Short, clear introductions to the cultures of Southeast Asian nations are difficult to find. For years, I cobbled together collections of short articles and selections of literature for my university-level introduction to Southeast Asia and presented the historical framework in lecture. My goal was to entice students to investigate the material on their own or in a more advanced class.

On a trip to Việt Nam, an area outside my own research field in the Bahasa world of Indonesia and Malaysia, I had a chance to meet Hữu Ngọc and was given a copy of Wandering through Vietnamese Culture, a collection of his essays, which is over 1,200 pages. It served as a wonderful guide, containing answers to so many of the questions that had presented themselves. When Ohio University Press was considering publication of an excerpted version of Wandering through Vietnamese Culture, I was asked in my role as editor for the O.U. Press’s Southeast Asia Series to accept the Press’s invitation to make the initial selection of essays.

Hữu Ngọc originally wrote his essays as newspaper columns for international readers who, living in Việt Nam, had some acquaintance with the country. Yet all of us working on this project, including and especially Hữu Ngọc, wanted also to think of those for whom Việt Nam is completely new. Starting from an early draft Table of Contents, with Hữu Ngọc as expert and author, we worked together to crystallize his oeuvre into a first-taste introduction to Vietnamese history and culture, emphasizing the structure, factors, and individuals he feels are particularly important.

Việt Nam: Tradition and Change shimmers with Hữu Ngọc’s thoughtful reflections and insight. The collection is designed for students in introductory classes and for other readers interested in Việt Nam. I hope they will also fall in love with the rich cultural heritage of the people and nation that is Việt Nam.

Hữu Ngọc’s central thesis—“All tradition is change through acculturation”—twines through each of the book’s ten sections and through many of these short essays. In the first section, “The Vietnamese Identity,” Hữu Ngọc portrays what it means to be Vietnamese. He describes the values that shape Vietnamese character, such as the untranslatable word “nghĩa,” and explores the meaning of the customs that embody Vietnamese ideals: ancestor veneration, worship of mother goddesses, the naming of a child, the arrangement of a traditional Vietnamese house, and the deep emotional attachment Vietnamese have to the communal houses of their home villages. In encounters with “others”—the Chinese, French, Japanese, and American overlords who have tried to rule Việt Nam—the Vietnamese absorbed new values, translating them into their own Vietnamese vernacular. Hữu Ngọc shows that the Vietnamese are martial, but not militaristic; they are willing to fight to defend their nation but never forget the anguish that war brings. We see how the Vietnamese have blended their ancient Austronesian cultural heritage and language together with Buddhist traditions brought from India and China, with the value that Confucian ethics from China place on order, harmony, and scholarly learning, and then with the Western influence of humanism and individual liberty. Nevertheless, for Hữu Ngọc, Buddhism remains the “heart” of the Vietnamese village, while Confucian ethics and learning and rites are still its “head.” The ancient, quintessentially Vietnamese rites of ancestor veneration that bind a family, clan, and village together and the awe at the legendary powers of the spirits of nature as well as the spirits of national and local heroes are the roots that anchor Việt Nam today.

The second section, “The Four Facets of Vietnamese Culture,” illuminates how the ancient Việt (Kinh) ethnic group had its roots in Southeast Asia and defines the Việts’ earliest cultural descriptors (e.g., a wet-rice-growing culture and bronze drums) that Việt Nam shares with other Southeast Asian countries. However, Hữu Ngọc specifies the cultural aspects (e.g., matriarchy, mother goddesses, myths, and legends) that are quintessentially Vietnamese. He clarifies the four major facets of Vietnamese culture—the original Southeast Asian roots and the subsequent Indian-Chinese, French, and regional-global branches—and shows how the Southeast Asian base of Vietnamese culture persists today within a dynamism created by tradition and change through acculturation. Central to the features specific to Việt Nam and important in the Việts’ preservation of their cultural essence during foreign occupations is the Vietnamese language. Vietnamese has been the mother tongue of the Việt for millennia and, today, is the mother tongue for 85 percent of the country’s population, which includes fifty-four ethnic groups. Many nations, particularly former colonies in Africa and Asia, do not have this unifying feature of a common language, which is both ancient and modern.

Hữu Ngọc takes us deeper into Vietnamese Confucianism and Buddhism in the sections, “Việt Nam’s Confucian Heritage” and “Buddhism in Việt Nam.” Hữu Ngọc helps us understand the ethics Confucianism espoused and the cultural overlay it brought. He contrasts the Machiavellian Realpolitik of twentieth century international relations with the Confucian ethical spirit that condemns corruption, but he also criticizes Confucianism for its conservatism, for its contempt of commerce (an attitude, which produced poverty) and for its misogyny (which altered the deep roots of Vietnamese matriarchy and institutionalized rigid and destructive gender inequality).

Like Confucianism, Buddhism is a theme spreading throughout this book. We meet the “Bearded Indian,” who played an early role in Vietnamese Zen Buddhism. We also learn about retired King Trần Nhân Tông, who established Việt Nam’s Bamboo Forest Zen branch at Yên Tử Mountain, which we as readers visit. The section on Buddhism features an essay devoted to the female Bodhisattva, Avalokitesvara (Quan Âm or Quan Thế Âm), the Buddhist Goddess

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