painters embody the push-pull, repulsion-attraction of the Vietnamese response to French influences.
The section on “The Vietnamese Landscape and the Vietnamese Spirit” helps us understand the inextricably intertwining of these two determinants. Hữu Ngọc describes how the Vietnamese landscape has forged the character of Việt Nam’s people, how the harsher climate and floods in northern Việt Nam led to tight-knit communal villages, while a wilder frontier spirit prevailed in the southern part of the country. His essays introduce the reader to places beloved for their historical significance, beauty, and local customs as well as to the illustrious individuals and ordinary inhabitants associated with those sites. He takes us to Ancient Hà Nội and inside the Royal Palace in the 1700s, more than a century before French colonialism, through a long excerpt written by a Vietnamese doctor, Lê Hữu Trác, who arrives to treat the crown prince.
Hữu Ngọc also takes us to the Hà Nội of his childhood through his own reflections and a rich excerpt by Hoàng Đạo Thúy about traditional “Grand Tết” (Lunar New Year) in the early 1900s, “when the newly established colonial administration had only blurred the festival’s traditions.” This section ends with Côn Đảo Island and its infamous prisons off the coast of Sài Gòn and a tribute to Confucian scholar Phan Châu (Chu) Trinh, whose sense of honor did not bind him to tradition but, rather, made him one of Việt Nam’s most famous patriotic opponents to French rule. Phan Châu Trinh combined Confucian ethics with democratic ideals in an attempt to create a harmonious, independent country achieved through non-violence. Phan Châu Trinh’s poem, “Smashing Rocks at Côn Lôn,” which he wrote on the prison wall, weaves together landscape, Confucian ethics, patriotism, and Vietnamese endurance.
In the book’s final two sections, “Vietnamese Women and Change” and “Đổi Mới (Renovation or Renewal) and Globalization,” Hữu Ngọc turns his attention to more modern times. Once, teeth lacquering was thought to enhance one’s beauty. In the 1930s, the áo dài was created, with French influence; it is now considered traditional Vietnamese dress. In these essays, Hữu Ngọc’s subtle commentary suggests that customs and traditions must be thoughtfully assessed for the ways they shape people’s lives. Some should be preserved, some reformed, others discarded. Hữu Ngọc reflects on the difficulties confronted by women in the era of Đổi Mới, which began in late 1986. He exposes the ways in which Confucian traditions once limited women’s lives and the new challenges women face now. The essays on Đổi Mới consider the problems Việt Nam addresses as it builds an economy linked to global markets, a step that inevitably opens the society once again to outside influences.
Hữu Ngọc argues that national culture “must hold a central position and play the coordinating and regulating role” in economic development and that economic statistics are not an adequate measure of the quality of life of a people. The unfettered expansion of world markets poses a threat to the environment, and there is great danger that the wealth produced will be appropriated by a minority of elites, leaving the mass of people dependent and poor. To shape a different kind of identity, Việt Nam must restore a balance between national traditions fostering patriotism, a strong sense of community, and discipline on one hand and universal values (such as human rights) and the need for economic development on the other.
We find here essays on the impact of a market economy on marriage, divorce, attitudes toward tradition in the “cicada” generation born after 1990, class differences, the traditional village, the value placed on education, and corruption in government. Hữu Ngọc suggests that the traditional family, which is at the heart of national culture, should be modernized, divesting itself of disdain for women. His reflections are nuanced, returning always to the theme, “All tradition is change through acculturation,” yet encouraging readers to make their own evaluation of the balance between national values and the values of the market.
Having read these essays, a foreigner sees Việt Nam through new eyes. Written during Đổi Mới, the essays reflect modern times but reach into the rich past of Hữu Ngọc’s memory and scholarship. These essays are also a reminder to young Vietnamese and to all of us of the vibrant cultural heritage that distinguishes Việt Nam. The essays can be read in any order. They invite readers to dip in here or there, according to impulse and interest. Taken together and read from beginning to end, they transform one’s understanding of Việt Nam, its culture, and its people.
Elizabeth F. Collins
Professor
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio
Introduction
If I were to choose one person to accompany visitors on their first trip to Việt Nam, my choice would be Hữu Ngọc. If I were to choose one book for those about to visit Việt Nam or those unable to visit, my choice would be Hữu Ngọc’s Việt Nam: Tradition and Change.
At age ninety-eight by Western counting (ninety-nine according to Vietnamese), Hữu Ngọc is among Việt Nam’s most famous general scholars. Born with limited eyesight, he reads by holding a text three inches from his near-sighted eye. Yet with his unusual linguistic ability, prodigious memory, and his longevity, he is among Việt Nam’s keenest observers of traditional Vietnamese culture and recent history. For twenty years, Hữu Ngọc wrote a Sunday column in French for Le Courrier du Vietnam (The Việt Nam Mail). An English version appeared as “Traditional Miscellany” in Việt Nam News, Hà Nội’s English-language newspaper. He collected 1,255 pages from these essays into Wandering through Vietnamese Culture, the only English-language book to win Việt Nam’s Gold Book Prize.
Việt Nam: Tradition and Change is a selection from the many treasures in Wandering through Vietnamese Culture.
Hữu Ngọc was born on Hàng Gai (Hemp Market) Street in Hà Nội’s Old Quarter in 1918, when Việt Nam did not yet have its own name on world maps. At that time, the French name for Việt Nam was Annam, which was also the French name for one of Việt Nam’s three regions—Tonkin (Bắc Kỳ, the Northern Region); Annam (Trung Kỳ, the Central Region); and Cochin China (Nam Kỳ, the Southern Region). The Vietnamese people in all three regions endured colonialism’s rigid and often lethal grasp. The literacy rate among Vietnamese was from 5 to 10 percent. The schools recognized by the French provided education in Quốc Ngữ (Vietnamese Romanized script) and French to train a small group of Vietnamese students to be administrators at French offices. The curriculum in the country’s few high schools centered on French literature, French history, mathematics, and the sciences, with Vietnamese taught as a foreign language.
During Hữu Ngọc’s student years, Hà Nội had only two state-run high schools—Bưởi School for Vietnamese and Lycée Albert Sarraut for French children as well as for Vietnamese children from the privileged class. Hữu Ngọc was one of two students from Bưởi along with several from Sarraut to place highest in the special examinations. The prize was a ride in the first airplane to circle above Hà Nội.
“This was 1936,” Hữu Ngọc says. “Airplanes were rare in Việt Nam. How extraordinary, how amazing to be up in the sky! Such a wide-open view!”
Việt Nam was still under French rule when Hữu Ngọc completed a year of law school in Hà Nội and taught French in Vinh and Huế, two cities in the Central Region. Việt Nam’s Declaration of Independence placed the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam (DRVN) on the world map on September 2, 1945. Hữu Ngọc joined the Revolution that same year.
However, nationwide independence was short-lived. The French re-invaded Việt Nam’s Southern Region on September 23, 1945, three weeks after
