Contributions of Indochina magazine in the process of modernizing Vietnamese literature and culture in the early 20th century

“…Holding a plow in one hand, but still looking at those who are long-backed and waste cloth, whenever one can throw away a useful plow, and pick up a rabbit-hair brush to draw deer or monkeys, to describe the sky and the sea, one throws it away immediately. Merchants and craftsmen always have to work hard when they have to. When they have enough money, thanks to a chisel, a needle and thread, they immediately go to work on welding, bowls and so on. The family business is left to the servants who don’t bother to do it anymore. As for Confucian scholars, they are smart and study hard, but they only try to get a pair of shoes and an umbrella, when they have it, it’s like someone who has a magic spell to open the door to the court. When they become an official, their ancient knowledge is no longer useful, so can that hard work be called

"Can labor be useful?" 130

In addition to the habit of favoring fame, superstition is also a long-standing disease of the Vietnamese people. Nguyen Van Vinh wrote several articles in a row to condemn this custom. The article Hoi Kiep Bac published in Dong Duong magazine, issue 14, is an example. Through the article, he criticized the practice of selling gods and saints, using a meritorious mandarin like Hung Dao Dai Vuong for personal gain:

“Everyone should know that the king appointed Mr. Tran Hung Dao as a supreme god, built a temple for thousands of generations to worship, just like in France, bronze statues were erected to show gratitude to great sages who had great contributions to the country, so that future generations would see them and remember the work of the ancients, not to capture ghosts or cure infertile women.”

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From the ignorance of the people, the sacred place becomes chaotic: "Every year on this festival day, the yard of Kiep Bac temple is still full of groups of shamans playing drums and cymbals, surrounding a woman with wrinkled skin, red eyes, a raised neck, dark lips, writhing and writhing, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing. The old shaman calls himself by name, sometimes 36 ghosts do it for one person."

130 Indochina Magazine No. 11

He suggested: "The evil of mediumship is really harmful, I think we should take this opportunity to show our foolishness and foolishness, which humiliates the gods and saints."

It is also a matter of faith, but in Dong Duong magazine No. 13, Nguyen Van Vinh focused on criticizing the Vietnamese people's half-belief and indecisiveness. He gave an example that although many people go to church to worship, when they go to temples and pagodas that are known to be sacred, they also worship no less than anyone else, with the view: "I also worship at my father's side, I also worship at my mother's side". Those who follow Buddhism or believe in the sacredness of saints and gods need not be mentioned. They chant sutras and recite Buddha's name, constantly saying "Namo Amitabha Buddha" but have no understanding of Buddhism. This worship and seeking benefits creates an opportunity for temples and pagodas to turn into places for trading gods and Buddhas:

“The Annamese people have one thing, they don’t know whether it’s good or bad, whether it’s religion or whatever they do, they don’t believe it, and they don’t believe it either. Therefore, there’s nothing that is truly enthusiastic. […] Because of that ideal, the Annamese people are born with an uncertain mind. Not only in religious matters, but also in daily life, they don’t do anything without enthusiasm and determination; they hesitate, they see others doing it, so they do it without thinking ahead. They don’t ask why they do it, and what happens after they do it. […] Because our people’s faith is not determined, their religion is not consistent, so the temples have become shops selling gods and Buddhas, and people who go to the temple don’t even know, they just bring in hundreds of silver coins to make offerings.”

In addition, Nguyen Van Vinh also dissected a bad habit that many people still consider a good quality of Vietnamese people: the habit of smiling.

“We Annamese have a strange habit of always smiling. When people praise us, we smile, when people criticize us, we smile. When things are good, we smile, when things are bad, we smile; when things are right, we smile, when things are wrong, we smile. With a grin, everything is no longer serious.”

He pointed out that inappropriate laughter is not only ineffective but also offensive:

"It turns out that my laughter is sometimes unintentionally cruel; there is a way of being rude and contemptuous; there is a way of cursing people; there is a way of being at ease without having to listen to everything."

"There is nothing more annoying than asking someone's opinion with a sore throat, a tired tongue, numb lips, and only a 'h' sound, praising without gratitude, scolding without argument, asking without reply, all the while just smiling, who wouldn't be angry?"

According to Nguyen Van Vinh, this way of behaving like “laughing at everything” is “a vulgar way of treating inferiors, an educated person would not dare to treat a servant like that”. According to him, the habit of “laughing at everything” of Vietnamese people is an improper attitude and not “the way of a virtuous person” as people think: “It makes us seem like (were) insolent people, not considering anyone. We should distinguish insolentness as a mean person’s trait from laughing at life as a discreet way of laughing” ( Examining our own faults - Dong Duong magazine, issue 22).

Another bad trait of the Vietnamese people was also mercilessly dissected: deceit, manipulation, and fraud, especially when dealing with the government. “When reaching the level of mandarin, some say yes and some say no, others say yes, each one competes to be deceitful. And our Annamese mandarins have already known enough. Therefore, the truly honest mandarins who love the people are the ones who know, every time someone sues another, to give each side a few lashes and send them away.”

