He waited until the seventh day of the New Year, when festivities had ended, to plant his.
Early in the morning of the first day of the year, scholars took out their ink slab and writing brush to write their first poem.
He wrote his when afternoon was drawing to an end.
Everyone wanted to find a rich wife. His was poor.
He went to school for studies, but the only title he earned was Mr. Nhieu.
Clearly Mr. Nhieu did not fit into his time and place. In giving that nickname to his great-nephew, perhaps Great-uncle Two was thinking in the first instance of himself and his own destiny.
His wife died in 1940 of tuberculosis. I do not recall much about her, except that she was an educated lady who was good at writing poetry, in particular satirical poems. Some of these I could still recite by heart. Her eldest son Nguyen Duc Ung was also a poet in his spare time and wrote a number of pieces under the title “Collection of Duc Ung’s Poems.” Great-uncle Two had two sons both of whom had only daughters. Thus after one generation, his branch had ceased to have male descendants.
Great-uncle Three, Tam Tiep, threw himself into revolutionary activities at a very young age. He chose the radical path of leaving home and country in order to fight against French rule. In the period under the French, self-exiles like him were heroes worshipped by the young generations. Few people knew what the exiles were doing abroad. Mystery and imagination entertained the hopes placed in them. Away from the reach of the French secret police, helped by Chinese friends and sympathizers, they were setting up secret armies with modern arms not yet seen in this country. Thus, the rumors went. In time, they would come back to liberate us from the colonial yoke. We would be free, independent and strong again. Did Tam Tiep set out to go to China or Japan? We only knew that he “went abroad.” After the lines of communication with him were broken up by the police, our house in Kim Bai was placed under constant surveillance. Former students of Dinh Dat, even if they were still able to assure the liaison with China, would not have dared to show up. Forty years passed. In our family, Great-uncle Three was not mentioned anymore in conversation. But in the mind of a great-nephew who did not know him, being born long after he had left, he remained very much present. To me, he was wrapped in an aura of prestige like a hero of legend. For he symbolized the pure spirit of youth as well as the daring of a pioneer; most of all, he loved his country and did not falter from going into a life unknown in a place foreign in order to fight for it.
In 1945, Japan surrendered to the Allies. Vietnam proclaimed its in-dependence. Chinese troops came to the north of the country to disarm the Japanese forces. The revolutionaries returned from China. Nguyen Hai Than, with whom Tam Tiep went abroad, was now at the head of the nationalist party Kuomingtang, the second most powerful organization in the north behind the communists. Our family hopes were rekindled. Great-uncle Three may be coming back! But days went by and the good news failed to materialize. Contact was made with some revolutionaries who could not give us any information about Tam Tiep. The man to ask was Nguyen Hai Than himself, but he was now a leader of a party engaged in a death struggle with the communists to decide political supremacy over the country. It was not easy to get in touch with him as he was heavily guarded by his own troops and by the Chinese. Finally, my maternal grandfather was able to meet him to renew their friendship of decades ago. Nguyen Hai Than agreed to come to his place for lunch, one of the very few times that he left the safety of his headquarters. As the two reminisced over a cup of wine, while nationalist militants swarmed around the house and in adjoining streets to guard their leader, my maternal grandfather enquired about Tam Tiep. The old revolutionary, now over sixty, found it hard to recall events of forty years go. After a while, he said: “I do remember that eager young man from my home town,” alluding to the fact that both he and Tam Tiep came from villages within the province of Ha Dong. “But I was with a group of several people and after arriving in China, I handed them over to the organization. The idea was for the young people to learn Chinese, then go into military schools or universities to become military or political leaders.” Nguyen Hai Than then branched into another topic of conversation and my grandfather thought that was all he would say about Tam Tiep. But he returned to the subject afterwards. “In the 1910s, after the Japanese joined hands with the French and expelled all Vietnamese revolutionaries from their country, the Chinese also grew less supportive of us. Financial sources of help dried up and our young people had to abandon their studies to earn a living. The organization could not help them anymore. It was everyone for himself. Our people dispersed in all directions. China is a vast country. It was impossible to keep track of them.” Nguyen Hai Than continued:
I do not know what Tam Tiep did for a living or where he went. Most of our first wave of revolutionaries must have died. They did not live to see the end of French rule. They were not able to say to themselves that their sacrifices were not in vain.
