men, Dung says in the book, have struggled with deep shame for not meeting societal expectations — marrying, building a family, taking over the house, caring for their ageing parents and producing male offspring.
“If you were born gay,” he writes, “no matter whether you are a man or a woman, you were born at a bad time, on a bad day, in a bad month, in a bad year, under a very bad star.”
“If there is the so-called next life, I beg God to let me be an ordinary man or an ordinary woman, whatever gender it may be, but to be as normal as other people. It seems a very simple dream, but for me and my friends being normal is impossible,” he writes.
The word “bong” can mean shadow or silhouette and is sometimes used as a derogatory term for homosexual males because it suggests they are mere “shadows of normal men.”
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
BIGGER ROLE: Beijing has said it maintains an impartial stance on the war in Ukraine, but by training Russian troops, China is far more involved than previously known China’s armed forces secretly trained about 200 Russian military personnel in China late last year, and some have since returned to fight in Ukraine, according to three European intelligence agencies and documents seen by Reuters. While China and Russia have held a number of joint military exercises since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Beijing has repeatedly said that it is neutral in the conflict and presents itself as a peace mediator. The covert training sessions, which predominantly focused on the use of drones, were outlined in a dual-language Russian-Chinese agreement signed by senior Russian and Chinese officers in Beijing on
HOTTER: While Indians are accustomed to summer heat, climate change has caused northwestern India to warm faster than other parts of the country, an academic said Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India. The India Meteorological Department forecast maximum temperatures for yesterday of about 45°C in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope. The weather department warned that conditions would likely persist across several northern regions in the coming days, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses. India declares a heat wave whenever maximum temperatures
RSS