Topography
For a relatively small country, about the size of Italy, Vietnam’s geography is remarkably varied and complex.
It has a sizeable mountain range in the northwest (an offshoot of the Himalayas), heavily forested uplands, extensive limestone scenery with several areas of mature ‘Karst’ landscape, an elevated central plateau, two large river deltas and thousands of offshore islands.
Although all this makes life difficult for most of the 70% of the population that still work the land, it has great benefits for visitors in the form of a wide variety of landscapes.
Lush green paddy patchworks, vertiginous mountain terracing, tea and coffee plantations, pepper and pineapple fields, salt pans, flood dykes and drainage canals: the ways in which the people have adapted the land to agriculture with the beauty of the natural landscapes for the photographers’ attention.
From a visitor’s point of view, such geographical diversity is part of Vietnam’s attraction. Icy mountain streams and boiling hot mineral springs, sheer cliffs to challenge even the best rock climber, deep caves and underground rivers, many unexplored, serene freshwater lakes, white sand beaches – Vietnam has all this, and much more.
Bio-diversity
Vietnam’s wide range of fauna, flora and marine species places it in the top ten countries for the variety of its bio-diversity. Large National Parks, forests and marine coastal zones are home to some of the most endangered species in the world, and are often unique to Vietnam. Elephants, tigers, rhinoceros, black bears, leopards, wild buffalo, primates, pythons and crocodiles are some of the larger species still living in remote areas.
Several of Vietnam's forests and wetlands are rich in birdlife, with many rare species.
Aquatic and semi-aquatic species include large pelagic fish and mammals, such as dolphins, sharks, rays and the occasional whale. Turtles and dugongs visit some of the more remote islands in the south. Corals and marginal plant species such as mangroves and sea-grasses can be seen in many locations.
Plant life varies from rhododendrons and deciduous trees in the mountainous north, cactus plants and pines in the dry central areas, dripping vines, exotic orchids and ancient trees in the primitive forests, and lush palms and fruits in the tropical south.
Providing access
Vietnam is gradually being ‘tamed’. Flooding is being brought under control, remote areas are being opened up and its inhabitants provided with access to electricity and telephones. Virgin forests, mountain areas and caves are being surveyed and recorded. For the people who live in such areas, this is all to the good.
Vietnam’s History
From pre-history to the WTO
Vietnam’s history is complicated – a minestrone of kingdoms and dynasties, invasions and resistance, independence and occupation. Guide books and potted histories that attempt a chronological synopsis of the 500,000 years since the first human habitation of Vietnam usually end up as an impenetrable mêlée of names and dates.
Rather than providing our customers with information that is freely available elsewhere, we prefer to try to interpret the development process that has led to modern Vietnam and attempt to shed a little light upon some of the more arcane, or positively baffling, modes of conduct and behaviour encountered by visitors to our country.
Putting chronology on one side, each of the eight pages in this section follows a particular theme, tracing the influences that have shaped and moulded the Vietnamese people over two millennia. They are intended to provide a framework to enable visitors to place the things they see and hear in a context that makes sense.
Striving for sovereignty
Since their emergence in the Vietnamese heartland of the Red River Delta seven thousand years ago, the Vietnamese have fought for their independence. This struggle, beginning with a thousand years of Chinese domination from the second century BC, has been a potent element in creating the Vietnam of today.
Defying invaders
Vietnam’s history has been one of resistance interspersed by periods of feudal communalism under dynastic rule. Many invaders have sought to conquer the country, including Kublai Khan's Mongol army, and a few have succeeded. However, in every case, the Vietnamese have ultimately triumphed.
The Confucian influence
Whilst religion has been a powerful influence, the strictures of Confucianism, the most successful instrument of large-scale social control ever devised, have probably been the defining factor in the evolution of the Vietnamese character. An outline of its philosophy and development is a prerequisite to an understanding of modern Vietnam.
