Vietnamese culture is shaped by more than 2,000 years of Confucianist philosophy – and in Asian cultures of service, parental love is a thing you experience not through words, but through actions.
Notions of filial piety shape the idea that familial affection is a duty and bond cultivated in collectivist cultures where the loving family unit becomes the cornerstone of social prosperity. While theories of “love languages” burgeon in the West, the high-context cultures of the East demand a love that is quieter – unspoken – assumed.
If we can accept the differences inherent in that tension, we find that oftentimes there can be beauty in the small things which remain unexpressed.
That brutal June, in a country far away from home, I didn’t realize how much I’d needed to hear those words, spoken over the phone by parents whose lives I’d allowed mine to quietly diverge from.
“Thì con cứ nói đi, ba mẹ đang lắng nghe." Translation: You just speak, mum and dad are still listening.
Here are five ways Vietnamese parents let you know they love you, without using words.

1. Gọt hoa quả – The gift of peeled fruit
Perhaps best tabled under the list of things we take for granted, a platter of carved fruit is the imagery which has become synonymous with the wordless affection of Vietnamese parents. Many odes have been written to this act of service – Connie Wang’s “Love In The Shape of Cut Fruit” beautifully illustrates the psychological underpinnings contained in the act of peeling fruit for one’s children. “It’s about disaster prevention”, she writes, in a world where control is hard to come by and life is “filled with bitter and hard things.”
In a culture where words of affection are few and far between, a plate of peeled fruit is the epitome of effort and care.
America’s Apple logo tells us that apples exist to be bitten into; Vietnamese parents understand that apples need peeling and slicing before children will eat it.
My mum teaches me to carve carrots into flowers because “we don’t serve food unless it’s đẹp mắt (beautiful to the eye).” This is the way we learn to expect love – in quiet and unassuming ways.

2. Xoa dầu, cạo gió – Medicated oil and “scraping wind”
Those of us who have moved away from the Vietnamese homes we once grew up in may have compartmentalized the memories of intensely menthol-scented oil and spoon rubbing which were proffered as solutions to minor fever and cold.
How could you ever explain the purpose of that constellation of deep purple bruises, scraped into the pattern of a fishbone on your spine to someone who had never experienced the same?
The traditional folk remedy of cạo gió – understood in Western medical journals as “coining” or “pressure stroking” – is a typical Vietnamese home remedy for dissipating heat or negative energy accumulated in the body during periods of illness or Yin-Yang imbalance.
To modern scientific medicine, the pain-to-relief ratio of this practice is an unresolved equation. But as adult children, you realize that the act of rubbing oil and scraping the impurities from one’s body is an act of interdependence which cannot be done by one’s own hands alone.
To xoa dầu, cạo gió (“rub oil and scrape wind”) is to participate in an ancient form of therapy passed down orally through generations, and delivered in a way only Asian parents know how.

3. Nấu cháo khi con bệnh – Chicken porridge for the soul
A bowl of plain white porridge (“cháo trắng”) or chicken porridge (“cháo gà”) during sickness is perhaps one of the simplest creature comforts Vietnamese parents provide to aid with a child’s speedy recovery. The story of the humble bowl of thin rice gruel as an economical means for achieving base nutrition was shaped during times of historical wartime shortage.
Easy to digest, and nutritionally efficient for the effort required.
“Ăn một bát cháo chạy ba quãng đồng” goes one Vietnamese idiom, translating to the idea that one bowl of rice could sustain you for a lap of three fields. “Mạnh vì gạo” goes another – strength from rice.
All of this to say: acts of care in Vietnamese culture aren’t grandiose or pretentious. Sometimes the strength from a bowl of porridge was all we needed from our parents to get through another day.

4. Mua đi mua lại món con thích ăn – Serial buying your favourite foods
A scarcity of exchanged words means the ones which end up being spoken retain a longer shelf-life in a parent’s mind. Repeatedly buying foods that a child said they liked signals affection and concern.
“I bought your favourite food,” a Vietnamese parent might say when they come home from work.
Said another way: “I remembered your preferences.”
5. Ủng hộ việc học – Investing in your education

Education is a core pillar of the Vietnamese value system, adjacent to the value of family. It’s a truism that Vietnamese parents invest an extraordinary amount of time and resources into their children’s education and extracurricular activities, if only because it serves as a means and mode for creating the opportunities for a “better life”.
As children, music lessons and tutoring might have been a source of complaint, but in retrospect, that investment may have been an unspoken bid for better things:
“Go do the things we didn’t get a chance to do.”