Mountain and water are connected, and the humanities meet—cultural exchanges between China and Vietnam promote mutual understanding between the two nations.

浏览量：47.0万次 发布时间：2023-12-13 17:02 来源： 作者：
China and Vietnam have deepened their cultural exchanges in the past 15 years since establishing a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership. The distance between the hearts of the two nations continues to shrink.
China and Vietnam are connected by mountains and rivers, and their cultures are similar, providing natural conditions for cultural exchanges between the two. TV dramas adapted from China’s four classic novels, such as “Journey to the West,” “Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” “Water Margin,” and “Dream of the Red Chamber,” have been widely spread in Vietnam. Nguyen Quynh Mai, a 26-year-old graduate student at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities under the National University in Ho Chi Minh City, said to reporters, “I am from Hanoi. When I was a child, every summer break, I would sit in front of the TV to watch ‘Journey to the West.’ I particularly liked Sun Wukong with his divine powers and the beautiful Queen of Women’s Country. Now, if you go to the old quarter of Hanoi, you can still see performances of the Monkey King, which attracts many people to stop and watch.”
On November 1, 2023, at Hanoi University in Vietnam, Vietnamese university students participated in a riddle game during the “Sing Together, One Song” China-ASEAN Youth Film and Television Gala event. (Xinhua News Agency, Hu Jiali)
Currently, the Chinese TV dramas that Vietnamese young people prefer to watch are mainly costume dramas and urban romance dramas. Nguyen My Anh, a director major at Hanoi Drama and Film University, told reporters, “Chinese TV drama scripts are well-written and well-produced. We love works like ‘The Journey of Flower’ and ‘Eternal Love.’ I will graduate next year, and Chinese TV dramas have provided me with a lot of inspiration for my graduation design.”
Music is also a spiritual bond connecting Chinese and Vietnamese people. Nowadays, songs such as “Mismatched Time and Space” and “White Moonlight and Red Mole” that are very popular on the Douyin platform can often be heard on the streets and alleys of Vietnam. Many young Vietnamese people will also sing along when they hear this music. At the same time, Vietnamese netizens’ popular songs like “See Tinh” and “Body Shaming” have also become popular in China in the past two years, and Vietnamese singer Chi Pho has also gained popularity among Chinese audiences for her participation in the Chinese variety show “Riding the Wind 2023.”
Since this year, the personnel exchanges between China and Vietnam have continued to heat up. On March 15th this year, at the Friendship International Port in Lang Son Province, local girls wearing Vietnamese traditional ao dai and straw hats presented flowers, and local people performed lion dances to welcome the first group of Chinese travel groups to pass through the land border to Vietnam after China’s pilot resumption of outbound tour groups. By the end of September, the number of Chinese tourists visiting Vietnam this year had exceeded 1.12 million. Ho Trong Tho, Deputy Director General of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism under the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, said that tourism cooperation is an important area of Vietnam-China cooperation, and the tourism industry is an important pillar of Vietnam’s economy. The return of Chinese tourists has injected strong momentum into Vietnam’s economic recovery.
On March 15th, Vietnamese officials at the Friendship International Port in Lang Son Province welcomed Chinese tourists with flowers. (Photo by Hu Jiali/Xinhua News Agency)
The future of China-Vietnam relations relies heavily on youth and educational cooperation. In December 2014, the Confucius Institute at Hanoi University was officially established. According to Luo Jun, the Chinese Dean of the institute, over the past nine years, the institute has actively organized various youth exchange activities. For example, last month, it collaborated with the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Radio and Television Bureau to host the “Singing Together” China-ASEAN Youth Film and Music Festival, attracting around 400 participants. The institute has also partnered with Guangxi Normal University Press Group to establish the Du Xiu Bookstore, a reading space for local students to learn about Chinese culture.
The number of Vietnamese students studying in China has been increasing year by year, providing more opportunities for Vietnamese youth to gain firsthand knowledge of Chinese history and culture. According to data from the China Scholarship Council, in the 2022-2023 academic year, there were over 23,000 Vietnamese students studying in China. Educational cooperation between the two sides mutually benefits and achieves success.
In the past year, China announced that it would provide no less than 1,000 Chinese Government Scholarship slots and no less than 1,000 International Chinese Language Teachers Scholarship slots to Vietnam over the next five years. This will help Vietnam cultivate high-level talents and international Chinese language teachers, greatly promoting educational cooperation between the two countries.
Ms. Nguyen Hong Ren, a lecturer in the Department of Chinese Language and Culture at the Foreign Languages University under Hanoi National University, believes that there is great potential for cooperation in the cultural and humanitarian fields between Vietnam and China. She is confident that both sides will further promote cultural exchanges and continue to strengthen the social foundation of friendship between Vietnam and China.
Editor: Xiao Xiao
Responsible Editor: Liu Liang