I was reading the Renmin ribao 人民日报 (People’s Daily) and came across a reference to a 1971 film called “The Visit to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam by a Delegation from the Chinese Communist Party and Government” (中国党政代表团访问越南民主共和国). This film was about the March 1971 visit to Hanoi by Zhou Enlai.
This is some of what the article said about the film:
“The beginning of the film takes us to the warm scene of the Vietnamese people solemnly welcoming a friendship delegation of the Chinese Communist Party and government led by member of the Central Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China and Minister of Foreign Affairs Zhou Enlai. Everywhere in the heroic city of Hà Nội, which is decorated festively for the occasion, is permeated with the joyful atmosphere of the united struggle of the Vietnamese and Chinese peoples. Warmly welcoming their Chinese fighting friends, the Vietnamese people dance with joy, from Gia Lâm airport, to Chi Linh Park, from in front of the army guesthouse [迎宾馆 ?] to Ba Đình Square. One smiling face after another that is filled with victorious resolve welcomes the Chinese fighting friends, and one bunch after another of fresh flowers that symbolize the joy of victory is offered to the Chinese brothers.”
影片一开始，就把我们引入越南人民隆重欢迎以中共中央政治局常委、国务院总理周恩来同志为团长的中国党政代表团友好访问的热烈场面。披着节日盛装的英雄城市河内，到处洋溢着越中两国人民团结战斗的欢乐气氛。喜迎中国战友的越南人民在欢舞，不论在嘉林机场，还是在芝灵公园；不论在迎宾馆前，还是在巴亭会堂，一张张充满着必胜信念的笑脸，迎向中国战友，一束束象征着胜利喜悦的鲜花，献给中国兄弟。
Then I found on the Internet that there was apparently another film produced in 1973 called “Warmly Welcoming the Delegation from the from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s Communist Party and Government” (热烈欢迎越南民主共和国党政代表团). This was a film about a visit to China by some government figures from the DRV, and the film reportedly contained a song composed by Vietnamese composer Đỗ Nhuận called “Vietnam – China” (越南—中国) that went as follows:
越南中國山連山江連江
共臨東海我們友誼向朝陽
Vietnam and China’s mountains and rivers are joined as one,
Both border the East Sea and face the rising sun.
共飲一江水朝相見晚相望
清晨共聽雄雞高唱
Drinking the water of the same river, we see each other morning and night,
And together hear the cock’s crow at dawn’s first light.
啊——共理想心相連
勝利的路上紅旗飄揚
Ah. . .
We have the same aspirations and are hearts are joined,
Over the road to victory flutters the red flag.
啊——
我們高呼萬歲
胡志明毛澤東
Ah. . .
We shout out “Long live
Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong!”
越南中國團結緊隊伍強
打擊敵人我們並肩戰斗有力量
Vietnam and China are united closely and our troops are strong,
In attacking the enemy, we fight shoulder to shoulder, we have strength.
兄弟情義長前進路上不分離
為共同勝利高聲歌唱
With our fraternal feelings, on the march forward we will never part,
For our mutual victory, we sing out loud.
啊——共理想心相連
列寧的路上紅旗飄揚
Ah. . .
We have the same aspirations and are hearts are joined,
Over the road to Lenin flutters the red flag.
啊——
我們高呼萬歲
胡志明毛澤東
我們高呼萬歲
胡志明毛澤東
Ah. . .
We shout out “Long live
Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong!”
We shout out “Long live
Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong!”
It is interesting to see when these films were produced, because right in between the two years when these films came out was the fateful year of 1972 when Mao and Nixon met and shook hands.
The 1971 Renmin ribao article states that “Chairman Mao has pointed out that ‘The 700,000,000 Chinese are the backup support of the Vietnamese people, and the vast territory of China is the backup base of the Vietnamese people.’ If anyone amongst us says anything about not being able to help the Vietnamese people in their struggle to resist American and save the country, then that is treachery, it is betraying the revolution.”
毛主席指出：“七亿中国人民是越南人民的坚强后盾，辽阔的中国领土是越南人民的可靠后方。”如果我们中间有谁讲出不能帮助越南人民抗美救国斗争的话，那就是叛变，就是背叛革命。
Interesting. . .
On the one hand, it is easy to dismiss all of this as propaganda or empty words, but on the other hand, this was an important aspect of the times. When diplomatic historians study the past, they have traditionally tended to talk about the meetings that were held and the decisions that were made by government leaders. Films and songs do not often find a place in their analysis, but they were part of the overall strategy, so understanding how they fit and what their purpose was is important for understanding the past.
In any case, I would certainly love to see these movies. To see them today, some 40 years after the fact, would be fascinating.
“Việt Nam Trung Hoa” by Đỗ Nhuận was published on the pages of Nhân Dân on September 28, 1964 and later published on the pages of Tin Sáng Nhựt Báo on October 1, 1975 to celebrate the 26th anniversary of the Peoples Republic of China. Nhân Dân is of course Vietnam’s “People’s Daily.” Tin Sáng Nhựt Báo was the one paper from the Republic of Vietnam that continued publishing at 4/30/1975.