Incorporation and transformation
Vietnam has experienced numerous incursions of foreign forces, and their subsequent expulsion, throughout its history. Rapidly alternating balances of power have been instrumental in shaping the remarkable pragmatism of its people, and underpinned their assimilation of foreign religions and philosophies: beliefs and ideas that were absorbed and transformed into something distinctly Vietnamese.
Colonial occupation and liberation
The impact of a hundred years of colonialism has also left its mark, but perhaps more upon the tangible infrastructure of the country, rather than its people. However, the French occupation earns its right to being a discrete theme by its galvanising effect upon Vietnam’s burning desire for liberation and the subsequent commitment of most of its people to all-out war against the forces of the United States and its allies.
After victory, re-unification and eventual international recognition of Vietnam as a free and sovereign state, all these themes combined to set the stage for Vietnam’s recovery, reconciliation and eventual emergence into the world community. As our country struggles to establish its relationships and roles in the emerging world order of the new millennium and prepares for entry to the World Trade Organisation, the current pages of Vietnam’s history are being written by the juggernaut of globalisation, and its impact upon a people who virtually bypassed the twentieth century.
Vietnam’s Culture
Influences that have shaped the way we think and behave
A brief overview of the building blocks of Vietnam's cultural heritage
The Chinese legacy
The roots of Vietnam’s culture are firmly bedded in a thousand years of Chinese domination, but other influences have helped to shape Vietnam’s intellectual achievements and way of life.
The early Dong Son people, the original Viet people, brought sophisticated mining, smelting and casting skill from their Mongolian origins and left a legacy of magnificent bronze statues and drums.
The Champa Kingdom also left its mark in the form of ornately carved sculptures decorating their mysterious brick towers.
However, the impact of other races and nations is dwarfed by that
of China. The Confucian code and Buddhism introduced during their occupation of the country have dominated Vietnamese life for two millennia, and will doubtless continue to do so for centuries to come.
Putting aside the differing cultures of Vietnam’s many smaller ethnic groups, most of which have migrated into Vietnam comparatively recently, the post-Chinese development of the culture of the majority ‘Kinh’ people that constitute 85% of the population can be divided into four phases. They are the long period of dynastic rule, the French occupation, the years between 1945 and 1986, and the post ‘doi moi’ period.
The Dynasties
The years of the Imperial Dynasties that ruled Vietnam from the 10th to the 19th century were marked by wars and feuds with neighbouring countries as the country expanded to the south and consolidated its territory.
Culturally, there was little change under the Confucian administrative structures inherited from the Chinese. The conservative nature of Confucianism limited technological and cultural progress, making the country highly vulnerable to the advanced military power of the French.
French domination
The French colonialists brought European-style administration, Christianity in the form of Catholicism, and implemented the written version of Vietnamese that had been ignored by the Vietnamese since its creation by a Jesuit monk in the 17th century.
They originated new forms of cultural expression, such as painting and prose, established a European-style theatrical tradition, transferred a different style of architecture and introduced European cuisine.
However, by their brutal suppression of the Vietnamese people, the colonialists also created the social conditions that led to the rise of communism and insurrection early in the twentieth century.
The USSR model
Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of independence in 1945 ushered in a new era of social realism in which the purpose of culture and all forms of artistic expression was to further the country's revolutionary aspirations. Many traditional and French-influenced artistic genres were suppressed.
The influence of the USSR was considerable during this period. Russian became the second language, large numbers of Vietnamese people went to the Soviet countries to study, and new administrative systems, economic structures, planning models and mass movements based on examples in the Soviet Union were introduced.
New directions
By the early 1980's it had become glaringly obvious that the USSR model of centralisation and collectivisation had brought Vietnam to the brink of economic collapse and pariah status among the international community.
In 1986, the Communist Party Congress introduced ‘doi moi’- a programme of national renewal involving opening up the country to the outside world and embracing the concept of a market economy.
