We were all keen to play cards but could not play for long. Relatives and other villagers kept coming with their season’s greetings and we always had to break up to greet and entertain them. A colorful event was the visit by the canton chief, who arrived on horseback at the head of a delegation of officials. Wearing a black satin dress with a wide belt in red silk wrapped around his waist, his head under a shiny black turban, he cut a stately figure. Officials followed him on foot. Behind them came porters carrying offerings. My father came out to meet them at the gate; a welcoming string of firecrackers was lit, which made the horse jump wildly. The delegation paid their respects to our ancestors’ altar, wine and crystallized fruit were served, and then came the exchange of greetings. The canton chief had a powerful baritone voice. With the help of wine, his greetings were delivered loudly and in flowery language. Other delegates followed suit. As the meeting progressed and more wine was consumed, the greetings became louder and more elaborate. On our family’s side, my grandmother had a vibrant voice and a spontaneous laugh that had won her much affection. Whereas her husband expressed himself briefly, she always responded with a verve equal to that of the visitors. The sound of voices and laughter echoed up the gate house. As our guests left, they were bidden farewell by another explosion of firecrackers.
After lunch, we still were not left alone because now, on top of receiving guests, members of the family had to call on those who had visited us to return the courtesy. It was a busy day for everyone. Not until the evening, after dinner had been taken, could we finally concentrate on playing cards. Some of us continued to play until the early hours of the morning.
On the altar were offerings of traditional round and square cakes and special dishes prepared for Tet, most of which were based on chicken. Chicken in the Vietnamese scholarly language is ke which, in our colloquial language, means money. Thus, people believed that by eating chicken at Tet, they would have plenty of money during the year. On the first day of Tet, two big capons were boiled in two very large pots-the pots must be large enough so that the birds were intact from crest to feet-after which they were placed on two brass trays and decorated with flowers. One capon was sent to the Communal Hall as an offering to the village deities, the other went to an altar especially set up in honor of the deities who presided over our ancestral home. Several dishes for the feast of Tet had a base of chicken broth, such as swallow’s nest soup and dragon’s beard soup. We had bamboo shoot soup too, which normally was not a prized dish for banquets, but the shoots here were taken from a species of small bamboo special to our region called truc sang. These shoots had a delicate flavor and were the only ones tender enough for my old great-grandmother to eat. The next day, it was customary for our family to have a dish called kin tien ke. There can be no better name for a Tet dish, for these three words all mean money. My mother was especially good at preparing that dish, which was a great favorite of mine. It was she who introduced it to the Nguyen family after her marriage and such was its success that since then, every year it was on our menu for the second day. Its three layers of chicken, fat and ham were marinated in sweet brandy, then grilled over charcoal and served on a bed of lettuce. On the third day, we usually had a noodle soup prepared with chicken, prawns, pork sausage and flavored with a special condiment taken from a species of beetle called ca cuong. That condiment is one of the most ancient and expensive in our food. History books recorded that, as far back as the year 181 B.C., a basket of such beetles was among the tributes sent to the Han Court in China. These beetles have at the base of their neck a single drop of an oily substance. Just a tiny portion of that drop would suffice to give a delicious aroma to a whole bowl of soup.
The second day of Tet was marked by visits. The first to arrive was my great-uncle. As head of a junior branch, he stayed in Hanoi to welcome the New Year with his own family. Early on the second day, he returned to the ancestral home, riding a rickshaw and accompanied by one or two of his children. Grandfather waited for him before celebrating the day’s service at the ancestors’ altar. Great-uncle knelt and bowed. He presented to his mother, his elder brother and sister-in-law his New Year’s greetings. His nephews, nieces, grand-nephews and grand-nieces took turns to wish him a happy New Year and to receive from him the traditional money gift. These formalities over, great-uncle immediately joined a game of to tom, for he was a very keen player. Aunts of mine who were married visited with their husbands and that meant to us children more greetings and more coins. Other relatives and friends would also make the trip to Kim Bai on that day. Some came in their motor cars and created quite a stir in the village, as cars were still a rarity in those days.
