VN01: General things

Well, before we begin our journey of exploring my less known Asian culture, there are some things I want to lay down first, so that we can be on the same pace and have the same background understanding of the matter discussed.

1. Our ancestors are extremely, very, super duper lazy in naming things. Most of the time, they follow the ‘magic formular of naming for dummies 101’: “Everything you can think of + ‘Tinh’”, with ‘Tinh’ meaning spirit, deities, demons, both good and bad. So, unless you want to learn about a bazillion different “Snake Demon”, we will refer to the creature not by their name, but by the lore in which they appear in.

2. Vietnamese myths and legends are very human-centric, as in gods are only respected because they help the people instead of being the deity of ultimate goodness, just and all powerful, being feared and obeyed etc. Please note that in Vietnamese myths when the gods turn evil and try to harm human, the men and women alike will rebel against them, and they will win.

3. Like any other cultures, Vietnamese fables have various version. We also home to around 54 ethnic minorities, all have their own fables, sagas, legends, folk tales, etc. I’ll try my best to introduce them, but mistakes and errors are pretty much unavoidable considering such an enormous number of fables, tales to cover.

4. There’s undeniably a huge different between cultures, so there might be things in this post you find disturbing, but pretty much are the norm in my home country. With that said, audiences discretion is adviced.

5. As you can probably tell by the broken English in these posts, I'm not a native English speaker, and my translator doesn't involve much in my blogs. So please pardon the grammar mistakes