Vietnamese

ETHNONYMS: Annamese, Cochinchinese, Kinh, Tonkinese

Orientation

Identification. The Vietnamese speak the Vietnamese language and live in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Significant numbers of Vietnamese, especially since 1975, are now found in most Western countries, including the United States, France, Australia, and Canada. Remnants of earlier Vietnamese migrations still exist in northeastern Thailand and New Caledonia. Many Vietnamese have also lived in Cambodia and Laos for many decades. Under French colonial rule Vietnam was divided into three separate political entities: Tonkin (north Vietnam), Annam (central Vietnam), and Cochinchina (south Vietnam). Foreigners have sometimes used these terms as designators of ethnicity (e.g., the "Tonkinese"), sometimes employing the term "Annamese" to include all Vietnamese. This usage is offensive to Vietnamese, who all refer to themselves as "Vietnamese," sometimes using "northern," "central," or "southern" as adjectives to designate region of origin. Ethnic Vietnamese also refer to themselves as kinh, meaning "lowlanders," as opposed to highland "tribespeople."

Location. Vietnam is located between 8°30′ and 23° N and between 102° and 109° E. Very narrow and elongated in the center, it is wider in the south and in the north. The country lies to the south of China and east of Laos and Cambodia, with a long coastline on the South China Sea. Although some three-quarters of Vietnamese national territory is hilly or mountainous, ethnic Vietnamese have lived mainly in the lowland plains.

Demography. The population of Vietnam is about 68.5 million, over 20 percent of whom live in urban areas. Population density is over 207 per square kilometer. About 85 percent of the total population is ethnic Vietnamese. There are many highland ethnic minorities, including numerous Tai-speaking groups as well as Hmong (Meo), Nung, and Muong in the northern highlands and Austronesian-speaking groups (e.g., Rhadé and Jarai) and Mon-Khmer (Austroasiatic)-speaking groups (e.g., Bahnar, Sedang, Stieng, Mnong, and Katu) in the southern highlands. A sizable and long-established ethnic Chinese population lives mostly in urban areas of the south, although many left the country between 1975 and 1980. Many ethnic Khmer live in parts of the Mekong Delta. The Red River and Mekong deltas, containing less than a quarter of the total land area, hold almost 60 percent of the population and over 70 percent of all ethnic Vietnamese. Population density in these core areas is often very high (over 2,000 persons per square mile), but in highland areas it is often under 25 per square mile and rarely exceeds 150 per square mile. Both the southern and the northern regimes during the division of Vietnam (1955-1975), as well as more recently the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, had programs to resettle Vietnamese into the highlands, but they encountered numerous difficulties and achieved only limited results.

Linguistic Affiliation. Vietnamese is a monosyllabic and tonal language of composite origin, basically Mon-Khmer (Austroasiatic), but with elements derived from Tai and Sinitic languages.

History and Cultural Relations

The early inhabitants of the area apparently were Negritos. Some 4,000 years ago Austronesian (Indonesian) migrants from the north were moving into the area that is now north Vietnam. Later, Austroasiatic (Mon-Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian) peoples arrived. Then, about 2,500 years ago Viet (Yueh) and Tai peoples moved down from southern China. Out of this mixture of genes, languages, and cultures arose Van Lang, considered to have been the first Vietnamese kingdom. In mid-third century b.c. Van Lang was overrun by and incorporated into another state to the north, forming the kingdom of Au Lac. Then Au Lac was incorporated into an even larger and more powerful state: Nam Viet (Nan Yueh in Chinese), centered on Canton. Local leadership and culture were little disrupted in the Red River Delta, although new cultural elements entered from the north. In 111 b.c. the region was incorporated into the expanding Han Empire in China and the Red River Delta was part of the Chinese empire for a thousand years. Local hereditary leadership was used by both Nam Viet and early Han rulers, but as infrastructure and more intensive production techniques developed, pressure increased for more complete Sinicization of local culture and administration. In a.d. 39 the Trung sisters led the traditional local elite in a popularly supported revolt that flourished briefly but was suppressed in a.d. 43, ending hereditary leadership. The new hybrid elite of the Red River Delta kept and developed a sense of regional identity; the local language and many non-Chinese customs were retained. Revolts came periodically until a.d. 939 when independence from Chinese rule was achieved, although China would remain a military threat and a continuing source of cultural influence. What is now central Vietnam was then the kingdom of Champa. The Cham spoke an Austronesian language, had a powerful Indian influence on their culture and political organization, and also had a strong maritime orientation. Over the next six centuries Vietnam displaced or assimilated the Cham and extended Vietnamese territory down the coast to the plains and foothills east of Saigon, which they took and occupied during the seventeenth century. The Vietnamese then expanded at the expense of Cambodia, settling the western Mekong Delta in the eighteenth century and the eastern portion in the nineteenth. But between 1859 and 1883 all of Vietnam fell under French colonial control. South Vietnam (called Cochinchina) was a French colony; central Vietnam (called Annam) and northern Vietnam (called Tonkin) became protectorates. Together with Cambodia and Laos, they constituted French Indochina. A public school system established by the French in 1908 disseminated elements of Western culture in Vietnam, influencing but not destroying Vietnamese culture. In 1945 a popular revolution erupted against French rule. As this movement came under increasingly strong Communist control, however, some Vietnamese became disaffected. In 1955 Vietnam gained independence from France but was divided into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in the northern half and the anti-Communist Republic of Vietnam in the southern half. About 900,000 Vietnamese relocated from the north to the south, while 90,000 or so others moved from south to north. A Communist-led revolution in the south evoked heavy American support for the Republic of Vietnam, adding American influence to the already heterodox southern region, and led to the invasion of the south by northern troops. After a devastating war, Communist forces in 1975 took over all of Vietnam, the foreign troops departed, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was established in 1976.

