Daniel Dang stands behind the counter of his Bellaire Boulevard enterprise, Daniel & Co. Jewellery.
Each bona fide Houstonian is aware of Johnny Dang. The Vietnamese jeweler is credited with customizing grills, platinum and gold customized mouthpieces blinged out with diamonds, for stars like Paul Wall, Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, and Beyoncé. Lesser recognized, nonetheless, is his brother Daniel Dang, who paved the way in which. Because the eldest baby of a protracted legacy of jewelers, Daniel’s rise in Houston is a full-circle second, not only for him, however for his complete household.
Glittering gems mirror tiny rainbows on a jewellery field as Daniel Dang reaches in, selecting up a platinum diamond ring. “After I go to Vegas, I am going all out,” Daniel says with a chuckle as he drapes iced-out bracelets on his wrists. After tucking the jewels again right into a secure field, Daniel leans again in his chair, taking in all that he’s constructed. His workplace, situated alongside bustling Bellaire Boulevard, is crammed with luxuries match for, effectively, a jeweler. Pictures of diamonds, designer watches, and framed copies of Daniel’s work certifications from the Gemological Institute of America cling on the partitions. However earlier than the glitz and glam, earlier than he turned one in every of Houston’s premier jewelers, Daniel’s journey was crammed with strife, hustle, and conflict.
The oldest of 4 kids, Daniel, legally Hoang Xuan Dang, was born and raised in Vietnam throughout the Nineteen Seventies amid the contentious conflict between North and South Vietnam. Simply 5 years after his delivery, on April 30, 1975, Saigon fell and was overtaken by the communist-led North Vietnam. Daniel’s father, Thomas Dang, who had labored for the CIA, the US army, and the South Vietnamese military, was captured as a prisoner of conflict and thrown into a jail camp for almost all of Daniel’s childhood. Daniel recollects visiting his father in jail twice. Homelife was additionally difficult. Daniel remembers destroyed homes in his neighborhood, dropping members of the family to conflict, and being so poor that his mom despatched him away to dwell with kinfolk to reduce the monetary burden.
However Thomas, although imprisoned, had a plan. “My dad knew beneath the Communist regime, I [would] by no means, ever have a future in any respect,” Daniel says, and so Thomas plotted a approach for Daniel to flee Vietnam. The primary try, which occurred when he was round 8 years outdated, “fell [through],” says Daniel, who recollects being chased and shot at as he “ran via the jungles, waters, ocean, rivers, strive[ing] to cover.” Finally, he was captured and imprisoned for 3 weeks earlier than he was launched.
A number of years later, Thomas deliberate one other escape. Following his dad’s plan, Daniel, then 12, swam roughly two miles into the ocean with a gaggle of 17 different kids. A small boat picked up the group, then left them on a abandoned island earlier than resuming their journey on one other, bigger boat days later. Daniel remembers considering the boat wasn’t massive sufficient to carry everybody, however he and the opposite kids nonetheless rushed on, desperate to get someplace secure. Within the chaos, Daniel fell and injured his leg. Bleeding, he made it onto the boat, the place he and the others nonetheless risked being captured. A number of the older kids pretended to be fishermen to cover from coastal patrollers. “In the event that they catch you escaping the nation, they’ll kill you,” Daniel says.
After three days of crusing, the group entered worldwide waters, however that was solely half the journey. The boat drifted aimlessly via the ocean, its crew ready for somebody to rescue them. “There’s no meals, there’s no drink, there’s no gasoline,” Daniel recollects, so the crew survived off of the occasional fish, rainwater, and through essentially the most determined instances, no matter lifeless issues floated to the floor within the ocean. Daniel even drank his personal urine a number of instances, mixing it with saltwater and toothpaste to make it extra appetizing.
Only a baby, Daniel Dang survived floating throughout the Pacific Ocean.
In the meantime, Daniel’s leg harm worsened. He fell out and in of consciousness, teetering on the point of demise because the tiny boat, too small for the handfuls of passing cargo ships to identify, drifted. He listened to the whispers onboard. Boatmates had been ready for him to die so they might eat him. “Oh, s—, oh hell no, you’re not gonna eat me!” he recollects considering. However he feared this might be his finish. He apologized to his mom aloud, expressing his remorse for leaving residence. “There’s nothing else you are able to do, proper?” he says. “You simply wait and die.” Then, the unthinkable occurred.
A ship crammed with Filipino fishermen speeding to shore stumbled upon the crew. The boys rescued them, bringing them to a small island on the sting of the Philippines. Had they stayed within the ocean for an additional half-hour, an incoming storm would have wiped them out, he was instructed.
Weak and emaciated, Daniel crawled onto the seashore and chugged water from a bucket. “I can’t even specific the sensation,” he says.
That island served as Daniel’s residence for the following a number of days earlier than the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or the UN Refugee Company transferred him and the opposite kids to the Palawan Refugee Camp.
