I went to a talk last night by a very famous scholar who was talking about the Neolithic Revolution. This guy made the point that all of the early states in the world that he knows of (Mesopotamia, China, Greece, Rome, etc.) needed two things in order to form – a type of grain (wheat, rice, etc.) and slaves.
According to this scholar, wherever you see the earliest states forming you see a surplus of grains being produced, and an enslaved population who does a lot of the work.
This made me think about the earliest description we have of the Red River Delta – a few lines from a text called the Record of the Outer Territory of Jiao Region [交州外域記, Jiaozhou waiyu ji] which is cited in Li Daoyuan’s sixth-century Annotated Classic of Waterways [水經注, Shuijing zhu]:
交州外域記曰，交趾昔未有郡縣之時，土地有雒田，其田從潮水上下，民墾食其田，名為雒民。設雒王雒侯主諸郡縣。縣多為雒將。雒將銅印青綬。
“The Record of the Outer Territory of Jiao Region states that ‘In the past, before Jiaozhi had commanderies and districts, the land had lạc fields. These fields followed the rising and falling of the tidal/flood waters. The people who opened these fields for cultivation were called lạc people. Lạc princes and lạc marquises were appointed to control the various commanderies and districts. Many of the districts had lạc generals. The lạc generals had bronze seals on green ribbons.’”
People have talked a lot about what 潮水 means. It’s most literal meaning is “tidal waters,” but I’ve seen definitions of 潮 that that simply mean something like “rising water,” and therefore it could mean “floodwaters.”
Regardless of how we want to translate it, it seems to indicate a kind of agriculture that relies on the natural movement of water. The speaker I listened to last night referred to this as “inundation agriculture.” Essentially the way this works is that when a river floods, people throw rice seeds in the water, and then when the water recedes, the rice grows.
This is one of the most simple ways of growing rice.
So this makes me wonder about Văn Lang – the kingdom that Vietnamese scholars said existed in the first millennium BC. If for a state to emerge it was essential to have grain/rice and slaves, then what evidence do we have that these two elements existed in the Red River Delta in the first millennium BC?
Inundation agriculture could produce a surplus of rice, but not a very large one, so if there was a state that was based on this type of agriculture, it probably was limited in size and wealth.
And then as for slaves, why is it that I’ve never heard anyone talk about slaves in the kingdom of Văn Lang? If this was the norm in early states, why doesn’t anyone talk about this in the case of Văn Lang? Were there no slaves in Văn Lang?
If there weren’t, then how can we explain why Văn Lang was different from all other early states on the planet?
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is this a picture of Japan’s Yayoi period farming? I can tell from their hairstyles and clothing.
Yes, you are right! 🙂
The traditional agriculturists were the Proto-Tai speakers, not the Austronesians living in the ancient Red River Delta or the inhabitants that have been labeled as the Vietic speakers by many linguists. According to Chamberlain, they were hunter-gatherers which could be observed when visit the Annamite Mountains. While Michel Ferlus claims that they were dry rice cultivators. For the Austronesians, I’m convinced that they were hunter-gatherers. Whatever these tribes did to produce food, it was not enough to create the earliest form of a state.
I can’t help wondering why the Chinese elite in the medieval Red River Delta ended up choosing a branch of Vietic languages to speak? What was special with these Vietic tribes that made the Chinese rulers switch to their language?
For the Tais, I also have some questions to wonder. That is there are a number of linguists having claimed that there is a connection between Tai-Kadai and Austronesian speakers and that they separated only about 5,000 years ago. However, the present-day non-mixed Tai groups, such as the Black Tai and the Southern Zhuang look completely different from the Austronesians, ie the Malays and Indonesians. So, Why after only 5,000 years of evolution, humans can look that different ? What happened with the early Proto-Tai speakers that made them look more like the Chinese than the modern Austronesians ?
