Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [370]
Vietnam’s ethnic minorities |
Minorities in the southern lowlands
As the Viet people pushed down the coastal plain and into the Mekong Delta they displaced two main ethnic groups, the Cham and Khmer. Up until the tenth century powerful Cham kings had ruled over most of southern Vietnam (See "The Cham towers and Tuan Tu Village"); nowadays, there are approximately 130,000 Cham people, mostly living on the coast between Phan Rang and Phan Thiet, or on the Cambodian border around Chau Doc, with a small number in Ho Chi Minh City. The coastal communities are still largely Hindu worshippers of Shiva and follow the matrilineal practices of their Cham ancestors; they earn a living from farming, silk-weaving and crafting jewellery of gold or silver. Groups along the Cambodian border are Islamic and, in general, patrilineal. They engage in riverfishing, weaving and cross-border trade, with little agricultural activity. On the whole, Cham people have adopted the Vietnamese way of life and dress, though their traditional arts, principally dance and music, have experienced a revival in recent years.
The Khmer people are indigenous to the Mekong Delta
Ethnic Khmer are the indigenous people of the Mekong Delta, including Cambodia. Nowadays only about one million remain in the eastern delta under Vietnamese rule, and some of these only arrived in the late 1970s as refugees from Pol Pot’s brutal regime in Cambodia. Khmer farmers are noted for their skill at irrigation and wet-rice cultivation; it’s said that they farm nearly 150 varieties of rice, each suited to specific local conditions. Traditionally, the Khmer live in villages of stilthouses erected on raised mounds above the flood waters, but these days are more likely to build flat on the earth, along canals and roadways. The pagoda, however, is still a distinctive feature of Khmer villages, its brightly patterned roofs decorated with images of the sacred ancestral dragon, the neak. Although ancient beliefs persist, since the late thirteenth century the Khmer have been devout followers of Theravada Buddhism, as practised in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. They produce fine silk and basketry and wear distinctive red-and-white scarves.
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Vietnam’s ethnic minorities | Minorities in the southern lowlands |
Hoa and Viet Kieu
Ethnic Chinese people, known in Vietnamese as Hoa, form one of Vietnam’s largest minority groups, estimated at around eight hundred thousand. Throughout the country’s history, Chinese people, mostly from China’s southern provinces, have been emigrating to Vietnam, as administrators and merchants or as refugees from persecution. In the mid-seventeenth century the collapse of the Ming Dynasty sent a human deluge southwards, and there were other large-scale migrations in the nineteenth century and then the 1940s. Until the early nineteenth century all Hoa, even those of mixed blood, were considered by the Viets to be Chinese. After that date, however, they were admitted to public office and gradually became integrated into Vietnamese society, so that now most have Vietnamese nationality. Nevertheless, the Hoa remain slightly apart, living in close communities according to their ancestral province in China and preserving elements of their own culture, notably their language and traditional lion dances. The Hoa have tended to settle in urban areas, typically becoming successful merchants, artisans and business people, and playing an important role in the economy. Ninety percent of Hoa now live in southern Vietnam, predominantly in Cho Lon, with small groups scattered through the Mekong Delta and the central highlands.
Viet people have tended to