A Vietnamese Family Chronicle

by Nguyen Trieu Dan

  In Peking, the Vietnamese envoys first presented their credentials to the Chinese minister for the Rites and handed over the imperial tribute. Then, they were given an audience by the emperor. A ceremony was organized for them to receive the emperor’s gifts to the Vietnamese ruler, which usually consisted of precious products from China such as brocade, embroidered silk and ginseng. Time was spent visiting the capital and attending banquets. But the most important activities of our envoys were contacts and negotiations with the mandarins who governed China. On top of everything, they must have sought to meet with Grand Secretary Chang to acquaint him with the situation in Vietnam and cement Chinese support to the Mac dynasty. Did they obtain a private audience with him and succeed in “winning the heart” of a man considered as being, in effect, the emperor? Judging from the welcome they received back home from their king and from mandarins at the Court, they probably did. Having left Thang Long at the end of the year of the Dragon (1580), the mission arrived back at the border fourteen months later, in the spring of the year of the Horse (1582). The following quote is taken from the History of Dai Viet:

  On the twenty-sixth day of the second month, year of the Horse, the Mac king ordered the minister of Finance, Count of Vinh Kieu (and three other high officials whose names were given) to the border at Lang Son to welcome back the Luong Phung Than mission.

  Mandarins were routinely sent to the border to meet tribute missions on their return, but this time a court minister went and the occasion was considered important enough to be recorded in history books. Only once before under the Mac dynasty did the king send a minister and that was in the very special case of envoy Le Quang Bi, who came back after being kept by the Ming for eighteen years. Moreover, historian Le Quy Don recorded in his book that “on the fifth day of the third month, the minister of Public Service Tran Van Tuyen asked to be allowed to retire, so as to make room for the envoys who had just returned from China. The Mac king rejected his request.” Among ministers, the one heading the Public Service was the highest in rank; that he offered to cede his place showed the very high credit enjoyed by the returning envoys. By all accounts, their trip to China was a great success. Yet another indication of this success was the sending of another tribute mission in 1584. Relations with China, which were disrupted for a long time by the Le Quang Bi affair, were again back to normal and the old system of triennal tribute missions was reestablished.

  Like many envoys “to the north,” Nguyen Uyen must have written a number of poems during his trip. Our family was not able to keep any, but I can readily imagine them, short and concise in the mode of classical Tang poems and subtly expressing emotions and feelings through references to ancient Chinese stories and writings. Some poems written by envoys from his time have been preserved. They are quite difficult to understand, being written in the old scholarly script. As eyewitness accounts of the trip to China, they are of little value. Envoys were also known to have written diaries and memoirs, and these would be of much more historical interest. The splendor of Peking at the time of the Ming, the pomp and ceremony at the Imperial Palace, how I would love to see them through my ancestor’s eyes! The negotiations with the Chinese, the diplomatic experience at the court of the Son of Heaven, I am sure that Nguyen Uyen wrote about them, not only in his official report but also for his personal records. Most academicians were prolific writers. Private diaries and memoirs, however, tended to disappear quickly in the incessant turmoil of our country. Families could never keep them for long. Our own family lost all papers left by Nguyen Uyen; worse still, it even forgot the crowning achievement of his career, the tribute mission which I only discovered in the History of Dai Viet. I was thrilled, the more so since I myself made a career in diplomacy. But searches in other historical sources provided few other details, for the Mac period was one of the least documented in our history. As a result, to paint a picture of my ancestor’s mission, I had to draw on information that I could gather from other missions.

  It was customary for the Mac, like the Le dynasty before them, to reward returning envoys with the position of deputy minister and the title of tu, or viscount. We have no records of the positions and titles that Nguyen Uyen and his colleagues were given. But the ba that our family remembered as being his middle name may very well be the title he received. Other rewards and honors came to the envoys. An ambassador was granted fifty-five mau of rice fields, a deputy ambassador forty-five mau, or sixteen hectares. Like newly-graduated doctors, envoys were triumphantly welcomed back to their villages and feted as popular heroes. At over seventy years of age, Nguyen Uyen must have retired soon after his return from China. In those days, mandarins were often subjected to harsh disciplinary measures such as reprimands, demotions, dismissals, forced resignations. Just to be able to retire honorably in old age was a matter of much rejoicing. To be retained in the king’s service until Nguyen Uyen’s age and to end a career on such a high note as a diplomatic mission was a rare achievement indeed. His friends and colleagues would have organized a sumptuous farewell banquet poem after poem of praise would have been written on long silk hangings and presented to him. On the day he left to return to his village, there would have been a large crowd to see him off at the gates of the capital.