Not only that, there is a Chinese linguist called Zhengzhang Shangfang (郑张尚芳) has interpreted the ancient song ”the Song of Yue boatman” to be an approximation of medieval Thai using his reconstructed Old Chinese. The song itself was recorded somewhere in the modern-day Chinese province of Hubei 2,500 years ago. Moreover Zhenzhang has attempted to prove that the ancient states of Yue and Wu were of Proto-Kam-Tai using his linguistic evidence. while Pittayawat Pittayaporn claims that the Proto-Tai speakers began to migrate out of the present-day Guangxi starting only at the 8th century AD. So, how come their language can be found in the present-day Hubei at the 5th century B.C ? Is it possible that all these linguistic things is pseudoscience ?
I have forgot that in your article “The Tai words and the place of the Tai in the Vietnamese past” pages 58-59, you mentions that Xu Songshi claimed that the Zhuang word ”gu” (古) was found from Anhui to Guangxi Provinces in the past. Moreover, Pittayaway Pittayaporn proposes that the Tai migration out of Guangxi from the 8th-10th centuries applied only for Southwestern Tai. He does not mention anything about whether or not Proto-Tai or its earlier form, Proto-Kam-Tai, had existed further north in the present-day Hubei and Anhui provinces? That means that the early geographical distribution of Proto-Tai/Proto-Kam-Tai speakers remains a mystery.
“I can’t help wondering why the Chinese elite in the medieval Red River Delta ended up choosing a branch of Vietic languages to speak? What was special with these Vietic tribes that made the Chinese rulers switch to their language?”
Good question. I think the answer might be in not seeing the “elite” as very “elite. Certainly by the Tang some of the “officials” were essentially warlords who fought themselves to power and then were “appointed” to “govern” over the area. Who knows how educated those guys were, but some of their followers were probably not very “elite.”
Like languages like Urdu, perhaps the language that emerged was initially more of a language of the barracks rather than a language of the elite.
”Who knows how educated those guys were…”
I have long wondered why the present-day Vietnamese especially in the north and northern central parts have very different behavior from their neighboring SEA peoples and from other ethnic minority groups living the country who have not yet overexposed to the Vietnamese ? in that they appear to be thief-minded, dishonest, deceitful, cunning, crafty, greedy, selfish, suspicious, protective comparing to other SEA peoples, even to the poorer and much less developed ones. And why there exists the same type of difference between the southern Vietnamese and northern Vietnamese, ie. north and northern central, despite a 40-year-long unification and a free movement of people from the north to the south ?
After reading many of your articles on this blog and having gained a clearer understanding of the history of the people that’s now called ”Vietnamese”, I’m convinced that I have the answer to that. That is the Han Chinese came to live in the northern part of Vietnam throughout 1000 years were not normal Chinese, but almost all of them were soldiers, condemned criminals and deported prisoners who got sent there to build roads, fortifications and engineering works. What do you expect from these population segments ? …violence, thief-mindedness, dishonesty, having zero respect to other people, deceit, greed…and most of them were men. A normal Chinese would not want to go to the southern most frontier area like Jiaozhi to live since it may be considered to be undeveloped, uncivilized, not to mention its alien hash climate to the Chinese. As time went by, the lifestyle and behavior of these criminals and prisoners became the main culture of the population there. Even though they finally adopted a branch of ”Vietic” languages as their native tongue but their way of life still remained intact and ended up becoming universal because the population of these Han Chinese outnumbered that of the ”Vietic tribes”. That also explains why the present-day Vietnamese living in the north and northern central Vietnam look much more like the Chinese than the Vietic groups living in the Annamite Mountains whose appearance is similar to the Cambodians.
I can point out to you that these characteristics of the Vietnamese have existed not just from the 20th century but at least earlier than the 18th or 19th centuries because a number of the Vietnamese blame the communism for worsening the Vietnamese’s mindset and behavior. The recent political system may fuel such behavior but it does not create that.
