A QUICK GLIMPSE OF VIETNAM’S HISTORY & CULTURE 英文專題－越南文化知多少？ NEHS@CTSP – English PBL Course 2017 CONTENTS Special Editorials ................................................................................2 A Quick Glimpse of Vietnam’s History ..................................................6 The Popular Food of Vietnam: Pho Soup and Spring Roll .................... 15 The Popular Food of Vietnam: Bánh Mì and Coffee ............................. 23 A Talk on Vietnam’s Pop Music ........................................................... 31 Students’ Reflection on the English PBL Course ................................ 40 ▲ Members of English Project Course 1 Special Editorials PRINCIPAL’S REMARKS AN INSIGHT INTO VIETNAMESE CULTURE It is a pleasure to say some words for the students who take the course of Vietnamese culture in the class and soon will have their papers collected and published. Here, I would like to give special thanks for the advisor’s instruction. From the booklet, I can see the hard work and effort the students have made to learn about core values of Vietnamese culture. Although the Vietnamese culture is complex because of the influence from many foreign invaders over the centuries, one thing quite sure is that the foundations of the culture mainly come from Confucian and Buddhist philosophies. Since 1954, there has been constant political conflicts between Communist and Republican interests, and the whole country suffered from poverty and political turbulence. The wars lasted until South Vietnam was occupied by North Vietnam in 1976. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam undertook various economic, educational and political reforms to improve their people’s education level and standard of living. By 2000, they had established diplomatic relationships with all nations, and in 2012, their GDP reached US$138 billion, with a nominal GDP per capita of $1,527. According to a forecast by some financial experts, Vietnam could be the fastest-growing country with a potential growth rate of 10% by 2025. Vietnam now is a rich and prosperous country and deserves our attention and respect. An old saying goes, “Those who respect others will be respected by others.” Another Chinese saying also teaches us, 2 “Know your enemy, and know yourself.” In doing so , I would like to encourage the youth who are interested in studying Vietnam to go further to explore the country and understand the country well. It is important to maintain frequent interactions with the Vietnamese people because the feedback of their viewpoints could help us better know their country. Further, the way to achieve the goals of mutual understanding is to show your care and respect. One thing we must keep in mind is that the Vietnamese tend to avoid direct conflict and don’t like lose to face in public. Also, when you get a chance to talk to them, you should try your best to speak in an indirect way especially on some sensitive and controversial issues, such as human rights, politics, religion, and privacy. Someday I hope that our school can further create a more active academic or cultural exchange with Vietnam through the sincere and mutual understanding of the new immigrants from Vietnam. Sincerely, I believe, when data and information about Vietnam become more accessible and transparent to the public, the authentic cooperation between Taiwan and Vietnam in the future could be enhanced. Lin, Kun-Tsan 2018/01/17 3 ADVISOR’S REMARKS THE WORLD BEYOND YOUR IMAGINATION: VIETNAM FAR OR NEAR? This course was designed to integrate a set of school-based curriculum in National Experimental High School at Central Taiwan Science Park. The class was intended to invite students interested in observing historical changes under the context of globalization and examining historical texts with a critical mind. Besides, this class also attempted to help students gain a better understanding of Southeast Asia and establish a connection with their life in the present and in the future. In this course, each of the students played the role of a historian and role-played their participation in a short essay on issues related to Southeast Asia’s history. To achieve the learning goals, they had to learn the historical development of Southeast Asia, elements of a historical argument, and procedures of the Big6TM. With the knowledge in mind and skills on hand, they illustrated issues about historical changes of Southeast Asia with their personal viewpoints, consisting of historical arguments without information problems. Languages and cultures of Southeast Asia played a part in our daily life with the population of immigrants from Southeast Asia increasing in the recent two decades. Following the New Southbound Policy and the new Curriculum