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The first section provides the standard understanding of the concept of ‘đồng bào’ (hereinafter ‘đồng bào’). This understanding is widely shared by the Vietnamese populace for it to stand robustly and independently from any controversies. Then, implications of ‘đồng bào’ for two areas of bioethics—transplantation and ethics in crises—are provided. Finally, ‘đồng bào’ shall be developed for the purpose of global health.
Literal and original metaphorical meanings of ‘đồng bào’
In English, ‘fellow citizens’ or ‘compatriots’ are the terms used to describe people of the same ‘community’. ‘Compatriots’ defines the ‘community’ by virtue of soil (its etymology has the Latin term ‘patria’—‘fatherland’). ‘Fellow citizens’ defines the ‘community’ in terms of citizenship and links to the concepts of ‘polis’ or ‘state’. ‘Đồng bào’ is a Vietnamese word conveying the notion of ‘people of the same ‘community’ which occupies a decent position in the Vietnamese public-politic life.1 Though ‘đồng bào’ in Vietnamese is generally considered comparable to, translatable into and has been translated into ‘compatriots’ and ‘fellow citizens’, ‘đồng bào’ neither delineates the ‘community’ in terms of ‘soil’ or ‘citizenship’.
‘Đồng bào’ literally means ‘from the same fetus’ (‘bào’ is ‘bào thai’—fetus). ‘Đồng bào’s’ original metaphorical meaning derives from the Âu Cơ creation myth. The Vietnamese Âu Cơ myth stands out from certain other creation myths because, according to it, people are considered not only to have the same mother but to ‘have been conceived and born simultaneously from one fetus’ as opposed to ‘were born from the same womb’ as in certain other creation myths. People are not only siblings of each other. Rather, people share bones, flesh, blood and a bond forged in the common destiny …
Footnotes
X @HaiDoanThanh
Contributors HTD is the sole author.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
↵Another possible explanation is the diffusion of cultures, myths, folk tales, and words between adjacent localities, often with variations. It is open for further investigations in historical and cultural studies concerning these regards. These kinds of studies cannot be undertaken by this paper.
↵Jing-Bao Nie and Gareth Jones argued that the popular belief that Confucianism discourages transplantation is due to misinterpretation and misunderstanding of Confucianism. They studied original texts of classical Confucianism and other primary materials and employed and interpreted certain Confucian concepts to countervail the misunderstanding and misinterpretation of or related to xiao (filial piety). They can be true, but this paper is not capable of addressing their discussions. However, the belief is still popular. As a result, further supplementation from other ethical concepts can be needed to mitigate the belief.