Chinese creator tells Vietnam’s travel stories in fluent Vietnamese

Ha Vy, a member of the Vietnamese-language department at CCTV, balances her role as a presenter and editor with her passion project, which is a travel channel aimed at Vietnamese audiences.

Her department of 15 staff produces news, cultural, economic, travel, and lifestyle programs for radio and social media, often in collaboration with Vietnamese broadcasters.

Her channel, @HaVydulichTrungQuoc, has nearly 37,000 followers and more than 330 videos, with some clips reaching over 100,000 views.

She began in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown in Beijing, when her first video about a closed food market attracted strong interest from Vietnamese students living in the Chinese capital.

Since then, her content has expanded to travel and cultural exploration, covering destinations from Beijing to Xinjiang, Guangzhou, and Nanning.

Posting two to four videos monthly, she tailors each story to Vietnamese viewers, often asking what they would want to know before visiting a place.

Her fluency now surprises many viewers.

“Most of my audience is Vietnamese. Sometimes they ask, ‘Wait, are you Chinese?’ That makes me happy because it means my Vietnamese sounds natural enough for them to connect with,” she said.

Vy began learning Vietnamese in 2006 at Guangxi University for Nationalities in Nanning.

She revealed that her ethnic Zhuang background helped her learn Vietnamese easier owing to linguistic similarities, but she practiced diligently, often rehearsing pronunciation by the lake every morning.

When she was a third-year student, she joined an exchange program at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, under Vietnam National University, Hanoi, significantly improving her fluency.

She returned to Vietnam to study journalism at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Hanoi from 2011 to 2013.

She continues to refine her Vietnamese language skills by watching news broadcasts, including the 7:00 pm bulletin on state-run Vietnam Television, and following social media trends to understand how Vietnamese audiences consume stories.

She remarked that mastering a foreign language requires daily discipline and a strong foundation in one’s native language.

For Vy, video-making is more than content creation.

Her most popular video, about the He Shen mansion in Beijing, reached 1.7 million views.

She recalled editing it overnight until 5:00 am.

“Editing gives me a special feeling. Watching each frame and arranging the story, I relive the entire journey,” she said.