Art
Art des pays d’Asie du Sud ou de la France
Ngô Quyền (Version anglaise)
Ngô Quyền
Faced with the Chinese army, which is accustomed to resorting to force and brutality during its conquest and domination of other countries, the Vietnamese must find the ingenuity to emphasize flexible and inventive tactics adapted essentially to the battlefield in order to reduce its momentum and its material superiority in men and numbers. One must never throw oneself headlong into this confrontation, as in this case one seeks to oppose the hardness of egg to that of stone (lấy trứng chọi đá) but one must fight the long with the short, such is the military art employed by the talented generalissimo Ngô Quyền. This is why he had to choose the place of the confrontation at the mouth of the Bạch Đằng River, anticipating the intention of the Southern Han to want to use it with their war fleet led by Crown Prince Liu Hung-Ts’ao (Hoằng Thao) ordered by his father Liu Kung (Lưu Cung) as King of Jiaozhi to quickly facilitate the landing in Vietnamese territory.
This celestial fleet entered the river mouth as planned. Ngô Quyền had pointed iron-covered stakes planted in the riverbed and invisible during high water prior to this confrontation. He tried to lure the celestial fleet beyond these iron-covered pointed stakes by incessantly harassing them with flat-bottomed boats. At low tide, the Chinese ships retreated in disarray in the face of attacks from Vietnamese troops, and were besieged on all sides and now hindered by the barrage of emergent piles, resulting not only in the annihilation of Chinese ships and troops, but also the death of Hung-Ts’ao.
Bạch Đằng river
Ngô Quyền was a fine strategist as he managed to perfectly synchronize the movement of the tides and the appearance of the celestial fleet in a time frame requiring both great precision and knowledge of the place. He knew how to turn the superiority of the opposing force to his advantage, for the army of the Southern Han was known to be excellent in maritime matters, and always made water or the river Bạch Đằng its ally in the fight against its adversaries. Water is the vital principle for the Vietnamese flooded rice civilization, but it is also the lethal principle, as it can become an incomparable force in their battles. As a high-ranking Chinese mandarin, Bao Chi, later noted in a confidential report to the Song emperor: the Vietnamese are a race well-suited to fighting on water.
If the Vietnamese fled to the sea, how could Song’s soldiers fight them, as the latter were afraid of the wind and the wave (1). Ngô Quyền knew how to refer to the three key factors: Thiên Thời, Địa Lợi, Nhân Hòa (being aware of weather and propitious conditions, knowing the terrain well and having popular support or national concord) to bring victory to his people and to mark a major turning point in Vietnam’s history. This marked the end of Chinese domination for almost 1,000 years, but not the last, as Vietnam continued to be a major obstacle to Chinese expansion to the south. The leading figure of Vietnamese nationalism in the early 20th century Phan Bội Châu regarded him as the first liberator of the Vietnamese nation (Tổ trùng hưng).
How could he succeed in freeing his people from the Chinese yoke when we knew that at that time our population was about a million inhabitants facing a Chinese behemoth estimated at more than 56 million inhabitants. He must have had courage, inventive spirit and charisma to succeed in freeing himself from this yoke with his supporters. But who is this man that the Vietnamese still consider today as the first in the list of Vietnamese heroes?
Đường Lâm village
Ngo Quyen was born in 897 in Đường Lâm village, located 4 kilometers west of the provincial town of Sơn Tây. He was the son of a local administrator, Ngo Man. When he was young, he had the opportunity to show his character and his willingness to serve the country. In 920, he served Dương Đình Nghệ, a general from the family of Governor Khúc of Ái Châu (Thanh Hóa) province. Dương Đình Nghệ had the merit of defeating the Southern Han by taking the capital Đại La (formerly Hànội) from them in 931 and now declared himself governor of Jiaozhi. He entrusted Ngo Quyen with the task of administering the Ái Châu province. Finding in him great talent and determination to serve the country, he decided to grant him the hand of his daughter. During his 7 years of governance (931-938), he proved to bring peaceful life to this region.
In 937, his father-in-law Dương Đình Nghệ was assassinated by his subordinate Kiều Công Tiễn to take the post of governor of Jiaozhi. This heinous act provoked the anger of all sections of the population. Ngô Quyền decided to eliminate him in the name of his in-laws and the nation because Kiều Công Tiễn asked for help from the Southern Han emperor, Liu Kung. For the latter it was a golden opportunity to reconquer Jiaozhi.
Unfortunately for Liu Kung, this risky military operation ended a long Chinese domination in Vietnam and allowed Ngô Quyền to found the first feudal dynasty in Vietnam. In 939, he proclaimed himself king of Annam and established the capital at Cổ Loa (Phúc Yên). His reign lasted only 5 years. He died in 944. His brother-in-law Dương Tam Kha took advantage of his death to seize power, which provoked the anger of the entire population and led to the breakup of the country with the appearance of 12 local warlords (Thập nhị sứ quân).This political chaos lasted until the year 968 when a brave boy from Ninh Binh, Dinh Boy Linh, succeeded in eliminating them one by one and unifying the country under his banner. He founded the Dinh Dynasty and was known as « Dinh Tien Hoang ». He settled in Hoa Lu in the Red River region and Vietnam at that time was known as « Dai Co Việt (Great Việt) ».
Bibliography
Hoàng Xuân Hãn: Lý Thường Kiệt, Univisersité bouddhique de Vạn Hạnh Saigon 1966 p. 257
Lê Đình Thông: Stratégie et science du combat sur l’eau au Vietnam avant l’arrivée des Français. Institut de stratégie comparée.
Boudarel Georges. Essai sur la pensée militaire vietnamienne. In: L’Homme et la société, N. 7, 1968. numéro spécial. 150° anniversaire de la mort de Karl Marx. pp. 183-199.
Trần Trọng Kim: Việtnam sử lược, Hànội, Imprimerie Vĩnh Thanh 1928
The bamboo ( Cây Tre)
Bamboo is closely linked to Vietnamese daily life. When we’re young, we fall asleep in the swing of a bamboo cradle. When we’re old and dying, we lie in a coffin lowered into the grave with bamboo ropes. French journalist Jean Claude Pomonti, a specialist in Southeast Asian issues, has often humorously referred to our civilization as the “bamboo civilization” in his columns for the newspaper “Le Monde”, because bamboo is an important part of our culture. Thanks to scientific research, we know that 39,000 years ago, bamboo was the main resource used by human groups in Southeast Asia, but due to the extremely unfavourable preservation conditions for organic materials, this use was no longer visible several thousand years later. In 1948, the famous geographer Pierre Gourou spoke of a “plant civilization” for Indochina, and more specifically for Vietnam.
It is a plant with multiple uses in Vietnam. Thanks to this plant, everything is possible in this country where nothing is easy and where we do not let ourselves be put off or stopped by obstacles. First, in our history, bamboo is evoked in the myth of the giant child of the village of Gióng. This man grew enormously in a few weeks to chase away the armies coming from the North (the Shang) and on his iron horse breathing fire, he succeeded in pulling out bamboo forests to defeat his enemies. Then in the 13th century, a resounding victory was led by the generalissimo Trần Hưng Đạo against the Mongol hordes of Kublai Khan on the Bạch Đằng River with junks and boats made of wood and bamboo. The victory of Dien Bien Phủ was also achieved in 1954 against the French expeditionary force through the massive and clever use of bamboo poles and bamboo-trimmed bicycles in supplying the front with food and ammunition and i clever use of bamboo poles and bamboo-trimmed bicycles in supplying the front with food a around the fortified camp of Dien Bien Phủ, which thus facilitated intensive artillery bombardment, day and night.
Through history, we can see that there is a long-standing deep attachment of the Vietnamese people to this bamboo. It is this plant that the Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Duy tries to humanize and describe for the noble qualities in his poem entitled « Tre Việt Nam (Vietnamese bamboo) » from which some verses are extracted below:
Bão bùng thân bọc lấy thân
Tay ôm, tay níu tre gần nhau thêm.
Thương nhau, tre chẳng ở riêng
Luỹ thành từ đó mà nên hỡi người.
During the storm, the bamboos protect their bodies.
Arms clasped together, they try to get closer to each other.
Filled with affection, they cannot live apart.
Thus, the bamboo fortress is born.
In food, bamboo shoots are used in the preparation of many dishes. They are necessarily cooked or canned in order to remove the natural toxins they contain. There are many proverbs and popular songs alluding to childhood by evoking bamboo shoots. We say măng sữa (bamboo shoot to breastfeed) or tuổi măng sữa (tender age) to refer to childhood. We usually say: Măng không uốn thì tre uốn sao được. (If we do not straighten the shoot, how can we straighten the bamboo?). The bamboo shoot reminds us of the notion of the passage of time. We must not let lost time slip away because bamboo grows for a time and man has only one age. We must enjoy time before it passes and old age catches up with us. This is what we find in Vietnamese folk songs and sayings:
Măng mọc có lứa người ta có thì.
There’s a season for bamboo shoots, just as there is a time for people. Or
Khi đi trúc chưa mọc măng
Ngày về trúc đã cao bằng ngọn tre.
The bamboo hadn’t yet sprouted when I left.
It had already reached the top of the bamboo when I returned.
Or
Tre già măng mọc
When the bamboo grows old, the shoots begin to emerge.
This expression somehow reflects our hope for youth and future generations.
In the past, the Vietnamese used this hollow bamboo, so strong and so light, to build partitions and hedges several meters high to protect their village from enemies and bandits. This material is found everywhere in the house, from the framework, walls, partitions to the floors. Everything is made with this hollow wood (furniture, beds, tables, various accessories, etc.), even a drinking cup. Torn into strips, it is used as ropes and strings. Bamboo filaments are used to make baskets of all kinds to facilitate transport on land (baskets) or on water (round baskets). It is also used to make conical hats to shelter from the rain and the sun. Thanks to this plant, we know how to create everyday tools (buckets for drawing water, pipes for smokers, water pipes, etc.).
