I surf net and found an interesting article writing about Viet and China. Here it is:

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Why Vietnam loves and hates China
By Andrew Forbes

For more than 2,000 years, Vietnam's development as a nation has been marked by one fixed and immutable factor - the proximity of China. The relationship between the two countries is in many ways a family affair, with all the closeness of shared values and bitterness of close rivalries.

No country in Southeast Asia is culturally closer to China than Vietnam, and no other country in the region has spent so long



fending off Chinese domination, often at a terrible cost in lives, economic development and political compromise.

China has been Vietnam's blessing and Vietnam's curse. It remains an intrusive cultural godfather, the giant to the north that is "always there". Almost a thousand years of Chinese occupation, between the Han conquest of Nam Viet in the 2nd century BC and the reassertion of Vietnamese independence as Dai Viet in AD 967, marked the Vietnamese so deeply that they became, in effect, an outpost of Chinese civilization in Southeast Asia.

While the other countries of Indochina are Theravada Buddhist, sharing cultural links with South Asia, Vietnam derived its predominant religion - a mix of Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism popularly known as tam giao or "Three Religions"- from China. Until the introduction of romanized quoc ngu script in the 17th century, Vietnamese scholars wrote in Chinese characters or in chu nho, a Vietnamese derivative of Chinese characters.

Over the centuries, Vietnam developed as a smaller version of the Middle Kingdom, a centralized, hierarchical state ruled by an all-powerful emperor living in a Forbidden City based on its namesake in Beijing and administered by a highly educated Confucian bureaucracy.

Both countries are deeply conscious of the cultural ties that bind them together, and each is still deeply suspicious of the other. During the long centuries of Chinese occupation, the Vietnamese enthusiastically embraced many aspects of Chinese civilization, while at the same time fighting with an extraordinary vigor to maintain their cultural identity and regain their national independence.

During the Tang Dynasty (6th-9th centuries AD), Vietnamese guerrillas fighting the Chinese sang a martial song that emphasized their separate identity in the clearest of terms:

Fight to keep our hair long,
Fight to keep our teeth black,
Fight to show that the heroic southern country can never be defeated.

For their part, the Chinese recognized the Vietnamese as a kindred people, to be offered the benefits of higher Chinese civilization and, ultimately, the rare privilege of being absorbed into the Chinese polity.

On the other hand, as near family, they were to be punished especially severely if they rejected Chinese standards or rebelled against Chinese control. This was made very clear in a remarkable message sent by the Song Emperor Taizong to King Le Hoan in AD 979, just over a decade after Vietnam first reasserted its independence.

Like a stern headmaster, Taizong appealed to Le Hoan to see reason and return to the Chinese fold: "Although your seas have pearls, we will throw them into the rivers, and though your mountains produce gold, we will throw it into the dust. We do not covet your valuables. You fly and leap like savages, we have horse-drawn carriages. You drink through your noses, we have rice and wine. Let us change your customs. You cut your hair, we wear hats; when you talk, you sound like birds. We have examinations and books. Let us teach you the knowledge of the proper laws ... Do you not want to escape from the savagery of the outer islands and gaze upon the house of civilization? Do you want to discard your garments of leaves and grass and wear flowered robes embroidered with mountains and dragons? Have you understood?"

In fact Le Hoan understood Taizong very well and, like his modern successors, knew exactly what he wanted from China - access to its culture and civilization without coming under its political control or jeopardizing Vietnamese freedom in any way. This attitude infuriated Taizong, as it would generations of Chinese to come.

In 1407, the Ming Empire managed to reassert Chinese control over its stubbornly independent southern neighbor, and Emperor Yongle - no doubt, to his mind, in the best interests of the Vietnamese - imposed a policy of enforced Sinicization. Predictably enough, Vietnam rejected this "kindness" and fought back, expelling the Chinese yet again in 1428.

Yongle was apoplectic when he learned of their rebellion. Vietnam was not just another tributary state, he insisted, but a former province that had once enjoyed the benefits of Chinese civilization and yet had wantonly rejected this privilege. In view of this close association - Yongle used the term mi mi or "intimately related" - Vietnam's rebellion was particularly heinous and deserved the fiercest of punishments.

