A Vietnamese Family Chronicle

by Nguyen Trieu Dan

  He did not obtain the license which would have opened for him a mandarinal career. But he became a successful teacher who presided over a revival in our family’s fortunes. Although the chronicle does not mention it, I believe that he held a bachelor degree for he prepared students for the regional competitions, the equivalent of today’s university examinations. Such a high level of tuition was seldom given by untitled scholars. Duc Y ran his own school and taught under the pseudonym Dinh Thuyen. Dinh was the royal courtyard, an allusion to the royal courtyard examinations in which our earlier ancestors took part and where Duc Y must have dreamed he could go. Thuyen means to choose good and wise men to serve as mandarins. Thus, after two generations of Zen Buddhists, the name Dinh Thuyen announced the return to purely Confucian values. Many generations of young scholars studied under Duc Y in their quest for “the golden board.” He remained their “teacher” long after they had left his school and it was said that even those who became high and powerful mandarins continued to regard themselves as “students” in his presence. For the family, Duc Y’s success signaled the end of a long period of stagnation. Confidence was rebuilt and the younger generation, which included not only his children but also a brother who was twenty years his junior, was encouraged to study and prepare itself for better times ahead. Duc Y provided strong leadership. As a mark of gratitude for the role he played, the family later on adopted the first word in his pseudonym, Dinh, as its middle name. Descendants of his branch and of the junior branch all took the same middle name. In time, we became known in Kim Bai as the Nguyen Dinh-or the Nguyen of the Royal Courtyard Examination-to differentiate us from other Nguyens in the village.

  We are not descended from Duc Y, but from his younger brother who was thus our seventh ancestor. His real name was not recorded in the chronicle. We know his pseudonym Thuan Can, which means Gentleness and Caution, two of the qualities often praised by Confucian writers in a gentleman. Thuan Can was born sometime in the 1690s. His life was spent very much in the shadow of his elder brother who, considering their difference in age, must have been like a father figure to him. He followed in Duc Y’s footsteps, with however much less success. He was good enough a scholar to pass the test held at the prefecture level to choose candidates for the regional examinations, but got no diploma at these examinations. He taught in his brother’s school, but his teaching career earned him nothing like the reputation that his brother had.

  During the last three generations, the land owned by the Nguyen had been gradually reduced in size. Part of it went into the hands of corrupt officials who took advantage of Phuc Thien’s opposition to the Trinh to prey on our family. Then, our recluse scholars had no regular livelihood other than the rice fields they inherited and had to dispose of a number of them. Still, at the start of this generation, our landholdings remained extensive. We had rice fields, mulberry fields and ponds in several villages in Thanh Oai prefecture, besides our own village. The dreaded one-son pattern at least had a good side to it; it prevented our assets from being divided. But that situation was going to change. Two branches appeared and the inheritance was split. Most of it went to Duc Y. As the eldest son, he received firstly the ancestral home and a large amount of land to be used for the worship of ancestors, then his own share. Thuan Can only received his share. This still gave him a comfortable existence, but he could not afford to be like his father and grandfather and not worry about earning a livelihood. Teaching and getting an income became for him a necessity.

  Thuan Can’s wife was a Nguyen and, therefore, probably from a family outside Kim Bai. She managed the reduced family holdings and engaged in trading activities at the market to bring in an additional income. The couple had two sons, of whom the younger one was our eighth ancestor. His name was Nguyen Dinh Binh, Dinh being the newly adopted middle name common to the whole family and Binh his own given name.

