Expanding and Adapting: When the Vietnamese Moved South

                                          by Jim Goodman

 

rice cultivation in the Red River Delta

      Students of Vietnamese history know that, after over a thousand years of Chinese occupation, in 938 the Vietnamese finally expelled the Chinese and re-established their independence.   Books then go one to tell the story of the dynasties that followed, their defeat of Chinese attempts to take back the country, including three massive Mongol invasions, and the establishment of a distinct state and culture.  This development suffers a jolt in 1407, when the Chinese invade and occupy Vietnam for twenty years until an indigenous guerrilla movement throws them out and its leader founds the Lê Dynasty.  After that, the Vietnamese gradually expand south.

Chùa Dâu, the first Buddhist temple

       This is a summary of the history of the Vietnamese people, but not that of what today constitutes the territory of Vietnam.  The events just narrated concerned only the northern third of the country, called Đại Việt.  The narrow middle section, Central Vietnam, was home to several Chăm kingdoms, while the swampy, very sparsely populated Mekong Delta was part of the Khmer Empire. 

       Đại Việt was the most populated and centrally organized.  With the construction of dikes and canals, ancient Vietnamese had turned the swamps of the Red River Delta into productive rice-growing farms, enabling the formation of states based on agricultural revenue.  The long Chinese occupation didn’t change this, but imposed a Confucian system for organizing both government and everyday life, and introduced Mahayana Buddhism as a state-sponsored religion.

       Chùa Dâu in Bắc Ninh province, constructed in the 3^rd century, was the first Buddhist temple.  Vietnamese adopted the religion whole-heartedly and it spread throughout the north.  Buddhist monks served as advisors to Đại Viêt’s first kings and the Lý Dynasty lavished funds on temple construction and religious endowments.  Taoism also had its adherents, but in any case, animism never disappeared from the Vietnamese psyche.  The village’s main deity was its own guardian spirit, who was once a living person, quite often a general who fought northern invaders.

Quố Tử Giàm, the National University

       Like their former overlords, the Vietnamese followed Confucian ideals in everyday life, such as ancestral veneration, social hierarchies, models of behavior and respect for learning.  Confucian norms also characterized the government.  In 1076 the Lý Court established a National University (Quốc Tử Giàm) to train officials.  Confucian classics dominated education.

       Besides the periodic invasions from Chins, Đại Việt also had problems with the Chăm kingdoms on its southern frontier.  Chăm people began migrating into Vietnam from the Philippines and Indonesia two thousand years ago, establishing different kingdoms along the coast of Central Vietnam from the late 2^nd century, influenced by their Khmer neighbors to the southeast.  The religion was Hindu, the temples modeled on Khmer architecture and sculpture, the rulers god-kings, identified with Shiva, with occasional monarchs, as in Cambodia, Mahayana Buddhists.

Chăm Court, Đà Nẵng Chăm Museum

       The main difference between Chăm and Khmer kingdoms was that the Chăm were also great seafarers and supplemented their agricultural economy and national wealth by trading in ports throughout Southeast Asia.  After the 8^th century, many of those involved in the maritime trade with Indonesia became Muslim, though Hindu Chăm still comprised the majority of the population. 

        They were also a very bellicose people, involved in frequent wars with Khmer princes and each other, as mercenaries for one Khmer contender for Angkor’s throne against another, and sometimes in alliance with the Khmer against the Vietnamese.  Northern Chăm states made a habit of raiding southern Đại Việt districts from the time of the Chinese occupation. The eventual Vietnamese response was always a punitive expedition that forced the Chăm to cede their own northern districts to Đái Việt. When Vietnamese began settling in these acquisitions the Chăm would start raiding them, provoking another expedition and another annexation.

Bánh Ít Chăm towers in Bình Định

       By the 14^th century, the Vietnamese had pushed the Chăm south of Quảng Nam.  But the largest Chăm kingdom, Vijaya, with its capital in present-day Bình Định province, rose to new strength later that century under the charismatic King Chế Bồng Nga.  For nearly two decades, starting in 1371, he launched several invasions of Đại Việt, sacked the capital twice and would have done so a third time, but was killed by Vietnamese artillery after a defector had revealed which ship he was on.

royal court, Lê Dynasty

       Some decades later, grossly underestimating his enemy’s strength, the King of Vijaya resumed raids on Đại Việt territory.  However, his opponent this time was Lê Thánh Tông, the Lê Dynasty’s most talented king, who was determined to end the Chăm menace once and for all.  With an overwhelming invasion force, backed by the latest artillery technology, he captured Vijaya, obliterated its defenders and annexed the state, extending Đái Viết’s borders down through Phủ̉ Yên.  Many Chăm fled by sea north to Hainan Island, east to Cambodia or south all the way to Acheh, Indonesia. Others moved to the hills or simply stayed, adopted Vietnamese names and assimilated to the new order.

