The author | our author Zhang Lan
"Asahisha" (formerly "We Love History") is the headline number signed group media
Word count: 2654, Reading time: 7 minutes
History asks questions
Why did Ho Chi Minh, who was fluent in Chinese, immediately order the abolition of Chinese characters after he founded Vietnam?
A: In several countries in the "Chinese character culture circle", the relationship between Vietnam and Chinese characters is not generally deep.
Due to the special historical origins of China and Vietnam, Chinese characters have entered the Vietnamese region as late as the Qin and Han dynasties. In 968 AD, Annam Haoqiang Dingbu established the "Great Qu Yue Kingdom", and Vietnam entered a "new historical period of independent feudalism". Most of the Subsequent Vietnamese dynasties maintained a "tribute relationship" with China, and for a long time used Chinese characters as the official orthodox script. Vietnam's official documents, proclamations, and even numismatic scripts use Chinese characters. After the establishment of the imperial examination system in Vietnam, Chinese characters were also the official written script at the time of scientific expeditions. It is no exaggeration to say that the history of Vietnam's feudal dynasties is basically written in Chinese characters.
Even, in this nearly thousand-year history, Chinese characters also constitute Vietnam's brilliant "Han poetry" culture, from the 10th century to the 19th century AD, Chinese was called "Holy Characters" in Vietnam, in 1075 Vietnam began to "repair the Temple of Literature, plastic Confucius, Zhou Gong and the four statues", almost completely transplanted Chinese Confucian culture. "Han poetry" has become an important literary theme in vietnam's ancient history, such as the fifth king of the Vietnamese post-Lê Dynasty, Le Hao (during the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty), whose personal level of Chinese poetry is extremely high, and he has written such a good sentence as "a piece of cold light on the blue sky". He presided over the editing of the "HongDe Yin Poetry Collection", which contains more than 300 Vietnamese Chinese poems. It was a glorious period for Vietnamese Chinese character culture.
Many celebrities in Vietnam's modern and modern history also have extremely deep knowledge of Chinese characters, such as the founder of the modern Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Vietnamese proletarian revolutionary Ho Chi Minh, who is a "Chinese character master", born in the Vietnamese "Han Chinese doctor" family, he not only speaks fluent Chinese official dialect, but also writes beautiful Chinese characters. After he was imprisoned in his early years, he wrote "Diary in Prison" in Chinese characters, which contained more than 100 Chinese poems in its entirety, and the level of each capital was extremely high, such as "Boys are here to be proud of their heroes", and many Vietnamese revolutionaries were inspired to fight in blood.
However, when Ho Chi Minh, who was well versed in Chinese character culture, finally won the victory of the "August Revolution" in 1945, his next move was to decisively abolish Chinese characters. On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence, written by the Vietnamese "Chinese Characters" (Latinized Pinyin script), at Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi, Vietnam, and six days later, Ho Chi Minh formally signed a decree establishing "Chinese Characters" as the legal script of Vietnam, and that "only citizens who can use Chinese characters are eligible to use the right to vote." At this point, the Chinese characters that had long dominated Vietnam have almost "disappeared" in Vietnam.
But what if you say "Ho Chi Minh abolished Chinese characters"? To tell the truth, this "big cauldron" Ho Chi Minh really can't afford to memorize. The "fading" and even "disappearing" of Chinese characters in Vietnam has actually undergone a long historical process. One of the first reasons for this is the limitations of Chinese characters themselves.
Although Chinese characters "landed" in Vietnam very early, as a Chinese writing system, Chinese characters naturally appear in the communication and recording barriers when they are used to express vietnamese. Many well-known scholars in ancient China recorded the state of Vietnam's "characters are the same as Chinese, but the sounds are different".
Therefore, from the 12th century onwards, the indigenous script "murmur" appeared in Vietnam. That is, the "local character" is re-formed by taking the partial side of the Chinese character. In the six hundred years since, although Chinese characters still dominate Vietnam, the use of "mumbling" has also been expanding. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, Vietnamese officials used "murmuring characters" to translate a large number of Chinese classics, and the novel "The Legend of the Golden Cloud Wings" written in murmuring characters has also become its local "classical masterpiece".
Although it is difficult to promote on a large scale because it is more complex than Chinese characters, it has also led to a decrease in the scope of use of Chinese characters in Vietnam - in the 19th century, the "township covenant" and "Yang Lian" in rural Vietnam have commonly used "murmur" to write.
