The words that we use have a tremendous influence on how we see and understand the world, and this is particularly the case with the names of nations. As soon as we say or think of names like Thailand, Russia or Argentina, some kind of image of a nation appears in our brains.
What do we do if we want to talk about something before a modern nation was formed? We can use the name of whatever polity existed at the time. So for the fifteenth century we can talk about “Ayutthaya” instead of “Thailand.”
But when we do this, we are still thinking in terms of polities, and when we think of polities, I think that aspects of the modern nation (like clear borders and government administrations, etc.) again start to enter our minds.
So to avoid this we can use geographical terms. We can talk about the Chao Phraya River basin, for instance. Or we can talk about the mountainous periphery of the Red River Delta.
All of this can help, but there is one term that seems to constantly provide problems, and which is very difficult to find a solution for. And that is the “C word”. . . China!
Here again, we can talk about geographical areas, such as the Yellow River valley, the Yangzi Delta, etc., but what do you do when you want to talk about the cultural practices that were shared across various geographical regions?
I was reminded of this today when I was reading Lương Trúc Đàm’s 1908 Treatise on the Geography of the Southern Kingdom (Nam quốc địa dư chí 南國地輿誌), a wonderful example of an early effort by a reformer in what was left of the Nguyễn empire to re-conceptualize how the place where he lived should be known.
It contains a section on “education” (giáo dục 教育). The concept of education was new to people like Lương Trúc Đàm. It was a concept that ultimately originated in Europe and North America, but at the turn of the twentieth century, intellectuals in places like Huế and the Red River Delta most likely accessed information about this concept from reading the works of reformers from the Qing empire, who in turn had read and written about the works of reformers in places like Tokyo, who in turn had read the works of writers from Europe and North America. . .
There were of course scholars in the Qing empire who had read, translated and written about writings from Europe and North America. And there were probably some intellectuals in places like Huế and the Red River Delta at the turn of the twentieth century who had made similarly direct access, but the content and style of Lương Trúc Đàm’s text is similar to the work of reformers from the Qing empire at that time, like Liang Qichao, and my guess would be that it is from the writings of such individuals that Lương Trúc Đàm got his ideas.
Indeed, in the section on education, Lương Trúc Đàm mentions two “places” where knowledge comes from – Trung and Tây 中西. Today many people would probably translate Tây as “the West/Western” and Trung as “China/Chinese,” but these English terms do not signify comparable entities, and I think that the way in which Lương Trúc Đàm used the term “Trung Tây” does indicate two entities that were equivalent.
Today “China” is a country, but “the West” is not. However, the place that we call “China” was historically a lot like the place we refer to as “the West.” That is to say, it was a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural region of the globe where one could find a high culture that members of the elite across that vast region shared to varying degrees.
So rather than see a division between “Western” knowledge and “Chinese” knowledge, I think it would be more appropriate to translate “Trung” more literally as “Central.”
It is as arbitrary to think of one part of the globe as “the Center” as it is to think of another part of the globe as “the West.” At the same time, both of these concepts have their origins in each of these respective areas. Finally, they are equally vague, and yet they both point to something (difficult to clearly define) that was shared by some people across these regions.
In any case, here is a translation of that section of Lương Trúc Đàm’s text. It is interesting because he starts out talking about “hướng lai” 向來. This can mean “in the past” or “in the past and continuing in the present.” Later, he contrasts “hướng lai” with the present. However, many of the things that he said about “hướng lai,” such as the holding of the civil service exams, were still the case in 1908.
So this passage is about the “past and the present” of the educational system, but when Lương Trúc Đàm talks about the present, he is really only talking about the small number of reform schools that had been set up at that time, particularly the Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục.
Here is what Lương Trúc Đàm wrote:
As for the method of education in our kingdom/country in the past [hướng lai 向來], in the capital there were chancellors and directors of studies who taught students studying at the Directorate of Education who had passed the prefectural or provincial exams or who were inheritance students. Outside of the capital there were educational commissioners who taught the children of scholars from various places in the provinces who were engaged in studies.
In the towns and villages there were also many private schools where students studied under a master.
The Ministry of Rites controlled the administration of the kingdom’s schools and the examination system. Every three years it held the provincial and metropolitan exams, respectively, and the scholars that [the court] obtained were put to use both inside and outside [the court].