       Lê Thánh Tông then set up an immigration system of military colonies to promote Vietnamese settlement in the conquered territories.  But aside from political exiles, runaway convicts, criminals and dubious adventurers—the usual frontier riffraff—nobody went south.  Vietnamese are very conservative and don’t like to leave their ancestral lands without a serious compelling reason.

countryside near Huế--the heartland of old Thuận Hoá

       After two decades of four successive depraved, bloodthirsty, reckless and incompetent teenaged kings (with absolute power), each of whom was killed at the end of his rule, in 1527 Mạc Đăng Dung, the Court security chief, seized power and started a new dynasty.  Lê followers escaped to Laos and several years later launched a protracted war against the Mạc regime.  Every few years contending armies marched across the Red River Delta territories, conscripting every able-bodied man in the villages, fought furious battles, beheaded all their prisoners and retreated to regroup and campaign again later.

       In many places there were no men left for agricultural work.  Dikes fell into disrepair, rice fields became weed patches and famines stalked the land.  This bleak situation provided the motives for emigration, not over-population.  Đại Việt’s population fell sharply in the 16^th century, especially in the Delta.  Life became untenable in the ancestral homelands.

       Vietnamese had already been settling in Thuận Hoà, the area below Quảng Binh down to the Hải Văn Pass near Đằ Nẵng.  Their numbers multiplied in the 16^th century, while some continued on to Quảng Nam and former Chăm areas further south.  They were refugees fleeing a land they had no hope of returning to, pioneers that included hardy farmers, skilled crafts workers, canny merchants and dedicated soldiers.  

Thiên Mụ Pagoda

      Up north, two rival families, the Trịnh and Nguyễn, allies and inter-married but suspicious of each other, led the Lê forces.  Trịnh Tùng commanded the forces that drove the Mạc out of the capital in 1592 and installed the restored Lê king as a figurehead, keeping real power himself.  His rival Nguyễn Hoàng had been governor of Thuận Hóa since 1558 and made it his own autonomous fief.  He set up an efficient administration, dominated by military officers, and essentially broke away from the Lê government by refusing to send taxes back.  Visiting the Perfume River in 1601, he sponsored the building of the Thiên Mụ Pagoda, still standing and a major tourist attraction.       

       When he died in 1613 the country was effectively split.  The Trịnh Lords of the north were not yet strong enough to compel the Nguyễn Lords’ submission, but Nguyễn Hoàng’s capable successor, Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên, knew the showdown was imminent.  He married off one of his daughters in 1623 to Chay Chetta II, King of Cambodia, to insure the supply of war elephants and rice to his small and vulnerable realm.  To secure his southern flank, he also married off another daughter to Pôrômê, the Chăm King of Panduranga, south of former Vijaya.

       The long-expected invasion came in 1627 and the southerners turned it back. They resisted more invasions in the next decades and made one unsuccessful campaign into the north before finally, in 1672, the two sides signed a truce, dividing the country at the Ghanh River just above Đồng Hợt, Quảng Binh. 

       These campaigns were intermittent, leaving the south long periods of peaceful development.  Vietnamese settlers, less tradition-bound and more open to changes than they were up north, made several adaptations in the new lands, where they would be a minority for generations to come.  Farmers found the soil in Thuận Hóa the soil was different from that up north.  The plow they used there was not very strong in the sole or the blade, light enough to be drawn by a single animal, and quite suitable for the less compacted soil of the Delta.  But it would not work well with the thick grass and harder soil of Thuận Hóa.  So they used the Chăm plow, stronger in the sole and better suited for the fields.  Then they improved it by adding a part to alter the angle of the blade.

Pô Nagar, the main Chăm goddess

whale temple wall, Bạc Liêu

       The immigrants took to eating some of their food raw, like the Chăm, and wrapping their hair in headscarves, male and female, like the Chăm.  They also adopted the Chăm way of capturing, training and using elephants.  Northern armies had been using elephants in warfare for a long time, but now Vietnamese, like the erstwhile Chăm kings, also employed them as royal entertainment and to execute criminals.

       In spiritual matters, too, Chăm culture influenced immigrant Vietnamese.  The latter erected new temples on the site of ruined Chăm temples because they accepted the Chăm belief that the particular site was charged with holy power.  They adopted the cult of the whale, Cá Ông, in Phú Yên and took it with them further south.  Most significantly, they incorporated Pô Nagar into their own cult of the Holy Mothers, one that had only become part of Vietnamese culture since the 16^th century.  They renamed her Thiên Ý A Na.

