A Vietnamese Family Chronicle Read online

  The Mountain of the Twins has held a particular appeal to my family. My great-grandfather was a Taoist scholar known as Song Son Dat Dan, a pseudonym meaning Hermit of the Mountain of the Twins. In the 1930s, when my grandfather built a new house in our ancestral compound, he must have had the Mountain in mind because the two-story brick building had a rectangular shape with three rooms on the ground floor, each next to the other, but on the upper floor, only two rooms separated by an open terrace, where our family went in the evening to wait for the southern breeze. The two upper rooms, each covered by a tiled roof, stood out and in this way the house called to mind the Mountain of the Twins in the prophecy.

  I remember coming across the geomancer’s prophecy for the first time in an old document which village officials brought in for my grandfather to read. I was then learning the scholarly script and could not understand the document, but I picked up the prophecy. I found it again in other documents and its repeated occurrence made a strong impression on me. It was usually put right at the beginning of the documents, as if its authors wanted to impress on the readers the unique character of the land of Kim Bai, before coming to the matters at hand. My imagination was captured by the mysterious features which ordinary eyes could not see. The Mountain of the Twins came to represent the place where the teachings of ancient masters would lead us and where Truth might be found. I might never reach or even come close to that place, which lay far away in the distant future. But I knew that, as said in the prophecy, it was there and a path could be found leading to it.

  2. My Village

  In the old administrative setup, the basic unit was the village. Above it was the canton, grouping a number of villages, then the prefecture, grouping a number of cantons and, finally, the province. My village Kim Bai belonged to the canton of Phuong Trung, the prefecture of Thanh Oai and the province of Ha Dong. Kim Bai lies on the banks of the Hat River, which started as a branch of the Red River, then flowed south through most of the province of Ha Dong, skirting Kim Bai to the west. For most of the year, it was a small and peaceful river. But came the monsoon season, and it became an expanse of water at places up to a hundred meters wide, with a strong current making it very difficult to cross.

  Kim Bai lay about twenty-five kilometers from the ancient capital Hanoi, to the southwest. Since early times and under different names, Hanoi had been the seat of power in Vietnam. Being close to it, our home region had often been linked with events which shaped the nation’s destiny. The territory of Thanh Oai was part of Hanoi’s outer defenses and the Hat River constituted a natural barrier on the approaches to the capital. Both the Hat River and Thanh Oai prefecture were mentioned many times in history books. Many decisive battles were fought there. Since the traditional threat to our country came from China, one would have thought that such battles would take place north of the capital. It was not always the case. When the Mongols invaded Vietnam in the thirteenth century, their troops quickly occupied the capital, then called Thang Long. Vietnamese counterattacks came from the south and the famous victories of Ham Tu, Chuong Duong and Tay Ket in 1285, which defeated the invasion, all occurred southeast of Hanoi. In the fifteenth century Vietnam fell under Chinese domination for thirteen years (1414-1427). From the southern province of Thanh Hoa, Le Loi raised the banner of national revolt and in a ten-year struggle succeeded in recovering independence for our country. In 1426, Vietnamese forces moved from the south towards the old capital. The Ming Court sent a 50,000-strong army under the command of Wang Tong to reinforce the Chinese garrison. They set up a front of several miles long to defend the southwestern approach of Thang Long. This time, our region of Thanh Oai became the main battlefield. History books described the scene thus:

  The enemy built fortified positions one following another for several miles, their flags and banners covering the fields, their lances and swords shining under the sun, confident that they could defeat the Vietnamese in one big battle.

  This battle was fought over three days, first in Thanh Oai itself, then further south as the Vietnamese withdrew to lure the Chinese into a marshy area. The result was the victory of Tuy Dong and, eventually, the end of Chinese domination. Wang Tong retreated into Thang Long and barricaded himself behind the walls of the capital to emerge only a year later (1427), after having obtained a guarantee of safe passage for his troops from the Vietnamese. It was the last time that China was to rule Vietnam.

