A few years ago I was extremely pleased to see that the National Library of Vietnam was starting to digitize some of the Hán Nôm manuscripts that it holds. It did this in collaboration with an American organization, the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation (VNPF).
This is what the VNPF says about the project on its web site (here): “The National Library of Vietnam (NLV) in Hanoi holds a special collection of some 4000 ancient texts in Hán and Nôm, the former ideographic writing systems of Vietnam. Since 2006, the NLV has co-operated with The Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation (VNPF) to preserve this important cultural heritage through the creation of a digital library. What you see in the images and metadata on this website are the first steps for creating a digital library for scholarly research, teaching, and learning in Vietnam and abroad.”
This is all wonderful. However, when I actually use this digital library I sometimes get frustrated because it employs a premodern catagorization system for this digital-age resource.
In the past, Confucian scholars in East Asia divided texts into four categories: Confucian classics, history, philosophy and literature (kinh sử tử tập 經史子集). Where did Buddhist texts fit in this scheme? They didn’t. Confucian scholars didn’t think such texts were worth reading, so they were not worth categorizing and preserving either.
In reality we know that people whom we can refer to as “Confucian scholars” did in fact read Buddhist and Daoist texts. However, when it came to creating an official collection of works (such as the Qing-era Siku Quanshu project), texts from those traditions were excluded.
Many of the texts that the National Library of Vietnam preserves are precisely the type of texts that Confucian scholars would never have included in any collection (and this is what makes that collection so precious). In addition to Buddhist texts, the National Library has morality books (thiện thư 善書) and collections of spirit writing (giáng bút 降筆).
These are all texts that fell outside of the categories of kinh sử tử tập, so ideally one should use a different categorization system to categorize such texts (because they don’t fit into any of those categories).
By far the most “advanced” people in creating such digital libraries are the South Koreans. Like the Vietnamese, the Koreans have a rich textual heritage. However, the South Koreans are far ahead of most other people on the planet in “updating” their cultural heritage for the digital age.
They have created a wonderful resource called the “Database of Korean Classics.” You need to know Korean to use it effectively (which I don’t), but if you just go and click on a few links you can get the sense of what they have done.
Essentially what people in South Korea are doing is taking texts that were originally written in classical Chinese, inputting the text so that it can be searched, translating the texts into modern Korean, and including scanned images of the originals.
This is fantastic, and it is also clearly the direction that everything is heading. So while the digital library that the National Library of Vietnam and the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation have started to build is wonderful, there is still so much more that can and should be done. Think of how fantastic it would be if such a digital database could eventually be created for Vietnam’s written cultural heritage.
Hi,
I randomly stumbled across your blog and found myself completely fascinated, reading one entry after the other continuously. I’m Vietnamese-American, and my Vietnamese is quite elementary, so most of the sources I’ve had to read about Vietnamese culture and history are secondhand English language sources from non Vietnamese. it’s nice to find a Vietnamese expert with such a great grasp of English and a true objective to find the truth (rather than just relying on nationalistic impulses to rewrite Vietnamese history in the most glorious light).
Do ignore the rest of this message if you must, after all I’m just some random stranger and have no business wasting your time. I basically thought I’d ask for your thoughts on two Vietnamese cultural/historical topics I’d long been wondering about, since you seem so knowledgeable about Vietnamese history in general.
The first concerns a shocking (and I don’t use that lightly) account of prostitution and sexual health in Vietnam during the late 19th century by a certain Dr. Jacobus X (apparently going by a pseudonym?). He was apparently known for his studies of sexuality across many Asian countries and even Africa and the Middle East Keeping in mind any obvious biases or racist attitudes Europeans may have had towards Asians in the 19th century, I’m wondering whether or not his research is generally accepted as accurate or not?
I assume you’ve probably already read the document I’m talking about yourself, but if you have not, this Dr. claims that prostitution was rampant in 19th century Vietnam, and thus so were STD’s such as gonorrhea. He also stated that most Vietnamese girls lost their virginity by the age of 10 due to being molested/raped by their brothers or fathers (!), and many others were sold off by age 16 into the bamboo brothels of the lower class Vietnamese (which were also frequented by Europeans). He even asserted that so-called respected women in the general population who were married led double lives which their husbands knew about, where they would receive meager earnings as vendors (or something of the sort) during the day and prostitute themselves during the night..
