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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The Three Incarnations of Hội An

                                               

                                   by Jim Goodman

Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai Street

       Lying near the mouth of the Thu Bồn River in Central Vietnam’s Quảng Nam province, the picturesque town of Hội An is one of the country’s top tourist attractions.  No wonder.  It features a well-preserved old town that has been a World Heritage Site since 1999, lies near several ancient Chăm vestiges, especially the Chăm religious sanctuary at Mỹ Sơn, itself a World Heritage site, and is close to sparkling beaches, offshore islands, riverside craft villages, attractive rural scenery and offers a range of local culinary delights.  That makes it a major factor in Vietnam’s tourist industry and thus a contributor to the country’s rising prosperity.

boats in the Hội An River, a branch of the Thu Bồn

       It used to be much more.  It was the main port of ancient Chăm states in the area, long before any Vietnamese resided here.  And in the 16^th to 18^th centuries, when it was known as Faifo, it was the main center of international commerce under the regime of the Nguyển Lords and the busiest port on the entire coast of Vietnam.      

       The Chăm are an Austronesian people who began settling along the central coast over 1500 years ago.  They established different states from Nình Thuận in the south to Quảng Bình in the north.  From the 7^th to 10^th centuries the strongest of these was Amaravati in the Quảng Nam region, with its capital at Simhapura, the Lion City, today’s Trà Kiêu, about 20 km west of Hội An.  The state and society was modeled on that of their Indian-influenced Khmer neighbors.  The important difference was in the economy.

boat and fish trap on the Thu Bồn River

       The Khmer state was based on agriculture.  The Chăm states occupied narrow strips of good agricultural land and relied more on commerce, in particular maritime trade.  Chăm ships sailed great distances to trade and in Amaravati Hội An was its main port.  After Amaravati’s demise, the destruction of both Simhapura and the successor state of Indrapura at the end of the 10^th century, and the shift of power to Vijaya further south, Hội An’s role declined; still an active port, but less important to the Chăm economy. 

casting a net on the Thu Bồn River

       Hội An’s revival began in the mid-16^th century, when civil war raged in the north, migrations began to the former Chăm territories of Vijaya (conquered and annexed in 1471), and rivalries climaxed among supporters of the Lê side—the Trịnh and Nguyển families--in the war against the Mạc Dynasty.  Fearing for his safety from the Trịnh commander, Nguyễn Hoàng angled himself an appointment from the Lê Court as Governor of the areas from Quảng Bình to Phú Yên, 

       The Lê side largely defeated the Mạc by 1592 but the restored monarch was but a figurehead.  All power was in the hands of the Trịnh Lord.  Nguyến Hoàng wouldn’t accept this breach of legitimacy, as he interpreted it, and so became the first of the Nguyễn Lords, setting up his own fief in Central Vietnam.  And as part of his administration he began building up maritime commerce through the port of Faifo (Hội An), already home to Chinese and Japanese merchants, taking over the trade links previously established by the Chăm.  A big portion of the government’s revenue came from taxing commerce, which it encouraged.

Nguyển Hoàng, the first of the Nguyễn Lords

       Nguyễn Hoàng died at 88 in 1613, having successfully established the foundations of an autonomous state.  His very capable sixth son, Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên, already a veteran of several years of administration, succeeded him.  By then it was becoming obvious that a showdown was inevitable with the Trịnh regime in the north.  The new Nguyễn Lord took firm steps to strengthen the realm’s administration, defense and commerce.  This included patronizing Faifo. 

       He permitted the Portuguese to set up in the port in 1615, who eventually became his suppliers for cannon and advisors on shipbuilding. He also established a customs office to collect import duties and control the trade in ivory, aromatic oils and woods, rattan mats and caulking resin.  A very pro-business ruler, he even married off one of his daughters to a resident Japanese merchant.  Relations with the Trịnh regime in the north came to a head in 1627, after Nguyễn Phuc Nguyên refused to pay tribute and the Trịnh Lord sent his armies south to compel compliance. 

