A few days before their departure, the envoys were received in audience by King Mac Hau Hop, the fifth of the dynasty, who gave them his last instructions and wished them well for their trip. Following the royal audience, the “hundred mandarins” of the court gave a banquet to farewell the mission. There was a certain urgency about it because our envoys left in the last month of the year, a rather unusual time. All Vietnamese wished to celebrate Tet, the most important festival of the year, at home. Moreover, popular belief considered it not auspicious to start great and important endeavors at year’s end. Let us wait, people would say as they quoted the proverb: “Come the new year, days will extend and months will be longer.” No doubt, our envoys would have liked to commence their mission once Tet was over. But the Mac rulers were keen to resume relations with China, broken thirty-eight years ago since the ill-fated Le Quang Bi’s mission. Perhaps also, negotiations over the terms of the mission had been difficult, with the Chinese demanding the payment of tributes missing over the past period and the Vietnamese claiming for guarantees that delegation members would not be retained in China against their will. Chinese agreement to receive the mission was welcome news to the Mac king who implemented it without delay. Our envoys were not given the luxury of greeting the new year and setting off for their diplomatic journey when the days and months were “longer.”
On the auspicious third day of the twelfth month, at an auspicious hour chosen by the Ministry for the Rites, they departed from the capital Thang Long. Ten days’ travel and they arrived at the town of Lang Son, still a day’s march from the official crossing place to China which was the Nam Quan pass. The name Nam Quan was imprinted in our national history. All the wars between our country and China had started at that pass, which commanded the easiest route from the north to the Red River delta. While in the south and the west, the Vietnamese fought to subjugate their neighbors and extend their territory, in the north they had to defend their own country against China. Nam Quan evoked memories of invasion, of battles fought against great odds and of the heroism of soldiers sent there to be the first to fight and to die. In peacetime, Nam Quan was on a main route taken by traders and immigrants. All our diplomatic missions started their journey north from Nam Quan and it was also from there that Chinese missions entered our country. Before reaching Nam Quan, the mission came to a pass believed to be guarded by a powerful spirit. Back in the third century when the Chinese ruled over the Viet country, they called it Demon’s Gate, for it was said that nine out of ten of their people passing through it would never come back to China. They would be killed either by the deadly climate or in fighting against the Vietnamese. Our people worshipped that guardian spirit. Traders, officials, soldiers, all stopped there to make offerings. On the passage of the envoys, a large ceremony was held for them to make sacrifices to the spirit and pray for a safe and successful journey. A day before the agreed date to cross over to China the mission arrived at Nam Quan. The time had come for the envoys to take leave of friends and colleagues who had come all the way from the capital to see them off. That evening, they dined together, drank farewell cups and exchanged poems. Older envoys made last recommendations to their children. Ahead of them was a journey across mountains and rivers over tens of thousands li, one from which they may not return.
The next day at an auspicious hour, the gates of Nam Quan were thrown wide open and the Chinese welcomed the Vietnamese onto their soil. The tribute mission was on its way. “This journey lives up to the dream of a lifetime,” wrote an envoy. As a scholar trained in the Chinese classics and well-versed in the culture and history of China, our ancestor was going back to the very sources of his learning; how thrilling it must have been for him! From poems written by envoys and some accounts of later delegations, we can get a good idea of what his trip was like. Members of the mission travelled in convoys of comfortable boats or carriages escorted by Chinese officials. They stayed in government guest houses and were entertained at every stop. The Chinese were sometimes guilty of not letting foreign envoys return home, but they always looked after them well. They did so with Le Quang Bi during the whole eighteen years they kept him as a virtual prisoner. Even unofficial representatives of the Le who were in China in 1540 when the Chinese switched their support over to the Mac, and who could not return to the south, were given house and land to live on.
From the border going north to Peking, travellers could go either by way of the province of Guangdong or that of Guangxi. In the sixteenth century, our tribute missions usually took the Guangxi route. Diplomacy played an important part in the first stage of their journey for, as we have seen, China’s day-to-day relations with Vietnam were handled by provincial authorities of the two Guang provinces and not by the Ming court in faraway Peking. Our envoys met with those authorities in Kueilin, the capital of Guangxi. Much of the mission’s success depended on the kind of impression they made on their hosts and how well they could convince them that the war was going the Mac’s way. The Chinese report would reach Peking before their arrival and determine what welcome they would receive. Mandarins of the two Guang could make or break a mission. It was they who sabotaged the mission of envoy Le Quang Bi in 1548.