Since then, the reins have been loosened, and several traditional and new forms of cultural expression are beginning to flourish. Tourism, television and the Internet have hastened the rate of change, but the brake of Confucianism has meant that economic and cultural development has been slower than expected.
However, Vietnam's Confucian traditions have helped to insulate the country from some of the more pernicious features of globalisation.
Nevertheless, change is moving ahead relentlessly and the culture of Vietnam is being reborn in a different guise. Vietnam’s large proportion of young people will mature into a social and cultural milieu completely unrecognisable to their elders
Vietnam’s religions
The complex patchwork of belief in Vietnam
In Vietnam, little is what it appears to be on the surface. The country’s religion is an excellent example. Ostensibly, Vietnam is a Buddhist country – around 80% of the population regard themselves as adherents. Pagodas are everywhere, and Buddhist festivals are embedded in the calendar. Also evident are temples with large effigies of obviously non-Buddhist deities and historical figures, as well as Christian churches and signs of other religious sects.
Visitors often correctly assume that, as in their own country, many different religions are practiced in Vietnam. Not so! Although in most countries people commit themselves to a specific religion, sect or cult, in Vietnam, people subscribe to several different canons of beliefs simultaneously.
The triple religion
The bedrock of religious practice in Vietnam is an amalgam of several components. The major religious inheritance from China, Confucianism, Taoism and ancestor worship, have coalesced with ancient Vietnamese animism to form a single entity – ‘tam giao’ – the ‘triple religion’. Each element exists in a pure form in Vietnam, and there are sects and cults that adhere to a single set of beliefs, but the great majority of people who describe themselves as ‘Buddhist’ are using it as a portmanteau word for the ‘tam giao’.
Vietnam’s major religions are described separately in this section, but it must be noted that many of the orthodoxies referred to have been adapted to ‘fit’ the way of life, rather than the other way round. For example, although Mahayana Buddhism requires its followers to abstain from eating meat, Vietnamese Buddhists (apart from monks and other acolytes) avoid meat only on two days each month, the full and the new moon. People arriving with a belief that vegetarianism will be widespread in Vietnam are dismayed to find that this is not so.
Christianity in Vietnam
Of the major religious faiths present in Vietnam, the Catholics adhere most closely to their creed. However, many still maintain an altar in their houses to worship the ancestors, or use a Christian shrine for the same purpose.
The Catholic Church has been prominent in Vietnam’s recent history. Initially, little notice was taken of European missionaries entering Vietnam from the 16th century onwards. However, when Christianity began to gain a foothold, the mandarins and other authorities increasingly saw it as a threat to Confucianism and banned the religion.
The French invaded and gave Catholicism preferential treatment, a policy extended to suppression of Buddhism by the Catholic-led Saigon regime after the country was partitioned. Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist priest from Hue, publicly burned himself to death in protest in 1963. A graphic photograph of the event had a major impact in turning public opinion against the US presence in Vietnam.
The post-war years
After re-unification, the communist authorities followed Marx’s dictum that religion was ‘the opiate of the people’ and introduced controls on religious expression by placing religion under state control, confiscating land and property, and sending priests, monks and other devotees who had been politically active supporters of the Saigon regime for ‘re-education.
Since ‘doi moi’ opened Vietnam to the rest of the world in 1986, restrictions have eased, land has been returned and religious freedom has been enshrined in the nation’s constitution. Nevertheless, although the vast majority of the people are now free to worship more or less what and where they like, the authorities continue to keep a firm hold on religion and its more fervent followers, mindful of attempts by Vietnam’s political enemies abroad to use it to foment dissent.
From time to time, critical reports are issued by religious and political organisations in the West, claiming this as suppression of freedom and abuses of human rights, an accusation vigorously denied by the Vietnamese and by many senior Vietnamese clerics. In reality, the Vietnamese government has recognised the destabilising potential of ‘social evils’ such as drug abuse and crime, and is encouraging religion and religious values as a contribution towards maintaining social cohesion at a time of rapid development.
source :http://www.haivenu-vietnam.com/
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