Ten Categories of Vietnam Trivia Quiz

Answer: Monkey

The word "lutung" is from the Sundanese language and means "blackness". Also called leaf monkeys, they live in two main ranges: southeast Asia, including Vietnam, and in southern India and Sri Lanka. Lutungs are diurnal and tend to live in harems of up to 20 animals. They are herbivorous, and have multi-chambered stomachs to aid digestion of the leaves they eat.

Lutungs are of the genus Trachypithecus, meaning "rough monkey". In Vietnam, there are at least four species of lutung: Francois's langur, the white-headed langur, Griffith's silver langur, and the endemic Delacour's langur, which is unfortunately one of the most endangered primates of the world, living only in an area of about 2300 square miles (6000 square km) in northern Vietnam.

Answer: Hai Phong

Vietnam's cities are divided up into three levels with further subdivisions. The highest level comprises provinces and municipalities, the latter of which there are five, including Hai Phong. Hai Phong is a very important centre of industry, situated in the Red River Delta. Around 80% of its agricultural land is used to cultivate rice; although it is a port, fishing is only a minor industry here. Product manufacturing, from fish sauce to pharmaceuticals and ships, is also a vital area of industry in this region. Hai Phong has several universities and its notable people include pop singer Thu Phuong and painter Mai Trung Thu. The Gulf of Tonkin is part of the South China Sea. Written "Dong Kinh" in Vietnamese, Tonkin was used as a name for northern Vietnam in general during French colonization.

The trees mentioned are Delonix regia, known as "flame trees" and called "Phuong vi" in Vietnamese, or "phoenix's tail". Their distinctive appearance gives Hai Phong the nickname "The City of Red Flame Trees".

Answer: China

Leader Trieu Da (Chinese: Zhao Tuo) was a Chinese military governor who defected from the Han dynasty of China and became regarded as a folk hero in Vietnam. Upon his defeat in the Han-Nanyue War in 111 BC, Nanyue, as the land of Vietnam was called, was incorporated into the empire of the Han dynasty, and remained under Chinese domination for most of the next thousand years. In fact, the name "Vietnam" derives from "Nam Viet", the Vietnamese equivalent of "Nanyue". Under the Khuc clan in the 10th century, Vietnam did gain autonomy, but was not yet fully independent.

The Battle of Bach Dang River in the year 938 was won mainly due to Ngo Quyen's calculations of the movements of the Chinese troops that were dispatched to quell the rebellion of the Viet. The Viet fighters placed thousands of wooden pikes in the waters of the river, under Ngo Quyen's orders, and used shallow boats over this area to lure the deep Chinese ships in. Many ships became trapped, allowing the Viet forces to fight their way to victory, while over half of the Chinese army drowned in the river. The nation subsequently prospered under the dynasty founded by Ngo Quyen and those that followed. It was not conquered by the Chinese again until 1407, following the Ming-Ho War.

Answer: Fish sauce

Fish sauce was developed in what was then the Champa kingdom, which was located in the central and southern regions of modern-day Vietnam. It is made from fermented fish such as anchovies and can be used as a condiment as is, or made into a dipping sauce called nuoc cham, which has a less intense flavour. It contains glutamate which gives the sauce its umami flavour.

Fish sauce can be served with just about any Vietnamese dish, including cha gio (fried spring rolls) or com tam, a dish made with fragmented rice grains. Of course the most famous Vietnamese dish is pho, which is a noodle soup with meat. Its origins and etymology are debated, but it became popular in its modern form at the beginning of the 20th century. After the 1954 partition of Vietnam, people fleeing from North Vietnam brought pho to the south, where it had not been popular before.

Answer: Water

"Mua roi nuoc" literally means "to make puppets dance on water". This form of puppetry developed in the Red River delta from village performances in flooded rice paddies. The wooden puppets are guided on the water by the puppeteer, who uses bamboo rods and strings to masterfully create the characters' movements. To protect the fig wood puppets from the water, they are lacquered in many layers. Nowadays, shows are performed mainly in special pools on a stage and a traditional show is hosted by the comedic character Teu. Reflecting their origin, these shows usually focus on rural stories and folklore.