Once the diplomatic business was over, our representatives settled down to enjoy their journey across China. If the Chinese authorities wanted the envoys bearing tribute to be seen by the people, they also wanted foreigners to see-and be impressed by-the wealth and beauty of their country. From the rich valleys of the south to the fertile plains of the Yangtse and the Hwang Ho, their itinerary led them through large and prosperous cities: Nanning not far from the border and known to many Vietnamese, Chang-sha and Wu-chang farther north in Hunan and Hupeh provinces, Hankow on the Yangtse, which was the most important commercial center in central China at the time, and the southern capital of Nanking, former seat of the Ming dynasty. In the mountainous areas of Guangxi, they saw majestic landscapes of deep gorges and high peaks. As described by one mission:
The Que River wound its way across an infinite succession of mountain peaks. Sometimes, wild animals of the forest came to the bank to drink, on seeing our convoy of boats, they roared and made fearful sounds.
And again:
On the Tuong River, our boats had to move very slowly. A little mistake could produce a disaster. The deep river made its way through the whole Hunan province before pouring its waters in the Tungting lake. For nearly a month, our boats negotiated the Tuong. It was a very difficult part of the journey, but one in which we could see the strangest and most magnificent landscapes.
Several of the places visited held a special significance for the Vietnamese. Changsha, the capital of Hunan, was the scene of a battle won by the Viet over the Han in 185 B.C. Then, Trieu Da ruled over a country called Nam Viet, or Viet of the South, whose territory extended over what are now the two Guang provinces and the north of Vietnam. He refused to submit himself as a vassal to the Han court, which reacted by forbidding the sale of all products in gold and metal, in particular agricultural implements, to Nam Viet. Trieu Da in anger led his troops north and attacked Changsha. He was, as a matter of fact, a Chinese commander who conquered our country from a Vietnamese dynasty, the Thuc, in 207 B.C. But ancient history books, including the History of Dai Viet, appropriated him and treated his as a Vietnamese dynasty. They anchored the belief that our northern border was originally the Wu Ling mountains north of Guangdong and Guangxi As a result, scholars often wrote of the Wu Ling with nostalgia as our natural boundaries and our envoys to imperial China stopped at the old battle place in Changsha to recall the glory of time past, when the Vietnamese advanced close to the Yangtse River. Under the Ming in China as well as under the Mac in Vietnam, Confucianism was elevated to the rank of a state doctrine, well above Buddhism and Taoism. Temples of Literature dedicated to the cult of Confucius were found in large cities and provincial capitals. Our envoys never failed to visit those temples which happened to be on their way. Close to the end of their journey, they mad
e a pilgrimage to the prefecture of Khuc Phu in Shantung province, to worship in his native place the one whom the Vietnamese, like the Chinese, honored as “Teacher of ten thousand generations.” It was customary for tribute missions also to honor the memory of Si Nhiep, a governor when our country was under China’s rule, by paying a visit to his home district in Guangxi province. Chinese governors were best forgotten-some became notorious for their cruelty-but during the millennium of Chinese domination, three of them stood out as worthy of gratitude by the Vietnamese. In the first century A.D. Tich Quang was credited with administering his region in conformity with “the rites” and justice. In the same century, Nham Diem taught inhabitants in the regions south of the Red River delta to cultivate the soil and grow crops. Until then, they had been hunters and fishermen. Si Nhiep, the best known of the three, was a governor for forty years in the third century. At the end of the Han dynasty, when China was torn by conflicts, Si Nhiep kept the Viet country safe and peaceful. He greatly encouraged learning and later on came to be worshipped as a patron of our scholars. Although a Chinese mandarin, he was posthumously honored by the Tran dynasty and given the title of Great Prince in the thirteenth century.
But what lay closest to the hearts of our scholar-envoys were the lakes, palaces, mountains, rivers and cities immortalized by the poems of the Tang and Sung periods. They knew these poems by heart; in imagination they already saw those places. Now they were there themselves and could put brush to paper to emulate ancient Chinese poets:
Range upon range of mountains surround the citadel of Peng,
They reach up to the clouds, like a jade screen planted on the horizon.
