Undergrad from Vietnam Spots Traditions in War

Ngo Vinh Long '68 originally sent the following article as a letter to a Harvard professor. The CRIMSON believes that it deserves wider circulation.

The author, the only Vietnamese undergraduate at Harvard, is a leader of the Vietnamese Students Association in the United States and a former secretary-general of the New England chapter. Before coming to Harvard, he was president of the Saigon Students Association.

Dear Professor,

I am a Vietnamese student enrolled in your course. Since I heard you mention your experience of having listened to some Vietnamese "epic poems," I venture to present you mine with the hope that again you will have the patience to read it through.

Being a Vietnamese, my basic education has been directed under these four most important laws: "hoc an, hoc noi, hoc goi, hoc mo," which means that I am supposed to learn to eat, to learn how to say things, to learn how to wrap up the things I have to say, and to learn to open up the things that others have wrapped up.

The first law is supposed to provide me with a guide-line in my relationship with people around me; in the family, when I sit down at the dining table I have to look around to see how much food is available there before eating; outside the famliy it teaches me how to be considerate of other people. The other three laws are supposed to teach me how to survive and to get along in the world. However, since I have been highly influenced by Western standards, I cannot but have some inner admiration for the concluding sentences of King

Lear:

The weight of these sad times we must obey

Speak what we feel and not what we ought to say.

The eldest hath borne most, we that are young

Shall never see so much nor live so long.

I was truly impressed the other day by your lectures on Vietnam. In a war in which the perfection of military arts and techniques outweighs all other considerations, the attention you paid to the Vietnamese traditions and culture as some of the factors upon which either the shortening or the lengthening of this conflict rests, demands my respect. If I am correct, in your lectures you mentioned that the Vietnamese, being mostly Confucians, usually behave according to the Confucian ethics. That is to say they seldom remain neutral in a conflict in which one side to the struggle turns out to be the decisive victor, since the victor is also the carrier of the "Mandate of Heaven."

But I think that Confucianism in Vietnam is as different from its Chinese counterpart as the Vietnamese themselves from the Chinese. In Vietnam, people operate less on Confucian doctrines as such than on Vietnamese principles. It is not the winning side in a struggle that usually carries the Mandate of Heaven, but rather the side which carries out the traditions or behaves according to the principles of the country. Vietnamese history is full or examples illustrating this point. And the present conflict is but only another of such examples.

In fact, I think that the secret of the Liberation Front's strength and the reason for its survival lie in its ability to act according to the Vietnamese principles although it may seem paradoxical that a revolutionary Communist-oriented movement should behave so.

In support of your thesis about the ambivalent behavior of the South Vietnamese people towards both the South Vietnamese regime and the Viet Cong, you also mentioned the Viet Cong's control of the population in the countryside "by night" and the regime's "by day." Many Americans would go a little further by saying that the Viet Cong's nighttime control is possible because it is coupled with an "evil and dark system of terrorism." President Johnson, in his Johns Hopkins University speech, talked of "innocent children and women being strangled in the heart of the night" and of "terror striking the hearts of the cities," etc.

Beginning in 1960 I went all around South Vietnam making 1/25000 military maps for the U.S. and I have witnessed many times the so-called Communist terrorist activities. They did not strangle "children and women in the heart of the nights" as President Johnson would like to think, but only murdered people very selectively. Douglas Pike, a USIS employee, has a detailed description of the way they carry out the murder in his book Viet Cong (pp. 247-250), so I will not go into that here. What I am concerned with now is the fact that the Viet Cong follow the Vietnamese principles even in this repugnant activity; for this reason they gain positive support of many people.

Traditionally, the Vietnamese authority forms a structure in which the Emperor (Hoang De) sits on top. He was the Son of Heaven (Thien Tu) who carried with him the "mandate of heaven" (Thien Mang) and was the supreme agent of the emperor of Heaven and Earth (Thueng De). For this reason he declared himself responsible for all the misfortunes afflicting his nation, whether they be war, famine, or any other catastrophe, since these are "thien tai" (disasters from heaven). At such a time he had to pacify the "anger from the palace of heaven" (tran loi dinh) by confessing his unworthiness in edicts, sacrificing in solemn ceremony, ordering fasting for his court, etc. . . . Under the emperor, we see the mandarins who had to see to it that "all under heaven" (thien ha) were to live in peace and prosperity. In fact they were known as "phu mau chi dan" (parents of the people) besides being administrators, judges, and educators.

