A Vietnamese Family Chronicle Page 5
According to our custom, a good meal would start with hosts and guests enjoying a glass of rice brandy while savoring tidbits of meat such as pork tripes or chicken giblets. Normally, meat was served as an appetizer, not fish or vegetable. But it was said that fine gourmets would gladly have eaten with the brandy bean curd of the quality produced in Kim Bai, dipped in a good bean sauce like the one made by my grandmother. Bean curd can be fried instead of steamed, or marinated in thick bean sauce and cooked a la casserole with pork meat. Since a child, I have been particularly fond of that dish. My mother said that as a four- or five-year-old, I would at times wake up in the middle of the night crying and crying for some bean curd casserole. Bean curd and bean sauce have to go together to bring out their best. To eat bean curd with fish sauce, for instance, would be a waste of both.
Additional sources of income for the women of Kim Bai included weaving cloth, turning paddy into polished rice and selling their produce at the market. Many were also engaged in the petty trade of haberdashery, dyes, paper, pens and anything else that country people might need. Mornings would see them setting out for the market, young and graceful figures in groups of two or three, their working capital contained in two wooden counters nicely balanced at the ends of their bamboo pole. Women had traditionally played an important role in the economic life of our village. They were often praised for their diligence and resourcefulness, as well as their beauty. “A fortunate family is one whose son marries a girl from Kim Bai,” older people used to say. A folk poem put it this way:
Pretty girls in Kim Bai,
Are as many as flowers of the thien
Young men from here and there,
From everywhere,
Who want to find a wife,
All come and look.
The thien ly is a vine with heart-shaped leaves which grows in the countryside. Its purple flowers are grouped in bunches. When Vietnamese think of their village, they usually see in their imagination a group of thatched roofs shining in the morning sun with, next to each roof, an arbor of thien ly, whose flowers represent the simple and unpretentious beauty of country girls.
A folk-saying known throughout our region went simply like this:
Girls of Kim Bai,
Boys of Nga Vac.
It meant that the girls and boys of these two villages were the very best. The girls of Kim Bai seldom had to toil in the fields. They spent much of their time indoors working at their looms. Thus, they kept a slender figure and fair complexion. With their market activities, they provided an additional income for the family. Being used to buying and selling in the marketplace, they were not shy and knew how to strike a conversation. Pretty girls in the village were many and, in my youth, two relations stood out. One was my Aunt Quyen and the other my sister Trang. Everyone said they were beautiful but not without adding that Aunt Quyen was a shade too tall and sister Trang’s complexion was a shade too dark. Such was the way the Kim Bai people appreciated beauty. In their eyes, beauty could never be perfect or absolute. Moreover, they believed that too much beauty was a bad omen.
Why the girls of Kim Bai were praised in the folk-saying was easy to understand. But why the boys of Nga Vac, a village not far from ours, were put on the same pedestal as the Kim Bai girls, I do not know. Nor do I understand why the boys of Kim Bai, a place known for having produced many bright young graduates, were not celebrated in any folk-saying.
3. Our Ancestral Home
My father worked as a civil servant in Hanoi. Our family belonged to the upper middle class, but after the Second World War spread to Asia, life for us became more and more difficult. The lot of civil servants was not bad before the war. We used to go to a seaside resort every summer. Then came the hostilities, inflation and rationing. Salaries did not keep up with rising prices. With a large family of seven, it must have been hard for my parents to make ends meet. I remember that they tried their hands at various business activities without much success. Once they went into a mining venture as shareholders; it proved to be a total failure.
My grandparents owned some land in Hanoi and Ha Dong, as well as rice fields in Kim Bai. They were moderately wealthy, although with several underaged children-the youngest being my age-their financial burden was still heavy and, by the 1940s, my grandfather had already retired. They helped us to some extent. Whenever my grandmother came to visit us from the village, she always brought with her provisions of rice and other produce of the land. But other than that, my parents had to rely on their own means. I was then a student at the French Lycee of Hanoi. When I obtained a scholarship to become a half-boarder there, my family was very pleased. I was very skinny and the scholarship gave me a free lunch six days a week, Saturday being also a school day in those days. Lunch at the Lycee provided more nourishing food than our ordinary fare. It was served á la French, with plenty of meat.
My grandfather shared his time between our ancestral home in Kim Bai and a small bungalow that he owned in Ha Dong. My grandmother and great-grandmother lived in Kim Bai. From Hanoi, we made the trip to Kim Bai quite regularly, about once every two months. Our visits usually coincided with seasonal festivals or commemorative services for ancestors. On each occasion, we stayed for a day or two, except for the New Year festival when the stay was longer. We were town dwellers and had the war not intervened, my experience of village life would have been limited to those short visits.