Among the visitors on the second day, two people stood out in my mind. The first one was a former student of grandfather who, eventually, married his niece and became head of a prefecture. Uncle Prefect Tam, as I called him, belonged to the old school of learning based on the scholarly script. A favorite pastime among scholars was for a person to write a poem and for others to respond by producing other poems on the same theme and using the same rhymes. It was akin to “variations on a theme” in Western classical music. Tet and the coming of spring have inspired many a poet and every year, Prefect Tam had a poem to show to his former teacher. But he was quite reluctant to produce it and only did so after much prompting. Finally, he recited the poem in modulated tones. Grandfather and other elders, who had all stopped their games of to torn to listen, congratulated him warmly, expressing appreciation of the subtleties of wording and inspiration. Then, grandfather said that such good poetry deserved a response and he immediately improvised a four-verse poem with the same rhymes, also to celebrate the festival of renewal. Uncle Prefect Tam got up and made a deep bow to his teacher. He praised the response with much eloquence, saying that grandfather’s poem had expressed the feelings that he himself had wanted to express in his own poem but had been unable to do.
The second personage was a widow and businesswoman who owned a large shop in downtown Hanoi called Hoa Tuong. As was the custom in Vietnam, she was herself called Mrs. Hoa Tuong, after the name of her shop. Rumored to be among the wealthiest business people in Hanoi, she personified the independent and resourceful woman often found in our society, who did not fit into the traditional mold of Confucian teaching, according to which a woman “when unmarried should obey her father, when married should obey her husband and, on her husband’s death, should follow her son.” She had three boys and a girl and was distantly related to my grandmother. The boys were my grandparents’ adopted sons. Wealthy people in business often asked high officials to “adopt” their sons. This was not an adoption in legal terms, simply a practice to obtain more social standing. My grandfather had other “adopted” sons and daughters, not all of them from rich families. Some were village people who belonged to his household and had followed him to various provinces in the course of his career.
As part of our family, Mrs. Hoa Tuong and her children participated in all our celebrations and anniversaries. They always joined us for the New Year on the second day. They came in a big car, bringing expensive presents such as imported French wines and biscuits, rare fruit such as the renowned oranges of Bo Ha in the Northern Highlands and the imperial bananas, so called because they were sent each year as tribute to the emperor in Hue. Tet was also the season in the north for a special type of mandarin which went by the name of cam duong, or sugar orange. True to its name, it was perfectly sweet with absolutely no trace of sourness. Bigger than the usual mandarin it had a very thick skin and big segments full of juice. In the cold northern winter, the juice was chilled. I have never eaten more delicious mandarins, not in the south where our family moved in 1954, not in all the foreign countries where I have stayed. Once, on a visit to Taiwan, I was told that sugar oranges like those in north Vietnam were available. I immediately bought some. Unfortunately, although they looked the same they did not have the same flavor and sweetness.
Peach branches covered with pink blossoms and bow
ls of flowering narcissus were traditional New Year decorations. Narcissus, in particular, was the flower of Tet. Nowadays when spring comes to our Melbourne garden, narcissi grow profusely-some white, some yellow. In Vietnam, narcissus is a rock plant difficult to grow and, therefore, very precious. Bulbs had to be nicked for buds to come out, according to an ancient art taught by older ladies to the younger ones. Narcissus bulbs came from the mountains in the north or were imported from China. They were bought as Tet approached and nicked in such a way that flowers would bloom right on the first day of the New Year. If these seemed likely to be late, the bulbs were put in lukewarm water to speed up the process. In the opposite eventuality, they were left outside in the cold night air to retard flowering. When ready, the bulbs were displayed in porcelain bowls, with water and pebbles, in an arrangement similar to the Japanese Ikebana. The delicate beauty of the flowers, the bulbs’ white roots hanging out under water and the pebble arrangement combined with the classical lines of the blue porcelain bowls to make an exquisite tableau. But more than shape and color even, it was the fragrance of the narcissus which became associated in my mind with the New Year and its message of renewal. In Australia, as the flowers first come out in the middle of the year, their sweet smell brings back to life the Tets of my youth. Suddenly, the refugee away from his homeland feels hope being reborn within him, and he gears himself for a new beginning.