Settlements

The traditional Vietnamese village, typical of lowland northern and central Vietnam, was a highly nucleated settlement surrounded by a bamboo hedge or sometimes by an earthen wall. Each village had a communal hall (dinh ) that served as a sanctuary for the cult of the village guardian spirit and as a public meeting hall. Mahayana Buddhist temples were also common. These villages tended to be tightly bounded and relatively closed communities (both physically and socially) with an elaborate community structure, located along roads or waterways or on knolls or hillsides. Houses were built with mud or brick walls, thatched or tile roofs, and earthen or concrete floors. In the more recently settled southern region, especially in the western Mekong Delta, settlements have been more scattered and less tightly bounded, with a less well-defined community structure. Some southern villages had no dinh. Most are strung out along roads or waterways and some households are scattered over the countryside. Houses have walls of woven bamboo, brick, or wood, earthen or concrete floors, and roofs of palm leaves, thatch, or, in recent decades, corrugated iron or metal sheets made from recycled aluminum cans.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities . Vietnam is a poor country, with an annual per capita income of less than U.S. $200. Agriculture, the dominant sector of the economy, emphasizes the cultivation of wet rice, but the production of secondary food crops (maize, yams, manioc, beans) and industrial crops (rubber, tea, coffee, pineapple, citrus fruits, sugar, tobacco, jute) has increased in recent decades. Despite efforts to mechanize agriculture, water buffalo and human beings still do most of the farm work. Pigs, chickens, ducks, cattle, and fish ponds are common. Many coastal villages specialize in fishing. Home gardens play an important role in the household economy.

Industrial Arts. Small-scale food processing, charcoal making, and handicrafts (furniture, lacquerware, pottery, silk, baskets) play an important economic role. Sewing machines are widespread. Mining and metalworking are important in the north. Some industries (cernent, textiles, chemicals, steel) are well established, but efforts to build heavy industry have been impeded by war and a weak economic base.

Trade. While small shops, stalls, street peddlers, and market squares are common, and Vietnamese women are especially active in petty retail and trade, until recently ethnic Chinese dominated many wholesale activities. Government efforts to socialize the economy in 1978 closed tens of thousands of small private businesses that were replaced by a state trading network, but some private enterprise has now returned.

Division of Labor. Traditionally women have had charge of domestic affairs, including finances. Men dominated public affairs, the professions, and agricultural activity. Extended warfare and government regulations have given women greater opportunities in all areas, but much de facto division of labor by gender persists.

Land Tenure. The ratio of people to arable land is one of the most unfavorable in the world for an agricultural country. Most landholdings have been collectivized under Communist rule. Each household in a collective is permitted to have some land for its own use; private plots (about 5 percent of the land area) typically produce from 10 to 20 percent or more of the total yield.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. The structure of Vietnamese kinship involves logical opposition and functional complementarity between two models. Especially in northern and central Vietnam, patrilineage has been the dominant form, with emphasis on hierarchy and solidarity. But bilateral tendencies, with greater egalitarian emphasis, have always been present, most strongly in the south. In recent years Socialist policies have reinforced bilateral tendencies, weakened patrilineage, and strengthened the nuclear family. Descent is patrilineal, but with increasingly strong bilateral tendencies.

Kinship Terminology. Vietnamese kinship terminology is of the Sudanese type, highly descriptive. There are different terms for father's siblings and mother's siblings, and father's older brother is terminologically distinguished from his younger brother.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Although free choice in marriage is now the law and is quite common, arranged marriages and the use of matchmakers persist, and parents and important elders wield much influence. In the northern and central regions, village endogamy and patrilocal residence have been the norm and are still common. Polygynous marriage, once common, is now illegal; but it has not disappeared.