In the past dating from the 13th century until very recent the 18th, 19 centuries, there were a considerable number of Vietnamese sent by the court to the border region with China as officials and teachers. These people nowadays get classified as the ”Tay” by the Vietnamese government because they became Tai-ized and could speak a Tai dialect as well as Vietnamese and many of them bare the sure name ”Nguyen”. Even though after several generations have passed, their behavior is still exactly the same as the Vietnamese living in the Red River Delta: violent, showing zero respect and blatantly want to confront other people, dishonest, greedy and selfish which set them off from other peaceful neighboring Tai inhabitants. In my childhood, I was ”lucky” enough to live in the same neighborhood with one of these Tai-zed Vietnamese clan and had quite enough experiences with them that make me wish that I shouldn’t have lived there. Not only that, these Tai-ized Vietnamese involved in a fight over land dispute (as they possess a lot of land) with another ”proper Vietnamese” family moving from the Delta in the same neighborhood, causing their whole clans and relatives to partake in the fight. Both of these Vietnamese bear the surname ”Nguyen” in which the Tai-ized Vietnamese have the surname ”Nguyen Đình” specifically. This is one of many clan surnames migrated from the Red River Delta around 200 years ago to take office as ”tusi officials” in the border region. That explains why they own a lot of land. Therefore, these personality traits of the Vietnamese as a whole have existed many centuries ago, not just now.
That also makes me very worried about the future of not only the Tai but also other minority groups because there has been an influx of the Vietnamese moving to the northeast Sino-Vietnamese area and the northwest highlands which is the Black Tai’s homeland from the lowlands, bring together their dirt behavior. Sooner or later the naive and peaceful Tais will be taken advantage of by these Vietnamese when exposed to them or rapidly become assimilated since their languages and culture are portrayed as uncivilized and inferior by the communist authorities and in reality many of them have been abandoning their own language in favor of Vietnamese, not knowing that Vietnamese is a useless language in cross-border communication. By keeping their own Tai dialect, they could easily communicate with other Tai groups living in other countries or at least facilitate their learning process.
Moving to other countries, these Vietnamese exhibit the same pattern of behavior. Many of them have wondered why even the financially affluent middle class exhibit the same thieving behavior when travel to other countries ? I’m convinced that the answer lays in their far past.
I can’t reply to Ego-I’s long form for some reason, but his essay made me realize I have to watch out for all those thieving descendant of convicts Australians.
If your famous scholar was outlining requirements for the establishment of those early Neolithic states then he missed one of the critical steps. Creation (or borrowing) of a written language. Think about it. The critical need to control your “empire” is clear, concise communication and record keeping.
Instead of slaves, it is the ability to mobilize a substantial work force for short/long term projects. Slaves need to be fed forever whereas a work force only needs enough rice to dig a short canal or build/reinforce a dike.
When the Koreans unified Japan (yes, the first Emperor of Japan was Korean and one/third of the Japanese nobility was Korean — after all, someone has to know how to read and write), they introduced Chinese characters and Chinese phonetics which became the Japanese written languages. In addition, Japanese grammar became identical to Korean although it is a Polynesian language (in that it has no ending consonants except “n” on Chinese loan words ending in “ng”).
Why did the Thais adopt a written language in the 13th century? Why did the Khmers adopt an “Indian” written language? Buddhist missionaries or the need to administer their new territory?
Why did the Chams use Sanskrit (and other Indian?) written languages? Did the Chams go into india for trade purposes before the Indians went East? The Chams (in CVN and Funan) did send tribute to the Chinese. Was that more for their trade with China than as vassal states of China. To me, the Chams seem to have been maritime traders rather than immigrants who took over a “country”. The Chams used the Mon rice farmers to acquire trade material used with China (think Sandal wood). Compare that to the presence of Chinese businessmen in VN and Thailand who controlled the rice crops.
Similarly the spread of Dong Son brass drums throughout SEA (and especially into the PI and Indonesian islands) fits the Cham trade routes. I think the Chams did not run kingdoms but rather small trade empires.
