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Editors’ note: 

This article is the second installment in a series on the gospel and Vietnam’s search for identity. Read the first installment here. Photos by Kristin. Names have been shortened for security reasons.

My friend, a recent graduate from a Hanoi university, has digested many of the French and Russian classics. Most of the former set found their way into Vietnamese during the early part of the last century, while the bulk of the latter accompanied an increasing Soviet influence, which marked the end of French occupation in 1954.

As we sat across from each other in the cafe booth, sipping an iced blend of espresso and sweetened condensed milk, he reflected on three of his favorite Western authors, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Hugo. He isn’t a believer, but I asked about the composite picture of Christianity these writers had supplied him.

Thinking, he rubbed his chin with one finger and then began, “I like Crime and Punishment because it’s a story of a madman, Raskolnikov, who becomes one of the best guys in the book at the end. And a young prostitute saw his soul and wanted to help him.”

He paused and squinted, continuing on a little quicker than before, “But God only fights inside the mind. With Tolstoy, it’s also like this, but God doesn’t have much power to influence the character of a person. For example . . . ”

He tapped the bit of glass tabletop beside his cup, scouring his mind for a name. I waited attentively and urged on his search with my fixed eyes and nodding head, excited at any mention of Dostoevsky, my favorite novelist. Once retrieved, the name filled in the empty space. “. . . Pierre, from War and Peace, dreams of many big things, like Raskolnikov, but he didn’t do anything big for anyone else. He only married Natasha. I think their faith is not as strong as Victor Hugo. In Les Miserables, Jean Valjean believes God did everything for him, and he becomes a tool of God.”

I appreciated his insight, surprised at the sincerity with which he engaged these required school readings. It was obvious that he had wrestled with the identity of God, even if only in a literary sense. However, we cannot ponder God’s identity without considering our own, and the fact that my friend was drawn to one portrayal over another bears witness to this. Dostoevsky’s use of a seemingly hopeless personage to bring about redemption resonated with my friend’s very human desire to see that same impossibility inside himself. Even more, through Hugo, he realized the implications of this impossibility, that it renders us only vessels, but vessels of privilege and action, charged with the task of working impossibility in the seemingly hopeless world at large.

Reflecting on his words and wants, I am reminded of our common humanity, which transcends the bone-deep saturation of culture. Surprisingly, this kind of indirect exposure to Christianity through books is common, an artifact of Vietnam’s first documented interaction with the faith. That is, Quoc Ngu, modern Vietnamese script, owes its existence to this encounter. In turn, as we examine Vietnam’s search for a modern identity, we find here an interesting starting point, one that lays linguistic foundations for the modern society and points to Him who alone can bestow our true identity. However, as we will see in later installments, the brunt of the writings that fueled this search failed to search outside of man, examining him as only an individual or a part of a group, rather than a being made in God’s image, which veered from Quoc Ngu’s spiritual beginnings.

It was in the 17th century that Jesuits from Spain, France, and Portugal transcribed the complicated Chinese characters of the day into the phonetic Roman alphabet currently used. Nowadays, of the roughly 86 million people living in Vietnam, about 6 million espouse Roman Catholicism, the majority of which are situated in the South. However, the Quoc Ngu system developed by these workers has left its direct mark on almost all Vietnamese, my friend included, as it has helped the country reach a literacy rate of about 94 percent, one of the highest in the world. In fact, Mark Ashwill, in his book Vietnam Today, describes the Vietnamese people as “insatiable readers,” a trait nurtured by the high cultural value placed on education.

Not until French colonization, though, did Quoc Ngu become Vietnam’s script of choice. Previously, literacy was low and limited to the domain of the academic elite. A proper education demanded the laborious acquisition of Chinese characters, as these held the history and tradition that mandated society’s ideals. Quoc Ngu, on the other hand, suffered from a stigma of vulgarity, colonialism, and Catholic conversion. The average northern Vietnamese wanted no part of these things.

Initially, some of these apprehensions had merit. Jamieson, in Understanding Vietnam, records a letter from the French director of Indochina’s internal affairs in 1886. In it, the colonist says of the Chinese characters:

This kind of writing system presents nothing but difficulties in transmitting to the population those diverse ideas which are necessary at the level of their new commercial and political situation. We are obliged as a consequence to follow the traditions of our own educational system. It is the only way which has the power to effect a reconciliation between ourselves and the Annamites of the colony, to inculcate them with the principles of European civilization, and to isolate them from the hostile influences of their neighbors.

The French certainly lobbied for this linguistic overhaul for their own colonial purposes, but soon many Vietnamese took up its cause as well, developing it further and making it their own. Publications appeared throughout Hanoi in this new script. The movement collected a wealth of critics, and understandably so, as its full realization would sever Vietnam from a rich writing tradition. However, Quoc Ngu’s ease and accessibility offered literacy to the population at large, catalyzing a natural and unstoppable dissemination through society.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Nguyen Van Vinh, perhaps Quoc Ngu’s strongest proponent, translated both Vietnamese classics and famous French texts, including works by Rousseau, Montesquieu, and the novel by Hugo that so impressed my friend, into this burgeoning script. Vinh was one of many intellectuals that emerged at this time, seeking to reform Vietnam through the creation of a new identity, one forged by assimilating the beneficial aspects of Western thought into that of their own. Moreover, Quoc Ngu ensured that the written word would be the medium of this search, and that the public would take part.

However, as one would expect, sorting through the philosophies of the West in hopes of separating the gold from the dross became a severely subjective endeavor. All of these writers wished to better their society, but Vinh, who called for complete submission to French rule and culture at the full expense of Vietnamese tradition, represented a minority voice.

By contrast, most intellectuals assembled uniquely Vietnamese combinations of the old and new ways, and although the makeup of each combination differed, their ultimate goals tended to converge. Like my friend, they knew that truth, as they believed it to be, should inspire action. That is, advancement would principally prepare the way for Vietnamese independence. In turn, a type of fragmented harmony took root in society, as most intellectuals disagreed on what to take from the French, but agreed that, what was taken, should be used to overthrow them.

This push encompassed the technological, promoting a rationalism that would fuel science and development, but, as previously noted, it also plunged the Vietnamese deep into questions of existence. New ways of viewing the world and themselves bombarded public discourse, forcing a new generation of readers to reexamine former assumptions. And even now, at the beginning of the next century, my friend continues this unresolved discussion, as he wrestles with these ideas of infinite implication.

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