Promoting culture the young Vietnamese way

South Africans learn and experience Vietnamese lacquer art during “Vietnam Day in South Africa 2023”.

Contributing to that effort, many artists and young people have chosen the path of returning to traditional culture, using it as a fulcrum to create momentum, bringing Vietnamese cultural identity to international friends in new, attractive, interesting ways that keep up with current trends.

Everyone is an ambassador

Returning explosively after years of silence due to Covid-19, many young artists have become cultural ambassadors bringing the image of the country and people of Vietnam to millions of audiences around the world. They are accompanied by the ao dai, conical hats... and familiar Vietnamese songs that conquer friends around the world.

Male singer Trong Hieu in the Eurovision Song Contest Germany 2023 brought a conical hat and a traditional Vietnamese dress to the stage to perform in his important final night. He performed the song "Dare To Be Different" and made a highlight with the lyrics "My homeland Vietnam takes me away so far".

The final result of Trong Hieu's third place was not only a satisfactory result, but also helped him achieve his dream - bringing traditional Vietnamese colors and folk music to the international competition stage.

Young artist Hanbin (Ngo Ngoc Hung) is also very active in promoting Vietnamese culture as a member of the music group TEMPEST (Korea). He often speaks Vietnamese in group activities or teaches other members to speak Vietnamese.

Many of TEMPEST’s fans even said they are learning to speak Vietnamese to communicate with their idol. He also promotes Vietnamese cuisine when he has the opportunity to meet Korean stars on TV shows or sing “Mot con vit” on MBC radio.

According to Mr. Cuong Chu - founder of Big Arts entertainment company - the debut of some Vietnamese artists in Korea is a very strong lever not only for the Vietnamese entertainment industry but also indirectly promotes many other aspects of the country, people, culture, and tourism to international audiences.

Stepping out into the world, the “cultural passport” carrying the traditional values of the nation is what creates the unique identity and success for many young Vietnamese people. To promote Vietnamese culture abroad, in addition to tangible cultural products such as music, movies, books, etc., each Vietnamese person is a cultural ambassador with a personality that cannot be confused with any subject of any other culture.

In recent times, besides the contributions of artists, or large-scale programs promoting Vietnamese culture abroad, many young Vietnamese people have had new and creative ways to honor the image of Vietnam.

Taking advantage of the development of technology and social networks, content creators with their simplicity, closeness and creativity have contributed to increasing the coverage of Vietnam's image to distant lands. First, sharing life abroad, then introducing and promoting the beauty and spirit of Vietnam. While many young people of the same age choose to go to developed countries with modern industries such as Japan, Korea or European countries, the young man Quang Linh (born in 1997, Nghe An), owner of the channel Quang Linh Vlog - Life in Africa, chose Angola as his destination - a country that is not really developed.

In 2019, Quang Linh started filming his first clips, marking a turning point in becoming a YouTuber. Initially, the young man's clips were just honest recordings, reflecting the daily life of himself and his Vietnamese friends in a foreign land.

After that, the 9X guy recorded his and his colleagues' volunteer activities here. That was a clip recording the scene of distributing rice to Angolan people, donating food, clothes, building new houses, installing electricity systems for villages, bringing clean water to local people... The simplicity and authenticity in each film of Quang Linh creates a unique feature that attracts curiosity, mixed with pride about the young Vietnamese man in a foreign land.

Along with volunteer activities to help Angolan people is the effort of Quang Linh's group to promote Vietnamese culture in this country, through practical activities in life such as cooking Vietnamese dishes, going to schools to teach children to speak, singing Vietnamese songs...

It is hard to believe that in a country tens of thousands of kilometers away from Vietnam, heroic Vietnamese songs are constantly resounding, and Angolan children know Vietnamese children's songs by heart. Not only that, the 9X guy and his colleagues also organized Mid-Autumn Festival, Lunar New Year, Vietnamese-style weddings for the locals... cultural features imbued with Vietnamese national identity, the generosity of Vietnamese people in all the villages that the group helped.

With the rapid development of the trend, in addition to promoting through YouTube channels, the number of young people promoting Vietnamese culture through TikTok has also increased significantly. With the desire to promote the image of their nation to people across the country and international tourists, young people, especially hot TikTokers in the highlands, have been realizing their plans, contributing to spreading the culture of ethnic minorities and making them more widely known.

When mentioning TikTokers who are ethnic minorities, it is impossible not to mention the name Chao Thi Yen (Dao ethnic group in Bat Xat, Lao Cai). Not too fussy, the content in each clip is simply exploited by Chao Thi Yen to maximize the rustic quality, true to the style of the Dao people. Simple but not boring, topics such as writing, Tet, traditional costumes, cultural experiences... are all exploited by Yen through humorous narration, thereby attracting and helping people understand more about the culture of the mountainous region.