Domestic Unit. Households average from five to seven persons, but they vary greatly in size. Most consist of a nuclear family, often supplemented with one or more other close relatives, and function as a single economic unit, sharing the work and resources.

Inheritance. In general, all children inherit equally, although sons, especially eldest sons, are sometimes favored. The oldest, or sometimes the youngest, son (or even the youngest daughter) may stay at home to care for aging parents and inherit the house.

Socialization. The attitude toward young children is very permissive, but older children are much more strictly controlled and disciplined. Boys have somewhat more freedom than girls and, although the tendency is weakening, are likely to get more education. Family solidarity is emphasized over independence, and nurturance/dependency relationships over self-reliance.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Vietnamese social organization entails complex interaction between two contradictory sets of ideas. Traditionally, individual Vietnamese have been firmly embedded in powerful corporate groups, first and foremost in a family. A family was part of a lineage and of a village. Villages were aggregated into the state through a national civil service. Within families, lineages, and villages a strict, male-dominant hierarchy was common. These biases persist in Vietnamese society. Relative age, rank, titles, degrees, and other status markers remain significant determinants of attitudes and behavior in social interaction. Yet at each level a distinct set of more open and egalitarian institutions has always been present: bilateral family ties, mutual aid groups, shamanistic cults, and Buddhist practices. Situational shifting between these two logically contradictory but on the whole functionally complementary domains at every level has been and to a large extent remains the essence of Vietnamese social organization. In recent decades state ideology and legal codes have weakened the strength of traditional social groupings and hierarchies; but the new Socialist men and women and the new Socialist society envisioned by state planners since 1955 in the north and 1975 in the south remain more of an ideal than an actuality as older patterns reemerge in new forms. Vietnamese social organization is changing, but the extent and precise nature of change is still unclear and unevenly distributed from region to region.

Political Organization. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a Communist state divided into thirty-nine provinces and three autonomous municipalities. Provinces are divided into districts, districts into villages and townships. Each such unit has its own People's Council, the main public organ of state authority, and a People's Committee, the executive agent of the People's Council and the major administrative body. The Communist party of Vietnam plays a major role in all spheres at all levels, however, imposing parameters of discourse and action and setting social and economic goals. The Communist party is designated by the constitution to be the "sole force leading the state and society," and the executive branch of government is virtually an extension of the Central Committee of the party.

Social Control. Traditionally families, lineages, and villages could be held corporately responsible for the actions of their members. Concern for the welfare and reputation of one's family has served to constrain misbehavior. Gossip and ridicule have been important weapons for social control because of a concern for "face." Now neighborhood committees and Communist party cells and organizations monitor behavior and rebuke deviance. Self-criticism and public-criticism sessions are used to check antisocial tendencies.

Conflict. Local disputes have often involved competition for scarce water or land; historically much conflict has arisen from Vietnam's southern expansion and from resistance to encroachment upon Vietnam's territorial integrity and independence from the north. Ideological disputes have torn the country and region apart for the past fifty years, while regional rivalry has reemerged with national independence. Within groups, conflict often involves perceived slights in regard to respect behavior and relative status. Underlying such sensitivities there are both high psychological stakes and competition over the control of resources. Vietnam, with the twelfth-largest population in the world, has maintained the fourth-largest army and a large public-security apparatus, despite a weak economy.

Religion and Expressive Culture

The official ideology of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is basically atheistic, and the state is committed by its constitution to combat "backward life styles and superstitions." While official policy guarantees freedom of religion, secular activities of religious groups are severely circumscribed, and activist religious leaders have been jailed.

Religious Beliefs. Popular Vietnamese religion is a mixture of ritual and belief derived from animist, Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist sources. Veneration of ancestors is a very important part of this syncretic system, as are many elements of Mahayana Buddhist practice and belief. But only a minority of Vietnamese could properly be called Confucianists or Buddhists. Beliefs in astrology, geomancy, and the intervention of spirits in human life are all widespread. Traditional villages had cults to a village guardian spirit. There are perhaps over 5 million Roman Catholics in Vietnam. Many Vietnamese are nominally Buddhists, but active members of organized Buddhist churches probably number only 3 or 4 million, mostly in and around Ho Chi Minh City and Hue. The Cao Dai, numbering between 1 and 2 million and limited to the south and south-central regions, combine folk religion and Christian beliefs. The Hoa Hao, limited to one portion of the western Mekong Delta, with about 2 million adherents, are a puritanical, poor, peasant-based sect committed to a simplified and austere Buddhist doctrine. There are also a small number of Protestant Christians and other small sects built around prophets or charismatic leaders. For some Vietnamese, Marxism seems to function as a secular religion and appears to have acquired some sacred aspects. Ho Chi Minh, "the father of independence," is to some a cult figure similar to traditional heroes worshiped as powerful spirits after their death.