The angry current of the Hwang Ho,
Spills its waves over the banks and rushes down towards the southeast.
Holding my jade seal, I climb up the Golden Pavillion,
My fingers follow Su Dong Po’s calligraphy, carved on the stone.
This journey lives up to the dream of a lifetime.
The Sung writer Su Dong Po was revered by the Vietnamese for his poetic essays. He built the Golden Pavillion in the Peng citadel looking over the Hwang Ho, or Yellow River. The author of this poem was Pham Su Manh, the friend whom Le Quat bid farewell in a poem cited earlier. The jade seal in his hand was a figure of speech to show that he was an envoy. In olden times, envoys were given a jade seal and a flag made of fur as insignia of their mission.
Vietnamese scholars shared with their Chinese counterparts “the four elegant pastimes.” They played a similar kind of music, enjoyed the same game of chess, practiced brush painting and wrote poetry in the same script. Not all scholars were talented at music playing or painting. Few were really keen chess players. But all were good at composing poems. They had to be otherwise they stood no chance of being successful at the examinations. “He speaks not words but poetry” was one of the highest praises that a scholar could receive. On their journey north, our envoys had plenty of opportunities to indulge in their favorite pastime of getting together around a bottle gourd of rice brandy and challenging one another to poetry writing. Their progression was a leisurely one. A few days at Lake Tungting, another few days at the Palace of the Golden Crane, the subject of a famous Tang poem and an inspiration for countless poets since, a stop in the Pei district where the Han empire started, a visit to the ancient city of the Yao emperor, who was worshipped by Confucian scholars as a model of a kind and virtuous king, and so on, there were many breaks along the way for the visitors to enjoy the sights and be entertained by the cream of local scholars. From a palace looking out to the mountains or on a boat moored in a tranquil lake, guests and hosts sipped rice brandy and talked of literature and poetry. A scholar improvised a poem to which others responded with poems on the same theme and using the same rhymes. Then, another theme was taken up, another piece was composed and responded to. Vietnamese and Chinese tested each other’s talent; to be unable to respond would mean a serious loss of face. As the envoys thus continued in their unhurried way, their reputation preceded them to Peking. For those who gained the respect of their hosts as scholars and gentlemen, all doors in the Chinese capital would open and they would find court mandarins ready to listen to what they had to say. That was the reason envoys were chosen among men of rich experience and knowledge; often, they were older academicians.
To impress Chinese envoys to Vietnam, our people often resorted to disguising learned doctors into boatmen, helpers, sometimes even placing them as beggars at strategic spots in places visited by the Chinese. There were many anecdotes of boatmen joining the visitors in a poetry contest and surprising them with their literary prowess. “It was bold of me to respond with my unpolished poem,” the boatman would say in the manner of an excuse. “You will find in our scholars more worthy interlocutors.” One boatman did more than improvise poetry. A Chinese party was enjoying a boat trip down one of our many rivers, drinking brandy and talking among themselves when the envoy broke wind, sonorously. His companions burst out laughing and the envoy, perhaps to hide his discomfiture, bragged: “Thunder rolls over the south!” The south for the Chinese meant our country, just like we meant China when we said the north. The boatman could not let this pass. Stopping his rowing, he went to the bow and, in full view of the party, urinated into the river. “Rain comes to the north!” he said. The Chinese could not help but appreciate the à propos of his repartee and this became a celebrated anecdote in the history of our diplomatic relations with China. The Chinese, for their part, tested our envoys’ mettle by placing them in impossible situations. Mac Dinh Chi, an ancestor of King Mac Dang Dung, went to China in 1308. An ugly man, he was described in history books as short and small and looking like a monkey. At first, the Chinese made fun of his physical appearance. Soon, they had to bow to his extraordinary literary talent. Still, they threw one challenge after another at him, from which he always came out on top. Once, he was asked to deliver the eulogy at the funeral of an imperial princess. He was given to understand that the eulogy had been written and what was expected of him was only to read it. At the ceremony, before the “hundred mandarins” of the Mongol court and other foreign envoys, he stepped out and was handed the roll containing the eulogy. Opening it, he saw only blank paper with a single horizontal stroke which was the Chinese character for “one.” Without changing his expression, Mac Dinh Chi immediately improvised a poem to lament the princess’ death, taking “one” as a theme: “A single cloud in the sky . . . the only snow flake . . . a unique flower . . . the moon over the pond . . ..” His short eulogy moved the assembly more than anything that Chinese officials could have written for their princess. Chinese history books recorded its full text. This time, the Mongol court was definitively conquered. Something out of the ordinary had to be found to honor such a talent and the Chinese came up with the title “First Laureate of both nations.”
