We know that the name Kim Bai existed before the eleventh century as well as the Ly dynasty. It was believed to date from a golden period in the village’s history, when its citizens held high mandarinal positions. Could these citizens be our own ancestors?
Nguyen, our family name, is the most common name in Vietnam. Millions of people are Nguyen, who may not be at all related. Among them, a distinction can be made between those families which have always had that name and others which had changed theirs to Nguyen. After taking power from the Ly in 1225, the Tran killed all members of the royal family; moreover, in order to eradicate from the people’s minds the name of a dynasty which had stayed on the throne for over two hundred years, the new rulers ordered all the Ly in the country who were not related to the fallen dynasty to drop their name and become Nguyen. A sizeable part of the population thus joined the mass of Nguyen, making it by far the largest group of Vietnamese sharing the same family name.
We are not original Nguyen. I had always thought that our ancestors were Ly who changed into Nguyen in the thirteenth century, until my father told me, one day as we discussed about the family’s origins: “I heard that our original name was not Ly, but Le.” I was taken aback. I could understand that having been Ly, we were forced to become Nguyen by edict of the Tran dynasty. But if we were Le, why did we have to change? What made us do so, and when? My father offered no explanation. “It must have happened very long ago,” he said. “The reasons for the change have been forgotten, inevitably so.”
Indeed, the earliest ancestor whom we know was already a Nguyen. He was Nguyen Tue, born in the latter part of the fifteenth century. The change of name had occurred before him and, probably, in times very far away for I can find no tradition or belief handed down within our family which gave an explanation for it. But it puzzled me that our forefathers had taken such a step. Vietnamese do not change their surname, unless for very compelling reasons. The family, in the sense of an entity over the generations, has a sacred character in our system of ancestor worship. Each generation has the duty to uphold the family name and pass it on to the next.
There may be strong private reasons to change one’s name, such as in the old days when a guardian considered a ward as his own son and gave him his name, and the ward accepted it as a sign of gratitude. The same thing may happen between an aged master and the favorite disciple who was going to succeed him. Rich and powerful men with no male heir may leave their name and their properties to a son-in-law. I do not believe that any such private reasons could have motivated our ancestors, for we have always been a proud, independent and rather conservative Confucian family. In the annals of all dynasties can be found instances of high mandarins who were “allowed” by the king to take the royal family name as a reward for their particularly meritorious services. However, no Nguyen dynasty existed before the fifteenth century and therefore, such a signal honor was not the cause for us being Nguyen. On the other hand, an ignominious punishment could be meted out to members of the royal family who had committed serious offenses; they were stripped of their royal name and forced to take a “common people’s name.” Fortunately, this also did not seem to have been the case for our family. Our first ancestor Nguyen Tue graduated and became a mandarin under the Le in 1511, less than a century after that dynasty came to power. In those times, strict checks were made on the candidates’ antecedents and Nguyen Tue would not have been allowed to sit for the public service examinations if his close forebears had done something very wrong and been obliged to change their name from Le to Nguyen.
I believe that we have been Nguyen since long before Nguyen Tue’s time and that only very compelling political reasons would have made us change our family name. Vietnam’s history has been marked by periods of violent turmoil, especially at the change of dynasties. Those in the service of the fallen dynasty had to flee with their families to escape persecution and death. Our family had known one such period at the end of the sixteenth century, following the collapse of the Mac dynasty. Then, our name was preserved, but it was concealed. Eventually, even his own descendants could not remember what the personal name of the head of our third generation was. It was quite possible that, in an earlier crisis, our family was faced with an even greater danger and the name had had to be changed as a means to ensure the family’s survival.
In the tenth century, the Vietnamese wrested their independence from the Chinese. The first dynasty was that of the Ngo, whose founder Ngo Quyen annihilated the Chinese in the battle of the Bach Dang River (938). Upon learning of this defeat, the King of the Southern Han was said to have burst out crying and decided to withdraw all his forces from Vietnam. Ngo Quyen ascended the throne in 939. At the time, the country’s borders did not extend very far to the south and the king’s rule was confined to the Red River delta and parts of the highlands to the north and the west. Thanh Oai, our region, was then one of the centers of power with its populous villages and fertile land spreading out from the banks of the Hat River. The hills and mountains in the west and a large marshy area in the south provided good cover for defense as well as places to retreat to in case of an emergency. The Ngo did not stay in power for long. Ngo Quyen died in 944. Soon after, numerous warlords set themselves up in different parts of the country. One of the best-known generals of the Ngo dynasty, Do Canh Thac, seized our region and built his capital at a place about five kilometers from our village. The ruins of his citadel can still be seen today. In 965, the country was divided into twelve principalities and the warlords were fighting against one another for the throne of the Ngo. The two main contenders amongst them were Do Canh Thac and a young warlord named Dinh Bo Linh. In 967, Dinh Bo Linh vanquished his rival, rallied to him the rest of the warlords and became the first king of the Dinh dynasty. He ruled until 979 when he was assassinated. The son who succeeded him was only six. On hearing this, the Sung dynasty in China sought to take advantage of the situation and sent an army to reconquer Vietnam. Before they set out to meet the foreign threat, the Vietnamese troops elevated their commander-in-chief to the throne, replacing the child-king. The general from the Le family, by the name of Le Hoan, defeated the Sung invasion and established the Le dynasty in 980. History books referred to his dynasty as the Earlier Le, to distinguish it from the Later Le who came to power in the fifteenth century.
