Midnight has passed. I put the house in order,
Before sitting down in front of my loom.
A few hours’ sleep and soon dawn will break.
Softly I call on my husband
To wake up and not to sleep any more.
For the king will soon order that examinations be held.
On the golden board shining in the sun, your name will be written.
You will repay the efforts of your parents,
Who toiled away to buy brush and ink-slab and to provide for your studies.
Dinh Dat sought to improve his chances at the examinations by going to Hanoi and studying under well-known teachers. The couple had brief occasions to stay together when she brought him, at intervals, his provision of rice and other produce from home. She would make the thirty kilometers or so trip from Kim Bai, carrying two heavy baskets at the ends of a pole over her shoulder. Starting early in the morning, she would arrive at dusk in the maze of streets, lanes and paths of the large city, and have great difficulty in finding the place where he stayed. When seeing him, she would be happy, but shy and hesitant because they had not been married for very long. Such was life for many young couples when the husband was a scholar vying for academic honors. The image of a young wife carrying rice to town for her scholar-husband was depicted in many a folk poem. Here is one:
Both my parents are old.
I married you, a talented scholar,
So that my future could safely be in your hands.
Whether it is summer or winter,
The produce of each session is ready for you to take, when you go away.
When you send words that rice had run out, I carry it to you.
Asking people to direct me to where you are staying for your studies,
Finally I find the right lane and come to your place.
Putting my baskets down, I can only find these words to greet you: “Dear husband!”
But in spite of his talents, Dinh Dat kept failing at the examinations. Bad luck dogged him. Sessions were held only once every three years, but on those crucial days, either he was caught in poor health or something happened so that he could not put four good papers together to cover the required examination subjects. A turn for the worse came when his mother fell ill and became almost paralyzed. Most of the time, she was confined to her bed. It was a difficult period for the couple. Dinh Dat was busy tutoring younger students, while pursuing his own studies. His wife continued to make cloth and sell at the market, but she also had to nurse an ailing mother-in-law, washing her, giving her food and medicine, keeping her company. The old lady was crippled with pain, but stoically she remained cheerful and never complained. In the last years of her life, the quick temper and severity of her character disappeared. Like her late husband, she sought refuge in the Buddhist religion and her attitude became one of quiet acceptance. To her son, who had grown increasingly despondent and impatient because of his lack of success at the examinations, she talked of the need to follow one’s fate. Talent, she told him, rarely came hand in hand with good fortune. Success may come late to a brilliant scholar, or it may not come at all; we were all bound by our karma. Happiness would come with our readiness to accept what was in store for us, according to Lord Buddha’s teachings. When she died after several years of debilitating illness, her mind was at peace. As a pseudonym for her, Dinh Dat chose Tu Thuan. Tu, or Compassion, was the usual first word for a mother’s name. The second word was the virtue by which he wanted to remember her for, and that was Thuan, meaning Acquiescence. The Thuan here was taken from a passage written by the Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu about his Master, Lao Tzu. It said: “When the Master came to this world, it was at a proper time. When he left it, he readily accepted that it was also at a proper time. Quietly acquiescing to whatever happens leaves no room for grief or for joy.”
Dinh Dat was devoted to his mother. He often told the family that his father’s death and the loss of the family’s fortune in the south could have meant poverty and irremediable decline were it not for the sacrifices made by his mother. Her role was praised in the chronicle in these terms:
Dinh Dat’s father died in the south when he was only three. He was brought up by his mother who toiled to send him to school and give him a future. Thanks to her, he became a scholar who soon acquired a fine reputation in letters.
During her long illness, he and his wife cared for her in the most dutiful manner. More than anything else, he had hoped to be able to graduate and give her the satisfaction of seeing her efforts rewarded. But when she died, he was still just a plain scholar, at the age of thirty-three. Dinh Dat also owed much to his two elder sisters who, since their teens, had worked on the weaving loom and gone to the market with their mother. When she grew old, they became the family’s mainstay. The chronicle put on record Dinh Dat’s debt towards them: “His sisters Tu Loan and Tu Hao kept themselves busy in petty trade so as to provide him with an income. Thanks to them, he could go on with his studies.”
