Melbourne to Hanoi in 21 Captions
Building a bridge between worlds through a story and a shared goal
I arrived a little early to my first meeting with Teresa, but she was already waiting in our pre-arranged meeting spot in the library. We knew nothing of each other except that I would be the editor for her photobook. Her punctuality made me happy: we were respecting each other’s time and it felt like a good start.
We found an empty meeting room. Many students, including me, heave their computers and books around in a backpack, but Teresa was wheeling her belongings in a neat black suitcase. It was the most sensible thing I had seen for ages.
Within a couple of minutes, Teresa told me that it was not easy for her to write a story. English was not her first language.
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I can help with the story.’ She looked uncertain. I didn’t know what else to say to assure her that I could be useful in the story department. I had no evidence that I could be helpful beyond the obvious: English is my first language.
‘Shall we look at the photos?’ I suggested, to get the ball rolling.
And so began our project to build a bridge between Australia and Vietnam through a photo book and our collaboration.
Teresa had taken photos at a restaurant in South Melbourne called Rice Kitchen. She showed me a range of images of the exterior and interior of the restaurant, delicious colour images of the food, and images of a woman working in the kitchen and behind the counter. Wearing my editor’s hat, I immediately homed in on the photos of the woman.
‘Who is the woman? Do you know her?’
‘She is my friend.’
Bingo! The woman was Ms Lili Tu, the owner of Rice Kitchen. We had the key to the story.
At the end of our first meeting I asked Teresa what name she would like me to call her. She had used the name ‘Teresa’ at the end of her emails, but there was a different name in her email address: Huong.
‘It is my Vietnamese name,’ she explained.
I tried to say ‘Huong’. She repeated her name many times for me with great patience, and I made dreadful and embarrassing attempts to copy her intonation. I got it right once, and her face lit up, but it was a fluke that I couldn’t replicate. In the end, we admitted defeat and agreed I should revert to using the name Teresa. But I felt far from defeated. My pitiful attempt to say one Vietnamese word had made her smile.
As the project progressed, Teresa and I focused the story on the connection Lili was building between Melbourne and Vietnam through her fusion cooking and the physical space at Rice Kitchen. In the introduction and captions, we explained Lili’s philosophy of introducing ‘foreign’ Australian ingredients into traditional Vietnamese cooking. We highlighted Lili’s mother, who brought flowers from her own garden to decorate the restaurant, and the workshops held at Rice Kitchen to raise funds for communities in Vietnam.
Our goal was to create a book about more than a restaurant; it was about a connection between Australia and Vietnam created through food, flowers and family.
One afternoon I brought a print-out of our work-in-progress into my editing class. My tutor, Matt, had a suggestion to increase the reader’s engagement with the food shots:
‘Try to get some quotes.’
At first, I was reluctant to go down this new avenue: it would create more work for Teresa and me, and time was not on our side. We were both juggling several end-of-semester assignments and other responsibilities. But I was committed to our shared goal of creating the best possible photobook. I owed it to Teresa to at least mention the idea. And when I did, she immediately saw the benefits and wanted to pursue this approach.
The quotes transformed the captions for the food photos from menu items to insights into Lili and her background. For example, we added the following quote by Lili to the caption of the photo of bun cha, which is a dish of Vietnamese meat balls:
‘As a Hanoian, I want to keep this dish as authentic as possible. So no cutting corners here. Our bun cha is just like they make it on the Hanoi streets.’
In my view, the quote is more interesting than a description of pork patties.
Throughout the editing process, Teresa considered all my suggestions seriously and carefully. I teased out her meaning and helped her find words that reflected her intentions. It took quite some time and several drafts. During one meeting early in the process, I noticed that Teresa looked rather tired. I realised that we’d been combing through the pages for nearly two hours. It must have been exhausting for Teresa to have me picking her brains in English for so long. I made a note to self: keep meetings shorter in future.
In the end, Teresa’s photobook was ready for printing in good time and I can’t wait to see the final product. We shared many smiles and laughs along the way, and I think we made a great team. I still can’t say ‘Huong’ properly but I hope one day I will cross that bridge too.