  Nguyen Uyen died when the Mac were still in power. The court conferred on him the posthumous name On Tinh. These were aptly chosen words to honor the memory of an envoy, for they stand for moderation and calm. He married twice. The family chronicle only mentions the name of his second wife, a lady from the Phung family. She was probably stepmother to his only son who, as we shall see in the next chapter, was born in 1534 when Nguyen Uyen was in his twenties and therefore, more likely from his first wife. What could have been the reasons for the name of that Phung lady to be remembered, while that of his first wife was not?

  For a long time, Nguyen Uyen was thought to be our first ancestor. He still holds a very special place in our family history. Most of the traits and traditions related to the Nguyen of Kim Bai can be said to have originated from him: scholarship, public service, a long life, a certain slowness in reaching the top of one’s career and a journey to a faraway place in uncertain conditions. To those of my own generation he comes across as a familiar figure, much closer to us than his father, which is natural since links with the latter were lost for quite a long time, but also closer than many ancestors who came after him. In its length and variety, his mandarinal career was exceptional. Lasting over half a century, it saw a young doctor rise to become royal delegate to a region, serve in the Academy, the national center for scholarship and learning, and finally participate in a mission to China, the dominant power in our world. Nguyen Uyen did not seem to have reached a very high rank. I do not think that he ever was part of the inner council of the Mac king or even belonged to any faction at the court. I rather picture him as an independent scholar-mandarin in the traditional Confucian mould, who put his versatile talent to whatever function the king wanted him to perform-true to the Master’s precept that “a gentleman should not specialize”-while always careful to keep a certain distance vis-à-vis his superiors and the king himself, as a means of safeguarding his integrity and independence of judgment. But his reputation must be such that he was still called upon, in the evening of his life, to undertake a most sensitive mission in which the paramount interests and honor of the state were involved: a diplomatic journey to Peking.

  The Mac rule lasted for over six decades. Of our ancestors who served it, Nguyen Uyen was the most fortunate in that he graduated and spent his whole career under the same dynasty. In this way, he was spared the heartbreaking choice that his father had to make when the Le were replaced by the Mac as well as the shame and despair which would be the lot of his son when the Mac were defeated. His was a calm and stable period between two storms. It may be for this reason that, while the traumatic first and third generations came to be forgotten, Nguyen Uyen stayed on in the memory of his descendants. The words Han Lam, the Academy, mean “the
forest of brushes.” Our ancestor must have used his writing brush often. With a life as rich as his, there was a great deal to write about. It was said of our country that from the forest of its ancient literary treasures, only a few trees have been preserved. The same can be said of Vietnamese families. Nguyen Uyen must have written poems, essays, diaries, memoirs, perhaps even contributed to a history of the Mac. But following the fall of that dynasty and the decline of our family, the trees that he left were soon destroyed. Not a single one escaped. His long and full life, including fifty years of public service, are reduced to a mention in the History of Dai Viet, a few lines in the two registers of high graduates and a paragraph in our family chronicle.

  16. The Tragedy of the Third and Fourth Generations

  The next generation was recorded in the chronicle by a few short sentences:

  Our third ancestor’s pseudonym was Phuc Ninh. His wife came from the Nguyen family. Her pseudonym was Trinh Khiet. They had to move from place to place. There was no recollection of their tribulations.

  Then, in the manner of a postscript, came these cryptic lines:

  The family organized a ceremony to call our foremother’s spirit. She was buried where the highway ran, outside the boundary of the Pham family’s shrine. Consequently, her grave was lost. The date of her death was also forgotten.

  “No recollection of their tribulations,” wrote my grandfather. There were, about the ancestors of this generation, many unanswered questions. We know that they fled after the Mac dynasty crumbled. Why did they have to flee? It was thought that the departure was on account of the Nguyen of Kim Bai having served the Mac in prominent positions for several generations. Anti-Trinh feelings were strong in our family and these were attributed to persecution at the hands of the new rulers. Was Phuc Ninh himself a mandarin of the Mac? That would be quite likely, considering what his grandfather and father did under that dynasty. But why did the family not remember anything about him, his diplomas, his career or even his name? Phuc Ninh was only a pseudonym. Furthermore, after a long period of absence, Phuc Ninh’s wife was able to return to Kim Bai. She died and was buried there. The purpose of the above ceremony was to find the location of her grave. Did Phuc Ninh return? Why was there no effort to locate his grave, which we know was also lost? From what was written in the chronicle, one could sense something sad and tragic, which elders were reluctant to recall. I can remember vaguely something they said about the third generation, that it was an “ill-fated” generation. When my grandfather translated the chronicle from the old scholarly language into modern Vietnamese for the benefit of the young generations, he omitted the fact that the family “had to move from place to place,” in other words to go into hiding. He also left out the ceremony of calling our foremother’s soul. It seemed to me that Phuc Ninh’s case was similar to that of our first ancestor Nguyen Tue. Later generations came to forget everything about Nguyen Tue, because as a mandarin he transferred his allegiance from the Le to the Mac, an act decried as treason when the Le returned to the throne. Similarly, it is likely that some traumatic event also occurred in Phuc Ninh’s time, which the family at first tried to conceal and ended up forgetting for good. I consulted history books, but since Phuc Ninh was only a pseudonym, there was no possibility of doing any meaningful research. To me, that generation was a lost cause until the day I came across the following passage in the Dai Viet Register of High Graduates:

  In the year of the Goat, fourth year of the Sung Khuong era under the Mac, seventeen candidates were awarded the doctorate diploma . . .. First among the doctors of the second class was Nguyen Hoang, hailing from the village of Kim Bai, prefecture of Thanh Oai. He graduated at thirty-eight years of age. He rallied [to the Le] and became second deputy-minister of Justice, with the title of count.