I don’t believe the Chinese rulers in the Red River Valley talked directly to the Kinh rice farmers. They talked to Kinh intermediaries who could speak Chinese. Some Kinh became educated, could read Chinese characters, and eventually became Mandarins within the Chinese system (but not in the Red River valley, I believe). Of course some Chinese probably did learn to speak Vietnamese (a la the French to run rubber plantations or to run businesses).
FYI: I am retired, speak and read Vietnamese, and was school trained in Vietnamese, Mandarin, Korean, and Thai. I am very interested in Van Lang and the beginnings of the Kinh.
“I don’t believe the Chinese rulers in the Red River Valley talked directly to the Kinh rice farmers. They talked to Kinh intermediaries who could speak Chinese. Some Kinh became educated, could read Chinese characters, and eventually became Mandarins within the Chinese system (but not in the Red River valley, I believe). Of course some Chinese probably did learn to speak Vietnamese (a la the French to run rubber plantations or to run businesses).”
I think you are correct when you say: “Some Kinh became educated, could read Chinese characters, and eventually became Mandarins within the Chinese system (but not in the Red River valley, I believe).”
This is difficult to document, but in translating the “ngoai ky” of the Dai Viet su ky toan thu and consulting Chinese sources at the same time, I do recall coming across a few brief references that made it clear that a certain officials in areas outside the Red River Delta were not Chinese, that is, the Chinese were relying on locals.
Were those people “Kinh”? What I would argue is that the process of serving as a local official of the Chinese started to bring about the kinds of linguistic and cultural changes that eventually led to the creation of the people and culture that we now refer to as “Kinh.”
So I think we could probably call such people “proto-Kinh.”
I’m saying this not to argue “against” what you say, but to take it a little bit further and make it even more precise.
You all are going about Vietnamese history the wrong way. My dad knew a lot about Vietnamese history, he was a student of the reverend Kim Định. Unfortunately he has depression and is a severe alcoholic and forgot much of it.
The clue why Văn Lang had no slave is in the number 15. That is a Druid number. There are a lot of demonization against Druids, and most of history we’ve been taught by imperialist powers are lies.
There were people who could communicate with the Han because they were people who migrated from the north but they were not Han. Han identity only start to emerge with the cult of Hoàng Đế which emerged around 500 BC. Many people who spoke the same language with them at the time still belonged our 9 Dragon or 9 Righteous ethnic and were not converted to their cult. Họ Đỗ Việt Nam website provides some omitted history in the official Vietnamese version.
The water dragon has universal symbolic spiritual meaning across all cultures including the Greek, some Jewish mystical tradition use the Leviathon, it’s not meant to be the object of worship as some have suggested.
Vietnamese culture and genetic make up and even language might change over the millennia due to various migrations and diffusion but that does not erase or disconnect Vietnamese history from the link to the Nine People in ancient time.
For example there are now theory that Vietnamese came from Baipu people and displaced the Baiyue or Austronesian people, and also Bronze drums are Tai-Kadai artifact while Vietnamese are Austroasiatic why do Vietnamese claim to be from Baiyue?
Vietnamese got split from seafaring Austronesian people in around 300BC. This is told in the story of Sơn Tinh and Thủy Tinh. Hence, there was a shift in Vietnamese genetic make up also. The Haplo group M119 that is used to identify Baiyue stock still occurs at frequency of 6.7% in Vietnamese. It’s cunning of people who claim that Baiyue was a generic term used for many unrelated people, now using genetic findings to group a people into one “Baiyue” linage while trying as hard as they can to exclude Vietnamese. Genetic research is only a complementary tool anyway. Take the Black Hmong for example, they worship both Chi You as well as Yellow Grandfather, and if Yellow grandfather is Huangdi then it might be that various Miao groups in the past had lost their men in wars while Miao boys were castrate resulting in shortage of men, hence many Miao women had marry Han men, therefore there were changes in their cultural believe, practice and genetic make up.
