Saigon-Hue #9

Chinese character on Mausoleum exterior wall. Hué, Vietnam. 

Vietnamese, unlike most of its mainland neighbors, uses a romanticized alphabet for writing. This makes Vietnam a somewhat easier place to navigate: despite the fact that I find Vietnamese extremely difficult to speak, you can at least read the names of restaurants and streets, which is impossible in Khmer. However, despite the fact that there is longstanding antipathy for China (but not the US, curiously)  Chinese characters are everywhere in Vietnam, usually ornamenting graveyards, pagodas and small shrines. Through Wikipedia, I learned that when Chinese influence took hold in the 2nd century BC, Chinese became the sole script used for official and educational purposes. By the 18th century, vernacular Vietnamese had grown in prestige and was written using both Chinese characters and unique characters that resemble Chinese. An alphabetized system was developed by missionaries in the 17th century, and more formally introduced by the French, who sought to eliminate Chinese systems from the country. By the early 20th century, following more widespread schooling, the romanticized alphabet was the primary written form of the language. It appears that Chinese, or Chinese-looking characters, are used exclusively for religious purposes, à la Latin in the Catholic church.

The French also tried to replace Khmer script with a romanticized alphabet, but a young King Norodom Sihanouk had rejected the idea, marking one of his first conflicts with the French colonial regime that had hoped he would be a pliant figurehead.