China on top
Sometimes a strongly sexual imagery creeps into this "intimate relationship", with Vietnam, the weaker partner, a victim of



Chinese violation. In AD 248, the Vietnamese heroine Lady Triu, who led a popular uprising against the Chinese occupation, proclaimed: "I want to ride the great winds, strike the sharks on the high seas, drive out the invaders, reconquer the nation, burst the bonds of slavery and never bow to become anyone's concubine."

Her defiant choice of words was more than just symbolic. Vietnam has long been a source of women for the Chinese sex trade. In Tang times, the Chinese poet Yuan Chen wrote appreciatively of "slave girls of Viet, sleek, of buttery flesh", while today the booming market for Vietnamese women in Taiwan infuriates and humiliates many Vietnamese men.

It's instructive, then, that in his 1987 novel Fired Gold Vietnamese author Nguyen Huy Thiep writes, "The most significant characteristics of this country are its smallness and weakness. She is like a virgin girl raped by Chinese civilization. The girl concurrently enjoys, despises and is humiliated by the rape."

This Chinese belief that Vietnam is not just another nation, but rather a member of the family - almost Chinese, aware of the blessings of Chinese civilization, but somehow stubbornly refusing, century after century, to become Chinese - has persisted down to the present day.

During the Second Indochina War, Chinese propaganda stressed that Vietnam and China were "as close as the lips and the teeth". After the US defeat, however, Vietnam once again showed its independence, allying itself with the Soviet Union, in 1978-79, invading neighboring Cambodia and overthrowing China's main ally in Southeast Asia, the Khmer Rouge.

Once again Chinese fury knew no bounds, and Beijing determined to teach the "ungrateful" Vietnamese a lesson. Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader, openly denounced the Vietnamese as "the hooligans of the East". According to one Thai diplomat: "The moment the topic of Vietnam came up, you could see something change in Deng Xiaoping.

"His hatred was just visceral. He spat forcefully into his spittoon and called the Vietnamese 'dogs'." Acting on Deng's orders, the Chinese army invaded Vietnam in 1979, capturing five northern provincial capitals before systematically demolishing them and withdrawing to China after administering a symbolic "lesson".

But who taught a lesson to whom? Beijing sought to force Hanoi to withdraw its frontline forces from Cambodia, but the Vietnamese didn't engage these forces in the struggle, choosing instead to confront the Chinese with irregulars and provincial militia. Casualties were about equal, and China lost considerable face, as well as international respect, as a result of its invasion.

Over the millennia, actions like this have taught the Vietnamese a recurring lesson about China. It's there, it's big, and it won't go away, so appease it without yielding whenever possible, and fight it with every resource available whenever necessary.

Just as Chinese rulers have seen the Vietnamese as ingrates and hooligans, so the Vietnamese have seen the Chinese as arrogant and aggressive, a power to be emulated at all times, mollified in times of peace, and fiercely resisted in times of war.

In 1946, 1,700 years after Lady Triu's declaration, another great Vietnamese patriot, Ho Chi Minh, warned his Viet Minh colleagues in forceful terms against using Chinese Nationalist troops in the north as a buffer against the return of the French: "You fools! Don't you realize what it means if the Chinese remain? Don't you remember your history?

"The last time the Chinese came, they stayed a thousand years. The French are foreigners. They are weak. Colonialism is dying. The white man is finished in Asia. But if the Chinese stay now, they will never go. As for me, I prefer to sniff French $hit for five years than to eat Chinese $hit for the rest of my life."

Yet Ho was an ardent admirer of Chinese civilization, fluent in Mandarin, a skilled calligrapher who wrote Chinese poetry, a close friend and colleague of Chinese leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Ho wasn't as much anti-Chinese as he was pro-Vietnamese. It was his deep understanding of and respect for China that enabled him to recognize, clearly and definitively, the menace that "a close family relationship" with the giant to the north posed, and continues to pose, for Vietnam's independence and freedom.