The Bronze drums were used by many different ethnics south of the Yangtze, it is not exclusively Tai-Kadai, Miao people also use it. Current theory stipulate that Thần Nông linage came from rice growing people from Pearl River, and rice growing spread to Vietnam first before it moved to northern China. If the tribes and culture also spread in the same pattern then obviously Vietnamese are related to the northern people. Therefore it is consistent of ethnic continuity when the Vietnamese received migrants or refugees from the north are are not from the Hoàng Đế cult. The Yao people are also from Thần Nông linage. Iu Mien and Vietnamese share huge number of vocabularies, and the Iu Mien or Yao claim to be the original Chinese. I reckon the word China come from the word chín our word for number nine. There’s postulation that it comes from “Zina” the term that the Yelang people called themselves.
One needs to learn how to interpret metaphors, and look at various mythologies of various Nine peoples around the world and also know how to interpret the bible when you research Vietnamese history. It can be dangerous when people falsely interpret the biblical text, or follow corrupted text and teaching especially when the bible has been corrupted many times. For example there’s currently some controversy against the US congress who were lobbied to pass Noahide law, opponents claim that it is a racist law invented by Talmudic people in Babylon in around 400BC, in the bible the Israelites could and did marry people from other tribes; moreover the Noahide law said that adultery is punishable by death which is inhumane and obvious wrong unholy teaching.
The commandment against adultery is quite complex in its explanation, it covers more than cheating on your spouse. It’s also about alteration, falsify of texts. It is also about against blending different spiritual traditions together, although one recognizes that various spiritual teachings ultimately came from one same source each tradition must remain in their own form or purity, I’m not sure what the word is but there are certain practices that are universal such as kundalini concerning the Seven Chakras which we all have and referenced as the Seven Color rainbow in the Noah chapter, and the proper Jewish Kabbalah can be practiced by Christians also if not everybody.
That’s my 2cents worth. There’s a man from America who’s been touring different countries to talk to Vietnamese youth to try to keep Vietnamese history and heritage, he talked about linguistic connection and Nine Li spiritual connection between various people. I was not there but my sister has contact with him. Maybe we will try to set up some website and publish information in some future times, covering wide ranging topics.
Take care!
@Ego-I /about the evil traits of VN character
You have right on one point . After the Han conquest , Annam was a penitentiary settlement to where criminals or disgraced officials were banished . But one can say the same about another people , the American Anglosaxons . Australia had Botany Bay as a pen settlement whereas the American colonists were ” ordinary ” colonists . So how come the US are the most expansive , intrusive , cruel , murderous , rapacious of all colonists while the Australians seem less brutal , more law abiding ( they have gun control , as far as I know )
You have a personal experience with some VN people ; that prejudices your thinking to that , you link the notion of Han colonists as [ soldiers, condemned criminals and deported prisoners ] to explain the evil character of mostVN : you’re making a quantum leap, an unscholarly one ; it’s a case of ” feelings obscuring mind “, you’re are settling accounts .
_ matter for reflexions to the question [ why the Chinese elite in the medieval Red River Delta ended up choosing a branch of Vietic languages to speak? What was special with these Vietic tribes that made the Chinese rulers switch to their language?] VN language is two thirds words of ” Han ” origin and one third of native ( Mon Khmer , Austronesian , whatsoever ) and the “native” VN words concern more trivial matters than the other parts
One of the things that supposedly differentiated Southeast Asia from places like China and India in the past is that there was a lot of land and not many people. Another thing you saw was a complex system of “slavery/debt bondage” because people were more important than land, as land was abundant but people were scarce. “Slaves/people in debt bondage” were also supposedly treated better than our instinct leads us to think how “slaves” are treated.”
What I just described there, however, has not applied to the Red River Delta for as long as there is historical information. So rather than attributing the kinds of behaviors that you describe to (Chinese) culture, it could have more to do with population density. When there are a lot of people, they have to compete with each other, and when people have to compete, they get nasty. . .
