Beginning learning English since they get 4-5 years old, watching foreign films and reading foreign literature, listening European music, enjoying Halloween and Christmas more than Vietnamese Mid-autumn festival or traditional Tet, urban children are getting “westernized.”
The word “westernization”, which has been created recently, talks about the tendency of “aping” the people of the western culture. With the tendency, people tend to speak foreign languages, play foreign games and enjoy foreign holidays, believing that the western culture is more interesting and enjoyable than Vietnamese culture.
The tendency has appeared when more and more Vietnamese people, in the integration into the world, have the opportunities to travel abroad, live or study in foreign countries. When returning to Vietnam, they also bring with themselves the foreign cultural habits.
Hong Anh, a second grader of the Hong Ha Primary School in Hoan Kiem district in Hanoi, was led by her mother to a supermarket one week before the Christmas day, where she and the mother bought necessary things for the Christmas party.
Hong Anh could talk clearly about what she would do on the Christmas day, to whom she would give gifts and what she would do with the mother. However, she could not answer the questions about the Tet holiday. Especially, she did not know what the most outstanding dishes are for Tet days.
Hong Anh is not alone. A lot of children in big cities like Hanoi, HCM City or Da Nang feel they are more westerners than Vietnamese.
The children want their parents to lead to fast food shops to reward their high achievements in studying instead of the shops of traditional food. They like eating pizza and drinking Pepsi more than visiting museums or parks on weekend.
Especially, wearing trousers with wide trouser legs, dancing hip-hop, and they feel uncomfortable when wearing Vietnamese traditional clothes. The children have deep understanding about graffiti, but they have nothing to talk about to he (a kind of children’s toy) and water puppetry. Many of them believe that these things should be forgotten in the modern times, when Vietnam has been integrating more into the world, and the country needs to acquire the best cultures of the mankind.
The Hang Ma Street, which is considered the “toy street” of Hanoi, has been sparkling on the Christmas and New Year holiday. Urban children wake up their parents early in the morning, requesting the parents to bring them to supermarkets and the toy street to buy Santa Clause’s clothes. The boys tell their parents that they want super cars and super-man toys, while the girls want beautiful dresses. They do not want to he or ao dai (Vietnamese traditional long dress).
While the traditional Tet will come in some 20 days, very few children expect the national special event.
Educators have expressed their worries about the so called “westernization tendency” of Vietnamese children in urban areas. While Vietnamese enjoy Halloween and Christmas with big family parties, they now tend to travel abroad on Tet holiday instead of staying at home and making dishes to worship the ancestors. Meanwhile a lot of women order fast food instead of making food at their kitchen. Who will teach Vietnamese children the Vietnamese traditions, then?
While urban children hurry to turn them westerners, there are still a lot of Vietnamese people, who try to educate their children to grow up as Vietnamese. A millionaire, who asked to be anonymous, still brings his child to a local primary school, even though he can afford the high tuitions set up by international schools. He said that if his son studied at an international school, he would not be able to learn about Vietnamese history, geography and traditions.
Ha Phuong
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