Khleang Temple, Sóc Trăng, originally built 1533

       After the truce with the Trịmh Lords, the Nguyễn regime focused on the south.  By this time Cambodia had fallen into a long series of succession struggles among its royal princes.  Since Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên’s daughter married Chay Chetta II, Cambodia had become weaker and the Nguyẽn Lords’ realm stronger.  Rival princes needed outside help to win and in return for Vietnamese help; ceded provinces in the Mekong Delta over which the Cambodian government had had no control for centuries. In this way, the Vietnamese were able to set up direct administration of Saigon in 1698 and in the following century gradually annexed the entire Mekong Delta.

       The Mekong Delta at that time was mostly an uninhabited swamp.  The Khmer lived mainly near the mouth of the Mekong, far from Cambodia proper, in communities virtually autonomous since their founding.  Vietnamese migrants did not displace them, but moved into the adjacent areas and beyond, cleared the swamps and created big rice plantations.  Local Khmer by then were Theravada Buddhists and while that did not influence the migrants, they did adopt the custom of field shrines to the land spirit, the use of split palm leaf to make houses, Khmer farming tools and the types of rice grown.

Khmer house of split palm leaf

       The late 17^th century also saw the introduction of Chinese settlers in the Mekong Delta, when political refugees were allowed to settle in Biên Hoa and Mỹ Tho.  Other Chinese refugees established the port of Hà Tiên, now on the southwest border of Cambodia.   Vietnamese were still a minority, but their numbers increased with the arrival of Vietnamese Christians fleeing periodic persecutions by the Nguyễn regime. 

       By the mid-18^th century the Nguyến regime was in decline.  The Tây Sơb revolt, named after a village in south central Vietnam where it began, broke out in 1771 and in a few years overthrew the regime.  They later went on tọ conquer the Trịnh regime in the north.  The Nguyễn family escaped to the south, but the rebels caught up with then and massacred every member except the teenaged prince Nguyễn Ánh.  The next chapter of Vietnamese history is the story of how this indomitable prince waged a 25-year campaign to finally defeat his Tây Sơn opponents.

Chinese stage show, Hồ Chị Minh City

Chợ Lợn Chinese market, Hồ Chí Minh CIty

       After several reverses and recoveries, he consolidated control over the Mekong Delta and used this as his base to slowly, methodically advance north.  As his close friend and advisor, as well as link to Western military technology, was the French priest Pére Pigneau, Nguyễn Ánh tolerated the practice and spread of Christianity.  He also promised local autonomy to the Chinese, Khmer, Chăm and other non-Vietnamese communities in return for their support for his cause.   And he kept those promises after victory.

       With this multi-ethnic army, Nguyễn Ánh ultimately rolled into the northern capital in1802, terminated the Tây Sơn regime, founded the Nguyễn Dynasty and took the reign name of Gia Long.  His triumph was more than just the restoration of his family’s power.  This was a new country, Vietnam, bigger and more culturally enriched than Đại Việt, with the boundaries it still has today.

 

Vietnamese-made canal in rural Vĩnh Long

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                  For the full story, see my book Delta to Delta:  The Vietnamese Move South

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Lạng Sơn, Vietnam’s Gateway to China

                                                               by Jim Goodman

the city of Lạng Sơn

       Of northeastern Vietnam’s three border provinces, Lạng Sơn is the most easily accessible and least appreciated.  Just 154 km from Hanoi, on a good level road, the trip to Lạng Sơn city takes just over two hours.   The last hour or so the road flanks picturesque hills, but nowhere in the province do these hills rise to heights like its neighbor provinces Hà Giang and Cao Bằng.  Thus, guidebooks downplay Lạng Sơn, giving it little attention other than as a city on the way to the border crossing into China, which is just 18 km away near Đồng Đăng.  But the city and its environs offer enough attractions to make it worth a stopover or even a separate excursion out of Hanoi when you’re not crossing the border.