As a diplomat, I can imagine how my ancestor might have felt as he approached Peking, the goal of his journey. Even nowadays with modern means of communication, one does not go on a mission to a foreign country without a sense of excitement and eager anticipation, as well as some apprehension at facing a new challenge in an unfamiliar environment. How much more so it must have been four centuries ago. What reception were he and his fellow envoys going to have in the Chinese capital? How well would they fare in negotiations with the Ming court? We know that a problem faced by the mission was the confusion regarding its status. At the time, China did not consider our country as a vassal state, but as a dependency. In an earlier mission, which took place in 1543, the Mac envoy received the traditional imperial gifts, but the Ming emperor made the point of not giving him a banquet and of ordering that the number of feasts in his honor be reduced, to show that he was not treated as a vassal’s representative. The Vietnamese, for their part, did not consider their country as a Chinese dependency. The Mac rulers did accept an inferior title from the Ming emperor, but they continued to call themselves kings. Their tribute missions were described by histori
ans in the same way as those of earlier dynasties the titles given to envoys were the same. Protocol and status were important diplomatic considerations, but in reality, China was content that the appearance of her supremacy was upheld. Ever since the last century, when their armies were decisively defeated and their domination brought to an end, the Ming had been reluctant to get involved again in Vietnam. Behind a condescending attitude, there was a healthy regard for Vietnamese power of resistance. Thus, although our country was small in comparison with China and, moreover, weakened by internal conflict, I do not think that our envoys would, in any way, entertain a sense of inferiority as they presented themselves to the Ming court. On the contrary, they represented a country master of its own destiny and it must have been with pride and elation that my ancestor and his companions entered the Forbidden City to accomplish their mission.
Nguyen Uyen arrived in Peking in the summer of 1581. The period between 1573 and 1582 was one of great prosperity for China, under a government led by the Grand Secretary Chang Chu Cheng. The Ming emperor was young and Chang was the country’s real ruler during that decade. After he died in 1582, the dynasty steadily declined until it fell to the Manchus in 1644. Our ancestor thus saw China in the last splendor of the Ming.
He and his fellow envoys were welcomed thirty li from Peking by Chinese officials and taken to the diplomatic residence, where they stayed with envoys from other countries who happened to be visiting the capital. The Ming court received missions from a great many places. Under the reign of the great emperor Yung-lo (1402-1424), these came from neighboring states such as our own, Korea, Japan, the Ryukyu Islands and also countries farther away: Champa, Cambodia, Siam, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Malacca, and even some Indian states. Yung-lo, who raised the Ming dynasty to the zenith of its power, expanded external relations. He sent several maritime expeditions led by Admiral Cheng Ho to southeast Asia, India and as far as the east coast of Africa. Often, Vietnamese and Korean diplomats were in the Chinese capital at the same time and many stories of our people matching wits and poetry with the Chinese mentioned the presence of a Korean envoy. A strict control was exercised by the Chinese to prevent foreign missions from buying history books, Tibetan silk, weapons, gunpowder and, generally speaking, from learning any trade secret. Also, foreigners were forbidden to take any plant or seed out of China. The Chinese were extremely sensitive about these matters, but some of our envoys still managed to elude their attention and bring home new manufacturing techniques and new varieties of crops. Phung Khac Khoan, the man who presented the Ming emperor with thirty poems, visited Szechwan and memorized the way silk was made there, how it was unwinded from the cocoon and how weaving looms were constructed. On his return, he instructed people in his village and created a thriving silk and gauze cottage industry. He also smuggled out seeds of corn and sesame, which, since the seventeenth century, have become two important crops.
A Vietnamese Family Chronicle Page 30