Our country was dragged into the Second World War following Japan’s attack against Pearl Harbor. Trenches were dug, air raid drills were conducted, but for a long time hostilities did not affect us. Japanese forces were pushing forward farther and farther on land and in the Pacific Ocean. The only planes we saw in the sky were Japanese ones going to and from the nearby Gia Lam airfield on the other side of the Red River. Then, as the Allies struck back and the tide of the war turned, air alerts became more frequent. Japanese military bases were bombed. Sitting in the trenches, we could see American planes passing overhead on their way to attack the airfield, surrounded by the smoke blooms of antiaircraft fire. We still felt like we were observing a conflict involving other people, until Hanoi itself was bombed in the beginning of 1943. As a half-boarder, I went to school in the morning and stayed there until evening. After the afternoon classes, the half-boarders joined the full-boarders and did their homework under the eyes of supervisors, before they were allowed to go home. That day, having taken lunch in the school refectory, we were upstairs lying down during the regulatory half-hour siesta, when the alert sounded. We went downstairs, out of the building and over to the sports ground, now crisscrossed with open trenches. Soon, the planes came and the familiar noise of antiaircraft fire had just begun to be heard when loud explosions occurred all around us. From my trench, I could see columns of black smoke rising. The commotion lasted for quite a while. We emerged from our shelter after the all clear signal, safe but shaken. My family was living not far from the citadel. Our street ran between the town’s power station and a Japanese army barrack. All these places were prime targets for American bombing. I was anxious to get home. There were rumors of many people killed. However, half-boarders were not allowed to leave until the evening; in spite of the special circumstances, the school stuck to its rigid rule. At last, I left the Lycee. The rickshaw sent by my parents was at the gate to pick me up. I was driven through streets without lights, past destroyed houses and fallen trees. War had truly come to our town. Thankfully, no one in our family was harmed. The next day, the authorities decided that all schools should close and children should be evacuated from the capital. We left for Kim Bai. Our ancestral home was full of close and distant relatives. Rather than a wartime evacuation, the atmosphere was like a school holiday combined with a family reunion.
The land where our ancestral home stood was believed to be part of an estate owned by the Nguyen since the sixteenth century. At that time, our ancestor Nguyen Tue was a minister of the court and held the title of count. As the family later on developed into several branches, the
estate was parceled out. We came from the youngest branch of the eighth generation. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the head of our branch settled in a corner of the original estate. His grandson, who made a fortune trading with Chinese merchants, purchased some land from neighbors to add to his block. My grandfather bought more land and extended the area to about two thousand square meters, quite a large size by Kim Bai’s standard.
Our compound occupied one of the best positions in the village, right in the middle of the Central Hamlet and close to the Communal Hall. On two sides of the compound, the land still belonged to other branches of the Nguyen family, except for only one or two small plots sold by impoverished descendants to outsiders. In the 1940s, the heir to our eldest branch decided to leave Kim Bai to make a living in town and he sold his land, which adjoined our compound, to my grandparents. He also sold his house-a cottage with a thatched roof and earthen walls-to be taken down and rebuilt elsewhere. His was the fourteenth generation after the count. It was sad to see him sell his piece of land and leave the place of his roots. As he belonged to the eldest branch, his land may have been the very place where our first ancestor had his home, four centuries ago.
An artist’s impression of our ancestral home in Kim Bai (circa 1942).
Homes in the countryside were generally cottages with a small garden or orchard. Ours was built like a sprawling villa in the city. Nearly the whole compound was taken up by brick buildings and paved courtyards. Only here and there was some space left for flowers and trees. In fact, the compound contained not one house but several, built at different periods.
The oldest was the altar house and an adjoining building called the transversal house, because it stood at a right angle to the altar house. The latter was first built in the eighteenth century, probably with a thatched roof and earthen walls. After about five or six decades of tropical climate, houses made that way had to be rebuilt. Family elders recalled that each time when rebuilding took place, the altar house was given a new orientation. Succeeding generations in our branch had had only one son to continue the line and this was believed to be caused by the alter house facing in the wrong direction. Each time, a Chinese geomancer was called in to find a more auspicious orientation. The last time that this happened was in the 1920s, when the present house was built. As it was going to be a long-lasting construction in brick, my grandfather made a special effort to find a good geomancer, who again was Chinese. The geomancer shifted the house to another site and kept it facing southwest. South, by the way, was the orientation adopted by most houses in the Red River delta, as it exposed them to the cool southern breeze during summer. Whether the result of the geomancer’s choice or not, the fact is that since then, there have been more male children in our family.
