Thanh Hóa’s Famous Families

                                        by Jim Goodman

villager passing by the walls of the Hồ Citadel

       Thanh Hóa is Vietnam’s fifth largest province, situated between Nghẹ An, the country’s largest, to its south, the plains and rivers of the Red River Delta to its north and bound by the mountains of Laos on its western side.  The provincial capital, also called Thanh Hóa, lies 153 km south of Hanoi on National Highway 1A and 15 km from the beach at Sầm Sơn.  While the scenery in the province is pleasant, it doesn’t boast of anything spectacular and foreign travelers generally pass it by, making it one of the least known places to foreigners in Vietnam.

typical Thanh Hóa landscape

       For the Vietnamese, however, Thanh Hóa is part of the ancient heartland of their culture, where the bronze drum originated and where human habitation began over 6000 years ago.  Unlike the Red River Delta, prehistoric Thanh Hóa’s plains were not swamps that had to be cleared, for only two rivers, the Mã and the Chu, run through them.  Hills are moderate in the eastern half of the province and higher in the west, where the valleys are also home to Thái and Mường minorities.  Thanh Hóa’s Vietnamese have a reputation for cultural conservatism, thrift and fondness for traditional folk music and dance.

flooded rice fields near Vĩnh Lộc

       The province is also important for its role in Vietnam’s history.  It was part of the Hùng Kings’ realm from the 19^th to 3^rd century BCE at the dawn of the Bronze Age.  Under the thousand years of Chinese domination it was part of the administrative unit of Cưu Chan, which included present-day Nghẹ An and Hà Tĩnh.  It suffered and repelled Chăm invasions in the 3^rd and 5^th centuries and after Vietnam regained its independence it later became the birthplace of four famous families—the Hồ, Lê, Trịnh and Nguyễn—that played important roles in the nation’s history.

southern entrance of the citadel's south gate

      The most direct route to Thanh Hóa city from Hanoi is via Highway 1A.  Even with the heavy traffic it takes only three hours or less.  Aside from Sầm Sơn beach, Thanh Hóa province’s main attraction is the Hồ Dynasty Citadel in Vĩnh Lộc district, two hours drive northwest of Thanh Hóa city.  But a better way to reach this historical vestige, and to appreciate the landscape of the province, is by beginning at Xuân Mai, 35 km southwest of Hanoi, one of the starting points of the Hồ Chí Minh Trail during the Vietnam War.

       Largely a footpath through thick jungle back then, Đường Hồ Chí Minh is now a paved road in good condition with very little traffic, rolling through forested hills with gradients at a maximum of 10%.  Skirting around Cúc Phương National Park as it enters Thanh Hóa province, the scenery is especially delightful.  Villages lie far apart from each other, but many restaurants and petrol stations punctuate the route.   

triple arches of the Hồ Citadel south gate

       At the Cẩm Thủy junction, the Trail turns southwest and then south, eventually passing near Lam Kinh, Lê Lợi’s birthplace, where a modest shrine marks the spot.  The other road turns southeast, along the Mã River, to Vĩnh Lộc and the Hồ Citadel, which lies a few kilometers outside the town, in what is now a rural agricultural area.  The gates and portions of the walls are basically all that’s left of the citadel, but that was enough, along with its historical significance, to earn it the award of World Heritage Site.   

citadel wall

       The site is large, nearly square, measuring 870.5 meters north-south by 88ê.5 meters east-west.  The triple-arched south gate, the ceremonial entry point, stands 9.5 meters high and over 15 meters wide.  The other gates have a single arch, the east and west gates rounded.  Local stone provided the construction material, quarried from nearby hills, with their sometimes sheer cliffs often striated, as if to give the masons guidelines where to cut the stone.  Thanh Hóa stone has a national reputation for high quality and in the early 20^th century was used to build the cathedral and subsidiary churches at Phát Diệm in Ninh Bình province.

interlocking stone blocks of the citadel walls

       The stone blocks used in building the Hồ Citadel average 2 meters by 1 meter by .7 meter.  Some are almost perfect cubes, while others are longer.  Usually the masons simply stacked them on top of each other.   But occasionally they cut out sections of the corners to make the blocks fit together more snugly.  Thick earthen mounds backed up the walls and wooden watchtowers stood above the gates and at intervals along the walls.