  For his part, Duc Y had three sons, the eldest of whom would be in the same age group as his uncle Thuan Can. The new generation grew up under the rule of overlord Trinh Cuong (1709-1729), the last good period of the Trinh before a great agrarian rebellion engulfed the country. The two decades of his rule saw a further improvement in our family’s fortunes. Duc Y’s heir, Nguyen Du, obtained the license at the regional examinations and entered the mandarinate, the first in five generations of our family to do so. He reached the position of senior prefect of Gia Hung, a senior prefecture in the province of Hung Hoa, in the northwest of the country. A senior prefect held the lower sixth mandarinal grade, just one grade away from the dai phu or high mandarins. His importance could be seen from the fact that the number of senior prefectures in the country was then fifty-two and he was in charge of everything in his prefecture, except for the preservation of public order. Gia Hung was in size probably the largest of all senior prefectures, larger even than many of the country’s provinces. It bordered on China and Laos and only had a sparse population composed of Vietnamese, Chinese and mountain peoples of the Thai and Meo races. The area was poor and mostly covered with forest. Its climate was insalubrious. In the hierarchy of prefectures, Gia Hung stood below most others, but Nguyen Du did not have a doctorate and he already had done well to become a senior prefect.

  Nguyen Du’s two brothers were unsuccessful at the examinations. One of them was Cu Hau, the ancestor who left the papers mentioned in previous chapters. Cu Hau looked after our Ancestral Shrine and managed the extensive cult land belonging to it. In this generation, our family was still well-off and the Ancestral Shrine continued to receive donations from the branches. Cu Hau himself was a man of means who had donated land to Kim Bai’s Association of Literati. Land donors were usually people without descendants; they gave land in order that the association perform the ceremonies of worship for their spirits after they died. Cu Hau, however, had descendants and he did so to support the association’s activities in favor of young scholars in the village.

  At about the same time as Nguyen Du broke the drought for our family by going into the mandarinate, success came to other scholarly families in Kim Bai. More students qualified to take part in the regional examinations. More gained degrees. Then, one claimed the high prize of a doctorate diploma. As recorded in the Dai Viet Register of High Graduates, Nguyen Huy Thuc hailing from Kim Bai was made a doctor in 1739, at the young age of twenty-four. He worked in the Censorate, the body which kept watch over the actions of mandarins and saw to it that they were in conformity with the laws and customs of the country. Nguyen Huy Thuc was one of the thirteen censors assigned to oversee a province. Although also a Nguyen, he was in all probability not related to us, for our chronicle says nothing about him. Besides, our family had by then become the Nguyen Dinh, a name easily distinguishable from that of Nguyen Huy.

  Nguyen Du’s success naturally made him the leader of our extended family. He took over that position from his father Duc Y. In our chronicle, which is that of the younger branch, my grandfather did not expand on their roles. He merely noted that the history of their lives was kept by the heir to the eldest branch. Those two ancestors had started our revival and hopes were raised high in the family. It had taken us two generations since the first harbinger of better times appeared with our tree spreading out into two branches. Talents had been rewarded. Duc Y was a respected teacher. His son rejuvenated with our tradition of public service. Progress had been slow and gradual, but that had always been the case with our family. Our way up the Mountain of the Twins had been through a long and tortuous path. As the generational cycle kept turning, the young generations would continue to forge ahead and reach higher peaks of success.

  But there followed a great calamity, the result of which was that, instead of pursuing its revival, our family sank deeper into decline.

  Already under Trinh Cuong, there were early signs of a deteriorating situation in the countryside. The overlord had to take measures to prohibit public officials from abusing their position and buying land in areas under their jurisdiction. He ordered that court proce
dure be speeded up to settle the claims of peasants whose land had been grabbed by mandarins and big landlords. His son Trinh Giang succeeded him in 1729. A violent and bloodthirsty man, Trinh Giang murdered King Le Duy Phuong and killed several good and loyal mandarins who had served his father well. His spendthrift ways caused heavy taxes to be imposed on the population. To bring more money in, he put administrative offices up for sale. Anyone could become prefect by paying the Treasury 1,800 quan and senior prefect by paying 2,800 quan. Mandarins could go up one grade with a contribution of 600 quan. This measure destroyed the reputation of the mandarinal corps and increased corruption, for those who paid for their offices would recover their money-and take more-from the people. Resentment became widespread. Rebellions broke out nearly everywhere, supported by the peasantry. The rebels all proclaimed to fight the Trinh rule in order to restore the Le monarchy to real power. Historian Tran Trong Kim wrote that peasants in the Red River delta

  took their harrows and sticks to join the rebels. Big movements counted up to tens of thousands men, smaller ones a few thousands or a few hundreds. Villages were attacked and pillaged. Towns were surrounded. The army was unable to quell the insurgents.

