A Vietnamese Family Chronicle

by Nguyen Trieu Dan

  The Dang family was willing to give their daughter in marriage since the bridegroom-to-be stood as a good scholar with a bright future, although it was pointed out that he “was not good-looking.” When grandmother told me that, I objected. I always found grandfather elegant and handsome, particularly in his old age with silvery white hair and a long beard flowing down to his chest. One morning, the family was shocked to see him coming out of the bathroom with the beard shaved off. Only the moustache was left. He did not tell anyone in advance. We later found out that at a dinner party some days before, some ladies convinced him that he would look younger without the beard. Grandmother never minded telling people that her husband was “skinny and not good-looking” when young. I myself was very skinny and angular as a child and she used to console me, saying that “even your grandfather could find a beautiful wife; what matters is to be a successful scholar.” Often, she repeated for me in a modulated voice this proverb: “In your books, you will find a girl with pearl-like beauty.” Once the Dang had agreed to the union, a problem remained to be solved. Social custom called for the bride’s family to “challenge” the groom’s for the provision of wedding presents. These must be shown to all relatives and guests at the wedding to prove that the bride was married into a family of comparable wealth and social standing. But our family was in no position to supply the required presents. After much toing and froing, a secret understanding was arrived at. In the red round lacquer boxes used to carry the wedding presents, only the top layer would consist of expensive items. It was up to the groom’s family to put whatever things it liked underneath to make up for space and weight.

  On the wedding day, the groom’s party came with a dozen servants carrying the red lacquer boxes on their heads. The boxes were opened and showed around. All the guests were impressed with the brocade, silk, tafetta and personal jewelry displayed. Quickly, the bride’s family asked servants to put the boxes away as the ceremony must proceed and the bride must leave her home at the time designated by astrologers. No one saw the stratagem and everything went right. But after that, our family enjoyed a rather flattering reputation of being very wealthy, when in fact it was not.

  The wedding took place in 1905, when grandfather was a student at the School of Administration. His family life had now settled and his career path was also clearly drawn. The same year, my great-grandfather celebrated his seventieth birthday. Things appeared to be going well, but in the same year his younger brother had left home and a crisis was impending.

  Grandfather’s two younger brothers were brought up like him as scholars. However, they did less well in their studies. Both were active in subversive activities against the French occupants, in particular the youngest whose name was Nguyen Tam Tiep. Tiep, written like his brother’s name but carrying a different tone, means “to continue.” Tam means third, thus Tam Tiep was the third son who continued the line. Tam Tiep joined at a very young age secret organizations in which former students of his father were involved. After Phan Dinh Phung’s movement was crushed in 1895, other armed rebellions which broke out in the Red River delta suffered the same fate. Only in the northern mountains could the revolt led by Hoang Hoa Tham continue to hold out against the French. Many revolutionaries fled to China to fight another day. Secret organizations sent young people out of the country to join them. In 1903, scholars under the leadership of Phan Boi Chau formed the Movement of the Restoration of Vietnam, with at its head Cuong De, Marquess of Ky Ngoai, a member of the royal family. The movement planned to recover independence by mobilizing the population into a vast national movement. It sent emissaries to all parts of the country to enlist patriots.

  Meanwhile, events in Asia forged ahead. Russia was defeated by Japan in Manchuria. In the naval battle of the Tsuchima Straits, the Russian fleet was decimated. For the first time in contemporary history, an Asian country emerged victorious against a European power. The news resounded all over the continent. To our revolutionaries, it brought a lesson: they must follow Japan’s lead and get help from that country. In a book relating his revolutionary life, Cuong De was reported to have said:

  The news (of the Japanese victory) came to warm the heart of so many Vietnamese. We believed that if we asked Japan for help, it would be readily given, for the Japanese and the Vietnamese share the same culture and are both Asian.

  In 1905, Phan Boi Chau escaped from Vietnam. He went to China and Japan to solicit aid. Soon, Cuong De was to join him there. That was the situation when my great-uncle Tam Tiep decided to leave home. The appendix to the chronicle written by my father stated that he “went abroad when sixteen years of age.” It did not specify the year when Tam Tiep left, but as he was born in 1889 and by my father’s generation, the custom of giving everyone an extra year had been dropped, that year should have been 1905. He made the escape along with Nguyen Hai Than, who later became the leader of the Quoc Dan Dang, or Nationalist Party, and was Ho Chi Minh’s opponent in a bitter struggle for power in 1945. Nguyen Hai Than, a scholar holding a bachelor degree, was about ten years older than Tam Tiep. They were among the very early self-exiles and Tam Tiep at sixteen was probably the youngest of them. Historical documents confirmed that Nguyen Hai Than left the country at that date. When Phan Boi Chau was in Japan in 1905, he wrote a propaganda booklet entitled “Encouraging the Young to Study Abroad” and wanted to send it to Vietnam to be distributed. Author Phan Khoang, in his book History of Vietnam under French Domination 1884-1945, wrote: “Nguyen Hai Than, then newly arrived in Japan, volunteered to finance the cost of disseminating that document.” Whether Tam Tiep also went to Japan with him was not known. It was also not clear whether the two belonged to Phan Boi Chau’s movement or to some other revolutionary group.