Tây Bụi giỏi qua!!! So I checked the Vietnamese Wikipedia page for Đỗ Nhuận and did not see this piece mentioned there. Do you think it would be safe to say that political events after 1964 have served to lessen the enduring appeal of “Việt Nam Trung Hoa”? Or are there artistic/aesthetic reasons why this song might not be so well remembered?
Nhân Dân is modeled after the People’s Daily and Sự Thật must be inspired by Pravda.
http://baochi.nlv.gov.vn/baochi?a=cl&cl=CL1&sp=WODk&e=——-vi-20–1–img-txIN——
Kind of symbolic of the balancing act between the PRC and the USSR, no?
Thanks for that date, Tây Bụi. I couldn’t control my curiosity. I had to go take a look at that. 😉
After the fall of Saigon regime in 1975, all the Chinese grade and middle schools (with all the other Vietnamese schools) were nationalized and under Vietnamese Communists’ direct control. The song of “Vietnam China” were only taught in the previous Chinese schools from May of 1975 to 1978. Beside “Vietnam China” song, there was also a song of “Viet Nam Lien Xo” (Vietnam Soviet Union) which was taught all over all the schools.
I believe a new term was created after 1970’s which was East Sea (Bien Dong) to replace South China Sea (Bien Nam Hai). The song was sung in front of Chinese leader (Zhou Enlai). The Vietnamese were tactfully to convey their thinking and to imply that we Vietnamese co-shared East Sea or South China Sea with you guy Chinese.
1970’s should be 1960’s. We also have an analogy for this between Korean and Japanese. Between Korea and Japan, there is Japan Sea which has been internationally recognized, but Korean call and rename it as East Sea. It means that the sea is on the east side of Korea.
A Thanh, in 1975-78 what version of the song was sung in those schools – the Chinese-language version or the Vietnamese-language version or both?
When the Chinese schools were nationalized, I would assume that the language of instruction was changed to Vietnamese. Is that correct? But if they were singing “Vietnam China,” now I wonder about that.
The two versions were taught and sung in those school.
After nationalization, the language of instruction was changed to Vietnamese. Before that the subjects had been derived from Taiwan’s oversea Chinese curriculum. The school daily hours (Monday to Friday) lasted 6 to 8 hours, it started from 8AM to noon, and from 2 to or 6PM. And we had only half day on Saturday. For Vietnamese schools, the school daily hours usually lasted 4 hours, so we had AM or PM classes either from 8AM to noon or 2 to 6PM. So for Chinese school, we had two curriculums in parallel, one from Taiwan and one from local government.
After the so called liberation, all the curriculums were abolished completely and was replaced by a new one which was the same for all the schools in the South. So the previous Chinese schools shared the same teaching materials with the rest of the country. Chinese language study was reduced significantly and the learning materials was Chinese translation from Vietnamese study. And there was no longer a “pure” Chinese school, a student was assigned a school based on his or her residence. As a result, we had more and more ethnic Vietnamese students in the previous Hoa schools.
“Taiwan’s overseas Chinese curriculum” – Interesting. Do you have any idea of what kind of loyalty that curriculum tried to teach people. Were they taught to be loyal to the ROC? Or when you say that it was “derived” from that curriculum, does that mean that kids were taught to think of South Vietnam as their home and to be loyal to it?
I wish someone would study about the ROC’s overseas educational policy. I think people know it existed, but I’ve never seen anyone talk about actual textbooks and the curriculum.
Actually, all the Chinese text books used by the Hoa school before the collapse of Republic of Vietnam (South VN) had been imported directly from Taiwan (ROC) and those books had to be approved by the Department of Education of ROV in advance.
In terms of loyalty, this has been a sensitive issue. ROC still allows dual citizenships while PRC does not. The vast majority of Hoa people in the South had only the Vietnamese (ROV) citizenship. Officially, ROC has encouraged the worldwide oversea Chinese (OC) to obey and comply with their local laws or regulations and to fulfill the duties of the local citizenship and to think of place they live as their home and be loyal to it.
I think there is still a branch or department in Taiwan today to handle the OC affair (Committee for OC Affair ?). It is a good place to look for information about the OC educational policies and curriculum.
Thanks again for the comments. It made me go and look at an article I remember reading a long time ago to see if it said anything in detail about the curriculum [E. S. Unger, “The Struggle Over the Chinese Community in Vietnam, 1946-1986,” Pacific Affairs 60, no. 4 (1987-88): 596-614.]