  The fourth year of the Sung Khuong era corresponded to 1571 in the western calendar. Nguyen Hoang was then thirty-eight, which means that he was born thirty-seven years before as we have to take into account the Vietnamese custom of giving an extra year to every person; when born a baby is already one year old. Nguyen Hoang was therefore born in 1534; he thus belonged to the generation of Nguyen Uyen’s son. Was he the same person as Phuc Ninh? The register of graduates, which so clearly established the family links between our first and second ancestors, failed to provide any clue regarding Nguyen Hoang’s parentage. But there were several positive indications. His name is composed of two words, like those of Nguyen Tue, Nguyen Huyen and Nguyen Uyen. Names were made of two words in some Vietnamese families, three words in others. Nguyen Hoang may very well belong to our family, for there could not be several families of Nguyen in Kim Bai with a two-worded name and whose members were scholars with high academic honors to their credit. Nguyen Hoang graduated in a year of the Goat and this is another interesting pointer. Our people attached much importance to the fact that our first and second ancestor was both made doctors in a year of the Goat, at an interval of twenty-four years. In our calendar, the same animal came back every twelve years. As doctorate examinations were held triennially, they were always under the sign of one of the following four animals, the Goat, the Dog, the Buffalo or the Dragon. Among these, the Goat showed itself to be our auspicious animal, for our three doctors Nguyen Huyen, Nguyen Tue and Nguyen Uyen all won their laurels under it. Now, thirty-six years after Nguyen Uyen, Nguyen Hoang also became a “year of the Goat” doctor. Was this just a coincidence, or could it be taken as an indication of direct descendance? I know that village elders, those in the time of my youth, would surely lean towards the second possibility. They would also invoke the prophecy of the Mountain of the Twins, which said that at any given period, there could only be one family in Kim Bai succeeding at the highest civil service examination.

  I discussed my findings with my father. “We can never be sure,” he said, “since we do not know Phuc Ninh’s real name and the registers of high graduates remained silent on Nguyen Hoang’s family links.” Nguyen Hoang’s surrender to the Le seemed to be at variance with our family recollection, which was that Phuc Ninh suffered tribulations because he had been a mandarin of the Mac. However, my father pointed out that by coming out to work for the victorious Le, Nguyen Hoang would have made it possible for our family to return to Kim Bai. This might also explain why the family had been able to hang on to large landholdings until the seventh generation, as stated in the Cu Hau papers.

  Then, I discovered something more about Nguyen Hoang in the Southern Sky Register of High Graduates:

  Nguyen Hoang . . . was a doctor of the second class in the year of the Goat. In the Royal Courtyard examination, his papers could have earned him the first class. But he committed the bach tu mistake and was downgraded to second class. After the Mac rule ended, he rallied to the Le. He became second deputy-minister of Justice, with the title of count. He was killed by rebel troops.

  Such inauspicious happenings as the rallying to the Le and the violent death at the hands of rebel troops would explain on the one hand, why our family had wished to forget about our third ancestor and on the other, why our village had no collective recollection of its most brilliant scholar. The downgrading at the examination would be another tribulation in a life remembered as ill-fated. More and more, Nguyen Hoang and Phuc Ninh became one in my mind.

  Nguyen Hoang graduated at the age of thirty-eight. Probably, he had sat for a number of doctorate sessions before getting his name on the “golden board.” He must have been talented, but unlike Nguyen Uyen and Nguyen Huyen before him, both of whom won the degree at a young age, luck was obviously not on Nguyen Hoang’s side. At thirty-eight, time was running out for him, for few were those over forty who could successfully meet the challenge of a doctorate session. Then, in that year of the Goat, under an animal sign which saw his grandfather, great-uncle and father all graduate, everything seemed to fall into place. Nguyen Hoang went through the four stages of the Hoi examinations, attended the Royal Courtyard session and wrote such a good paper that he was deemed worthy of
the first class, a rank awarded only to the top three graduates of each session. Would he be given the third title, which carried the poetical name of Tham Hoa-Searching Among the Blossoms-or the second title of Bang Nhan, Eye of the Honors List? Could he win the supreme honor of being made Trang Nguyen, or First Laureate of the country? Our family had never had such glorious titles, nor had indeed our village.