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Text: Catherine Noppe, Jean-François Hubert Translation: Ethan Rundell, Arthur Borges Design: Cédric Pontes

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ISBN: 978-1-78310-725-4

Catherine Noppe, Jean-François Hubert

 

 

 

 

Art of Vietnam

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contents

Introduction Land and Water

Chapter 1 Van Lang and Au Lac, the First Kingdoms

Chapter 2 Chinese Domination and its Heritage

Chapter 3 The First National Dynasties: The Ly (1009-1225) and the Trân (1225-1400)

From Hoa Lu’ to Thang Long: The Capitals of the National Dynasties

Buddhist Architecture in the Time of the Ly

Ly and Trân Ceramics

Trân Hu’ng Dao and the Struggle Against the Mongols

Chapter 4 Champa Kingdom

Chapter 5 The Lê Dynasty

Hôi An

Buddhist Statuary Art

The Temple of Literature and the Confucian Manifesto

The Community Hall (Dinh)

Ceramics and the Lê Dynasty

Chapter 6 Hue and the Dynasty of the Nguyên

The Imperial City

The “Blues of Hue”

Chapter 7 French Influence

French Colonial Architecture

Vietnamese Modern Art

Chapter 8 The Arts of the Minorities

Conclusion

Appendix

Historic Maps

Bibliography

Glossary

Chronology

Introduction
Land and Water

Situated on the eastern extremity of what is known as Southeast Asia, Vietnam finds itself at the confluence of two worlds. With China to the north and Laos and Cambodia to the west, Vietnam has long been subject to a double-influence; one nicely captured by the French term, first introduced in the 1840s, “Indochine” (Indo–China).

Endowed with a coastline more than two thousand kilometers long, Vietnam’s eastern seaboard gives it access not only to the Philippines and Indonesia, but also to China and Japan, commercial opportunities that were first exploited in the fifteenth century.

Vietnam’s tropical climate differs from north to south. While the north of the country enjoys four distinct seasons and receives monsoons in both winter and summer, the south has only two seasons, one dry, and the other rainy.

“Two baskets of rice suspended on a yoke”; such is the image most frequently cited by the Vietnamese to evoke the shape of their country as it appears on a map. In this image, the yoke – in fact, a long bamboo pole split along its length and carried on the shoulders to assist in transport of all sorts – represents the Tru’o’ng So’n Mountains, otherwise known as the “Annamite Mountain Range”, the backbone of the country and principal frontier with its western neighbors. The “two baskets of rice” which hang from the extremities of the yoke correspond to the Red River (Song Hong) in the north and the Mekong River (Cu’u Long) in the south.

These low countries, particularly well-suited to rice field irrigation (there are two monsoons annually in the north and three in the southern and intermediate market areas) and consequently overpopulated, sometimes leads one to forget that Vietnam (with a total area of 329,000 km2) contains twice as much mountainous area as plains. Indeed, it is in Vietnam that one finds the highest summit in Southeast Asia, Mount Fansipan (3143m).

In addition to the forest covered and virtually uninhabited Tru’o’ng So’n Mountains, the country also possesses a moderate “Middle Region” in the north and “High Plateaus” in the center and south. In many cases, the latter only expire when they reach the Eastern Sea – for example, at Porte of Annam, which gives access to the entire central region and the Collar of Clouds between Hue and Danang.

During the colonial era, Vietnam’s three regions – Northern (Bac Bo), Central (Tru’ng Bo), and Southern regions (Nam Bo) – were rebaptized Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchine. Tonkin comes from the name Dong Kinh, “capital of the east”, as Hanoi was known in the sixteenth century; Annam, “South Pacific”, was the name conferred on the country by the Chinese during the Tang Dynasty (618–906 AD); the term “Cochinchine”, though invented by Westerners, also derives from Dong Kinh.

Although each of these three regions still plays an important cultural role, the most important regional division in the country, as we shall see later, is that between the plains and the High Plateaus.

The chain of limestone mountains in the north of the country, including the fantastic isles of the Bay of Ha Long (“the dragon which descends towards the sea”), are geologically similar to the Guangxi formations of China. Just like the mountains of the central region, they are penetrated by innumerable caves, long considered sacred places giving access to the entrails of the Earth. Stalactites and stalagmites of bizarre shapes are given names in accordance with their form and have been known to come in such shapes as geckos, elephants, tortoises, “Buddha’s heart”, and even, in a cave that was only recently discovered on an island in the Bay of Ha Long, an astonishing profile of former President Ho Chi Minh. Since prehistory, two great rivers, the Red River and the Mekong, have graced the country with diverse and profoundly civilizing influences. With a length of 1,200 kilometers, the Red River has its source in the Chinese province of Yunan.