It is also used as food for animals and even for villagers. They eat the most tender bamboo shoots like asparagus. The roots of this hollow wood are even dug up and dried in the sun for weeks on end. As Tet approaches, it is used as firewood to bake sticky rice cakes or to protect against the cold, especially in winter in northern and central Vietnam. Bamboo thus becomes something « sacred, » intimate and specific to the village. It is thanks to these hedges made from this plant that the village regains not only its tranquility and privacy, but also its traditions and customs. Bamboo thus becomes the protector of the villagers. This is why a Vietnamese proverb says that
The king’s authority stops before the village’s bamboo hedges. (Phép vua thua lệ làng)
It is also only in villages today that we find this incomparable plant that makes life easier for villagers. Bamboo and the village are so closely linked that they are often compared to a person linked to his shadow. This is why we find this evocation in several Vietnamese poems. This impression, every Vietnamese will probably have it when passing through his native village through the following four verses:
Thì bao nhiêu cảnh mơ màng
Hiện ra khi thoàng cỗng làng tre xanh.
As we indulge in dreaming, we see the entrance to the village and the bamboo appear from afar.
Dừng bước nơi đây lòng ngỗn ngang
Ngùi trông về Bắc nhớ tre làng
When we stop here, we feel helpless
When we remember our homeland with emotion, we are reminded to see the village bamboo again.
To find the bamboo is to find the village. That’s why bamboo has become the representative symbol of Vietnam.
Cham elements in Vietnamese culture (Yếu tố Chàm trong văn hóa Việt)
In Vietnamese folklore, when speaking of Princess Huyền Trân (Jade Jenny), the Vietnamese people deplore not only the fate reserved for her but also the promise of King Trần Nhân Tôn to grant his daughter’s hand in marriage to the Cham King Chế Mân (Jaya Simhavarman III) during his special trip to the capital Vijaya (Bình Định) through the following folk song:
Tiếc thay cây quế giữa rừng,
để cho thằng Mán, thằng Mường nó leo.
It is a shame to let a Man or a Mung climb the cinnamon tree in the middle of the forest. However, we do not know that the founder of the « Bamboo Forest » sect was a talented politician with great insight who wanted to expand his territory in the South and maintain good neighborly relations in the fight against the danger coming from the North.
Thanks to the support provided by the Đại Việt kingdom in blocking the land passage, the Yuan army lost the battle for the second time by attacking Champa under the command of the valiant King Chế Mân with 20,000 soldiers. As for Chế Mân, the two provinces of Châu Ô and Châu Ri were not entirely under his control because their inhabitants had fled to the forest or to places where the Cham government still fully exercised its authority, the other three provinces Bố Chinh, Ma Linh and Địa Lý having long since been ceded to King Lý Thánh Tôn by the Cham king Chế Củ (Rudravarman III) in exchange for peace and his liberation.Now, by ceding two more provinces, Châu Ô and Châu Ri, it seemed difficult for him to speak to his people, especially since he was the hero of the Cham nation who had managed to win the victory against the Yuan army. The marriage of Huyền Trân was an excellent solution for the political situation of the time. This event also demonstrates the use of the « non-violence » method of the founder of « Bamboo Forest » to resolve conflicts in Buddhism according to the Vietnamese newspaper Giác Ngộ, but no one expected the sudden death of the king forcing Huyền Trân to accompany him and die with him on the funeral pyre according to Cham custom.
According to researcher Po Dharma, this is indeed a staging of the story of the organized rescue of Huyền Trân and the broken promise of the Trần dynasty, which transformed this incident into a deep discord between the two peoples, thus leading to the decline of the Champa kingdom a few centuries later with the dazzling victory of King Lê Thánh Tông in the citadel Đồ Bàn (Vijaya).
Is this ironic folk song true or not? Is Cham culture so mediocre that people despise it like this? We also need to know who they are, where they come from with the practices of a different culture carrying cultural and traditional elements specific to India. The temples and towers they possessed on the current central coast stretched over 1,000 kilometers with statues of gods of a strange and different religion. Although they were in ruins or intact, they were still invisible threats deeply rooted in the minds of our people like the statues of Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu, which created more or less anxiety, confusion and fear as is the case of Lord Tiên (Nguyễn Hoàng) who was in charge of governing the territory of Thuận Hóa (Binh Trị Thiên) in Đàng Trong, a remote, arid and dangerous region.
Tới đây đất nước lạ lùng
Con chim kêu cũng sợ, con cá vẫy vùng cũng lo.
This is a very strange place.
A bird’s cry frightens me as much as the wriggling of a fish in a stream.
This is why, according to Abbot Léopold Cadière, in order to reassure the soul and gain peace, our people do not hesitate to introduce Cham cultural sites into their world of religious belief and transform them into places of worship such as the Pagoda of the Celestial Lady (Thiên Mụ), the Hòn Chén palace, the Po Nagar temple etc.
Throughout the travel to Thuận Hóa, the group of faithful and trusted men of Nguyễn Hoàng were all from Thanh Hóa and integrated into that of Nghệ An during the first migration in the 14th century when the provinces of Châu Ô and Châu Rí belonged to the Đai Việt kingdom. The inhabitants of Thuận Hóa were called at that time by the name of « Thanh Nghệ people » (Thanh Hóa-Nghệ An). Having left without knowing the date of return, they had to endure all the hardships and sufferings from then on. But, having strengthened the will of an adventurer in a foreign land, sometimes, they could console themselves. That is why there is a folk song tinged with philosophy as follows:
Măn giang nấu cá ngạnh nguồn,
Tới đây nên phải bán buồn mua vui.
Nothing beats wild bamboo shoots cooked with catfish,
Once you’re there, you have to sell your sadness for a little hope.
Having arrived first, the inhabitants of Thanh Nghệ were not numerous in the current region of Quảng Tri. They were forced to live in harmony with the Chams who remained there. At first, Nguyễn Hoàng still spoke with a northern accent, but over the course of only a few generations, his heirs and residents were influenced by the social environment resulting from the mixing of the two peoples, especially at the time of the breakdown of relations and trade by taking the Gianh River as the border between Đàng Trong and Đàng Ngoài and especially after the construction of the rampart (Trường Dục) of Đào Duy Từ, which gave them a particular tone, recognizable to the inhabitants of Quảng Bình and Quảng Trị.
According to scholar Thái Văn Kiểm, the Huế accent was formed later when Lord Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên (Lord Sãi), decided to move the capital to Phước Yên village, Quang Điền district and Lord Thượng (Nguyễn Phước Lan) to Kim Long village in 1636. Through the interaction of two ancient cultures, Việt Mường (Thanh Hóa and Nghệ An) and Cham, a new way of life emerged focusing on food (eating spicy food, shrimp paste, pissalat etc.), treating diseases with southern medicinal plants, cultivating Cham rice, building boats with the Cham model (thuyền bầu) for trading at sea, water management and the construction of dikes along rivers and the use in fine arts, of the five most distinctive colors among which is purple, a color that does not provoke sad emotions and which Cham women still love and use today. These are the new characteristics of the Việt-Cham community that are often seen in Binh Trị Thiên and are now called the identity of Huế.
According to American historian Michael Vickery, based on comparative linguistic analysis, it is known that the Cham came from the island of Borneo by sea at the end of the first millennium BC. Their language belonged to the Austronesian languages. They often settled in places suitable for transporting goods on the river. Known as the Vikings of Southeast Asia, they used to cause trouble at sea by plundering ships in the southernmost coastal region of Nhat Nam district, which was directly under the administration of Giao Chau (the land of the Vietnamese) when the latter was still annexed by the Chinese. According to the observation of Vietnamese archaeologist Ngo Van Doanh, they often preferred to live in coastal plains located between three slopes of high mountains and a slope leading to the sea, all equipped with one or more fortresses.
Based on Chinese historical documents and epigraphic inscriptions, it is known that the Lâm Ấp (Lin Yi) country was transformed into the kingdom of Champa (Champapura) from the beginning of the 7th century with Simhapura (Trà Kiệu) as its capital. It is thanks to the name Champapura that we can guess that Champa is a kingdom composed of several city-states (pura). It is in some ways a federation of many city-states. The most powerful city-state is chosen to assume the role of « leader » (main role) and thus becomes Champapura (the capital of Champa). The dynasty of this city-state thus controls the entire kingdom of Champa.
According to archaeologist Trần Quốc Vượng, the Cham used to use the following cultural model, which always consisted of 3 parts: sanctuary (mountain), citadel (capital) and port (economic center) in their city. This type of model has been seen repeated in every Cham city-state from Quảng Trị to Bình Thuận. According to the observation of archaeologist Trần Kỳ Phương, city-states that built grandiose religious sites must be able to mobilize a necessary human resource that they can feed with possible economic potential. The Cham are generally oriented towards maritime trade because their arable land found in the coastal valleys of central Vietnam is very limited.
How many times has human history demonstrated that a superior civilization has a transformative effect on an inferior one? The more powerful ancient Rome, at the time of its conquest, was subject to the influence of Greek civilization. Similarly, the Mongols or Manchus, at the time of their conquest in China, were subsequently assimilated by the latter. Our Đại Việt kingdom was no exception either. Being accustomed to denigrating and despising the Chams (or Mans), could our Đại Việt have anything to do with this conquest? He received many things during the punitive military expedition of King Lê Đại Hành to Champa in 982. To enhance his prestige and celebrate his victory, he brought back not only an Indian monk (Thiên Trúc) who was at the monastery of Đ ồng Dương (present-day Quảng Nam) but also a hundred musicians and dancers (Thai Van. Kiem:64).
