A Vietnamese Family Chronicle

by Nguyen Trieu Dan

  Like his brother, Huyen started as a mandarin of the Le dynasty. Did he stay on to serve the Mac? The question arises because both registers of high graduates made no mention of him being a Mac mandarin, while they made clear that his brother Tue reached this position under the new dynasty. Does that mean that Huyen had remained faithful to the Le and had left at the change of dynasty? I do not believe so. As a young doctor in 1511, Huyen was probably only in his late thirties when the Mac took power. He could not have achieved his high offices at that age. More likely, he was then only a middle-rank mandarin, whose transfer of loyalty was not deemed a matter worthy of interest by the authors of the registers. We have no indication as to the region where Huyen was appointed as an administrator-delegate. The thirteen regions differed in importance. Some like Thanh Hoa in the south and Hai Duong in the east of the capital Thang Long were strategic places where only trusted servants of the king were sent. Thanh Hoa was second in importance only to the capital itself; under the previous dynasty it was called the Western capital. As for Hai Duong, it was the home town of the Mac kings. With an elder brother in an influential position at the court, Huyen would be well-placed to obtain a good appointment, perhaps not Thanh Hoa or Hai Duong, but quite possibly one of the fertile and populated regions of the Red River delta. The positions of administrator-delegate and deputy minister both corresponded to the lower third mandarinal grade. Huyen’s rank was, therefore, slightly below that of his brother, who as minister belonged to the lower second grade.

  Of the two branches of our first generation, the younger one had disappeared. My grandfather wrote in the chronicle:

  No descendants of Ancestor Nguyen Huyen are known to have survived. His branch could have ended due to the absence of a male heir or because its descendants had gone away during times of trouble and contact with them was lost. We do not really know what happened.

  Did the lack of a male descendant, that scourge which had plagued our family for so many generations, cause the disappearance of the second branch? I rather think that it was the “going away.” The times of trouble referred to in the chronicle came with the collapse of the Mac. Our own branch fled from Kim Bai. It managed to survive and return many years later. The second branch might not have been so lucky. Whatever the cause, it is sad to think that a branch which began so auspiciously with a young and bright doctor-who subsequently had a very successful mandarinal career-was to vanish without trace, for the Cu Hau papers written in the eighteenth century contained no mention of it.

  15. The Academician-Envoy

  The passage regarding our second ancestor in the family chronicle reads:

  He was named Nguyen Ba Uyen and given the posthumous name of On Tinh Tien Sinh. He passed the doctorate third class in the year of the Goat which was the sixth year of the Dai Chinh era under the Mac. He held the position of inspector-delegate of the administrative region of Thai Nguyen. The Register of High Graduates recorded that he was a member of the Academy. His second wife came from the Phung family. Her pseudonym was Tu Uoc.

  The name given in the chronicle was Nguyen Ba Uyen, but in the Register of High Graduates it was only Nguyen Uyen, without the middle name Ba. According to my father, the ba here was not a middle name, but a title. After family documents were destroyed in the eighteenth century, our people could only write down what they remembered, and the ba was mistaken for a name. That was quite understandable, my father said, because ba-meaning elder-was a middle name commonly given to the first son and when the chronicle was rewritten, more than two centuries had passed since Nguyen Uyen’s time. Besides, up to the seventh generation, our ancestors’ names used to have only two words, not three. It appeared, therefore, that Nguyen Uyen also received the title of ba-count-like his father. But I still have to find confirmation for this in history books or registers of graduates, to be sure. Indications about Nguyen Uyen in these documents, however, are extremely sketchy and consist in just a few pointers to a very long career. The posthumous name was conferred on him by the Mac court after his death. On Tinh means Moderation and Calm, Tien Sinh is an appellation addressed to elders, which can be translated as Honorable Sir.