The Mekong, meanwhile, runs for 4,200 kilometers in a general north-south direction before evaporating into a vast delta. Beginning in the Tibetan plateau, it passes through China, travels along the Laotian–Burmese border, and then crosses Cambodia before entering Vietnam.

Sources of life and the foundation of regional rice patty irrigation, the waters of these great rivers are also prone to terrifying floods against which the population struggles without cease via an ever more perfected series of dams. In addition to these great rivers and their tributaries, numerous waterways, generally oriented northwest/southwest, make their way through the mountains to the Eastern Sea, crossing slender bands of coastal plains as they do so. These rivers supply a large part of the population with fish, snails, and diverse crustaceans. One need only glance at the iconography that characterizes the various ceramics, “blue and white” porcelain, and enamel work of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – crabs, shrimp, fish, waterfowl, lotus and other Asiatic plants are everywhere in evidence – to grasp the vital importance that waterways have long played in Vietnamese culture.

For all that, the resources of the sea itself are in no way neglected: prehistoric coastal cultures have left traces of their existence in the form of great heaps of seashells along the shores of Vietnam’s northern and central coast.

Indeed, net fishing is still practiced today in these areas. It is significant that, in Vietnamese, the expression dât nu’o’c – land and water – signifies “country”. These two elements combine to make Vietnam a piecemeal country, rich in contrasts and particularities and, as a consequence, difficult to unify politically. Corresponding to this astonishing physical geography is a remarkable degree of human diversity, something characteristic of Southeast Asia more generally.

Ethnic Mosaic

The legend of Vietnam’s origin takes account of the plains-mountain polarity. According to this story, the Dragon King, Lac Long Quân, married the Immortal Au Co’ and together they bore one hundred sons. However, one day Au Co’ said to her royal husband: “Sire, you are of the Dragon race while I am of that of the Immortals: we must separate.” Fifty sons then left with their father to populate the country’s low countries while fifty others accompanied their mother into the mountains. In this manner, the different populations of the country were born. Today, the population of Vietnam consists of fiftyfour distinct ethnic groups.

With a total population estimated at nearly eighty million individuals, the Viet or Kingh – the descendants of Lac Long Quân – are in the majority while the so-called “national” or “minority” ethnicities comprise only around fifteen percent of the population. Traditionally occupying the plains and the deltas, the Viet commenced their “March to the South” beginning in the eleventh century – a Nam Tiên destined to give them access to new regions propitious to irrigated rice farming. The small coastal plains, which sprinkle the seaboard from north to south, were apparently not adequate to satisfy the Viet’s desire for land; having conquered first the Joncs Plains and then the Mekong Delta, the Viet today extend all the way into the highlands.

The Viet traditionally live in villages united by a perfect solidarity born of the constant struggle against the water and the construction of dams. The ancestor cult that they practice guaranties the cohesion of the clan, or extended family, and also assures its prosperity as the deceased (or so it is said) continue to watch over their descendants. This cult, observed by the elder son, requires that the ancestors be commemorated on particular dates both within the family shrine and also at their burial place. Assuring a proper burial place for the predecessors is a sacred obligation that the horrors of the twentieth century have unfortunately made impossible in many cases. The celebration of “lost souls”, which takes place each year just before mid-autumn in the traditional lunar calendar, seeks to appease the spirits of those who have been deprived of burial.

Under such complex circumstances, it is difficult to settle on an acceptable classification of the minorities living in Vietnam. Taking into account the great “cultural areas”, one can distinguish for example the Cham, descendants of the Indian-influenced kingdom of Champa, the Hoa, Chinese in origin, and the Khmer, who live along the Mekong Delta.

Pioneers in a domain that has since been more fully explored by Vietnamese researchers, the scientific world owes a great debt to such French ethnologists as Georges Condominas, Jacques Dournes, and Jeanne Cuisinier, who devoted their lives to the study of the oral literature, customs, and beliefs of Vietnam’s Highland minorities.

Thanks to these efforts, one can now attempt a classification of Vietnamese minorities according to the ethno-linguistic groups to which they belong. The first thing to note is that every linguistic family of Southeast Asia is represented on the territory of Vietnam. Some of these groups were among the first inhabitants of the country; others arrived due to historical accidents in diverse epochs.