That said. . . one group of people in VN who have perhaps the worst reputation for the things you describe are people from Thanh Hoa. I don’t know the history of population density of the Red River Delta vs. Thanh Hoa, but Thanh Hoa definitely has a history of being more “rustic.” So the kinds of behavior that you describe might be the result of 1) population density + 2) rusticity.
And fyi, Hanoians complain a lot about the cheating, lying, etc. people from Thanh Hoa who are all over Hanoi doing business these days. 🙂
I don’t believe in the population density because in SEA there’s a country that’s similar to, even greater than Vietnam in terms of population density. It’s the Philippines. But its population’s personality traits as a whole are different from the Vietnamese, ie. the north and northern central parts.
You’re talking about modern population numbers. I’m talking about population from say 500 BC – 1800. At that time, the Red River Delta and parts of the island of Java were the main places with population density in Southeast Asia.
According to you, could the proportion of the Han Chinese lived in the Red River Delta in the first millennium be fairly significant in the total population?
Except the Han Chinese came from other parts of China to the Red River Delta to rule the area as Kings, there had always existed other Han Chinese population who came there before these Kings, is that correct ?
@Ego-I
_ the policy of banishing criminals to Annam was continued during centuries until the fall of the Tangs . The VN weather was harsh; as their saying went , rain ( half year long ) is like ” pouring oil ” and heat ( half year ) was like fire ; and the mosquitoes and the flies and malaria…. . But as far as I know , Seu Tchouan and Yunnan were also lands for banishment . How come their inhabitants are not as evil as the VN ? Anyhow ,what was sent to the lands were not predominantly criminals as you insist , there were also peasants in greater numbers
_ Oh I found something interesting , the notion of creole language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language
So Vietnamese may be is a creole offspring of Han chinese
_ north VN villages always had a native name and a ” Han ” one ; even VN peasants had a ” chinese ” surnames and names
_ VN is similar to the Latin American countries ; they were conquered by a small moinority of Spaniards who imposed their culture , their religion , their language , their names . Today , the ruling class is mostly caucasian
and the mass of people are from ” indio” origin bearing spanish names
Looking at the ethno-linguistic distribution map of Yunnan on muturzikin.com [here, http://www.muturzikin.com/cartesasie/20.htm%5D, I see that the distribution pattern of Mandarin Chinese is not consistent, but rather the Mandarin Chinese speaking areas are separated and interrupted by other ethno-linguistic groups. This is caused by the mountainous topography of Yunnan where small flat valleys and plateaus are interrupted by high mountains which means that human settlements and their connection and communication in Yunnan are highly isolated and separated by its topography in the first millennium. So, if the deported Han Chinese did get there like you said, they would be confined in certain places without easy movement like people did in the Red River Delta. Not to mention that the Chinese rule in Yunnan was interrupted by the formation of Nanzhao and Dali. The majority of the Han Chinese in the present-day Yunnan is not as ancient as like in Jiaozhi. In the first millennium, the dominant inhabitants there were not the Han Chinese, but rather some other ethno-linguistic groups and it was these people that established non-Han kingdoms.
What’s about Sichuan basin? it is a flat area that’s pretty much similar to the Red River Delta and as you’ve claimed that the Chinese dynasties also deported there condemned criminals and prisoners. Look at its close geographic position to the coastal delta of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers where gave birth to the ancient Chinese civilization. This basin is quite a special plateau because it’s located really close to the vast coastal delta of Yangtze and Yellow Rivers to the southwest and gets separated from this vast delta only by the high Daba mountains, not far away like Jiaozhi [https://www.google.com/maps/@32.4592724,105.1065296,5z/data=!5m1!1e4]. This makes it is a very favorable place to live as there’s no such same kind of it can be found when move westwards and southwards. Given its close position to the eastern coastal delta, when the Huaxia discovered and conquered this basin, there must be not only the prisoners and criminals got sent there, but also ordinary Han Chinese. Throughout Chinese history, kingdoms established in the Sichuan basin never separated for too long from the central empires, which means the free flow of people to this basin from the coastal delta has never stopped like in Jiaozhi after the 10th century. If somehow, as you said, at first there were only the lowest social classes in Chinese society got deported there during early centuries after conquering this basin, then later on there must be other social classes also moved there and this balanced out the barbarous culture that the earlier migrants had created. Note that Han Chinese population has always existed in a very large number comparing to its neighboring vassals. The closer in time to the present, the bigger its population grows. Therefore, the later ordinary migrants flowing from the coastal delta to the Sichuan basin were possibly greater in number than the earlier deported criminals and prisoners.
