A Lesson to Learn

An interview with Minh Bui Jones

Portside Review
I just wanted to ask you about how you started Mekong Review. What gave you the idea, where it kind of comes out of and who were some of the people and stories involved in getting it off the ground? 

Minh Bui Jones
Mekong Review started in October 2015 when I was living in Cambodia and the birth of the magazine was just a lot of happy circumstances, a confluence of serendipitous moments. I had just come back from a trip to Thailand where I was doing a story on Chinese tourists in Thailand and how badly behaved they were – that was the story I pitched to the editor. But when I went to Thailand I found, contrary to what I had read, that the Chinese tourists were quite delightful. I didn’t see many examples of their ghastly behaviour. They were sweet. They were adventurous. I met young women who had gone off for the first time to see the world…they were so excited that they reminded me of when I was young, going to Greece for the first time. But the editor in America was sold on the idea of badly behaved Chinese tourists so I had to write this story. And I was really angry with myself. I was very disappointed with the story. A lot of journalists I know also experienced this. A lot of journalists go on assignment and come back with a vastly different story which they couldn’t write about because it wasn’t what their editor was expecting. So many of us have, in our bottom drawer, a lot of these off-cut stories that we have never found a home for. And so, the Mekong Review idea was born of that frustration; it’s me thinking, ‘Oh, god, I wish I had a place where I could publish these stories’.  

When I came back to Cambodia from Thailand…I bumped into a few friends who were starting up the Kampot Readers and Writers Festival (Kampot was south of the capital Phnom Penh). They wanted me to compare one of the sessions. I hungrily accepted it and then on the way home, I decided to start the Mekong Review, because I thought the literary festival was a really good event to start such a publication because you’re riding on the wave of a festival, but I only had four weeks to do so.  

Portside Review
And what then?  

Minh Bui Jones
So that night I pulled together the team, and within a couple of weeks I had the first issue sewn up, then we designed and printed it. We put the magazines in the boot of a car and drove to Kampot for the launch. I think we had a couple of hours to spare.  

I really didn’t think about the longevity of the magazine. I just wanted to get one issue out and test the water, and thankfully it was really well received. People wanted to subscribe, and as a result, the second issue was guaranteed. The first issue, mind you, was mainly on Cambodia because it was a local magazine. This is something that I quite like about hard-copy magazines, that, unlike the internet, it’s very localised. I always wanted to do publications in which I get to know my audience and I get to see them. It’s one way of knowing your readers and your advertisers; it’s a much more intimate way of publishing than the internet. 

Portside Review
In that way, I guess my second question partly builds on that because I think in that time the internet’s become more of a presence, in the last six or seven years. But I’m also wondering if you could talk about what’s changed between that first issue to what has changed now? You might want to refer to the pandemic, you might not, but it might be about how you see Mekong Review right now.  

Minh Bui Jones
Since the beginning, the Mekong Review was born from, as I said, a confluence of circumstances and it worked out really well. So, it was quite organic the way it grew; the first issue was on Cambodia; the second issue was on Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand; and then some time into the second year we were covering Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines and so on. In more recent times we have expanded our coverage to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. And so, in a way, we have grown where our readers have taken us. 

It’s not just about our readership, it’s also about our supply. That is to say supply of writers, of artists and photographers. I started the magazine in Cambodia at a time when there were so many creative spirits wandering the streets of Phnom Penh. There were so many of them I could have commissioned an entire issue by hanging around one café for half a day.  

In so far as the internet is concerned, it has helped people find us, it’s an electronic word of mouth, passing the magazine from one reader to another via social media or through our website. But the internet is supplementary to our physical existence. Most of our subscribers have subscribed to our magazine because they’ve picked it up on their travels through Southeast Asia. On a trip to Vietnam or Cambodia they will have seen a copy or picked it up and when they return to San Francisco, Cornwall or wherever, they then subscribe to us.  

Portside Review
What about the pandemic in that case? 

