There at it again. For the past few days Vietnamese cyberspace has been filled with articles and discussions about whether Chinese characters (chữ Hán) should be taught in schools in Vietnam.
I think the article that got the current debate started was one that called for teaching Chinese characters in order to “preserve the clarity of Vietnamese” (Cần dạy chữ Hán để giữ sự trong sáng của tiếng Việt), and this provoked somewhat of a backlash from some people who see this idea as some kind of effort to make Vietnam more “Chinese.”
Essentially the argument of the initial article was similar to arguments in Europe or North America when people say “We need to teach Latin in schools in order to preserve the clarity of French/English, etc.”
And indeed, such efforts to teach Latin to help literacy do exist, and they aren’t seen as being problematic.
However, in Vietnam the situation is different, because it strikes at the core problem that Vietnamese intellectuals have struggled with for the past century – how do you create a modern culturally-unique nation from a premodern universal culture that was centered in a country that you now try to define your modern national identity in opposition to?
This struggle is easy to see, as Vietnamese intellectuals have left a long trail of evidence of their thoughts.
Essentially what happened is that in the early twentieth century Vietnamese intellectuals became aware of the fact that Westerners viewed the world very differently than they did. In the West, it became common in the nineteenth century to view each country as a separate nation, with its own distinct language and culture.
This was a radically different way of viewing the world than the one that educated Vietnamese had upheld for centuries by that point. Prior to the twentieth century, Vietnamese intellectuals prided themselves for being “civil” (văn hiến), which meant such things as being able to read and write in classical Chinese, composing poetry like the great poets Li Bai and Du Fu, wearing Ming Dynasty era robes, etc.
None of these cultural practices made educated Vietnamese distinct, but being distinct was not the point. The point was to be “civil” (văn hiến), and educated Vietnamese believed that this was a universal condition, not a national characteristic.
Why did they change? Because Westerners began to conquer, colonize and dominate Asia. This was a clear sign that the world of “civility” was not as powerful as the world of “nations.”
So Vietnamese intellectuals started to look for a way to create a nation out of their world of civility.
In the early twentieth century we thus see Hoàng Đạo Thành calling on fellow Vietnamese in his Đại Việt sử tân ước toàn biên to study the nation’s history in order to “imprint” the concept of the nation in their brains (something that they hadn’t been doing prior to that point because Vietnamese history had not been an essential part of the civil service exam curriculum).
In the late 1920s and early 1930s there was a debate over “national learning” (quốc học). This concept of national learning had emerged earlier in the twentieth century in China were intellectuals tried to create a history of Chinese ideas in order to show that they had a intellectual tradition of their own just like Western nations claimed for themselves.
What was the Vietnamese intellectual tradition that constituted “national learning”? According to intellectuals like Phan Khôi and Phạm Quỳnh there was no such intellectual tradition in Vietnam, as scholars in the past had only studied “Chinese” (Tàu) learning.
Ironically, in debating about national learning at that time, intellectuals like Phan Khôi and Phạm Quỳnh were still following the ideas of Chinese intellectuals as this entire concept of national learning had already been debated there.
However, Chinese intellectuals were able to envision a history of national learning for themselves, but Vietnamese intellectuals were unable to do so, because in looking to the past, all they could see now was “Chinese-ness” where a generation before, their fathers had seen “civility.”
In other words, once “civility” (văn hiến) became something like “Chinese culture” (văn hóa nước Tàu), then the past became a “problem” for Vietnamese intellectuals.
However, the concept of the nation demands that there be a past for the nation, and the longer that past the better.
So Vietnamese intellectuals in the twentieth century had to find a way to deal with the long history of civility/Chinese culture in the Vietnamese past and to somehow make it “Vietnamese.”
In the 1940s and 1950s there was a big debate over whether writings in classical Chinese that were written by Vietnamese authors should be considered “Vietnamese literature” or not.
In 1956 North Vietnamese scholar Văn Tân summarized this debate and sought to conclude it by declaring that before a Vietnamese writing system had fully developed, educated Vietnamese had used classical Chinese to record their thoughts and feelings, and that therefore, writings in classical Chinese by Vietnamese authors should be considered as part of the national literature of Vietnam (văn học dân tộc Việt Nam).
