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Vietnam has fifty national music instruments, in which the set of percussion instruments is the most popular and diverse. Vietnamese folksongs are rich in forms and melodies of regions from across the country, ranging from reciting poems, lullabies, and chanting. Traditional performing arts include cheo and tuong. Water-puppet shows are also a special traditional art that was ignited in the Ly dynasty. At the start of the 20th century, cai luong (reformed theatre).....
Music and Dance
Vietnam has fifty national music instruments, in which the set of percussion instruments is the most popular and diverse. Vietnamese folksongs are rich in forms and melodies of regions from across the country, ranging from reciting poems, lullabies, and chanting. Traditional performing arts include cheo and tuong. Water-puppet shows are also a special traditional art that was ignited in the Ly dynasty. At the start of the 20th century, cai luong (reformed theatre) appeared in Cochinchina with melodies of ‘vong co’.
The Vietnamese acoustic arts generally have symbolic, expressive and emotional features. Traditional stage performances relate closely to the audience in its combination of music and dance forms. Dance is an elegant affair and rarely filled with hard or rough movements, preferring the grace and sway of arms and body movements.
Literature
Parallel and deeply interacting with other cultural aspects, Vietnamese literature came into being at an early date with its two major components - folk literature and written literature. Folk literature held a great significance in Vietnam and made immense contribution to preserving and developing the national language as well as nourishing the Vietnamese soul. Folk literary works were diversified by mythologies, epics, legends, humorous stories, riddles, proverbs and folk-songs and featured the influence of Vietnamese various ethnic groups.
Written literature was born roughly in the 10th century. Up to the 20th century, there had been two components existing at the same time: works written in the Han Chinese characters (with poems and prose demonstrating the Vietnamese soul and realities; thus, they were still regarded as Vietnamese literature) and works written in the Nom ‘Vietnamese’ character. Since the 1920’s written literature has been mainly composed in the National language with profound renovations in form and category such as novels, new-style poems, short stories and dramas... and with diversity in its artistic tendency.
Written literature attained fast development after the August Revolution in 1945, when it was directed by the Vietnamese Communist Party’s guideline and focused on the propaganda of fighting and day to day working life. In Vietnam today, greater affluence has allowed the arts to flourish and for traditional forms to resurface. Hanoi, in particular, remains home to Vietnam’s finest music and dance troupes and renowned painters and artists that are achieving acclaim on the world stage.
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Vietnam Culture & Customs 
