The next stage of his business saw Quang So become a timber merchant, probably operating with a group of partners, for the timber trade required a great deal of capital and manpower. Timber was bought in the highlands of Vietnam and Laos, assembled in rafts and floated downstream to their destinations in the delta. Our ancestor dealt in precious hardwood of the types which could not be attacked by termites and which, once seasoned, would not warp. Such wood was used for making house pillars and beams, furniture and also coffins which, traditionally, wealthy people bought on approaching old age and kept ready for their final journey. Labelled “iron wood” because they were as hard as iron, four were singled out for being the most valuable: dinh, Ern, sen, tau. Dark red Lim wood, in particular, could be seen standing as tall and proud pillars in temples, communal halls and the homes of the wealthy. Quang So went up the highland to buy the timber and accompanied it on its way down. It was a dangerous and high risk business. The rafts had to negotiate rapids and strong currents. Losses were frequent. Of course, during the monsoon when every river became a torrent, no transport was possible. Moreover, although a single emperor reigned over the whole country, the highlands next to the borders remained far from secure. Rebellions continued to oppose the central government; in the 1830s, several movements were taking place there, one of which was led by a descendant of the Le trying to restore the old monarchy fifty years after it had ended. As for bandits, whether Vietnamese, Chinese or from the mountain tribes, they were a chronic threat. There were times when business had to stop, as the danger of going to the border area was too great. Still, it was a profitable line and our ancestor would keep doing it later, in between his trips to the south of the country.
His business developed and several men of Kim Bai worked for him. One of them named Khau went with him in all his trips. Khau’s son was in his sixties when I stayed in Kim Bai as a boy. His house was next to our compound and he often came to talk to us in our front yard on summer evenings, after the brick surface had been watered to take away the heat of the day and we all sat there waiting for the southern breeze to rise. He told us stories about bandits, tigers, ghosts and spirits of the mountains. A tiger there was not just called a tiger but respectfully as “Mr. Tiger.” Tigers often killed and ate their victims. They caused a lot of harm but those who went out to destroy them saw strange things happening to themselves. Thus, a man thought he had killed a tiger but in fact only injured it; the same animal returned after many years to kill him. A group was attacked by a tiger who only went at one man while sparing all others; it was found out later that his father had killed tigers years ago. So the stories went. “Mr. Tiger” was vested with human, even supernatural, faculties. Local people lived in fear of him and wished that they would not cross his path. Of the cruelty of bandits, we were told how innocent people were killed by them and thrown into the river, and how the corpses kept floating alongside the timber rafts until the traders had to stop and find a place to bury them. Many women were kidnapped and sold to the Chinese. In some Chinese towns across the border, most of the women were, in fact, kidnapped Vietnamese. Traders could operate and come out of the area alive only if they had an arrangement with the bandits. That was not so difficult, for the bandits were willing to let the traders and their goods pass through their territory, provided that the right amount of money was paid.
The most exciting stories that we heard from the old man were those of ghosts and spirits. Spirits inhabited every part of the mountains. They were in temples dug deep in marble caves or suspended high between the summits and the clouds, where Buddhist monks and Taoist recluses died after spending their lives in the pursuit of Truth. Time and again in our history, Vietnamese warriors were called to the border to fight off Chinese aggression. Their spirits continued to guard the passes where they laid down their lives, and where gates and temples were erected for their worship. Lesser spirits ruled over special geographical features such as river, mountain, lake or even a particular stretch of road and waterway. Before their boats crossed a dangerous rapid, for instance, the traders never failed to make offerings at the small shrine on the bank and pray to the local spirit for a safe passage. Included in the offerings were incense, fruits, flowers, quantities of gold and silver monies in paper reproduction, and also a live cock which was sacrificed at the ceremony.
People living in the northern mountains had to contend with all kinds and manners of ghosts. All those known to delta people were found there, and some more. Traders who came down the river on boats or rafts had to be wary of the water ghost. Lying in wait at the bottom of the river, that ghost extended its enormously long arms to seize the legs of a swimmer and pulled him down. The ghost’s grip could not be shaken off, however hard the swimmer tried. Just before drowning, he suddenly found himself released to the surface. For ghosts did not normally kill people; they only frightened them, then let them go back to tell their tales. An effective way of dealing with the water ghost was to do what the forefathers of our race did in prehistoric times, when they went out to sea to fish and were continually attacked by strange creatures there. They tattooed their body to make the creatures think that they were also fish living in water, not land-based humans. Khau’s son said that his father had tattoos on his chest and was never troubled by the ghost. I wonder whether my ancestor had tattoos also. If he had, that would be very unusual, for I have never heard of scholars tattooing their body. Certainly, men in our family were not known to do so. Some mountain ghosts were particularly feared because they could take possession of your body and turn you into a ghost. The ma ca rong, or ca rong ghost, only existed in the northern highland. It seized its victims, made them into ghosts, then sent them out in the night to attack people and suck their blood. It was the Vietnamese version of the vampire. Those possessed by the ca rong ghost often lost their minds or committed suicide. Another ghost of ill repute came from the border provinces of Lang Son and Cao Bang. It appeared under the unlikely form of a cock. If it took possession of you, you became yourself a cock to terrorize people and make them fall ill. However, I found it difficult to understand how anyone could be frightened of a cock. As a boy, I raised chicks in the backyard of our house in Hanoi. I remember the thrill of waking up in the early morning and hearing the first crow of young cocks I had had since they were just newly hatched chicks. A full-grown cock was one of the most majestic and beautiful creatures I knew. How could it become a feared ghost? Khau’s son did not give any satisfactory explanation. He only asserted that the cock ghost struck deep fears among mountain peoples.
