Viet Nam. Hữu Ngọc
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Chinese introduced Confucianism to Việt Nam after their conquest in the second century BCE, but Confucianism tightened its social grip only after the 1500s. As opposed to Buddhism, Confucianism supports a philosophy of social ethics and the improvement of life on earth but leaves untouched the question of individual salvation. The doctrine of Confucius (551–479 BCE) is based on rules for social relations (e.g., king – subject, father – child, husband – wife, master – disciple, and brother – sister). Relations are hierarchized for social harmony as an element of universal harmony. The Confucian edifice rests on strong, moralizing rules, with “the virtue of humanity” as its foundation.
Pre-Chinese Vietnamese culture caused these strict rules to lose their rigor in Việt Nam compared with China. Nevertheless, Confucianism brought to Việt Nam a political philosophy, trung, based on allegiance to the monarch, thereby supporting Vietnamese cohesion and the country’s unity. As paradoxical as it may seem, Vietnamese Confucian scholars animated by the ideals they had borrowed from China struggled relentlessly against the Chinese for Việt Nam’s independence. “The Proclamation of Victory over the Ngô [Ming Chinese]” (Bình Ngô Đại Cáo) written by Nguyễn Trãi (1380–1442) and promulgated by King Lê Lợi (life: 1385–1433; reign: 1428–1433) illustrates this paradox.
Traditional Confucian order flourished in ethical, social, political, and cultural domains. Vietnamese adoption of the Chinese model for education (the role of the master, ideograms, triennial examinations) and administration (a mandarin bureaucracy) fostered Confucian ethics. The Vietnamese emphasized moral virtues and literacy but scorned material wealth, economics, and technology. Empiricism replaced science, while patriarchy edged out matriarchy, and men dominated women. An unwritten code of conduct reigned in the village and in the family.
However, many pre-Chinese Southeast Asian cultural values survived in Việt Nam because the Chinese colonial administration never fully penetrated the villages. There, Vietnamese maintained and developed their own popular culture alongside scholarly Confucian culture; thus, the prime Vietnamese cultural identity continued to blossom. Today, Confucianism continues in Việt Nam as a philosophy of social duty, order, and hierarchic discipline. In a word, Confucianism represents “reason.” On the other hand, Buddhism searches for individual happiness, relaxation, and compassion. In one word, Buddhism represents “feelings.” These two apparent opposites are complementary and contribute to equilibrium in villages, where pagodas for worshipping Buddha co-exist with communal houses and other temples for Confucian rituals.
Analyzing the influence of Buddhism on Vietnamese culture is complex, because Indian traders and monks first introduced Buddhism. Later, Chinese Buddhism reigned. Nevertheless, Buddhism in Việt Nam, even in its most Sinicized form, remains fundamentally a product of Indian spiritualism, as, for example, in the Zen (Dhyana, Thiền) sect. As a religion, Vietnamese Buddhism does not advance the existence of divinities, although priests later introduced statues and images for ordinary people. According to Buddhism, suffering is the human condition because humans believe in the existence of a self and are motivated by desire. Human illusions subject us to the cycle of births and rebirths. Yet, through spiritual enlightenment, individuals can end their ignorance and achieve Nirvana (Enlightenment).
However, enlightenment is accessible only to scholars and monks of the Chinese Zen (Dhyanist, Thiền) School, which is an amalgamation of Buddhism and Taoism. The Vietnamese Zen Buddhist School advocates transcendence through the intellect, communion between master and disciple without speech and scriptures as intermediaries, and meditation until enlightenment. We can see here the syncretism of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. For ordinary Vietnamese, Buddhism brought not only consolation during feudal exploitation and oppression but also provided the hope of achieving earthly wishes. For this reason, Vietnamese worshipers often invoke Buddha Amitabha (A Di Đà) and Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara (Quan Âm), who are thought to rescue the deprived.
Vietnamese Culture: Southeast Asian Roots Facing Chinese Confucianism
Two French scholars, Pierre Huard and Maurice Durand, have aptly remarked on the nature and evolution of Vietnamese culture:
“Vietnamese culture over the centuries has never absorbed any foreign element (Hindu, Chinese, or Western) without trying to imprint on it a Vietnamese cultural stamp. That trait guarantees that Vietnamese culture has sufficient cohesion to resist external pressure.”
Over time, Vietnamese culture has always preserved its Southeast Asian roots while enriching itself with different grafts. During the 2,000 years before French colonization in the 1870s and 1880s, Việt Nam evolved in the cultural orbit of East Asia and, like Korea and Japan, was imbued with Confucianism. Chinese cultural influence came during two different periods—the Chinese occupation (179 BCE – 938 CE) and then Vietnamese emulation during the first era of independence (939–1884). The relations between Vietnamese and Chinese followed a particular dynamic. On one hand, the Việts rejected the aggressor’s culture and aspired to preserve their Southeast Asian roots. On the other, they were attracted to Chinese culture, which seemed richer. The Vietnamese borrowed from Chinese culture the elements that could enrich their own culture. Rejection and attraction characterized this ambiguous relationship, just as it does today.
In general, what have these Confucian and Chinese grafts brought to Việt Nam’s Southeast Asian roots?
In terms of lifestyle in ancient times, Chinese influence brought extensive use of iron, domestication of the horse, intensive cultivation of rice (iron plows, buffaloes, oxen, irrigation, fertilizers), enameled ceramics, the development of weaving and wicker ware, the manufacture of paper and glass, great progress in river and sea navigation, the Spice Road between China and Southeast Asia, and trade with Java, Burma, and India.
In terms of intellectual and spiritual development, adoption of Chinese ideograms made possible the propagation of Confucianism, the official doctrine that radiated throughout all domains but particularly in general ideology and education. Confucianism endured because it suited Asian feudal societies, which were agricultural, autarchic, stationary, and subject to a monarchic regime, which decreed that all land was the king’s private property. Confucianism was the moral and political creed of the learned man, the intellectual, the “superior man” (quân tử), who followed the principle: “Perfect oneself morally, manage one’s family, govern the country, and establish order in the world.” Confucianism had very strict rules about social behavior in order to maintain order and harmony in a strongly hierarchical society.
Confucianism took root easily in Việt Nam because the Vietnamese community spirit that Confucianism enshrined was highly compatible with the spirit prevailing at the Vietnamese nation’s birth, when peasants faced the permanent threat of aggression from the north and the Red River’s floods. However, after penetrating Việt Nam, Confucianism lost many of its original concepts, including the strictures of filial piety, absolute fidelity to the monarch, and many of the complicated rites.
Thus, two parallel and complementary cultures took shape on Vietnamese soil—the popular culture anchored in the villages and more faithful to the roots of the Việt and the scholarly culture marked by Confucian-Chinese grafting. The Confucianized Vietnamese intelligentsia had several strata: orthodox scholars (the Court and the mandarinate); those faithful to the king but also concerned with the well-being of the people (e.g., Nguyễn Trãi, 1380–1442); those resolutely siding with the people against the king (e.g., rebel Cao Bá Quát, 1809–1853); and those integrated into the life of the people (e.g., village school teachers).
The brutal intervention of French colonizers in the late 1800s compelled enlightened scholars to make a painful revision of their Confucian values.
French Culture in Việt Nam Today
When the BBC interviewed me by phone about the role of French culture in today’s Việt Nam, I was reluctant to answer because, with a subject so large, one can say nothing about this third facet of Vietnamese culture in three minutes. Still, I couldn’t refuse the invitation made so graciously by the interviewer, an ethnic-Vietnamese woman who seemed very young, judging by the sound of her voice.
I had