It's ironic, then, that as the current Vietnamese leadership strive to develop their economy along increasingly capitalist lines while at the same time retaining their monopoly on state power, the country they most admire and seek to emulate is, as always, the one they most fear.

Andrew Forbes is editor of CPA Media as well as a correspondent in its Thailand bureau. He has recently completed National Geographic Traveler: Shanghai , and the above is an excerpt from his forthcoming book A Phoenix Reborn: Travels in New Vietnam.

(Copyright 2007 Andrew Forbes.)

Where's page 2?

Pretty well written article.

Chinese infatuation with Viet women explains a lot.

Nice article.

minor correction

This Southern Chinese insecure troll has nothing except living off on his parents' paycheck and ready to rape his mother heritage anytime. Fact is Chinese emperor consider everyone dirt men and women alike, like this troll's father working as a running dog for the CCP that he bragged about. Obiviously, by contribute nothing to the society he has very low esteem and uses things that are too far off related to him to boost his delusional pride.

Why vietcong always try to associate me with S.Chinese, must be the typical vietcong's inferiority complex at play again

And no, S.Chinese don't have your vietcong's hertiage, stop wanking and get some self-esteem OK?

I predict in about 2-3 posts, genetic stuff will be discussed.

Hell yea, they're all pseudo-geneticists on here.

There is some truth to the article although a lots of things I disagree with.

Vietnamese peoples culture was destroyed and they knew no alternative to Chinese civilization. Even after Independence where Ngo Quyen crushed the Chinese and dared them not to come back--Quyen look up North (China) for concept of authority and legitimacy. A fatal limitation often repeated by Vietnamese. Guess what he adopted? Feudalism--which later plunder the country into chaos gave rise to the 12 warlords.

Athens defeated a tyrant they came up with new social order: democracy.

Vietnam defeated tyrant and copied the tyrant.

It doesn't mean we "love" them. The Chinese like to spread propaganda that we love them and proud of their influence, not true at all. It seems like the author is influenced by Chinese world view . The habit of looking to China is involuntary imposed by a simple fact of life: China was large and Vietnam is small. For Vietnamese learning the Chinese ways of life or doing thing was a means survival. We had to learn Chinese characters to exchange poems in Chinese court, fluently express ourselves, dress in Chinese styles to make chinamen feel comfortable because they're very intolerance and extremely xenophobic--etc. It's not like "being rape" or "love", that's nonsense.


as for Taiwan and China mistreatment of Vietnamese mail ordered bride such as abused them, mutilating them such as the cutting of a finger or an arm or any other body parts, and even killing them--it does not humiliate us but rather angered us--I mean, what kind of piece of $hit type of people would do such a thing to women? I mean anyone with humane characteristics would be pissed. Although, barbaric chinamen are different. They would insult the women, making up lies, calling them whores and so on. and they never brought up the fact that it is also their fault for killing off all the female fetuses which put them into this situation. Then again lying and killing are traits of uncivilized people. I just want to make it clear that in no way I am humiliated, just pissed.

humiliate is defined as:
–verb (used with object), -at⋅ed, -at⋅ing.
to cause (a person) a painful loss of pride, self-respect, or dignity; mortify.

Paradoxically, I feel supreme confidence and self-esteem compared to these low life barbarians. Such uncivilized people and culture: massive abortions, mistreatment of women, backward ideologies, and barbaric behaviors. And at the same time, I'm sadden by the fact that these savages are still influencing Vietnamese people.

on the side note, South Korean men do sometimes mistreat their foreign wife but at least they admit it and their government started clinics to help these unfortunate women. They're somewhat decent people.

^ Both Vietnamese and Chinese need to stop blaming others for everything. Vietnam did not have to adopt Chinese culture. Most of Southeast Asia did not, including those that bordered China. Owe up to your own choices and consequences. All I see from you is an endless litany of "China brought uncivilized behavior to Vietnam," "China brought Communism to Vietnam," "China is the reason why Vietnam sucks." This is standard victim mentality, as practiced by many ex-colonial countries, and while it is understandable, it is not conducive to progress. Besides, so-called "barbarity" is a common trait of all pre-modern societies. Did those Southeast Asians that did not adopt Chinese culture fare any better? Do they fare better, today?

