VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese poor students have to take different kinds of jobs to earn their living and fund their study. Traveling from place to place--so as to sing in the public is a new job.
The “barley-sugar” students

A young boy and a young girl can be seen every evening in a place near a university in Hanoi. They were seen singing and offering barley-sugar bars to people. Some people took banknotes from their wallets and purchased the barley sugar, while others shook their heads.

Only a few people know that the singers are the real students, who go to lecture halls every morning and afternoon, and then go singing in the public every evening. They are called “barley-sugar” students, because they travel from place to place, singing in the public and asking people to buy barley-sugar.

“You should be patient and understand well people’s psychology to take this job. And please don’t be too touchy,” said Nguyen Tan, a student from the HCM City Industry University.

“Every evening, if would meet a lot of people, including the ones who may make impolite behaviors. However, you still should be polite to everyone in order to sell your products,” he explained.

An old motorbike, a microphone, an audio player, and the bars of barley-sugar worth 2000 dong each are enough for a set of tools of the “barley-sugar students”. In general, the investment capital is really big, because an audio player is worth no less than eight million dong.

Though the job requires big initial investment capital only poor people would take this job.

Tan said that he regularly meets troubles in his working days. A lot of people bought candies, but then thundered him. Others tried to drive him away. Meanwhile, drunken men tried to break his microphone and insulted him. However, Tan still had to reply with smiles and songs.

The “barley-sugar students” go to work in rainy days as well. They stand and sing in the rain at pubs the street shops, though the shops are not full of people these days. If they stop working for one day, they would not earn any money for the meals, and they would not have money to send to their parents in the home villages.

“The student-singers only love sunny days. If it rains, their stomach will be empty,” Tan said.

Nguyen Van Dung, also a barley-sugar student, said that those, who take this job, needs to have some “music talent”. “You should know a lot of songs, and can deal with a lot of types of music to attract listeners,” he said.

“The most important thing you should have is that you should understand clients well and have the “art of communication”,” he added.

Dung said that he has been taking this job for the last two years, which has brought him money, so that he can live and study in HCM City.

This is a “clean job”

None of the student-singer feels a complex about their conditions, while they affirm that this is a “clean job” which allows them to live on “clean money”.

Bich, a female student, said that she sometimes feels self-pity when drunken men take liberties with her. She sometimes thought of giving up the job, but she has changed her mind. If she does not go to work, their parents would have to feed her, and this means that they will have to work harder.

Nguyen Thu Lan, a former student of the Industry Junior College, now is working for an electronics company, said that the job helped her live and survive the difficult period, and she is proud of this.

All the barely-sugar students understand that they need to work now, so that they can have better lives in the future.

NLD