The Austro-Asiatic group contains those who speak Viet-mu’o’ng and Môn-Khmer. The Mu’o’ng, a group that occupies the mountains in the region of Hoa Binh and Thanh Hoa, are considered to be close cousins of the Viet. Less influenced by Chinese culture than their neighbors, they have conserved certain traces of the Dông So’n civilization of the first millennium BC.

The Môn-Khmer-speaking population, small islands of which are to be found from the northwest to the south of the country, mainly consists of small groups of Khang, Khmu, and Mang but also, in the central highlands, of Ba Na, Xo’ Dang, Mnông (a group severely affected by the Vietnam War), and, along the Mekong Delta, of Khmer.

The Malayo-Polynesian group (also called “austronesian”) consists of the central highland groups of the Gia Rai, the Ede, and also the Cham, the last descendants of the Indian kingdom who, until their elimination by the Dai Viet, occupied the Center and the south of the country. In the northwest of the country are to be found a dozen ethnic groups belonging to the Tibeto-Burmese family. These are mainly concentrated in the valleys and low mountains along Vietnam’s frontier with Laos and China.

The Thai-Kadai group includes the Thai, who occupy high valleys (from 600 to 900 meters) into which about a million of them moved beginning in the ninth century, and also the Tay of Lang So’n and Cao Bang, an earlier, more “Vietnamized” group.

The H’mong and the Dao of the northwest, members of the Miao-Yao group who occupy the country’s highest altitudes, only began to migrate into what is today Vietnam beginning in the eighteenth century.

Depending on their number (from several hundreds to more than a million), their social structure, and their stage of development, these ethnic groups enjoy very different lots. But, in general, their way of living differs radically from that of the inhabitants of the plains.

Rice Patty and Forest Civilizations

The rice patty civilization of the plains and deltas, which we shall examine in greater detail in the first chapter, is founded on the unchanging progression of the seasons: plowing, sowing, and extraction, followed by the transplantation of the young rice plants, weeding, irrigation, and finally harvest. The Vietnamese peasant, it is said, offers “his back to the sun and his face to the earth”. This way of life, shared by millions of peasants across Southeast Asia and Indonesia, is poetically captured by the image of the child who sits or lies upon the back of the water buffalo after whom he looks as it grazes. An indispensable and much respected partner, the buffalo is the peasant’s assistant in the rice patties. As the popular song goes:

“Oh buffalo, listen to what I tell you, my buffalo.

Come to the rice patty and work with me;

Work and replanting are the duties of the farmer.

Me on this side, you on the other, which of us supports the other?”

(Translated by Lê Thanh Khôi. Quoted from Aigrettes sur la rizière. Classic songs and poems of Vietnam, Paris, Gallimard, 1995, Connaissance de l’Orient)

The child – like the buffalo, an essential part of the family’s wealth – is typically pictured sheltering under a large round lotus leaf as one might in the shade of a parasol or lightly tossing his large straw hat into the air while picking off a few notes on his bamboo flute. Popular prints often illustrate this theme of the child and the buffalo, an image associated with the idea of peace and prosperity, something that has long been little more than a dream for the people of Vietnam.

In yet another domain of popular art, marionette performances on water (mua rôi nu’o’c) similarly illustrate the civilization of the rice patty. While shadow theaters, marionettes, and puppet shows are often encountered across Asia, marionette performances on water are an exclusively Vietnamese genre. Their origin likely extends back as far as the twelfth century.

History has it that these shows were first conceived by Tu Dao Hanh, a well-known monk, botanist, herbalist, and state servant, to celebrate the New Year and the end of agricultural labors in the village communities of the north. The performance, to which the entire community was freely invited, would take place in the village pond where a Temple of Water (Thuy Dinh) – a bamboo edifice covered by silk or cotton fabric imitating the tiled roofs and walls of an actual building – was constructed.

An orchestra composed of gongs, drums, two string violins and bamboo flutes stands in this structure, half submerged in the muddy waters that hid the long poles and complex systems of strings that permitted the marionettes to remain above water as they moved about. Lacquered and sculpted in jaquier wood, the heaviest marionettes, sometimes as high as sixty centimeters, were provided with floats. In scenes at once humorous and immensely poetic, the world of peasant life was evoked: pole fishing, frog trapping, duck fattening, rice planting and replanting, and harvest.

Swimming competitions and boat races also accompanied these popular celebrations. Other scenes, evoking both myth and history, were included in the spectacles. Sadly, these celebrations, once crucial sites for the reaffirmation of cultural identity, are today performed mainly for the benefit of tourists.

While rice patty irrigation can be practiced in regions of medium altitude, slash and burn rice farming is the only possibility for those who inhabit the highest altitudes.