Here's something to consider: Vietnam today has adopted a more Western way of operation. If Vietnam fails tomorrow, or begins to exhibit new sorts of "barbaric" behavior, are you going to blame this on the West, next? Come on.

I agree with what you say here.

The real test of culture is to see how easy it is to collapse to stupidity and barbarism, and the test of cultural revolution and the spread of communism is the real test. Then you will see which culture is stronger and who is influencing whom.

At the risk of always repeating and quoting myself:



Remember, great Viets don't hate people. We just hate stupidity and hypocrisies.

That is very accurate.

The Cultural Revolution--Mao encouraged workers to humiliate managers and engineers, and students to humble their professors. many of the "experts' were killed or imprisoned or removed from their posts and sent to work in the fields. Everything was turned upside down where idiots were in power and the people that had common sense where killed or imprisoned. Industrial and agricultural production fell drastically, and wide spread of suffering entered the picture. It was so chaotic that Mao finally agreed too bring in the PLA to restore order in universities, factories, and throughout society.


Communism itself from Karl Marx is actually very radical and just. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." . And Karl's criticism of capitalism is right on point. Lenin and Mao practiced something else under the label of "communism".

Vietnamese need to innovate and come up with our own system, instead of adopting poisonous influences from China. Vietnamese need to stop buying into the propaganda that Chinese are civilized, they're nothing but hypocrites--one of the most barbaric civilization on earth--then and now. It amazed how these barbarians have so much influence in Vietnam. We were once a nation of heroic freemen and free-women but are now turned into servants and slaves. People are constantly living in fear, kept in the dark, the only thing they care about is survival--there is no room for thinking and question things around them.

Happiness and enlightenment will not be guaranteed but don't we have the right to pursuit them? Education reform is a first start...

Wow, this article is simply amazing.

I admire your spirit, but if I'm not mistaken, you are living in a Western country and speaking a Western language. How about moving back to Vietnam and starting something?

If you know that nothing is absolute, then everything has it weaknesses. There is nothing radical about equality or selfish gene is there? The war of words between communism and capitalism is just a ruse to start the real war. If you agree that Viet Nam war was a ruse, then open your eyes and look further and you will know the others will be ruse too. How else do you think wars started?

To rule over you, they have to claim they are more civilized than you, better than you. But anyone who knows history will know this at the risk of repeating and quoting myself:



Viet's great culture teaches Viets to love all people that includes Chinese people, but to hate stupidity and barbarism that includes hating the sick man of Asia culture coming from China or anywhere else.

To be honest, I'm happy if I see Chinese people around me when the numbers of Vietnamese students in my school is very limited. I see the Chinese as the 2nd Vietnamese if you know what I mean. No matter how ugly or bad they are, they are still considered as an extended family in Vietnam.

we shouldn't not be enemies after all those years. us viets gotta thank the chinese for their invasion of vietnam in the past. without them, we wouldn't be who we are today. lol we are all asians and human beings! we gotta unite and fight the westerners.

Family? are you sure?

As a Chinese, I think friendship is OK, but family? don't invite hatred, thanks.

I am sure all asian countries can do perfectly well on their own, stop making another allies when there is no superpowers to back your sorry @$$ up anymore, you pathetic vietcong learn to work on your twos for the first time in your history

There are more Chinese in Viet Nam, than Vietnamese in China proportionally. Perhaps this is why? Keep asking questions people. Remember to open your eyes to see, simple.

???

unless you're an ethnic Hoa , I don't see the relevance whether they're Laotian ,Chinese or Korean.

Before Viet Communists and Viet Capitalists existed and before the arrival of Europeans and Americans, Dai Viet was able to protect and preserve Vietnamese culture and identity.


Please use your brains to think harder.

I find it interesting that you would bashed another Communist party when you are a Communist yourself.
Honestly now, the Viet Cong and Hoa Cong are like best friends forever. Camaraderie and comrades. =P

Some Viet that i met have some Chinese in them, but they like to go around telling people that they are chinese.

but some just hate chinese.