It can be said that since then, royal music included many elements of Champa. In 1069, King Lý Thánh Tông ordered the court musicians to compose a kind of slow and sad melody, in the style of the Cham people called Chiêm Thành Âm. Then, during the reign of Lý Cao Tôn, there were “Southern Rhymes (Airs of the Southerners)” such as Ha Giang Nam, Ai Giang Nam, Nam Thuong etc. There was also a Cham musical instrument called “Rice Drum” or “Phạn sĩ” which our people frequently use, according to the book titled “Annam chí lược (Abridged Records of Lê Tắc). As for sculpture, the Vietnamese lived under the southern influence of the South to create artifacts such as the head of a dragon from the Lý-Trần dynasty resembling that of a makara dragon or the Siamese duck (vịt siêm) with the Hamsa goose of Champa for example, all of which were found in the imperial citadel Thăng Long on the tiled roofs and gables of buildings up to the decorated motifs on bowls (Hồ Trung Tú:264). Another Cham element of the Lý dynasty that can be observed in the field of architecture and to which few people pay attention is that the pagodas of this period often had square plans, similar to the model of Cham towers (kalan).
The Dien Huu Pagoda (One Pillar Pagoda) originally consisted of a square main hall only 3 meters across and a single entrance similar to that of a Cham tower, erected on a column 4 meters high above the water surface. As for the barcarolles of the coastal region, such as the song of the second oar (hò mái nhì) or song of the propelling oar (hò mái đẩy), they all received Cham influence. According to musicologist Professor Trân Văn Khê, the boatmen’s songs of Huế (or barcarolles) and the Pelog songs of Java (Indonesia) both present the same melodic line. He concluded that after centuries of exchange, Vietnamese music was tinged with Cham color. According to researcher Charles J.C. MacDonald (CNRS Marseille), whale worship is considered a typical characteristic found among the Vietnamese living along the coast of Central and South Vietnam, as people in the North did not have it. Some Vietnamese scholars such as Thái Văn Kiểm, Trần văn Phước, or Trần Hàm Tấn have confirmed that this cult belongs to the Chams.
Thanks to these Cham elements, Vietnamese culture has become rich and diverse because, in addition to the Việt-Mường (Bai Yue) culture, it has also inherited, more or less, since the founding of the country, traditions from two ancient cultures: India and China.
The long march towards the South: the end of Champa.
According to scholar Thái Văn Kiểm, our people’s long march towards the South is an obvious historical fact that veritable foreign historians must recognize, and it is also a source of great pride for our nation. For over a thousand years, the Vietnamese people have crossed more than five thousand kilometers, or 1,700 meters a year or 5 meters a day. This speed is even less than that of a snail. This proves that our people have encountered many obstacles and have sometimes had to stop and take a step back on this long march. In a way, this folk song evokes the anxiety and fear of the Vietnamese people on this journey strewn with pitfalls:
Đến đây đất nước lạ lùng
Con chim kêu cũng sợ, con cá vẫy vùng cũng lo.
This land seems very strange to them
The chirping of birds also frightens them, as does the restlessness of fish.
Despite the fact that our population stood at around one million against a giant China estimated at the time at over 56 million subjects, we were led to discover the incredible talent of Ngô Quyền, who succeeded in freeing our people from Chinese domination for almost a thousand years. Unfortunately, he reigned for only 5 years. Then came the period of national unrest with the twelve warlords. Fortunately, the hero Đinh Bộ Lĩnh from Ninh Bình province emerged. He succeeded in eliminating them, unifying the country under his banner and founding a new dynasty, the Đinh dynasty. During this period, our country had just become an independent nation, but was confined only to the Red River delta and the small plains along the central coast of North Viet Nam (Thanh Hóa, Nghệ An).
In the North, it is difficult to begin territorial expansion because of the presence of China. This country had a large population and always caressed the intention of annexing our country at the opportune moment, whatever the reigning dynasty. At the West stand the rugged Trường Sơn mountain range, which is difficult to cross, and at the East is located the East Sea, which Nguyễn Trãi had occasion to mention in the “Proclamation on the Pacification of the Ngô (Bình Ngô Đại Cáo)” as follows:
Độc ác thay, trúc Nam Sơn không ghi hết tội,
Dơ bẩn thay, nước Đông Hải không rửa sạch mùi.
What cruelty! The bamboo of the southern mountains can’t record all their crimes,
What filth! The water of the Eastern Sea can’t wash away their stench.
to allude to the cruelty of the Ming (Chinese) that the East Sea failed to erase during the ten years of their aggression against the Great Yue (Đại Việt). This is a pressure that our people always had to endure during the course of our nation’s formation. Only in the South lies the only way for our nation to expand its borders, avoid extermination and maintain national independence, especially as our ancestors remain the only tribe of the Bai Yue who have not been assimilated by the Chinese since the time of Qin Shi Huang Di (Tần Thủy Hoàng).
However, at this moment in time, in this march towrds the South, our people have two undeniable advantages, one of which is to have a brilliant strategist to defend against Chinese invaders in the North, and the other is to succeed in involving the mass popular movement in this expedition for legitimate reasons. In the South, there is a kingdom called Lin Yi (later Champa), which succeeded in gaining independence from China in Nhật Nam in 192 A.D., and used to provoke unrest on our country’s border. This kingdom occupies an important position on the trans-Asian sea route coveted by the envious (Manguin 1979: 269). The capture of Champa can be considered a major success in the control of the East Sea and passing ships (Manguin 1981: 259). Today, it’s still a burning issue that attracts the attention of world powers.
The Great Yue (Đai Việt) was a country that had just had its first king when it was caught in a pincer movement between China and Champa. These two countries initially acted in concert to destroy our country. Considered a warrior king and a strategic visionary, King Lê Đại Hành (or Lê Hoàn) had both of these advantages. He succeeded in defeating Hầu Nhân Bảo‘s Song army in 981 at Chi Lăng (Lạng Sơn) and in punishing Champa during an expedition mounted within a year to drive the Chams out of Amaravati province (Quảng Ngãi) after their clumsy king Bề Mi Thuế had imprisoned Đại Việt’s messengers, Từ Mục and Ngô Tử Canh sent to Champa in an attempt to smooth over disagreements. He destroyed the capital Indrapura (Quảng Nam) and the shrine in 982 and killed its king Paramec Varavarman (Bề Mi Thuế).
He then handed over control of operations in the capital Indrapura and northern Linyi to his subordinate Lưu Kế Tông before returning to his capital. Through this disguised power of attorney, we can see more or less clearly Lê Đại Hành’s intentions to expand the territory, but he was afraid of perhaps receiving reprimand from the Song dynasty at this time. That’s why he didn’t want to reveal them.
According to “Les Mémoires historiques du Grand Viet au complet (Đại Việt Sử Ký Toàn Thư)”, Lưu Kế Tông went into hiding in Champa. That’s why King Lê Đại Hành had to send his unnamed adopted son to capture and kill him in the year 983. But in Song history, it’s worth noting that Lưu Kế Tông became king of Champa three years later, from 986 to 989, and he even sent an ambassador to the Song dynasty to ask the latter to recognize him as ruler of Champa. This shows that there is something at odds with what has been written in our history. It can be explained that Lưu Kế Tông was initially tasked with fulfilling a mission that King Lê Đại Hành had entrusted to him. As Lưu Kế Tông managed to gain fairly strong local support, he attempted to pose as king and gave up honoring his mission.
But thanks to the restoration of the Cham people’s growing military strength in Vijaya (Chà Bàn, Bịnh Định), King Harivarman II succeeded in defeating Lưu Kế Tông, then retaking the whole province of Amaravati and once again settling in the capital Indrapura. As for Lưu Kế Tông, according to French researcher Georges Cœdès, he had passed away. He is no longer mentioned in history. Despite intensified looting along the northern frontier, Champa was now under constant and increasing pressure from our Annam. According to the scholar Trần Trọng Kim’s “History of Vietnam”, China always granted our king the title “Prince of Jiaozhi Province (Giao Chỉ quận vương)” because it continued to regard our country, Jiaozhi (or Giao Chỉ) as a Chinese province at the time of its rule. It was only under King Lý Anh Tôn that our king officially received the title of King of Annam. Since then, our country has been called Annam.
Under the Lý dynasty, on the pretext that Champa had not paid tribute to the Annam kingdom for 16 years, King Lý Thái Tông was forced to go and fight Champa in 1044. The Chams suffered many casualties. Cham general Quách Gia Di decided to slash his king Sạ Đẩu (Jaya Simhavarman II), the last king of Champa’s Indrapura dynasty, and cut off his head to demand surrender. In 1069, based on the reason of not honoring the payment of tribute by Champa for 4 years, King Lý Thánh Tông decided to personally take 100,000 soldiers to fight Champa, succeeded in capturing Chế Củ (or Jaya Rudravarman III) in Cambodia where he sought refuge at that time and brought him back to the capital Thăng Long. To redeem his freedom and return to his homeland, Chế Củ offered in exchange the three northern provinces of Champa roughly equivalent to two provinces of Quảng Binh and Quảng Tri (Georges Cœdès: 248).
It can be said that from this transaction, Đại Viêt began to expand to new lands and encouraged people to live there under the reign of King Lý Nhân Tôn after Lý Giác‘s revolt in the Nghệ An region. On the advice of this rebel, King Chế Ma Na (Jaya Indravarman II) attempted to retake the three exchanged provinces, but was subsequently defeated by the famous general Lý Thường Kiệt, and this time had to definitively retrocede these three retaken provinces.