  Unlike his father, Nguyen Uyen has always been remembered by his descendants. The Thanh Hinh Hien Sat Su-as they usually referred to him, by his full title of Royal Delegate for Inspection and the Fair Application of Justice-was long thought to be their earliest ancestor. Family tradition recalled that he was a brilliant scholar, a mandarin who remained in active service until an advanced age and also, that he undertook a hazardous journey to a faraway place. My grandfather discovered that he graduated in the year of the Goat and became a member of the Academy. I was able to find additional information and draw a broad picture of his life and career.

  Nguyen Uyen became a doctor in 1535, the sixth year of the Dai Chinh era, or era of Great Righteousness, a dynastic title taken by the second Mac king. He must have been born sometime between 1510 and 1515 because, as will be seen later, history books recorded that he went to China in 1580, a trip he could not have made later than in his late sixties or early seventies. He would have been, then, a doctor in his early twenties, or a full ten years younger than most other graduates. Although the registers of graduates do not mention it, he may well have been successful at his first try, like his uncle before him. When the Le lost the throne to the Mac, he was still a young student and would not have known the stress of a transfer of loyalty, especially since his father took the side of the Mac from the very beginning. He probably started schooling in his village at one of the many private schools run by scholars who had failed to gain a diploma. At about the age of twelve, he would have left for the capital, or the town where his father worked, to study under more qualified teachers. A few years later, he was ready to join a special college for mandarins’ sons. There were three in the capital, admission to which was based not only on the father’s mandarinal rank, but also on the son’s rank in the family. As his father was a count and a mandarin of the second grade, and he an eldest son, Nguyen Uyen could go either to the Sung Van Quan or the Chieu Van Quan. The first one, whose name means College for the Exaltation of Literature, was reserved to eldest sons of mandarins of the first three grades and to cadets of those of the first two grades. The second, or College for the Advancement of Literature, admitted sons and eldest grandsons of dukes, marquesses and counts as well as eldest sons of mandarins of the second to eighth grades. I believe that Nguyen Uyen went to the first college, which was more exclusive and had a higher academic reputation, for he proved to be a very bright student who obtained his diplomas at a young age. In 1534, he went to the regional examinations, passed all four subjects and became a licentiate. He was now entitled to sit for a doctorate in the following year. To prepare for it, he joined the Quoc Tu Giam, or National University, an institution founded in the eleventh century under the Ly kings. There, he attended lectures given by learned academicians on Confucian texts and other subjects required for the doctorate. Exercises and essays were given to students every day. His workload was heavy, for there was only one year between the two examinations; if he failed, it would mean a wait of three more years. The university was built next to the Temple of Literature, where doctors’ stelae were housed. The names of Nguyen Uyen’s father and uncle were on one of the recent stelae. The young scholar must have dreamed to have, one day, his own name in the Temple. Unfortunately, although he did become a doctor, no stele was erected to commemorate his session. In the beginning of Mac Dang Dung’s reign, the Mac managed to erect one stele for those who made doctors in 1529, but for some reasons never came round to have the names of doctors admitted at later sessions carved on stone for posterity.

  With Nguyen Uyen’s success, two generations of ours had won the golden board, a rare achievement in a society where families moved up and down quickly. The registers of high graduates acknowledged this, for in their short biographies, they highlighted the fact that he was Nguyen Tue’s son and Nguyen Huyen’s nephew and th
at “father and son, elder and younger brothers all graduated.” The scholarly reputation of our family was made. It would remain long after our family had dropped out of the mandarinal class. “The Nguyen of Kim Bai” continued to be known throughout the region. Later ancestors who made their living as village teachers used to have students travelling from far-off places to study under them.

