Viet Nam. Hữu Ngọc

no doubt for all peoples in Southeast Asia—the interest in the region goes far beyond politico-economic questions of the day to include rediscovering our cultural identity, which has been obscured by several historical factors, particularly the glowing aura of Chinese and Indian cultures and the impact of Western colonization.

      The word “Indochina” (referring to Việt Nam, Laos, and Cambodia) was probably coined in the late 1800s to designate the peninsular part of Southeast Asia (itself comprised of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Việt Nam). “Indochina” highlights acculturation from the two major Asian cultural centers (India and China). However, it obscures the fact that Southeast Asia peoples had built their own specific cultures on common ground well before they came under Indian and Chinese influence.

      Over time, many independent states, which had been Indianized or Sinicized, came into being, breaking the region’s geographical and socio-cultural unity. Through the vicissitudes of history, some of these states forgot the brilliant epochs of their past, for example, the Angkor civilization. Under the colonial regimes, which lasted from the second half of the 1800s to the end of World War II in 1945, French, Dutch, and British scholars—prominent Indianists and Sinologists often with an Eurocentric prism tinged with Indianism or Sino-centrism—devoted more time and effort to the study of Indian and Chinese influence in Southeast Asian countries than to the exploration of the substratum of indigenous cultures. Japanese historian Yoshiharu Tsuboi’s The Vietnamese Empire Facing France and China: 1847–1885 (L’Empire Vietnamien: Face à la France et à la Chine, 1847–1885, Paris, 1987) rightly chose Việt Nam itself as the study’s starting point and avoided a base on views oriented toward France and China.

      After World War II, the idea of Southeast Asia as a geo-cultural-political entity took shape following formation of the great powers’ spheres of influence, the process of decolonization, and the awareness of newly independent states with a common past yet each in search of national identity. The lifting of ideological barriers between the countries of ASEAN (Association of South-east Asian Nations, which grew out of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization—SEATO) and the countries of what once was French Indochina has created an irresistible rapprochement and unification among Southeast Asians. Việt Nam has followed the same impulse on the cultural plane. Having faced two major foreign influences—the Chinese in our Middle Ages and Western (mostly French) in modern times—Việt Nam is returning to sources in Southeast Asia as its primary identity.

In Việt Nam, Rice is the Source of Life

      It was proper that the United Nations declared 2004 the International Year of Rice, for rice is a staple for more than half the world’s population and the principle source of income for more than one billion people, most of whom are farmers. During 2004, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hoped to encourage greater access to rice, increased production, a reduction in hunger and poverty, and greater environmental protection in rice-producing countries. Việt Nam took great interest in the promotional year because 80 percent of our population lives in rural areas and essentially survives on rice farming. Then, too, many of us still remember the double yoke of Japanese and French occupation at the end of World War II, when famine took two million lives. The Đổi Mới (Renovation or Renewal) policy, which began in late 1986, ended our perennial food shortage. In recent years, Việt Nam has consistently ranked as the world’s second largest exporter of rice.

      Rice was a weed until man began to cultivate it six thousand years ago. As of 2012, 85 percent of rice was grown in Asia and fed 40 percent of the world’s population. In Việt Nam, rice dates to the Mesolithic Culture of Hòa Bình and Bắc Sơn Provinces. By the dawn of the Vietnamese identity in the Red River Valley in the first millennium of the Bronze Age, rice-growing had become culturally ingrained in Việt Nam as well as in neighboring Southeast Asian countries.

      Rice is the source of life in Việt Nam. It’s fitting that the English word “rice” has many different words in Vietnamese. To name a few, “lúa” is the rice plant; “thóc” is raw, unhusked rice; “gạo” is raw, polished rice; and “cơm” is ordinary, steamed rice. In the old days, a woman unable to breast feed would feed her child rice porridge (“cháo”), and when the child was old enough, the mother would chew “cơm” to feed the baby. When a person dies, he or she is said to have taken “xôi” (glutinous or “sticky” rice), probably because sticky rice is usually among the votive offerings for the deceased.

      Việt Nam practices dry-rice agriculture in mountainous areas and wet-rice agriculture in irrigated fields on the plains. Following the August 1945 Revolution, farmers assisted each other through mutual-aid groups. When the War of Resistance Against France ended in 1954, the Land Reform Campaign returned land to the tillers in liberated North Việt Nam. The country benefited from the 1960s Green Revolution, which brought greater productivity through high-yield seeds, mineral fertilizers, pest control, improvement in irrigation, and various short-stemmed varieties developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. These varieties concentrated the energy generated from photosynthesis onto the rice plant’s ear instead of in its stem.

      In the 1960s, household rice plots were regrouped into village co-operatives. During the War of Resistance Against the United States, these agricultural co-operatives filled the void left by the young men who had become soldiers by providing rice, food, and other labor to the soldiers’ families and other villagers. All villagers shared the work collectively, with women taking a great role in food production. After the war, unfortunately, many co-operatives became ineffective because of bureaucratic mismanagement and ineffective distribution of produce. Gradually, the co-operative became moribund; in the early 1980s, many farmers refused to harvest co-operative fields.

      The new policy of Đổi Mới instituted in late 1986 curbed a prolonged economic crisis and revived agriculture by giving farmers control of the full scope of rice production. The success was spectacular. Previously, everyone had been hungry. Then, in 1989, Việt Nam exported two million tons of rice and quickly reached third place as the largest world rice exporter, after Thailand and the United States and then moved to second place after Thailand.

Myths Die Hard in Việt Nam

      Emerging from a subway in New York’s Time Square, American author Joseph Campbell was immersed in the crowd waiting at a crosswalk and thought he saw more than one ancient myth coming to life right before his eyes. According to this eminent mythologist, in our presumably de-mythicized world, myths are still essential to understanding history as well as a society’s modern aspirations:

      “It [mythology] is where all the inventions of the common people’s imagination meet up with archeology and history.”

      Let us begin with the Vietnamese myth of origin from the period of the Hùng Kings before 2000 BCE, during the Bronze Age:

      The Vietnamese people were born from the union of a dragon and a fairy. Throughout the course of history, many Confucians and more than one modern patriot (for example, Hồ Chí Minh in writing our Declaration of Independence) have invoked this mythic origin to mobilize the masses in national struggle against Chinese feudalism and French colonization.

      Triệu Quang Phục (a.k.a. Triệu Việt Vương, life: ?–571 CE; reign: 548–571), hero of resistance to Chinese domination, is one. He established his guerrilla base in the swamps of the Lake of One Night (Đầm Nhất Dạ Trạch), which is associated with Chử Đồng Tử, a mythic god from the time of the Hùng kings. Chử Đồng Tử descended from Heaven on a dragon to give Triệu Quang Phục, the country’s new savior, the fabled animal claw that assured invincibility and legitimacy. Such, at least, was the claim of Triệu Quang Phục, who knew the myth’s power.

      Other myths have survived for millennia, entering popular practices. For example, the betel quid expresses love and consecrates marriage; Tết cakes (bánh giầy and bánh chưng) represent the round sky and the square earth; ceremonies honor the Mountain Spirit, whose struggle against the Water Spirit protects the Vietnamese against the