Chinese Assembly Hall of the Cantonese community 

       The campaign failed, as did four subsequent invasions in following years, which included one unsuccessful Nguyễn campaign against the north.  Finally, in 1672 the two sides agreed to a truce that would last over a century.  None of the Trịnh attacks touched Faifo, however, and the port’s importance grew.  This was Hội An’s golden age.  Every year the town hosted great international fairs, attracting Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese traders and all three had resident communities in the port.  Besides luxury goods like silk and aromatic woods, these fairs also offered a wide variety of domestic use items, particularly ornaments for local consumption, an indication of the population’s relative prosperity.

Bạch Đằng Street on the Hội An River

       The Nguyển regime exported silk, sugar, pepper, rattan, cinnamon, musk, deerskins, eaglewood, lac and gold.  Imports included ceramics, silver, utensils, swords, armor and copper coins—the good ones re-circulated, the inferior ones made into cannon.  China banned trade with Japan, so merchants from the two countries met in Faifo to mostly exchange Chinese silk for Japanese silver.  After the Japanese government closed its doors to the outside world, Vietnamese trade with Japan was indirect, via Chinese merchants who were allowed to enter Nagasaki.  The Japanese community in Faifo, however, remained for a time and monopolized local silk production.

      While trade with China and Japan was more substantial, the Nguyễn regime also promoted commercial links with Southeast Asia.  Ships regularly arrived from Siam, Cambodia, Philippines and Java.  And for the first time since the Lý Dynasty, Vietnamese merchants took trading ships overseas to Manila, Java and Siam, and even formed a sizable resident community in Ayutthaya.

shop houses in old Hệi An

       Besides allowing Portuguese merchants to set up a base in Faifo, the Nguyễn Lords also permitted the presence of Christian missionaries.  The Jesuits had established a base in Japan in the 16^th century, but the government expelled them in 1614.  A group of Portuguese and Italian missionaries relocated to Hội An and a decade later Alexander de Rhodes arrived, staying for three years studying the Vietnamese language.  He would later become the most instrumental person in devising the alphabetic system, adapted from Latin letters, called quốc ngũ, that eventually replaced the Vietnamese version of Chinese characters and is the official orthography of the language today. 

       In the 18^th century, as Vietnamese migrants moved into the Mekong Delta and established large rice plantations, the port of Quy Nhơn became equally important to the Nguyển regime.  Ships from there sailed to the Mekong Delta to pick up the rice so needed to feed the increasing population around Huế and in Quàng Nam.  Faifo was still the regime’s principal international port, but that role began to abate when the Court, by then already in the throes of terminal decline, began imposing exorbitant taxes on overseas trade in mid-17^th century, effectively cutting off its main revenue source.       

       In 1771 the Tây Sơn Revolt broke out in the area that was formerly the Chăm state of Vijaya. A few years later Tăy Sơn forces and their Chinese mercenary allies attacked Faifo and slaughtered most of its Chinese residents.  The town never recovered.  The Tây Sơn state lasted until 1802 and the establishment of the Nguyển Dynasty.  But although the new state made nearby Huế its capital, it did not favor commerce like that of its Nguyển Lords predecessor state.  International trade was only permitted at Danang and anyway by then silt deposited by the Thu Bồn River ended easy access to Faifo.

waterfront street

typical old town street and houses

       From then on Hối An was just a minor river port servicing very local commerce.  The Japanese community was long gone, though the bridge they built is still one of the great attractions of the town. Chinese communities stayed on, rebuilt their houses in a new style and added the community centers and temples that are some of the main tourist attractions in contemporary times.  But its economic importance to the state was now negligible.  In colonial times it served as an administrative center and a small French neighborhood existed just east of the original town, but the French never tried to revive Hội An’s historic role. They built a railway link to Danang, but a storm destroyed the tracks in 1916 and they were not rebuilt.  Thanks to the silting, big ships could no longer travel up the Thu Bồn, and no new port was constructed on the coast.

boats and ferries on the river

       Hội An did not suffer any war damage during the anti-colonial struggle.  It was neither bombed nor fought over during the American War and when Vietnam launched its renovation policy in the late 80s, while nearby Danang experienced fast development that replaced its old buildings with new ones, Hội An was virtually unaffected.  As a consequence, its antiquated architecture remained intact, providing the basis, with the inauguration of Vietnam’s Open Door policy, for its third incarnation as a major tourist attraction.