”what was sent to the lands were not predominantly criminals as you insist , there were also peasants in greater numbers”.
I’m convinced that there was no peasant among the deported Han-Chinese in the Red River Delta because the vocabulary in wet rice cultivation technology in modern Vietnamese is all borrowed from Tai language. It’s the Tai speakers who have cultivated wet rice throughout thousands of years. The Vietic tribes were either hunter-gatherers or dry rice cultivators. If there were peasants among these Chinese migrants why did the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual inhabitants in the medieval Red River Delta have to borrow agricultural lexicon from the Tai who began to migrate there from Guangxi starting only from the 8th century ?nThis also indicates that the deported Han Chinese in the Red River Delta did not partake in agricultural activities, but rather they ended up becoming soldiers and leaders of armies who fought each other to become rulers of the area.
”VN is similar to the Latin American countries ; they were conquered by a small moinority of Spaniards who imposed their culture , their religion , their language , their names . Today , the ruling class is mostly caucasian
and the mass of people are from ” indio” origin bearing spanish names”
I think so, as you’ve made such simile. However the present-day Vietnamese population would not be similar to that of Ecuador, Peru or Bolivia, Paraguay where the mixed mestizo Hispanics outnumber the White, but rather it’s similar to Costa Rica or Argentina where the white population is greater than the mestizo.
muturzikin map here: [http://www.muturzikin.com/cartesasie/20.htm]
Don’t know why it’s changed from [http://www.muturzikin.com/cartesasie/20.htm] to [ http://www.muturzikin.com/cartesasie/20.htm%5D%5D
I misunderstood one of the points that you wrote above. Therefore I asked the blog owner to delete my comments on them, sorry.
First of all, I’ve got to say sorry for my words describing the personality traits of the Vietnamese which will make a ”proper Vietnamese” feel very uncomfortable. But the fact that the boundary separating the north and northern central parts of Vietnam from its southern part is almost the same as the line that separates the behavioral differences between them and it was also the borderline of the southern most district of the Chinese empire throughout 1,000 years is not a coincidence. Why the Vietnamese type of behavior does not exist in the Tai-speaking communities living further north in the present-day northeast Vietnam who were also under Chinese rule for 1,000 years? because the Han Chinese criminals and prisoners did not get sent to their living area but rather further to the south in the flat basin of the Red River.
The case of the Vietnamese officials and their clans who got sent by the court to its Tai-speaking northern border with China to take office is a bit similar to what the Chinese empires did with Jiaozhi. Those Vietnamese did actually contaminate a number of their Tai neighbors living around them in which the behavior of these Tai inhabitants got worsened off after a certain period of time overexposed to these Vietnamese. This phenomenon these days can be observed in Laos where besides the Chinese, there are hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese mostly from the north and northern central parts have intruded on every single remote and peaceful village of the Tais using cunning schemes to get these naive villagers buy stuff from them. But this is not one hundred percent the same as the act of the Chinese dynasties sending the lowest social classes to their southern frontier district because the Tai have always been the majority further north from the Red River Delta, their population scatters over a large area while the Vietnamese officials and their clans solely settled in the provincial seats. So, their negative influence is limited to their direct neighbors.
For what you have brought up on the Australians, I’m not familiar with Australian history therefore I will not engage in that.
Your words on me is to show nothing but that you are a Vietnamese.