They are accompanied by a Vietnamese orchestra, with instruments including drums, bells, gongs, and bamboo flutes.

Answer: The Tale of Kieu

Like many early Vietnamese literary works, "The Tale of Kieu" was based on an earlier Chinese work, a 17th-century novel called "Jin Yun Qiao", or, as rendered into Vietnamese "Kim Van Kieu". Best known in Vietnam as "Truyen Kieu" (literally "The Tale of Kieu"), the poem has more than 3,000 verses and tells the story of Vuong Thuy Kieu, a young woman who makes great sacrifices to save her family. Although the original Chinese novel was a romance, many scholars believe Nguyen Du used his poem to create an allegory of the rise of the Nguyen dynasty around the end of the 18th century. It was originally written in Chu Nom script, a system formerly used in Vietnam using Chinese characters to write the Vietnamese language.

"On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" (2019) is a modern novel by Vietnamese-American author Ocean Vuong. "The Mountains Sing" (2020) was written by Nguyen Phan Que Mai, while "The Plum Tree Blossoms Twice" is a 19th-century poem by an anonymous author, based on an earlier Chinese work.

Answer: My Linh

Do My Linh (born 1975 in Ha Noi) won Best New Artist at the National Pop Music Festival in 1993 at the age of 18, which kickstarted her professional music career. Following her marriage to music producer Anh Quan, she began to branch into styles such as soul and R'n'B. In 2004, she released "Coming To America", an album that had majority English-language tracks and brought her music to more international audiences. She was also a judge for the TV show "Sao Mai diem hen", a singing contest for young artists.

Maggie Q is a Vietnamese-American actress and model. Xuan Dieu was a writer known for his love poetry. Le Duc Anh was the fifth president of Vietnam (1992-1997).

Answer: Cham

The Cham people form around 1% of Vietnam's population and are an indigenous group descended from the Champa kingdom in what is now central and south Vietnam. Historically, most Cham people were Hindus but now in Vietnam they are mostly Muslims. They form approximately two-thirds of Vietnam's Muslim community. Cham people also live in Cambodia where many of them are Buddhist.

Religious statistics are a bit obfuscated in Vietnam because folk religions are not recognised in censuses, so many of the approximately three quarters of the population marked down as having no religion actually follow these traditional folk practices. Government statistics are also said to underestimate the Buddhist population because many practice Buddhism without being a member of the religious organisations that are counted by the government. Folk religions have seen a resurgence in popularity in modern times and include the shamanistic Dao Mau, which worships mother goddesses.

Answer: Football (soccer)

The French first established clubs in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and some Vietnamese locals began to play and form their own clubs. The first Vietnamese teams were founded in 1907. Vietnam had two national teams while it was partitioned into North and South Vietnam, and after reunification, the united national team first played in 1991 at the Southeast Asian Games in Manila, Philippines.

In 2023, the national women's team qualified for the first time for the FIFA Women's World Cup. The stadium with the largest capacity in Vietnam is the My Dinh National Stadium in Ha Noi, which seats over 40,000 people. Nguyen Quang Hai is one of Vietnam's famous footballers; he has played for Cong An Ha Noi and the national team.

Answer: Austroasiatic

Austroasiatic is not to be confused with the Austronesian language family. With approximately 85 million speakers (2022), Vietnamese is by far the most commonly spoken Austroasiatic language, spoken by over two-thirds of speakers of the language family. It and Khmer are the only languages in this family that are official national languages. Others are official in their region, such as Wa in Myanmar's Wa State, and Mon, which is recognised as an indigenous language in Myanmar and Thailand.

Vietnamese is notable for its six tones which change the meaning of the word. Its word order is subject-verb-object and words do not change to mark grammatical case, person, number, etc. Like any language, it has been influenced by contact with other nations, especially Chinese, and in fact the Vietnamese language used to be written in Chinese characters. From the 13th century onward, scholars developed the Chu Nom script based on Chinese characters to write Vietnamese. More recently, around the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the use of the Latin alphabet became more common, and nowadays Chu Nom is only used by few people in specialised areas like calligraphy. The Latin alphabet used for Vietnamese uses diacritics to represent the language's tones.