       The man responsible for the construction of this citadel, Hồ Quý Ly, was a Thanh Hóa native from a nearby village.  Born in 1336, he first entered the service of the Trần Dynasty court in Thăng Long (today’s Hanoi) in 1371, after the Chăm, under a charismatic leader Chế Bồng Nga, had sacked the capital.  The Trần Dynasty, which defeated three massive Mongol invasions the previous century, was now in decline.  The Chăm continued to menace the Vietnamese for nearly two more decades, sacking Thăng Long again in 1378. 

Nguyễn Hoàng departs for Thuận Hoá

the founder of the Lê Dynasty

      In 1388 the Chăm annihilated a Vietnamese counterattack on their capital Vijaya, near today’s Quy Nhơn, and prepared another march on Thăng Long.  Trần Nghệ Tông, the King Father since his retirement in 1372 after two years as King, and still the power behind the throne, appointed Hồ Quý Ly as commander of its forces, but his attempt to deflect the Chăm advance failed.   Thăng Long was spared another sacking only because a Chăm defector revealed to Vietnamese gunners Chế Bồng Nga’s precise location.  After the death of their king the Chăm returned to Vijaya.

Trịnh Lords Palace in Đông Kinh (today's Hanoi)

       Trần Nghệ Tông died in 1394, leaving Hồ Quỹ Ly de facto ruler.  Three years later he ordered the construction of the citadel in Thanh Hốa.  Not merely a fortress, its walls contained a complete city, which was named Tây Đô--the Western Capital.  He forced the Trần Court’s removal to his new capital and renamed Thăng Long Đông Đô---the Eastern Capital.  Then he set about systematically assassinating 370 members of the Trần family and in 1400 deposed the nominal king, usurped the throne and founded the Hồ Dynasty. 

       His blood-soaked usurpation condemns him in the opinion of Vietnamese historians, yet he was also a progressive reformer.  He introduced paper currency and the use of nóm, the Vietnamese version of Chinese characters, in official documents, expanded traditional Confucian education to include mathematics and agriculture, and instituted land reform, limiting holdings to ten acres (four hectares).  Following a Trần tradition, he abdicated in favor of his son Hồ Hán Thương in 1402.but continued to manage state affairs behind the scenes.

local farmer outside the eastern gate

       However, two Trần princes escaped to China, where they called on the Ming Dynasty Emperor Yong Le to restore them.  The Chinese dispatched a huge army of 400,000 in 1407, chased the Hồ family all the way to Tây Đô and captured them there.  The Chinese sent their prisoners to serve as common foot soldiers in China and their ultimate fate has not been recorded.  Instead of installing a Trần ruler, the Chinese annexed Vietnam and stayed to loot and exploit the country to the greatest extent possible.

planting rice inside the citadel

       Serious resistance to the Chinese occupation began in Thanh Hóa in 1417.  Organized by Lê Lợi and known as the Lam Sơn Insurrection, after the name of the town hosting the first conclave, it won the support of two other influential Thanh Hóa families—the Trịnh and the Nguyễn.  Using guerilla tactics that were adopted by the Việt Minh centuries later, Lê Lợi’s forces first survived, then expanded, and after ten years captured the capital and expelled the Chinese.  In 1428 Lê Lợi founded the Lê Dynasty to govern the liberated country.