The two were married to fellow villagers, one to a gentleman of the Pham family, the other to a cousin of Dinh Dat’s wife. They continued to help their brother financially until he established himself as a teacher. Later on, when tragedy befell him, they would be there again to give him a supporting hand.
Some time after his mother’s death, Dinh Dat opened his own school inside the family compound, using for that purpose the guest house built by his father. He could have anything up to a dozen students, of different ages and levels. A stern master, he drove his pupils hard and used the rod liberally. In those times, parents would see in the rod the mark of a good teacher. “You love them, you give them the rod; you don’t and you let them play,” a proverb said. Dinh Dat’s reputation grew. He not only taught in Kim Bai but, as reported in the chronicle, “was a visiting teacher at several places.” Villages without their own teachers secured his services for a few months each year. He did not have much of an income. It was accepted custom that children from poor families receive free tuition. Presents of rice, cake, fowl or fruit was all that he received from most of his students. It was a strenuous life moving from one place to another, but there were compensations. In his own village, which was traditionally one of scholars, Dinh Dat was ranked behind all those who held diplomas and mandarinal offices. But a visiting teacher was often the top scholar at the place where he stayed. Dinh Dat was an honored guest at communal festivals or family celebrations. Moreover, he functioned also as a scribe, a calligrapher and writer of parallel sentences that people liked to hang in their homes. Our family still owned some land. Dinh Dat’s wife contributed with the proceeds of her weaving and market activities. All things put together provided for a frugal living.
Academic titles continued to elude our ancestor, but at least his family life was coming along well. In 1871, when he was thirty-five, the couple had a son. Two years later, a daughter was born. Fate, however, was waiting to show its hand. The next year, it struck. His wife of more than ten years, who after a long period of caring for an invalid mother-in-law had finally settled into the life of a wife and mother, died. Then, as misfortune never happened just once, his five-year-old son died too. All that was left of his family was a baby daughter. At forty, his aspiration to become a graduate and mandarin had, for all practical purposes, gone for at that age he had not even obtained the bachelor’s degree.
One can understand why he wanted to look elsewhere than the conformist ideals of Confucianism for an answer to a life afflicted by adversity. He could have sought refuge in the Buddhist religion, as did his parents and his forebears of some generations ago. The roots of Zen in our family were still there, waiting to grow to the surface again. Instead, Dinh Dat turned to the mystical doctrine of Taoism. He was a keen student of the works of Chuang Tzu, the renowned Taoist philosopher who lived in the third century B.C., some two centuries after Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism. Chuang Tzu was a great exponent of that doctrine and he, more than Lao Tzu, was responsible for propa
gating it and making it into one of the three mainstays of Chinese culture. He was also a great writer. His book, consisting of philosophical discourses, tales, fables and parables is one of the best-loved works of Chinese literature, although in many passages one of the most difficult to understand. I remember being introduced to Chuang Tzu through the Story of Kieu. I was reading the Story to my grandfather when we came to a verse with a reference to Chuang Tzu’s celebrated puzzle about himself and a butterfly. Grandfather took out the book of Chuang Tzu writings, wrote that passage down-for me to copy for I was then also learning calligraphy-and explained it to me. Once Chuang Tzu dreamed that he was a butterfly, fluttering about and enjoying itself. When he woke up, he did not know whether it had been him dreaming that he was a butterfly or it was now a butterfly dreaming that it was Chuang Tzu. Grandfather taught me a number of easy passages from the book. What a refreshing change from the study of the Confucian classics! Chuang Tzu wrote in such a lively and witty way that one is not quite sure whether he was seriously engaged in a profound discourse, or just enjoying himself and letting his imagination run. This, for instance, is how he dealt with the subject of death. A man was dying. His family was wailing with grief. A friend came and told him: “What is the Creator going to do with you? Is he making you into the liver of a rat, or the wings of an insect?” To which the dying man replied: “I am like a son, wherever his parents tell him to go, east, west, south, or north, he would obey.” In another passage, Chuang Tzu wrote: “How am I to know that my love of life is not a delusion? and my fear of death is not like that of a child who had lost his way and did not know that he was going home?” I tried to read Chuang Tzu in the Chinese text by myself, but without the guidance of a teacher could not make any progress. Only much later in life did my knowledge of Chinese improve enough to allow me to approach that task, and I still needed to have with me two translations, one in popular Vietnamese, the other in English.