Harvests, however, are meager and the forest thus remains an indispensable resource. For this reason, a number of researchers contrast the civilization of the plains and deltas with the civilization of the highlands and forests, or “plant civilization”. In recent years, this latter region has suffered brutal deforestation at the hands of traders in precious woods, Viet rice farmers who have begun to move into the highlands, and road builders, imperiling both the forests on which a large number of ethnic groups depend for their livelihood and the way of life and culture that has been inspired by these forests. This sad situation holds true not only for the primitive forests of Vietnam and Southeast Asia but also for forests the world over.

The history of Vietnam is also that of a necessary interdependence between the low country populations and the highland tribes. These latter have also played a constitutive role in the creation of “classical” Vietnamese culture and should not be neglected, whether at the level of poetry, music, or the plastic arts. Certain ethnic groups, such as the Thai, are characterized by a rigorous social structure and an original and highly refined culture; others, much weaker numerically, remain at an inferior stage of development and frequently find themselves in a relation of subordination with the others. Since the eleventh century, the Dai Viet and Champa, who when at war sought the allegiance of minority groups as well as their active participation in forming an army, have exchanged their natural resources with the mountain dwellers. In exchange for precious woods and such animals as the central highland elephant, a guarantee of military force and symbol of power, low country people have provided the highland groups with the rice and ceramics not produced locally. The history of the relations between these two worlds is complex and much remains to be written.

Nature and Culture

In all times, the builders of temples and pagodas have found, in the mountains, areas corresponding to their spiritual aims. But the irresistible spiritual attraction that the mountains seem to exercise on man is also expressed in the microcosm of his daily existence. In the courtyards of important buildings as well as the interior courts of private homes, one often finds sublime artificial mountains (hon non bô) whose dimensions vary from around several tens of centimeters to two meters long.

Pierced with caves, covered with mysterious swamps, decorated with ficus, dwarf bamboo and moss as well as miniature bridges, pagodas, and small human and animal figures in porcelain, the miniature mountains stand in a basin of clear water in which fish and small turtles swim. This tradition, Chinese in origin, has been developed in Vietnam to a rare perfection. Situated near the entryway of a building, these artificial mountains serve as protective screens while at the same time offering each passer-by the opportunity of calm contemplation, a return to one’s self, a moment of evasion in a perfect world – in short, paradise.

In the midst of luxuriating nature, certain trees are naturally charged with significance and become the indispensable landmarks for a population. Each place, each thing can harbor the sacred: an old tree, wherever it might be found, a tree or a boulder isolated in the midst of a denuded terrain or rice field, are considered as the place of residence of the earth’s genie.

It is thus that the banian (Ficus benghalensis or, in Vietnamese, cây da) is at the center of a cult in which it is offered incense, flowers, and fruits. The popular saying, “the banian depends on the genie and the genie depends upon the banian” (cây da cây thân, thân cây cây da), invokes the imperious necessity of mutual aid. The tree of awakening (Ficus religiosa or, in Vietnamese, cây dê) that one encounters in pagoda courtyards – so-called due to the fact that it was at its feet that the Buddha received enlightenment – is similarly honored. Because of its intoxicating perfume, exhaled when its flowers open each evening, the frangipani (Plumeria acutifolia Poir or, in Vietnamese, cây dai), which ornaments tombs and pagodas, is said to attract phantoms and spirits.

Other plants have also acquired a strong cultural connotation touching on the sacredness of family lines and hospitality. The Areca nut (Areca catechu, or cây cau), for example, that thin, proud palm tree, is used for the confection of chewing tobacco, a mixture that also includes Betel leaf (Piper betle or trâu không), a variety of climbing pepper, as well as the lime drawn from dried shells. This lightly astringent mixture produces a very light intoxication and turns the mouth red. According to a legend known throughout Vietnam, two twin brothers and a faithful wife, linked by conjugal and fraternal love over the course of a sad existence under the reign of the Hung King, were in death transformed into an Areca plant, a limestone boulder, and a thin beetle creeper. Betel chewing-tobacco, which parents not long ago had their children chew in order to maintain family lines and which they were offered prior to engagement, is less often consumed today but is still part of traditional ceremonies, whether at the altar or at the time of engagement.