Thus, Nguyen Hai Than implied that Tam Tiep had died. I remem-bered that when the news was relayed to him, my (paternal) grandfather took it stoically. He must have guessed that much, for nothing that the family had heard had given it any hope that Tam Tiep was still alive. But his brother was skeptical. “That Nguyen Hai Than is old and maybe his memory is not that good,” he said. Politically, he did not agree with the Kuomingtang, his views being more to the left. “We must continue to ask,” he insisted. Later on, grandfather also managed to see Nguyen Hai Than. He was hoping that the previous meeting had jogged the latter’s memory about Tam Tiep. But he could not obtain any new information. In 1945, if he was still alive, Tam Tiep would have been fifty-six. He was younger than most of those who left for China at the start of this century. Besides Nguyen Hai Than, our family was unable to meet with anyone who belonged to that “first wave of revolutionaries” and who could give us a firsthand account of Tam Tiep.
Our further enquiries proved fruitless until a person told us that he did not know Tam Tiep personally, but had known of him. He heard that Tam Tiep married a Chinese woman and had children before dying, a long time ago. If that was true, there would be a branch of the Nguyen Dinh now living in China. Who knows? I might find cousins of mine in China some day.
From Nguyen Hai Than’s account and from documents published since 1945, we now know how difficult and precarious life was for those revolutionaries abroad. Instead of setting up vast armies to fight the French, as we tended to believe in our dreams, they were struggling to get a living. Only the lucky ones could gain a scholarship into the Military Academy or could find a Chinese benefactor to finance their studies. At first, secret collections of money were made in Vietnam and sent out. They never amounted to much. In 1906, the Movement for the Restoration of Vietnam devised a plan to call on the public to buy shares in trading companies serving as fronts for the revolution. The plan proved a failure. After that, the only hopes rested with China’s or Japan’s willingness to help a fellow Asian nation. There, the revolutionaries soon discovered that, as the Marquess Cuong De had commented bitterly, foreign policies were based not on sentiment but on concrete national interests. They could never rely on assurances of help given either by the Chinese or the Japanese. It all depended on the policy of the government of the day. There were “good times” when the Vietnamese were assisted with money, arms, military training and scholarships to go into universities. But help, when available, was always given in small amounts, drop by drop. There were “bad times” when nothing came, not even a word of moral support. The worst blow that ever fell on the Vietnamese exiles was in 1909 in Japan when, following an agreement with France, the Japanese government expelled all of them, from one day to the next. All nationalist parties struggling for independence abroad were placed in that vulnerable situation. They could never really build themselves up into powerful organizations. The only group of revolutionaries who could rely on regular help and guidance from a foreign power were the communists, their struggle for Vietnam’s indepe
ndence being a stage in a world proletarian revolution directed from Moscow. Consequently, they held a decisive advantage over the nationalist groups when the Second World War ended and Japan left. As the French had been kicked out by the Japanese a few months before, Vietnam was there for the taking and the communists, being the best organized force, took it.
Our family being poor, Tam Tiep could not have taken much money with him. At sixteen, to struggle for a living in a foreign environment must have been extremely hard. I have often wondered whether circumstances had allowed him to work for the revolution the way he hoped to. Was his wish to serve the country fulfilled? Or did he not, when evening fell at his place of exile, sometimes regret his decision to leave home and say to himself: “If only I could play this game all over again!” I believe that he had died years before 1945, when the French were still well entrenched in Vietnam and no one could have forecast the cascade of events that would come with the end of the world war. Yet, I hope that in his heart, that patriot had found some consolation and peace as he closed his eyes for the last time, away from his homeland.
Grandfather started his mandarinal career in a prefecture called Truc Ninh, which was part of the province of Nam Dinh, a rich and populous province in the delta, southeast of Hanoi. The township of Nam Dinh was the third largest in the north, after Hanoi and the port of Hai Phong. It was an important cultural center, with schools of high reputation like that of Headmaster Son Nong, where grandfather studied. Triennial examinations to select bachelors and licentiates were held there as well as in Hanoi and the Nam Dinh center often attracted more candidates. Truc Ninh, however, was only a prefecture and not among the large ones in Nam Dinh. A position of education officer there was perhaps one of the lowest that a licentiate could get on graduating from the School of Administration. Out of a scale of nine mandarinal grades-which was in fact eighteen as each grade was composed of two subgrades called upper and lower-an education officer occupied the upper eighth grade, or only three steps above the lowest grade which was the lower ninth. By comparison, colleagues of grandfather who were appointed as prefects held the lower sixth grade. For him, this could hardly be called an auspicious start.
