A Vietnamese Family Chronicle

by Nguyen Trieu Dan

  In the eighteenth century, rebels and bandits roamed our region. Kim Bai fell prey to them time and again. Our extended family suffered to such an extent that it took the efforts of three generations to retrace our ancestry. We shall describe that crisis in detail in the next pages.

  Until the beginning of this century, all our family’s documents were written in the scholarly language, using the Chinese script. Then, the colloquial language using a new Romanized script became the national language. My grandfather belonged to a generation which knew both Chinese script and the national language. His children however, were only taught the new script. My father’s generation could not read old documents. When I started learning the Chinese script in 1943, I was the first one in two generations to do so. Papers belonging to my great-grandfather, who died in 1909, were still kept in our ancestral home, many of them already damaged by weather and insects, but my scholarly language was not good enough to read them. The change of script created a rupture in the generational chain of knowledge. Given time this problem, which was national and not particular to our family, could have been remedied by having old documents translated into the national language, as grandfather did with our family chronicle, and by training more people to read the old script. But the communist revolution in 1945 and the 1946-1954 war intervened before anything could be done to save our family’s documents.

  In that period, all books and written materials left by my great-grand-father and grandfather were destroyed, except for the chronicle. When the war ended, there was nothing left to be saved. Our loss was as total as the one suffered two centuries ago at the hands of the bandits. Today, I cannot quote a single poem or literary piece written by my ancestors, although we have been for five hundred years a family of scholars and my great-grandfather, in particular, was known to have kept himself busy with essay and poetry writing.

  In the eighteenth century, Vietnam was nominally under the Le dynasty but real power belonged to the Trinh overlord. The ruler Trinh Giang was a cruel and tyrannical man. In 1732, he killed a Le king to put another one on the throne. His spendthrift policies caused heavy taxes to be imposed on the population. Resentment was widespread in the country. Several rebellions broke out to challenge the Trinh’s rule. Bandits operated in the open in many parts of the Red River delta. It took the central government thirty years to pacify the country. During that period, recalled by later generations as “the great calamity,” our village was pillaged many times and had to abandoned for long periods. Many families lost their fortunes and were scattered away. Our Ancestral Shrine was burned down. The family register and chronicles deposited in the Shrine were destroyed. After the turmoil, some elders got together to put down on paper what they could remember. The new chronicle, my grandfather noted, “was based purely on recollection, without any written evidence.” The earliest ancestor that our elders could remember was Nguyen Uyen, who lived in the sixteenth century and is now known as our second ancestor. Only two centuries after his death, Nguyen Uyen’s father, the Count of Hung Giao, had been completely forgotten. Of our third ancestor, himself a deputy minister at the Mac Court, only a name remained not his real name but a pseudonym used by the family to invoke his spirit during ceremonies commemorating his death. From the fourth generation down, precious little was recorded about the lives and careers of our forefathers. Even information of a sacred character such as the location of their graves and the anniversaries of their death was in some instances missing. As a result of the great calamity, our family even lost its links with a recent past.

  Fortunately, a person who lived before those troubled times had in his papers information relating to our family’s ancestry. It was known that those papers had escaped destruction at the hands of bandits. He was Cu Hau. Hau was not his name but an honorific title, and Cu a term of address which Vietnamese use for old people. Like other villages with a tradition of scholarship, Kim Bai had an Association of Literati to promote culture and learning. People who donated land to the Association received the honorific title of Hau and the Association would celebrate the anniversaries of their death after they had passed away. Cu Hau lived in the early part of the eighteenth century. Our seventh generation had two branches; he was probably the second son of the eldest branch. A scholar without academic diploma, he served as keeper of the Nguyen Ancestral Shrine. Normally, that responsibility rested with the heir to the extended family, in other words, the eldest son of the senior branch, but often it was delegated to another family member. In this case, Cu Hau’s elder brother, Nguyen Du, was a mandarin who pursued a career away from the village. Cu Hau replaced him and assumed the duties of administering the cult land, maintaining the Shrine and celebrating the ceremonies of worship.

  It was possible that Cu Hau either died during the period of bandit attacks, or soon after, because his papers were already missing when a new chronicle was compiled following the return to normal conditions. The Nguyen family knew that the papers existed but, in the decades that followed, all its branches fell into hard times and no search could be made. As time passed, the papers were not forgotten but, like the old Shrine, they grew in importance in our people’s minds. The old told the young about a hidden treasure which held the keys to our past. “We have been a family of scholars for many generations,” they said. “Many of our ancestors won high diplomas and had rewarding careers in the service of the state. We do not remember who they were and in what period they lived, but they must be mentioned in the Cu Hau papers. At the time when all our ancient chronicles were burned by the bandits, those papers were saved.” No one knew where the papers were, but hope continued to be entertained by the elders: “The papers were only misplaced. When found, they will reveal a golden period in our family history.” Meanwhile, the family was in serious decline. Success at the examinations had not come for several generations. Poverty had become our lot. The need was to encourage the young to persevere with their studies. “Our family was once rich and powerful,” the young were constantly reminded. “The cycle will soon turn. Success and prosperity will be with us again.”

