(Part 2) Top products from r/VietNam

Hi there! Yeah I am super happy you are interested in both TK and Hán-Nôm studies.

Re: The use in the context of military strategies. I am not sure if there is specific academic research on that. So little information survives. It is was for sure the written language of governing structures so its extension to military seems reasonable. I have heard it discussed a number of times.

Here is one of the best resources for academic stuff. John Phan is just about the only young professor in the world who is a Nôm expert. https://columbia.academia.edu/JohnPhan

Also, http://www.nomfoundation.org/ is a great resource.

What you wrote in this part "In regards to Truyện Kiều, ..." is, I believe, very accurate. Nguyễn Du also wrote poetry under the pseudonym Tố Như. There you really get a sense of the anguish in his life - but also his resolution to accept and move on. His poems are spectacular. Here is a huge resource https://www.thivien.net/Nguy%E1%BB%85n-Du/author-ZRyB2U-4oqfhcjZ7xrf1_A

As far as English goes, make sure you read this one. https://www.amazon.com/Tale-Ki%C3%AAu-bilingual-Nguyen-Truy%C3%AAn/dp/0300040512/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2TUG02AULY27S&keywords=truyen+kieu&qid=1571648091&sprefix=truyen+%2Caps%2C354&sr=8-2

Huỳnh Sanh Thông was a master. Had I made a couple different academic choices I could have studied with him at Yale. But then my life would have unfolded totally differently and I probable been stuck being a professor which is what I was so anxious to escape in the first place.

Anyway best of luck with stuff !!! I am so happy for you.

-ARR

To understand the impact of the war on both Southern and Northern economies, start with French colonialism. It wasn't great for the Vietnamese people. But with the advent of WWII, French control disintegrated as they submitted to the Japanese, and things went from bad to worse. In 1945 the war ended and a power vacuum ensued. The Viet Minh took control of Hanoi in the North and began to fight for power with the French, based in Saigon to the south. An estimated 5 million people died of famine, war, and disease during these years (out of a population of about 24 million). The French eventually lost the North in '54, and set up a puppet government backed by the US and UK in Saigon. Flagrant corruption and religious persecution caused discontent with the Southern government, and the Viet Minh sent forces south to start a guerilla movement known as the Viet Cong. That's when the US jumped in under the pretense of stallin' communism.

As the US began losing the ground war in the mid 60s, they switched to carpet bombing, Agent Orange, and napalm. It's impossible to say how much exactly, but a staggeringly large percentage of land, especially in central Vietnam, eastern Laos, and northern Cambodia, was decimated by 7 million tons of bombs, 72 million liters of Agent Orange (covering nearly 10% of the Vietnamese countryside and jungle), and a modest 400,000 tons of napalm.

Eventually the North took control of the entire country as it is today. It's no surprise that the Communist party fought so hard for the land below the 17th parallel, whatever patriotic slogans they may have used--the Mekong delta alone produces half the country's rice, and rich businessmen in Saigon were scraping huge profits. When the Hanoi government took over in 1975, wealthy elites, intellectuals, and catholics fled the country or were killed/persecuted/removed from power. The Party annexed a vast majority of the economy into SOEs (state-owned enterprises) and sucked the economy dry yet again by corruption, misuse of state funds, and cronyism. Tack on a war in Cambodia, and it took Vietnam another 20 years ('75-'95) to even begin to recover. Older people here remember very well not having enough rice 20 years ago.

Think about what 30 years of war and famine does to a population. As Viktor Frankel so poignantly put it when describing Nazi concentration camps, the best examples of our species do not survive. Those who were altruistic, honest, and brave died first. Those who were not increased their chances of survival. Open persecution of anything deemed intellectual, individual, or capitalist for so many years has a stifling effect on an economy. Only in the last 15 years has Vietnam begun to pull itself out of an economy that meant severe poverty for a majority of people. As Hanoi's paranoia of all things foreign subsides and a small number of SOEs have been privatized, a growing middle class and new wealth in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) are raising living standards. Riding the wave of China's boom, Vietnamese people saw life improve at an almost surreal pace from 2002-2007. Today things have slowed down and inflation is getting out of hand, once again due in large part to the reluctance of the Party's plutocrats to tidy up the corruption.

Regardless of its often melancholy history, Vietnam is a beautiful country, full of bright, charming people. Visiting is easier and more pleasant than ever. Things are looking up here.

I highly recommend reading Jonathan Neale's A People's History of the Vietnam War. It goes into detail about the war and its effects through the 1980s. link

The costumes in the pic are kind of there but not there. But I applaud for your work. Just one thing to stand out is that the Vietnamese in the past like to walk on bare feet. Only Mandarins of sort would prefer wearing boots. And Yếm is the kind of bra for women. For costume reference,thisis a good starting place. She also has others pics if you dig around in her account. If you want to dig deeper into patterns, check out this one. Please noted that the patterns should be in CC licence but I forgot the actual group making it. (Im not the Original Author for this pattern, just sharing it).

And the book,Ngàn năm áo mũ is one of the most mainstream book about ancient Vietnamese fashion.

And for choosing the dynasty, Later Le is the most famous one and also the height of the empire with many attempts to restore much of its fashion trend. Nguyen is the most well-known if you want mainstream reception.

And yes, I would love to read about a fictional world that has Viet as a part of it!