This article was meant to “resolve” the “problem” of the existence of writings in classical Chinese in the Vietnamese past. It did so by declaring that those writings were “Vietnamese.”
However, did the people who composed those writings think that way? When they said that their writings were proof that they were “civil” (văn hiến) was that the same as saying that they were “Vietnamese”?
This “problem” of the premodern past has haunted modern Vietnamese intellectuals for the past 100 years. They can’t find a way to deal with all of that “Chinese-ness” in the “Vietnamese” past, as well as in the Vietnamese language.
The real “problem,” however, is that modern Vietnamese intellectuals can’t accept the fact that their ancestors thought differently than they do, that they didn’t see the world as culturally divided between “Vietnam” and “China.”
Instead, they demand that their ancestors be the same as them.
Their writings have to be “Vietnamese.”
Their language has to be “Vietnamese.”
Their culture has to be “Vietnamese.”
“But,” the ancestors would say, if they could talk, “we’re civil (văn hiến)!”
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The main reason for the debate is that quite a few Vietnamese are Sinophobic.
I used to run into the following sentence from a Vietnamese magazine:
“A feudal China, or a communist China, or a free China, or a past China, or a present China, or a future China is always Vietnam’s eternal enemy.”
I agree, but the point that I would make is that the current Sinophobia is something recent, and is the product of various historical developments in the 20th century that are related to what I wrote about here. Such Sinophobia could only become prominent after the elite had rejected “van hien” and started to promote “Vietnamese-ness.” But that alone was not enough, because if we could go back to North Vietnam in the 1950s then we would find lots of evidence of how great the “Chinese friends” of the “Vietnamese workers” were. That relationship started to go bad when Mao and Nixon shook hands in 1972, and then it really went bad in 1979. So that Sinophobia has Vietnamese reasons for its existence. It is not just a reaction to things that Chinese have done. It’s in part a product of what Vietnamese did in the 20th century to create a sense of nationalism.
There ‘s the vietnamese expression hồi tố 回溯 , it means roughly retroactive application , for example , a new law enacted can’t be retroactive The Vietnamese at the start of the 20th century learned a new lecture of their past history and they revisited it with their new eyes or new lenses And now their minds are seared by that , they are crazed by sinophobia : 1000 years of servitude is too heavy a burden , too traumatic , it’s a kind of PTSD .
There’s another VN saying : ăn phải đũa ( literally swallowing chopsticks which got stuck in the esophagus ) , learn something stupid from strangers and stick with it ; the VN are infatuated with the new history and can’t get rid of it .
How did this hoax story seeps down to everybody ? thanks to the comprador ” instruits ” underling class ( translators , clerks , intellectuals ) the likes of Pham quynh and Ng va Vinh which aped everything from their white masters and served as transmission belt
Thanks for the comment. But I would argue that it was people who followed other white masters (namely Marx, Engels, Lenin and company) who are really responsible for making Vietnamese infatuated with the new history, and for becoming ever more Sinophobic. What would history be like if it had developed in a different direction? Well you had people like Phan Boi Chau who started to talk about race in the early 20th century (which is a concept that the white masters developed), and he believed that Viet were who they were because of racial mixing with Chinese. Then you had Nguyen Phuong in South Vietnam who argued the same thing.
I’m not saying they are right, but just pointing out that you are bringing up a view of the past that has been repeated over and over and over, but which really doesn’t explain the past with sophistication. Yes, blame Pham Quynh for being a slave of white masters, as if International Communism wasn’t created by white masters. . .
Even the critiques of the West (colonialism/imperialism/racism/sexism, etc.) all come from the West, such is the dominance of the world of the white masters on the rest of the globe. No one in Vietnam has been immune from that dominance. Pham Quynh is just one variation.
Lots of westerners keep repeating the misconception that China invaded a “vietnamese” state and subjugated “Vietnamese people” for 1,000 years.
From what I understand, it was (probably Tai-Kadai) Baiyue in Guangdong who subjugated and beat the ancestors of Vietnamese in the Red River Delta into vassal status, then the Chinese General Zhao Tuo takes over the Tai Kadai and rules them as Nanyue with their Red River Vassals attached to his state. Then the Han dynasty takes over the Chinese ruled Nanyue.