       Unfortunately, Lê Lựi died in 1433 and for nearly three decades palace intrigues, purges of lê Lợi’s lieutenants and periodic fights with the Chăm dominated the Court scene.  In 1460 the last two surviving Lam Sơn generals intervened to install Lê Thánh Tông as Emperor, the one truly successful Lê monarch after the founder Lê Lợi.  He conquered Vijaya and annexed the Chăm state’s territory, promulgated a new law code and reigned over a stable and prosperous Vietnam until 1497.

two hundred year-old house outside the citadel

       His son Lê jiiến Tông governed competently for six years, but upon his death in 1504 the country plunged into protracted political chaos, with five successive teenaged kings, who either died young or were murdered for their embarrassing debauchery.  Finally, in 1527 the security chief Mạc Đăng Dung seized the throne and proclaimed a new dynasty. 

       Supported by the Trịnh and Nguyễn families, the remnants of the Lê royal family fled to Thanh Hóa and then to Laos.  There they waited until several years later, when an anti-Mạc revolt broke out in Thanh Hóa.  Under the leadership of Nguyễn Kim, the Lê loyalists returned to Vietnam to engage the Mac armies and in 1443 captured Tây Đô.  Re-occupying and rebuilding the former Hồ citadel, the loyalists proclaimed it their capital and the residence of Lê Trang Tông, the teenaged descendant of Lê Thánh Tông whom they recognized as their sovereign. 

carved brackets of the old house

       Tây Đô remained the capital of the restored Lê Dynasty until the final ouster of the Mạc family from power in 1592.  In 1545 a Mạc follower assassinated Nguyẽn Kim and command of the Lê forces went to his son-in-law Trịnh Kiểm, who was intensely suspicious of the Nguyễn family.  Nguyễn Kim’s eldest son soon died in mysterious circumstances and his other son Nguyễn Hoàng laid low for years and eventually in 1558 secured appointment as governor of Thuận Hoá, today’s Thừa Thiên and Quảng Trị provinces.

Sầm Sơn boat on the sea

       He did such a good job that in 1570 the Lê Court added Quảng Nam to his jurisdiction.  In 1593 Nguyễn Hoàng returned to the north to help mop up remnant Mạc forces, but fearing the intentions of Trịnh Tùng, in charge since 1570, Nguyễn Hoàng returned to Thuận Hoá and turned it into his personal fief.  When he died at the age of 87 in 1613, Vietnam was essentially split into two realms:  the north rued by the Trịnh Lords and the south ruled by the Nguyễn Lords, both recognizing the same Lê Emperor, who was basically a puppet of the Trịnh Lords.

       Hostilities broke out between the two sides later that century, but periodic Trịnh invasions all failed and one Nguyễn invasion of the north only got as far as Thanh Hóa before it had to turn back.  The two sides made a truce in 1674, dividing their realms at the Gianh River in Quảng Binh.  Peace between them lasted a century and then the Tây Sơn Revolt destroyed both regimes in the late 18^th century.  Another protracted war ensued until eventually the resurgent Nguyễn defeated the Tây Sơn and in 1802 established the last pre-colonial imperial dynasty.

morning market on Sầm Sơn beach

       Tây Đô was abandoned during the Trịnh-Nguyễn conflict and today no trace of its former palaces or watchtowers exist. Most of the area has been turned into rice fields.  Only a pair of headless stone dragons in the center remains within the walls as evidence of its former splendor. But another kind of relic—a two hundred year-old house—stands in the village outside the eastern gate.  One story, wide, with a tiled roof, it features nicely carved embellishments on its beams, brackets and furniture and has been home to the same family for seven generations.

       No other vestiges of Thanh Hoá’s famous families exist in the province.  From Vĩnh Lộc, it’s two hours drive to Thanh Hoá city, which is almost entirely new, reconstructed after heavy bombing in the Vietnam War.  But Sầm Sơn Beach is a short distance away and very popular with Vietnamese tourists.  It’s also a major fishing center.  From dawn the fishermen go out in small skiffs of woven split bamboo, covered with pitch, with an engine at the rear, a wooden rudder and a triangular cloth sail, usually blue or brown.

hauling a boat up to higher ground

       At most, half a dozen people can fit into these vessels, but usually it’s just two or three.  They return from 9:00-10:00 and park their boats temporarily at the edge of the water.  Customers from the city and its vicinity, and even from as far away as Hanoi, then come to the boat to purchase the morning’s catch of fresh fish, squids, crabs, shrimps and other crustaceans.  When the crowd of buyers has dispersed, usually before noon, the fishermen move the boat to a higher spot on the beach, beyond the tide line, by mounting it on a frame with wheels and rolling it up the slope.