According to scholar Henri Maspero, during the reign of Lý Thần Tông, our country was invaded by the warrior king Sûryavarman II of Chenla (Chân Lạp). The latter used to often drag Champa into war by constantly inciting or coercing it against our country in the Nghệ An and Thanh Hóa regions. Then, as the two countries became hostile, there was a war lasting almost a hundred years. This was to weaken them in the face of the Annam country, which became powerful at the beginning of the 13th century with a new dynasty, the Trần dynasty. It was also a time when the entire Eurasian region was being invaded by the Mongols. But it was also a time when neighboring Annam and Champa enjoyed good relations, and Champa regained peace and stability under King Indravarman V (1265-1285).
It was thanks to this rapprochement that the Vietnamese and the Chams, united in the same struggle and acting together against a common enemy, the Yuan empire of Kubilai Khan (Đế Chế nhà Nguyên của Hốt Tất Liệt), together achieved military feats of great historical significance not only for our people but also for Southeast Asia. Thanks to this union, the two peoples defeated the Mongol empire. In order to strengthen the hitherto non-existent good understanding between the two peoples, King Trần Nhân Tông visited the Kingdom of Champa for nine months as spiritual leader of the Đại Việt Zen sect on May 11, 1301.
Thanks to this visit, he promised to grant the hand of his daughter, Princess Huyền Trân (Jet Pearl), to King Chế Mân (Jaya Simhavarman III), even though Huyền Trân was only 14 and Chế Mân was quite old. Despite his monk’s cassock, he was still the king-father of the Đại Việt kingdom. He therefore always had a long-term vision for the country and had realized that the Đại Việt kingdom needed territory as a rear base in case of need in the south when he was well aware of the malevolent intentions of the Northerners and he managed to win the war of resistance against the Yuan army twice (1285 and 1287-1288). On the contrary, why did the hero of the Cham people, Chế Mân (Jaya Simhavarman III), cede the two Ô-Lý districts at this time to become a traitor to his people? Is Champa too disadvantaged and Đại Việt too advantageous in this transaction, isn’t it?
It was perhaps because of the aridity of the ceded area that Chế Mân felt it was impossible for him to control it, as Quảng Trị was an area of sandy soil and Thừa Thiên Huế surrounded by hills was also a region devoid of any significant plain (Hồ Trung Tú:283). Moreover, it was a matter of legalizing a territory that Champa no longer had the capacity to govern since Chế Củ (or Jaya Rudravarman III) had ceded it in exchange for his release 236 years ago. The fact that Princess Perle de Jais (Huyền Trân) married Chế Mân five years later (1306) with the dowry of two thousand square meters of the Ô and Lý districts (today’s Quảng Trị and Thừa Thiên Huế provinces) should be a well-considered political calculation with the aim of perpetuating peace and carrying the strategic character for both Đai Việt and Champa dynasties. Thanks to this marriage, Đai Việt’s territory had extended as far north as the Thu Bồn River, and Champa could preserve the remaining territory for future generations.
In the eyes of the people, Princess Huyền Trân is a woman deeply admired in the minds of several generations of Vietnamese, and she is evoked repeatedly in this long march south through her history and destiny. After a year of marriage, King Chế Mân died in 1307. Only the latter and Trúc Lâm đại sĩ (the nickname given to king-father Trần Nhân Tông) managed to know just why, but they had both died within a year of each other. Since then, this wedding gift became a bone of contention between the two countries, leading to continuous wars in which Đai Việt was always the country with the most victories.
Thanks to demographic pressure and immigration policy under the Hồ dynasty, the territories ceded by Champa had become independent, autonomous regions thanks to the Vietnamese village organization (the king’s authority stops in front of the village bamboo hedges). This made it more difficult for Champa to reclaim these territories in the future. Once again, after the 14th century, Champa became a major military power, engaging in battles as far afield as Thanh Hóa. This was the time of the appearance of a character described in the history of the Ming dynasty as Ngo-ta-ngo-tcho, but in the history of the Cham people he became known as Binasuor (or Chế Bồng Nga). Having taken advantage of the weakening of the Trần dynasty and at the same time received the title of King of Champa from the Ming dynasty in China, Chế Bồng Nga attacked North Vietnam 5 times in succession during the period from 1361 to 1390, but 4 times he took his troops directly to the capital Thăng Long.
Due to the treachery of one of Chế Bồng Nga’s subordinates, named Ba-lậu-kê, general Trần Khắc Chân of the Trần dynasty managed to spot the junk carrying Chế Bồng Nga and asked his soldiers to fire on it. Chế Bồng Nga was hit head-on. According to G. Maspero, Chế Bồng Nga’s period was at its peak, but according to G. Cœdès, this sentence is completely incorrect, but Chế Bồng Nga’s military victories should be compared with the blue light at sunset (Ngô Văn Doanh: 126 or G. Cœdès: 405).
A Cham general with the Vietnamese name La Khải, whom the Chams recorded as Jaya Simhavarman in their history, ascended the throne after eliminating the children of Chế Bồng Nga. La Khải decided to abandon all Cham territories north of the Hải Vân Pass (the present-day provinces of Quảng Bình, Quảng Trị and Thừa Thiên Huế).
To avoid another war with the Đai Việt, he ceded Champa’s province of Indrapura in 1402, corresponding to the present-day province of Quảng Nam, where the Mỹ Sơn shrine was located, but reclaimed it later in 1407 when the Ming took the pretext of eliminating the Hồ dynasty for the usurpation of the Trần throne. These Ming thus annexed Annam, sought out all men of talent and virtue and brought them back to China for employment. These included the young Nguyễn An (Ruan An), who later became a Vietnamese eunuch architect responsible for building the Forbidden City in Beijing according to the theory of Yin and Yang and the 5 elements, and Nguyễn Phi Khanh, father of Nguyễn Trãi. After ten years of resistance against the Ming army, Lê Lợi ascended the throne in 1428 and founded the later Lê dynasty. He re-established peaceful relations with the Ming and Champa, whose king was the son of La Khải, named Virabhadravarman and known in Vietnamese chronicles as Ba Dich Lai (Indravarman VI).
According to George Cœdès, Champa rapidly fell into a state of political recession at the end of this dynasty, with up to five successive kings in 30 years due to civil wars for power. At that time, in Annam, there was a great king known as Lê Thánh Tôn, renowned for the literary and martial arts in the history of Việt Nam. It was he who asked the historian Ngô Sĩ Liên to compile all the information relating all the historical events into a collection of articles known as “Đại Việt sử ký (The Historical Memoirs of the Great Viet)”. He ordered his subordinate to trace the geographical map of our country, but secretly sent someone to Champa at the same time to draw a map of Champa with all the strategic nooks and crannies, which enabled his army to take the capital Đồ Bàn (Vijaya) from Chà Bàn (Bình Định) in the year 1471 and capture King Trà Toàn (Maha Sajan) brought back to Đại Việt with 30000 prisoners.
The capture of the Vijaya capital could be compared to the fall of Constantinople (1453) at the same time by the Turks (Nepote 1993:12). After this, the Ming emperor sent an emissary to ask him to return the territory of Binh Định to Champa. But faced with his categorical refusal, the Ming emperor had to give up all action, as our country’s prestige was great in view of the tributes paid by neighboring countries such as Laos (Ai Lao) and the Mường of the West. Champa had now shrunk to just the territories south of Cape Varella (Đại Lãnh, Phú Yên) and no longer posed major obstacles to the southward advance of the Vietnamese people.
As for the Chams, they were dispersed into numerous groups and evacuated by sea and land: one group fled to Cambodia and was sheltered by the Cambodian king Jayajettha III (Ang Sur) in Oudong, Chrui Changvar and Prêk Pra near the capital Phnom Penh and in the province of Kompong Cham, another group went as far as the island of Hainan (Thurgood 1999: 227) and Malacca, and the remaining population had to hide in the Panduranga region still belonging to Champa or accepted to live with the Vietnamese in the annexed territory.
By now, Vietnamese and Cham villages had been established side by side for several hundred years. Nor was it known who was really assimilated when there was the clash and peaceful cultural exchange between humanity’s two great civilizations, India and China. How many times has human history demonstrated that a superior civilization has a transformative effect on an inferior one? The more powerful ancient Rome, at the time of its conquest, was under the influence of Greek civilization. Similarly, when the Mongols or Manchus conquered China, they were assimilated by the latter.
Our Đại Việt kingdom was no exception either. Being accustomed to denigrating and despising the Chams (or Mans), could our Đại Việt have had anything to do with this conquest? He received many things, including many elements from Champa found in royal music such as the Chiêm Thành Âm (Champa Resonances) or the well-cooked rice-plated tambourine (trống cơm)(Thái Văn Kiểm 1964: 65) or later with the “Danses du Sud (Airs des Méridionaux)” through the endless painful laments of the Cham people such as Hà Giang Nam (Descent to the South of the River), Ai Giang Nam (Lamentation of the South of the River), Nam Thương (Compassion of the South) etc. and in sculptural art under both the Lý and Trần dynasties.
There was a time when the Vietnamese lived under the southern influence of the South to create artifacts such as the head of a Lý-Trần dynasty dragon resembling that of a Makara dragon or the Siamese duck (vịt siêm) to the Hamsa goose of Champa for example, all found in the imperial citadel Thăng Long on tile roofs and building gables right down to the decorated motifs on bowls (Hồ Trung Tú: 264).
As for the Chams, they weren’t completely assimilated right away, as they were abandoning their language to speak Vietnamese in their homeland. Henceforth, they were to have a surname like the Vietnamese under King Minh Mạng. The names they had had in their history were the surnames of kings or those of the royal family according to author Phú Trạm in the newspaper Tia Sáng (October 2, 2006). They used Ja (man) or Mu (woman) They also created an accent tone for themselves that hadn’t existed before, by speaking the Vietnamese language with the intonation of a native Cham. They spoke, they listened, they corrected themselves, they understood each other with the Vietnamese community on the spot to produce a distinct accent tone that no longer resembled the original tone (Quảng Nam’s intonation for example) when they had contact with the Vietnamese people before (as their Vietnamese wife and children) or when they were appointed notables in territories belonging to the Đai Việt kingdom. They didn’t necessarily lose their roots immediately, as they still retained the habits and customs of the Cham people.