         Thanks to cross-border trade, Lạng Sơn has thrived since the normalization of relations between China and Vietnam.   Chinese goods dominate the markets and virtually all of its buildings date from after the 1979 conflict, which resulted in the destruction of nearly every building in the city.  Only the remnant of one of the old Nguyễn Dynasty city gates remains at the south end.  Lying along a bend of the Kỳ Cùng River, most of the commercial and residential quarters lie north of the bend, while administrative buildings are largely south.  The old French quarter used to lie here, but it was destroyed in 1979.   A couple of hills jut up from the flat land of the city while bigger hills dominate the surroundings.

phallic stalagmite in Tam Thanh Cave

altar to Quan Âm and other deities

       The city basically lies on a north-south axis, with its main market, Kỳ Lừa, lying in the northern quarter. In its northwest suburb, behind a fancy entrance gate, is the Tam Thanh cave, the biggest of three in the vicinity, with an elaborate altar to Quan Âm and other deities just inside the mouth.  Several paths from here lead to other small shrines inside niches of the cave walls.  One path leads to an opening with a view of the countryside, another to a pavilion on the slope of the mountain and all of them converge at an underground pool, featuring a very phallic stalagmite jutting up from the dark water.  Another cave, Nhị Thanh, lies just south and is even more impressive, featuring a 600-meter walk along a subterranean stream.  Stalactites force a lot of ducking and dodging along the route, which is also graced by a 20-meter high waterfall.

NàngTô Thị Waiting for Her Husband

      Outside Tam Thanh cave a path leads to the top of Thô Thị Hill, affording a great view of the city and the red roofs of its buildings. The hill gets its name from the interesting rock formation called Nàng Thô Thị Waiting for her Husband, which resembles a woman carrying her baby, standing alone on the ridge.  Lạng Sơn residents venerate this rock by leaving offerings of flowers and incense.  Perhaps they identify with the theme suggested by the rock.  For devotees it symbolizes all the women who have waited for husbands to return from one of the many wars that have plagued the country’s history.

       On another section of the same hill lie the remnants of a 16^th century Mạc Dynasty citadel, one of the few physical vestiges in the country of a little-known period of Vietnamese history.  In 1428, following final success in expelling Chinese forces after a twenty-year occupation of Vietnam, Lê Lợi, a Thanh Hoá landowner who led the insurrection, founded the Lê Dynasty.  Though it was to be the longest running dynasty in the country’s history, not officially ended until 1787, its kings were rarely in control.  Lê Lợi died five years after establishing it.  His successor was just ten years old at his accession and died in mysterious circumstances nine years later.  The next king was barely a year old when crowned and when he reached 17 his brother murdered him and usurped the throne.  He in turn lasted but eight months and then the last of Lê Lợi’s veterans overthrew him and installed Lê Thánh Tông as king.

remains of a Mạc Dynasty citadel above Lạng Sơn

       He proved to be the most successful monarch in the entire Lê Dynasty.  Taking over in 1460 at the age of 18, he led the conquest of the Chăm state of Vijaya, opening the way for Vietnamese migration to south central Vietnam.  A dedicated Confucian, he promulgated a law code that was to survive until the early Nguyễn Dynasty replaced it, held regular examinations aimed at recruiting government officials, promoted literature and commissioned national histories. 

       Unfortunately, kings in those times rarely lived to an advanced age.  Perhaps because he worked himself too hard, Lê Thánh Tông died in 1497 at the age of 57.  His very capable son Lê Hiến Tông ruled but six years and died when just 43.  After his demise the Dynasty basically ran out of good rulers, doomed by the fatal flaw underlying all dynastic successions—that the son is not always the equal of the father.  His own son and successor died after six months and the next four monarchs were depraved, capricious, murderous teenaged tyrants with, thanks to Lê Thánh Tông’s centralization, absolute power.  All of them suffered violent deaths as factions at Court, basically pitting the Red River Delta officials against the Thanh Hoá families that had supported Lê Lợi, worked behind the scenes to promote their favorites.

Thất Khê

      One of these schemers was Mạc Đặng Dung, from a village in Hải Dương, who won appointment to the Royal Guards under one of these young kings and rose steadily in the hierarchy while remaining keenly aware of the scandals at Court and the subsequent deterioration of conditions in the countryside.  In 1527 he decided the country had had enough of Lê Court shenanigans, arrested the current king and founded his own dynasty.  Those Lê family members he could not capture escaped to Laos with their Thanh Hoá supporters, primarily the Trịnh and Nguyễn clans, to plot their return to power.

       The Mạc Dynasty ruled until 1592, when the Lê loyalists captured the capital and the reigning Mạc king.  Though the victors reinstated the Lê king’s legitimacy, they did not yet wipe out the Mạc.  The latter maintained its own claimants to the throne and remained strong in the east and northeast.  It was around this time that the Mạc regime constructed the citadel in Lạng Sơn.  Later in the 17^th century they lost Lạng Sơn and retreated to Cao Bằng, where they survived until 1677.

gate to the Holy Mothers temple in Đồng Đăng

       Lạng Sơn residents are unlikely to know anything about the Mạc period of the city’s history, but are well aware of 20^th century Lạng Sơn history.  The road to Cao Bằng is the famous Highway 4, site of the first significant Việt Minh advances against the French colonialists.   The French had built a fort at Đông Khê, south of Cao Bằng and north of the Lạng Sơn provincial border.  In September 1950 the Việt Minh captured it, prompting a French evacuation from Cao Bằng province.  Shortly afterwards they also captured Thất Khê, inside Lạng Sơn province and used it as a base of operations for expelling the French from this province as well.