It was when he was around forty that Dinh Dat took up the pseudonym of Song Son Dat Dan, or Hermit of the Mountain of the Twins. For the rest of his life, he would be known by that name. To me, it evokes a scene often depicted in old paintings. The hermit is a tiny figure standing alone next to a pine tree. In front of him are mighty peaks surrounded by misty clouds. He has left his cares and ambitions with the world below. In the calm of the mountain, he searches for Tao, or “the way.” Chuang Tzu often represented his Chan Nhan, or True Men, as hermits or recluses of the mountain. True Men were those who “knew the part that Heaven played and the part that man played”; in other words, who had reached an understanding of the fundamental harmony that lay behind all things. That harmony was the Tao. Chuang Tzu’s hermits were old men “whose complexion was that of a child,” and who behaved rather crazily. One of them was always rambling about, slapping his buttocks and hopping like a bird. Yet, kings, princes, philosophers, scholars, the mighty and the learned of this world, all came to them in the hope of gleaning something of their wisdom. It was not easy to find a hermit in the mountain though, and he would not say much at the first meeting. One had to come back again and again before he would consent to talk. Dinh Dat must have dreamed of going up the western mountains, the cradle of our race which from his village he could see turn purple in the light of the setting sun, there to devote himself to his quest. But family and work tied him down to Kim Bai. His Mountain of the Twins was never anything but a mythical place.
Among the many tales told by Chuang Tzu, I found one which seemed particularly relevant to Dinh Dat and all those scholars like him who failed at the examinations and had to spend their lives teaching in some obscure village school. With their talents unrecognized, they may feel useless. Chuang Tzu told of a useless tree which, however, was destined to quite a different fate. A carpenter came to a place where stood a tree used as an altar for the spirits of the land. The tree was so large that it could shelter a thousand buffaloes. It measured a hundred spans around and rose high before throwing out branches, tens of which were big enough to be made into boats. So many people came to see it that the scene under its canopy was like that of a market. Yet, the carpenter did not turn his head to look at it and went on his way without stopping. An apprentice of his, however, was filled with admiration and ran after him, saying: “Since I followed you with my axe and bill, Sir, I have never seen such a beautiful timber. Why did you not look at it, but went on without stopping?” The carpenter said: “I did look, but it is useless wood. A boat made from it would sink, a coffin would quickly rot, an article of furniture would quickly decay, a door would be covered with sap, a pillar would be attacked by insects. Its wood is useless, that is why it has grown into such an old tree.” The apprentice listened, but the next day he returned to that problem: “Sir, that useless tree, how is it that it became an altar for the spirits of the land?” The carpenter replied: “It is a secret. That tree happened to be there. People who do not know think that it is useless. If not used as an altar, would it not be in danger of being cut down?”