Quang So’s activities brought him in contact with Chinese merchants who were in control of most of the country’s trade as well as its exchanges with China. That was the start of a successful association. As noted in the chronicle: “Our ancestor entered into partnership with the Chinese and operated in that way for several years. He became known as a wealthy businessman.”
The Chinese had been trading in Vietnam for as long as one could remember, but rarely had they and the Vietnamese joined hands in business ventures. Solidarity was the Chinese’s strength. Migrants from the same region of China, and even more so from the same prefecture or the same village, stuck together and supported one another in their commercial enterprises. The typical Chinese hawker in my young days was the seller of grilled peanuts. He did not speak Vietnamese but was popular because he always gave a good serving and his peanuts had the flavor of spices not found anywhere else. He was certainly new to the country and had probably arrived penniless from faraway Guangdong or Yunnan Immediately, he was taken under the wings of his countrymen. They gave him a loan to start his business, with no other guarantee than that he came from the same place than they and therefore was to be trusted. They told him a few things about local conditions and there he went, selling peanuts to schoolboys. With perseverance, hard work and financial support from his compatriots, in a few years’ time he would not need to hawk his product in the streets but would sell from a small shop. From there, he w
ould continue to progress to better things. Chinese traders were closely-knit, unlike the more individualistic Vietnamese. They formed solid partnerships, while Vietnamese were less inclined to trust one another and could not stay together in partnership for long. This advantage, coupled with a good business acumen, put the Chinese on top of our trade. Those khach or “guests”-the term we called the Chinese to make clear their position of migrants vis-à-vis us, the hosts and original inhabitants of the country-did not even need Vietnamese as interpreters or local guides. They could always rely on their own community which had settled in Vietnam for generations. A mixed partnership, like the one Quang So had with them, was very unusual indeed. It tells us much about our ancestor. To start with, he must have had the temperament of a pioneer, unafraid to go into new fields. Then, he must have had an open and flexible mind to overcome the cultural and behavioral differences between us and our “guests.” He gained the respect and affection of his Chinese partners, as would be seen later when he died in the south. He must also have spoken Chinese, probably the Cantonese dialect. He would have been at a disadvantage if he did not, for he was apparently the only Vietnamese in the group and among his partners there were certainly people able to speak both languages. Finally, the Chinese must have seen in him qualities of a good businessman and a gentleman whom they could trust.
We were then in the early 1830s. Quang So moved away from the northern region where he had been doing most of his trade, to go into a new field: plying the sea between the Red River delta and the Chinese province of Guangdong. It was just as well that he did so, for soon that region would be the theatre of an important rebellion which the government took the best part of two years to quell. During that time, few traders could venture there. The partnership thus came at a good time for our ancestor. It owned a number of junks which came to pick up their shipments at Hung Yen, a river port southeast of Thang Long (Hanoi) and about forty kilometers from our village. Hung Yen, by its previous name Pho Hien, had been an important commercial center since the times when the king resided in Thang Long. Chinese, Dutch, English and other European vessels which came for trade in the seventeenth century were allowed to sail up the Red River as far as Pho Hien, but not to the capital which lay farther upstream. From Hung Yen, the junks belonging to Quang So and his partners started the voyage down the river until the South China Sea. There, they turned north for the short run to Guangdong, all the time hugging to the coast. Quang So made several trips to China and I could imagine the exciting stories he told the people at home on his returns. He must have been familiar with the Bay of Ha Long, hailed by European travellers as one of the marvels of the world, with its myriad of rock islands thrusting out of the sea. At that time though, the Bay was no tourist attraction. From the mouth of the Red River to the Chinese border lay a series of bays well-sheltered behind a profusion of big and small islands. Traders usually went through the bays instead of braving the high sea, although they risked falling into the hands of pirates who hid in island caves and suddenly appeared to attack their boats. Danger lurked at many places, but a successful trip could mean for the trader and his family financial security for several years. Of the many products transacted between Vietnam and Guangdong, Quang So and the Chinese dealt mostly in textiles. They exported the natural silk of Ha Dong, our own province, and a shiny black silk called linh which was used to make trousers for women. The Chinese were very fond of linh. Early European traders in China had noticed that material and praised its softness and attractive look. From Guangdong, the junks brought back bro-cade, an embroidered material sought by mandarins and wealthy people for their formal dress, high quality tea, a traditional import from China, and fine china which could not be produced in our country. A good source of supply and a safe sea journey were all that was required for a successful venture. Once the junks were back in Hung Yen, a well-organized network of distributors set up by the Chinese took over. Selling the goods was not a problem, although they were expensive. After three decades of political stability and with the new land of the south acting as a spur to the economy, the country was getting more prosperous. “People were waiting to buy all the brocade, tea, china and other Chinese products that could be brought in,” old folks said.