Tày ethnic minority

       The first stop north of Lạng Sơn on Highway 4 is the border town of Đồng Đăng, a prosperous-looking place with new buildings in the Franco-Viet style and a large and lavishly decorated temple to the Holy Mothers.  It’s not the actual crossing point, which is eight km northeast at Tôn Thanh, a nondescript place with a big entry gate and the adjacent Friendship Village, basically rows of tents hawking Chinese goods like clothing, utensils, kitchen ware, appliances, cell phones, DVD players, radios, etc.

       Just at the northern edge of Đồng Đăng, though, a sign reading “Border Zone” points to a path between the hills flanking the road that leads to another post, hidden behind the promontories, with big warehouses and Chinese signs.  Vietnamese porters pick up large packages here and carry them down the rocky paths to the road, where motorcycles wait to take the goods into town. 

Nùng in the countryside

        The road north passes by steep limestone hills on its eastern side and the gently flowing Kỳ Cùng River on the western side, featuring a number of water wheels along the banks.  The towns and most of the roadside villages along this and other provincial highways are Vietnamese, but the province is also home to the Dao ethnic minority in the hills and Tày and Nùng in the valleys.  The Dao are rather exclusive, rarely venturing into the cities, even at festival time or market days.  The Tày and the Nùng are both members of the Tai-Kedai linguistic group and in China are considered sub-groups of the Zhuang. 

       Tày and Nùng dialects are similar, as are their lifestyles.  They differ in various domestic and religious customs and especially in appearance.  The Tày women dress in dark colors, mostly black, with little or no embellishments like embroidery or jewelry.  Nùng women wear black trousers, with a thin white strip along the sides, but their jackets are quite colorful, with checked and plaid patterns, side-fastened and long-sleeved, similar in style but no two jackets exactly alike.  The same is true of their headscarves:  tied in the same manner but always with individual cloth patterns.

Nùng in the city

       The jacket material they buy in the market and stitch together back home.  They live in single story houses on the ground of mud-brick walls and tiled roofs.  The interiors are full of split-bamboo storage baskets, spinning wheels, thread winders and a four-shaft loom.  Winter is the weaving season, when women make cloth for their trousers, bags, pillowcases and blankets.

       Nùng villages lie just several kilometers east of Lạng Sơn in Cao Lộc district, in valleys among the rolling hills.  Being so close, the Nùng are frequent visitors to the city, especially on market days, held every fifth day.  They comprise a noticeable percentage of both buyers and sellers, generally hawking crops grown on their farms and purchasing household goods and maybe grain.  And when they’re not shopping they’re window-shopping and exploring the city, not confining themselves to the immediate market areas.

bringing in baskets for sale at market day

      Market day begins early and is not entirely confined to Kỳ Lừa, for the city has two other, smaller venues.  Kỳ Lừa is the most crowded, though, and the first stop for ethnic minorities in attendance.  The activity only begins to subside in late afternoon and the presence of so many Nùng women, often in groups of three to six, makes it a memorable day.  For a traveler, the only occasion more interesting is Lạng Sơn’s annual Kỳ Lừa Festival.

       Beginning the 22^nd day of the first lunar month and running six days, the festival honors Thân Công Tài, the 17^th century Lê military officer who founded Kỳ Lừa market.  The main venues are the Tả Phù Temple behind the market, dedicated to this man, and Kỳ Cùng Temple, sited at the bend in the river that divides the northern and southern sections of the city.  Devotees begin bringing offerings, like trays of glazed roast pig, to these temples the day before the festival starts.

food offering at Kỳ Cùng Temple 

       Besides religious activities, the festival’s highlights are the processions between Tả Phủ and Kỳ Cùng Temples and the costumed dances in the streets and squares along the route.  Elaborately carved red and gold sedan chairs carry the temple deities from one temple to another, borne by both Vietnamese and Nùng men, dressed in ceremonial silk garments.  Preceding them are lines of women holding the sacred guardian weapons that normally stand inside the temples in front of the altars.  Others hoist Buddhist flags.  And at the very front a band of musicians playing drums, gongs, cymbals, lutes and viols leads the line, their volume augmented by an amplifier and speakers mounted on a bike pushed alongside them.

