A Vietnamese Family Chronicle

by Nguyen Trieu Dan

  Over three hundred years from now,

  I wonder whether there would be anyone

  Who would shed a tear for To Nhu.

  To Nhu was his pen name. Nguyen Hoang himself could have written those lines, I think, if he was also a poet. I cannot help feeling that he suffered greatly from being disloyal to the Mac and wished that later generations would understand why he acted the way he did. Over three hundred years after his death, at least a descendant of his has now rediscovered the links with him and he can shed a tear over his ancestor’s tragic life.

  It is quite possible that, due to the circumstances of his death, our family was not able to bury Nguyen Hoang and did not even know where his grave was. The thought of him lying somewhere in an unmarked and untended grave must have tormented our people for a long time, as much perhaps as the violent manner with which he met his death. It must have been after that event that his wife Trinh Khiet decided to make the move back to Kim Bai. A family in exile was like a tree separated from its roots. Already when it grew in the original soil of our village, our tree had remained singularly vulnerable because lateral branches often did not appear. Sons had been few and late in coming. Many generations had been obsessed with the fear that the line would not be able to reproduce itself. Family elders talked wistfully of the centenary si tree which stood near the village gate, barring the way to evil spirits. With a dense canopy of leaves and countless roots hanging down from its branches, the tree looked like a large house. In the summer, men working in the fields repaired to the coolness of its shade to eat a light lunch and enjoy a siesta before getting back to work. When the winter drizzle came down and the icy northern wind blew, weary travellers on the highway broke their journey and headed under it for cover. “With the merit accumulated by many generations, one day our tree will expand and develop branches in all directions, like the si tree,” elders said. But for most of the time, the tree which represented best the succeeding generations of our family was the areca nut palm. With only a straight trunk and a crown of leaves, it shot high up into the air, as high as the bamboo of the village enclosure. One feared that it might never withstand the storms of the monsoon, as it swayed violently and there was nothing to support its slender trunk. But it did. Although in no way resembling a si tree, our tree had survived over the generations because it was well suited to the soil of Kim Bai. For countless centuries, its roots had grown deep into it. Taken away from it, how long could it last? Transplanted in another land, would it not wither and die? Later generations would credit Trinh Khiet with returning our family to the place of its roots. Besides, the capital must have become for her and her children forever associated with the ruling Trinh’s treachery and Hoang’s pitiful death.

  The Mac reestablished their rule in Thang Long with Mac Kinh Cung, a brother of Kinh Chi, on the throne and Mac Hau Hop’s mother holding the title of mother of the nation. But Trinh Tung’s withdrawal was a clever move to draw his opponents out and force them to defend Thang Long, instead of being on the attack at many different places. A few months later, he brought his army back and crushed the Mac. Mac Hau Hop’s mother was captured. Kinh Cung escaped and fled to Cao Bang on the Chinese border. That was the last burst of the Mac. They would continue to stay for a long time in Cao Bang, but any chance for them to reconquer the country had gone. Gradually, security returned to the countryside and our people could finally go back to Kim Bai. As their absence, according to family recollection, had lasted about a decade since the end of the Mac dynasty in 1593, they should have been back sometime in the early 1600s, or a few years after Nguyen Hoang’s death. Not only were they back, Trinh Khiet also succeeded in resuming possession of the family’s land-holdings.

  Nguyen Hoang’s memory would be lost to later generations, but not that of Trinh Khiet. We know that she came from a Nguyen family but, unlike the name Phung in the case of Hoang’s stepmother, the name Nguyen was common to so many Vietnamese families that it tells us really nothing. We can only surmise that hers was a scholarly and mandarinal family like our own, for marriages were arranged affairs between families belonging to the same social stratum. Trinh Khiet survived her husband for many years during which she played the role of a matriarch to the family. She was reported as having great courage and strength of character. Now that the story of Nguyen Hoang’s tragic life has been rediscovered, we can see that without such qualities, it would have been difficult for her to keep the family together and overcome the shock of Hoang’s death. Long after she was gone, her spirit remained “powerful” and often manifested itself to her descendants in their dreams. It was probably following one of those appearances that the ceremony of “calling her spirit” was performed, sometime in the 1860s, or more than two centuries after her death.

  As already quoted from the chronicle:

  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.