The ceremony of “sweeping the tomb” took place on the fourth day. By tradition, it started at dawn. Late starters were viewed with disapproval, for one must not make the ancestors wait on that day of all days in the year. I can not recall my grandfather participating in the ceremony-perhaps this was on account of his age-but all male members of our family were there. From an early age, I had been allowed to join the party. Going out in the open fields, when everything was quiet and still and the promise of a new day lay ahead, always gave me a special feeling of elation. Winter in the north meant a persistent drizzle and a penetrating cold. Our party of twenty people or so was led by a cousin of my father, who belonged to a senior branch of the extended family and had held the position of Deputy Mayor of Kim Bai. I called him Uncle Deputy. My great-uncle the mayor, although a Chu and not a Nguyen, was also in the party, because over several generations the two families had intermarried and some ancestors were common to both. The misty rain was all around us. Flat and empty fields stretched far into the still dark horizon. We walked in single file on the narrow paths that served as boundaries to the rice fields. It was slippery, our feet were wet and our clothes spattered with mud. But in the gentle light of dawn, the countryside assumed a poetical beauty. Like an ink painting, shapes and lines were indistinct and the colors but different shades of grey. Villages appeared vaguely in the distance. The fields were silent, no sound of bird or animal could be heard. Here and there, silhouettes of men in single file were seen, carrying on their shoulders shovel and hoe. They were fellow villagers on the way to perform the same ceremony as we. Only short greetings were exchanged with them; it was as if everyone’s mind was turning inwards and towards the past.
We visited all ancestral graves, starting with that of my great-grandfather. The graves were mounds of earth, some still as large as newly-built tumuli, but others and more ancient ones had been reduced to the size of a tea chest standing solitarily in the middle of a field. At each grave, we used hoe and shovel to clear the grass and weeds. Then, we built the earth up and made the mound square and upright again, before lighting incense and offering prayers. Lastly, votive papers were burned. Elders recalled the time and life of the ancestor buried there to the young people, for whom each year’s ceremony was an occasion to learn something more of the family history. Some graves lay within our village’s boundaries, others lay farther away in the neighboring villages of Kim Lam, Cat Dong and Van Quan. Although the graves covered a period of three centuries, their actual number was not high because many generations of ours consisted of only a single branch. By the time we had finished, it was only mid-morning. On our way home, we passed by graves which had been weeded and hoed. Red incense sticks were planted on them, some still burning. Ashes of votive papers floated around. While earlier in the day they had looked forlorn in the fields, the graves seemed to have acquired a life and warmth of their own. A few, however, had been left unvisited and the mayor would tell us their sorrowful stories: the family line had ended or the descendants had all left the village. Often, he stopped our procession, went over an untended tomb, cleared it and lit some sticks of incense over it. The Story of Kieu contains a famous passage about the young Kieu who, on the day of sweeping the tombs, saw an abandoned grave and took pity on it. She enquired and was told that it was the grave of a songstress, long renowned for her beauty and talent. But the songstress died alone and destitute. Only a kind-hearted admirer came to give her a simple burial and since then, no one had ever visited her grave. “How fragile was the fate of those blessed with beauty!” lamented Kieu. Little did she know that her own fate would not be so different from that of the songstress. That passage was one of the first that I learned from the Story of Kieu. During our own “sweeping the tomb” ceremony, I saw that my great-uncle was also moved by the same feelings as the heroine of our best loved literary work.
The ceremony over, we left Kim Bai. It was customary for my mother to return to her own family on the fourth day of Tet. My parents took us back to Hanoi and from there, they went to her village, which was only a few kilometers away. Not all the children accompanied them, only one or two each time. They stayed there only for the evening meal. In the countryside, the Tet festival would continue until the seventh day of the New Year, when the poles were taken down. But schools in Hanoi resumed one or two days earlier, and to us, going back to school marked the end of Tet.