My second query has to do with another pretty controversial topic, but in a very different way, lol: Vietnamese clothing prior to the 18th century. For a variety of reasons such as the constant wars and humid tropical climate, there are few relics or documents left which tell us how ethnic Vietnamese dressed prior to the 18th century. Some do exist (whether they’re depictions by Dutch, French or even Japanese traders), but the scarcity of these sources have led to a lot of ambiguity. Recently, I’ve noticed that there was a lot of uproar in Vietnam when a few local historical movies were made which took place during this time period because the general public complained that the clothes were too “Chinese-looking”. This has sparked endless debate on Vietnamese history forums about the extent of sinicization when it came to clothing before the 18th century. On that note though, I have to say that I’ve found that there are a lot of misconceptions that Vietnamese people have when it comes to their traditional clothing, some of which have become so ingrained that they’re taken as a given, even though they’re blatantly false. The reason I bring this up to you is that I wanted your opinion on something I recently found. A random digital artist compiled all of the existing relics/documents she was aware of on Vietnamese clothing, alongside a Vietnamese documentary on the subject and then created a historical timeline of these clothes, which has become quite popular and widely disseminated online, including on Vietnamese forums.
I’m wondering what you, as a Vietnamese cultural expert, think of her “guestimations”? (I know that’s not a word). Is it too Chinese-looking?
http://lilsuika.deviantart.com/art/Evolution-of-Vietnamese-Clothing-and-Ao-Dai-287945386
Thanks a lot.
I really DON’T expect a response to this so don’t feel obligated at all! I know I was incredibly long-winded.
Thanks for the message!! And thanks for reminding me of that book: “Untrodden fields of anthropology : observations on the esoteric manners and customs of semi-civilized peoples” http://archive.org/details/cu31924029859174
It’s fun to read, but I’m not really sure what we can learn from it. I guess what we can learn is that French soldiers did a lot of stuff. . . and that their doctor, the author of the book, learned and heard a lot (be it myth, rumor or fact), but he was looking at Vietnamese society through a very weird lens. It would sort of be like writing a book about the sexual practices of Americans by observing and talking to people in a porn shop somewhere. Would you gain an accurate picture of reality? Probably not, but you’d get some good information for writing an exciting book. . .
That said, I did find this tidbit a while ago on venereal disease:
http://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/the-siamese-sore-in-late-imperial-vietnam/
As for the clothing, I think that picture is largely the product of someone’s imagination. However, I know someone who just wrote a book on the clothing at the various Vietnamese courts over the centuries. I’ve asked him about that picture, and I’ll let you know what he says.
Thank you very much for your response!
What you said makes perfect sense now that I think about it. After all, considering the main focus of his studies, it’s a logical assumption that the sexual histories/experiences of his subjects might not be so representative of the general population. I remember asking my parents about this during dinner (bad idea) and their jaws practically dropped to the table.
That entry you linked me to is fascinating as well. It pretty much dispels this nationalistic theory I’ve seen some Vietnamese throw around recently which is that prostitution was a “western disease” that the French brought with them..
So the person I asked about the clothing styles responded and said that people who try to draw pictures of how people used to dress do so by basing their ideas on old drawings and images/statues in temples.
The problem with this is, 1) old drawings were not necessarily meant to be realistic, and 2) the statues in temples in Vietnam mainly date from the 18th or 19th centuries.
So they are not accurate “sources” to base one’s ideas about the entire period that the picture you linked to shows.
What he said was that in order to try to figure out how people dressed, you need to supplement the above two “sources” with information from textual sources. That, however, is something that people have not done.
Thank you for getting back to me.
I figured that the reliability of the “sources” she used were in question for those very reasons. It’s interesting because I recently read about a Vietnamese artist/costume designer for films who had released a book about Vietnamese clothing throughout the centuries (his name is Trinh Quang Vu), and he faced severe criticisms for the exact reasons you mentioned above! Even assuming that the statues accurately portrayed real-life costumes at the time, it can be hard to translate certain details on a statue to real-life clothing, so you just end up making educated guesses and hope for the best. Sadly, I’m not sure we’ll ever get any closer to the truth unless some miraculous treasure cove of documents/artifacts is unearthed.
With that said, there were a few sources from before the 18th century which I thought were more likely to be accurate, but I may be totally off-base here. It always seemed to me like the Japanese had an uncanny knack of keeping extremely detailed and accurate records (they’ve been able to reconstruct ancient temples with perfect authenticity), and so I figured that the Japanese drawings of 17th century (and early 18th century) Tonkinese were likely to be accurate (what’s more, one of those drawings seems to depict a garment similar to the surviving ao tu than, albeit with wider sleeves). Then again, maybe they’re completely off and the Japanese only kept accurate records about their own civilization, lol.