A Vietnamese Family Chronicle

by Nguyen Trieu Dan

  West of Thai Nguyen was the border region of Tuyen Quang. In 1527, when the Mac overthrew the Le, Vu Van Uyen was military-delegate in Tuyen Quang. He refused to serve the new dynasty and set himself up as an independent authority. His troops numbered several tens of thousands. After a Le king in exile was proclaimed in Laos, Vu Van Uyen rallied to him. In 1540, China made preparations to invade our country and Vu Van Uyen’s forces were slated to act as vanguards for the Chinese. But, as we saw earlier, Mac Dang Dung succeeded in defusing the invasion threat and in normalizing relations with China. Having done that, the Mac turned against Vu Van Uyen. Twice in the following years, they launched big offensives to seize Tuyen Quang and get rid of that thorn in their side, but failed. For his part, Vu Van Uyen also made sorties out of his region, but was beaten back. On his death, his brother Vu Van Mat took over. In 1551, his forces made a foray into the delta and came close to the capital, forcing the Mac king to flee. Not only was Tuyen Quang a military problem for the Mac; under the Vu brothers, it prospered and attracted people from the delta who moved there to settle. Many traders also went there to engage in the commerce of forestry products.

  Meanwhile in the south, the forces of restoration pushed out from Laos and occupied the Western Capital in 1543. By the mid-1540s, the country had been partitioned. The Mac authority extended over the Red River delta and all other areas to the west and the north, with the exception of Tuyen Quang. From the region of Thanh Hoa, where the Western Capital was located, to the southern border was Le territory. During the next two decades, a seesaw war took place, pitting against one another two outstanding generals, Mac Kinh Dien on the northern side and Trinh Kiem, the founder of the dynasty of Trinh overlords, on the southern side. Ten times, Mac Kinh Dien attacked the south. Six times, Trinh Kiem sent his troops north. Neither side could gain a decisive edge. In 1559, Trinh Kiem nearly obtained victory. Bypassing the delta to the west, he moved a sixty thousand strong army through the hilly areas next to the Laotian border, then swerved east. Joining forces with Vu Van Mat in Tuyen Quang, he quickly seized Thai Nguyen and all the northern provinces up to the Chinese border. He now had the Mac caught in a pincer movement as his forces attacked the delta from both the north and the south. The Mac fought on until 1561 when, in a masterly counterstroke, Mac Kinh Dien reversed the situation. Abandoning a defensive posture, he launched his forces against the Le capital in Thanh Hoa, while Trinh Kiem was away in the north. Faced with the danger of losing his own home base, the latter hurriedly called off his campaign. The stalemate was restored and the country settled in for a prolonged partition.

  Nguyen Uyen probably stayed in Thai Nguyen for two years, the normal mandarinal tour of duty. At that time, Thai Nguyen’s territory was quite large as it extended up to the Chinese border and included the province of Cao Bang. The region’s wealth lay in its gold, silver and iron mines. Fertile valleys yielded a plentiful crop and forests were a ready source of timber. Cao Bang had a thriving trade with China. Before Trinh Kiem launched his 1559 offensive, in which his troops were to move far away from their bases in the south and reach up to the Chinese border, his generals cautioned him about overextending his lines of supply. He told them:

  Tuyen Quang, Thai Nguyen and Lang Son in the northern mountains are places where people are rich and money and paddy are in surplus. We will obtain the food from where we happen to be, so there is no reason to worry about supplies.

  There was also an interesting story about the wealth of Cao Bang, which had become a separate province under the Trinh overlordship. In 1715, the Chief Censor-one of the most important mandarins at the court-was told to go as governor to Cao Bang. He protested against what he considered as a demotion, but it was explained that the overlord had wanted to reward him for his services by giving him a “fat” appointment. Mandarins posted there were the recipients of many extra emoluments and could quickly make a fortune. The Chief Censor understood the overlord’s intention and gratefully accepted his commission.