As for what was taught, there was nothing other than writing [văn chương 文章] and no thoughts about anything other than the civil service examination. In investigating matters, none of the topics such as chemistry, acoustics, optics, mechanics, electricity, mineral gas studies [petroleum?? khoáng khí học 礦氣學], astronomy, geography, machinery and drawing were discussed at all.
There was education in name, but it did not completely exist in reality. To call it a country without education would not have been an exaggeration.
Recently, given that [the existing] textbooks are flawed, [people have] resolved to make improvements and have drafted texts, set up schools, assembled together Central and Western [Trung Tây 中西] studies from the past and present and translated them into the national language, and divided [all of this] into the levels of advanced, elementary and intermediate.
Teachers start with the national language at the introductory level, while Hán and European writing are specialized topics. The basis for universal education has therefore been established, and we are marching toward the age of civilization.
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What a fascinating post! Thanks, and will respond more later.
Do you think a Chinese writer from the same time or a little earlier would have lamented the lack of instruction in “chemistry, acoustics, optics,etc…”? In other words was actual formal education limited to văn chương and civil service exams in the Trung world as well as Vietnam? And I guess what I’m also try to understand is whether Lương Trúc Đàm would have been writing from a Trung perspective and reacting to its perceived deficiencies?
Yes, I think that if we were to look through (the many) writings by Liang Qichao in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we would find him saying all of these same things. This was very much a Central discourse. What was different about it was that it was a discourse created by reformers that critiqued the traditional ways of the Center. But reformers from what is now the Korean to Indochinese peninsulas all made the same arguments.
Vương Trí Nhàn on his blog sometimes excerpts writings from reformers where the general thrust is that everything the Vietnamese do is inferior compared to the some other ideal sometimes stated as the Western ideal, (sometimes not). Here is an example from his blog:
http://vuongtrinhan.blogspot.com/2012/09/thi-hieu-nho-mon-va-chat-bi-thuong-sau.html
So someone will write a book where they say “Âm nhạc Việt Nam hãy còn ấu trĩ” (Vietnamese music is still in its infancy) and lament that there is no systematic understanding or instruction. The needed reform is to establish music schools and conservatories, write textbooks and before you know it everyone is studying piano and violin and abandoning the đàn nguyệt, or applying Western pedagogical methods to traditional musics and fundamentally transforming them (and often marginalizing or setting them apart).
But the key seems to be to establish a system. There is a positive side that subject matter that was not taken seriously (like chemistry, acoustics, optics or music) can now be taken seriously. Also, with a systematic education, one can be become a respected master or expert of a subject previously not thought to be worthy of consideration. So, perhaps there is not so much an interest in abandoning the center / Trung but of realizing that there are other possibilities that it is necessary to explore on the periphery / West. That’s why the idea of khoa học (not so much to be scientific, but meaning to be approached in a serious, systematic and approved manner) becomes so important. It explains the continued rhetoric of “tiếp thu có chọn lọc những thành tựu văn hoá, khoa học, kỹ thuật hiện đại của thế giới” in a 1987 cultural policy document. The word thế giới is broader than the west, but I think it’s the same place – from outside from Trung / the center. But the “tiếp thu có chọn lọc” is all important.
These are really good comments!!! Thanks for posting them!!
Saying “that everything the Vietnamese do is inferior compared to some other ideal” starts before exposure to the West. Prior to the 20th century you can find the elite repeatedly stating that “our kingdom is supposed to be văn hiến but it’s not,” and then these reformers in the early 20th century change this to say “our country/nation is supposed to be văn minh but it’s not.”
The ideal that văn hiến was compared to was the Center, whereas the ideal that văn minh was compared to was the West.
There was (from the orthodox view of the time) only one version of văn hiến, just like there is (from an orthodox view) only one version of a religion. As for văn minh, however, yes there was a general category of civilization, and I think that’s what the reformers were talking about, but once you headed down the road of seeing the world as divided into nations, then it was also the case that each nation could/should have it’s own distinct variation of civilization as well.
You have to get to this last stage for “tiếp thu có chọn lọc” to become an acceptable idea. In a religion, you do not “tiếp thu có chọn lọc.” To do so is to be heterodox. In a world of nations, “tiếp thu có chọn lọc” is what you say you do in an attempt to create a sense of national pride and legitimacy.