The altar house was a simple rectangular structure divided in two lengthwise by an internal wall. Its high roof covered with red tiles had no ceiling. From the inside, all the beams and tiles could be seen. On the ridges of the roof were sculptures, made in mortar, of dragons and clouds. The front part of the house was formed by a long open space running from one end to the other. Its size was as large as five rooms joined together and was therefore said to have “five rooms,” although there were no partition walls. It served as lounge and dining room during the day, and became a sleeping area at nighttime. The back part also had “five rooms.” The three rooms in the middle formed the altar area and were separated by partitions from the other two rooms, one at each end. The altar area was the sacred place where our ancestors’ spirits were worshipped. It contained two altars. The main altar at the center was dedicated to the Nguyen ancestors. A smaller altar, on the right, was for our maternal ancestors. Normally, such an altar was not required because the ancestor cult was celebrated by male descendants. However, some of our forefathers married into families which had no sons, and the cult of their wife’s ancestors fell to them. Many Buddhist families had in their altar room also a place to worship Lord Buddha, but our ancestral home had no such place.
The main altar was about five or six meters deep. It consisted of a low, large square platform and two high tables, placed end to end. Urns, incense burners, candle holders and other objects required by the cult were displayed there. During the ceremonies, the platform and tables also provided room for flowers and for the offerings of food and wine. At the far end of the altar stood the tabernacle, a miniature temple with intricate carvings and painted in red and gold, the traditional colors of our country. Set on a higher level than the tables, the tabernacle housed our ancestors’ tablets. Normally, its sliding doors were shut. They were opened only on the anniversaries of the death of our ancestors and at traditional festivals, when the tablets were taken out for the ceremony of worship.
A drum and a gong were placed at the front of the altar. Their beat announced the start of ceremonies. Between them sat a pair of elephant tusks which was there, not for decorative purposes, but probably because it was presented to our family on the occasion of the bestowing of a title on an ancestor. Behind the tusks were two sword racks, each holding four long swords. Two rows of flags and parasols lined the sides of the altar. The swords, flags and parasols were symbols of authority and rank, bestowed posthumously on our ancestors by the court of Hue. In times of old, mandarins going out on official duties had soldiers marching in front carrying their flags and swords, and other soldiers marching behind, holding parasols to shelter them from sun or rain. Some flags were rectangular others triangular and they were of different sizes and designs. The parasols were large or small, depending on the ranks. The swords were long and heavy, with delicate carvings of Chinese characters on both blade and handle. Sadly, these priceless treasures, as well as many other family heirlooms, were all lost during the war with the French and the communist revolution.
On the left of the altar house was the transversal house. The two houses, at a right angle to each other, formed two sides of a rectangle and followed a traditional pattern for village homes. In fact, until the end of the nineteenth century, all houses in the countryside had to be built in accordance with a rigid set of rules. The average house was just a rectangular cottage facing a courtyard. Wealthier people added to this a transversal house. They were allowed to extend each of these two houses but had to keep to the same floor plan. It was not permitted, for instance, to build another transversal house on the other side of the courtyard; such an arrangement was reserved for houses of high mandarins in the capital. Storeyed houses were also forbidden for the same reason. Our transversal house was a brick building with a tiled roof and walls only on three sides to provide shelter for paddy-grinding, rice-pounding, rice-sieving, preparing food for family festivals, etc. … In other words, it was a working area. Next to this building was the kitchen and behind the kitchen, the granary. The fowl range and pigsty could be found farther back behind the granary.
My great-grandmother and grandparents generally started the day by having early morning tea in the altar house. They sat on two wooden settees set up in the middle of the house, the ladies on one side, grandfather on the other. Between them was a narrow table on which was put a tea set with a very small teapot in red earthenware, not much bigger than an egg, and even smaller teacups in porcelain. The set looked like miniature toys. Grandfather prepared the tea himself. He would drink one or two cups, then have a smoke on his water pipe, drawing deeply from it and making it sing like a boiling kettle. Sometimes, he would call me over to hand me a cup. The highly concentrated black tea was bitter and I never liked drinking it, especially in the morning before one had had anything to eat. After the midday nap, there was another tea session, this time with a bigger teapot and bigger cups, and a much more palatable tea because it was not as strong. As a matter of fact, the tea taken in the afternoon could be excellent when it was perfumed to the scent of the lotus flower, the jasmine flower or, most precious of all, the ngau flower of our own garden. Besides the tea sessions and the meals which were taken there during the cold season, the altar hous
e was very much the domain of the women. Great-grandmother was then nearing ninety, her eyesight failing, but otherwise enjoying good health. She did not need any special help and could go about by herself within the compound. However, most of the time she remained seated on the settee. She and grandmother slept in the front room on two adjoining wooden beds, so that grandmother could look after her mother-in-law and help her if she got up during the night. There were no such things as individual bedrooms. Several wooden platforms were set up in the altar house. During the day, covered by rush mats, they served as a lounge for visitors to sit and have tea. At mealtimes, they became an eating area, with the family sitting around trays of food. In the evenings, cleaned, with the mats changed and mosquito nets installed, the platforms were transformed into beds.