More specifically, in regions such as Đà Nẵng, Hội An, we continued to see people still wearing Cham clothing at the end of the 18th century through the photographs of Cristoforo Borri or John Barrow. The men wore kama or bottomless pants (the sarong) with a fairly wide turban, and the women long skirts with several multicolored pleats or bare torsos (Hồ Trung Tú: 177).in front of the names like the words văn or Thị among the Vietnamese. When they became old and occupied an important role or rank in society, they were called from then on by that function or title (Hồ Trung Tú: 57).
The Vietnamese who migrated to areas where the Cham population was dense were obliged to adapt and accept the Chams’ way of speaking the Vietnamese language, from Quảng Nam to Phú Yên. As for the territories where the number of Chams was low and that of Vietnamese migrants was high, the intonation practiced in these territories remained that of the Vietnamese migrants. The latter managed to retain their intonation entirely in territories stretching from the Ngang Pass to Huế. They frequently used the dialects of Nghệ An-Hà Tịnh (Hồ Trung Tú:154) or Thanh Hóa later with Lord Nguyễn Hoàng.
As for the cultural characteristics of the Cham people, they have all disappeared since the 9th month of the Year of the Tiger, under the reign of Minh Mạng (1828). This was the time of the royal edict designed to prohibit southern men from wearing kamas. Since the Chams claimed not to know how long ago or when they had a link of Northern origin like hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese families cohabiting in this territory, they no longer wondered who they were exactly, because after a few generations they had become “pure Vietnamese” and thus joined their people in the long march to the tip of Cà Mau. From then on, the end of Champa could be announced.
Bibliography
Thái Văn Kiểm: Việt Nam quang hoa Editeur Xuân Thu, USA
Georges Cœdès: Cổ sử các quốc gia Ấn Độ Hóa ở Viễn Đông. NXB Thế Giới năm 2011
Pierre-Yves Manguin: L’introduction de l’islam au Champa. Études chames II. BEFEO. Vol 66 pp 255-287. 1979
Pierre-Yves Manguin: Une relation ibérique du Champa en 1595. Études chames IV. BEFEO vol 70 pp. 253-269
Ngô văn Doanh: Văn hóa cổ Chămpa. NXB Dân tộc 2002.
Hồ Trung Tú: Có 500 năm như thế. NXB Đà Nẵng 2017.
Agnès de Féo: Les Chams, l’islam et la revendication identitaire. EPHE IVème section.2004
Thái Văn Kiểm: Panorama de la musique classique vietnamienne. Des origines à nos jours. BSEI, Nouvelle Série, Tome 39, N° 1, 1964.
Thurgood Graham: From Ancient Cham to modern dialects . Two thousand years of langage contact and change. University of Hawai Press, Honolulu. 1999
Trần Trọng Kim: Việtnam sử lược, Hànội, Imprimerie Vĩnh Thanh 1928.
Đại Việt Sử Ký Toàn Thư. Nhà xuất bản Thời Đại. Năm 2013.
Forbidden Purple City (Huế)
The Forbidden Purple City of Hue is protected by a 4-meter-high brick wall. This wall is further reinforced by the installation of a water-filled moat system, thus encircling the city. Each gate leading into the city is preceded by one or more bridges, but the Meridian Gate remains the main entrance, once reserved for the king. Today, it is the main entrance for visitors.
It is a powerful masonry structure pierced by five passages and topped by an elegant two-story wooden structure, the Five Phoenix Belvedere (Lầu Ngũ Phụng). To the east and west of the citadel are the Chương Đức Gate (7) and the Hiển Nhơn Gate (8), which are very well decorated and each pierced by three passages. The Hiển Nhơn Gate was completely restored in 1977.
World cultural Heritage of Viet Nam
Once you pass through the Meridian Gate, you see the sumptuous Palace of Supreme Harmony or Throne Palace, which can be reached by crossing the Esplanade of Great Salutations (Sân Ðại Triều Nghi). It was in this palace that the emperor, seated on the throne in a prestigious symbolic position, received the greeting of all the dignitaries of the empire. They were lined up hierarchically on the esplanade for major ceremonies. It is also the only building that has remained relatively intact after so many years of war. Behind this palace is the private residence of the king and his family.
- 1 Gate of the Midday (Ngọ Môn)
- 2 Palace of the Supreme Harmony. ( Điễn Thái Hòa)
- 3 Belvedere of the Lecture or Pavilion of the Archives (Thái Bình Ngự Lâm Thư Lâu)
- 4 Royal Theatre (Duyệt Thị Đường)
- 5 Splendour Pavilion (Hiên Lâm Các)
- 7 Gate of the Vertu (Chương Đức Môn)
- 8 Gate of the Humanity (Hiển Nhơn Môn)
Vietnamese makara (con kim)
Con kìm
Version française
Version vietnamienne
For so many years, when I have the opportunity to visit temples or pagodas, I am used to taking photos of the sacred animal that is clearly visible on their roofs. I always think I am dealing with a dragon because its head resembles that of a dragon, its mouth being gaping and always swallowing an element of the roof. But when you examine it closely, you discover its very short body and its tail resembling that of a fish. The Chinese are used to calling it Xi. This is their way of calling this legendary creature Makara. This one is used to living underwater and is the favorite vehicle of the goddess of the Ganges River, Ganga. It is therefore an aquatic creature from abroad. Its mouth is so large that it can swallow an architectural element of the roof. Is this why the Vietnamese give it the name « Kìm » (or pincer in French)? Why is it often found on the roofs of temples or communal houses?
According to the Taiping Leibian Encyclopedia, it is a tradition dating back to the Han period under the reign of Emperor Han Wudi and the period when Buddhism began to take root in China. Following the fire at the Bach Luong Palace and at the suggestion of a mandarin to the emperor, the Imperial Court decided to sculpt the statue of this aquatic creature and install it on the roof of the palace because it was capable of extinguishing fire by surfing on the waves, which caused rain when it appeared. This creature henceforth became the symbol of the extinction of fire.
This custom was widespread not only in the Han imperial court but also in popular belief. Our country, annexed by the Han at this time, was no exception in the practice of this cult. Kim thus became the sacred animal of decoration on the roofs of communal houses and pagodas because Vietnamese artists have succeeded today in giving it a specific character in Vietnamese culture over the centuries. It has long since become a purely Vietnamese sacred animal. Everyone forgets not only its Hindu name, makara, but also its origin.
Phùng Nguyên culture (Văn hóa Phùng Nguyên)
Văn hóa Phùng Nguyên
Tìm về cội nguồn của dân tộc Việt.
Version française
Version vietnamienne
Phùng Nguyên is the name of a village of the same name in Lâm Thao district of Phú Thọ province where the remains of this culture are found. It is now known that the Dong Son culture is the culture of the Lo Yue who are the ancestors of today’s Vietnamese. Through archaeological excavations carried out in important places with several cultural layers, Vietnamese archaeologists have discovered that there is no hollow separating them as is the case at the Đình Chàng site in Đồng Anh commune (Hanoi). It is within the Gò Mun site that we find the burial tombs of the Dong Son culture, but under the layer of the Gò Mun culture, there are the Dong Du and Phung Nguyen cultures. This shows that there is no break in the continuity between these cultures. Thanks to this we can see the Phùng Nguyên-Dồng Đậu-Gò Mun-Dồng sơn genealogy that archaeologists have established very precisely with the further confirmation of radiocarbon dating. These cultures succeed each other in time. This means that from each of them, we find its development in the next and its distribution in the Middle Red River region where the provinces of Phú Thọ, Hà Nội, Vĩnh Phúc, Bắc Ninh, Ninh Bình etc. are located. We can say that this is the original sacred territory of the Vietnamese people. According to archaeology professor Hà Văn Tấn, these cultures can be easily distinguished thanks to their ceramics.
This is when our country Văn Lang was ruled by the Hùng kings in legends. According to archaeology professor Hà văn Tấn’s observation, the tribes of the Phùng Nguyên culture constitute the first nucleus in the process of forming the Việt-Mường ethnic group and that of nation-building.
At first, the Phùng Nguyên artifacts found in the excavations reached a very sophisticated level: jade, stone, ceramics, bone, horn that everyone identified as belonging to the late Neolithic, particularly in stone and ceramic manufacturing techniques. But in the presence of a number of bronze objects found later, researchers such as Hà Văn Tấn, Trần Quốc Vượng agreed that the Phùng Nguyên culture was at the origin of the Bronze Age in northern Vietnam and had a notable influence later in many parts of Southeast Asia through the Đồng Sơn culture.
Are the inhabitants of the Phùng Nguyên culture the Luo Yue, the ancestors of today’s Vietnamese (the Kinh), or are they simply a Yue ethnic group or people who came from somewhere to settle in the Red River region? Did they come from Malaysia or the Yangtze River? The origin of the Vietnamese people is very confused in history because relying solely on legends, it’s hard for us to believe and accept the irrationality in the legend of the “Lạc Long Quân-Âu Cơ” with a pouch hatching a hundred eggs. For researcher Paul Pozner [1] Vietnamese historiography is based on a very long and permanent historical tradition, which is represented by an oral historical tradition during the 3rd – 1st half of the first millennium BC in the form of historical legends in ancestor cult temples.
The next two lines:
Trăm năm bia đá thì mòn
Ngàn năm bia miệng vẫn còn trơ trơ.