More like a secret admirer. I love you, i love you not.

In 2004 I checked, one out of every 4 person in Saigon or HCM city is Chinese.

Whats wrong with Sino-Vietnamese or Chinese in Vietnam saying they're Chinese or considered Chinese as part of their family? That is just the obvious fact of life. It does not equate to Vietnamese want to be Chinese. Although these Hoa (Chinese-Vietnamese) do give an impression of such.

On personal note, I do not "hate" or "Love" Chinese. To me, they're like human obstacle in the way that must be removed, in the name of freedom and progress. Nothing personal, it's politics. I play my role as a liberator and they play their role as the oppressor. Life is a drama so the roman/Greek saying goes--and I am just playing my part.

smells like socall and shyn

i hate these two vietnamese as-sholes who try to speak like as if they are native or 100% chinese...but the truth is they are like, only half a quarter of chinese from their great-great-great grandparent.....anyway its not even a secret that viets are chinese wannabes

Right, good going. And it is no secret that you are a Maoist idiot on the same trolling lunacy as myempire.

You Chinazis amuse me to no end, it's no wonder why you're the joke of the world.

Where'd you get that?

Saigon does have many Chinese, or part Chinese people but I'd figure it's more like 1 out of every 20. Last time I went there were a lot of northerners and centralers. The northerners were obvious cause they still speak northern or they just changed the z sounds to y's but everything else they stayed the same. Centralers were less obvious cause they would only speak central to other central people otherwise they spoke southern. Also counting the ones that were southernized earlier on I'd say Saigon has way more full Vietnamese people than part Chinese or Chinese people.

chinese are everywhere in vietnam. all chinese there use vietnamese surnames and first names. it's pretty hard to figure out who's chinese or vietnamese a lot of times.

I don't remember, read it on some article almost six years ago. If I do find out I'll post it.

So you're like a Vietnamese Hitler, huh?

The article is nonsense.

Viet isn't a virgin.

Viet is a whore that beds with the biggest pimp on the block, whoever that may be. It was China, then France, Soviet, now U.S.

No, I am not a Vietnamese Hitler. Let say If I have power, the Chinese in Vietnam can continue to live and believe whatever they want as long as they do not betray the country. The Chinese obstacle I am talking about are the Chinese government that keep stealing land, and plundering the country. By "remove" it doesn't necessary mean killing or starting war, either. My words, might be apocalyptic but you do not know what's going on in my mind, so don't assume.

hmmmm human obstacle.... but if it wasnt for the hard workign chinese...i guess the viets would still be swinging on a tree...picking lices from each others like the wild gorillas they are...come on now...we all know chinese basically run yoru pathetic economy......the real human trashes are like you viets,indonesian,lao, monkey dungs like that....who hardly get your @$$ up and work ....

yes yes Vietnamese are a bunch of monkey, Chinese control the economy blah blah..gotcha.

come on and accept the cruel reality...you are nothing now viets without the great hard workign efforts of the great chinese...theres a saying by chinese, not sure if i translated it right "弱肉強食" which means the weaks are meant to be eaten by the strongs
so accept your failure please
you gave away all the oppurtunities to chinese to make the money and create employments for you
what more can you ask?

LOL at first your posts were a bit of an annoyance but now it's pure comical entertainment. You made me LOL in real life

anyway i am sticking back to work have a good day viets bye bye

Well, I think maybe 100 years ago S. Vietnam would have a higher percentage of Chinese people hence the southern accent still being spoken which means the original speakers of that accent must have more influence on everyone else that was coming in. But there were about 1 million or more N. Vietnamese who came down after/during the war, and I would say several million Centralers too. Also, as Saigon is the biggest and richest city in Vietnam people from all over Vietnam would head into Saigon with less moving out. I think by now there would be many many more Vietnamese than Chinese. As you can see if you go over there, instead of blending in by speaking the southern accent, more and more are still speaking the accent from where they came from.