When Quang So went into partnership with the Chinese, he was already an established trader with years of experience as a travelling salesman and timber merchant. He must have also built up a good financial base. However, the funds put into the partnership were said to be not only his, but also his wife’s. She was a daughter of the Chu family, from a neighboring village. Her given name was Che. Like the Chu of Kim Bai to whom they were related, Quang So’s in-laws were rather well-to-do landowners which, in those times, meant having one or two hectares of rice fields. They had two sons and two daughters. Both sons died young, leaving no heir. Quang So married the eldest daughter and, as recorded in our chronicle, “after his father-in-law died, the responsibility of celebrating the ancestors’ worship in the Chu family fell to him.” Did he inherit valuable assets which could then be used for the business? Quang So’s father, it can be recalled, had inherited house, garden, pond and rice fields from his in-laws. But for his part, Quang So may have received only some land for the purpose of celebrating the cult, as he was survived by his mother-in-law who would have remained in possession of the rest of the Chu family’s properties. Thus, the money for the partnership did not come from inheritance but must have belonged to his wife. She had a previous marriage and may have been left with some wealth after her first husband died. In any case, the fact was that she contributed financially to Quang So’s business and did so at a crucial time, when he was embarking on his most ambitious commercial venture.
They were both in their thirties when they married. She had two children of her own, a boy and a girl. It was not an arranged marriage. Quang So was not one to let his life be ruled by the family or by rigid traditions. He resisted parental pressure to start a family early so as to ensure continuity of our line, turning a deaf ear to all prospects put to him by his parents and elder sisters. Eventually, when well past thirty, he took for wife a woman of his choice, a widow with two children. How an old-fashioned family reacted to that union can easily be imagined. Were his parents still alive, in particular his strict teacher-father, one may wonder whether Quang So would have gone ahead with his marriage. They were gone, but he still had to contend with opposition from his two sisters, in spite of the fact that both were married into the Chu family of Kim Bai and, therefore, related to the woman he wanted to marry. Quang So, however, was by then a mature man who had travelled widely and had become well-established in his profession. Once his mind was made up, the sisters could only fall in line. After the marriage, our foremother Che moved with her two children into the family’s ancestral home. A woman of character, she quickly settled into her position as wife of the family head and made everyone else accept her as such. The chronicle added that “our ancestor adopted his two stepchildren and considered them as his own. When they came of marriageable age, he found a wife for the son and a husband for the daughter.” The term “adopted” is not to be taken here in a legal sense, for the children were not given the surname Nguyen. They continued to keep their father’s name Le.
Quang So’s business prospered. Most of the time, he was away from Kim Bai. When he came back, it was to supervise some building work. Our ancestral home was a thatched house set up by his grandfather in a corner of the Nguyen ancestral compound. Quang So extended our plot by buying adjacent land from cousins and other neighbors. On a new emplacement, he built a new house with the timber he chose himself in a trip to the Laotian border. Instead of a straw roof like the old one, the new home was covered in latania leaves. Then, a smaller house was built in the compound to entertain his business relations. Next would come a project very close to our ancestor’s heart, about which he often spoke to his family: a new shrine to worship the memory of common ancestors of the Nguyen Dinh.
An endearing si
de of his character was the pride he took in his roots. My grandfather wrote: “He sought to bring into prominence the achievements and virtues of our forefathers. He cleared a path for descendants to follow.” In his time, the memory of count Nguyen Tue was forgotten. He only knew as far back as what is now known as the generation of academician Nguyen Uyen. Even so, he felt that the existing shrine, a humble cottage, did not befit a mandarin who served his king and country with distinction and laid the foundation for a long line of scholars to follow. The original shrine, destroyed in the last century, was still very much present in our people’s mind. They kept talking about its imposing size and the wealth of its cult instruments. Quang So had no ambition of building a similar shrine. His project was on a modest scale, but it represented something very important to him, something akin to a goal in his life. He had bought timber from the mountains and had it stored on the Hat River while waiting for construction to start. He had composed parallel sentences and poems dedicated to the spirit of our forefathers and had them carved in commemorative boards. Alas, as written in the chronicle, “the new shrine never came off the ground. That year-it was not remembered which year-he went to Dong Nai in the Gia Dinh province of the south, contracted an illness and died. Heaven did not allow his wish to be fulfilled.”
A Vietnamese Family Chronicle Page 41