     The province has a few other scenic attractions.  But besides the Hồ Citadel and Lê Lợi’s birthplace, it does not have much tangible evidence of its historic importance.  The main legacy of its famous families does not lie in buildings.  It is the spread of Vietnamese cultural and political institutions across the entire territory of the Vietnam we know today. No other province can make such a boast.

sunset over the Thanh Hóa plain

                                                                             * * *    

 For the full story of Thanh Hóa's families, see my book Delta to Delta:  The Vietnamese Move South

                           https://www.facebook.com/commerce/products/1223204557724843/   

Magic in the Pond—Vietnamese Water-Puppets

                                                           by Jim Goodman

A procession begins at the Hanoi theater.

      Of all the possible sights and activities available to a first-time visitor to Hanoi, attendance at a water-puppet show, a truly authentic indigenous tradition, is all but obligatory.  The architecture of the city’s temples and public buildings derives from Chinese and European models.  The cuisine and street life resemble that of Southeast Asian neighbors.  Water-puppets, however, are uniquely Vietnamese.  No other country has this tradition.

      Most visitors catch the show at the water-puppet theater conveniently located at the top end of Hoàn Kiếm Lake.  They sit in ascending rows behind a pool of water lying in front of a curtained stage.  The orchestra of traditional instruments sits to the left of the pool.  The lights dim and the musicians perform a classical number 

Ông Tễu, the show's emcee

as prelude to the show.  When they conclude, a larger-than-normal puppet pops up on the water from behind the curtain and introduces himself as your emcee Ông Tễu.  After a brief summary of what will follow and encouragement to the audience to enjoy the show, he scoots behind the curtain and does not reappear.

      A variety of skits now commence.  Brightly painted wooden puppets representing people and animals emerge from behind the curtained screen, move, march, dance, play, float or thrash on the pool surface, manipulated by puppeteers standing waist-deep in the water, hidden from view by the screen.  With the puppets’ reflections rippling across the water, the effect is that of a magical swirl of color, all the better because the source of the colors’ movement cannot be seen.

a vignette of rural life

      Some of the skits are vignettes of rural life, as befitting a tradition born in a watery environment like the Red River Delta, with its innumerable streams, ponds and canals.  These may include fishing with traps or with rods and lines or from little boats, making a raft, riding a buffalo, plowing a field, tending ducks, etc.  Other skits feature dancing phoenixes and energetic dragons.  More complex skits involve processions, either religious ones or that of the successful scholar’s escort home, boat races, a dance of fairy-goddesses and the famous story of Lê Lợi, founder of the Lê Dynasty in 1428, returning his sword to the divine golden turtle of Hoàn Kiếm Lake.  At the show’s finale of writhing dragons, smoke and fireworks, the puppeteers emerge from behind the screen, wade into the pool in front, and bow to the audience.

The Golden Turtle takes the sword back from Lê Lợi

      The show presents a fine sampling from the repertoire of over a hundred skits and vignettes in the water-puppet tradition.  It is a very slick and professional performance, carried out mostly by villagers from Nam Chấn, in Nam Định province, one of the two dozen or so Red River Delta villages that still maintain their water-puppet tradition.  The Nam Chấn ensemble was the one the government chose to introduce the tradition abroad on a world tour in the early 90s as Vietnam opened its doors to tourism.  The success and interest aroused by this tour prompted the government to build the theater beside the lake and hire Nam Chấn puppeteers to handle the performances.  These have now grown from once nightly to several per day.

