From Confucianism To The Modern:The New Culture/Literature Movement In Vietnam And Its Relationship To The New Culture/Literature In Modern China

Focusing on the period of the late 19th to the early 20th, when Vietnam in its transformation from a traditional society to a modern one, this paper tries to make an analysis about this period and centre the probe on three questions: 1) How about the condition for the transformation of Vietnam Society? 2) How did Vietnam finish its transformation from the traditional to the modern? 3) How about the role played by the Vietnamese intellectuals in this process?Making a critical analysis about the thoughts of Vietnamese intellectuals, this paper outlines the nature and characteristics of this process, it maintains that what Vietnam really needed at that time from the perspective of those new intellectuals, was a kind of culture which is not only independent but also national, and modern as well. To build such a kind of culture, what Vietnam needed to do is to adjust the relation between the Chinese and Vietnamese culture on the one hand, and approach the wetern culture on the other.Furthermore, this paper emphasized that the Vietnamese intellectuals, from Nguyen Truong To(1827-1871),to Truong Vinh Ky(1837-1898),to Pham Quynh(1892-1945), all of whom make a great contribution to the establishment of such kind of a new culture in Vietnam.