  A total of thirty-two scholars were awarded the doctorate degree in 1535. Three obtained the first class, seven the second class and twenty-two the third class. Nguyen Uyen was among the latter. At that session, the prophet Nguyen Binh Khiem earned the title of First Laureate. Khiem’s fame as a teacher and prophet was established long before he won a doctorate. He could have sat for it under the last kings of the Le dynasty, but abstained from doing so because, so it was said, he considered it unwise to come out and serve in those troubled times. He kept staying away in the first seven years of the Mac, until 1534, when he finally decided to enter the regional competition, the same year that Nguyen Uyen did. The next year, he was First Laureate at the nationwide competition. His coming out to serve the dynasty was an important success for the Mac. The prophet had found a king worthy of his allegiance! Those were halcyon years under Mac Dang Doanh’s reign and the Mac looked set to rule for a long time to come. Strong ties of solidarity existed between fellow graduates. Nguyen Binh Khiem was then forty-five. Twenty years separated Nguyen Uyen from him. More than a fellow graduate, our ancestor must have looked up to Khiem as a respected elder and teacher. He may have stayed close to the prophet and I believe that the latter may even have been the go-between in Uyen’s second marriage.

  The prophet did not have to climb one by one the rungs of the mandarinal ladder like the other doctors. At once, he was appointed to a high position by the enlightened king Mac Dang Doanh. Within a few years, he became a deputy minister of Public Service, a very influential post dealing with nominations and promotions of officials. But the good Mac king died in 1540 and Nguyen Binh Khiem soon was disenchanted with the way things were going at the court. Using old age as an excuse-he was then fifty-one-he asked to be allowed to retire. King Mac Phuc Hai continued to treat him with great consideration in his retirement, asking him for advice and conferring on him honors and titles. By that time, the forces of restoration had established themselves in the south and their leaders also solicited, in secret, the prophet’s advice. We saw in the last chapter how he counseled Trinh Kiem against the temptation of making himself king. He was also credited with helping Nguyen Kim’s descendants find a place of refuge and a base for their future conquest of power. Nguyen Kim was the leader who started the campaign to restore the Le. After he died, allegedly poisoned by the Mac, power in the Southern court fell into the hands of his son-in-law Trinh Kiem. Nguyen Kim had two sons, both military commanders. One was killed by Trinh Kiem. The other son Nguyen Hoang, Duke of Quan, knew that he would be the next target. He sent a secret emissary north to see the First Laureate and beg him for guidance on how to escape the danger. This time, the prophet gave a direct advice. “Beyond the Hoanh Son range,” he said, “you will find shelter for countless generations.” Beyond the Hoanh Son mountains, in the southern portion of the country, lay a few poor and sparsely populated provinces conquered not long ago from the Champa. Situated far away from the traditional seats of power, which were the capital Thang Long held by the Mac and Thanh Hoa-also called Tay Kinh or Western Capital-held by the Trinh, exposed to attacks from the neighboring kingdoms of Laos and Champa, these provinces were certainly no place for a leader with political ambitions to go. Nguyen Hoang asked his brother-in-law to send him to guard the southern border and Trinh Kiem readily obliged. It was from there that, in 1628, Nguyen Hoang’s son set himself up against Trinh Kiem’s grandson and war between the Trinh and the Nguyen overlords began. It would be fought over almost two centuries. Not only did the prophet help Nguyen Hoang find a place of refuge, he also placed his descendants in a position to lead the Vietnamese people in their final and greatest surge towards the south. By the end of the seventeenth century Vietnamese colonizers, setting out from the provinces held by the Nguyen overlord, had settled on the Dong Nai River in a place now called Saigon. After a few more decades, the Mekong delta was theirs and they had reached the shore of the Gulf of Thailand. The historic Nam Tien, the March South started by our people millenniums ago from the Red River delta, had ended. With the conquest of the south, the balance of power shifted and it would be from there that a descendant of Nguyen Hoang reunified the country under the Nguyen dynasty in 1802. The prophet, who lived in a period of violent conflicts and rapid changes, was not bothered by considerations of legitimacy or loyalty to a king. He served the Mac but did not refuse to help also the Trinh and the Nguyen, the other contenders to the throne. Unlike the historians, he-a prophet-did not claim to say which side was right and which side was wrong in the national drama which was unfolding. His conception appeared to be very close to democracy, in that he saw the country as belonging to all and everyone was entitled to claim a share in it. As he exclaimed in a poem: “But the country is not anyone’s patrimony!”