With a hundred years, the stone stele continues to deteriorate
With a thousand years, people’s words continue to remain in force
testify to the practice consciously carried out by the Vietnamese in preserving the culture they inherited during the Hồng Bàng period in the face of relentless Chinese repression at the time of their country’s annexation.
From the confiscation of numerous bronze drums by Generalissimo Ma Yuan of the Eastern Han dynasty to be melted down into horses for his emperor, to the systematic destruction of pagodas, the burning of books, the arrest and exile of over 10,000 talented Vietnamese, including Nguyễn An (or Ruan An), the chief architect of Beijing’s Forbidden City during the reign of Yongle (Ming dynasty), showed us that the Chinese were methodically and maliciously attempting to assimilate the Luo Yue, the only ethnic group in the “Hundred Yue” still retaining independence to this day. Fortunately, it’s only in the last twenty years since 1998 that research into molecular phylogenetics carried out by research groups in the USA and Europe, along with advances in DNA analysis techniques in anthropology, have made it easier for us to obtain more precise data on all genes and DNA molecules. As a result, we no longer have historical hitches, and we know more clearly the origins of the Vietnamese people.
Leaving Africa, prehistoric humans migrated in two waves. The first wave headed towards Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, through the eastern coast of India around 60,000-30,000 BC before reaching Australia and heading back to North America via the Bering Strait, and the second wave attempted to move towards the Middle East and Central Asia and along the Himalayas to Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, around 30,000 BC, thanks to known genetic data. Based on the documents of genetic research, a number of Vietnamese authors (Cung Đình Thanh, Hà Văn Thùy, Lang Linh or Hoàng Nguyễn) have suggested a theory that is entirely compatible with legends, history and archaeological excavations undertaken in the past in Vietnam.
It was at that time in Southeast Asia that prehistoric humans (Indonesian group) resulting from the fusion of the two important Mongoloid and Australoid races, had left their mark in the Red River basin with the famous Hoà Bình culture (18000-10000 B.C.) that the French archaeologist Madeleine Colani discovered in 1922. This is also the culture that was at the origin of the civilization of the Proto-Vietnamese. It had spread and influenced the Neolithic cultures of China such as the Yangshao (Shanxi) and Hongshan cultures. The British physicist Stephen Oppenheimer went beyond what was thought at that time by demonstrating through scientific and logical methods that the cradle of human civilization was in Southeast Asia in « Paradise in the East ». According to the genetic research documents of McColl and his colleagues [2], the Hoà Bình people at that time had genes closest to those of the Onge people living on Andaman Island and not yet merged with other ethnic groups. This is the type of black man with short, curly hair that we can identify with the Hoà Bình people. They were the first to know well the cultivation of irrigated rice and other agricultural techniques such as growing cereals etc… (The Spirit Cave for example). Yet they were described by Western archaeologists as people living by fishing, hunting and gathering. Worse still, in the “Later Han Writings (Hậu Hán Thư)” it is also said that the Chinese governors Si Kouang (Tich Quang) and Ren Yan (Nham Dien) had taught our ancestors how to cultivate rice. This is absurd and paranoid.
Then came a great flood 12,000 years ago. This caused much of the land inhabited by prehistoric populations, such as the Red River basin, to sink into the sea. The latter were forced to leave and flee, taking refuge all over the world: to the east in the Pacific Ocean, to the west in India or to the north in the Yangtze River region, taking with them the characteristic objects of the Hoa Binh culture found at the Xian Ren Dong site (Tiên Nhân động) in Jiangxi province (Giang Tây), for example. According to genetic research, these are indeed ancient inhabitants of Southeast Asia (or the Hoà Bình people) making their stop in the Yangtze River basin, as this area was favourable at the time for the development of irrigated rice cultivation. But there was yet another group of people who liked to continue their migration to East Asia by taking their domesticated rice with them (Shangshan site, Thượng Sơn) and their millet and taking the passage to Zhejiang (Chiết Giang) to settle not only in the Yellow River delta but also as far as the Liao River region in the Inner Mongolia of today’s China (Liêu Hà, Nội Mông Trung Hoa).
It was in the latter that they had united with the nomadic natives of North Asia whose remains were found in the Devil’s Gate cave in the Russian territory bordering Korea (Western Siberia) to give birth to a typical Northern Mongoloid race and a culture called « Hong Shan (Hồng Sơn) » discovered from the region of Inner Mongolia to Liaoning. These Northern Mongoloids had descended into the Yellow River region where the Hmong lived, who were very gifted in agriculture. They were part of the Yi tribe. Being originally the drawing of a man 人 carrying a bow 弓, this character « Yi » 夷 gives us a precise idea of the particularity of these people of the North. They distinguished themselves by archery and they were very skilled in combat. Therefore, they managed to win victories against the Hmong led by their leader Chiyou (Xi Vưu) at Zhuolu (Trác Lộc) in the year 2704 B.C. in the province of Hebei (Hà Bắc) and Shennong (Thần Nông) three times in a row, which then gave birth to the Chinese civilization (Yangshao (Ngưỡng Thiều) and Dawenkou (Đại Vấn Khẩu) and the new Southern Mongoloid race with the ancient inhabitants of Southeast Asia. Being more and more numerous, these new Southern Mongoloids thus became the subjects of the Yellow River basin and the ancestors of today’s Chinese.
On the other hand, there are also the Pre-Austronesians – Tai-Kadai of Southeast Asian origin who migrated and later settled in the Shandong region. Then from there, they descended into the Yangtze River basin (or Blue River, Dương Tử) about 6000 years ago, taking millet with them. This cereal was found at the Tanshishan site dating back to about 3500 BC in the Fujian region [3] according to data from genetic research [4][5]. The Austronesians continued to migrate to the island of Taiwan and then dispersed to the islands of Southeast Asia.
In the Yangtze River basin, the formation of the Yue-Tai-Kadai ethnic community took place due to the proximity of the indigenous inhabitants of the Austroasiatic language family and the Pre-Austronesian -Tai-Kadai who came later. Given the genetic factors caused by the fusion of the indigenous people and the newcomers from the waves of migration from North Asia to South Asia and vice versa over thousands of years, there were changes in the structure of genes, especially under the influence of the environment, which caused a natural change in size and skin color and led to the formation of the North and South Mongoloids and the Yue of the Austroasiatic family. This consists of several ethnic groups in East Asia. Even in their language, there is evidence of borrowing from the coexistence of the Yue ethnic groups in the Yangtze River region. This is why the Austroasiatic language family emerged. American linguists Mei Tsulin and Norman Jerry [6] identified 15 loanwords from the Austroasiatic language in Chinese texts from the Han Dynasty.
This is typical of Chinese characters such as the word jiang 囝 (or river in Vietnamese) or the word nu 弩 (or ná in Vietnamese). They conclude that there is contact between the Chinese and Austroasiatic languages in the southern part of present-day China. It was here that the Yue realized that they were clearly different from the nomadic tribes of the Yellow River region. They called themselves Yue. The word “Yue (axe)” they used to refer to themselves as the people living in the Yangtze River region, or as those who used the axe to cultivate grain and defend themselves when invaded by the northerners (the Chinese). The latter still regarded them as Man Di (savages). Yet it was they who led to the formation of great civilizations such as Liangzhu and Shijahe. The Liangzhu culture was discovered in the 1970s, thanks to archaeological excavations in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. It was far more advanced than the Yang Shao culture, dating back to 3300 BC, with the discovery of pictograms carved on stone, turtle breastplates and animal bones used in divination sessions and religious services.
These figurative drawings predate the Shang oracular inscriptions by over 2,000 years. It is known that the Liangzhu inhabitants had a stable, sedentary lifestyle, with an irrigation system using water stored in canals, and a labor-intensive social organization for production and distribution.
Are they the Man Di (savages) or not? But the national awareness of the Yue people is obvious and can be found very early on an artifact from the Liangzhu culture circa 3300 BC, bearing the following inscription composed of 4 symbols that Chinese researcher Đổng Sở Bình managed to decode to give the following meaning: the federation of Yue communities (Phương Việt hội thi).
This is why the Chinese accepted the Yue way of identifying themselves to speak of them in the oracular inscriptions of the Shang dynasty and also used Yue ceremonial axes in human or animal sacrifices according to the remark of the French archaeologist Corinne Debaine-Fracfort. Being considered as the jade culture, the Liangzhu culture had many jade artifacts such as jade axes, cong ritual cylinders, jade bi ritual discs in honor of Heaven, jades etc…. All of these were discovered in the tombs of the ruling and aristocratic class while ceramics were reserved for the lower class. The ceremonial jade axe was both a ceremonial weapon and an object of power that only began to be discovered in the Liangzhu culture in Taihu (Jiangsu) in the Xích Quỷ area of King Kinh Dương Vương, the first ancestor of the Yue clan and father of Lac Long Quân in legend. According to the Vietnamese writer Nguyên Nguyên [7], the name Kinh Dương Vương 涇陽王 can be translated into Vietnamese: King Yue is solemn.
The legend that Kinh Dương Vương ascended the throne and founded the kingdom of Xích Quỷ in 2879 B.C., after the formation of the state of Liangzhu in 3300 B.C., shows that the birth of the kingdom of Xích Quỷ corresponds to the flourishing period of the Liangzhu culture. The owner of this culture chose for his totem the union of a bird and an animal. There is thus a close link with the Hồng Bàng dynasty, implicitly evoking the bird and the serpent, i.e. the Fairy and the Dragon.