The Vietnamese back then didn’t even identify as “Vietnamese”. The entire etymologies of “Vietnam” and “Kinh” derive from the Chinese Sinitic language.
“Viet” was not from the Vietnamese language.
“Yue” (Viet) was a Chinese word used to describe all minority ethnicities in southern China.
“Nam” was a sinitic Chinese loanword, of the same origin and stymology as Mandarin “Nan”.
“Dai” was a sinitic Chinese loanword, of the same origin and stymology as Mandarin “Da”.
“Kinh” was a sinitic Chinese loanword, of the same origin and etymology as Mandarin “King” (Jing).
When Vietnamese are calling themselves “Dai Nam” and “Kinh”, they are using words of entire Chinese origin. The ancient Red River aboriginals certainly did not identify as “Kinh” or “Viet”.
Basically the Tai populated Chinese ruled Nanyue acquired some vassals around the Red river Delta, and as a result of the Han dynasty annexation of Nanyue, China also acquired the Red River Delta as an unintended byproduct, an influx of Chinese settlers intermingled with the natives, forming the ancestors to the Vietnamese people who acquired a large amount of Sinitic loanwords, Daoism, Confucianism and a Classical Chinese literary culture.
Distorted version – “Baiyue were all Vietnamese and Southern China is Kinh territory. Chinese imperialists invaded and drove out all the Viets from South China to Vietnam. China invaded the Vietnamese Nanyue state and forced Chinese civilization onto the Vietnamese who struggled against their oppressors for 1,000 years before finally freeing themselves. They always hated China for 2,000 years. Daoism was invented by Vietnamese and stolen by China, Ming dynasty destroyed all old Vietnamese records written in our native script which is why I can’t prove anything I’m saying or make citations………. bla bla bla.”
There are ultra nationalists in Japan who claim modern Han Chinese are descendants of barbarian Wuhu tribes who drove out the original Sinitic peoples so the Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin and Han were not ancestors of modern Han, and this means Japan can hate China as inferior while copying their ancient civilization at the same time. Despite the fact that there are Chinese lineages today in both northern China and southern China which can trace their lineage back to the Zhou like the descendants of Confucius and his disciples.
Korean ultra nationalists claim Korean civilization is 4,000 years old and that the Hwandan Gogi proves the Korean Empire ruled over the entire Asian continent and founded Sumerian civilization.
Ultra nationalists from Korea, Vietnam, and Japan all look like they’ve been plagiarizing from each other.
_ the 1000-year story was seemingly modeled after the French tale of ” nos ancêtres les Gaulois ” which spoke too of glorious resistance , of non – assimilation despite centuries of oppression . The tale sprang up from the time of Napoléon III in the 1860s . VN was conquered afterwards ; the tale of “chinese ” domination started in the 1910s or 20s. It’s amazing , incredible how fast it took hold of the VN psyche and how a whole people , one would say masochistically , gobbled that story , a humiliating fantasy : has no historian ever set his mind to study that incredible , unbelievable , …. ( words are too poor ) phenomenon ? ” China ” and ” Vietnam ” didn’t exist then
and in France , as Dr Kelly wrote somewhere ,the peoples who inhabit different regions didn’t know they were French until the start of the 20th century when they received general education and were fed the concept of the ”
French nation ”
_ when Ho chi Minh started his long march in the 1910s ,the Soviet Union didn’ exist yet ; later on , communism seemed to be the unique toolbox available to fight colonialism . So it’s quite different for resistance figters to adopt a political ” medecine ” for a legitimate purpose compared with a ” comprador ” underclass to slavishly imitate its rulers ‘ mores , ways of life of thinking
I had a chance to know personally Tôn Thất Thiện, Van Hạnh University professor, and Information minister (bộ trưởng thông tin) 1968, South VN Republic. According to his father (TT Quảng), Phan Bội Châu didn’t know French (speaking, writing, reading); while himself mastered both French and classic Chinese. The said trend in learning hindered the knowledge of the Vietnamese intelligentia.
