A Vietnamese Family Chronicle

by Nguyen Trieu Dan

  I cannot recall my grandfather mentioning any piece written by his father. Presumably, that was because none if his children knew the old scholarly script and I was the only grandchild to whom he taught it. Dinh Dat only composed in that script; if he had also written in the popular script which became the national language at the beginning of this century, we may still have had some of his poems today. Moreover, his poems in scholarly script were probably composed in the manner of the old school and laden with learned references to ancient Chinese texts. They would be very difficult to understand to the uninitiated. What would be the point for grandfather to read them to us, who went to French schools and were more familiar with the language of Moliere than with the script used by our forebears! Even if he would translate the words of a poem, its melody and evocative quality would be lost. Truly that would be, to use a popular expression, like “playing music to a buffalo’s ears.”

  Wherever he went to teach, his literary talent made Dinh Dat a kind of resident scholar and poet. People came to ask him to compose complimentary poems and parallel sentences for such auspicious occasions as the building of a new house, a mandarinal promotion or a seventieth birthday. Most of the time, he would take out his brush and write something down right away. Good scholars had that capacity to make instant verses; as people said: “They only have to open their mouth, and words will come out in verses!” But if it was for a close acquaintance or a respected scholarly family, he would take time to think of something special. His sentences and poems were carved on heavy boards which were then lacquered in a combination of red, gold and black colors and hung on walls as decorations. Made of precious wood, the boards could stay in good condition for many generations. Had peace and stability prevailed, some of Dinh Dat’s boards would still adorn traditional homes in our region and, through them, we would still be able to get some idea of his style and inspiration. But since his time, there were the French war of conquest of the 1870s and 1880s, the communist revolution and another war with the French. When the Geneva Agreements were signed in 1954, all that our family had left in Kim Bai was the empty shell of an ancestral home. All furniture and decorative boards had gone, after just one war. The boards were not appropriated by other people; they were too heavy to carry and did not have any other purpose than decoration, a luxury that one could hardly afford in a time of war. But they were a ready source of fuel to a soldiery which could not care less about culture and history. Dinh Dat’s boards would have had to survive two wars. It would be a miracle if any of them were left.

  Overshadowing the problems besetting Dinh Dat’s personal life was the gloom which descended upon our country. Since the tenth century and except for a brief period of Chinese domination (1414-1427), the Vietnamese had been masters in their own country. The only threat to their survival as a nation came from China and it may be said that after millenniums of living next to the Chinese, the Vietnamese have learned the way to deal with them. But now they were faced with a new challenge originating from the West. European traders and missionaries came to Vietnam in the beginning of the seventeenth century, but relations were kept at a low level until the end of the next century, when a crucial development took place. As we saw earlier, political and military links were established between the Vietnamese and the French. The overlord Nguyen Anh obtained French arms and the services of French experts. He won the war against the Tay Son and founded the Nguyen dynasty. Thus, we had a leader who saw the superiority of the West in military art and technology long before the Japanese were convinced of the same and opened their country to modernization. As Emperor Gia Long, Nguyen Anh ruled for seventeen years, from 1802 to 1819. Had he continued to learn from the West and to make the necessary changes in the country, we would have stood a good chance of joining the modern world as a strong and independent nation. But no more French experts were brought in. Young Vietnamese were not sent abroad to study Western technology, the way that Japan would do so successfully later. Neither Nguyen Anh nor his successors had the foresight of a Japanese Meiji. His successors, in particular, paid little attention to developments in the rest of the world and resolutely pursued a policy of going back to classical Confucian teachings. Catholicism was forbidden; its followers were persecuted. The country closed its doors to Europeans. French initiatives to establish trade and consular relations were rejected. In retrospect, it appeared that the opportunity was then lost and Vietnam’s history took the course it did. Historian Tran Trong Kim wrote of that period: “Our people did not understand the changing times. We kept priding ourselves that we were more civilised than others, instead of trying to learn new ways like them and to follow the way of progress.”

  Western imperialism appeared off the coast of Vietnam in 1847 in the form of French warships. The French demanded that the persecution of Catholics be stopped, sank a number of Vietnamese ships in a show of strength, then left. That action could have served as a salutary warning to Vietnam, in the same way as the American “black ships” would do for Japan in 1853. But it was not the case. The emperor and his court neither took the necessary steps to bolster our defense, nor made any move to open relations with the West. Nine years later, French ships came back to bombard the port of Da Nang, just south of the imperial capital Hue, then left again. Again, the warning went unheeded. Finally in 1858, a Franco-Spanish armada of fourteen ships and three thousand troops launched the invasion, under the pretext of saving the Catholics from persecution. French priests have assured the leaders of the expedition that Catholics in the country would rise up in their support. To meet such a force, the Vietnamese had a navy consisting of small boats, an infantry equipped with swords, scimitars, lances and a few muskets and an artillery still using cannons dating from Nguyen Anh’s time which were loaded from the mouth of the gun. Da Nang was attacked and quickly occupied. The French sought to advance north towards the capital, but a large force under Marshall Nguyen Tri Phuong succeeded in stopping them. A few months of stalemate followed. As the expected Catholic uprising did not materialize and their troops suffered heavy losses due to cholera, the French decided that the rich Mekong delta in the south would be an easier target. Leaving an occupying force behind in Da Nang, they moved their ships south and attacked Gia Dinh, nowadays Saigon. Their conquest of Vietnam started from there. It was a drawn out process, taking place over as many as twenty-five years and alternating between military campaigns and phases of negotiation. Our country was taken bit by bit, very much like a mulberry leaf being eaten by a silkworm. During all that time, the Vietnamese court was like a paralyzed body, unable to find effective ways to oppose French arms or to seize the opportunities that arose to make peace.