Guidelines, our school also made Vietnamese language learning available to our 10th graders. However, their knowledge of Southeast Asia was limited. The insufficiency of their background information resulted from the design of their history curriculum, in which the history of Southeast Asia was barely touched and discussed. In fact, even to those students taking Vietnamese as their second foreign language, they had a limited understanding of Southeast Asia for being bombarded with learning a new language within insufficient teaching hours (one hour per week on average). Most importantly, most of the students were indifferent to issues in Southeast Asia for their ignorance and 4 misunderstanding of the world. As a result, the course attempted to help them gain a better understanding of Southeast Asia through the process of learning how to write a historical argument and solve an information problem. In the course, they were asked to observe the historical development of Southeast Asia and stated their viewpoints on historical changes related to Southeast Asia. Through the process, they had to identify their information problem and solve the problem by means of the Big6TM to clarify relevant issues and find solid evidence. Through the course, students were guided to think about the historical development of Southeast Asia critically and examine the historical texts independently. With the knowledge of being a critical historian of multicultural perspectives, they were expected to expand their cosmopolitan attitude toward the world and rethink the position on Taiwan in relation to Southeast Asia. In the language curriculum, they would be able to connect the language with the real context in their life. In the history curriculum, they would be able to think how their knowledge of history had been constructed and rethink whether such construction was valid and solid for them to understand the world in a cosmopolitan aspect. What’s more, when addressing multicultural issues in Taiwan or abroad, students could use a new spectacle to critique all the cultural phenomena with an open mind or a new historical construct. Most importantly, when engaging themselves in the sphere of Asia, they would become a freelancer, traveling between the boundaries of multiple cultures and transcending the regional borders of Asian nations. SHIH YONG-TING 2018/01/12 5 A Quick Glimpse of Vietnam’s History AUTHORS: CHANG, SHEN-WEI (張升瑋) LIN, TSE-HWA (林澤華) ADVISOR: SHIH, YONG-TING (施勇廷) I. INTRODUCTION These days, the French colonization brought a large influence on Vietnam. At that time, the Industrial Revolution began. Every country in Europe was eager to expand their territory, so France decided to invade Vietnam. The French made Vietnam’s economy prosperous, but they did it for purpose. They plundered Vietnam’s resources and freedom, which led to Vietnam’s vehement resistance. Eventually, according to the influence of WWII and the Cold War, Vietnam decolonized itself successfully. (林澤華) 前言介紹： 在現今，法國的殖民對越南帶來龐大的影響。在工業革命開始之餘，每一個國家 都渴望著壯大自身在國際上的影響力，因此法國決定以越南為殖民目標。雖然法 國給予越南經濟的繁榮；但法國是有特別殖民目的性，法國奪取越南當地資源及 人民自由，引起越南當地激烈的反抗。最後，藉由二戰及冷戰的影響，越南終於 成功獨立。（林澤華） II. CRUCIAL ISSUES (I) What was the attitude of European colonial rule on Southeast Asia? (1-3HW0524) 1. Summary: The colonial governments usually took a negative approach to dominate the colonized countries and they were reluctant to give the local residents higher education but fundamental communication skills or their local languages. The phenomenon came from the fact that the colonial rules were afraid of providing 6 higher education, which led to the vehement resistance of the local people. Furthermore, the labors who were controlled were exploited by the authorities concerned. The local workers were eager for a reasonable and normal working environment. Thus, the severe surroundings resulted in the fact that the workers had no enthusiasm to work continuously. In conclusion, it brought some bad effects on the colonized countries, such as their education and working environment. (林澤華) 2. Colonial education: The British government was discussing about whether to set up schools at the local place. They wanted to teach the locals basic knowledge but not too much, which could probably lead to a bad result. The British white-collar jobs would be taken, and their power would be threatened by local well-educated people. According to what Frank Swettenham said, “Whilst we teach children to read and write and count in their own languages, or in Malay, we are safe.” (黃奕緹) 3. Colonial exploitation: Obviously, it showed us a hard living situation of a plantation worker during the colonial rule in Vietnam. The worker didn't have any enthusiasm for their job. In addition, their bodies were not healthy. The article