  My grandfather used such a condensed style that, at places, the meaning of what he wrote was quite obscure. In the eighteenth century, our family went through a critical period of decline and many ancestral graves could not be looked after. When it recovered in the next century, efforts were made to find Trinh Khiet’s grave but they brought no result. It was thought that its location was mentioned in the Cu Hau papers but, when these were found in 1861, they only contained information on ancestral graves going back as far as the fourth generation, the one which came after Trinh Khiet’s. A meeting of the extended family took place in 1862 and it was probably then that members decided to make another search for her burial place, with the help of a medium. Ceremonies to “call the spirit” of a departed parent were quite frequently held in the country, up until recent times. The medium was usually a woman. After offerings were made and prayers sung, she entered into a trance and family members could see by the way she talked that the parent’s spirit had taken hold of her and was expressing itself through her voice. They would then go into a conversation with the spirit. Would it need anything in the other world, such as money, house or servants? These could be sent over in the form of paper representations to be burned at the ceremony. The real object of the exercise came next; it was to invoke the spirit’s help in a matter of particular concern to the family. In this instance, Trinh Khiet might have expressed displeasure in her descendants’ dreams that her grave was left untended; so the spirit was asked to show where her burial place was. As far as I can understand my grandfather’s account, the family was told by the medium that Trinh Khiet “was buried where the highway ran,” which means that at some later date a highway was built passing over her grave and consequently it was now definitively lost. Whether that was true or not, no one can say, but at least the family got an answer to a problem which had been of great concern to it and was satisfied that nothing more could be done. Following that “discovery” I am sure that Buddhist priests were called to our ancestral home for a special prayer service to Trinh Khiet’s spirit. For several days and nights, they prayed there and went to pray next to the highway, outside the shrine of the Pham family, where her original grave was thought to be, so that Trinh Khiet’s spirit could finally detach itself from this world and find rest in the realm of immortal peace.

  In Nguyen Hoang’s time and after three successive generations of high mandarins, our family must have owned a vast amount of land in Kim Bai and adjoining villages. In addition, our ancestors were given by the Mac king, in conjunction with their ranks and titles, sizeable grants of land in villages further away but still within our prefecture. After the defeat of the Mac, the grants were of course rescinded, but our private land continued to be exploited by tenants while the family was absent. It did not seem to have been confiscated by the new authorities, or if it was, it had been restored to Nguyen Hoang after he came out of exile to work for the Le. Hoang, however, never came back to Kim Bai. Only after his death did Trinh Khiet return to claim
the land and as the wife of a mandarin who died for the Le, she must have been given support by the court. Ten years, however, was a long time to be absent and out of possession. Furthermore, even the king’s writ stopped at the village gate. Inside the bamboo enclosure, what mattered was the attitude of other villagers to our family.

  Because of its proximity to the capital Thang Long, in a war, our village usually belonged to the side which held power there. The Hat River formed a natural line of defense to the southwest of the capital and Kim Bai was located right behind that line. Once an enemy crossed the Hat, no other natural obstacle stood between him and Thang Long. During the long war between the Mac and the Le, Kim Bai was threatened only twice. The first time was in 1559-1560, when Trinh Khiem launched from the south a vast ouflanking move against the Red River delta. His troops went north through the hills and mountains west of the Hat but they did not cross the river and Kim Bai was not taken. The second time occurred more than twenty years later. In 1585, the Trinh forces pushed up from the south towards our home region. They came closer and closer but were turned back before reaching it. Kim Bai remained in the Mac camp until the very last stage of the conflict. Our region fell into Trinh hands following the big battle near the Hat River which heralded the end of the Mac.

  Many in Kim Bai were scholars and civil servants. Under the Mac, some reached the highest offices while others served in the middle and lower ranks of the bureaucracy. All through the war, our village was not affected by a divided loyalty and when the war ended, it did not suffer from the tragedy of internecine fighting. There was no revenge, no settling of scores against people who worked for the fallen dynasty. On the contrary, all in Kim Bai found themselves in the same boat, with something to fear from the victorious Le. As for our family, in three successive generations of prominent mandarins, it must have made important contributions to the welfare of the community. As a matter of fact, the Mac period was one of the most prosperous in our village’s history. The legendary brothers Nguyen Tue and Nguyen Huyen were the first citizens of Kim Bai ever to gain the coveted doctorate title. Their success inspired other students and the old tradition of scholarship flowered. Both men opted to serve Mac Dang Dung and were given top positions by the new king. Village solidarity meant that they naturally gave a helping hand to fellow villagers and the number of Kim Bai people in the civil service must have increased. Nguyen Tue was made a count and Kim Bai became a seat of power. It must have expanded greatly, for later documents showed it as being formed by an agglomeration of three villages. In the next generations, the brothers’ leadership roles were passed down to Nguyen Tue’s son and grandson. Academician Nguyen Uyen, in particular, must have done a great deal for his village during his long mandarinal career. Those ancestors of ours had certainly earned the respect and gratitude of their fellow villagers. Their names and deeds would be recorded in village documents and, in peaceful and stable times, these would be kept for all future generations to see. But after the dynasty which they served was defeated, their memory was officially banned, documents about them were destroyed and they passed into oblivion. Centuries later, villagers continued to talk of the Mountain of the Twins and sing the praise of the Nguyen Brothers without remembering what the Twins stood for and who the brothers were.