Among scholars of his days, Dinh Dat was well-respected for his literary talents. If his poems or writings in prose were kept, I am sure that we would find in them a Taoist inspiration and the yearning for a life in harmony with nature that the pseudonym he chose expressed so well. But scholars of the old days did not write with an eye for posterity, only to enjoy themselves. They would like nothing more than to exchange poems with their friends over a cup of perfumed tea or sweet wine, singing the poem aloud, commenting upon them, composing variations on given themes and rhymes. Few would seek to make themselves known to a wider public and that was another reason why so much of our literary treasure had been lost. Up to the beginning of this century, when the country finally had a publishing industry, literary magazines, museums and public libraries, the survival of a literary work was often a matter of luck more than anything else. A writer would gain a good reputation, his poems would be learned by heart and circulated outside his circle of friends. One day, some scholar of renown would judge them good enough to be included in his literary anthology and in this way their author would stand a chance to leave his name to later generations. Most of our ancient literature was preserved in anthologies, which by some quirk of fate had survived while the original works had disappeared. Our ancestor Dinh Dat was known to scholars of his region, but never won the kind of fame that would put his name in anthologies. When he died, his poetry died with him. Some scholars would not even want their poems to survive after them. For them, poems were like personal papers, to be shared only with friends. That they could be read by unknown persons was an unacceptable invasion of privacy. Back in the fourteenth century, a king put the seal of royalty over the radical practice of destroying one’s literary and artistic creations. Tran Anh Ton (1293-1314) presided over the destiny of the nation in the period following its glorious victories over the Mongol army of Kublai Khan. The Mongols came to subjugate our people. They were defeated once, came back and were defeated again. The Vietnamese forced them to accept peaceful relations. Our national pride rose to its peak. “A grasshopper taking on a chariot,” so the saying went, but in this case the Vietnamese grasshopper succeeded in knocking the Mongol chariot off its wheels. It would have been easy for a Vietnamese king in the circumstances to entertain illusions of grandeur. However, Tran Anh Ton remained a humble and modest man, intent on keeping the peace and giving the country a good administration. He relaxed by painting and writing poetry; probably most of his works were a combination of both, with a poem written over a corner of a landscape painting. We have no means of judging his talents as painter, but the few poems of his which are preserved in anthologies show him as a gifted and sensitive poet. Anyway, there must have been no dearth of courtesans and high mandarins to praise his poems and paintings and to tell him that they deserved to be kept for the enlightenment of thousands of generations to come. Before he died, however, the king told his chamberlain to bring him the entire collection of his works, entitled “Letting my brush wander
along the water and with the clouds.” Then, he ordered him to burn them to ashes before his eyes.
My great-grandfather did not go to the extreme of destroying what he had written. As a follower of Chuang Tzu who once said that the writings left by ancient sages were just “the dregs they left behind . . . when they died, they took with them thoughts that could never be transmitted,” I do not think that it mattered in the very least to him that his poems were preserved or not. One day, I discovered two wooden cabinets lying under the altar of our ancestral home. I had to crawl on my hands and knees to reach them in the dark. On them were old padlocks of the kind formerly used in our country which could easily be opened with any narrow and flat piece of metal. Inside were piles of old handwritten books. I was then learning the old scholarly script and was excited to discover another set of books to test my newly-acquired skill. So I took a few out to examine them at leisure. They were all written in a cursive style so strange that I could only decipher a few characters here and there. The rest made no sense to me. Great damage had been done by bookworms which had made furrows in most pages. The cabinets were placed in a damp place never reached by sunlight. My grandmother happened to pass by and asked me what those books were. When told where I took them from, her expression changed. “They were your great-grandfather’s books,” she said. “Put them back at once! Your grandfather would not be pleased if he knew that they were taken out.” Her attitude seemed to imply that these relics left by great-grandfather had something of a sacred character. I should not have touched them, let alone taken them out and risking to lose them. I believe that the cabinets contained mostly textbooks used for teaching. Printed books were few and expensive in those days, so scholars used to copy them in a fast and cursive style of writing which was highly personal and very difficult to read for anyone else than themselves. Great-grandfather’s personal papers and any prose or poetry that he wrote must be in there too. The books were stored in a hallowed place right under the altar, but no care was taken to preserve them from insects and dampness. Even without a war and a revolution, they would be soon destroyed.
A Vietnamese Family Chronicle Page 44