      No origin tale exists for water-puppets, but a record exists of an early Lý Dynasty Court show at West Lake that featured a turtle, with three mountains on its back, that moved across the water.  The other puppets in this show were conventional rod-puppets, but water-puppets are a kind of rod-puppet and whether this Lý Court show was the first use of a water-puppet or not, by the time of the Trần Dynasty in the 13^th century, water-puppet shows were part of Court entertainment for visiting envoys.

water-puppet pavilion at Chùa Thấy

      Besides a pond, the essential requirement for a water-puppet show is a pavilion on the water.  From inside this pavilion, standing in the water, shielded from view by a split-bamboo screen, the puppeteers manipulate their puppets.  Villages that maintain the tradition sometimes build permanent pavilions.  The most outstanding example is the graceful 18^th century puppet pavilion at Chùa Thấy, west of Hanoi, which still stages performances during the pagoda’s festival, 5^th to 7^th days of the 3^rd lunar month.  Other villages keep a collapsible canvas pavilion that they erect for shows in their own villages or take with them when invited to perform elsewhere.

      So that the puppet can float easily and last a long time, the wood used to make it has to be light, durable and easy to carve.  The fig tree that grew alongside ponds and lakes throughout the Delta fit these requirements, though carvers had to work quickly on it after cutting it, for it didn’t stay soft for long.  Within the puppet workshop ordinary and apprentice carvers made the simplest puppets and the parts for the more complicated ones.  Skilled specialists added the faces, costumes and props.

portable pavilion erected at the Kiếp Bạc festival

      After completing the carving, the next step was to paint them using the traditional lacquering process, in eight steps, with five days break in between coats of lacquer.  The finished product was a lightweight, colorfast, water-resistant puppet that moved and floated easily and lasted over fifty years.  Some puppets are relatively simple figures with few movable parts, like people or farm animals.  Fish and dragon puppets, though, are likely to comprise many linked parts, all the better to make them wriggle in the water.  A final category of puppet is the prop—the boat, fish trap, altar, loom, sedan-chair, etc—that is made the same way from the same materials. 

spouting dragon Chùa Thấy performance

    The puppet itself consists of a carved body, with movable parts, mounted on a base attached to one or more rods.  The base varies according to the size and shape of the particular puppet.  Human figures stand on a round or square box.  More elaborate figures, like phoenixes, fish or dragons, are mounted on a stick base.  The base in either case holds control mechanisms to allow it to float just below the surface of the water and keep the puppet vertically upright.  It is attached to one end of the manipulation rod over a metal pin that serves as a rotating axis.  With this operating, the puppet can assume different standing positions.  Below this same end of the rod is a small rudder, by which the puppet can turn easily.

      The visible puppet and the hidden manipulation rod come together at the base, which thus acts as a fulcrum for the movement of the puppet.  The base must be kept below the water’s surface to conceal the controlling mechanism.  But it cannot be held deeper under the water for there will be more resistance moving the rod, more energy sapped from the puppeteer and the risk of the puppets’ movements losing their vigor.

puppets mounted on manipulation rods

      The simplest manipulation rod is a pole of wood or bamboo 3.5-4.5 meters long.  By thrusting the pole underwater forwards and backwards and swinging it laterally the handler can make the puppet move around in a given area, even quite quickly.  But the base also contains string mechanisms attached to the head and limbs from inside the puppet’s body.  By moving the strings at the same time as the pole, the puppeteer can make the head, neck and limbs of the puppet move simultaneously.

      For larger sized puppets, such as Ông Tễu, the emcee of every water-puppet show, as well as for groups of puppets performing closely together, a manipulation rod is insufficient.  In the former case the puppet is too heavy for a pole.  With groups, like the Eight Fairies, individually held rods would too easily interfere with each other 

the Dance of the Fairies

and the dance of the fairies would be disharmonious.  Some skits involve puppets on boats or puppets doing military maneuvers.  Individual manipulation rods are inappropriate in these circumstances, too.

