Qualla: Hậu Giang province

Hậu Giang province: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Đông Sơn (thảo luận), CC BY-SA 3.0. Half a metre. That is the figure that hangs over everything else here. Raise the sea by fifty centimetres against the current land elevation and an estimated eighty per cent of Hậu Giang goes under — and the land elevation is not holding still, because the delta is subsiding as groundwater is pumped out from beneath it. This is a landscape with almost no margin. Average ground level across the province sits under two metres, the Hậu River drains past its northern edge on the way to the sea, and the entire economy is built on the assumption that fresh water stays where it is.

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Image: Đông Sơn (thảo luận) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hậu Giang province: Twenty-One Years

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tdkhuong, CC BY-SA 3.0. Hậu Giang had a precise beginning and a precise end. When the city of Cần Thơ was pulled out of the old Cần Thơ province and made a centrally administered municipality, what was left over needed a name of its own. On 1 January 2004 it became Hậu Giang, with Vị Thanh as its capita...

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Image: Tdkhuong | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hậu Giang province: Where Seven Rivers Meet

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Berthold, CC BY-SA 4.0. At Ngã Bảy, seven waterways converge in a single junction: Cái Côn, Mang Cá, Búng Tàu, Sóc Trăng, Xẻo Môn, Lái Hiếu and Xẻo Vong. About a decade after the last of the canals was cut through, in 1915, boat traders began gathering at the meeting point, and the Ngã Bảy floating mark...

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Image: Daniel Berthold | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hậu Giang province: The Jade Emperor's Flooded Ground

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kantcer, CC BY-SA 4.0. In Phụng Hiệp lies Lung Ngọc Hoàng, roughly 2,800 hectares of wetland whose name translates to something close to the Jade Emperor's flooded ground. It is one of the last substantial pieces of natural swamp left in this part of the delta, and it does the work its nickname suggest...

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Image: Kantcer | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hậu Giang province: Pineapples, Cane and Highway 61

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pimnl, CC0. Hậu Giang farms. Rice dominates, sugarcane runs through the Phụng Hiệp area, freshwater aquaculture fills the ponds, and the province's best-known export carries its own place name: khóm Cầu Đúc, the pineapple grown on the acid-sulphate soils around Cầu Đúc, which the local groun...

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Image: Pimnl | CC0

Hậu Giang province: What the Water Decides

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bùi Thụy Đào Nguyên, CC BY-SA 3.0. Everything in Hậu Giang comes back to water, and the balance is tilting. Saltwater intrusion pushes further up the delta's channels in the dry season each time upstream flow falls. Land subsidence adds to the effective sea-level rise. The province's own strengths — pineapple on a...

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Image: Bùi Thụy Đào Nguyên | CC BY-SA 3.0