We can speculate that the Vietnamese elites, at the premodern time, had no other way than the Chinese venue for an access to Western cultures; they might read Tôn Trung Sơn, Lâm Ngữ Đường etc…Republic of China
As a proof (?), they brought to our language strange proper names: Mạnh Đức Tư Cưu, for Montesqieu; Lư Thoa for Rousseau; Luân Đôn for London; Ba Lê for Paris; Cựu Kim Sơn for San Francisco, USA, and countless other ones…Á Mỹ Lỵ Gia, America; Bồ Đào Nha, Portugal… Except Cựu Kim Sơn and those translated by meaning, these appellations are close to the original if pronounced in Chinese.
By the way, this blog did carry an interesting article regarding “learning French”. Emperor Thành Thái’s edict to establish the Quốc Học.
I love this article on the notion that Vietnamese nationalism was, in a sense, distilled from external forces; it’s very insightful. What had always bothered me while studying Vietnamese history was that I always felt like I was studying sources that had a framework of taking modern nation-state conceptions and applying it back through the past 2,000 years, especially the problematic notion of what is considered part of and not part of “Vietnamese history”, which I’ve known itself to be a political process that is aligned with the agenda with whoever is talking about such history.
It looks to me like what you “felt” is exactly right. I saw a comment on fb today where someone quoted an elderly Vietnamese scholar as saying that if you don’t have the Vietnamese spirit then you can’t write Vietnamese history (không có tinh thần dân tộc Việt thì không thể viết ra sử Việt được). I would counter that by saying that if you think that you have the Vietnamese spirit then you are already demonstrating that you are incapable of writing anything but a history that, as you say, takes a modern nation-state conception (which comes from the West) and applies it back in time for 2,000 years.
I would like to copy the last portion of an essay regarding the Frenchness (francité) from The Times of London depicting the new landscape in the French way of thinking (no more obsolete chauvinism): However, the apocalyptic nightmares of the declinists were challenged from the outset, notably by the signatories of the 2007 Le Monde petition calling for French creative writing to abandon its narcissistic tendencies and open itself to the world; over the past decade, this “littérature-monde” has significantly broadened the horizons of the annual rentrées littéraires. The trend was confirmed in 2017 with the election of Emmanuel Macron, who celebrated France’s European identity and vowed to promote a more effective dialogue among the nation’s conflicting historical “memories”. This dynamism was echoed in the intellectual sphere with the publication of the Histoire mondiale de la France, an edited collection which has sold more than 100,000 copies. Affirming the mutually constitutive relationship between France and the world, it mocks the obsession with France’s Roman and Christian “origins” by opening with a chapter on prehistoric cave paintings in the Ardèche; it also defines modern French civilization as a métissage, a “fraternal and dynamic blend of cultures”. By displacing the Eurocentric assumptions of contemporary French identity, and confronting the implications of France’s imperial and colonial heritages, the Histoire mondiale opens the door to that most alluring of prospects: a genuinely universal republican vision of Frenchness.
Having lived in Australia (of Vietnamese origin of course) for 40 years and quite familiar with the history of Australia, I’ve finally succumbed to the hard-to-argue reality that, just as most modern white Australians’ ancestry originated in what is now Britain, so are most modern Vietnamese ancestry can be traced to what is now China. As Prof Kelly has often pointed out, that the idea of a modern China is of a relatively recent concept. There should not be any shame attached to the thinking that at one time our ancestors had lived in the region that is now called China. It doesn’t mean we are Chinese. In fact there is evidence that the Nguyen clan originated from the area that is now Ganshu province (Cam Tuc). The land was called Nguyen and the people there migrated to various parts South escaping from the Northern invaders (a recurrent event throughout history) . To remember where they came from, many called themselves Nguyen. After centuries of mixing and mingling we are who we are. Distinct from the people from the north genetically if not completely culturally. Much like the modern day Aussies and their British brethren, we share many similarities with the people from the north. However we also have our differences. We should celebrate the differences and acknowledge the similarities. Accept it and move forward. The important issue is to protect our current sovereignty with the strength of will and pride. And look after all the people’s well being and happiness. That is the only thing that the leaders of current VN should focus on.
Thanks for the comment!! I’ve recently been looking at translations of Cham inscriptions. We can see in them that slaves were donated to temples, and the slaves came from far away places, like Cambodia and what is now Myanmar. Meanwhile, Cham were also captured and brought to Viet areas. So in addition to Chinese, there were a lot of other people who were “mixed into” Vietnam. 🙂