Tày and Nùng performers at Kỳ Lừa market

       On the first day the gods of Tả Phủ go to visit Kỳ Cùng Temple, while on the last day the Kỳ Cùng deities return the call with a procession to Tả Phủ.  Near the temple before the processions begin, and at various places on the route, traditional dance performances entertain the crowds.  Nùng men put on a show with three dancers wearing fierce red demon masks. Tày men follow with lion dances and a Vietnamese troupe performs a dragon dance. 

       Besides the dances, the procession itself is entertainment, with participants dressed in utterly gorgeous clothes.  Proceeding normally in a stately manner, at major intersections the line breaks into a quick-time figure-8 loop and then resumes its ordinary pace.  All along the way shopkeepers have erected candlelit altars with burning incense, laden with offerings to the passing deities.  These are mainly liquor and food items, cooked, raw and packaged.  The gods bless these offerings, as they did the roast pigs, fruits and glutinous rice cakes presented at their altars, and return the offerings to the people.  And when the processions are over and the dance costumes put away the celebrants are then free to indulge in the last act of the festival program—enjoying the blessings of the deities in the form of a big feast and a fine round of drinks.

the annual Kỳ Lừa Festival procession

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Only the Ruins Remain: Chăm Relics in Bình Định

                                                          by Jim Goodman
   
    Quy Nhơn is a small but pleasant, uncongested city of about 300,000 on Vietnam’s south central coast.  The capital of Bình Định province, it lies halfway between the better-known tourist destinations of Hôi An and Nha Trang.  While endowed with the same basic features that make those places popular—splendid beaches, a landscape of rolling hills, the ruins of ancient Chăm towers and delicious seafood—it draws but a small fraction of the tourists.  Maybe it’s because the historical relics are scattered throughout the province and not concentrated in a single place, like the collection of monuments at Mỹ Sơn, near Hội An, or the sprawling Pô Nagar temple next to Nha Trang.  Maybe it’s because the city has no real nightlife.

the beach at Quy Nhơn

    It certainly has its attractions, both within the city and at various sites in the countryside.  Flanked by a bay that keeps the worst of the typhoon winds from striking the city, Quy Nhơn is blessed with beautiful clean beaches.  The most accessible is right next to the city, especially the southern stretch along Nguyôn Huệ Street. Pretty much deserted during the day, the beach fills up with local Vietnamese around 4 p.m., when the sun is low enough not to affect their skin tones.  Vendors appear selling grilled seafood, fruits and other snacks while groups form up on the beach for football or volleyball and others go for a wade or a swim in the sea, usually fully clothed.  A few indulge in jet-ski rides or parasailing and a couple of times during the year the waves are strong enough for surfboard riding.
    A long, hilly peninsula lies just offshore to the east, enclosing the Thị Nại Lagoon that bounds the northern part of the city.  The longest bridge in the country stretches across the southern part of this lagoon to connect the city with the port area on the peninsula.  North of this peninsula are several clean, white, secluded beaches beside small fishing villages.  A few guesthouses and restaurants serve the rare visitors, where the seafood is fresh and cheap.

secluded beach north of Quy Nhơn

    The city has a variety of religious monuments, the biggest of which is the centrally located Long Khánh Buddhist temple.  Originally a more modest building from the 18th century, it was rebuilt in recent years and is now much bigger, three stories high, housing an enormous Buddha statue inside and backed by a multi-tiered pagoda.  The city also has a few Catholic churches, a legacy of the Portuguese mission first established here in the early 17th century.  At that time Quy Nhơn was, after Hội An, the second most important port in Đằng Trong, the portion of the country ruled by the Nguyễn Lords from the late 16th century.  Quy Nhơn was a relatively young city then, for Vietnamese didn’t come here to settle until the beginning of the 16th century.
    Before that, until 1471, all of Bình Định, as well as Phú Yên to the south and Quảng Ngãi and parts of Quảng Nam to the north, were part of the Chăm Kingdom of Vijaya, which became the most important Chăm state from the late 11th century.  Its capital lay about 20 km northwest of Quy Nhơn, between two branches of the Côn River, which flowed into the sea at nearby Thị Nại, the state’s main port.  One of the principal Chăm relics from that period is within the urban area of Quy Nhơn, near National Highway 1A.  It’s called Tháp Đôi—Double Tower—because the two towers look like twins.  Originally three towers stood here, but the northern one collapsed long ago.  The two that remain are in relatively good condition, with sculpted friezes and garudas still intact on the upper levels.
    Vijaya rose to prominence because its northern neighbors, the Chăm states of Amaravati and Indrapura, had finally lost in their centuries-long conflict with the Vietnamese.  Trouble between the Vietnamese and the Chăm started during the period of Chinese rule over the northern third of the country, which they called their province of Giaochi (and later Annam).  The Chăm often raided the southern districts of Giaochi, which extended down to present-day Nghệ An province.  The Chinese, or even local Vietnamese militias and guerrillas, would then drive them back and this sort of situation continued even after the Vietnamese expelled the Chinese and won back their independence in 938.  Fed up with the raiding, sometimes the Vietnamese launched a punitive expedition against the offending Chăm capital, destroyed it, then forced the Chăm to cede their own northernmost districts, which could then no longer be used as bases for raiding parties on Vietnamese settlements.   

