This is not the self-satisfaction of the Vietnamese people but the assessment of foreigners. Recently, a Korean YouTube channel made a comparison between Vietnam and the remaining 9 Southeast Asian countries. They recognized many unique differences in culture, religion and political regime. This video has attracted more than 1 million views and more than 1,000 comments, including very long comments from Korean netizens. So why are we special?

First of all, it must be recognized that most Southeast Asian countries are greatly influenced by India. The Indus and Ganges River civilizations that began thousands of years BC are recognized as one of the oldest civilizations in the world with a profound influence on humanity. The largest religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism all originated here. Due to its geographical location right next to the Indian subcontinent, Indian culture easily spreads to the world.

Before the 20th century, the West called this region the East Indies based on its geographical location, from which they established large economic groups such as East Indies-Britain, East Indies-Netherlands, and East Indies-France, both doing economic work and deeply intervening in politics to maximize the exploitation of the colony. In purely geographical areas, the boundaries have been clearly defined and of course Vietnam belongs to Southeast Asia while China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea belong to East Asia or Northeast Asia. However, the issue we are interested in here is cultural space or geo-cultural area or geo-historical, cultural and in this respect geographical location has its importance but historical relationships and cultural similarities are the main basis. Also in the concept of cultural space, regional scope can have shifts in the historical process and is not completely bound by modern national boundaries.

Since ancient times, the process of Indianization has taken place strongly in the East, typically with the spread of Buddhism. Buddhist spreaders have gone in two directions. The first direction goes through today's Myanmar, through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and then to the Central and Southern regions of Vietnam. Indian culture spread further to the southern region of what is now Malaysia and Indonesia. That day is known as Southern Buddhism. In the second direction, Buddhist missionaries went to the Northeast, crossing the majestic Himalayas to reach the territory of China. From there, they blended with Chinese culture to create the Northern Buddhism line. Northern Buddhism spread from China to other territories from Korea to Japan and of course to Vietnam.

Particularly for our country, Northern Buddhism was introduced through the 1000-year period of domination by Chinese feudal dynasties in the North. According to the Buddhist culture of India and China, which also affects Southeast Asian countries, Vietnam is a very special country, where the North is influenced by China, the Central and South are influenced by India.

Until the 14th century, the southern territory of Vietnam was still the place of the Kingdoms of Champa and Funan where Indian culture was dominant. There was no special Southeast Asian country like this. According to researchers, although the world has hundreds of different peoples, in general, it only revolves around four major civilizations: Chinese civilization, Indian civilization, Muslim civilization and Christian civilization. Vietnam is a rare country influenced by two of these four great civilizations. Since 1948, the scientist Acodes has researched the process of Indianization of Southeast Asian countries from the beginning of the common era until before contact with the West in the early 16th century and believed that Funan, which established hamlets in Central and Southern Vietnam, was the earliest Indianized country. Meanwhile, Annam and North Vietnam were being sinicized. Thus, the author has distinguished two regions of Indianization and Sinicization in Southeast Asian countries and on the current territory of Vietnam, in ancient and medieval times, two regions of Indianization and Sinicization took place on the basis of the indigenous culture of Southeast Asian residents and South Asian culture.

Later, with the progress of the Vietnamese feudal dynasties to the South, Chinese or Sinicized civilization was replaced by Indian civilization in the Central and Southern regions. Countries such as Champa and Funan collapsed and disappeared from the map and the people were gradually assimilated into East Asian civilization. Our country today belongs entirely to the Sinicized world including seven countries and territories of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, North Korea, South Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Singapore in Southeast Asia can also be classified in this category with 75% of the population being of Chinese origin. However, they must not assume that the culture is characterized by ethnic diversity including Indians, Malays, Westerners and Muslims. The cult of Chinese culture in the monarchy dynasties was copied as much as possible from the language, customs, costumes, and heroes. People and scholars worshiped Guan Yu and Confucius. In exams to recruit talented people, they used the Four Books, Five Classics, Four History, and the experiences of governing the country of the Northern feudal dynasties.

The first university in Vietnam, Quoc Quoc Tu Giam, worshiped Confucius. Only later did Chu Van An, a Vietnamese, join the worship team. The influence of East Asia is most clearly shown in writing. After 1,000 years of Northern domination, Vietnam's feudal dynasties used Chinese characters as the main script. Although we still retain our own language and are not assimilated to China, our writing is completely borrowed from them. Then in the 10th century AD, the Nom script was created specifically for the Vietnamese people, but it was basically based on Chinese characters. This is very similar to other Dong Van countries such as North Korea, South Korea and Japan.

Koreans also used Chinese characters as their national language until the 20th century when they completely abandoned them and used their own set of characters, hanku. As for the Japanese Tao Quoc, in their current writing there is a separate set of Chinese characters that demonstrate the profound influence of Chinese culture over thousands of years. Thus, while Southeast Asian countries write based on Indian Sanskrit, Vietnam is the only country that writes based on Chinese. It was not until the 20th century that the Portuguese created the national language written in Latin characters. Since then, Vietnam has completely abandoned Chinese characters. Vietnam's political system is also almost different from the rest.

Southeast Asian countries all build states according to multi-party capitalism, some countries still retain kings such as Thailand and Cambodia. However, they are all symbolic and have little grasp of real power. Vietnam and Laos, respectively, follow a socialist regime with only one party at the helm. Of course, any political system has its advantages and disadvantages, but the one-party political regime helps policies and policies to be highly unified from top to bottom, and the direction is less interrupted by short terms like multi-party countries.

Korean netizens have commented that although building a Communist regime seems atheistic. However, in daily life, Vietnamese people believe very much in religion. Although the largest religion is Buddhism, the influence of Taoism and Confucianism here is not small. The concept of "loyalty and patriotism, respecting righteousness and virtue, respecting men over women" from China has penetrated deeply into many generations of Vietnamese people over thousands of years and still exists today. Everyone celebrates Lunar New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival just like East Asian countries, China, Korea, Korea, and Japan. In addition to the western solar calendar, the lunar calendar still exists in parallel and people still consider the time and date of physiognomy and worship according to this lunar calendar.

In terms of demographics, Vietnamese people have smooth white skin and straight hair and are somewhat more attractive than other Southeast Asian countries, while Indonesians, Malaysians, Thais, and Cambodians have dark skin and curly hair. Perhaps in terms of anthropology, Vietnamese people inherit from the ancestors of the Bach Viet tribes living in southern China in ancient times. Today, globalization has emerged from economic culture and costumes. Every country has copied the Western model. Between countries, we do not need to see too big cultural differences. However, before the storm of Western assimilation swept across every country and every nation still tried to preserve their traditional values ​​to some extent, so did Vietnam.

Although Vietnamese culture has been mixed through many changes in the history of war, it still retains East Asian features and is different from the rest of Southeast Asia.