Poetry and Literary Diplomacy: On the Literary Exchange Between Vietnamese Envoys and Chinese Literati

摘要

This paper mainly discusses the diplomatic way of Vietnamese envoys through literature during their mission toChina, including the group, communication mode and reason of the literary exchange between Vietnam envoy andChinese literati. The article points out that the Chinese literati contacted by Vietnamese envoys could be dividedinto Lingnan literati group (Guangdong and Guangxi provinces), Huguang literati group (Hunan and Hubeiprovinces), Jiangnan literati group (Southern Anhui and Jiangsu provinces), and Northern literati group (Henan &Hebei provinces and Beijing). There are three main ways of literary communication between Vietnamese envoysand Chinese literati: the first is to give poems to each other according to fixed rhythm;the second is to communicateby writing;the third is to comment on poems each other. There are two main reasons for the literary exchangebetween Vietnamese envoys and Chinese literati: on the one hand, they wanted to achieve the purpose of “poetrydiplomacy” with literature, and took the initiative to communicate with Chinese literati;on the other hand, Chineseliterati were curious about Vietnamese envoys, so they asked Vietnamese envoys to give poems, or even paid fortheir literary works. The literary exchange between Vietnamese envoys and Chinese literati is a direct reflection ofthe literary exchange between China and Vietnam, from which we can see that the Chinese literature of Vietnam inthe feudal period is an important part of the Chinese cultural circle.