Associate Prof. Dr. BUI XUAN DINH
Ethnologist
The southern region which covers provinces from Dong Nai southward is a vast delta formed by alluvia of Mekong and Dong Nai rivers. This fertile region with a two-season climate is characterized by thick rivers and canals, swamps and forests.
The region’s first inhabitants were owners of Oc Eo culture who had relations with owners of Sa Huynh culture in the central region, Dong Son culture in the northern region and Samrong Sen culture in Cambodia. Oc Eo culture laid a foundation for the formation of Phu Nam (Funan) Kingdom where major economic and cultural hubs (Oc Eo port in An Giang province now) were formed in the early Christian era. Phu Nam Kingdom had trade relations with India and the West.
The fall of Phu Nam Kingdom in the 7th century left the southern region unoccupied until the 8th century when the Khmer came after the fall of Angkor Kingdom. In the mid 17th century, the Viet, the Cham and the Hoa (Chinese people who migrated into the country in the late 17th century) lived together in this region, creating a cultural exchange between these groups.
Southern Viet people mostly came from the central and southern central regions as they were sent by Nguyen Lords to reclaim this region to create a land and economic power strong enough to compete with the Le-Trinh dynasty in the North.
For more than 300 years, generations of the Viet had turned the wild southern region into rich villages and vast rice fields, making it an important part of Vietnam.
As a recently-reclaimed region with particular natural conditions, southern Vietnam bears socio-economic characteristics quite different from the North’s.
Although living mainly on farming, southern Viet people make extensive rather than intensive cultivation given the region’s abundant and fertile land. With favorable land, water source and weather conditions, southern Viet people develop gardening, growing commodity fruit crops with numerous varieties. They also make the fullest use of the region’s rich aquatic resources and forest products.
Living in a region with a complex of canals linked with the sea, the life of southern inhabitants is largely affected by tides. Their work and daily-life activities depend wholly on the tide table. Floating markets are a unique trait of the region where sampans are the main means of transport.
Southern villages (ap), which are built on strips of land along rivers, are not surrounded by bamboo trees like northern ones, but are closely linked with rivulet systems. Residential areas are not separated from rice fields. Houses are simply built with bamboos and coconut leaves on the principle of tien vien, hau dien (gardens in the front, fields at the back).
Southern villages do not have typical communal houses like in the North. Thanh hoang (village tutelary god) were generals of the Nguyen dynasty or heroes during the anti-French war such as Truong Dinh and Nguyen Trung Truc.
Southern villages are socially different from northern ones. First, they were formed by immigrants under the organization of landlords and generals close to Nguyen Lords while northern ones were formed by communities under the organization of state mandarins.
Next, formed together with the establishment of grassroots administrations in the course of Nguyen Lords’ land expansion, southern villages were subject to administrative management rather than self-governance like northern villages which were formed thousands of years before communal administrations. Due to their late formation and with plentiful land, southern villages are not closely structured without clear discrimination between original and migrant inhabitants and thus have no village conventions.
Finally, due to an open commodity economy which promoted private ownership, southern villages saw a clear gap between landlords owning thousands of hectares of land and landless tenants while in the North where a closed and self-sufficient economy existed with different economic strata without a clear gap as the land ownership rate was low.
Living in a region with particular natural conditions, southern Viet people possess unique cultural traits. Culinarily, apart from northern dishes, southern Viet people have created new dishes suitable to the region’s natural conditions, prioritizing seafood in combination with meat of avian and mammal species and insects. Food is cooked, grilled, dried and salted. Coconut is a favorite spice. Southern food tastes salty, hot and sour. Goi (raw seafood served with vegetables) is a typical dish. Some dishes are learnt from other groups such as fried food and sour soup of the Khmer and fried rice of the Hoa. Living on water, southern people do not make sophisticated food and prefer to eat out even when inviting guests, unlike northern people who mostly eat at home.
Ba ba (black or grey blouse and trouser) and bandanna are the typical southern costume for both men and women. Women often have their long hair made into a bun or tied with a hair-pin.
Southern Viet people own a rich treasure of verses and proverbs which have been adapted to reflect geographical and economic characteristics of each locality. They also own rich folktales and humorous tales which reflect their harmony with the nature. Southern people have created different types of folksongs, cai luong (reformed drama), vong co (traditional tune) and dan ca tai tu (amateur singing).
Southern dialect, an indispensable part of southern Viet people’s intangible culture, which has been formed and developed together with Vietnamese national language, is consistent in different geographical areas while in the North exist clear dialectal differences between geographical areas, even between villages in the same area.
Southern Viet people’s religions and beliefs are relatively complex. They worship ancestors, tho dia (god of soil), gods of tree and rock, tiger and tien hien (village founders). They also conduct agricultural rituals like northern people. A typical rite of southern Viet people is cung le - a ritual in memory of the hard life of the founders of the southern region. Offerings which are simply made (fish is processed with a bamboo knife and cooked in an earthen pot) are put in coconut shells or terracotta bowls on a mat laid on the ground for worshiping.
Particularly, major religions such as Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam and Protestantism have been localized and combined with indigenous beliefs to form new religions, including Caodaism, Hoahaoism and Dao Dua (coconut religion).
Southern people who are carefree, open and easygoing do not attach importance to making a career through academic study, unlike northern people who are reserved and prefer to develop a career by hard study.-