Chữ Hán in the context of "Mandarin (official)"

The Sinosphere, also known as the Chinese cultural sphere, East Asian cultural sphere, or the Sinic world, encompasses multiple countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia that were historically heavily influenced by Chinese culture. The Sinosphere comprises Greater China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and historically the Ryukyuans. Other definitions may include the regions of modern-day Mongolia and Singapore, due either to historical Chinese influence or a contemporary overseas Chinese population. The Sinosphere is different from the Sinophone world, which indicates regions where the Chinese language is spoken.

Imperial China was a major regional power in Eastern Asia and exerted influence on tributary states and neighboring states, including Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. These interactions brought ideological and cultural influences rooted in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. The four cultures were ruled by their respective emperors under similar imperial systems, furthermore, the adoption of the Confucian-based imperial examination system deeply influenced the bureaucracy and social structure of Korea and Vietnam. Chinese inventions influenced, and were in turn influenced by, innovations of the other cultures in governance, philosophy, science, and the arts. Literary Chinese became the written lingua franca for bureaucracy and communications, and Chinese characters became locally adapted as kanji in Japan, hanja in Korea, and chữ Hán in Vietnam.

The Nguyễn dynasty (Vietnamese: Nhà Nguyễn or Triều Nguyễn, chữ Nôm: 茹阮, chữ Hán: 朝阮) was the last Vietnamese dynasty, preceded by the Nguyễn lords and ruling unified Vietnam independently from 1802 until the start of the French protectorate in 1883. Its emperors were members of the House of Nguyễn Phúc. During its existence, the Nguyễn empire expanded into modern-day Southern Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos through a continuation of the centuries-long Nam tiến and Siamese–Vietnamese wars. With the French conquest of Vietnam, the Nguyễn dynasty was forced to give up sovereignty over parts of Southern Vietnam to France in 1862 and 1874, and after 1883 the Nguyễn dynasty only nominally ruled the French protectorates of Annam (Central Vietnam) as well as Tonkin (Northern Vietnam). Backed by Imperial Japan, in 1945 the last Nguyễn emperor Bảo Đại abolished the protectorate treaty with France and proclaimed the Empire of Vietnam for a short time until 25 August 1945.

The House of Nguyễn Phúc established control over large amounts of territory in Southern Vietnam as the Nguyễn lords (1558–1777, 1780–1802) by the 16th century before defeating the Tây Sơn dynasty and establishing their own imperial rule in the 19th century. The dynastic rule began with Gia Long ascending the throne in 1802, after ending the previous Tây Sơn dynasty. The Nguyễn dynasty was gradually absorbed by France over the course of several decades in the latter half of the 19th century, beginning with the Cochinchina Campaign in 1858 which led to the occupation of the southern area of Vietnam. A series of unequal treaties followed; the occupied territory became the French colony of Cochinchina in the 1862 Treaty of Saigon, and the 1863 Treaty of Huế gave France access to Vietnamese ports and increased control of its foreign affairs. Finally, the 1883 and 1884 Treaties of Huế divided the remaining Vietnamese territory into the protectorates of Annam and Tonkin under nominal Nguyễn Phúc rule. In 1887, Cochinchina, Annam, Tonkin, and the French Protectorate of Cambodia were grouped together to form French Indochina.

Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary (Vietnamese: từ Hán Việt (IPA: [tɯ̀ hǎn viə̂ˀt]), Chữ Hán: 詞漢越, 'Chinese-Vietnamese words') is a layer of about 3,000 monosyllabic morphemes of the Vietnamese language borrowed from Literary Chinese with consistent pronunciations based on Middle Chinese. Compounds using these morphemes are used extensively in cultural and technical vocabulary. Together with Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese vocabularies, Sino-Vietnamese has been used in the reconstruction of the sound categories of Middle Chinese. Samuel Martin grouped the three together as "Sino-Xenic". There is also an Old Sino-Vietnamese layer consisting of a few hundred words borrowed individually from Chinese in earlier periods, which are treated by speakers as native words. More recent loans from southern Chinese languages, usually names of foodstuffs such as lạp xưởng 'Chinese sausage' (from Cantonese 臘腸; 腊肠; laahpchéung), are not treated as Sino-Vietnamese but more direct borrowings.

Estimates of the proportion of words of Sinitic origin in the Vietnamese lexicon vary from one third to half and even to 70%. The proportion tends towards the lower end in speech and towards the higher end in technical writing. In the famous Từ điển tiếng Việt [vi] dictionary by Vietnamese linguist Hoàng Phê [vi], about 40% of the vocabulary is of Sinitic origin.

The Chinese family of scripts includes writing systems used to write various East Asian languages, that ultimately descend from the oracle bone script invented in the Yellow River valley during the Shang dynasty. These include written Chinese itself, as well as adaptations of it for other languages, such as Japanese kanji, Korean hanja, Vietnamese chữ Hán and chữ Nôm, Zhuang sawndip, and Bai bowen. More divergent are the Tangut script, Khitan large script, Khitan small script and its offspring, the Jurchen script, as well as the Yi script, Sui script, and Geba syllabary, which were inspired by written Chinese but not descended directly from it. While written Chinese and many of its descendant scripts are logographic, others are phonetic, including the kana, Nüshu, and Lisu syllabaries, as well as the bopomofo semi-syllabary.

These scripts are written in various styles, principally seal script, clerical script, regular script, semi-cursive script, and cursive script. Adaptations range from the conservative, as in Korean, which used Chinese characters in their standard form with only a few local coinages, and relatively conservative Japanese, which has coined a few hundred new characters and used traditional character forms until the mid-20th century, to the extensive adaptations of Zhuang and Vietnamese, each coining over 10,000 new characters by Chinese formation principles, to the highly divergent Tangut script, which formed over 5,000 new characters by its own principles.

Literary Chinese (Vietnamese: Hán văn, văn ngôn; chữ Hán: 漢文, 文言) was the medium of all formal writing in Vietnam for almost all of the country's history until the early 20th century, when it was replaced by vernacular writing in Vietnamese using the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet. The language was the same as that used in China, as well as in Korea and Japan, and used the same standard Chinese characters. It was used for official business, historical annals, fiction, verse, scholarship, and even for declarations of Vietnamese determination to resist Chinese invaders.

Huaya ("flower seal"; Chinese: 花押; pinyin: Huā Yā; Korean: 화압, romanized: Hwaap; Japanese: 花押, romanized: Kaō, Vietnamese: hoa áp, chữ Hán: 花押) are stylized signatures or marks used in East Asian cultures in place of a fully written signature. Originating from China, the huaya was historically used by prominent figures such as government officials, monks, artists, and craftsmen. The use of stamp seals gradually replaced the huaya, though they are still used occasionally in modern times by important people.

A mandarin (Chinese: 官; pinyin: guān) was a bureaucrat scholar in the history of China, Korea and Vietnam.

The term is generally applied to the officials appointed through the imperial examination system.