Literary Chinese in Vietnam

It was used for official business, historical annals, fiction, verse, scholarship, and even for declarations of Vietnamese determination to resist Chinese invaders.

Literary Chinese was a style of writing modelled on the classics of the Warring States period and Han dynasty, such as the Mencius, the Commentary of Zuo and Sima Qian's Historical Records.

[8] The northern part of Vietnam (down to about the 17th parallel) was incorporated into the Han empire in 111 BC, beginning a millennium of Chinese rule, interrupted only by two short-lived revolts.

[9] At first, the empire sought to rule their new possession indirectly through the Vietnamese nobility, but after an influx of refugees fleeing the takeover of Wang Mang (9–23 AD), policy shifted to assimilation, contributing to the revolt of the Trưng sisters (39–43).

[11] The next extant writings by Vietnamese authors are poems from the late 10th century, in Chinese, by the Buddhist monks Lạc Thuận and Khuông Việt.

Civil service examinations on the Chinese model began in 1075, and in the following year, a college was established for training sons of the ruling elite in the Confucian classics.

[15] Unofficial histories from this period include the Spirits of the Departed in the Viet Realm and the Wondrous Tales of Lĩnh Nam, parts of which were also incorporated into the Complete Annals.

His prodigious output included a history of Vietnam, collected essays on a wide variety of topics, anthologies of verse, and commentaries on the classics.

[23] The French abolished the examination system in 1913, and both Literary Chinese and chữ Nôm were swiftly replaced by the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet in the early 20th century.