If we extend a hypothesis on this issue-if we have to choose between words and art, how should we choose?
Based on the importance of the two, I think it is of course to choose to keep the words and abolish the art. This alternative assumption may always be the assumption of the reality we see, but for the Vietnamese, they have actually experienced similar historical choices.
More than 70 years ago, with the order of our good friend Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese officially bid farewell to Chinese characters, and they quickly abolished them in a quick way.
Before that, Chinese characters had been used for more than 1000 years. Before the arrival of the French, Chinese characters have always been the cornerstone of Vietnamese civilization.
In fact, in the era of abolishing Chinese characters in Vietnam, the abolition of Chinese characters actually formed a trend, and many Chinese-speaking countries in Asia also started to abolish Chinese characters.
Of course, Vietnam is the most thorough and successful country, such as Korean and Japanese, and it is still related to Chinese characters, while the Vietnamese replacement word (called "Romanized Mandarin") has nothing to do with Chinese characters.
Now, more than half a century has passed, and friends who have been to Vietnam know that there are almost no Vietnamese young people who know Chinese characters except those tourist destinations mainly aimed at China tourists.
At the same time, a particularly dramatic phenomenon can be found in Vietnam. They can abolish Chinese characters, but calligraphy, an art based on Chinese characters, cannot be abolished.
It's hard to imagine that Chinese characters have been abolished and calligraphy still exists. Suppose they abolished calligraphy and kept Chinese characters, which is at least logical, but how can calligraphy be preserved when all Chinese characters are abolished? Can calligraphy survive without Chinese characters?
Of course, when Chinese characters were abolished in Vietnam, there was no proposal to abolish calligraphy, because as you can imagine, without Chinese characters, calligraphy would naturally have no soil for preservation, and it would naturally disappear without waste.
But the reality is that after the abolition of Chinese characters, calligraphy is still "alive" in Vietnam.
Today, calligraphy is still everywhere in Vietnam. Not only has it not disappeared, but it has become more deeply rooted in the Vietnamese artistic consciousness, because there is such a * * * knowledge in the Vietnamese subconscious-Chinese characters can be abolished, but calligraphy cannot be abolished! Why do Vietnamese think that calligraphy cannot be abolished?
In Viet Nam, thousands of years of folk customs mostly follow the tradition of China culture, so calligraphy is indispensable for both Chinese New Year and marriage.
The biggest application of calligraphy in Vietnam is couplets. Due to the preservation and continuation of this traditional custom, Chinese characters such as "Fu" and "Shou" have become one of the few Chinese characters known to Vietnamese people.
For Vietnamese, it is better to say that this traditional custom cannot be abolished than calligraphy-without calligraphy couplets and blessings, traditional festivals will be abolished, so even if Chinese characters are abolished, calligraphy cannot be abolished.
However, calligraphy, which has been preserved because of deep-rooted traditional customs, has gradually gone out of shape in Vietnam. Because of the lack of Chinese characters, the Latin letter Ku occupied the vacancy nest and became the basis of carrying calligraphy.
Therefore, apart from the traditional word "Fu", the calligraphy that Vietnam can see every day is calligraphy without Chinese characters, forming a unique "Vietnamese calligraphy" with Latin as its expression. This kind of Vietnamese calligraphy without Chinese characters is really hard to appreciate in China. "Neither fish nor fowl" is enough to describe how awkward this deformed calligraphy aesthetic is.
This may be the only cultural compromise that Vietnamese can make when abolishing Chinese characters. They watched Chinese characters leave the stage of their own civilization, so they could only leave an empty shell of calligraphy without Chinese characters to remember their ancestors and experience Chinese culture.