Wandering Through Vietnamese Culture (Lãng Du Trong Văn Hóa Việt)

The answers change. However, my question always remains the same: Howcan I best help international friends understand why I find Viet Nam so intriguing? Sometimes my answer is a book; sometimes, it’s a story; some-times, it’s a special person. Now, happily, Ha Nội’s Thế Giới (World)

Publishers has bound all three of those answers into one peerless volume: Hữu Ngọc’s Wandering through Vietnamese Culture.

Wandering through Vietnamese Culture is a compilation of Mr. Ngọc’s “Traditional Miscellany” columns, a popular feature in Việt Nam News for the past ten years. Every Sunday, Mr. Ngọc leads readers on a diminutive yet rich journey into some exquisite detail of Vietnamese culture. Each column is as deceptively simple as a single flower yet simultaneously as complex, for Hữu Ngọc both traces that cultural detail back to its roots and projects its growth into the future. Collected together, these articles become a Vietnamese “host of golden daffodils.”

Hữu Ngọc is a comprehensive scholar. His encyclopedic knowledge spans 3,000 years of Vietnamese history and 1,000 years of extant Vietnamese literature; it includes a thorough acquaintance with Vietnamese music, theater, and art; and it spans the traditions and customs of Viét Nam’s ethnic groups. Yet despite this erudition, Hữu Ngọc’s writing is neither arcane nor academic but instead, active and accessible.

However, this book is not just an eclectic potpourri. Mr. Ngọc’ brief introduction to Vietnamese culture providesa context for the individual cul-tural traits he explores. Further, scholars, researchers and writers will be grateful for the index. This turns Wandering through Vietnamese Culture into one readable encyclopedia and one comprehensive resource on Vietnamese culture in English.

Vietnamese have a saying: “A day’s journey – a basket of wisdom.” Wandering through Vietnamese Culture is the compilation ofa life journey – a view of what is special about Việt Nam as recorded by Hữu Ngọc’s “inward eye”. Readers who wander through Việt Nam with Hữu Ngọc as their guide will find their baskets amply filled.