Cu Chi tunnels: Vietnamese transmigrant’s perspective

• Vietnamese diaspora is becoming an increasingly transnational.
• Transmigrants generally do not harbor natural inclination towards the homeland.
• The Cu Chi tunnels’ reputation is regionally bound.
• Overseas Vietnamese imagines heritage through both visitation and abstention.

Made famous during the Vietnam War as underground passages of the Viet Cong guerillas, the Cu Chi Tunnels historical site is a tourist attraction, commonly associated with a kind of low-brow entertainment aimed at foreign visitors. This article expands the scholarship of this site using auto-ethnographic and qualitative survey research methods. Aimed at agitating Cu Chi’s kitsch and political associations, the author considers the Vietnamese market economy and the reversed-migration flows, in order to contextualize Cu Chi as an identity-negotiation nexus for transmigrant Vietnamese professionals. Particular focus is placed on how visitation to Cu Chi tunnels and the abstention of visitation can allude to the participant’s heritage affiliations.