As a fellow Vietnamese, it is regrettable to find so many of my countrymen who express disapproval over our own history. Indeed modern Vietnam has tried extremely hard to alienate itself from its own past, in the belief that we are eradicating traditions which were imposed by the “northern colonizers” (the Chinese). Now, Chinese influence is often seen as a shameful display of foreign culture, whose arrival have displaced our “pure Vietnamese traditions.” The “original form” of Vietnamese culture is fantasied as an extraordinary beauty whose memories we have forgotten, forever lost to the corruption brought upon us by foreign invaders.

And so we have willingly distanced ourselves from our own culture for fear that they are “too Chinese.” In the early days of Vietnam, the Party had tried to “purify” the Vietnamese language by replacing Chinese loanwords with native ones and discouraged Vietnamese traditions which may have originated in China. In doing so, modern Vietnamese is trapped in a gap of identity crisis, confused by the future and the past; and then another past which we imagine but have not come to define us. The Koreans and Japanese have not actively removed Chinese influence from their culture near our extent, yet funny enough neither Koreans nor Japanese face this kind of identity issue as serious as Vietnamese.

So am I proud of the Sinospheric past of Vietnam, you ask?

What is there not to be proud of?

The word “Sinosphere” is literally “Chinese Sphere” in English, but it only tells half the story. Just like the Roman Empire, China has influenced her neighbors in many ways, from which we have paved our own path on the foundation that has been laid down. The culture and traditions that we have developed cannot be more Vietnamese in that they have truly defined us—who we really are rather than something which we fantasies to be.

Pictures from Google.

Vietnamese can never dispose the glory of our ancestors, for it will always be a part of our identity. By keeping away from our very own cultural definition, what have modern Vietnamese become?

It is a Frankenstein of Four Nothings (四不像)

• Neither Western nor Eastern.
• Neither East nor Southeast Asian.
• Neither Confucian nor Non-Confucian.
• Neither “Pure Vietnamese” nor “Chinese-influenced.”