  Tam Tiep left well before the “Go East” movement of Vietnamese students to Japan, which was started by Phan Boi Chau some years later. His departure was a severe blow to the family, firstly because he was so young. At sixteen, he looked a mere boy. Secondly, although he was one of three brothers, our family had been through so many generations with only one heir that it was still obsessed with the fear of losing the lineage. At the time, my grandfather had just remarried-his first marriage was childless-and the second brother was still single. But many of Dinh Dat’s students were in China and their presence there was an assurance for the old man that his son would be well looked after. Also, it was still rather easy then for revolutionaries to make return trips as French security forces were not yet able to impose a strict control over the comings and goings of the population. Thus, Tam Tiep was not going into the completely unknown, with no promise of return. Yet, risks and dangers were evident in such an enterprise. It was a hard decision to make for his parents. Our scholarly tradition, however, was based on the notion of service and service to the country was of paramount importance. There was no question of them denying Tam Tiep the opportunity to respond to the call of the fatherland.

  Things went right for a time. “Tam Tiep was able to send news home at the beginning,” wrote my father in the chronicle, “but security control became tighter and tighter. After a while, the news ceased to arrive.” In fact, Dinh Dat’s former students brought home not only news, but also letters and even photographs of young Tam Tiep taken in China. They could visit their teacher without creating suspicion. Security services were not even aware of Tam Tiep’s absence. To everyone else in the village, he was pursuing his studies in town. Nguyen Hai Than, who left with Tam Tiep, actually returned to the country and involved himself in political agitation for several years before leaving again for China. Then, one of the messengers was caught. Under torture, he disclosed everything about Tam Tiep. Officials and soldiers descended on our house in Kim Bai. Fortunately, warning was received just in time for all of Tam Tiep’s letters to be burned. But his mother could not part with the photographs, so they were hidden over the beams of the roof, in between the latania leaves. My grandfather was then in Nam Dinh at the School of Administration, but his second brother was home.
He fled. Dinh Dat and his wife remained to bear the wrath of officials and to see the soldiery put their house upside down searching for evidence that would incriminate the family. Nothing was found. Their line of defense was that Tam Tiep was not a good student and he had left home to look for work. Since then, he had not been in touch. The search party was preparing to leave when someone said that the roof had not been looked into. Dinh Dat’s wife looked at him in horror. But it was not easy to find something under a roof made of latania leaves, unless it was taken down. The officials were not prepared to do this. Dinh Dat was a retired teacher and widely respected. So, they just did a perfunctory search of the roof and left.

  The above happened sometime in 1906. Grandfather was preparing for his examinations to get into the mandarinate. The security services in-terviewed him in Nam Dinh. He and his second brother were considered to be mainly responsible for Tam Tiep’s subversive activities, for their father was then an old man in his seventies. But grandfather was not arrested. A licentiate soon to become a mandarin, he was already a personality among northern scholars. The French thought it unwise to arrest him and create a stir in public opinion. So he was allowed to sit for the examinations. But the crisis must have affected his performance, or it could have been the long arm of the secret service, for he came out of the School of Administration at a very low rank. While many of his friends were immediately appointed to lead a prefecture, he was sent to a small prefecture to work as Huan Dao, or Education Officer. For the next ten years, he would languish in a teaching position.

  The second brother Nguyen Thuc Phan was hunted by the regime. He managed to elude the police dragnet for several months before being caught. But no evidence could be produced against him. He was released, then rearrested an released again. His studies were interrupted and although he sat for the examinations, he never gained any diploma. The police continued to dog him. In 1909, a marriage was arranged for him and was due to take place when the security services arrested him again. The families, however, agreed to proceed with the ceremony and so it turned out that only the bride was present, while the groom spent his night of nights in jail.

  As grandfather started his mandarinate career under the protectorate, he had a brother among the revolutionary ranks abroad and another one under surveillance by the security services. The brothers were engaged in different, one could even say opposite, paths. They seemed to be divided on political lines, but only apparently so. To grandfather, the eldest son, fell the responsibility of providing for the parents and assuring the survival of the family. A basic Confucian teaching, enunciated in the very first pages of the Great Learning, was that those who wished to do well in administer-ing their states should first try to order well their families. If one’s own family could not be maintained as a vital unit, how could one expect to successfully serve one’s country? Ours was a nationalist family and, like his brothers, grandfather suffered to see Vietnam under foreign domination. He, however, realized that it could not be opposed by force. Our country was too weak. It needed to be strengthened through economic development, social reforms, and the raising of the level of education among the population. Accepting that we could not get rid of the protectorate, ways should be found under that regime to achieve those goals. As for grandfather’s brothers, they could throw themselves fully into their activities against the French, knowing that he was there to look after their old parents. Outsiders looking in may see a contradiction in their attitudes, but our family remained fundamentally united. In any case, political attitudes have never affected the loyalty and solidarity among its members, either then or half a century later when Vietnam would become divided between nationalists and communists. As it turned out, revolutionary activities in the beginning of the century proved ineffective against the French domination. People like Tam Tiep only succeeded to keep up the flame of resistance. Meanwhile, it was grandfather who was the mainstay of our family and who laid the foundations for its new prosperity.

