with many of us working together and with assistance from many other colleagues in Việt Nam at World Publishers and in the United States at Ohio University Press, we have Việt Nam: Tradition and Change, an accessible and absorbing tour of Việt Nam’s history and culture with scholar-writer Hữu Ngọc as our guide.
Lady Borton
Hà Nội, Việt Nam
The Vietnamese Identity
Nghĩa
Of all the beautiful verses in The Tale of Kiều (Truyện Kiều), the immortal work in 3,254 lines by our national poet, Nguyễn Du (1766–1820), this couplet in six-word, eight-word meter about Kiều, when she is beset by lost love, seems to me the most beautiful:
Sorrowful, the remnant of old love,
The thread of a lotus root still lingering.
Tiếc thay chút nghĩa cũ càng
Dẫu lìa ngó ý còn vương tơ lòng.
I believe only Vietnamese can really appreciate this couplet’s beauty and, in particular, can understand “nghĩa,” which in this context means “love.” But that’s not all. “Nghĩa,” a Sino-Vietnamese word, is a traditional Vietnamese ethical concept, which can be understood as moral obligation, justice, duty, debt of gratitude, and mutual attachment based on duty. Nghĩa has to do with both the heart and the mind, which are closely linked in important phrases, such as “nghĩ bụng” (think with the belly) and “nghĩ trong lòng” (think with the bowels). Traditionally, belly and bowels are the locus of feelings.
“Nghĩa” is the phonetic transcription of the Chinese character for “justice,” a key word in Confucianism. Actually, Confucius (551–479 BCE) placed greater stress on humanism (nhân) than on justice. Mencius (372–289 BCE), for his part, insisted on “nghĩa” as meaning “the right thing to do, even to the detriment of one’s own interest.” Moral obligation can take different forms depending on concrete social relationships (suzerain – vassal; parents – children; teacher – student; friends, etc.). The best definition for “nghĩa” may be found in the lines I just quoted. The definition has three components:
• duration: A proverb says, “Nghĩa can arise from one ferry trip” (Chuyến đò nên nghĩa). This means that one trip across a river is enough for passengers to feel bound together by nghĩa.
• mind: The mind is symbolized by the lotus stem. When snapped, the stem’s tenuous filaments keep the two halves linked.
• heart: The tenuous filaments represent the heart.
In brief, far from being a dictate of conscience, nghĩa mixes reason and feeling—the mutual, moral, and sentimental obligation born from human contacts, however brief. Nghĩa governs relationships with other people as well as within the family, village, and country.
Love in Việt Nam generally leads to marriage and family. Conjugal love based on affection and loyalty is expressed by “yêu thương,” a compound word, which is very difficult to translate. “Yêu” means “love;” “thương” means “to have compassion, understanding, or pity.” “Yêu” implies passion, desire, affection, and fondness. “Thương” implies care, even tolerance. However, conjugal love can be best translated by “tình nghĩa,” with “tình” expressing “love,” and “nghĩa” capturing “mutual, moral, and sentimental obligation born out of love.”
Nghĩa will keep a married couple together at a later life stage, when passion no longer reigns supreme and when affection has become a habit. But even then, because of nghĩa, a conjugal relationship will not be governed solely by reason. Husband and wife endure with each other because nghĩa binds them. Nghĩa explains why so many couples remain physically faithful despite long absences, especially during war.
The Vietnamese Character
A few years back, I spoke with Sociology Professor Göran Therbom about the Swedish mentality. We agreed that circumspection is indispensable in questions of national character, the psychology of peoples, cultural identity, and traditional values, lest one enter the trap of racism.
Since Việt Nam’s August 1945 Revolution, we have held dozens of seminars and have published an abundance of literature devoted to the character and cultural identity of the Vietnamese people. The research, which tended to stress positive aspects, established the following points about the traditional Vietnamese character:
• strong adherence to the community: formation of the nation (unifying the family, village, and state) at an early stage to fight foreign invasions and natural disasters (e.g., building dikes against floods); formation of the village as the basic social, political, and economic unit
• an essential element: love for one’s country
• an ancient culture: importance of the Việt language and love of learning
• ardor for work: intelligence, innovativeness, skillfulness, thrift, and the influence of wet-rice cultivation
• primordial role of the family: language use of personal pronouns according to the presumed age of the interlocutors and their position in the wider cultural family
• relationships: filial piety, respect for aged persons, and solidarity (family, village, and nation)
• adaptability: ability to survive, suppleness of comportment, sense of realism, preference for concreteness, eclecticism, and empiricism
• lifestyle: sobriety and simplicity, greater sensitivity to the simple, skillful, lovely, and graceful than to the imposing and monumental
• spectrum of feelings: tendency to be more sentimental than rational
• philosophical tendencies: little inclination toward philosophical speculations or metaphysical flights
• religious feelings: religiosity rather than fanaticism, with a large presence of autochthonous beliefs (animism)
• profound influences: Confucianism and Buddhism
• priority: preference for the good rather than the beautiful, hence the predominant role of morals and virtues
Our researchers analyzing Vietnamese character and cultural identity tend to highlight positive points. Very few discuss negative aspects. This attitude was justified during the long wars for national liberation, since we needed to emphasize positive national traditions to galvanize our Resistance. However, we need truly scientific research in today’s increasing competition on a world scale to reveal our people’s weaknesses and strengths in order to help shape capable and highly motivated citizens. According to our researchers, the main negative traits of traditional Vietnamese character and cultural identity may be listed as follows:
• social development and socio-economic structures: inability to evolve normally because of war and other interruptions
• in opposition to the strong sense of community: exaggerated concern for face-saving, difficulty
