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What benefit will Vietnam obtain by reviving the traditional Vietnam culture?

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A culture that needs to revive is a dead culture. And a dead culture is worthless to anyone in any country.

Your question shows that you do not know Vietnamese culture at all. It is there even under the threats of the VCP and CCP.

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Nationalistic pride. Vietnam can be proud of their culture instead of feeling inferior (like Vietnamese-Americans) or using other means of nationalistic pride (like anti-Chinese sentiment). Something peaceful and beautiful that everyone can be proud of.

Culturally self-aware . Maybe Vietnam will finally know what their culture is, instead of grasping between Southeast and East Asia. I was surprised to know many Vietnamese cannot recognize their ancient script (no need to be able to read it, just know what it looks like) and some even think ancient Vietnamese wore Nguyen-styled clothes or sarong and saree in their history.

Rich materials for products. Look at Japan and their manga and anime. They utilize traditional culture, from clothing, cuisine, religion, to history and language to create their cultural products. Vietnamese comics are mostly modern settings, and when it’s historical settings, they don’t know anything about traditional or historical culture to know what to put in. The end result becomes a mess of Japanese and Chinese materials with some small Vietnamese elements. Grasping traditional culture can fix this.

Cultural exports. Japanese and Korean traditional cultures are so well-exported that now, it’s everywhere. Kimono is a term in fashion, Japanese words are sprinkled in other languages, and Japanese architecture is widely marveled. Just last decade, no one knew what Hanbok looked like, and now everyone wants to try it on. Korean terms are being used by fans all over the world as well.

Vietnam is capable of all of this. They just need to revive their identity first.

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I am going to give a controversial argument that we, Vietnamese, should not make too much effort in reviving the traditional Vietnamese culture. What are the aspects of traditional culture that are lost and need to be revive?

Is it the fact that people are becoming more materialistic in modern-day societies that they overlook the 5 core traditional values of Nhân (treat each other well), Nghĩa (only follow the act of righteousness), Lễ (respect the laws, seniors and basic ethics), Trí (think thoroughly before acting), Tín (maintain your credibility and trustworthiness)? It might be true that some individuals overlook them, but a majority of Vietnamese recognises, respect and uphold these values. Our education covers a wide range of traditional literatures that highly praise the 5 core values’ importance and inspires a stable and thriving societies base on these virtues. Hence, traditional values are not lost but embraced by modern Vietnamese.

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What about our cuisine? Our cuisine involves much fresh herbs and vegetables, has mild taste and comes with fish sauce. This is quite distinct from the strong, spicy taste, curry-influenced or deep fried cooking of our neighbouring countries. It is quite interesting that our well-known dishes were only recently introduced in 19th - 20th century, which coincides with the twists and turns of our history that makes up our identity. As history progresses, we should enrich our culture with modern aspects as well.

Gỏi cuốn:

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Phở:

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Bún chả:

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Cà phê sữa đá

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The monumental events in the 19th - 20th centuries also revised our traditional costumes. Áo dài from its ancient version of Áo tứ thân broke free from the influence of Sino costumes and were modernised so that they are not too highly intricate and can be wore by students on a daily basis, yet are formal for Vietnamese women to wear on special occasions.

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My point is that we are doing fine in preserving the valuable traditional values of our culture, yet enriching it with modern facets. There might not need a great effort to revive the out-dated aspects as culture also evolves with time. What we are inventing today, might be the legacies and culture of future generations. I personally prefer the modern features of Vietnamese culture as they break free from Sino influence yet carry many essences of East and South East Asia culture.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the above images.

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Reply to the Anonymous guy who think we should not make too much effort in reviving the traditional culture. Why we actually have to make more and more effort is because it is never enough effort, we should always try to make the best effort in anything. Even in Japan where the traditional culture is already well-preserved, they are still doing research and making effort to revive their ancient capital around 1000 years ago.

What you mentioned are only the narrow parts of our culture, most of them only reflect the modern or early modern culture of VN. We have a long history and have much more heritage than that. But compared to Japan, we did not preserve them as well as they do. We know too little about our ancestor, we dont know enough about the middle age and the previous periods of VN and we even misunderstand a lot about it. Not a lot of people nowadays make much effort to study about it. And when it comes to making a movie about history, no one in VN knows how to do it right... So actually it is opposite to what you said, we need to make more and more effort.

People in VN are so proud that their country has more than a thousand years of history, might be up to 2000–4000 years (still controversial) but when someone ask them so what was it like back in those days? They dont know anything themselves… So how can they prove that they have such a long history when nothing has been being kept until now? If we have lost a certain heritage then we need to try to find it and take it back as much as we can. You said that you dont want them because they are out of fashion. Yes, they really are. But no one force to live with the out dated traditions, you just need to try to research it, know more about it and understand it, that is how you respect your ancestor.

I think you are too obsessed with getting rid of Chinese influence that you dont appreciate what your ancestor did in the past and you only think that it is a reflection of Chinese culture. Our ancient culture has similarities but also a lot of differences with Chinese culture. Knowing about the both the similarities and the differences will make you more aware of who you are and make you independent from them and their culture. And not knowing well about the them will only make you dependent on China. So just take an example of making history movie, because people dont know anything about the past, they just assume that it is similar to China and so just copy from Chinese movie. So someone watching them will think oh so VNese culture is just Chinese culture then??… And that is how you become dependent on them just because you dont know anything about your ancestor, you neglect it, you dont make any effort to know about it. If you know what the traditions were like, you could have prevented that.

How we should do to get rid of Chinese influence is to become economically strong so that we are independent from their economical and political influences. What we should not do is to neglect the traditional culture, because it is what defines who we are. Everything in the past already made up who you are whether you like it or not. It is not about breaking free from a certain culture as you said, it is about respecting our ancestor and the heritage that they have left us with.

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By reviving the traditional culture, we can better connect to our ancestors and be Vietnamese. With a definite identity, we won’t have to struggle between Westernization, globalization, and our traditions like we’re doing right now.

Also because then, Vietnamese won’t say stuffs like Vietnamese history is just a series of wars.

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It is so sad a lot of Vietnamese nowadays just want to deny their whole history and tradition just because it was influenced by Chinese. They try to make new random things up to create their unique identity and call it Vietnamese culture… A lot of cultural aspects that we thought are our traditions are actually just random meaningless things made up.

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What kind of culture do you want us to recover?

human, ceremony, obligation, intelligence, prestige? or Mysterious military culture and genocide others? or high class culture and consider others to be barbarians? or culture of Bolshevik or What other cultures have existed in my country?

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