7. The Village Community
“A village is a small state,” said a proverb. “The laws of the king have to give way to village customs,” proclaimed another. Since olden times, villages in Vietnam had enjoyed extensive autonomy. The king’s government, although it appointed village chiefs, concerned itself only with the collection of taxes, the conscription of men and the maintenance of public order. Each village organized its life according to its own customs and regulations. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, village autonomy was further strengthened when communal authorities became elected by the people. Our old political system was a peculiar combination of absolute monarchy at the national level and democracy at the village level. All citizens had their say in the conduct of communal affairs. They participated in deliberations at the Communal Hall and elected the village council. Positions in the council were open to all. Traditionally, each village had a written document setting out the rules and regulations governing communal life. The name of that document underlined the democratic character of the system. It was called Huong Uoc, or the Village Contract and was signed by all citizens.
Fellow villagers shared strong bonds of solidarity and loyalty. In the old days, solidarity extended to the point of collective responsibility. Should an offence be committed by a member, the whole village was reprimanded by government officials. If taxes collected from its citizens failed to reach their target, the village had to make up the difference. The good reputation of the community must be upheld by all. One village’s bylaw stipulated that “disputes should be settled by the people involved in them. If the parties came to fighting and shouting abuses at each other, thereby making the community a laughing stock for outsiders, then both parties would be fined.” To have a native son graduate and become a high mandarin meant that the village itself would benefit, for the mandarin would see it as his duty to further the interests of his community. In the 1930s, my grandfather did much for Kim Bai. Four centuries ago, under the Mac dynasty (15271592), our village had the good fortune of producing as many as four doctors who all became high officials. Consequently, the Mac period was one of great development and prosperity for Kim Bai; in fact, its golden age. The village where a dynasty o
riginated became something of a second capital. Whenever the king returned there, the court followed him. Palaces and offices were built to accommodate the monarch and his entourage. Even when the king was not in residence there, all mandarins who happened to travel near the village in the course of their duties would stop to pay their respects to his birthplace. Outside Co Trai for instance, the village of the Mac kings in the eastern part of the Red River delta, a ceremonial platform was erected for the mandarins to perform their act of worship, facing in the direction of the village. They would not go in there; being the king’s own, the village had become a forbidden place, like the forbidden city in the royal capital. Important positions in the army and civil service were given to natives of the king’s village. Often, these were appointed as close attendants to the monarch and would control the access to his chambers.
Village solidarity remained strong during periods of violent change, such as the aftermath of a civil war. Vietnam has had a long history of internal conflicts. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Vietnamese were fighting against one another, more or less continuously. Rival dynasties partitioned the country. New forces emerging from the south challenged traditional rulers from the north. When a dynasty fell, its followers and their families were persecuted. Villages which were too closely allied with the defeated regime would suffer too. Certainly, the fate of the king’s village would be sealed. Time and again, our history had shown a victorious side razing to the ground the village of its enemy, destroying all its ancestral tombs and leaving no trace for the population to remember the former rulers. But thanks to their traditional autonomy, most villages would survive a change of dynasty. Life behind the bamboo enclosure would continue very much as before, under a new ruling house. Rarely a village would betray its citizens and hand them over to the new authorities. On the contrary, those on the losing side could always expect to get help and temporary shelter from their fellow villagers. They knew that if they survived the critical period of persecution, they could always come back and reintegrate into the community. Ancestors from two branches of our family occupied high positions under the Mac dynasty. When that dynasty fell under the attacks of the Trinh, both branches had to flee the capital, of course not to go back to Kim Bai, for the village would be the first place where the victors would look for them. Where they went for refuge and for how long they stayed away, we do not know. But one branch has since disappeared. The other branch, our own, met with untold tribulations. Our third ancestor died in tragic circumstances. The rest of the family, however, succeeded in returning to Kim Bai. After an absence lasting as many as ten or a dozen years, they were accepted back within the community. Furthermore, they were able to regain possession of most of their land.
A Vietnamese Family Chronicle Page 14