Vietnam + China

Despite the history of imperialism or colonialism or whatever they chose to call it, I assumed the relationship between Vietnam and China was pretty solid. I must have gotten that idea from China’s influence on the Vietnamese language and culture – the two peoples share many customs and I’ve heard that half of Vietnamese words (which were once characters rather than Romanized letters) are taken from Chinese. Plus the whole communism thing really should have helped them bond.

Aside from a spat over some islands, I don’t know much about the political mood between China and Vietnam, but socially, it seems Vietnamese aren’t so chummy toward their neighbor to the north. Perhaps they still hold a grudge over that centuries-old imperialism, but the resentment is subtle and certainly not a part of daily life. You just notice it when locals refer to the South China Sea as simply the “South Sea” or when they joke that if goods are low-quality, they must have come from China.

I don’t know, though, if I would call this racism because Vietnamese are generally friendly toward Chinese-Vietnamese or other Chinese who’ve settled in Vietnam (apparently, some anticommunist Chinese who didn’t flee to Taiwan came here instead). They even have their own Chinatown called Cho Lon (large market), though I couldn’t really see how it was different from other parts of Saigon. But locals see the difference. Apparently, even the dragons aren’t the same: pointing to the large white dragon statue in the middle of one street, a friend who took me to Cho Lon explained that, among other qualities, Chinese dragons are much more fierce-looking than their Vietnamese counterparts.