Minh Bui Jones
And so far as the pandemic is concerned, it’s struck us really hard because we haven’t been able to get our magazine out. This time last year our entire issue was binned because we couldn’t get it out. When we have managed to get the magazine into shops in Southeast Asia, there have been lockdowns and shops had to close for a long time. There were times when printers were closed, distributers went into hibernation. The whole business – transportation, printing, distribution – collapsed overnight, so even if we could produce the magazine, we couldn’t get it out. So, effectively, we didn’t exist as a business for 6 months last year and that’s why we were close to shutting down. But things are picking up now.  

Portside Review
That leads me to my next question. You just said “things are picking up now”, but how do you read both the region and the journal’s place in the region at this particular historic moment? How do you see things right now, both in terms of politics and culture, because the journal does both, but also what’s your view as a commentator, but also Mekong’s place in that commentary position? 

Minh Bui Jones
Well, I don’t know, to be honest with you. I think it’s up to readers, they’re in a better position to convey that because, for the last 18 months, I haven’t been able to travel so I haven’t been able to gauge our place. And also, we’re not a political magazine, we’re a literary magazine. We’re very political, but still, we are a literary magazine. Our strength is in our long pieces. We can deliver long, in-depth, detailed essays on history, politics and literature that websites like the Diplomat or others couldn’t possibly do. 

And I guess we’re different because there are a lot of websites running commentary or op-ed pieces on Asian affairs, but they deal with topical issues, with daily events, whereas we don’t. We take our time trying to make sure that an issue is covered well and is covered by the right person. I take a long time finding the right contributors. Our contributors don’t necessarily have to be born in Vietnam to write about Vietnam, nor do they have to live there for 10 years, but they have to show some commitment to Vietnam. That is, they’re not going to write about it then move on to the next subject. I get submissions from well-known authors all the time, but you often don’t see them because I don’t publish them. I tend to spend more time looking for local writers. They’re much harder to find. 

Portside Review
I think you can sense that when you’re reading the journal, the depth that’s there, which enables and creates a certain type of quality which might not certainly be a house goal, although I think there is a house goal beyond the geography, like I think that’s what makes it literary and a way of thinking about the journal and how to do a journal but this also goes back to what you said at the very beginning, that the magazine also has to be responsive to the storylines that are from places rather than decided by the ‘Lonely Planet-brigades’ sitting in editorial offices in Sydney, London, New York, or Paris. And I think that’s an important approach that gives the journal its quality substance and something that I really respond to as a reader. 

Minh Bui Jones
Thank you. It takes a little while to create this virtuous circle of readers and writers. We’re now nearly seven years into the Mekong Review and I don’t get a lot of ‘orientalist’ submissions. Those people would never come to us.  

Portside Review
Yeah, that’s right, and readers know what you’re on about so writers know what you’re on about so editors know what you’re on about and that kind of gives an internal strength and autonomy to the journal beyond any individual but that makes individuals proud of what they do. 

Minh Bui Jones
That’s right, and that’s why we never published any guidelines because we don’t need to, because people know exactly what the guidelines are. 

Portside Review
That leads me to my final question really. What’s the future of Mekong? How do you see it developing and where does it go from here? 

Minh Bui Jones
I’ve been working as a journalist for 30 years and 20 of those years have been in magazines so I’ve always been of the view that a magazine, once launched, develops a life of its own, and it’s important for the founder not to have any attachment to it. There will come a time when you are no longer of use to the magazine. It’s a bit like having a baby; once your kid finishes high school that’s it, it goes and does its own thing. A magazine is the same, it develops a life of its own. I also think a magazine shouldn’t last forever; that it should die. Magazines have a short lifespan because it reflects a moment in time. 

And so, for me, I think I’ve done my bit, I don’t think I’ve got that much more to offer, to be honest with you. I’ll probably hand it on to someone else, and hopefully they’ll bring it to the next level. 

It’s important in that Buddhist sense of learning how to let go.