”VN language is two thirds words of ” Han ” origin and one third of native ( Mon Khmer , Austronesian , whatsoever ) and the “native” VN words concern more trivial matters than the other parts”
This explains why in the past, linguists mis-grouped Vietnamese with the Austronesian, Chinese, or even Tai-Kadai language groups. But after examining this language carefully, they re-grouped it with Mon-Khmer, recognizing that it shares very basic lexicon with this branch of Austroasiatic language family. The question ”why the Han Chinese in the Red River Delta switched to a Vietic language” still remains unsolved.
What happened in Annnam happened also in Kwangtung ; the people are like first cousins : about their populating , I read somewhere the succeeding empires consolidated their hold by sending peasants – soldiers to create the equivalent of kibboutz called đồn điền 屯田
Settling there , were also numbers of literati and nobility after the fall of the empires or kingdoms following Han empire
Excerpts from the Cantonese
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese_people
[The original people of Guangdong belonged to the Yue until that kingdom was fully brought under Han control of Han Dynasty in 111 BC after the Han–Nanyue War, but it wasn’t until subsequent dynasties such as the Jin Dynasty, Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty that major waves of Han Chinese literati migration to the south of Guangdong occurred. Migrations came in waves, displacing and assimilating the existing populations with intermarriage at different time periods, but some native groups like the Zhuang still reside.The Cantonese often call themselves “people of Tang”. This is because of the Inter-mixture between native and Han immigrants in Guangdong reached a critical mass of acculturation during the Tang dynasty, creating a new local identity among the Guangdong people.[41] Some studies have shown that most Cantonese have a mixture of DNA ancestry from Han Chinese from the North and Yue from the South[42][43][44] with the exception of the Ping-Yue branch of Pinghua and the Tanka who speaks various types of dialects are genetically in common with the Southern ethnic minorities of China with little to no Han Chinese ancestry, some scholars believe that they are the sinicized descendants of Baiyue stock ]
So , the population of both lands did not encompass only criminals or destitutes
But still nowadays the other Chinese also look down upon the Cantonese as somehow unreliable and their women as promiscuous ( not unlike the VN )
Maybe , these lands are poorer and poverty breeds dishonesty
Or maybe , it’s in their natural disposition . Nature or nurture ?
Anyhow , everything in social sciences is multifactorial . Attributing VN evil traits to their past of criminals is naive .
Is the question ”why the Han Chinese in the Red River Delta switched to a Vietic language” solved by the notion of creole ?
The Han overlords did not switch to a Vietic language : their intermingling with the natives gave rise to a new language .
I don’t know what happened in Guangdong, but I’m confident that there was no Han Chinese peasant in Jiaozhi. The agricultural business may have been reserved for some other indigenous group who at first practiced non-wet rice agriculture and later, from the 8th century on, when encountered the Tai moving southwards, they started to adapt wet rice agriculture.
”poverty breeds dishonesty”. This is most unlikely to be true because the people in the Red River Delta is not the only human group that suffered from poverty and starvation or lived a hard life. Peoples in other areas have gone through the same events but they do not exhibit the same personality traits.
As you see , I don’t get incensed by your negative opinion of some VN
What I try to discuss is the link between the evil traits you attribute to them with the tainted past of their forebears: it’s far-fetched ,to say it politely . Anyhow , one should think that maybe the crooked VN of modern times have no link with the banished criminals of the Han conquest , so many ethnic mix having taken place during 2000 years .
Matter for reflexion : recently , these same ( ? ) VN displayed vs the North Americans such superhuman virtues . May a chauvinistic VN like myself be allowed to attiribute such feats to the heritage of the Han literati and
nobility who took refuge in Annam ?
In these discussions on Chinese immigration into (Northern) Vietnam, it is consistently implied that entire families moved; however, it would seem more likely to me that, by and large, it was Chinese men arriving in Vietnam without Chinese women. I always felt traditions were passed along and enforced by women much more than men. Therefore, the ensuing children born to Kinh mothers would be 100% Kinh in their outlook and language rather than Chinese. My half-Chinese wife is 100% Kinh culturally and does not speak Chinese.