The “Others” in Our Community: A view from the Lowlands

A very long time ago, Lac Long Quan – the dragon king from the sea and Au Co – the immortal fairy who lived high in the mountains met, fell in love and got married.  On the day of giving birth, Au Co bore an egg sac from which hatched 100 children who grew up quickly and became as strong as their father and as kindhearted as their mother. Despite their love, Lac Long Quan and Au Co became unhappy. The dragon king yearned for the sea while the mountain fairy always found her heart longing for the highlands. They decided to part and divide their children, of whom fifty would dwell with Au Co in the mountains. Lac Long Quan would lead the other fifty to live along the coasts. They made a promise that despite distance and separation, they will always look after each other and lend a hand should one be in need.

Source : Lac Long Quan and Au Co dividing their children

The children of Lac Long Quan and Au Co are, according to this myth, believed to be the ancestors of all Vietnamese ethnic groups. The fifty children that went with Au Co are called “highlanders” while the other fifty led by Lac Long Quan are called “lowlanders.” The legend has become the pride of Vietnamese people as it implies an unbreakable bond of unity for all Vietnamese. When Ho Chi Minh, the nationalist revolutionary leader of Vietnam, returned to his home country after 30 years being abroad, he wrote a poem that likened Lenin to a river and Marx to a mountain waiting to be “united in the same country” (Vietnamese: Kia suối Lê-nin, đây núi Mác/Hai tay dựng một sơn hà). The road to communism, for Ho Chi Minh, seemed to go from nationalism as he brought home a complex and alien ideology by linking the fathers of communism to a familiar Vietnamese mythical theme – the unification of mountains and rivers from Lac Long Quan – Au Co legend. This recurring theme of “national unity” appeared even more during the Vietnam War when the country was divided in two: North Vietnam backed by the Soviet Union and communist allies and South Vietnam backed by the United States and other anti-communist allies. Lowlanders or highlanders, bounded by their shared identity as “descendants from the Dragon and Fairy,” were ready to fight for a united Vietnam.

However, after the Vietnam War, the split between lowlanders (dominated by an ethnic Vietnamese elite: Kinh people, accounted for 86.2% of Vietnamese) and highlanders (mostly ethnic minorities) became larger. It is not just a geographical division but also a cultural and economic split. The living conditions in the highlands lag behind those in the lowlands, in part because many highlanders live in remote areas and are generally disconnected from the economy. Highlanders also have higher illiteracy and school drop-out rates than the ethnic Kinh majority, some of whom tend to treat the highlanders as an underclass. In the lowlands, highland ethnic minorities are seen by a lot of people as superstitious, backward and primitive while their “slash-and-burn” agricultural practices are regarded as the main cause for the rapid deforestation. Minorities are insufficiently represented in the government; the elevation of Nong Duc Manh (an ethnic Tay) to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party is an exception. Most highlanders do not speak Vietnamese and have customs of their own. The distance between the highlands and lowlands only contributes to the persistence of societal discrimination against ethnic minorities. 

Source: Highlands

Source (me): Lowlands (Hanoi)

As a consequence, many ethnic groups feel that they are being repressed, and ethnic minority activists started to emerge. Nevertheless, all these protests quieted down when the government arrested the leaders on charges of “causing public disorder” and “undermining the unity policy.” The problem of ethnic minorities, along with Vietnamese fear of Chinese encroachment in South China Sea, has always been central to Vietnamese national-security policy. For many years, the government has tried to address this problem by developing plans to strengthen national solidarity such as population redistribution and political integration. I personally think the gap between two communities has been generally narrowed as a result of government policy to acknowledge and celebrate cultural diversity. Customs and languages of highlanders appear more and more on television, in music and in our textbooks. Nevertheless, most of what I’ve learned in high school about highlanders were through stories of them fighting alongside lowlanders against foreign invasion to gain the right to national self-determination. In all of these stories, the state border is always the most important and relevant dividing line as lowland and highland ethnic groups are united within the frame of the Vietnamese nation.