Certainly, it looked as if grandfather was shunted aside by the regime, but when a delegation of young mandarins was picked to go to France on a study trip, he was chosen. An album of the trip was kept with his personal papers in Ha Dong until everything was burned down in 1946, at the start of the war. I could still visualize the photographs in the brownish-red color typical of prints in that early period. Grandfather was among twenty or so Vietnamese gentlemen, looking somewhat rigid and awkward in their new European suits, each sporting a new Parisian felt hat. Many of them had grown beard and moustache in the style fashionable in France at that time. I cannot remember if grandfather had them; probably he had not. But I am sure that the one who would become my maternal grandfather appeared with a very well-groomed moustache. The group was shown on the docks of Marseilles, in front of the Eiffel Tower, in the Luxembourg gardens and at other scenic spots. The delegation was a product of French policy aimed at exposing members of the Vietnamese elite to the culture and civilization of France. At the same time, it was a countermeasure to the “go east” movement promoted by revolutionary leaders calling on young people to go and study in Japan. The only person I could recognize in the group other than grandfather was Hoang Huan Trung, a close friend of his. They were classmates under Headmaster Son Nong. They graduated at the same 1903 Huang session and studied together at the School of Administration. A year before they left for France; their wives gave birth to a girl and a boy and they happily promised to each other that their children would become husband and wife.
Hoang Huan Trung, my maternal grandfather, in full Court uniform of a Governor (circa 1934).
The French trip lasted nine months. It was thought that on returning from it, grandfather’s career would take a turn for the better. But he was back to the same teaching job in Truc Ninh, where he stayed for another year. Then his father died and, following the custom of that time, he took leave and went into mourning for a year. In 1910, he was reappointed as an education officer, although to a larger prefecture, that of Thu Tri in Thai Binh. Thu Tri was the prefecture on the banks of the Red River, where a ferry linked the province of Nam Dinh with that of Thai Binh. After spending two years there, grandfather became a teacher at the Model School in Thai Binh. As its name indicated, that was a school whose teaching methods were meant to be taken by others as models. Only the cream of teachers was appointed to its staff. It was a prestigious establishment, but grandfather still ranked below the prefects and he knew that as far as career path was concerned, unless he reached that rank of prefect, there was no way he could move to the higher echelons of the mandarinate. He stayed at the Model School for an inordinately long time, from 1911 to 1917, while mandarins usually did not remain in the same job for more than two or three years. Either he was considered too good a teacher to do something else, or the powers-that-be had decided that he should stay there and go no further.
A good teacher grandfather was. He descended from a long line of teachers. Teaching ran in his blood and he enjoyed doing it. During those six years in Thai Binh, he trained a whole generation of students who were caught between the old education system based on the scholarly script and the Confucian classics and a new system based on the popular script, the French language and the sciences. It was a difficult period of transition for teachers and students alike. Grandfather, a licentiate of the old school who had gone to France, was eminently qualified and some of his students would later on reach high positions, even national prominence. Author Duong Quang Ham, for instance, the grammarian and literary historian who, incidentally, was a brother of his good friend Licentiate Duong, studied under him. Numerous former students from those days continued to visit him in Kim Bai in the 1940s, after he had retired. Many kept attending every year the anniversary of his father’s death. His long stay there made Thai Binh a second home town for him.