  From the sixteenth century, our country was embroiled in internal conflicts and partitioned. This sorry state of affairs lasted for nearly three hundred years. Firstly, it was the Mac in the north against the Le in the south (1540-1592), then, the Trinh in the north against the Nguyen in the south (1627-1774), then, the Tay Son in the north against the same Nguyen (1789-1802). Our home region witnessed some major battles between rival dynasties. In 1592 for instance, the Hat River in Thanh Oai was the scene of a last-ditch action fought by the Mac before their downfall. In 1788, taking advantage of the civil war in Vietnam, Chinese troops moved in and occupied Thang Long. Emperor Quang Trung of the Tay Son led his army north to repulse the invaders. While the bulk of his troops operated in the east, the left wing of his army composed of elephant-born and cavalry troops moved up along the Western Mountains and through our region. The epic battle of Dong Da in the southwestern outskirt of Thang Long, in which Quang Trung defeated the Chinese army, stands out as one of the most glorious events in our military history. Dong Da was only twenty kilometers from our village.

  To travel from Hanoi to Kim Bai in the early 1940s, one could take a rickshaw, which was the most widely used means of passenger transport in Vietnam as in other parts of Southeast Asia. Or one could take the tram from Hanoi to Ha Dong and change there to rickshaw. A private bus, with a very flexible timetable, ran from Ha Dong past our village to other localities further south. But the best and quickest way to travel was by bicycle. I still remember jumping on mine in the cool morning and pedaling along the silent tree-lined avenues of Hanoi. To own a bicycle was my dream as a young boy. Riding it gave me an exhilarating sense of speed and freedom which riding a motor car later in life never did. We youngsters liked to call a bicycle an “iron horse” on which we could be “moving as fast as if we were flying.”

  My family lived in Hanoi, not far from the old citadel. In days gone by a place where palaces stood, the citadel had become a group of barracks housing French and colonial troops. I cycled past it. Behind sturdy walls made of red stone, it seemed lifeless. At the time of the French conquest in the nineteenth century, Hanoi fell twice to the aggressors. Each time, the defeated Vietnamese commander wiped out his dishonor and “paid his debt to the country” by killing himself in the citadel. Perhaps for that reason, the citadel had always appeared to me more like a tomb for those heroes than a fortress.

  Leaving the citadel behind, I soon reached the Temple of Literature, at the edge of the ancient city. For centuries, the Temple was a center for learning, where the cult of Confucius was celebrated and scholars studied for the highest civil service examination. Some of my ancestors who graduated as doctors had their names carved on stone steal erected in the grounds of the Temple. But under the French, the place only remained as a relic of the past, lying under the shade of age-old trees. My route met with the tram lines going to the town of Ha Dong. I went through the dusty and noisy suburbs. The land was absolutely flat, but then on my right side a solitary hillock rose abruptly, with a temple on its top. That was Dong Da, the place where in 1789, Emperor Quang Trung vanquished the Chinese and tens of thousands of the invaders were killed. The hillock was their common grave.

  The road continued past green orchards and vegetable gardens. After less than an hour I was in Ha Dong, a small and tranquil town, very provincial in appearance in spite of its proximity to the capital. Its streets were lined with trees, many of them flame-trees which exploded in masses of brilliant red flowers in the middle of summer. Back in the twenties and thirties, my grandfather served as a mandarin in Ha Dong. The
bungalow he stayed in could still be seen in the official quarter of the town. Following her marriage, my mother went to live there with her in-laws and it was there that my elder brother, myself and a younger sister were born.