  An inspector-delegate was required by law to make frequent inspection tours and Nguyen Uyen must have known the area of Thai Nguyen and Cao Bang well. He may have even spent a good part of his time travelling. Either by land on winding mountain paths or on rivers through rapids and waterfalls, it took days to go from one district to another. Delta people who had been to the northern mountains usually came under their spell. Traders, mine workers, civil servants, many ended up staying there, or if they had gone back to the plains, often tried to return. In this century, several of our kinsmen went to settle in the mountains. They came home on the occasion of family festivals to tell us about peaks wrapped in autumn mist, strange birds and flowers and the sculptural beauty of tribeswomen. We listened to stories of cruel bandits, man-eating tigers, mountain genii who would become very angry if a traveller did not make proper offerings to their temples. Some of them suffered from malaria and had grown very thin and yellow-complexioned. Then, the festival over, they left again. Four centuries ago, our ancestor too must have been captivated by that region, and not only by its scenic beauty, flora and fauna, or such a wonder of nature as the lake of The Three Seas. Scholars dreamed of the calm of the mountains, of temples nestled in the heights looking out to the vast empty space, of recluses wandering among the clouds and under the pine trees. The mountains where a man like Nguyen Uyen could set aside his mandarinal responsibilities and let himself be part of the peaks above and the valleys below. “The wise may like the sea, but in the mountains the virtuous would find joy,” said Confucius. I have never seen the lake of The Three Seas or the paradise of Cao Bang in springtime-having grown up in a country at war, I never had much opportunity to travel-but it seems to me that I have always known them. Perhaps they had settled, since Nguyen Uyen’s time, in a corner of our familial memory so that I feel I can almost conjure them in my mind.

  Our ancestor was appointed to Thai Nguyen at a time when neighboring Tuyen Quang was in enemy hands and acting as a pole of attraction to delta people. Vu Van Mat’s forces, as we saw earlier, were strong enough to push into the delta. Thai Nguyen itself was threatened. The king would only send there delegates who enjoyed his full confidence, especially the inspector-delegate, his “eye and ear” whose responsibility was to ensure the loyalty and good conduct of government officials.

  Nguyen Uyen obviously had a high standing at the court where his father, who might have retired by then, should still have had plenty of connections. It looked as if he was destined for the top offices in the ministries, or that he would join the Censorate, a logical place for an inspector to go. But I could find no information in historical documents to support this line of thought.

  Instead, the evidence pointed to the calmer waters of the Academy. Both registers of high graduates indicated that the highest point of Nguyen Uyen’s career was reached there. “He rose to be an academician,” one of the registers stated. But there were eight different grades and functions in the Academy, which one was his? The other register was more precise: “He rose to be a reviser in the Academy.” But manifestly this was wrong. A reviser read and checked government documents before they were published. He only held the lower seventh mandarinal grade. That could not have been our ancestor’s highest appointment, for we knew that he had reached higher as an inspector-delegate. However, we can take it that Nguyen Uyen was a reviser at the Academy at some point in his career. He could have gained that junior position about three years after his graduation.

  The Academy was not open to every mandarin, not even to every doctor. Only the most brilliant and learned doctors were appointed there and the king often chose his envoys to China among them. The Academy had a right to remonstrate against governmental wrongdoings, but mainly its work was in the fields of education and research, away from the pressure of day to day government. Some academicians had the tasks of reading books to the king and commenting on them for him. From their close contacts with the monarch they often became very influential. Others drafted the text of royal edic
ts, orders and proclamations or explained them in case of difficulty of interpretation. Academicians were also educators, the equivalent of today’s university professors, and they ran the state examinations. The Academy was a prestigious institution, but in the mandarinal hierarchy, it came after such bodies as the ministries or the Censorate. Promotions were slower for academicians. Their Chancellor was only a mandarin of the upper fourth grade, whereas the Chief Censor had the upper third grade and a minister the lower second grade. In those times, grade was the common yardstick to measure all positions and a mandarin knew where he stood in relation to all others.

  Nguyen Uyen would probably have worked at the Academy before he became an inspector-delegate. Then, there followed a gap of some thirty years before the next thing that we know about his career, a diplomatic mission to China in 1580. What did he do during all that time? We can only make an informed guess. By 1580, Nguyen Uyen very likely had passed the retirement age of sixty-five. It was rare to see mandarins stay on after that age; history books did contain cases of men over seventy, some over eighty, still in active service, but they were elder statesmen holding the highest grades and titles of nobility. We have no indication that our ancestor had such grades or titles, except for the ba which was attached to his name. He must have been engaged in some work requiring great continuity to be asked to stay on. I am inclined to believe that he was a historian. This belief is strengthened by the fact that he became an envoy to Peking, for being an academician and a historian were two attributes which would make him a highly qualified candidate for that assignment.