      Instead of poles, the puppets are fixed to a sliding platform and this moves along a system of plaited split bamboo or coconut fiber ropes, connected to submerged stakes in the manipulation room and out to the staging area of the pond.  Waxed strings of plaited hair, coir or silk attach the parts of the puppets to the framework.  If the figures ride in boats, then the boats themselves are the sliding platforms.  Group scenes like the Dance of the Fairies or the depiction of a naval battle or boat race, requiring coordinated puppet movements, utilize the sliding platform method of manipulation.

ancient battle scene at Chùa Thấy

      The puppets’ ability to maneuver also depends on its size.  Puppets used for the performances at the theater near Hoàn Kiếm Lake are larger than those made in the Delta villages that have preserved the tradition.  This enables them to glide easily across the surface of the water, remaining relatively upright.  Those used for the Chùa Thấy festival, for example, are smaller, more agile but also more difficult to keep upright and likely to tilt in the water.  With these smaller and lighter puppets, though, the puppeteers can make them climb a pole and light firecrackers to start the show, even leap through flaming hoops, something not possible for the puppets in the Hanoi show.  

      Like the carvers, who pass through a period of apprenticeship, the puppeteers also undergo a period of training.  Since all such related skills are imparted at an early age, traditionally girls were kept from such training, for villagers believed that since women married men from other villages, they might betray the village’s water-puppet secrets.  Since every water-puppet village had its own individual contribution to the general tradition, it wanted to differentiate itself from others following the same tradition.  Nam Chấn village, the one chosen to present the water-puppet tradition to the world, was the first to allow women to become puppeteers.  This attitude has spread, and now it is not unusual to see at least one women emerging from behind the curtain at the end of a village water-puppet show. 

catching fish

      To cover the expenses of both making the puppets and training for and putting on the show was the responsibility of the village guild, a crafts organization set up to maintain the tradition. To meet the guild’s expenses for the annual offerings to its founder and associated rituals, as well as for the maintenance of equipment, the wood and paints needed and so forth, the village allots a section of its communal land to the guild.  Not every villager is a guild member, nor is every member directly involved in the making or performing of the puppets.  Some join for the prestige of being a guild member and to express their desire to uphold an ancient tradition.  All members upon joining take an oath to preserve the craft’s local secrets, confirming it with a drink of rice wine mixed with chicken blood.

      Nowadays the main secret preserved is the manipulation of the puppets, for not only are the puppeteers concealed by a screen from the audience, no one is allowed to observe them within the pavilion.  The techniques of manipulation, though, are pretty much the same everywhere.  More important is the repertoire.  Vignettes of daily life, cavorting dragons and skits like the procession of the returning scholar or the Dance of the Fairies are common to all village shows, but the tradition draws on a variety of sources for the skits.  These include famous scenes from tuồng opera, chèo popular dramas, incidents from Vietnam’s history and tales from the Chinese classic The Three Kingdoms.  To surprise their own villagers and impress visitors or “spies” from rivals, the guilds constantly seek new material and keep it hidden until ready for performance. 

festival performance at Nam Chấn

     For the guilds the biggest day of the year is the annual festival honoring the village guardian spirit, who in some places is the man who originally introduced the tradition.  The program includes the usual rituals at the communal house, perhaps a palanquin procession, a local market and various kinds of entertainment, the highlight, of course, being the local guild’s water-puppet show.  Villagers of all ages crowd around the pond to watch this always fascinating, magical spectacle, dazzled by both the usual skits and whatever new skit that was created for this year’s event.

      And in the presentation of the skits their village artists touch on all those aspects of life they all have in common.  They perform scenes with mythical animals or religious figures known to everyone in the audience.  They depict tales from their history and mythology with which the spectators are quite familiar.  They show festival activities like those so many fellow villagers have witnessed.  And above all, they perform the vignettes of everyday life that remind their audience of their very own village, always the best place on earth in which to live.

The puppeteers take a bow in the Hanoi theater.

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     A water-puppet performance is part of the program for my cultural-historical tour itinerary                                     for Vietnam.  See http://deltatoursvietnamcom for details.