Village guardian spirits were once important cult figures, but now less so. Some spirits are believed to provide assistance if venerated, or illness and misfortune if ignored. People who die violent deaths are thought to linger as angry spirits and bring misfortune if not propitiated. There are many categories of malevolent or potentially malevolent spirits, among them ghosts (ma ), and demons (guy ). There are numerous minor deities who may intervene in human life for good or ill, and a generally benevolent category of supernatural, tien, a "fairy" or "genie."

Religious Practitioners. Buddhist monks are to be found in many villages. They do not automatically enjoy high respect or exert influence in village affairs, although some may achieve these things. Catholic priests and many Cao Dai and Hoa Hao leaders are respected leaders in their communities. Shamans, fortune-tellers, and a variety of other specialists in dealing with the supernatural may build up a group of clients or followers.

Ceremonies. The most widespread and important ceremonies involve the ancestors. Death-anniversary celebrations, New Year's festivities, and other events bring the ancestors back to visit the family, where they must be ritually greeted. The Midyear (Wandering Souls) festival is widely observed. Christians celebrate Christmas and Easter. Many households have, in addition to altars for the ancestors, small shrines to various spirits (the earth god, Shakyamuni, the goddess of mercy, the god of wealth, etc.) and present ritual offerings once or twice a month.

Arts. Literary arts, especially poetry, are highly prized. A wide variety of musical forms and instruments is popular. Many southerners enjoy reformed opera, musical dramas with humorous elements. Some people like Western music, everything from classical to rock and roll. While guitars and pianos are popular, some people still play traditional stringed instruments with great skill. Fine arts and architecture reveal both Western and Chinese influence. Skits and impromptu musical performances or recitations of verse are popular at many kinds of gatherings.

Medicine. Illness is attributed to many causes: it may be organic or owing to germs, but it also may be caused by fright or hardship, heartbreak, an imbalance of elements, a curse, or spirit possession. Picking the right kind of treatment is essential. There are many specialists in the supernatural who diagnose and treat illness in a variety of ways, often sharing clients with modern medical centers and with Vietnamese or Chinese herbalists. Vitamin injections, tonics and elixirs of many kinds, and special dietary regimens are also used. Sometimes women feel called to worship a particular spirit or deity, and illness is the penalty for failure to make offerings. Protective talismans and amulets and ritual support for protector spirits are used to ward off illness.

Death and Afterlife. Funerals (and sometimes reburials) were elaborate and costly affairs, especially for the well-to-do, but they are now less so. Ritual support for the deceased is most crucial. Those not honored by a cult become errant spirits, unhappy and harmful. A series of rituals elevates the deceased into the ranks of the ancestors. Ancestors return to visit the family on death-anniversary celebrations and special family occasions. Major life events are reported to the ancestors.

Bibliography

Gourou, Pierre (1936). Les paysans du delta tonkinois. Paris: Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient. Translated as Peasants of the Tonkin Delta. 1955. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files.

Hickey, Gerald C. (1964). Village in Vietnam. Chicago: Aldine.

Hy Van Luong (1989). "Vietnamese Kinship: Structural Principles and the Socialist Transformation in Northern Vietnam." Journal of Asian Studies 48:741-756.

Le Thi Que (1986). "The Vietnamese Family Yesterday and Today." Interculture 92:1-38.

Rambo, Arthur Terry (1973). A Comparison of Feasant Social Systems of Northern and Southern Viet-nam: A Study of Ecological Adaptation, Social Succession, and Cultural Evolution. Monograph Series, no. 3. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Center for Vietnamese Studies.

Rambo, Arthur Terry (1982). "Vietnam: Searching for Integration." In Religion and Societies: Asia and the Middle East, edited by Carlo Caldarola, 407-444. Berlin: Mouton.

NEIL JAMIESON

Vi·et·nam·ese / vēˌetnəˈmēz; ˌvyet-; ˌvēət-; -ˈmēs/ • adj. of or relating to Vietnam, its people, or their language. • n. (pl. same) 1. a native or national of Vietnam, or a person of Vietnamese descent. 2. the language of Vietnam, which is probably a Mon-Khmer language although much of its vocabulary is derived from Chinese.

Vietnamese National language of Vietnam, spoken by c.70 million people. It is part of the Muong branch of the Mon-Khmer sub-family of Asiatic languages, and derives much of its vocabulary from Mandarin Chinese.

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