Due to rising sea levels, the Yue people had to move to the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in the area around Dongting Lake (Động Đình Hồ). This is where we see the continuity through the birth of the Shijiahe culture (Thạch Gia Hà) 2600-2000 years BC. This is a culture at the end of the Polished Stone Age in Hubei with 1000 artifacts found. Similar to Liangzhu City, Shijiahe City has a system of canals dug around urban areas and connected to nearby rivers. Among the artifacts found, there is one object that catches everyone’s attention. It is a ceramic vase with the image of a leader whose head is adorned with a headdress decorated with bird feathers and which is perfectly suited to the dancing figure wearing a feather costume on the bronze drums of the Dong Son culture (Ngọc Lũ for example). It is the symbol of the Yue people. Shijahe city is located in the territory of the Văn Lang kingdom.
Given the geographical description in the legend, we know that the latter possesses a very vast territory bordering Dongting Lake (Động Đình hồ) to the north, Champa (Hồ Tôn) (Chiêm Thành) to the south, the Hai Nan Sea to the east and the Ba Thục kingdom (Sichuan) to the west, where numerous Yue tribes live scattered from the middle to the lower reaches of the Yangtse River. The name Văn Lang is derived from the ancient Yue word Blang or Klang, which mountain people often use to designate the totem; it may be an aquatic bird of the heron family. The kingdom of Văn Lang can be considered at this time as a federation of Yue ethnic communities. It is also the first state of the Yue ethnic group according to Vietnamese history legend.
There is one thing that we should pay attention to is that in this Shijahe culture there is an artifact called « Nha Chương » meaning a jade tooth used for ritual ceremonies in honor of mountains and rivers. This ceremonial blade was discovered very early in the site of Erlitou (Nhị Lý Đầu) belonging to the Shang culture recognized today by archaeologists. But in Vietnamese legend, there is also reference to the military confrontation with the Shang through the mythical story of the celestial king Phù Đổng or Saint Gióng). So there is the contact between the kingdom of Văn Lang and the Yin-Shang culture. This finally shows the fundamental truth of the legend, especially with a fairly large number of « Nha Chương » discovered in the ancient villages of Phùng Nguyên and Xóm Rền considered as sites belonging to the Phùng Nguyên culture.
In 2000 BC, there was a drought in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, according to archaeological and meteorological studies. This forced the inhabitants of Shijiahe and Liangzhu to migrate because they could no longer continue farming. Based on the genetic research of Hugh McColl and his colleagues, we know that the Austro-Asiatic agrarian population migrated to Southeast Asia around 2000 BC and merged with the indigenous population, who lived by gathering and hunting, to a negligible extent.
The Yangtze River Yue Tribe Federation was also dissolved. This also caused the disappearance of two cultures, Liangzhu and Shijiahe. This disintegration is very consistent with the legend of Lac Long Quan Au Co at the time of the separation: 50 children followed their father to the plains (Lạc Việt), while the other 50 children accompanied their mother, Au Cơ, to settle in the mountains (Âu Viet). Under the rule of the Hùng kings, the Van Lang kingdom also shrank in 1879 BC, with the 15 tribes.
In the Yellow River Delta, there were three successive dynasties: Xia (2000-1600 BC), Yin-Shang (1600-1050 BC), and Zhou (1050-221 BC), marking the end of prehistory and the beginning of Chinese civilization.
In the Yangtze River basin, many small Yue states were initially formed, then gradually annexed to give rise to important states that we know throughout Chinese history such as the Wu-Yue state of Wu Zixu (Ngũ Tử Tư) or the Yue state of Goujian (Câu Tiễn) during the Spring and Autumn periods and the Warring States period (770-221 BC). Then these were annexed in turn by Ngô Khởi (Wu Qi) of the Chu state before the unification of China by Qin Shi Huang Di (Tần Thủy Hoàng).
In summary, the Yue farming people who returned to Southeast Asia and the Red River Delta at that time are the descendants of the prehistoric people of Southeast Asia (or the Hoà Bình culture people) who migrated to the Yangtze River region 12,000 years ago. They are the ancestors of today’s Vietnamese. It is thanks to anthropological and genetic characteristics, customs and language that we have the right to claim that we are now the Southern Mongoloids belonging to the Austroasiatic language family, although only legends remain to prove our origin after 1,000 years of Chinese rule.
Bibilography
Stephen Oppenheimer: Địa đàng ở Phương Đông. Nhà Xuất Bản Lao Động.2005
Hà văn Tấn: Theo dấu các văn hóa cổ. Nhà Xuất Bản Khoa Học Xã Hội. Hànội 1998.
Corinne Debaine-Francfort : La redécouverte de la Chine ancienne. Editions Gallimard 1998.
Léonard Rousseau: La première conquête chinoise des pays annamites (IIIe siècle avant notre ère). BEFO, année 1923, Vol 23, no 1.
Bình Nguyên Lộc: Lột trần Việt ngữ. Talawas
[1] Paul Pozner : Le problème des chroniques vietnamiennes., origines et influences étrangères. BEFO, année 1980, vol 67, no 67, p 275-302
[2]. Hugh McColl, Fernando Racimo, Lasse Vinner, et al. (2018). The prehistoric peopling of Southeast Asia. Science; 361(6397):88-92.
[3] Zuo, Xinxin & Jin, Jianhui & Huang, Yunming & wei, Ge & jinqi, Dai & wei, Wu & fusheng, Li & taoqin, Xia & xipeng, Cai (2021). Earliest arrival of millet in the South China coast dating back to 5,500 years ago. Journal of Archaeological Science
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440321000261
[4] Sun, Jin & Li, Yingxiang & Ma, Pengcheng & Yan, Shi & Cheng, Hui-Zhen & Fan, Zhi-Quan & Deng, Xiao-Hua & Ru, Kai & Wang, Chuan-Chao & Chen, Gang & Wei, Ryan. (2021). Shared paternal ancestry of Han, Tai-Kadai-speaking, and Austronesian-speaking populations as revealed by the high resolution phylogeny of O1a-M119 and distribution of its sub-lineages within China. American journal of physical anthropology. 174. 10.1002/ajpa.24240.
[5] Ko AM, Chen CY, Fu Q, et al. Early Austronesians: into and out of Taiwan. Am J Hum Genet. 2014;94(3):426-436. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2014.02.003.
[6] Norman Jerry- Mei tsulin 1976 The Austro asiatic in south China : some lexical evidence, Monumenta Serica 32 :274-301
[7]Nguyên Nguyên: Thử đọc lại truyền thuyết Hùng Vương.
Dong Son culture (Văn hóa Đồng Sơn)
In the early 20th century, archaeologists from the Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient (Louis Pajot, Olov Jansen) discovered a large number of Bronze Age artefacts in the Mã valley, notably in the village of Ðồng Sơn.
Among these finds are musical instruments, in particular drums. These are decorated with figurative motifs depicting stylized animals and scenes from daily life. But the most remarkable of these drums remains that of Ngọc Lũ. This is a cylinder 63 cm high and 79 cm in diameter. It was purchased by EFEO at the 1902 exhibition and auction in Hanoi for the price of 550 piasters at the time. It is arguably the finest drum ever found in Asia. On its upper side are motifs mixed with various ritual subjects: herds of deer, waterfowl, houses on stilts etc… The Austrian archaeologist Heine-Geldern was the first to propose the name Đồng Sơn for this culture. Since then, the culture has been known as the Ðồng Sơn or Dongsonian culture. According to researchers Louis Bezacier and Nguyễn Phúc Long, the art of Đồng Sơn represents only the final phase of a long evolution of bronze metallurgy from the Gò Bông (late Phùng Nguyên) , Đồng Dậu and Gò Mun eras and corresponds to the period when it reached perfection and acquired prestige and influence in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
According to researcher Hà Văn Tấn, the culture of Đồng Sơn has its roots among the proto-Dongsonian cultures discovered, which gradually enable it to have remarkable creations. The art of Đồng Sơn emerged on the basis of Neolithic industry, as the first bronze objects can be found alongside carved stone instruments and pottery with a still Neolithic character. To look for the origins of the Dongsonian in the north or west of Vietnam, as several researchers have done, is to put forward a hypothesis that has no scientific basis. Dongsonian art is also in contact with the art of the Warring Kingdoms (Houai-style daggers from the Wu-Yue kingdom). The ancient bronzes found in Vietnam are totally different from those of the Shang and Chu dynasties in China, both in the creation of charming forms and in decoration and alloying. We can say without hesitation that this is a purely local production with very little influence from Chinese bronzes.
Đồng Sơn culture
(500 B.C. – 43 A.C.)
Thanks to the discoveries of bronze ploughing implements (ploughshares) found at Vạn Thắng and Sơn Tây reported by Vietnamese researchers in their book entitled “Les premiers vestiges de l’Âge de bronze au Vietnam p 110-113, Hànội 1963)(1), the Proto-Vietnamese already knew how to plough their rice fields. This invalidates the old Chinese thesis that the Proto-Vietnamese didn’t know how to plough before the Han conquest. They had to learn from the governors Si Kouang (Tích Quan) and Ren Yan (Nhâm Diên) how to grow rice and how to live and dress (Livre des Han postérieurs). One of the characteristics of Dongsonian bronze lies in the subtle blend of copper, tin and lead elements, depending on the type of tool produced (battle axe, crossbow trigger, spear point, ploughshare, hoe, dagger, etc.). According to Vietnamese researcher Nguyễn Phúc Long, ancient bronze drums found in North Vietnam have a much higher lead content than those from archaic China, in the order of 27.8% for the former versus 0.55% for the latter.
Beauty and skill are not lacking either in the decoration of the various objects found with the creatures living in the rice fields (toad, pelican, turtle, buffalo etc.). For some time now, despite the proximity of a multi-cultural country like China, there has been unanimous agreement on the singularity of this age-old culture, which originated with the rice-growing peasants, whose feet were buried in the mud of the flooded fields and who were close to nature. It is contemporary with the Sa Huỳnh and Đồng Nai cultures of central and southern Vietnam today.