  Indeed, at the start of the nineteenth century, a revival occurred. The tenth ancestor of our branch quickly made a fortune in trade. Nguyen Quang So was a man intensely proud of his lineage. “His aim was to uphold the merits of our forebears and lead the way for future generations to follow,” wrote my grandfather. He was convinced that Nguyen Uyen, then the only ancestor known to have obtained the doctorate and reached the high ranks of the mandarinate, was not an isolated case. “One mandarin cannot assemble such wealth as to built the old Ancestral Shrine,” he said. “There must have been others.” With material means at his disposal, he set out to search for the papers in earnest. But a century had passed since Cu Hau’s lifetime. Already it was the generation of Cu Hau’s great-grandchildren and his branch had dispersed. As related in the chronicle, our ancestor discovered that “Cu Hau’s eldest grandson had left Kim Bai and, subsequently, his whereabouts were unknown. Before leaving, he handed the papers to a younger brother, who took over from him the responsibility for the worship of our common ancestors. Then, those documents were mislaid.” Apparently, the younger brother had died and some of his children had left the village-in those times of economic difficulties, many people went to look for work in towns. It was not possible to know who had the papers for safekeeping. The search ended there, for the time being. When our ancestor died, his only son was three years old. It looked as if, as a treasure, the Cu Hau papers would be forever hidden from us.

  Nothing was done in the next two decades until, as a young man, Nguyen Dinh Dat took up from where his father had left. The papers could not be found in Kim Bai. Hope rested with them being kept by a relative who had left the village. Although our family, after having enjoyed a brief period of affluence, was again in difficult circumstances, Nguyen Dinh Dat managed to reestablish contact with relatives at many places. He travelled widely in the Red River delta, went up the highlands and mountains of the north a
t the risk of catching malaria. He journed to Lang Son on the Chinese border where some of our people were established as traders. He visited other relatives living in Thai Nguyen and Cao Bang, where centuries ago our ancestor Nguyen Uyen resided as a mandarin. In his trips he restored links with family members who had gone away a long time ago. The papers were found on one of those trips, in 1861; precisely where and in what circumstances the chronicle did not say. But it made clear that the merit belonged to Nguyen Dinh Dat, who was my great-grandfather. The following passage showed him playing the central role:

  The papers left by Cu Hau were only recovered in the fourteenth year of Emperor Tu Duc (1861). In the first lunar month of the following year, Nguyen Dinh Dat called a meeting of all members of our extended family at the Ancestral Shrine in order to lay down the rules for our cult and to put again on record the chronicles of different branches.

  Thus, some one-and-a-quarter centuries after they were missing, the papers were safely back in our hands, a result which said much of my great-grandfather’s perseverance and conviction. He must have felt elated, yet it was said that on reading those papers which for so long had captivated the family’s imagination, his reaction was one of disappointment and shock. Our people had thought that the papers would carry a register of ancestors worshipped at the old Shrine; in other words the ancient genealogy of the Nguyen, as well as information on the lives and careers of these ancestors. Had that been the case, Cu Hau would have been the savior of our family’s history. But the data my great-grandfather found only went back to the six-teenth century. There was no mention of any ancestors whom he did not know, no reference to that golden period which generations of ours had talked about. Clearly, the papers were intended to help Cu Hau celebrate the cult and administer the cult land. They were not used to record family history.

  Of these papers, my grandfather wrote:

  Thanks to (them), we now know that the cult land bequeathed by our ancestors dated well back in time. The first six generations of ours all had left land, including ricefields, gardens and ponds, to provide for the cult. They all had deposited records and chronicles in our Shrine. By misfortune, the Ancestral Shrine was pillaged and burned down by bandits with all its contents.

  The shock to Nguyen Dinh Dat came from the cult land. A large part of Cu Hau’s documents was concerned with descriptions of land donated by family members to the Ancestral Shrine. In our tradition, before dividing their estates among their children, parents usually set aside some land for the eldest son, who had charge of the ancestors’ cult. Well-off people would also leave some land to the family’s ancestral shrine. In both cases, the land was called cult land, or to use a more literal translation of the Vietnamese term huong hoa, “land to provide for the flame and incense on the ancestors’ altar.” A cult land differed from ordinary land by its almost sacred character. It was not considered as the property of the person receiving it, but as land entrusted to him for purposes of the cult. He could not dispose of it as he pleased. If a family were to suffer hardship, its cult land would be the last to go, and a decision of the family council was required before it could be sold. It was known that our family owned large landholdings under the Mac dynasty in the sixteenth century and that we remained wealthy following the change of dynasty at the end of that century. But Dinh Dat never knew that our Ancestral Shrine owned so much cult land. The many acres of rice fields, ponds and gardens mentioned in the Cu Hau papers would form quite a large estate by Kim Bai’s standard. However, he was shocked to find that they were all presently in other hands. How did it happen that they were lost? Other branches were alerted and my great-grandfather called an urgent meeting of the extended family in the beginning of 1862. That it fell to him to take such an initiative was interesting to note. Our branch was the most junior of the family. It would have been more proper for the senior branches, on whom rested the primary responsibility for our cult, to act. However, while our branch had known a degree of revival, others continued to stay down and some even had dropped out of the scholars’ class. Although from the youngest branch and only a young man of twenty-six, Nguyen Dinh Dat was taking over the leadership of the extended family.

