Tìm về bản sác văn hóa Việt Nam (tiếng Anh)

The book Discovering the Identity of Vietnamese Culture
(Vietnamese title: Tìm về bản sắc văn hóa Việt Nam) that you are
holding in your hands was first published in Vietnamese in Ho Chi
Minh City in 1996. During the first four months after publication, it
was continuously among the top ten best-selling scientific research
books in Vietnam (according to the list of the publishing company
FAHASA). After less than six months, the book went through its
first reprinting. In 2001, during preparation for the third printing of
the book, it was significantly revised. Also during that year,
Discovering the Identity of Vietnamese Culture was translated into
French, and that translation was reprinted in 2006 and 2008.
Recently, in Taiwan in 2019, the Chinese translation was first
published. Although the task of translating the book into English
was started at the same time as the French translation, because of the
strict translation quality requirements, the result was edited and
revised by multiple groups over many years before it could be
published. Now, as the concluding phase of that long process, thanks
to the extraordinary efforts of Marc Young, with the mathematical
thinking of a former engineering student at Princeton University
and his deep command of Vietnamese language and culture, the
translation has been completed. Also working on Marc’s team were
Võ Thị Minh Hà, Vũ Đường Luân, Hứa Ngọc Tân, and many others.
Previous to Marc’s team, I cannot fail to mention the important
contribution of Professor Lê Xuân Hy of Seattle University and his
team (please see the Translators’ Preface for more details about the
members of these teams).
Undergoing more than thirty years of the implementation of the
national policy of Renovation and the holistic integration of Vietnam into the globalizing world community has caused
Vietnamese culture to go through many changes. In general,
research into Vietnamese culture, and my own research in particular,
have also achieved many new developments during that period.
However, those developments primarily relate to modern Vietnamese
culture, more than to traditional Vietnamese culture. Therefore, my
viewpoints presented in this book about the system of values in
Vietnamese culture have still basically remained the same, without
any changes.
From its first appearance until now, Discovering the Identity of
Vietnamese Culture has awakened extensive and eager interest from
the public. The beginning was a conference organized by the Trung
tâm Nghiên cứu Quốc học (Center for National Studies) in Ho Chi
Minh City on March 5, 1996, with the participation of many
researchers in different fields of the social sciences. Next were many
published articles in newspapers and magazines, both within and
outside of Vietnam – written by both professional specialists and
amateurs interested in the field. On December 18, 2010, a seminar
was organized by the Department of Anthropology of the University
of Social Sciences and Humanities, a branch of Vietnam National
University, Ho Chi Minh City, with the main speaker being Professor
Phan Hữu Dật – an ethnologist of the highest rank and former
chairman of the Ethnology Association of Vietnam. Most recently,
on the occasion of the publication of the Chinese translation, the
Center for Vietnamese Research of National Cheng Kung University
(NCKU), Taiwan, organized two seminars at NCKU and in Taipei
on December 25 and December 27, 2019, with the participation of a
number of scholars and politicians.