  All dynasties took great care to write their historical records, a task entrusted to official historians. These worked under a tradition which required that the annals should never be seen by the monarch of the time. Thus, although mandarins and “servants” of the king their independence of judgment was respected. Under an absolute monarchy, the profession of historian was not an easy one. The line between independence and deference to the king’s wishes was very fine indeed. The “grand” historian of China, Si Ma Quan, courted the displeasure of emperor Wu and was metted out the most humiliating punishment that a man could suffer, castration. Our own history recorded this revealing incident under the Le dynasty. The great king Le Thanh Ton (1460-1497) wanted to read the annals of his reign. He ordered his chamberlain to go the Academy and see historian Le Nghia in secret. The chamberlain started by not asking a direct question; in the usual manner of scholars he raised a historical precedent in order to maneuver the historian into a position where the latter would not be able to reject his request. Naturally, his precedent was taken from ancient Chinese history. He said: “In former times in China, Fang Xuan Ling worked as a historian when emperor Tang Tai Zong wanted to see the annals. Ling refused to accede to the request. How would you say you compare to Ling?”

  The question was double-edged as it referred to an incident in which Tang Tai Zong killed two of his brothers. Fearful of writing the truth, Ling only made a vague mention in the diary about “that incident in the fourth day of the sixth month.” Having seen that omission, the emperor ordered Ling to record clearly what happened. By recalling that event, the chamberlain hoped to draw the historian into saying that Tang Tai Zong did the right thing by seeing the diary. However, Le Nghia was on his guard. He answered: “The Chinese historian did not faithfully record what happened, but only did so at the command of the emperor. I am afraid that he was not a good man.”

  Seeing that his maneuver had failed, the chamberlain went straight to the question: “His Majesty wants to read the annals of the first eight years of his reign.” The historian replied: “It is not a good thing for a king to read the annals. The way Tang Tai Zong and Fang Xuan Ling behaved was criticized by later generations.”

  Brave words by the historian for these could easily be taken as a criticism against his king. The chamberlain pressed on: “His Majesty said that reading the annals would help him see past mistakes and change for the better.” The historian remained firm: “His Majesty needs only to strive and do good deeds. There is really no need for him to see the annals.” But the chamberlain repeated the request several more times and the historian finally bowed to the pressure. He produced the documents. King Le Thanh Ton read them and had them returned to the Academy. There was no mention that he asked for any change to be made to the entries.

  Nguyen Uyen had impeccable credentials to be a historian. A doctor-scholar, he came from a family whose commitment and loyalty to the Mac dynasty were unquestionable. The qualities which made him a good inspector, integrity and impartiality, an ability to operate without fear or favor, were eminently required in a historian, who otherwise would be a mere scribe writing down what his master wanted him to. If our guess was correct, Nguyen Uyen would have been an academician assigned, probably along with others, the long and exacting task of writing the official history of the Mac. That would have explained why he had continued to stay in active service until such an advanced age.

  The History of Dai Viet recorded that on the third day of the twelfth month in the year of the Dragon (1580), the Mac king “ordered Luong Phung Than, Nguyen Nhan An, Nguyen Uyen, Nguyen Khac Tuy, [eight more names followed] to go to the Ming country [China] for the yearly tribute.

  I noted the name of the third member of the mission but had, at first, doubts that he was our ancestor. A mission to Peking was the most prestigious task that a mandarin could be given and an envoy to China usually held a very high rank, either that of minister or deputy minister. Nguyen Uyen was not known to have reached such high positions. Moreover, being born sometime between 1510 and 1515, he would be in his late sixties or early seventies at the time of the mission. Would a man of his age be chosen to undertake the long journey to Peking? On the other hand the trip to China would fit in particularly well with our family recollection of Nguyen Uyen having been in the king’s service until a ripe old age and having “gone afar, with a risk of no return.” We shall see why there was such a risk in his diplomatic mission. The word uyen in Vietnamese has several meanings; it was written in different ways in the old scholarly script, depending on the meaning. Uyen in our ancestor’s name means profound, deep. I found that the envoy’s name was written in the same way. But could there be another person with exactly the same name Nguyen Uyen? I checked carefully with the History of Dai Viet, and found none. As time went on, the conviction grew in my mind that the envoy may indeed be our ancestor.