I use Duolingo. It's the only app that I've found really useful. Clozemaster has Vietnamese, but it's... pretty worthless. Memrise is nice, but only for memorizing vocabulary. Really, I've found practice with native speakers is an absolute necessity, because it's impossible to pronounce things correctly without it. Even with a significantly better vocabulary than when I started, it frequently takes a couple of restatements of what I'm trying to say before my meaning is clear.

For understanding more about the language, I recommend the book A Vietnamese Reference Grammar. The "scriptorium method" is also quite good, combined with the inexpensive Tiếng Việt study books intended for Vietnamese schoolchildren that you can find in any Saigon bookstore.

As someone who loves to read books, I’ll say, there’s actually PLENTY of books written about today’s Vietnam. Most of them are travel books. Most of them mentions about Vietnam’s thriving economy today

Check out Insight Guides, Lonely Planet Discover Vietnam, and National Geographic Traveler

These are fantastic books that has lots of beautiful pictures and lots of great explanations about Vietnamese society, cuisine, history, and more

These two are quite interesting:

https://www.amazon.com/Its-Living-Work-Vietnam-Today/dp/9971696983

https://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-Rising-Dragon-Bill-Hayton/dp/030017814X

Working life/attitudes and economic growth actually tell you a lot about a country.

Also here's a long list of recommended books. Quite a few of them aren't war books.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/8440.Best_Books_on_Vietnam

The best modern history book:

Christopher Goscha, Vietnam: A New History (Penguin, 2016).

and...

If you'd like to take a deep dive, starting from 1,000 years ago:

Keith Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese, (Cambridge, 2013).

I loved Norman Lewis' "A Dragon Apparent".
http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Apparent-Travels-Cambodia-Vietnam/dp/090787133X
It's a travelogue from the period when Vietnam was under French occupation, and Lewis is such a great writer that you get an incredibly vivid sense of what Vietnam was like at that time. There are some indications in it of the war that's to come but it's not a "book about war" at all.

This is only an adapter to fit the plugs. Your electronic chargers should be able to handle 220V in VN. If you bring a travel hair dryer, buy a dual voltage one like this https://www.amazon.com/Travel-Smart-Conair-Voltage-Dryer/dp/B002B8VE4U

For higher wattage devices such as iron, don't even bother, buy or borrow one , or hire someone local to iron your clothes.

Vietnam Today: A Guide to a Nation at a Crossroads

Mark A. Ashwill

http://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-Today-Guide-Nation-Crossroads/dp/1931930090


Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam

Robert Templer

http://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Wind-View-Modern-Vietnam/dp/0140285970


Understanding Vietnam

Neil L. Jamieson

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Vietnam-Philip-Lilienthal-Book/dp/0520201574

There was a fairly recent attempt by opposition groups in the south to get elected but I don't think it worked. Generally people see the Politburo as the key decider of political decision with the national parliament serving largely as a rubber stamp though it has more power then in the past. Saying that there is a wide degree of cynicism surrounding the voting system with the party choosing the candidates and voters going through the motions of voting.

​

There been a limited attempt to develop a degree of grassroot democracy as a response to the peasant rebellion of the 90s. Through I don't know a great deal about it and at least in some of the groups it has been outright fraudulent.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Political-Dynamics-Grassroots-Democracy-Vietnam/dp/1349954284

​

http://sdonline.org/58/grassroots-democracy-in-rural-viet-nam-a-gramscian-analysis/

​

Maybe skip to the section called

Relevant ideological, institutional and policy frameworks on grassroots democracy

​

to get a relevant overview.

​

​

I have no real good suggestion for where you should start with a discussion of Vietnamese politics but maybe try the first chapter of Politics in Vietnam which is available on libgen but it is perhaps overly academic. Vietnamese politics is famously opaque, fictionalised and corrupt but if you want to discuss recent controversies maybe look at the recent internet bill and the recent crackdown on dissidents.

​

https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/01/01/19/vietnams-draconian-cybersecurity-bill-comes-into-effect

​

Probably the best book look introduction to Vietnam is Vietnam: A Rising Dragon by Bill Hayton. The only book that can challenge is the dated Robert Templer’s Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam.

​

Sorry that I couldn't be of more help.

I really liked “Eating Vietnam: Dispatches from a Blue Plastic Table” by Graham Holliday. It was one of the first books published under Tony Bourdain’s imprint, and he wrote the foreword.

https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Viet-Nam-Dispatches-Plastic/dp/0062293060

Honestly the only recognized source I know is Duolingo. There are also some textbooks and websites that provide online courses.

Both of those questions are pretty complicated to answer, in short, the party/government structure of Vietnam is still Marxist-Leninist, but when it comes to the economy it becomes much more complicated. Officially the economy is called a "socialist-oriented market economy".

Some further reading on the topic:

https://medium.com/@otelocarvalho/socialism-today-in-vietnam-ac22ce2edf47

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00472336.2013.822988

https://www.amazon.com/Changing-Worlds-Vietnams-Transition-Globalization/dp/0199377588

https://return2source.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/actually-existing-socialism-in-vietnam/

I had to read this for a university anthropology class. It's probably a bit dated now:

https://www.amazon.com/Fragments-Present-Searching-Modernity-Publications/dp/0824824172

Buy this book.