Đình Minh Hương Gia Thạnh (Chợ Lớn, Saigon)
Temple Minh Hương Gia Thạnh
Tọa lạc ở số 380 đường Trần Hưng Đạọ (Saïgon) , đình Minh Hương Gia Thạnh được công nhận là di tích kiến trúc nghệ thuật bởi bộ Văn Hóa. Đình nầy được coi xem là có lâu đời nhất ờ vùng Saïgon-Chợ lớn do người Minh Hương xây dựng từ năm 1789. Người Minh Hương là những Việt gốc Hoa mà tổ phụ của họ là người Hoa, thần dân của nhà Minh sang định cư ở Đàng Trong sau khi nhà Minh bị sụp đổ, được chúa Nguyễn Phúc Tần cho phép hai vị tổng binh cựu thần của nhà Minh Dương Ngạn Địch và Trần Thượng Xuyên cư trú ở miền nam tức là vùng đất của Chân Lạp cùng với 3000 binh sĩ và gia đình vào năm Kỷ Mùi (1679). Dương Ngạn Địch vào khai thác vùng Mỹ Tho còn Trần Thượng Xuyên thì vào khai khẩn vùng Biên Hoà (Cù Lao Phố), một vùng đất trù phú. Người ngoại quốc thường tới lui buôn bán ở nơi nầy. Trong thời kỳ chiến tranh giữa nhà Tây Sơn và Nguyễn Ánh, thì tất cả người Minh Hương đều đứng về phía chúa Nguyễn nên nhà Tây Sơn tàn phá nhà cửa của họ vào năm 1776. Họ buộc lòng phải lánh nạn về ở vùng đất Đề Ngạn xưa tức là Chợ Lớn ngày nay. Đến năm kỷ dậu (1789) dưới thời Lê Mẫn Hoàng Đế thì con cháu nhà Minh có quyền lập ra Minh Hương xã. Ban đầu chữ « hương » dùng chữ 香 có nghĩa là « hương hỏa » (香火), đến năm 1827 đổi sang chữ 鄉 có nghĩa là « làng ». Như vậy Minh Hương có thể hiểu là « làng của người Hoa, thần dân của nhà Minh. Bởi vậy chúng ta cũng thường gọi họ là khách trú. Lúc đầu làng Minh Hương không có ranh định biên giới như các làng khác vì họ ở khắp mọi nơi của vùng đất mới. Người Minh Hương khỏi đi lính và khỏi đi làm xâu. Nếu họ phạm phép thì Minh Hương xã phân xử. Mặc dầu có đặc quyền như vậy, Minh Hương xã rất nghiêm ngặt trừng trị và lo lắng dạy dỗ con cháu họ. Bởi vậy họ sống rất hoà đồng với người dân Việt khiến mới có câu ca dao như sau:
Gỏi chi ngon bằng gỏi tôm càng
Đố ai lịch sự bằng làng Minh Hương.
Chính vua Tự Đức đã có sắc tặng cho làng Minh Hương bốn chữ: Thiện Tục Khả Phong (Phong tục tốt đẹp cần giữ lưu truyền), khắc vô một tấm biển, nay treo trước căn giữa Chánh điện của đình. Theo giáo sư Lâm Vĩnh Thế thì năm 1865, Thống Đốc Nam Kỳ lúc bấy giờ là Đô Đốc De La Grandière ban hành quyết định chấm dứt quy chế làng của Minh Hương Xã, viện lý do là Sài Gòn và Chợ Lớn là châu thành tức là thủ phủ của tỉnh, làng Minh Hương không còn có lý do tồn tại nữa. Đình Minh Hương Gia Thạnh không phải là nhà làng nữa mà trở thành từ đó nhà hương hỏa chung của tất cả hội viên, của tất cả công dân Việt Nam gốc Hoa có hơn hai trăm năm nay vì họ nói tiếng Việt, mặc quốc phục trong các dịp tế lễ, cho con cái học trường Việt và hành xử hoàn toàn như là một công dân Việt Nam. Trịnh Hoài Đức và Ngô Nhân Tịnh, hai người Minh Hương làm quan đến chức thượng thư.
Đình được xây cất theo kiểu nhà năm gian. Mái đình lợp ngói ống, trang trí hình lưỡng long tranh châu, cá hóa long, tượng ông Nhật bà Nguyệt, phù điêu trích từ các tuồng tích Trung Quốc. Trên cột và các đà ngang treo nhiều hoành phi, câu đối, phần lớn được làm từ đầu và giữa thế kỷ 19. Tại đình vẫn còn lưu giữ nhiều cổ vật quý giá nhất là đình có giá trị về nghệ thuật thư pháp, nghệ thuật chạm khắc gỗ mang phong cách Việt nam. Nhờ sự giải thích của chị Vân,một thành viên của ban tri sự quản lý đình hôm đến tham quan, mình được chị giải thích biết nhiều về các cổ vật trưng bày của đình. Thật thú vị và cũng tiện đây có một lời cám ơn chị qua bài viết nầy.
Située au numéro 380 rue Tran Hung Dao (Saïgon), la Maison communale Minh Huong Gia Thanh est reconnue comme un monument architectural et artistique par le ministère de la Culture. Cette maison communale est considérée comme la plus ancienne de la région de Saïgon-Cholon, construite par les partisans de la dynastie des Ming (ou Minh Hương) en 1789.
Les Minh Hương sont des Vietnamiens d’origine chinoise dont les ancêtres étaient des Chinois, sujets de la dynastie Ming qui s’étaient réfugiés dans le sud après la chute de la dynastie Ming en Chine. Le seigneur Nguyễn Phúc Tần permit aux deux anciens généraux de la dynastie Ming, Dương Ngạn Địch et Trần Thượng Xuyên, de trouver refuge dans le sud du Vietnam, l’ancien territoire du Chen La avec 3 000 soldats et leurs familles en l’année de la Chèvre (1679). Dương Ngạn Địch était allé exploiter la région de Mỹ Tho et Trần Thượng Xuyên la région de Biên Hoà (Cù Lao Phố), un territoire riche et peuplé. Les étrangers le fréquentaient souvent pour y faire des affaires. Durant la confrontation armée entre les Paysans de l’Ouest (Tây Sơn) et Nguyễn Ánh, tous les Minh Hương s’étaient rangés du côté de ce dernier. Furieux, les Tây Sơn pillèrent leurs maisons en 1776. Les Minh Hương étaient obligés de se réfugier dans la région de Đề Ngạn (Cholon d’aujourd’hui). En 1789, sous le règne de l’empereur Lê Mẫn, les Minh Hương obtinrent le droit de fonder leur propre village.
Le mot « Hương » était initialement écrit avec le pictogramme 香 pour évoquer le culte des ancêtres (香火), mais il était remplacé ensuite par le pictogramme 鄉 en 1827 pour signifier le village. Minh Hương pouvait être compris ainsi comme le village des sujets de la dynastie Ming. C’était pour cela on était habitué à les appeler « les résidents étrangers».
Au début, le village des Minh Hương n’était pas délimité par des frontières comme les autres villages grâce à leur possibilité de s’installer partout sur le nouveau territoire. Les Minh Hương étaient exemptés du service militaire et ils n’étaient pas forcés de travailler gratuitement pour l’état. En cas de la violation de la loi, ils seront punis par leur propre village. En dépit des privilèges qu’ils ont eus, les Minh Hương ne cessaient pas de respecter les lois avec sévérité et ils étaient toujours soucieux d’aider leurs enfants dans l’éducation. C’était pourquoi ils vivaient en harmonie avec les Vietnamiens, ce qui donnait naissance à la chanson populaire suivante :
Gỏi chi ngon bằng gỏi tôm càng
Đố ai lịch sự bằng làng Minh Hương.
Quelle salade peut-on trouver aussi délicieuse comme celle de crevettes ?
Y a t-il quiconque plus poli que le village des Minh Hương ?
L’empereur Tự Đức lui-même signa pour le village des Minh Hương un décret comportant quatre mots suivants: Thiện Tục Khả Phong (Les bonnes coutumes doivent être gardées et transmises), gravés sur une pancarte, désormais accrochée devant la salle principale de la maison communale. Selon le professeur Lâm Vĩnh Thế, en 1865, le gouverneur de la Cochinchine de l’époque, l’amiral De La Grandière, décida de mettre fin au statut de la création du village de Minh Hương Xã en prenant prétexte que Saigon-Cholon était la capitale de la province. Le village des Minh Hương n’avait plus de raison d’exister. Mais il était devenu dès lors la maison communale dédiée au culte des ancêtres pour tous ses membres et pour tous les citoyens vietnamiens d’origine chinoise depuis plus deux siècles car ils parlaient le vietnamien, ils portaient des vêtements nationaux lors des cérémonies, ils envoyaient leurs enfants dans les écoles vietnamiennes et se comportaient entièrement comme des citoyens vietnamiens. Trinh Hoài Đức et Ngô Nhân Tịnh issus des Minh Hương étaient au poste de ministre.
La maison communale a été construite dans le style d’une maison à cinq compartiments. Son toit est recouvert de tuiles tubulaires, décoré d’un couple de dragons se disputant la perle enflammée, de poissons se transformant en dragons, de génies de mariage et des tableaux en relief extraits des opéras chinois. Sur les colonnes et les poutres horizontales sont suspendus de nombreux panneaux horizontaux et des sentences parallèles dont la plupart ont été réalisés au début et au milieu du XIXème siècle.
La maison communale conserve encore de nombreuses antiquités, les plus précieuses étant l’art de la calligraphie et de la sculpture sur bois dans le style vietnamien. Grâce aux explications de Mme Vân, membre du comité de gestion de cette association, j’ai beaucoup d’informations à savoir sur les antiquités exposées. Pour moi, c’est très intéressant et aussi une opportunité de lui rappeler ma gratitude à travers cet article.