Not to mention a pretty high percentage of Vietnamese refugee's were actually Chinese or partially Chinese from Saigon. That's why when you go to Chinatown in L.A. they speak mainly Chinese but a lot of them know southern Vietnamese. And it's not hard to hear from an overseas Viet to say they're 1/4 or 1/2 or 1/8 Chinese. Which would mean less part Chinese/Chinese in Saigon.

Well, my source is outdated. As of right now, I have no idea.

I was just wondering. In demonizing Hitler, it seems to me that society has also lost a central insight - which is that Hitler's sentiments weren't necessarily unusual, though his methods were. A market dominant minority is often the target of native resentment, especially when its wealth is perceived as being ill-begotten, and its loyalties tied to a foreign power. Resentment, on the part of Southeast Asians for their Chinese minorities, is understandable from this point of view.

Lots of gibberish but the phrase the strong survive and the weak shall perish sounds like capitalism.

Let say 3 girls walking into a bar and 1 is extremely beautiful and the other two are ugly. And naturally every guy wants to ask the pretty girl out. Since she has so many option to choose from, she will reject most of them. And if the guys asked the ugly ones out after, they will reject them too because they felt disrespected or unappreciated because the pretty girl was asked first. In the end the guys will get no date. However, if the guys approach the ugly girl first chances are they're going to get date--the chance is much higher.

If everyone pursuit riches, there will be lots of losers. Human are social creatures, we benefit more in the end or on the long-run if we pursuit interest with regarding to other people's well beings. This was proof by John Nash using mathematical equation--he won a noble peace prize for it.

Did your Chinese saying won any noble peace prize? Hell no.

Why do you think people dislike Chinese? Because you're profit driven without regarding to anyone else--during the Vietnam war when resources was needed to feed soldiers you jacked up the prize, and monopolized the market. People like you have no regard to society as a whole. etc... don't get me wrong, it's good business tactic, very efficiency and pragmatic, but if people want to kick your @$$ out of their society is also understandable.

So what if you squeeze out a bunch of Millionaire or Billionaire in China-- more than a half of your population still suffering from basic needs and lack of education.The few rich Chinese are in fact hogging resources away from your fellow countrymen. In order to have winners there must be losers, and there are lots of Chinese losers. Such as these people:
http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazin...ution-in-china/

Nice job dumb @$$. BTW Watch out for angry Malaysian that you've taken advantage of and exploited oh and let us not forget the Tibetan, and those Xinjang natives etc..

Hitler was a piece of $hit but he was doing something right because Europe at the time most of the economies were going down hill but with Hitler's leadership brought so much innovation and revived Germany.

What resentment? If Chinese act barbaric and do barbaric things then I will say that it is barbaric. Besides, the state owns everything in Vietnam. All the wealth belongs to high communist officials along with mental wealth such as the access to higher education etc..

You gave me good laugh, I have more respect for the Chinese generation 15 years ago than the current generation of Chinese who are mostly bunches of spoiled kids. Midgets like you would be sent in the frontline to be in the meatgrinder with human wave tactics. At most you inherit thing from you parents which were given by CCP criminals who robbed land from Chinese peasants, landlords. My below-average personal portfolio of 250 grands and growing could easily have millions of Chinese waiting in line to be enslaved with work in sweatshops, coal mines, or put on a breast show like the current Miss Asia of ATV.
I have nothing against members of respectful humble hardworking Chinese.

ugh, how about no?

I study American history and Chinese were often discriminated and picked on, sometimes I feel sorry for them. Although, however, they always show the same arrogance and racist attitude toward Vietnamese. They even discriminated Vietnamese in China who happened to lived on their ancestral land and who are fully assimilated, adopted Chinese name, and only speak Chinese--So screw them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...9071801873.html

Chinese are like a loser that work at the office all day and get spitted on by the boss so he goes out and takes it out on smaller bystander in order to feel superior. except he picked on the wrong people--the Vietnamese

genetic is nothing other than mere biological facts--don't expect me to put up with your BS coz "we're Asian". get over it

Hatred begets hatred.

Not everyone can rise above it, but learn to hate the bad deeds. And if we can't help ourselves don't expect too much from others.