According to Nguyen Van Vinh, “that bad habit is an old habit that comes from our society”. He explained that, since ancient times, under the oppression of the Chinese, the Vietnamese people developed that habit. Because the mandarins always tried to “lie to the people to get money, the people also tried to lie back to avoid trouble”. The common people had to bow to the “etiquette” of the mandarins, but in their hearts they did not accept that “etiquette”, which gave rise to inhibition and secret opposition. On the surface, they obeyed to keep their peace, but on the inside, they were aggressive and provocative. ( Examining our faults - Indochina Magazine No. 9).

Among the habits that Vietnamese people need to change, there is the habit of not knowing how to be frugal and save. This sounds absurd at first, because Vietnamese people are considered a hard-working and frugal people. However, according to Nguyen Van Vinh, that frugalness is not scientific, so the poor remain poor. Family

In the countryside, there are only two ways to save: “one is to hide it. Silver bars are stored in jars, the furnaces are stacked with tens of thousands of zinc coins, but they still eat grasshoppers, they dare not sew a shirt, they dare not rebuild a dilapidated house. Two is to destroy that money to their heart’s content, whenever they can, they can, why keep it?”

Both of these ways do not create wealth, do not contribute anything to society. Seeing the limitations of his people's habits, Nguyen Van Vinh also analyzed the causes that created that behavior. According to him, the deeper cause of this was due to the insecurities of feudal society: "examining the root of that habit, in our country in the past, the people were not stable. The mandarins were oppressive, sweat and tears all year round, fasting, saving to have extra money, so the "heavenly lamp" often looked at it, and the mandarins' heavenly lamp in ancient times, shining wherever it went, rarely revealed justice, but often stunned the rich man" 131 .

Not only do we need to change the way we spend money, Vietnamese people also need to learn how to dress in a civilized and polite way. According to the editor of Dong Duong magazine , "our people have a way of covering their bodies that is too vulgar". Both men and women do not pay attention to how they dress, so they are criticized by Westerners as uncivilized: "Some men stand in the middle of the street, their pants pulled down to their knees, not afraid of being seen by others. The same goes for our women, sitting in the middle of the market breastfeeding their children, or freely shaking their clothes, accustomed to treating their skin like a piece of wood, not caring about the eyes of passersby".

The reason for these inconsiderate gestures comes from “the nature of the Annamese woman who never feels moved by the sight of a man’s flesh. This is certainly true for ten thousand people. Therefore, men are free to be rude. Women who see her easily do not think much of looking down”. As for men: “from the past until now, the strict morality of our country has made us never think of a man with a husband and children. A woman carrying a child is someone no one dares to think about. Even if she is pure white jade, no one dares to covet her or look at her. A child

131 Nguyen Van Vinh, “Examining one's own faults” (The habit of not knowing how to be frugal and prepare for the long term), Dong Duong magazine

No. 12 , Jeudi 31 Juillet 1913.

The child in one's arms seems to mark someone's destiny. Every woman believes this, so when one has a small child, one has the right to be careless" 132 .

However, he believes that we cannot use the reason that our country is used to being casual with people who have families as a reason to dress casually. What is good should be learned, what is bad should be abandoned: "I think about it, whenever two races of people mix together, the race with less strength and less civilization must follow the stronger and more civilized race in things that are so contrary that it is an eyesore. That custom of giving in is a social custom".

In addition to the "obvious" bad habits, Vietnamese people have some bad habits that, although not many people pay attention to, "involve everything". That is the bad habit of "ideological confusion" 133. If bad habits such as attaching importance to food, laughing at everything, and dressing inconsiderately are common problems among the manual labor class, then the disease of "ideological confusion" is a problem for intellectuals:

“In literature, everything is a lie, nothing is real. Poet writes poetry about the Thai Son mountain, the Hoang Ha river, the high sky, the vast sea. The Tan Vien and Nhi Ha mountains are right before our eyes, but they never respond, […] so when we sing, we sing for others, but our own situation is like we are blind and deaf. Borrowing other people's words, even customs and personalities, but not knowing how to use those borrowed materials to create our own literature, to give it its own special features.”

Because of this disease of the Vietnamese people, it has prevented the renewal of customs and progress towards civilization:

“Our literature is only for embellishment and painting dragons and phoenixes. The few good things are almost too many, so the truth and false writing are very far apart, the ideas do not match the temperament, touching people's hearts in a false way, so it does not

132 Nguyen Van Vinh, “Examining one's faults” (Dressing carelessly and revealingly), Indochina magazine, issue 14 , June 14, 1913.

133 Nguyen Van Vinh, “Examining one's own faults” , (Mysterious account of perception and thought), Indochina magazine, No. 15 , June 21, 1913.

I see the effectiveness of customs. So I think we want to imitate Western civilization, so we should practice describing personalities, writing truthfully. And being able to tell the truth, whether bad or good, should be honored by the skillful pen, not be ashamed of being narrow-minded.

