For the past four years, I have edited bizarre and chilling briefs about mob justice throughout the country. All of them seemed so strange, random and unwarranted. Soon, I was addicted to these stories and tried to imagine how they had unfolded. Take, for example, the 2011 story about a small hamlet in Yen Thanh District, Nghe An Province, that beat the stuffing out of a high-school teacher who got lost on his way home. The man's assailants believed he had come to their village in search of a dog to steal. Today, dog thieving and the violence it engenders have spread to all corners of the country. There doesn't seem to be anything anyone can do to stop it. Last year, in the northern province of Bac Giang, police arrested 13 people accused of beating a pair of dog thieves, both of whom died of their injuries. All 13 confessed to the crime. Then things got interesting. Hundreds of neighbors signed confessions claiming that they had all played an equal part in the same crime. … [Read more...] about Searching for the dog-thief murderers
Eating your own dog food
The ugly dog
Short Story (07-05-2006) The ugly dog by Kim Lan She was so ugly a dog that she had no name at all. Far from being a Quyt, Cun or Toto, as pet dogs are usually named, we just called her 'bow wow.' Not until after her death did my wife give her a name: "our Muc" (black dog). Whenever my wife recalled the time our small family lived in the northern resistance zone of Viet Bac, she would say "Our Muc was such and such when the French troops were parachuting on Viet Bac," or "Our Muc did such and such when our daughter Hien first started walking." What a pity for our Muc! From the time my wife bought the dog until the dog's death it was held in contempt by our family, treated like an unwelcome visitor. Those days, our first daughter wasn't even one yet and my wife needed a dog to help guard the house. With the stingy nature of a rural woman, she bought her for only a few farthings. I was disappointed with that bargain. As soon as I saw the dog I became angry, reminding my wife that "A … [Read more...] about The ugly dog
Where dogs and cats are chicken soup for the soul
I know people spend hours at cafes on laptops, ipads and other gadgets for work and leisure, but it is not my usual cup of tea. But there are two cafes in Ho Chi Minh City that have succeeded in keeping me there for hours in recent months. Their winning formula is: cats and dogs. The Ailu Cat House Café and the Dogi Café in Phu Nhuan District are natural attractions for me. I have always loved watching and playing with dogs and cats. Another personally heartening similarity about these coffee shops is that they have been opened by young women in their 20s who came to HCMC from other places. Located on the third floor of the Yuri House, a Korean restaurant run by a Korean woman who it is named after, the Dogi Café charges VND70,000 for one person, for one beverage from the menu and the pleasure of playing with the canine residents for as long as one wishes. The first time I arrived at the third floor, I took off my shoes (required), put them on a rack … [Read more...] about Where dogs and cats are chicken soup for the soul
Joel Brinkley eats his words (and they don’t taste good)
An Indochinese tiger, Mi, plays with her cubs at the Hanoi Zoo. Had Joel Brinkley, a professor of Journalism at Stanford University and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, been truly interested in the illegal wildlife trade in Vietnam, he could have gone to any number of illicit restaurants that have been identified by this newspaper and written about animal consumption that actually threatens the region's ecology rather than grosses out tourists. When Joel Brinkley came to Vietnam in December, he heard no birds. He saw no dogs out for walks. "Where'd they all go?" he asked his reader, at the beginning of the month, in one of his weekly columns for the Tribune News Service. "You might be surprised to know: most have been eaten." Who is Joel Brinkley? You might be surprised to know that he's a 23-year veteran of The New York Times, a professor of Journalism at Stanford University and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Brinkley's column, "Despite Increasing Prosperity, Vietnam's … [Read more...] about Joel Brinkley eats his words (and they don’t taste good)
It’s a dog’s life
Unfettered by regulations, the dog meat industry engages freely in extremely unhygienic, unscrupulous and cruel practices … [Read more...] about It’s a dog’s life