Vietnamese People and Culture

The Vietnamese first appeared in history about 2,000 years ago, as one of many scattered peoples living in what is now South China and Northern Vietnam. According to local tradition, the small Vietnamese kingdom of Au Lac, located in the heart of the Red River valley, was founded by a line of legendary kings who had ruled over the ancient kingdom of Van Lang for thousands of years. In 111 BC, Chinese armies conquered Nam Viet (the ancient name for this area) and absorbed it into the growing Han Empire.

The Chinese conquest had fateful consequences for the future course of Vietnamese history. After briefly ruling through local chieftains, Chinese rulers attempted to integrate Vietnam politically and culturally into the Han Empire. Chinese administrators were imported to replace the local landed nobility. Political institutions patterned after the Chinese model were imposed, and Confucianism became the official ideology. The Chinese language was introduced as the medium of official and literary expression, and Chinese ideographs were adopted as the written form for the Vietnamese spoken language.

Today, the Vietnamese people who derived from the southern Chinese, constitute about 88 percent of the total population; the rest are members of various ethnic groups. The majority live in small villages, although the southern part of the country is more urbanized than the north. Most people live in the delta areas or along the coast.

Vietnamese is the official language, with English increasingly being taught in schools. The Vietnam government has set an ambitious goal of having English be the language of instruction in all schools country-wide by 2020.

The long period of military conflict in Vietnam seriously disrupted educational progress and cultural programs, especially those remnants that dated from the years of French rule. Curriculum reforms since 1979 have standardized lesson content throughout the country, strengthened socialist educational ideals, and increased the vocational aspects of higher education. All schools in Vietnam were nationalized following reunification, and by the mid-1990s nearly 15.5 million pupils were in attendance. Schooling is free and compulsory.