  My great-grandfather Dinh Dat was twenty-two and preparing to go south to search for his father’s grave when the French launched their aggression against Da Nang in 1858. His trip had to be abandoned. He followed closely the events there, unlike many people in the north who had little concern for what happened in the distant land of the south. The war situation did not look too bad in the first two or three years. The French took the citadel of Gia Dinh at the beginning of 1859, after two days of fighting. They seized a vast amount of arms, ammunition, money and food. The defeated commander, Vu Duy Ninh, committed suicide. The loss of Gia Dinh was a serious blow. But French occupation was still confined to two enclaves, Da Nang and Gia Dinh. In 1860, the French withdrew their troops from Da Nang. France and England were then engaged in a war with China and reinforcements needed to be sent there. But the Vietnamese took the withdrawal as a sign of French weakness. The court proclaimed victory and Marshall Nguyen Tri Phuong was dispatched to attack the remaining French in Gia Dinh. Expectations rose that France would soon be forced to leave the country. Dinh Dat was thinking again of going south, once peace had returned. But by the end of 1860, China had been defeated and the French came back in force to Gia Dinh. Following a series of hard-fought battles, they extended their hold over neighboring provinces. However, the citadel of Bien Hoa, which commanded
the access to Gia Dinh from the northeast, remained in Vietnamese hands. As long as Bien Hoa could hold, hope was not lost that reinforcements sent from Hue could mount a counterattack to regain Gia Dinh. Bien Hoa lay close to our family’s heart. It was there that Dinh Dat’s father was buried. When it fell in December 1861, the fate of Gia Dinh was sealed and any lingering hope that Dinh Dat may still have had of finding his father’s grave also disappeared. In 1862, Vietnam was forced to sign a treaty ceding Gia Dinh and the eastern part of the south to the invader. By the same treaty, it also pledged to respect the freedom of religion and to open three ports for trade with France.

  As the country came under the attacks of a mighty European power, its leaders were men who held fast to the ways of the past. Under the Nguyen dynasty, Vietnam had become a power to be reckoned with in the region. It had enjoyed peaceful relations with China, while exerting a considerable influence over its smaller neighbors. Its national territory had grown larger than ever before. The high mandarins in Hue prided themselves on governing according to precepts laid down millenniums ago by Confucius and the ancient masters. The world had changed. Industrialized countries in the West had spread their tentacles to Asia. For years, the threat from France had been looming. But the mandarins continued to think of their world as safe and secure. Historian Tran Trong Kim gave of them this critical assessment:

  Since the nineteenth century, life and education abroad had progressed greatly, competition among countries had intensified. Yet, those holding political responsibility in our country were only keen on pursuing their literary education and improving their writing skills. When discussing national affairs, they knew only to refer to emperors in golden ages several thousand years ago, as examples for the present times to follow. From their high pedestal, they thought of themselves as superior to other people and treated foreigners as barbarians.

  The scholars’ class in the country was the image of its political leaders, conservative and parochial. Our ancestor Dinh Dat, however, belonged to a younger generation of men who reached their thirties in the critical decade of the 1860s. He had travelled widely in the country, firstly to look for people who had been to the south with his father and who may give him some information about his grave, and then to find relatives who had left Kim Bai and taken with them the Cu Hau papers. He had visited many trading towns on the coast, talked to Chinese and Vietnamese traders, and maybe even came into contact with European travellers. Thus, he was better aware of the problems facing the country than the majority of scholars, for whom knowledge was to be found in classical books.