Life there was totally different. “Mainly, you’re by yourself,” Daniel recalled. Individuals who lived within the camp, which was divided into zones, shared mud properties with straw roofs. Daniel, who lived amongst different single Vietnamese refugees, says in some methods, circumstances had been higher. Meals and water had been extra plentiful. Individuals would collect at a neighborhood temple and church, and he remembers enjoying soccer with different kids, taking English courses, and watching Jackie Chan films throughout the occasional weekend film evening.
The Palawan Refugee Camp was the place Daniel landed, residing there for over two years.
All of the whereas, he and the opposite refugees dreamed of being despatched to America. Two years later, Daniel was the primary in his speedy household, and one of many few in his camp, to be granted refugee standing in the USA. He got here to Houston as a younger teenager within the early Nineteen Eighties to dwell with an aunt and uncle who had fled Vietnam years earlier than him. Daniel acclimated to life in Alief, attending native faculties like Elsik and Hastings excessive faculties, however studying English, even via the ESL applications, was difficult. It was additionally a tradition shock. He thought, “Why are you speaking so quick? What sort of English is that this?” Alief faculties felt like a “five-star lodge.” “Again residence, all faculties [are] within the jungle,” he says. “There was no college.”
Nonetheless, Daniel excelled. He turned fluent in English and labored odd jobs after highschool to assist himself. He waited tables at Vietnamese eating places, served as a cook dinner at native fast-food joints, bought safety techniques door-to-door, mounted vehicles at a mechanic store, and even labored on the meeting line on the outdated Igloo coolers manufacturing facility in West Houston—but it surely wasn’t sufficient to thrive.
Seeking success, Daniel left Houston in 1987, bouncing round New York and California with mates. He landed a part-time gig at a flea market, broadly generally known as a “swap meet” in California, the place a jewellery retailer proprietor paid him $20 a day to arrange and take down his stand. The proprietor taught him in regards to the funds when issues had been sluggish. That’s when Daniel discovered that the jewellery enterprise was essentially the most profitable trade he had labored in.
In 1988, whereas nonetheless in California, Daniel obtained phrase that his father was free after making a profitable escape from jail on his third try. With a bouquet of contemporary flowers in hand, Daniel met Thomas on the airport. It was the primary time they’d seen one another since Daniel was a baby. “It was very emotional,” Daniel says.
Daniel moved his father into his residence, which was then half of a literal storage. “I [couldn’t] afford a complete storage,” he says with amusing. “To me, it was fancy in comparison with the refugee camp.” After six months, they cut up up once more to pursue their very own careers. Daniel returned to Houston and delved into jewellery making. In 1991, he opened his first firm, Daniel & Co., with two mates, leveraging six bank cards and borrowing $30,000 from acquaintances to determine a tiny stall in Sharpstown. They later opened one other stall in a neighborhood flea market, which additionally provided jewellery restore and design.
Daniel Dang poses with the All-Stars trophy, studded with 10,000 diamonds, that he designed for the All-Stars Automotive Present.
Daniel admits that the earliest designs had been ugly and boring, crooked and unpolished. “Oh, my God, it [was a] catastrophe,” he says. However they had been his. They had been handmade, they usually turned a basis that might assist assist his household.
Round 1996, Daniel’s mom and his three brothers—Kevin, Johnny, and Jimmy—had been granted refugee standing. The household reunited in Houston with Daniel and his father and shortly started working with Daniel on the flea market. Daniel’s brothers launched a enterprise of their very own, which might later increase into making their very own signature grills (Johnny Dang launched TV Jewellery in 1998 and later went into enterprise with native rapper Paul Wall). Daniel continued to customise jewellery and develop his enterprise, Daniel & Co., which he’d later study was in his bloodline: His great-grandparents had been jewelers for the Vietnamese royal household. Generations earlier than him, the Dangs, together with his father, uncle, and aunt, all labored for Vietnam’s leaders, crafting dazzling jewellery actually match for kings. Returning to the household enterprise was destiny.
As of late, Daniel runs the Bellaire Boulevard store, drawing up new designs and creating glamorous one-of-a-kind items. His work has been showcased in high-profile occasions across the metropolis, together with the All-Stars Automotive Present, for which he encrusted the All-Stars trophy with 10,000 diamonds. Daniel additionally acquired Kim Chung Jewellery, a enterprise situated close to Daniel & Co., to increase his footprint. Moreover, he hopes to increase his firm via franchising.
Daniel realizes how far he’s come. “We at all times dream. We at all times need to dream [big] like this,” he says, trying round his workplace, remembering the times when his objective together with his Sharpstown stand was to make a residing. “It was too large [of a dream] for me, particularly when you don’t have anything.” Along with his firm, he’s exceeded his wildest expectations, however “I don’t suppose I’ve achieved something but,” he says.