For the moment however, his career was at a standstill. Already, he was under suspicion because of his brothers’ activities. In 1907, another anti-French campaign broke out and his standing in the eyes of the regime took a further blow. “Modernist” scholars, whose aim was to strengthen the national spirit and to oppose the French by legal means, opened in Hanoi a school named Dong Kinh Nghia Thuc, or Righteous School of the Eastern Capital. Dong Kinh, the Eastern Capital, was an ancient name for Hanoi. It was also the Vietnamese translation of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. The scholars who established the school took their inspiration from a school in Tokyo which had been a training ground for reformist leaders in Japan, a country then looked up to as the standard-bearer for an independent Asia. The new school was opened to both male and female students, a revolutionary step in our male-dominated Confucian society. Tuition was entirely free of charge. Public lectures were organized in which speakers discussed the need for economic and social reforms and called upon the Vietnamese to find strength within themselves. People crowded at the lectures in a festive atmosphere. The school was such a success that, nine months after it started, it was closed down by the French. Its leaders were arrested, among them several of grandfather’s friends and classmates, in particular Licentiate Duong. Grandfather was then teaching in a far-away prefecture; as a civil servant he could not have been involved with the school. But he must have been sympathetic to his friends’ endeavors. Most scholars agreed with the aims of the school and, as an educationist, grandfather must have been thrilled to see new concepts being tried such as those of a mixed and open school. Anyway, he stayed in touch with his scholar friends and aroused official suspicion against him. In those circumstances, it was rather surprising that the French still included him in the delegation going to France in the following year. Perhaps, they had thought it worth their while to go to some length to bring someone like him over to their side.
Grandfather was a royalist, although not with
the same degree of fer-vor as his father Dinh Dat. The country had fallen under French protectorate and the emperor had lost much of his powers and prestige, but for many mandarins the distinction between the Imperial court and the protectorate was a capital one. They resented the many encroachments perpetrated by the French upon the authority of the court. In 1907, the French deposed Emperor Thanh Thai whom they themselves had chosen for the throne. But he was now judged uncooperative and they sent him into exile. In 1913, they dug up the tomb of Tu Duc, the emperor who fought against them in their long war of conquest of Vietnam. Tu Duc was worshipped by Dinh Dat and that sacrilegious act affected his son deeply. In 1916, the young emperor Duy Tan-Thanh Thai’s son-plotted an armed revolt, taking advantage of the fact that France was occupied with fighting a war on her own soil. He tried to carry the nation with him in the way Ham Nghi did thirty years before. But he failed utterly. His plan leaked out. Only one prefecture rose in his support. Even the court mandarins did not follow him. Although France had her hands full with the war in Europe, she maintained an unshakeable hold in Vietnam. Duy Tan was sent to join his father in exile. All those events had a depressing effect on grandfather. He was a proud and rigid man. The court had become little more than a tool in the hands of the French, but he would stubbornly cling to the notion that a Vietnamese mandarin was a servant of his emperor and no one else.
Every year, a commission of high mandarins met to decide whom among the teachers and education officers would be promoted to the rank of prefect. For the junior officers, the commission’s decisions would shape their careers. Only if chosen could they move into the senior ranks of the mandarinate. One of the most powerful mandarins in the north in grandfather’s time was Hoang Trong Phu. The son of a former viceroy who gained his position pacifying the north for the protectorate, Hoang Trong Phu had the full confidence of the French. He did not like grandfather. Whenever his case came before the commission, Governor Hoang opposed the promotion. “Bo Tiep, that stubborn fellow!” he exclaimed and the other mandarins, either out of respect for his opinions or out of fear of his powers, assented. Year after year, the way was blocked for grandfather. Others placed in his situation would try their best to placate Governor Hoang and win his favors, but grandfather refused to do so. Even his friends told him that was what he should do, but he still refused: “The governor is right,” they said, “you are really stubborn.” It is interesting to point out that the governor did not criticize grandfather’s capabilities; in fact, the marks he received from his superiors were always good. Nor did he say that grandfather was suspected of being a nationalist, which would have put paid to his career. He only considered him a stubborn person and that was enough to keep him out for many years. But grandfather’s work in Thai Binh had come to the notice of a high mandarin who had spent most of his career in that town. His name was Pham Van Thu. He was one of those mandarins who reached positions of high influence not because of political patronage or of being pro-French, but because they were respected for their integrity and capability. Pham Van Thu was also a mandarin of the old school who wanted to uphold the prestige of the Imperial court. He was the only one to speak out in favor of grandfather. At first, he could not make Governor Hoang change his mind. But he returned to it in the following year. He kept on for several years until grandfather at last got his promotion. That was in 1917, when he was already thirty-eight. Grandfather always kept in mind the debt he owed Governor Pham. He had the opportunity to repay it twenty years later, long after the governor had died. By then a governor himself, he gave his daughter in marriage to his benefactor’s grandson.
A Vietnamese Family Chronicle Page 51