Search

The cult of Tianhou (Vietnamese: Thien Hậu) originated in Putian, Fujian Province in Southern China, was officially entitled Furen, Tainfei and Tianhou by Song, Ming and Qing dynasties, finally become the popular sea goddess in Southeast China coastlines. At around the late seventeenth century, Southern Chinese immigrated to Southern Vietnam, including the Mekong River Delta, hence the cult was introduced into the region. The whole region has got a total of 74 Tianhou temples (of which the Chinese built 57, the Vietnamese built 17 and around 100 temples of gods in which Tianhou is co-worshipped. After over three hundred years of cultural integration and social development, Tianhou has changed from the main functions of a sea protector to powerful multi-functional Mother Goddess of both ethnic Chinese (also called “ethnic Hoa”) and a great number of Vietnamese people. This paper is to explore the structure and connotation of the cult of Tianhou in the Mekong River Delta from the perspective of cultural studies, and applies Western theories of hierarchy of need, superscription and standardization in popular religion and rituals as well as concept of distinction between acculturation and assimilation to analyze the transformation and adaptation of a symbolic faith under the specific background of the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam. The research also aims to investigate the principles of reshaping and constructing contemporary cultural identity of the ethnic Chinese people in Vietnam as well as the activeness and flexibility of local Vietnamese in dealing with the external cultural practices. This case study plays an important role in shaping a systematic look of cultural exchanges and multicultural harmonization in Vietnam nowadays.

Vietnam is a member state of the “Han scripts Cultural Circle” which enjoys a long traditional culture shaped under the combination of local cultural foundation (internally) and many external cultural influences mainly from China, India, and the Western world. Among the imported factors, Confucianism is the most important source helping to shape the national traditional identity. The basic differences in nature between Vietnamese local culture and Confucianism have created various complicated but interesting happenings in Vietnamese history. In general, these two factors started in dispute, and gradually moved to accept and complement each other in order to co-exist and mutually integrate. This historical trend has contributed to the appearance of traditional cultural characteristics of Vietnam used to be called “the nation of civilization”, Vietnam attaches special importance to talents and to educating talents. Therefore, Vietnam’s states over the historical periods have had policies to promote study and finance, using the contemporary ideology as a template for character and lifestyle education. That sense was ingrained in Vietnamese people’s consciousness, partly regulating the awareness about future life as well as civic roles and responsibility in society. In the newly-claimed and exploited Southern Vietnam, people are still conscious of a classic humane education with two main objects, including educating moral personalities and training talents helpful for the nation. In this modern society, with many major changes in all aspects, the consciousness of building a suitable and effective humane education urges ones to think, to discuss, and seek a best pattern which both inherits the past traditions and associates with the present situation as well as ensuring all three educational goals, consisting of knowledge, skills, and attitudes (i.e. covering three categories of intelligence, talent, and virtue). This article, from the cultural historical perspective of Vietnam’s education, is going to analyze the Confucian cultural characteristics of Vietnam and their impact on the humane educating traditions in Vietnam. I will consider it as a foundation and motivation to discuss the factors that may affect the process of building a modern and efficient education in Vietnam.