Amongst the fruits made famous by literature and the arts, several are not without discrete erotic connotations. The jaquier, a tree that, in the countryside, is a symbol of wealth and prosperity (as in the expression “a home with tiles, a jaquier” – Nha ngoi, cây mit), possesses a thick-skinned fruit that, though not particularly appetizing at first sight, conceals a savory and sweetly scented, golden meat. The great eighteenth-century poetess Hô Huân Hu’o’ng, whose talent was only equaled by her unhappy life, wrote a famous poem on this disconcerting fruit (qua mit):

“My body is like a jaquier fruit on the tree.

Its skin is coarse, its pulp thick;

Sir, if you love it, remove it with your wedge,

Do not pulp it: its juice will run down your fingers”

(Translated by Lê Thanh Khôi, op.cit. p.152).

In the realm of popular art, the coconut (qua du’a) often appears in the prints of Dông Hô. The prospect of an abundant harvest incites a woman – Vietnamese women have a reputation for being very modest – to lift her skirt as far as her shoulders, climb a tree, and throw fruits from it as children lark about its trunk. The expression “limp as jade, white as ivory”, which sometimes accompanies the image, alludes at once to the delicacy of the fruit and the female sex.

If artificial mountains are a transposition of nature in the framework of urbanized human life, potted trees or “landscape trees” (cây canh) can be considered a cultural transposition of wild vegetation. The ceramics of Bat Trang and Chu Dau have produced since the sixteenth century sandstone and porcelain pots designed to hold dwarf trees. The Vietnamese have always excelled in this art and draw upon a large number of species, which they trim in symbolic shapes (“Walking towards the Sky”, “Maternal Love”, “Family Lines over Nine Generations”) while respecting the natural movement of the tree. Until quite recently, the horticultural villages of the Western Lake in the suburbs of Hanoi specialized in the production of these dwarf trees. Two species, the prunus and the kumquat, remain indispensable in social life. During the lunar New Year (Têt), each family buys its branch of flowering prunus, symbol of nascent spring, and its potted kumquat, the fruits of which, though inedible, nevertheless augur wealth in the coming year.

Triumphant Diversity

The kings of the Nguyên Dynasty (1802–1945) well recognized the natural and cultural wealth of the unparalleled Vietnamese diversity. In the Forbidden City of Hue, before the Pavilion of Splendor (Hiên Lâm Cac), they erected nine bronze tripods. Forged during the reign of King Minh Man (r.1821–1840), each of the statues is nearly three meters high and weighs between three and four thousand kilos. Magnificent examples of the prowess of local bronze-workers, these nine tripods feature reliefs depicting the country’s wealth: mountains and capes, rivers and streams, delta rice fields and forests, tigers, elephants, fish, birds, plants, flowers, as well as roads and ships. Their magical value is evident and supports the correlation between macrocosm and microcosm: the possession of an image of the world equals its real possession. True emblems of the Nguyên’s power, these urns directly refer to the magical tripods forged by the mythical Chinese sovereign Yu the Great, a civilizing hero par excellence credited with regulating the flow of rivers. Transmitted from one sovereign to the next as palladia, which legitimated power, the mythical tripods (which also carried the image of the country’s wealth) disappeared mysteriously when the reigning dynasty, due to its abuse of power, lost the celestial mandate.

At the other extremity of traditional society, the popular and typically Vietnamese cult of Holy Mothers (Thank Mâu) also draws upon the geographical diversity of the country, represented by the Holy Mother of the Sky, dressed in red, the Holy Mother of Water and Earth, dressed in white, and the Holy Mother of the Forests, dressed in green. They possess their own temples but an altar (or sometimes even a room) is generally consecrated to them in pagodas and other sites of worships (dên). Deeply venerated and feared by the people, they are the objects of sometimes very onerous seances that seek as much to appease their eventual wrath as to solicit their support in all the challenges of life.

The cult of the Holy Mothers was eventually incorporated within Taoism, where the Holy Mothers were made subordinate to the (very discreet) authority of the Emperor of Jade, Ngoc Hoang. Nevertheless, within Taoist theology, the Holy Mothers dispose of a true panoply of servants amongst whom are Princes, Mandarins, Holy Ladies and royal maids as well as spirit-animals. These include Mandarin Tigers (Quan Ngu Hô), symbols of the forest, and Serpent Lords (Ong Lôt), symbols of water, whose altars are situated in the socle of that of the Holy Mothers. While the serpents are always represented in grey and white, the five Madarin-Tigers, guardians of sacred places and companions to champions in the struggle against evil spirits, display the colors of the elements: Earth (yellow), Fire (red), Metal (white), Water (black), and Wood (green). In the past, their images were popularized by the lively, polychromatic prints of Hang Trông but, under diverse forms, they continue to grow old at the entrances of temples.