In fact, this disease has been dissected by intellectuals in the editorial board in most of the articles in the Indochina magazine . They called for educational reform, ideological reform, and learning from Western civilization, all with the aim of curing this disease of the Vietnamese people. However, to have a change, it is necessary to talk about it over and over again, until the Vietnamese people understand it: "Please keep discussing our own diseases, even if we change the book's section, we still keep the same idea so that we know the disease, and the doctor can easily prescribe medicine. In examining our own diseases , please keep digging to the root of the tooth and hair, and in terms of human nature, we will borrow words or translate them for our compatriots to follow."

To help our people progress, it is important to recognize where our nation stands on the path of civilization. According to Nguyen Van Vinh, “The level of civilization of the Annamese people is at a very strange level. […] It is not right to say that our people are children, but it is also not right to say that they are adults. Education is really mixed.”

The irony is that, despite this, people are conservative and refuse to acknowledge the good and the beautiful in order to move towards civilization and progress. Education is an example:

“In the past, most Vietnamese people studied without any formality, just kept studying, and found it more difficult to explain, so they thought their studies were better. Sometimes they studied for a long time but still did not understand, and their minds did not think about what they were learning, did not know how to think broadly, and when they saw the teachings of the Confucian scholars were good, they memorized them and were convinced that there was nothing better and that they should study more.”

Because of this thinking, they refuse to accept new and good things:

“I have tested this daily newspaper and know. In the popular section, the newspaper first translates easy things, then discusses profound things, philosophy, and pure reason. The readers say: Are we children, why are you teaching us elementary things? But if we discuss profound things, many people will not understand? But those who do not understand and do not accept that not understanding is not as bad as those who do not understand but act as if we understand everything.

go, and there are also ideas that are not as highly discussed as Chinese newspapers. […] I have seen someone read a newspaper and praised it: "What a clever way to find trouble!" and criticized it: "Daily newspapers are so bad!" Someone said: "What a joke!" Some people read through an entire article and found a few funny points, and laughed, but the laughter was in the small things, forgetting the meaning of the essay". 134

He ended the article with a lament: "How difficult it is to civilize a nation with incomplete education like our country, Nam."

This article by Nguyen Van Vinh reminds us of some verses by Tan Da Nguyen Khac Hieu:

“ A population of twenty-five million is not an adult, but a country of four thousand years is still a child” ( Mau Thin Spring Feelings - 1932 )

Great minds think alike!

Continuing with the theme of attacking the shortcomings in the Vietnamese people's ideology, Nguyen Van Vinh also pointed out another disease that needs to be corrected: "sitting idleness".

“Our Annamese race, and many races in Asia, have an old contagious trait of sitting around, doing nothing and thinking nothing. As we say, we don’t even bother to swat a fly that lands on our mouth. […] Many people have brains, legs, and arms, but they don’t count, they live without anyone knowing, they die without anyone knowing, they have nothing to do with human society.”

The author suggests: “That is a defect that should be corrected. We should learn the way of life of the intelligent races in Europe, then we can worry about how to gain weight to have a national identity and face in the world competition.”

Through the topic of bad habits of Vietnamese people, we can see the sharpness and frankness of Nguyen Van Vinh's pen. From seemingly small phenomena in life, he has generalized into a way of behaving, an attitude of life of Vietnamese people so that by looking at it, people can improve themselves. Civilization

134 “Examining our own faults”, Defects in our people's intellectual activities , Indochina magazine, No. 18.

Only then can the nation's customs be built up and developed. Only then can Vietnam achieve its goal of escaping from colonial rule more quickly and in a better way, as presented in the title sentence "Speak all, to know all, to cure all". 135

Through this column, the lesson that the editorial board of Indochina magazine wants to convey to readers is: the problem is not to pursue the Western model recklessly but to carefully analyze the shortcomings of the Vietnamese people in order to be able to correct and progress. According to them, the main shortcomings of the Vietnamese people mainly lie in the way they organize society: "All of our bad habits have only one root, which is the way of organizing, the way of establishing villages, giving birth to a separate way of education.

make people grow up, gather a binding idea about human destiny, about society". 136

Since the organization of Vietnamese society is not comprehensive, reform is absolutely necessary. Therefore, it is necessary to follow new methods.

3.3.2. Vietnam customs section

Since 1915, in the National History Supplement section of the Indochina Magazine , with a series of articles on Vietnamese customs, Phan Ke Binh also provided an interesting look at Vietnamese customs, through the special lens of an intellectual well-versed in both Chinese and Western studies. The articles in this section were later collected into a book called Vietnamese Customs and quickly became a widely loved work, not only among the people but also among researchers on literature and culture.

Although he was an intellectual of Confucian culture, Phan Ke Binh was deeply interested in folk customs and practices, which, according to him, represented an important part of national culture and thereby created the modern image of national civilization.

Vietnamese customs are divided by Phan Ke Binh into three chapters: the first chapter is about "customs in the family", the second chapter is about "customs in the village party" and

135 First part of Indochina magazine , 1913, issue 6 (July 19), pages 4 - 5

136 First part of Indochina magazine , 1913, No. 6 (July 19), pages 4 - 5