  The restored Le did not look kindly upon a village with so many people in the Mac civil service. But Kim Bai appeared to have escaped serious retribution. Things would have been difficult had there been Mac military commanders among its people. As civil servants could not survive for long without work, after a decent interval those in Kim Bai came out of hiding to join the new administration. Nguyen Hoang’s act of submission to the Le was not out of step with the rest of the villagers. On the contrary, it may have persuaded others to do the same. Our village had survived all the civil wars and changes of dynasty because it knew when to acquiesce to the regime in power in Thang Long. In a way, Nguyen Hoang’s agonizing transfer of loyalty was a problem faced by the whole community, only in his case it was magnified because of his position as Kim Bai’s highest scholar and mandarin. So when his widow returned, Kim Bai’s people readily accepted her back.

  Our ancestral home and shrine must have been looked after by relatives and I do not think that there was any difficulty for Trinh Khiet retaking possession of them. But it was another problem with our rice fields, mulberry fields, ponds and other land left in the charge of tenants. Could any tenant be happy to see a landlord return after an absence of ten years to claim the fields he had been cultivating, during all the time, for himself? Village authorities may have been ordered by the court to help Trinh Khiet reestablish our family ownership, but that would have been the wrong way for her to go about getting back the land. Our return should be accepted by other villagers, not imposed on them. Trinh Khiet was well aware that the position of power and influence held by our family under the Mac had gone. In the end, I believe that it was through negotiation with the tenants that she succeeded in making them recognize our ownership. In return, they must have received a part of the land as their reward for having taken care of it when we were away. Animosity and bitterness were avoided. It was said of Trinh Khiet that, since the time her husband was a mandarin, she had always maintained a very close relationship with her fellow villagers. I imagine her not unlike my own grandmother who used to say that while in society she was the wife of a mandarin, in Kim Bai she was “a villager like others.” When her husband was a powerful official, respected and probably held in awe by the villagers, Trinh Khiet would have remained friendly and approachable. People who wanted to obtain help or favor from him would have gone through her. They did not forget her kindness and on returning from exile, she was able to draw from a vast reservoir of good will towards her. Thus, our family came through the upheaval of a change of dynasty, still wealthy landowners.

  In our custom, the head of a generation returned to live in the ancestral home when he retired. After he died, his widow continued to stay there. While younger generations may be dispersed to the four corners of the country and coming back only for festivals and death anniversaries, the two old parents were the link between the family and its ancestral land. Most of the time, it was only the matriarch as our foremothers usually survived their husbands for a very long time. So, when Trinh Khiet came home, the link was resumed. She was to remain in Kim Bai until she died. For many years, insecurity continued to prevail in our region. History books recorded that, as late as in 1613, twenty years after the war had ended, refugees were still fearful to return to their native places. Although living in safety among Kim Bai’s community and shielded from the outside world by its bamboo enclosure, our family had to exercise great caution. Rebels favorable to the Mac could still descend on the village and, therefore, real names were hidden. Nguyen Hoang must have been referred to only by his pseudonym Phuc Ninh. His son’s real name was also not used, with the result that he is also now known to us only by his pseudonym. As for Trinh Khiet, that was not a name used during her lifetime, but chosen by her son at her death for the purpose of invoking her spirit in prayers and ceremonies of worship. In normal times, she would be called by her husband’s mandarinal position-as wife of the deputy minister-or in association with his diplomaas wife of the doctor-but since both these appellations had to be avoided, she may have been called simply by her position in the family, as Ba Ca, or wife of the head of the branch. She went on to live until a ripe old age. Her influence was still felt centuries after her death, as we saw in the ceremony to invoke her spirit. Among our ancestors, the academician-envoy Nguyen Uyen has long been considered as our “first” ancestor, not only because he was the earliest one in memory, but also because he stood first in the affection and veneration of later generations. Among our fore-mothers, Trinh Khiet was not the earliest known, but she was certainly the “first” to her descendants, who remembered with gratitude the role she played in the most somber period of their family history.

  When the Mac dynasty fell in 1592,
Trinh Khiet’s son-our fourth ancestor-was probably in his early twenties and studying for the state examinations. Phuc Thien was not remembered for having obtained any diploma, but just to make sure that we have not forgotten another ancestor with high academic qualifications and a distinguished career, I carefully checked the records of all doctorate sessions in the last part of the Mac rule and the first period of the restored Le dynasty, when Phuc Thien was likely to have sat for the examinations. No one hailing from Kim Bai graduated from those sessions. But even without a degree, a mandarinal career was open to Phuc Thien. As the son of a mandarin, he would have qualified to study at one of three colleges attached to the Academy, for example the Chieu Van Quan or College for the Advancement of Literature, which was opened to sons and eldest grandsons of dukes, marquesses and counts as well as to eldest sons of mandarins from the second to the eighth grades. The rules of admission to that college stipulated that the sons and grandsons must be “intelligent, keen on studies and still at a young age.” Every three years, a number of students were selected by college teachers to be tested in dictation, Confucian Books and Confucian Canons. Those who passed the tests became civil servants.