  A few kilometers past Ha Dong the bitumen road divided into two branches, one going west towards the green hills of Hoa Binh, the other south to my village. The Japanese army had at that time a large base in Hoa Binh and one often met with columns of military lorries moving in the direction of Hanoi. The lorries were driven at high speed. Bullock carts, rickshaws, bicycles, pedestrians, all had to stop and move to the edge of the narrow road to let them pass. The soldiers in the lorries wore an impassive look, as if they did not see us. For several years, they had been in our country, yet no links seemed to exist between them and us. They remained total strangers. When Japanese forces came into the country in 1940, the Vietnamese thought that French rule would quickly end. They had heard much from Tokyo about Asia for the Asians and about a sphere of co-prosperity in Asia. They admired the way Japan had modernized and become a world power. I remember what strong impression the Japanese troops made on the schoolboy that I was. Their uniform, their guns, the vehicles they rode in, all had a battle-hardened and conquering look. How different they were from the antiquated French military! Surely, the Japanese could do away with the French whenever they wanted. Yet, for reasons of their own, they left in place the French colonial administration. Instead of playing the role of liberators, they settled in as an occupation force. Soon, they gained a reputation for harshness and brutality.

  I took the branch of the road going south, and the countryside at once presented a familiar and welcoming appearance. Kim Bai was still more than ten kilometers away, but to me that fork on the road was where my home territory started. The hustle and bustle of the city was behind me. Among gentle rice fields, crisscrossed by small watercourses, I was going back to the place of my roots. As is well known, there is a Vietnamese fondness for snacks between meals, and as a consequence there were numerous tea stalls scattered along the road. These consisted of small huts with thatched roofs and earthen walls, where different brews of very strong teas were served with the food. Many places could boast a special delicacy for travellers. Next to a small bridge called Cau Khau, the tea stalls offered banh dan, or balls of dough with a filling of sweet bean paste and dotted with sesame seeds all over their surface. When deep-fried, they became a brownish red and expanded to the size of an orange. The hot cake jumped between my fingers and burnt my palate, so impatient was I to eat it. Then, I came to a village named Xom which produced banh mat, a cake made of rice flour and molasses wrapped in banana leaves. Just to look at the newly-cooked cakes and take in their light-brown, steaming sweetness was a delight. Everyone in our family had a particular fondness for that cake and we never failed to break our journey, go into Xom for a drink, eat some cakes and buy some more for the family. The village of Xom dated from ancient times and carried the distinction of having been visited twice by King Ly Thai Ton in the eleventh century. History books recorded that in the year of the Snake (1041), the king went to the Western Mountains to capture elephants and on the way back to the capital he stayed the night in Kha Lam, the scholarly name for Xom. He liked the place and in the following year of the Horse, returned there for the springtime rite of tilling the fields and planting the young rice stalks. That manual task was performed once every year by the king to celebrate the cult of Emperor Than Nong, the God of Agriculture, who was worshipped as the ancestor of the Viet people and their provider.

  Villages in our region were traditionally Buddhist, except for one that was converted to Catholicism at the beginning of this century. For most people in the vicinity, the church bells were their only means of knowing the “western” time, because they struck at midday every day. Otherwise, daily village activities still used traditional time measurements, based on the movements of the sun, moon and stars. I wonder under what circumstances that village adopted its new faith, as the introduction of Catholicism into Vietnam was the source of violent conflicts. By the 1940s however, that Catholic group, isolated in the midst of a Buddhist population, had been peacefully and completely accepted. The highway passed right through the village; a quite unusual occurence, for it meant that the village’s bamboo enclosure could not be closed at night. For travellers, the attraction was a big statue on the side of the highway of Saint George plunging his lance into a dragon and crushing it under his foot. The statue was in stone which was rare in the countryside; more noticeably, it was sculpted in such a realistic manner that it appeared quite frightening, with blood spurting from the unfortunate dragon and the muscles of its body being torn apart by the blade of the lance. As children, we looked at that scene with apprehension and disbelief, for far from being an evil animal, the dragon was one of four supernatural and benevolent creatures in our mythology. It represented power and nobility and was in former times chosen as a kingly emblem. Often, we referred to the statue to frighten one another in the evening before going to sleep.

  Riding past that Catholic village, I soon came to the township of Thanh Oai prefecture. This was just a small place, with the office and residence of the prefect in the middle of a cluster of brick houses. The main street had about a dozen or so shops and tearooms. At the end of it, I was out in the open fields again and the bamboo wall of my village could already be seen in the distance.