  The shock created by events in the south gave rise to a reformist current. Dinh Dat was among those who realized that Western methods and techniques would have to be adopted if Vietnam was to stand a chance of overcoming the French challenge. In 1865, envoys sent to France and Spain to negotiate the return of the southern provinces came home to report on the wealth and power of European countries. In their submissions to the court, they advocated a series of measures such as teaching foreign languages, developing the mining industries and establishing a school on maritime transport. The following year Nguyen Truong To, a scholar converted to Christianity, went to Rome and Paris. On his return, he drew up a comprehensive plan to reform the education system, strengthen the army, develop industry and urbanism. Other scholars and mandarins who stayed back at home petitioned that the army be modernized, Vietnamese be encouraged to go into commerce and industry and a number of ports be opened to international trade. The submissions and petitions were examined by the court which rejected them all, some for “not being adapted to the times (sic)” others more seriously for being harmful to law and order. The high mandarins did not want Vietnamese to have contact with foreigners, which was rather understandable in the climate of xenophobia created by the French invasion, but they also opposed suggestions such as the development of commerce and industry. In the 1860s these were revolutionary ideas. Vietnamese society was then composed of four classes: the scholars, farmers, artisans and traders. It had no equivalent of the Western bourgeoisie. The principal source of wealth in the country was agriculture. There were no industries except artisanal ones. Mining was a state monopoly and scarcely developed. Trade was mainly in the hands of the Chinese, who were “guests” with no role to play in the nation’s political or social life. Vietnamese traders ranked last in the social scale. To encourage the Vietnamese to go into commerce and industry would be to strengthen the ranks of artisans and traders, thus disrupting the traditional order. The mandarins were fearful that they would not be able to control the activities of businessmen, especially if trade with foreigners were to be allowed. They knew well that economic changes would necessarily lead to other changes in the social and political system.

  But faced with a deteriorating situation in the south, the court eventually had to take some reformist measures. Vietnamese priests were called to the capital to translate French books, students were encouraged to learn the French language. A few interesting moves were made in 1866 when the authorities picked a number of bright students and good artisans, paid them well and sent them to Gia Dinh under French occupation. Their mission was to find out what they could about French technology. At the same time, mandarins were sent to France to buy textbooks and to recruit professors and scientists; a school was going to be established for them, until events in the south claimed all the attention of the court and nothing more was heard of the project. Other initiatives were taken, but all in a piecemeal fashion, without any central purpose or direction. In the end, those measures made no difference to the course of events.

  The Nguyen emperors ruling from Hue were never very popular with the people of the north, many of whom were still attached to the Le dynasty which lost the throne in 1788. Indeed, the north was still referred to as “the traditional land of the Le.” Real or imaginary descendants of that dynasty were often able to rally supporters and foment rebellions there. Several such rebellions broke out in the 1860s, when the south was being invaded by France. Among northern scholars, in particular those who failed at the examinations and were dissatisfied with their lot, nostalgia remained strong for the Le times when Thang Long was the capital and cultural center of the country. Dinh Dat was an unsuccessful scholar, but he never shared that attachment for a long-gone dynasty. He greatly admired Tu Duc, the Nguyen emperor who ruled from 1847 to 1883, and whose misfortune it was to preside over the loss of our national independence. He was eleven when Tu Duc became emperor, at the age of eighteen. They belonged to the same generation. Confucianism was then at its most influential period and in the king Dinh Dat could admire an elder and a Confucian gentleman. Tu Duc was a learned scholar. His knowledge of history and the classics was regarded with awe by his advisers, who counted among the most erudite doctors in the country. His passion for learning was well-known. He read all the papers submitted to him by his ministers and annotated them at length, often his comments took more place than the paper itself. Everyday after official duties were over, he spent long hours with his books, reading well into the night. A conscientious and hard-working sovereign, Tu Duc held court almost daily, starting just after dawn. Mandarins had to get up and eat their breakfast when it was still dark, so that they could be at the Palace on time. It became customary during his reign that houses in the mandarins’ quarter were lighted up and buzzing with activity even before the cocks started crowing.

  Loyalty and filial piety were two prime virtues required of a Confucian gentleman. Tu Duc was a most obedient son, a quality highly appreciated by Dinh Dat, who was himself very much attached to his mother. Tu Duc never let his responsibilities as a king interfere with his filial duties. He visited his mother regularly, to enquire about her well-being and to talk about his and the nation’s problems. The advice she gave him was carefully recorded in a book entitled Teachings of a Mother. As a king, Tu Duc owed loyalty to nobody, but Dinh Dat saw in him a fervent patriot who suffered greatly for having lost part of the country to the a
ggressor. The story went round the nation that after the 1862 treaty, the emperor’s hair became white as dew in a matter of days. He was only in his early thirties. And never again would he smile, since that fateful event.

  Like many reformists, Dinh Dat placed his hopes for change in the emperor. He blamed the failure to adopt reforms on the high mandarins. These were old men unable to adapt to the new situation, but Tu Duc was believed to be well aware of the need for change. He had read all the petitions, including those made by the Catholics, whose religion was proscribed by a series of royal edicts. His kindness to Nguyen Truong To, the Catholic scholar who on returning from Europe had submitted to him his ideas on modernizing the country, was well known. The few measures taken by the court to encourage the learning of languages and sciences were seen by the reformists as signs that the emperor was gradually overcoming the opposition of the old guard. Dinh Dat, for one, was convinced that the sovereign would eventually lead the country towards reforms and salvation.