Social relationships in Vietnam are very complicated and strict as Oriental culture originally and influences of Confucianism in Chinese domination period. They now are less strict than in the past but most of these cultural values have been maintained. In a Vietnamese family, family’s structure is patriarchy with the highest power in the hands of the oldest male.
In Vietnam, there may have several generations living together in a house as one family. Even when gender equality policy is implemented in practice, he still plays the role of a pillar in family. He has the ears of all family’s members and takes responsibility for almost businesses in family. Vice versa, the younger generation has to show their respect and gratitude to the older ones, especially their grandparents and parents. Thus, in Vietnam, members of a family have close relationships with each others, and are always glad to help another get out of trouble.
Vietnamese people always give care to the relationship with their neighbors as an old idiom: “A stranger nearby is better than a far-away relative”. At the time of emergence or holding wedding, funeral ceremonies, neighbors will be right there to help you, share the feeling of happy or sadness with you as a close friend, a close relative.
Besides, Vietnamese people always treat their friends with warm sentimentsas family’s members. For Vietnamese, friendship is a precious relationship because friend is the person you need when facing a trouble as well as the person you can trust and have his/her sympathy.
In Vietnamese society, teachers represent to knowledge and thus, they have high social status and respect of everybody. Yearly, Vietnamese teacher’s dayis celebrated on November 20th and it’s an occasion that students at all ages can honor and express deep gratitude to their respectable teachers. Also at that time, they usually give their teachers best wishes, flowers, and gifts.
Ideas about love in Vietnam are very different in compare with those in Western countries. In Vietnam, love is business of not only a couplebut also their two families. Although arranged marriage is no longer common in Vietnam, the voice of family’s members is still important to relationship of the two. Significantly, having pre-marital sex is not allowed by social conventions.