  The plenary meeting of 1862 was the first to be held in that century and the only one recorded in detail in the chronicle. The most important problem was, of course, ownership of the cult land. The assembly found that the land had been taken over by other people; not recently, but fifty or sixty years ago. Whatever right our family may have had before, prescription had applied in favor of those in possession. To quote the chronicle:

  . . .[because] the papers were misplaced for fifty or sixty years, the land bequeathed by our forebears had been cultivated by others. As a consequence, anniversaries and festivals in memory of our ancestors could not be properly celebrated . . .. [When the papers were recovered, the land had been usurped] for a long time and it was not possible any more to claim it back.

  There is a certain mystery about what actually happened to the cult land. The belief in our family was that all the land was usurped after the papers were “misplaced” by Cu Hau’s descendants at the beginning of the nineteenth century. I do not think that misplacement of the papers by itself could have led to usurpation of the land. More likely, the loss was caused by breakdown of family ties and the fact that those in charge of the land-the shrine keeper and his descendants-had left. Cu Hau’s grandson must have gone away from Kim Bai at the end of the eighteenth century and later on some of his great-grandchildren also left. Other people must have seized upon that opportunity to take our land. Moreover, I cannot help wondering why Cu Hau’s descendants had to leave their village, if our cult land was so extensive. To go away from one’s birthplace was not a decision taken lightly. Especially in the case of Cu Hau’s eldest grandson, heir to his branch, who had to relinquish his responsibility for the cult and hand it over to a younger sibling. Why could the descendants not stay on and cultivate the cult land for a living? Very likely, the land described in Cu Hau’s papers was that which existed in his time or the beginning of the eighteenth century. But by the next century, much of it had probably been disposed of. Indeed, the Nguyen prospered until the end of the seventeenth century, then a downward trend started. Some land may have been sold to help family members in need, or for the upkeep of the old shrine and for the building of a new shrine following the destruction wrought by bandits. Thus, the amount of land illegally appropriated by others may not have been as large as suggested in the chronicle.

  Why was it that “for fifty or sixty years,” our family did not react to the loss of its cult land and anniversaries and festivals in memory of ancestors were “not properly celebrated?” Obviously, our extended family had broken apart. Branches had lost touch with one another. Before Cu Hau’s descendants left the village, no one raised with them the question of who was going to look after the Shrine and administer the cult land. Three decades later, in the 1830s, the problem of cult land never crossed the mind of our tenth ancestor as he planned on establishing a new shrine. Fortunately, the papers were recovered and, because of them, our people were jolted into action. It was then too late to get the land back, but steps were immediately taken to restore family cohesion. The plenary meeting decided to reestablish the yearly ceremony of worship in which all branches participated. There had been a gap of over half-a-century since the last ceremony.

  Cu Hau’s paper did contain a wealth of information on more recent generations, including the membership of all branches, the location of ancestors’ graves and anniversaries of their death. Apparently, Cu Hau did not only look after the Shrine, he also helped other family members celebrate the cult within their own branches, which explained why he needed to have all the above information at hand. His papers covered only the four generations which preceded his, because within each branch, the cult did not extend further than four generations. If Cu Hau had copied all the records kept in his time at the old Shrine, how much more of our ancestry would we know? He no
ted in his papers that in the six generations preceding his, “all generations had deposited records and chronicles in the Shrine.” When we know that in the Vietnamese tradition, people wrote chronicles to relate the time and life, not of their own generation, but of their parents, grandparents and more distant ancestors, it is safe to assume that in Cu Hau’s time, our lineage was established at least back to the Tran dynasty in the fourteenth century. As it happened, that early part of our history was wiped out at the hands of bandits in that disastrous period of the eighteenth century.

  From the written evidence provided by the papers, my great-grand-father and family elders compiled a new chronicle to replace the previous one which was quite sketchy as it was based mainly on recollection. They were also able to draw up a register of members of all known generations. In those two documents, which were from time to time complemented and brought up to date, was contained the history of our extended family, while the chronicle in my possession dealt mainly with that of our branch. Until 1948, the documents were kept in our Ancestral Shrine. During the hostilities, all furniture and decorations of the Shrine were lost, but it is not entirely impossible that the documents may have been saved by someone and are waiting to be recovered someday, like the Cu Hau’s papers of two centuries ago.