Mindful of the risk of warlords challenging his rule, the Le king sent his twelve sons to take up residence in key areas of the country. In 993, his eighth son Tuong was given the title of prince and sent to our region. For sixteen years, until the end of the Le dynasty, he was our local ruler. Did our ancestors then have the family name of Le? Could they be related to Tuong or be part of that prince’s entourage? Did our village receive the name Kim Bai during that period? Tuong proved himself to be no military leader; history books recorded that in 997, bandits plagued his fief and his father, the king, had to personally lead his troops in to restore peace and order. When the king died in 1005, six of his sons fought for the throne and three of them were killed. Tuong kept out of the struggle. It is not known what happened to him at the end of the Le dynasty in 1009. But if the answers to the above questions were affirmative and our ancestors were associated in some ways with Tuong, they would certainly have to flee to escape retribution from the new ruler. The lives of many people were affected by the upheaval and that was shown in an edict proclaimed by the new Ly king in 1010, ordering “all those who went into hiding to return to their villages.” Probably, our ancestors were among those who stayed in their place of refuge for a long time. In the sixteenth century, our family’s tribulations continued over more than a decade. Five centuries earlier, either they might have lasted longer or the danger must have been more pressing, for our ancestors to be driven to take the radical step of changing the family name.
As with the preceding generations, mine and those which follow will seek to throw more light on the past, to use the term that my grandfather wrote in the chronicle. The source in the mountains will
be there to beckon them. The search, the conjectures, and the dreams will continue. But for the moment, let us put on record what we know about our family history. Here is the chronicle of the Nguyen of Kim Bai.
III. The Nguyen of Kim Bai
14. First Generation—
The Count of Hung Giao
The following was written in the chronicle:
The ancestor of our first generation was named Nguyen Tue. He obtained the doctorate third class in the year of the Goat, which was the third year of the Hong Thuan era under the Le dynasty. He served in the mandarinate, reached the office of minister under the Mac dynasty and on him was conferred the title of count. Of his wife, nothing is known.
The term “first generation” used here does not mean that Nguyen Tue was considered as the founder of our family. He was only the earliest ancestor known to us. Eighty years ago, before my grandfather established the relationship with him, our knowledge did not reach up to Nguyen Tue and our “first ancestor” was his son Nguyen Uyen.
The third year of the Hong Thuan era, when our ancestor graduated, was 1511 in the western calendar. On ascending the throne, a Vietnamese king chose for his reign a title, primarily so that the country could use it to count the years of his rule but, naturally, the name chosen also expressed the king’s aspiration as to what his reign would be. King Le Tuong Duc took the dynastic title of Hong Thuan, which means Great Harmony. However, there was in his case a wide gap between aspiration and reality, for he started by killing his first cousin to appropriate the throne and would end up by being assassinated by one of his generals. By the beginning of the Hong Thuan era, the Le dynasty had been in decline for some time. It would not be long before it was displaced by the Mac family and Nguyen Tue himself was involved in one of the most controversial periods of Vietnamese history. Although we do not know when Nguyen Tue was born, the fact that he became a doctor in 1511 gave us an indication about his age. A petition submitted by a mandarin to the king in 1509 addressed the problem of “students under thirty with less than fifteen years of study . . . who have only passed a number of subjects in the doctorate examination” (and therefore have not obtained the degree). It went on: “If by luck they were made mandarins, a regrettable confusion would be created.” From this opposition to people under thirty and not full doctors joining the mandarinate, we can deduce that most graduates at that time were thirty or over. Let us, therefore, say that our ancestor obtained the degree when in his thirties; in other words, he was born around 1475.
The doctorate was the highest degree in the examination system. It was not just an examination but a nationwide competition, held once every three years in the capital to recruit a limited number of mandarins. Candidates were required to have successfully gone through a regional competition. Historical records did not specify how many people sat for the 1511 examination, but they gave for previous sessions a number of candidates averaging five thousand. As forty-seven graduated in 1511, the success rate was in the order of one per cent. The examination comprised two stages, of which the first one called Hoi was eliminatory. By tradition, the Hoi took place in spring and its association with the season of hope and promise was not lost on the candidates. They knew that this was their chance to become part of the elite and play an active role in public affairs. They may even, one day, be in a position to realize a dream close to the heart of every Vietnamese, which was to render prominent services to the country, take a hand in its destiny, and in the words of the poet, “make their names known to the rivers and mountains.” Such a chance came but rarely; at the earliest once every three years, but if conflict or troubles affected the country, the wait could be longer. Few of the thousands of candidates would be among the chosen. Doctors formed a very small and privileged group.