  Roads were cut. The authorities had to build guard towers on high ground to observe the movement of rebel groups and light fires to warn of their approach. As the situation threatened to get out of hand, the high mandarins got together to depose Trinh Giang, in 1740. His brother Trinh Doanh succeeded him. By then, big and small rebellions were taking place all over the country. History books mentioned up to a dozen large movements which the Trinh could only put down after more than ten years of fighting. The whole of Trinh Doanh’s rule (1740-1767) was taken up by military campaigns to pacify the country.

  Author Pham Dinh Ho, who was born in 1768, gave a chilling account of what he heard of the calamity which descended in 1740 on his province of Hai Duong, southeast of the delta. One can read in his Essays Written in Rainy Days:

  Our province suffered from the hostilities for up to eighteen years. Wild dogs and pigs multiplied in the fields. People who survived had to peel tree bark and catch field rats to eat. A mau [about 3,600 square meters] of ricefield could only sell for the price of a small cake. In my canton, there was an old and wealthy widow who had silver coins piled up like a mountain [sic]. That year, her household ran out of paddy. She took with her five bags of silver to exchange for paddy, but could not find any and was found dead of hunger. Our village was abandoned and vegetation grew over it. When hostilities ended, villagers followed one another to return from the capital. Cutting down thatch and clearing grass, they looked for the foundations of their old homes. They gathered the bones of family members to bury. . .. The fields had to be burnt to clear them. It was not yet possible to build accommodation, so everyone assembled around the high foundations of the Communal Hall.

  From the above, we can have an idea of what the people in our own region went through during those dark years. There were periods when Kim Bai and neighboring villages too had to be abandoned and their fields left to “wild dogs and pigs.” Our area lay at the mercy of bands of insurgents who operated from their dens in a marshy area to the south and in the western foothills across the Hat River. They came to plunder and destroy at will, time and again. Whether they were political rebels, poor peasants revolting against their condition or simply bandits taking advantage of the absence of law and order, no one was sure. Those bands did not seem to belong to any of the big rebellions mentioned in history books. Kim Bai people recalled that period as “the great upheaval” or “the great calamity,” and referred to the insurgents as “rebels” or “bandits.” The population fled, then returned to work the fields, but their harvest would be taken. There were years when no one returned.

  By then, in the two decades of the 1740s and 1750s, our seventh generation had developed into five branches and some of the elder ones had subbranches. Our family tree had started looking more like the si tree at the entrance of Kim Bai. But the upheaval made the branches disperse and their ties weakened. All branches suffered from the calamity. Lives were lost. Family members sought the safety of provincial towns or fled to the capital. Some found work in the lower echelons of the bureaucracy. Others more humbly eked out a living teaching children or offering their services as scribes to write out letters, documents or pleas to the authorities for illiterate people. Some moved out of the scholars’ class and became shopkeepers or petty traders. All became impoverished and many tried to come back to Kim Bai to hold on to their land, but often had to leave again as the bandits reappeared. Our own branch stayed away from Kim Bai for long periods. Our eighth ancestor Dinh Binh was a young man when the trouble started. He was trained to become a scholar, but did not manage to get any diploma. He earned his living “rapping on young heads,” as the activities of those who taught children were often derisively portrayed.

  Even though a scholar, he was at the bottom of his class, among the mass of those not so talented who remained untitled and therefore had to “suffer from the cold.” The memories of privation and hardship that were imprinted in our familial mind could be traced back to his generation and the one following it.