  From the highway, Kim Bai looked like any one of the thousands of villages in north Vietnam, tucked behind its wall of bamboo. Our bamboo had quite a big trunk and could be over ten meters high. It grew in thick clumps with long, hard thorns thrusting out in all directions. As a barrier, it was impossible to pass. The village could not be entered except through the gates. At evening, these were shut and barred. Strangers wishing to come in had to call at the gate and wait for a guard to open. For villagers who had to go in and out during the night, the bamboo thicket did have a few places where they could slip through, which only they knew and which the guards kept an eye on. The bamboo was truly a rampart protecting the village and its inhabitants. In times of old, when insecurity in our countryside was chronic, bandits attacking Kim Bai always did so at the gates, as they knew they could not force their way through the bamboo.

  Our village was divided into hamlets, either five or six, as I remember. The main one was the “central hamlet” in which stood the Communal Hall. Another was called the “pagoda hamlet,” where the Buddhist pagoda was to be found. The “market hamlet” had the old market, and so on. Each hamlet had its own gate to the outside world. The whole village therefore had five or six gates. The main gate belonging to the central hamlet looked out on the highway and was built in solid brick, while the other gates were made of bamboo. The main gate was not just a gate, but actually a small tower, constructed on the model of ancient citadel towers with a curved, tiled roof, very thick brick walls and a guardroom on top. It was wide enough for cars to pass under. The front bore the name Kim Bai in two big Chinese characters. The two gate wings were made of thick panels of ironwood, one of the hardest timbers found in Vietnam. The presence of a tower gate usually indicated that the village was the home of a high official. Entrances to other villages in the region were more modestly built. Even Phuong Trung, the seat of our canton and a much larger village than ours, did not have that sort of construction. Four centuries ago, Kim Bai produced a succession of high mandarins and holders of titles of nobility. It was said that it had then a tower gate of imposing size which served as a ceremonial gate to greet royal messengers when they came to bestow royal honors on the mandarins. That gate was destroyed long ago, either after the fall of the Mac dynasty or by bandits who were so often the scourge of our region. My mother recalls that at her wedding in 1926, the main gate was simply made of bamboo. The present tower gate was built by my grandfather some years later, in time for the reception of imperial decrees granting posthumous honors to his ancestors.

  The main gate was called the Si Gate. Si i
s a tree similar to the banyan, with roots even longer than those of the banyan and hanging down from high branches. Next to the old gate, there used to be a large and very old si tree, hence its name. That tree was haunted. It had since disappeared, but villagers continued to see the Si Gate as a meeting place for the “lost souls” of those who had committed suicide or met with violent death. Many of these dead were buried in the graveyard, a small plot hidden in one corner of the village, where tumuli were placed in a chaotic manner facing in all directions. The graves there were called “without owners,” as no relatives or descendants looked after them. To be buried there was an indication of a wretched condition, because country custom called for the dead to rest in their family land, out in the open fields instead of being confined in graveyards. A small shrine stood among the graves. No one was ever seen in that forsaken place. Yet, every time I passed by it, I could smell the smoke of incense and see the flickering light of an oil lamp in the shrine. It was an eerie feeling. As if the light and the smoke had been put there not by any human being, but by the ghosts of the dead. Villagers believed that the tormented ghosts, instead of staying in their burial ground, crossed the village every day at nightfall to congregate at the Si Gate. There, they frightened passersby with strange happenings, such as crying and screaming in the wind or swinging on the roots or the long gone si tree and making a creaky noise. They made a nuisance of themselves and one might think that the villagers would look for a way to get rid of them. But it was not so. The ghosts also had their uses, for by staying near the main gate they prevented evil spirits on the outside from entering the village. Therefore, in their own way, they acted as guards and Kim Bai villagers were content to let them stay. Still, anyone who had to use the main gate in the evening would, consciously or not, hasten to get past it so as not to be caught or possessed by the ghosts. Stories of possession were not a figment of the imagination. They did happen as I was once a witness.