Vietnam

I was reading an article that a French military officer wrote in the early twentieth century about the various peoples who lived along the basin of the Sông Lô, or…

Yesterday a bright young scholar offered me one idea he has as for why the Nguyễn Dynasty referred to themselves and some other people in the kingdom as Han. He…

I was looking at the “nhu viễn” 柔遠 (cherishing men from afar) section of the Khâm định Đại Nam hội diển sự lệ 欽定大南會典事例 and I noticed that there is…

“The Tale of the Watermelon” (Tây qua truyện 西瓜傳, now referred to in Vietnamese as “Truyện Dưa Hấu”) is well known to Vietnamese today.

The story is about an official by the name of Mai An Tiêm who was purportedly employed by one of the Hùng kings. Mai An Tiêm, the story goes, was from a foreign country, and had been purchased by the Hùng king when he was a young boy. When Mai An Tiêm grew to become a man he was entrusted with various duties by the king. In due time he became wealthy and arrogant, and stated that “Everything here is because of my previous life. It is not because of the beneficence of my master.” For this lack of gratitude, the Hùng king exiled Mai An Tiêm to a remote island.

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Two emails came in this morning announcing the passing of two important men. Phạm Duy, one of the most important figures (some would say “the” most important figure) in twentieth-century…

I came across this image from Sài Gòn giải phóng (1 June 1975). The kid says, “Mom, those books are really beautiful!!” And the mother responds, “Truly beautiful, but those…

The study of “folk literature” (văn học dân gian) first began in Vietnam in the North in the 1950s. The approach that Vietnamese scholars at that time employed in studying…