Of the duties of a king, Confucian ethics laid great stress on the choice of good and wise men to help him govern the country. A doctorate session was, therefore, an event of national importance recorded in detail by historians. The examination grounds were located in the southern quarter of the capital, now Hanoi. In my childhood, the grounds had been transformed into a residential quarter full of elegant bungalows for French colons and professional Vietnamese. But in former times, it was just a flat open camp in the shape of a huge rectangle, surrounded on all sides by three rows of hedge and a ditch planted with bamboo stakes. Security was very tight to prevent any contact between candidates and the outside world, and the grounds were protected like a military camp. There were no permanent buildings; at the approach of the examination, bamboo cottages were erected to serve as administrative offices. Most of the spacious grounds remained bare; on examination day, each candidate was assigned a place to set up a small canvas tent where he stayed to write his essays.
Candidates sat for a total of four subjects. In the first, called commentaries on Confucian classics, they had to write no less than eight essays on topics taken from the Four Books and the Five Canons, each essay to be of three hundred Chinese characters or more. In the second, they were required to draft a series of administrative documents, including three royal proclamations in the style of the Chinese Han dynasty, three royal decrees and three submissions to the king in the style of the Tang period in China. The third subject was composition of poems in the Tang style and literary essays in classical Chinese style. The last and most important subject was a dissertation on a theme chosen from ancient books or from history. This had to be of one thousand characters or more and was designed to test the candidates’ general knowledge and judgment.
The scholars’ training was based on Confucian texts and on commentaries made by ancient Chinese masters. At the examination, they must keep closely to those texts and commentaries. Any personal idea or interpretation could destroy their chances, for examiners would not countenance it. Even the style that a candidate used to write his papers must not be his own, but that of a given Chinese classical period. With such a training and examination system, it was not surprising that the country had an essentially conservative mandarinal corps, which modeled its art of government and behavior in public life on ancient Chinese precedents. These precedents were constantly referred to in submissions, statements and edicts. For instance, here is an extract from an order to the troops, exhorting them to the greatest sacrifice and issued by Marshal Tran Quoc Tuan at the time of the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century. The order is considered as one of the most eloquent expressions of the Vietnamese spirit of independence; yet it began by a string of allusions to the deeds of heroes, not our own but those in ancient China:
I have heard: Ji Xin risked his life to save that of the Han Emperor, Shen Yu exposed his back to spears to shelter the Prince of Zhao, Yu Rang swallowed live coal to avenge his master, Shen Kuai cut off his arm and died for his country. Jing De was a petty officer, yet he braved death to save Emperor Tang Tai Zong from enemy encirclement. Kieu Qing was a mandarin in a place far away from the capital, yet he publicly branded Lu Shan as a rebel. From antiquity to our times, which period did not have righteous men and loyal subjects willing to give their lives to the nation? If those people had clung to common attitudes and petty calculations, they would have died of old age in a corner of their homes, their names would not have been written in history books and remained there, for thousands of generations to see.
Nguyen Tue sat for the same doctorate examination as his younger brother Nguyen Huyen. Both went through the Hoi stage, which means that they not only passed all four subjects but were also among the forty-seven with the highest marks. They were now assured of being made doctors, for the second stage was not eliminatory but served only to rank successful candidates. This stage was called the Dinh or Royal Courtyard, as it was held in the courtyard in front of the Hall of the Throne. There the candidates sat and wrote their papers. A stele erected in the Temple of Literature gave this account of the Royal Courtyard examination of the year of the Goat. It was the fourth lunar month, on the fifteenth, the auspicious day of the full moon:
&
nbsp; His Majesty set as subject for the examination the principles of government from antiquity to our times. He appointed the Duke of Thieu, Great Teacher, as governor of the session, the Minister of Works as director, the Deputy Ministers of Finance and Public Service as inspectors and hundreds of mandarins to other tasks. The next morning, the candidates’ papers were read aloud to His Majesty by the Minister for the Rites and the Head of the Censorate. . . .After having listened to the reading, His Majesty read the papers a second time before deciding on their ranks.
I have abstained from quoting in full the names and titles of the officials, which were quite long. The title of the Duke of Thieu, Great Teacher, ran over no less than forty words. As we can see, the examination was an event of special importance. The role of the king was stressed at the outset; he chose the examination topic and marked the papers after having twice acquainted himself with their contents. The panel was headed by the Great Teacher, a title held by the premier mandarin of the kingdom. More than half of the ministries, which numbered six, were represented on the panel with two ministers and two deputy ministers. Rites and protocol underlined the solemnity of the occasion. For candidates to write their papers in the Royal Courtyard was a special honor, even a kind of initiation as only high mandarins of the Son of Heaven were admitted there. In colloquial Vietnamese, doctors were called nghe, nghe being an office in the Royal Palace and a symbol of their position in the power structure. They formed a prestigious elite, all the more so because entry to their group was extremely difficult and restricted. In Nguyen Tue’s time, less than fifty scholars in the whole country were made doctors, every three years. Talent alone would not suffice. Luck naturally played its role, but popular beliefs attributed a doctor’s success to something special in his destiny, which made him the chosen one to receive a favor from Heaven.
A Vietnamese Family Chronicle Page 23