The text below is the excerpt from the book Art of Vietnam (ASIN: B07C2JLY7X), written by Catherine Noppe and Jean-François Hubert, published by Parkstone International. Situated on the eastern extremity of what is known as Southeast Asia, Vietnam finds itself at the confluence of two worlds. With China to the north and Laos and Combodia to the west, Vietnam has long been subject to a double-influence; one nicely captured by the French term, first introduced in the 1840s , “Indochine” (Indo—China). Endowed with a coastline more than two thousand kilometers long, Vietnam’s eastern seaboard gives it access not only to the Philippines and Indonesia, but also to China and Japan, commercial opportunities that were…