  Then, I went to Paris and got a translation of Nguyen Hoan’s Register of High Graduates. It gave me a shock. By the strangest of coincidences, there did exist at the time of our ancestor another Nguyen Uyen, who was also a doctor and mandarin. Moreover, the Register stated that he “had gone in a diplomatic mission.” So the envoy was him! I was taken aback, but wanted to get confirmation in the other register, that compiled by Phan Huy On, before accepting this new piece of evidence. Fortunately, I soon obtained a microfilm of the second register, written in the scholarly script. Phan Huy On’s work is credited by scholars with more thorough research and accurate information than that of Nguyen Hoan. It has the added advantage of listing the graduates by prefecture, thus greatly simplifying the task of a researcher. Quickly, I found our prefecture of Thanh Oai and came to the short biography of Nguyen Uyen. There, on the screen, appeared the information that I was looking for:

  Nguyen Uyen was a man from the village of Kim Bai . . . On the year of the Dragon under [King Mac] Hau Hop, four diplomatic delegations were sent out the capital of the Ming, to make up for the missing tributes. He went as deputy-ambassador . . .

  As for the other Nguyen Uyen, who graduated in 1556, the register noted the following: “Nguyen Uyen was a man from the village of Nham Lang. . .. In the winter of the year of the Dragon under (King Mac) Hau Hop, was ordered to go in the annual tribute to the Ming . . ..” It appears that both Nguyen Uyens went to China on the same diplomatic mission. It is not known what position the other Nguyen Uyen had, but our ancestor was deput
y ambassador of the mission. In all probability, he was the envoy mentioned in the History of Dai Viet. Diplomacy was my profession and a cherished part of my life. Now I have discovered that its roots went deep in my family and could be traced back to the second ancestor.

  The 1580 mission had more important objectives than just to bring tribute. As a matter of fact, no tribute was sent “yearly” to China. The timing of tribute missions was flexible and depended on the current state of relations between the two countries. Let us go back to 1540 and the agreement between Mac Dang Dung and the Chinese. In 1542, the Ming envoy came to the border to deliver the papers appointing Mac Dang Dung as Supreme Commander of Annam and a silver seal of office. By then, however, Mac Dang Dung had died and it was his grandson, King Mac Phuc Hai, who received the papers and seal. Following that event, envoys of the Mac were sent to China to “show gratitude” and pay tribute. The Chinese sent new documents of appointment to Mac Phuc Hai and, in 1543, another tribute mission went. Then there was a gap of five years. In 1548, envoy Le Quang Bi was sent to Peking. It was an inopportune time. According to the History of Dai Viet, a marquess of the Mac named Pham Tu Nghi had rebelled against the king with the aim of putting the second son of Mac Dang Dung on the throne. Defeated by loyal forces, he re-treated to the northern mountains with his troops, then crossed the Chinese border and wrought havoc in the two provinces of Guangdong and Giangxi. The Chinese were furious for not being able to contain him. They blamed the Mac regime for being behind that incursion and showing “insolence” towards China. They threatened to mount an attack against Vietnam. It was at that juncture that envoy Le Quang Bi arrived at the border on the way to Peking to bring tribute. He was detained by the Chinese provincial authorities who claimed that he was a false envoy. They did not allow him to proceed to Peking until fifteen years later! In the meantime, the Mac captured Pham Tu Nghi, beheaded him and sent the head to China as a proof that they did not approve of his activities. But the Chinese were still so angry that they returned the head. Such was the historian’s version. Popular folklore, however, treated Tu Nghi as a hero. A man endowed with exceptional strength, he was said to have been sent north by the Mac to look after the security of the mountainous region next to China. Tu Nghi performed with great zeal and success, pursuing Chinese aggressors and bandits to their lairs in China, where he was killed. The Chinese cut off his head and sent it down the river back to Vietnam where it was picked up and reverentially buried by the border population. Many villages close to the border worshipped him as a guardian spirit.