Bánh Ít--one of the Chăm temples from Vijaya's heyday

    Sometimes there were long periods of peace between the two sides, such as most of the 13th and early 14th centuries.  From the late 12th century Vijaya was more involved with wars with Angkor’s Cambodia and suffered Khmer occupation for a few decades at the start of the 13th century.  Not long after that the Mongols invaded both Vijaya and the Vietnamese state further north.  The invasions failed and Vietnamese-Chăm relations, forged by a common experience of invasion, were good for a while.  But by the mid-14th century they had soured and under a vigorous king named Chề Bổng Nga Vijaya forces sacked the Vietnamese capital Thăng Long three times.  Finally, in the late 15th century, the Vietnamese, under a strong young king named Lê Thánh Tông, decided to settle accounts with its main Chăm nemesis once and for all.  Leading a massive land and naval expedition in 1471, he destroyed the Chăm kingdom of Vijaya and leveled its capital. 
    The Chăm civilian population fled in several directions.  Many boarded ships under the command of a surviving Chăm royal prince to sail all the way to Hainan Island, where the Chinese Ming Emperor granted them permission to stay and autonomy within their own district.  Descendants of these refugees still live in Hainan.  Other Chăm fled west to Cambodia and Thailand, while a great number took up residence in northern Sumatra, becoming the ancestors of the people of Acheh province.

Tháp Bình Lâm, in old Thị Nại

    The triumphant Lê Thánh Tông announced that the former lands of Vijaya were now open to Vietnamese colonization and created a system of militarized settlements to achieve this.  But for the next hundred years the new settlers were mainly criminals, gangsters, political exiles and such.  Only after Vietnam became embroiled in dynastic struggles and civil war, from the mid-16th century on, when the population in the Red River Delta was declining from war-induced famines and life was becoming untenable there, did migration to the south begin in earnest.     
    From the beginning of the 17th century Vietnam was split into two parts:  the north, ruled by the Trịnh Lords, and everything south of Quảng Bình, ruled by the Nguyễn Lords.  The latter relied more on foreign commerce taxes than land-use fees as the basis of its state revenue and the newly established port of Quy Nhơn quickly rose in importance.  Foreign missionaries came with foreign trade and in the early 17th century the Portuguese set up a fairly successful mission there.  Government attitudes towards the foreign missionaries changed in later years and became quite hostile.  At the rocky promontory at the south end of the beach in Quy Nhơn are statues of the first Church officials and martyrs in Quy Nhơn.

Tháp Phườc Lốc

    When the Vietnamese conquered Vijaya they destroyed the citadels at the capital Chà Bàn and the port of Thị Nại but did not destroy Chăm religious monuments, just left them in place, where today they comprise most of Bình Đính’s tourist attractions.  Aside from Tháp Đôi, they lie north and northwest of Quy Nhơn.  The best preserved towers, called Bánh Ít, or Tháp Bạc (Silver Tower), stand on a hill just east of the highway 18 km north of Quy Nhơn.     Built in the late 11th century and originally comprising several buildings, today four of them remain, and from the summit one has a view of the heartland of old Vijaya, as well as some of the other towers.
    Another 12 km to the north, also east of the highway, the lone, phallic-like tower Tháp Phước Lộc stands on top of a broad, barren mound above the rice fields.  A lateral road running west from the junction leads, after a few kilometers, to the recently restored Tháp Cánh Tiên, standing on a small mound just west of Chà Bàn Citadel.  The remains of this citadel date from its reconstruction during the Tây Sơn Era in the late 18th century.  When it was the capital of Vijaya the citadel was much larger and the Cánh Tiên Tower was in its center.  