Vietnamese murmurs
But despite this, Chinese characters have a strong historical heritage in Vietnam. Therefore, whether it is the "murmur" of Vietnam itself, or the "Chinese character" of Vietnamese formed by Western missionaries in the 17th century with Latin as the phonetic pronunciation of Vietnamese, theoretically unable to challenge the dominance of Chinese characters. Therefore, the key to the "fading out" of Chinese characters in Vietnam is also due to the second reason: the change of vietnamese political affairs.
One of the direct reasons for Vietnam's long-term use of Chinese characters is the "tribute relationship" with China. Since China is the suzerainty of Vietnam, the entire ruling structure of Vietnam is almost completely "transplanted" from the Chinese feudal dynasty, and the imperial examination system is basically solid in Vietnam, and the Vietnamese bureaucracy is also dominated by scholars and doctors who have entered the army through the examination, and they are naturally strong supporters of Chinese characters. Moreover, the successive rulers of Vietnam wanted to sit firmly on the throne, and the first one was "approved by China", and the use of Chinese characters became inevitable. It was this strong foundation that laid the foundation for the dominance of Chinese characters in Vietnam.
However, with the complete colonization of Vietnam by France in the second half of the 19th century, the Vietnamese royal family and scholars who used to use Chinese characters in Vietnam were almost destroyed by the French colonists, and the imperial examination system was abolished in 1919, and the "platform" of Chinese characters in Vietnam was almost absent. In the case of a national illiteracy rate of 95 percent in Vietnam, the French colonists used tough measures to restrict Chinese characters: in Vietnamese French schools, Chinese classes were greatly compressed, French and Chinese characters became the official script of Vietnam, and although there was an elite class like Ho Chi Minh who was proficient in Chinese characters, the presence of Chinese characters in Vietnam was getting lower and lower.
On the contrary, under the impetus of the French colonists, the easy-to-read and easy-to-write pinyin "Chinese characters" began to be widely popular at the bottom of Vietnamese society. But the French did not expect that it was this "Chinese word" that they supported, and also dug a pit for them. Since the 1920s, Vietnamese revolutionaries have also taken advantage of the rapid dissemination of Chinese and wide audiences to vigorously disseminate revolutionary ideas with Chinese characters, setting off a vigorous revolutionary movement. Therefore, although the leader of the Vietnamese revolution, Ho Chi Minh, wrote a good hand in Chinese characters, for the process of the Vietnamese revolution, the Chinese characters were an important driving force.
Therefore, when Ho Chi Minh officially proclaimed the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in September 1945, the scope of application of both Chinese characters and mumbling characters in Vietnam at that time was very narrow, while Chinese characters in Vietnam had a broad foundation. Since then, the Vietnamese government has also accelerated the process of "abolishing Chinese characters": in the 1950s, Vietnam completely stopped The education of Chinese characters in compulsory education, and after the completion of vietnam's reunification of the North and the South in 1975, South Vietnam also abolished Chinese character education. Most of the Vietnamese who grew up after this did not know Chinese characters. It is no exaggeration to say that before 1950, Vietnam's classic materials, and even their own family genealogy, today's old Vietnamese people, most likely can not understand.
Today's Vietnamese Chinese word
But can we say that the Chinese character culture has completely disappeared in Vietnam? Of course not, as far as the modern Vietnamese vocabulary is concerned, Chinese characters account for nearly 40% of the daily vocabulary of Vietnamese, while in the field of justice, Chinese characters account for 50 to 60% of Vietnamese official documents. As a great script with a long history and profound heritage, Chinese character culture has long been deeply infiltrated into Vietnamese culture.
With the increasing strength of China in the twenty-first century, the world has already set off a wave of "Chinese character fever". By 2021, more than 70 countries around the world will incorporate Chinese language education into their curricula. In Vietnam, where "Chinese characters" have been "abolished" for many years, the "Chinese character fever" has also quietly heated up: after the normalization of Sino-Vietnamese relations in 1991, the proportion of "Chinese character education" in Vietnam has increased year after year, and since 2011, Chinese has become the veritable "first foreign language" in the Vietnamese education system. Such "warming up" will be a major trend that will last for many years.
The history of Vietnamese Chinese characters is not only the history of Vietnam's own thousand-year changes, but also a mirror, reflecting the precious memory of modern China, from decay to rejuvenation.
References: "A Narrative of the Rise and Fall of Chinese Characters in Vietnam", "Chinese Poetry Has An Important Influence in Vietnamese Culture, Ho Chi Minh Once Wrote Chinese Poems to Motivate Himself in Prison", "The Current Situation of Chinese Language Education in Vietnam", "From Exaltation to Abolition: A Test of the Fate of Chinese Characters in Vietnam"
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