  Dinh Binh married a woman of the Nguyen family. They had five children, three sons and two daughters. Our chronicle noted that “the first and third sons died without descendants.” One wonders whether they had died during the years of turmoil. One daughter married into the Chu family, whose ancestral compound was situated in the Middle Hamlet, quite close to ours. That was the beginning of a series of marriages between the Chu and the Nguyen Dinh, occurring over several generations. The other daughter died young. As can be seen, daughters have appeared for the first time in the chronicle and we are given some information about them. The second son, named Nguyen Dinh Phuong, became our ninth ancestor. Although three sons were born to them, Dinh Binh and his wife ended up with only one male descendant. The old fear was reawakened. Was the one-son pattern back to haunt us again?

  In the 1760s, security was finally reestablished in the countryside. People could reintegrate back into their villages. Sometime after the return, our family members got together to build a new Ancestral Shrine upon the foundation of the old one. But this time, it was just a small thatched cottage. Then, each branch went its own way. Everyone was occupied with their own survival. There was no one to play a leadership role and keep the branches together. The eldest branch, which used to be wealthier and more talented than the rest, and had produced such leaders as Duc Y and Nguyen Du, was now as destitute as the others. The Shrine used to own a great deal of cult land, which was the common property of the family. That land had disappeared, yet no one seemed to know or be concerned about it. Ceremonies at the Shrine dedicated to the memory of common ancestors were held a few times, then they stopped. A new chronicle was written and deposited at the Shrine. But based purely on the recollection of the survivors, it contained wide gaps. Among the early ancestors, only Nguyen Uyen was remembered. Ancestral graves were lost. Death anniversaries were missing. Yet, no one sought to fill in those gaps.

  Our ninth ancestor was born sometime in the 1760s. Although the family had fallen into hard times, the young continued to be given a scholar’s education. Nguyen Dinh Phuong was sent to study under good teachers in town, while his father, mother and sisters all worked to make ends meet, the women adding the proceeds of their market activities to the meager income of a teacher. “Pages were torn, but the spine of the book must be kept intact,” as my grandfather said. Dinh Phuong grew up in a calmer and more orderly period. The new overlord Trinh Sam (1767-1782) completed the pacification work of his father and strengthened the Trinh rule. With the north safely under control, Trinh Sam set his sights on the south where the Nguyen regime was in the hands of a mandarin usurper and, moreover, confronted with an important revolt from the Tay Son brothers in the highlands. In 1774, he resumed the hostilities which had remained dormant for a century. His army quickly broke through the lines of
walls defending the south and occupied the Nguyen capital Phu Xuan, now called Hue. The Nguyen descendants fled to the newly gained and still sparsely populated Mekong River delta. Their challenge to the Trinh seemed to have ended. The leaders of the Tay Son revolt made their submission to Trinh Sam, who looked poised to extend his rule over the whole country. Who could then have imagined that the Trinh were to be defeated and totally disappear from the national scene, only a decade later?

  Success went to Trinh Sam’s head. Breaking with a tradition that had seen the Trinh keep power in their hands for nearly two centuries while the Le king remained a figurehead, Trinh Sam wanted to become king himself. To take over the throne would be an easy matter for him, but for the fact that the Le king was a vassal of the Chinese emperor and the consent of the latter was needed for a peaceful change of dynasty. Trinh Sam sent a diplomatic mission to Peking to plead with the emperor to bestow the title of king on him, because-as his argument ran-there were no more descendants of the Le worthy of sitting on the throne of Vietnam. As head of the mission, he chose Vu Tran Thieu, a scholar-mandarin with the rank of deputy minister. His own trusted men were placed within the delegation, with large quantities of gold and silver to bribe the Ching mandarins. The mission broke its journey at Lake Tung Ting, the place where all Vietnamese envoys used to stop and rest for some time, before moving on to the Chinese capital. There, perhaps recalling the achievements of former envoys who upheld the honor and integrity of our country at the court of the Son of Heaven, and pondering over how history would judge him, Vu Tran Thieu burned the submission entrusted to him by Trinh Sam, then drank poison to kill himself. He must have been convinced that the people’s will still favored the Le over the Trinh. The mission was aborted. Trinh Sam had to drop the idea of becoming king.