the roof of Cánh Tiên Tower

    Further west, off the road running north of the Côn River, on a low mound in a setting of rolling hills, stand the three towers of Đương Long.  These were the last major structures built in Vijaya’s heyday, exhibit strong Khmer influence in the shape and decorations and are the tallest Chăm towers in the province.  South of the river, off the road leading to Tây Sơn, the single tower Tháp Thủ Thiện stands among sugarcane fields, its foundations badly eroded, looking like it might topple over any day.
    The last of the province’s Chăm relics is the Bình Lâm tower, which used to be the centerpiece of the Thị Nại Citadel, 23 km northeast of Quy Nhơn.  A tributary of the Côn River ran from Chà Bàn to Thị Nại and Thị Nại was the first place the invading Vietnamese captured in 1471.  Before advancing on the capital they destroyed Thị Nại’s citadel and today only a 200-meter dilapidated fragment remains, though they left the tower intact.  The original population left after the fall of Vijaya and it never again served as a port.  When Vietnamese settlers finally moved into the area Quy Nhơn became their port city.  Those who moved into the old Thị Nại area reclaimed land towards the sea, so that nowadays the former Chăm seaport is several kilometers from the sea.
     In general the Chăm towers stand on slightly elevated square bases.  The entrance to the interior is on one side, with false doors on the other three sides, with sculpted decorations along the sides and above the doors.  The tops of the towers feature graduated, tapering tiers, some with flared tips at the corners.  Not much of the original sculptures are left, thanks to natural decay, war damage and looting, and the best examples have been removed to the big Chăm Museum in Đà Nẵng.  But the provincial museum in Quy Nhơn holds a few statues and other decorative elements.  A separate Chăm ceramics museum in the city, actually a private family collection, holds several lovely sculptures, imaginatively displayed, and a whole range of ceramics.   

Chăm stone sculpture

 

false doors, Tháp Đôi

    For the average Vietnamese, the Chăm legacy of Vijaya is less relevant than the fact that Bình Đính was the birthplace of the Tây Sơn Revolt, so called because it was led by three brothers from a village in Tây Sơn district, about 45 km northwest of Quy Nhơn.  The three—Nguyễn Nhạc, the eldest, Nguyễn Lữ and Nguyễn Huệ--launched their revolt against the Nguyễn Lords ruling Đằng Trong in 1771.  By 1778 they had seized the entire south and exterminated all but one member of the ruling family, Nguyễn Ánh, who escaped to Thailand.

remains of the Tây Sơn citadel at Chă Băn

    Nguyễn Nhạc proclaimed a new dynasty and decided to set up his capital on the old site of Chà Bàn.  Partly this was to curry favor with the Chăm as allies.  He had a new citadel built, though a much smaller version, in which Tháp Cánh Tiên was a couple hundred meters outside the walls.  
Eight years later he dispatched Nguyễn Huệ north to end the rule of the Trịnh Lords and restore the authority of the Lê king.  But when the latter died and his son took over and called in Chinese troops to establish his authority, Nguyễn Huệ, who had withdrawn to the south, announced the end of the Lê Dynasty and declared himself Emperor Quang Trung in December 1788.  He then had his army celebrate the Tết New Year holiday early, marched them north and on the Tết holiday pounced on the unsuspecting Chinese and utterly destroyed their army.   

Nguyễn Huệ, later Emperor  Quang Trung

    Quang Trung died suddenly in mid-1792.  Nguyễn Nhạc died the following year.  The Tây Sơn Dynasty lasted just under a decade more until it fell before the slow, steady, relentless campaign of Nguyễn Ánh.  While Nguyễn Nhạc has been all but neglected in Vietnam, Nguyễn Huệ, the military genius who defeated a massive Chinese army, has been elevated to national hero status.  Every city has a Nguyễn Huệ Street (in Quy Nhơn it’s the one along the beach) or a Quang Trung Street, or both.  A mighty statue of him stands in Quy Nhơn’s central roundabout.
    Another Nguyễn Huệ statue stands in front of the Tây Sơn Museum near Phú Phong village, the brothers’ birthplace.  Inside are displays such as weapons and uniforms used in that era, portraits and sculptures of the leading personalities of those days and models and maps of the major Tây Sơn campaigns.  The Tây Sơn rebels were good at marshaling the strength of angry, disaffected people, at overthrowing a feudal order and at ending the political division of the country.  For these achievements they still receive favorable portrayals in the state-run media and school textbooks.  They eventually lost to someone who reinstated the feudal order, but maintained the unity of the country.  What began as a local revolt in Bình Định in a long divided country ended in a single, unified nation stretching from the Chinese border to the tip of Cà Mau.  Unfortunately, six decades after Nguyễn Ánh’s triumph the French came in and broke it all up again.

Cánh Tiên Tower

                                                                    * * *
         Chăm and Tây Sơn sites in Bình Định are on the itinerary of my VIetnam tour program.
                                            See http://deltatoursvietnam.com for details.