It didn’t, but the following information about the North is interesting (pages 600-603):
In the north, from 1954 until 1958 Vietnam allowed the P.R.C. Commission of Overseas Chinese Affairs great latitude in organizing Chinese education. In 1954 the Chinese Embassy called the Huaqiao community together for a meeting to re-establish Chinese schools. New Chinese schools were to be organized under the direction of the P.R.C.’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission. The commission deputed school administrators from China to head the re-established Hanoi Chinese middle and primary schools and the Haiphong Chinese secondary and primary schools. The commission granted over one million Vietnamese piasters to build the Hanoi Middle School and sent out all text books and teaching materials from China. In the same period, it established the Hanoi Teacher Training Institute to train ethnic Chinese teachers from the north, and staffed the institute with directors sent from China. For a decade it produced teachers for secondary and primary schools and developed Chinese education in all the provinces and outlying districts of northern Vietnam. During this time this school system claimed over seven hundred middle school and over two thousand primary school pupils. Students who scored highest at middle school graduated to further study in China and most of them returned to Vietnam after finishing their studies.
If one compares the situation with that in southern Vietnam or in other parts of Southeast Asia, residents in the north seem to have been in an enviable position. They could retain their Chinese citizenship, could periodically visit their relatives in China, and were not conscripted for military service. In the late 1950s, the Diem regime in the south had issued decrees banning Chinese residents from key occupations and forcing them to take out Vietnamese citizenship, and similar measures were also taken in Cambodia. As one Chinese refugee from Hanoi was quoted as saying in 1979: “We had the best of both worlds.”
During this period (1956 to 1963) the P.R.C. seemed to take a diminishing interest in the Overseas Chinese community in Vietnam. In 1956 Chou En-lai visited the D.R.V. and, in a major policy shift, urged the Chinese community there to treat Vietnam as its home. . .
In late 1958, presumably in response to the “3-good” policy of the P.R.C. (nationality, non-interference, resettlement), the Chinese embassy informed the Overseas Chinese community that authority for the Huaqiao schools in Vietnam was being transferred to the D.R.V. From the late 1950s the Vietnamese authorities thus began to take over administration of the Chinese school system. By 1962 the administrators and teachers deputed from China had all been gradually withdrawn, and in 1963 students from Vietnam stopped returning to China for further study.
The Chinese population in DRV was relatively small if compared to that in ROV. Before the exodus in 1978-79, there were about 200,000 to 300,000 Hoa people in the North while the number was much bigger (at least 1 million or more) in the South. Today, Hoa people is almost non-existent in the north while there are still about 1 million people in the south. If we count the number of Vietnamese who are partially Chinese, the number would be another million or more.
According to Mr. Ly dong A the population of Minh Huong (MH) people in Vietnam in 1930’s was 10% of the whole population. Today the MH descendants have been almost completely assimilated and integrated into the Vietnamese main stream society. The link about the biography of Mr. Ly is as follows: http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BD_%C4%90%C3%B4ng_A
Do you have any idea how many ethnic Chinese from Vietnam went to Taiwan ~1975?
Actually, very few Chinese could go to Taiwan at that time. After the fall of Saigon, a few Chinese were able to go ROC because their children had gone to study at Taiwanese colleges or universities before 1975 and sponsored them to get there.
I see. I remember coming across a web page years ago that was in both Chinese and Vietnamese and it was about all of these Catholic priests in Taiwan who were ethnic Chinese from Vietnam. So maybe there was a church connection too?
Generally, the majorities of Chinese Vietnamese (CV or nguoi Hoa) and Taiwanese share the same religion which is Buddhism. Few CV are Catholics or Christians. I know there is one Vietnamese priest in Taiwan now and his Wiki link is as below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyen_Van_Hung_(human_rights_activist).
The other Wiki link for the late CV priest (Nguyen lac Hoa) is as follows: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyen_Lac_Hoa
It was surprising to me to see “Việt Nam Trung Hoa” printed in a Saigon newspaper in 1975, so the song must have continued to be of some import up to that time. A Thanh’s comment is very interesting — that there may have been a particular emphasis upon this song in “Hoa kiều” schools between 1975 and 1978.
One important detail I neglected to mention is that Đỗ Nhuận was the General Secretary of the Vietnamese Musicians Association from 1956 to 1983. In addition to being a prolific composer is was also a very important bureaucrat.
I think it is simply political events that guaranteed that this song became buried. I was listening to the radio in Hanoi in October 2009. During this time they were broadcasting musical programs celebrating the Soviet Union’s October Revolution. I recorded a number of songs that you can’t find on the web. But some of them are on websites like http://baicadicungnamthang.net/
One of my favorites isn’t available online – here’s a translation –
http://taybui.blogspot.com/2013/10/bai-ca-ve-le-nin-song-about-lenin.html
But it would hard finding any of the Viet-Chinese friendship songs being sung or broadcast. I have sheet music for several including “Việt Nam Trung Hoa.” I’ll have to give it a look.
I guess there is one minor error or typo with the translation here: 七亿中国人民是越南人民的坚强后盾. It should be 700 million Chinese … (rather than 700,000 Chinese in your suggested script). Mao wants to mean the whole Chinese population at the time would wholeheartedly support Vietnam.
Oh, of course!! Thanks for pointing that out!!