  Nguyen Uyen’s career could not be compared to that of his famous fellow graduate. But it was also a special one for the few indications that we have show it spanning over half a century and extending to a wide variety of fields. Of his mandarinal appointments, the family only remembered one, that of inspector-delegate to the region of Thai Nguyen. We do not know when he was appointed, but assuming that his career was one of smooth progression, he would have reached that position ten to fifteen years after graduation. A new doctor of the third class started at the upper eighth mandarinal grade. He would have to move up four rungs to reach the upper sixth, the grade of an inspector-delegate. As three years were normally needed to climb each rung, Nguyen Uyen, who graduated in 1535, would have been in Thai Nguyen circa 1550. One of three mandarins in charge of a region, an inspector-delegate’s role was to administer justice and to exercise control over the work of all mandarins in his region, both civilian and military. He should find out, investigate and report to the king all instances of maladministration and corruption. He received complaints from the public; an order made by King Le Thanh Ton in 1471 stressed that he should be able to “express the secret sufferings of the people.” In addition, he was consulted by the administrator-delegate on such important matters as nomination of mandarins and assessment of their performance. Of the three royal delegates, an inspector was the lowest in rank. The gap between him and the other two was large; he had only the upper sixth grade, while the military-delegate had the upper third grade and the administrator-delegate the lower third grade. Yet, he was held in high regard, even feared by the other two, for he functioned as “the eye and ear” of the king and had the right to look into their behavior and actions. The system rested on checks and balances. The two senior delegates were high mandarins, generally in their fifties, with a long experience of public service behind them. The inspector-delegate was a younger mandarin of middle rank only, who therefore posed no threat to his elders’ positions, but exercised an effective control because he usually enjoyed strong political backing at the court.

  A royal decree issued by King Le Thanh Ton in 1496 dealt with the choice of inspectors. It said: “Inspectors have the responsibility of censoring, therefore those chosen should prove to be strict upholders of the law, of upright character, fearless of the noble and mighty and must not have committed any wrong-doing themselves.” It laid down strict selection criteria, not for inspector-delegates, who were appointed by the king, but for their deputies. These should be chosen among holders of a doctorate diploma, among civil and military officials who had passed a number of subjects at the doctorate examination but did not obtain the diploma. Probably, Nguyen Uyen had served as deputy inspector in one or two regions before becoming a royal delegate. When appointed to Thai Nguyen, he would have been in his late thirties, quite a young age for a delegate of the king. He gained a reputation of uprightn
ess and that perhaps explained why, down the generations, the family continued to remember him as a judge and inspector, while his higher appointments at the Academy and as an envoy to China came to be forgotten. The Thanh Hinh Hien Sat Su has always inspired in me a certain feeling of awe. The word Sat in the title means to investigate, but it had another meaning, to kill. As a child, I took it in its second meaning and thought that our ancestor had had the power to kill. It was known that many inspectors struck fear among mandarins of their region. Maybe our ancestor did bring some corrupt officials to justice and to their death.

  The administrative region of Thai Nguyen was situated in the mountainous areas bordering on China. Large and sparsely populated, it was-like the rest of the northern mountains-infected with malaria. Delta people dreaded going there, for few could escape the debilitating attacks of that illness. Those were places where “noxious gases emanated from the poisonous mountains,” they said in fear. It said something of our ancestor’s constitution, that, having been posted there, he then went on to lead an active life until a ripe old age. Thai Nguyen was also a haven for bandits, rebels and other fugitives of the law. Its military-delegate was traditionally an officer of high rank. The mandarins shunned the place. They preferred to stay in the Red River delta where land was rich, climate good and life more enjoyable. In normal times, delegates sent to Thai Nguyen were mandarins receiving their first royal assignment or those who did not pull much weight among the mighty and powerful at the Court. Nguyen Uyen may have been a young inspector-delegate placed for the first time at the head of a region, but when he went to Thai Nguyen, the place was one of great strategic importance for the Mac regime.