Chao Thi Yen shared: "The culture of ethnic minorities always contains good values. If not promoted, those values will lack influence and gradually fade away. Not everyone has the conditions to go to remote areas to learn about the culture of the people. Therefore, making promotional clips like this will help people, even if they just surf the phone, to understand a little about the culture and life of the highlands; create connections between ethnic communities. Further, it is to bring the culture of Vietnamese ethnic minorities to international friends."

In the common success of honoring Vietnamese culture and identity, it can be seen that the youth and creativity of each individual, like a cultural ambassador, has contributed to creating vibrant inheritances that attract international friends and generations of Vietnamese people living far from home. Following the trend of the times, young people must not forget their traditional roots, but must use them as a driving force towards the future.

The "Hai Ba Trung" watch model by Christophe Claret uses a painting by artist Nguyen Xuan Lam (Vietnam).

The path of integration with world culture

The flow of integration and globalization brings about the exchange of cultures. Amidst the mixture of imported foreign cultures, traditional values will be the “identity” for young people to affirm their uniqueness and spread Vietnamese culture in their own way.

Today's young generation does not simply "look back to the past", but they carry traditional cultural values and cultural heritage assets to recreate them in a modern and unique perspective. This has helped cultural values to be maintained and spread further.

In recent years, Vietnamese culture has shown encouraging signs with the growing interest of young people in reviving traditional cultural values. From their interests and passions, more and more young people are participating in restoring and creating cultural values from the heritage left by their ancestors; creating many projects and products that attract the attention of domestic and international public opinion.

Among them, we can mention famous singers such as Hoang Thuy Linh, Hoa Minzy, Ha Myo... who have tried very hard to exploit the beauty of traditional culture in their artistic products. Many movies have carefully made costumes, recreating the typical cultural features of the region such as "Tet in Dia Nguc village", "Hong Ha nu si", "The last wife"...

In the field of fine arts, there have been a few young people who have explored traditional paintings to restore and apply them to daily life. Also finding artistic inspiration from traditional materials, painter Nguyen Xuan Lam with the project "Repainting folk paintings" is one of the brave young people who bring innovation and creativity into his works.

Combining tradition and modernity, traditional culture and foreign materials, Xuan Lam has created works of art that bridge Vietnam to the world, such as the Buddy bear - a symbol of Berlin (Germany) with Vietnamese art patterns or the ceramic fruit tray with ancient Dutch and Vietnamese motifs. The more he researches and creates, the more interesting things Xuan Lam finds in Vietnamese art that few people know about, so that is also his concern to introduce Vietnamese culture to more international friends.

Reaching out to the world, recently in Australia, the first bilingual book in English - Vietnamese summarizing the ancient costumes of the early Le Dynasty was published with the name "Weaving the Dynasty" by the Vietnam Center group. These can be considered "silent messengers", connecting bridges that contribute to bringing Vietnamese culture to the world, leaving many marks in the international community.

There are many more projects to return to tradition by young people, however, how to turn these positive signs into a source of inspiration for a whole generation still needs a specific direction from management levels.

If we look at the broader scope of promoting Vietnamese culture to the world, over the years, we have had cultural diplomacy activities, promoting the image of Vietnam abroad, creating a resonance and good impression in the hearts of international friends.

Cultural activities abroad, promoting the image of Vietnam abroad are carried out on a larger scale, focusing on traditional areas, important partners in international relations and reaching out to remote areas that have little understanding of Vietnam. These activities resonate and create a good impression in the hearts of friends about the Vietnamese cultural and artistic traditions.

We also clearly see the increased presence, participation and influence of Vietnam at the world's largest, highest quality and most prestigious cultural events. International fine arts and photography exhibitions in Vietnam and Vietnamese exhibitions abroad in recent times have also done a good job of introducing Vietnamese culture, country and people, contributing to mutual understanding and friendly cooperation between Vietnam and other countries in the world.

In addition, Vietnam proactively participates and plays an active role in international cultural forums and organizations, notably the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), APEC, ASEAN, etc. Focusing on building and developing online promotion forms such as websites, social networks, publications, and promotional items.

Vietnamese cultural centers abroad have actively implemented many effective activities, contributing to developing relations between Vietnam and other countries, proactively promoting culture and tourism in the spirit of active international integration and expanding foreign relations of the Party and State.

The above activities are an effort to integrate Vietnamese culture with world culture. Although we have achieved certain results, we still have a lot of rich, abundant cultural potential, imbued with national identity that needs to be opened up. And to do that, we need to have policies to train generations of Vietnamese people to continue traditional values; promote and motivate young people to study and create to bring those values everywhere, introducing to international friends a Vietnam rich in identity.

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