That said, I think this change from the sacred to the secular happened gradually – some people changed faster than others, some only partially changed, and some didn’t change. And the changes that did take place did not all take people to the same end point. Some people went for “total Westernization” (whatever that means) others tried to “tiếp thu có chọn lọc” so as to preserve something “Vietnamese,” but the people who conceived of such ideas had already changed because they were thinking in terms of “Vietnam” instead of “văn hiến”. . .
The more I write I think the more unclear I’m getting, but my point is that there isn’t one rule/approach that we can apply to how people deal with knowledge that comes from someplace else. There was a major change that took place from a sacred view of knowledge to a secular view of knowledge, and that change enabled a lot of contending views and approaches to emerge, Nonetheless, those contending views all make use of the same vocabulary and storehouse of (reinterpreted) ideas to make their case. . .
Thôi! This is getting more and more confusing. I’ll stop here.
I like your explanation. I don’t think that important arbiters of nation and culture ever lost their religion. That may lead to some of the issues you’ve written about notions like khoa học and văn hóa. They realize that they must learn how to do some of the things that the west can do in order to be văn minh and be a participant in the world of nations. They become invested in khoa học, but as a means to an end, to serve the needs of religion (which has some congruence with the nation?). But true science / khoa học is underwritten by enlightenment values of free inquiry. And true free inquiry always undermines religion.
So there’s a real need and a will to “tiếp thu.” The “chọn lọc” though suggests that the religious leaders will decide the range of permissible activities. Do you feel confident that there has absolutely been a change from the sacred to the secular? The question, to me, is to what extent elements of văn hiến have been preserved in văn minh? Or is văn minh a totally new kind of sacred?
Keep getting more and more confusing, and I’ll try to confuse you back.
As scholars in the 18th and 19th saw it, văn hiến gradually spread southward from the area of the Yellow River valley, so that by roughly 1000 AD it enabled an autonomous polity that was (starting to be) văn hiến to emerge.
In the late 19th century, this polity was often referred to by the educated people who lived it in as “the South.” The South could not exist without “the North” because that is where the sacred stuff that made the South possible came from.
The sacredness of văn hiến is (largely) gone. Now, however, there is (as you say here) definitely sacredness in dân tộc/the nation. Where things get messy is that dân tộc/nations get their sacredness from origins and authenticity. How, however, can the dân tộc/nation be authentic or original if so much of what defines it “comes from somewhere else”? Well this is where sacredness helps out, because as long as we are in the realm of the sacred, anything can be twisted/interpreted in ways that support the sacred. What is interesting though is that these interpretations seem to always get done in talking about that place to the north.
This is where I see continuity between the past and the present. In the late 19th century scholars said that the South was văn hiến because it was like the North. A century later what got repeated was that “Vietnam” is a separate nation because it is different from “China.”
What has not changed is the Other. Maybe (I’m thinking off the top of my head here) it’s the way that the sacredness of văn hiến has been re-directed. The concept of văn hiến and văn minh contradict each other (because you can have Vietnamese civilization but not Vietnamese văn hiến). But both the belief in văn hiến and the form of nationalism that has taken hold in Vietnam both rely on the sacred/potent.
You could easily come up with a “secular” form of nationalism which would say that the Vietnamese are just like the Lao, Thai, Burmans, etc. who all went through a process of ethno-genesis roughly 1000 years ago, and this could be done without using “China” as the Other against which meaning is created (in either the positive way it was done for văn hiến or the negative way it is done for the dân tộc).
So to answer these questions: “The question, to me, is to what extent elements of văn hiến have been preserved in văn minh? Or is văn minh a totally new kind of sacred?”
-I think the answer would be that elements have morphed. There is some stuff that is new, but I don’t think much has been “preserved.” What continuities exist are “morphed continuities.”
“Morphed Continuities”?!! Hey, that sounds like a great phrase for the title of a book (before the colon). . .
Oh, and anh Tây Bụi, on that same topic of morphing, I should make a full disclosure. As I wrote the above comment I was streaming some ambient music from archive.org (http://archive.org/details/Complex_Silence_24) – “The Ambient Visitor – Complex Silence 24.”
I like to think that listening to stuff like this helps me concentrate, but as I clicked “post comment” I also noticed that it sort of feels like my brain is dripping. . . so if “morphed continuities” doesn’t make sense, then we can blame The Ambient Visitor, but if it does make sense, then we should give The Ambient Visitor some credit.