At the bottom, most interesting and most significant of all, were the scholars. They were again divided into two groups: the "nho si" and the "dung si," which mean students who concentrated on Chinese Classics and students who concentrated on "bravery" (fencing, etc. . . .). These scholars worked together to protect the people from arbitrary court magistrates and from arbitrary court magistrates and from the court. They were elected by the local people to help them to safeguard the tradition of "luat vua thua lang" (the laws of the king are inferior to the customs of the villages).

The mandarins and the court magistrates were mostly chosen through an examination system in which the candidates competed at three main levels. After the local examinations, successful candidates would be allowed to take the district examination, the regional examination, and the palace examination respectively. Candidates who passed all the exams would be called the tien si and would be appointed as high magistrates or court mandarins. Those who passed the exams on the lower levels would be appointed to less important jobs. There were many successful candidates who, instead of working for the court, went back to their respective villages and towns and formed an informal local elite group. This latter group was very important in that while it represented the local people and the communities in dealing with the court, it also helped the court to reach the people. Since the court realized that the "laws of the king were inferior to the customs of the villages," the wisest thing for it to do in order not to have its "mandate from Heaven" revoked was to use these scholars who could usually effectively adapt the requirements of the court to the traditions of the villages.

When the mandarins or the magistrates maneuvered themselves into

The U.S., in building houses [for uprooted Vietnamese], arouses more resentment than gratitude. Why should the people be thankful when their ancestors' land and houses are destroyed and burnt up, and they are forced to "stretch out their hands and beg" their very enemies? powerful positions and became arbitrary, the "dung si" would murder them in order to protect the people.

Diem destroyed this 500-year-old tradition of democratic election of village chiefs. He began making local appointments from Saigon, and the appointees--many of them outsiders who did not know the customs of the villages -- were therefore met with open hostility by the villagers. The successive regimes after him followed suit: village chiefs are sent out from the School of Administration in Saigon and other places and they are required to carry out such laws as law 004/65 of May 17, 1965 which demands jailing, death sentences, etc. "to all moves which weaken the rational anti-communist effort.... All plots of actions under the name of peace and neutrality." These village chiefs therefore are bound to get into conflict with the local people, and the Viet Cong would come along and carry out the traditional role of the "dung si" or what many Americans call "terrorism," and get the ppeole's support.

We have seen one of the many so-called "evil" doings of the Viet Cong. Let us examine in turn some of the "good" doing of the American side. Let us suppose that in military operations such as Cedar Falls, the "allied forces" take every civilian out of his or her village safely, raze the village down as they did since it may be Viet Cong headquarter, then provide a nice modern house for each inhabitant along with all sorts of American "goodies" after the operation. Let us assume that if all this were true then what will the Vietnamese think of it?

It is the tradition of the country that the people should never forgive those who "dem voi ve day ma to" (take the elephants back to stamp out the grave-yards of the ancestors). Figuratively, it means that they should never forgive those who invite foreigners back to destroy their fatherland (in Vietnamese it is called dat to, which means the land of the ancestors). (This is the reason why the Vietnamese have sacrificed almost anything to repulse foreign invaders from Vietnam: the Chinese, the Japanese, the French, and hopefully "you-know-who" someday. Especially it is clear to many who the foreign invaders are in the present conflict!).

Since most of the Vietnamese are ancestor-worshippers, whether they are Buddhists, Confucians, or Christians, they also take the above tradition literally. Once the grave-yards of their ancestors are destroyed, they would do anything to "revenge for the souls of the dead" or otherwise they and all their children after them will not be able to "raise their heads" (khong co the cat dau cat eo noi) which means that they will not be able to get anything anywhere in life. In fact, in the past, the destruction of another person's ancestral grave-yard was a capital crime. Now the one insult the Vietnamese find it hard to tolerate is any slighting remark to their parents and ancestors. Thus it is not strange that many would fight till death because of this.

In Vietnam there is also the custom of "banh ech di, banh quy lai" (If someone gives you a cookie, give him back a pudding). The Vietnamese are very proud, they do not want to be mendicants. The worst insult one could give a Vietnamese is to call him a beggar (do an may !). Even beggars themselves do not like to be called "beggar" as such. The U.S., in building houses such as we have described, arouses more resentment than gratitude. Why should the people be thankful when their ancestors' land and houses are destroyed and burnt up, and they are forced to "ngua tay an xin" (stretch out their hands open and beg) their very enemies? Almost every Vietnamese knows by heart a folk-song which means:

This house, this house is ours

Our ancestors have built it with much hardship

We must take care of it and keep it

For ten thousand years, along with our country.

I think you know much more than I do about what the Vietnamese call the "ban cung hoa de tri" (impoverish [the1