Page 3 - Vietnam Destination Guide - Alluring Asia

POPULATION HISTORY Vietnam has a population of slightly The origins of the Vietnamese people are shrouded in legend. Recent over 88 million who primarily reside archaeological finds indicate that the earliest human habitation of along the coast and in the lowland northern Vietnam goes back about 500,000 years. Mesolithic and provinces of the Red and Mekong Neolithic cultures existed in northern Vietnam 10,000 years ago; these river deltas. groups may have engaged in primitive agriculture as early as 7000 BC. The sophisticated Bronze Age Dong Son culture emerged around the 13th TIME century BC. Vietnam is GMT plus 7 From the 1st to the 6th centuries AD, the south of what is now Vietnam VISAS was part of the Indianised kingdom of Funan, which produced notably United States Citizens require a Visa. refined art and architecture. The Funanese constructed an elaborate Your passport must be valid for at system of canals which were used for both transportation and the least 6 months from the date of irrigation of wet rice agriculture. One of the most extraordinary artifacts arrival into Vietnam. found at Oc-Eo was a gold Roman medallion dated 152 AD and bearing the likeness of Antoninus Pius. INSURANCE Because the standard of emergency The Hindu kingdom of Champa appeared around present-day Danang in treatment in Vietnam is not as high the late 2nd century. Like Funan, it became Indianised (eg. the Chams as in the West, it is advisable in adopted Hinduism, employed Sanskrit as a sacred language and addition to normal medical borrowed a great deal from Indian art) by lively commercial relations insurance, to take out a policy which with India and through the immigration of Indian literati and priests. covers evacuation. CHINESE RULE (circa 200 BC to 938 AD) When the Chinese conquered the Red River Delta in the 2nd century BC, they found a feudally organized society based on hunting, fishing and slash-and-burn agriculture; these proto-Vietnamese also carried on trade with other peoples in the area. Over the next few centuries, significant numbers of Chinese settlers, officials and scholars moved to the Red River Delta, taking over large tracts of land. The Chinese tried to impose a centralized state system on the Vietnamese and to forcibly Sinicise their culture, but local rulers made use of the benefits of Chinese civilization to tenaciously resist these efforts. The most famous act of resistance against the Chinese during this period was the Rebellion of the Trung Sisters (Hai Ba Trung). In 40 AD, the Chinese executed a high-ranking feudal lord. His widow and her sister, the Trung Sisters, rallied tribal chieftains, raised an army and led a revolt that compelled the Chinese governor to flee. The sisters then had themselves proclaimed queens of the newly independent Vietnamese entity. In 43 AD, however, the Chinese counterattacked and defeated the Vietnamese; rather than surrender, the Trung Sisters threw themselves into the Hat Giang River. The early Vietnamese learned a great deal from the Chinese, including the use of the metal plough and domesticated beasts of burden and the construction of dikes and irrigation works. These innovations made possible the establishment of a culture based on rice growing, which remains the basis of the Vietnamese way of life to this day. As food