       Its designation as a World Heritage Site in 1999 insured that its old town, three long blocks along the river, would be preserved, with regulations put in place governing the height and appearance of its mostly early 19^th century shop houses, temples and Chinese community halls.  No other town in Central Vietnam so evokes the atmosphere of pre-modern Vietnam.  Most of its houses have become restaurants and shops catering to the tourist trade, selling clothing, souvenirs, local crafts, lanterns and paintings, but are still run mostly by native residents rather than outsiders.  Cars and taxis are prohibited from the old town, so it’s a pedestrian zone, quiet and unhurried, bereft of the hubbub characterizing virtually every other town in the country.

       Besides the traditional shop houses, Hội An’s attractions include temples, Chinese assembly halls, a few museums and rich merchants’ houses.  Some of these are participants in a ticketing scheme, in which for the purchase of a single ticket a visitor can explore the interiors of one building in each category.  The money is for the maintenance of the town, but not all the interesting sites are on the ticket list.  The most beautiful structure in town, for one, the 16^th century Japanese Covered Bridge, spanning a creek in the western quarter, is not. 

16th century Japanese covered bridge 

       According to legend, the Japanese built the bridge over the site of the heart of an underground beast whose head was in India and tail was in Japan.  When angry the beast shook its tail and caused violent earthquakes in Japan.  So geomancers directed the bridge to be built over the heart, so that the bridge’s piles would magically drive a sword through its heart.  With the beast dead the earthquakes ceased.

       Various Chinese communities from Fujian, Guangdong, Chouzhou and Hainan erected the Assembly Halls in Hôi An, serving as social and religious centers.  Lavishly decorated, these mainly date from the 18^th and 19^th centuries and a separate hall existed for all resident and visiting Chinese communities.  The old merchant houses and family chapels feature exquisite wooden furniture and interior decorations, but this is also true to a lesser extent for many of the restaurants.  In addition, the traditional shop houses along all the streets are attractive, with yellow facades, wooden beams and shutters, sometimes carved, with railed balconies and suspended lanterns.

       Taking an early morning walk through the old town, before the shops have opened, is like a stroll back in time.  And for the more history-minded visitors, various small museums specialize in exhibits of 17^th-18^th century trade ceramics, bronze artifacts, Chăm relics, pre-Chăm Sa Huỳnh Culture artifacts, contemporary handicrafts, minerals and gemstones, historical maps and costumes and a Folk Museum displaying traditional tools, agricultural implements, musical instruments and fishing gear.

local residents conducting a ritual in the old town

       Besides these heritage attractions, Hội An also has a typically lively local waterfront market, modern Buddhist temples, a river busy with small boats and ferries, a couple of Cao Dài temples, street stalls selling local snacks, tea and fresh beer, a variety of restaurants and some delicious local specialties.  It has a tourist-oriented theater for shows of traditional music and dance, plus a local platform where residents gather for particularly Hội An-style games and amusement, for themselves, not for visitors.  And on unspecified days a group might gather for an elaborate ritual on a public street.  A large part of the population is not at all involved in the tourist business and they simply carry on with their traditional ways in spite of it.  

       For all these reasons Hội An will continue to lure ever greater numbers of visitors, even Vietnamese tourists.  The number of businesses and facilities catering to tourists has more than doubled in the past decade.  Every year it will get gaudier and more crowded.  But that’s inevitable.  For a place as intrinsically beautiful and interesting as Hội An and its environs, there will always be so much to see and savor.

full moon in Hội An

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         Hội An is one of the stops on my Vietnam tour program:  see http://deltatoursvietnam.com