  The second brother Nguyen Thuc Phan, whom I called Great-uncle Two, settled down in business. He did so as a form of political opposition. He followed a movement started by scholars who, while they stayed out of the public service sought to develop the nation’s potential by going into popular education for some and into commerce, industry or agriculture for others. The time was when people with academic titles could be seen opening shops and textile factories, exploiting mines, cultivating rice fields and exhorting the population to use local products instead of those imported from France. The aim was to create in the country a strong bourgeoisie like that in Western countries, which could then give effective financial support to those fighting for independence. With their activities, the scholars also wanted to bring in social changes and do away with the traditional four-class society in which the mandarins sat enthroned at the top. Great-uncle Two married a city girl and together they opened a shop on Sugar Street in Hanoi. The center of Hanoi-its City-was from olden times composed of thirty-six streets, each specialized in the trade of a product. The names remained: Sugar Street, Silver Street, Hemp Street, Fan Street . . . although the specialization had gone and shops now sold a variety of products. Sugar Street was one of the main thoroughfares in the City. The unique tram line in Hanoi ran along it. The couple’s shop bore the name of Vinh Dong, meaning Forever Together. It retailed textile materials such as linen, cotton and silk. The family was excited with the move made by Thuc Phan, which brought back to mind the success enjoyed in trade by his grandfather Quang So. He succeeded better than many a scholar turned shopkeeper by conviction, and the shop provided him with the means to raise a large family. But of the caliber of Quang So, who went to the northern highlands, the Mekong River delta and south China, and who built up a business enterprise on a par with those of Chinese merchants, Thuc Phan was not. He and his wife were devoted to each other. True to the name they gave to their shop, they would stay together in their shop all their lives. They had ten surviving children, two sons and eight daughters. With such a numerous progeniture, life must have been difficult. I can only recall few occasions when we went to my great-uncle’s place for a meal.

  Thuc Phan was a brilliant conversationalist with a rather wicked sense of humor. He ridiculed people’s foibles mercilessly. Whenever he came to visit, everyone would rally around to listen to him commenting on the way the world was going. He used words in a bold manner, swearing freely. Cho dai, dogs for breeding, or ngua dai, horses for breeding, were the names he called us young boys. He knew some French and some of the swear words he often used in that language were positively scandalous: salaud, con, couillon; so much that one day his son had to bring a big Larousse dictionary and explain in detail to him their crude meaning. “Father, you used these words so frequently,” he told him. “You only got away with them because the people you talk to do not understand French!” Until old age, Great-uncle Two remained intensely nationalistic. In 1945, after both the French rule and Japanese occupation came to an end in Vietnam, he gave full expression to his joy and excitement. He came to see my parents-we were then living in a house in Quan Thanh street, close to Hanoi’s Western Lake-and quickly climbed the steps to the first floor lounge, although he was then close to sixty and not keeping in good health. As my mother served tea and my parents enquired about his health, he took off his turban and was in high spirits. “I can still fight to keep the independence of our country,” he said. He called my elder brother and me to stand in front of him and addressed us, not in his usual mocking style but very solemnly:

  Our country is now independent. We are no longer servants of foreigners. Our people are free to trade and work as they like for a living. Do you youngsters feel happy? Can you realize how lucky you are growing up in a sovereign country?

  In opposition to French rule, he had chosen not to try for a position in the civil service and had gone instead into commerce. Although he did rea-sonably well with his shop, it was an obscure and hard life, made even harder at times such as the Great Depres
sion of the 1930s. He could not afford to buy a parcel of land in his village on which to retire, the dream of any Vietnamese. The western house in our compound which belonged to him was given him by my grandfather. Compared to the latter, he was always the brother who had dropped behind. One could sense in him a certain bitterness and discontent at the life that fate had laid out for him.

  When a child, I was nicknamed Ong Nhieu, or Mr. Nhieu. Nhieu in the old village system was an appellation given to persons who were exempted from unpaid labour imposed by the authorities. Villagers who could afford it bought the exemption. Mr. Nhieu stood above the lowest category of citizens in the village, but that was the only precedence he enjoyed. He ranked below all other village officials. That nickname was given me by Great-uncle Two. It was not complimentary at all, but our custom wanted children to be called by rather deprecatory or ugly-sounding nicknames. For parents to boast about their children was poor taste. Great-uncle Two, so my mother told me, liked to carry me in his arms while he walked around reciting in a modulating voice the following folk poem:

  Before the New Year, people planted ceremonial poles to celebrate the Tet.