9

1

p “Kneeling humbly, I venture to beg the forgiveness of Your Majesty for the mistake His faithful army made of being far away and for failing to protect You from traitors and enemies. For reasons ill-fated, Heaven had willed that Your Majesty’s most faithful servants should have been far away..."

p Thus wrote Regent Ton That Darn to the Son of Heaven, Ham Nghi, on learning that the young emperor had been taken prisoner. Thereupon Regent Thuyet committed suicide. Before he died, he made the mandarins and scholars in his party promise never to serve the invaders.

p Meanwhile, the emperor and his retinue were brought to Hue in chains and shipped off to FVance. The prisoner was seventeen, but his behaviour was dignified and his self-control surprising in one so young. He looked bravely in his enemy’s faces, and left his country with proudly raised head.

p The man who told this story to his twelve-year-old son, adjusted the ill-smelling oil lamp. The boy had been listening raptly, eyes wide open, tears rolling slowly down his cheeks. He wore a black handwoven jacket. Two funny locks of hair bobbed on his shaven head. For boys to have the locks was the custom of those days.

p Why, he asked, had the foreigners’won so easily? Not easily, his father replied it took them nearly thirty years.

p “If you want to know,” he added, "the Resistance isn’t entirely dead today."

p The boy liked those evenings at home, and his father’s endless stories of near and distant times. It was impenetrably dark outside. In the room, the murky light of the oil lamp cast shadows on the walls. His father, Nguyen Sinh Sac, was the most learned man in the village. He had had a Confucian education. He knew the Four Books and the Five Classics of the ancient Confucian doctrine, and had only recently returned triumphant from the capital, where he had passed his civil service examinations, an exceedingly rigorous selection among aspirants to high honours. By imperial grace, Sinh Sac had been granted the title ofphuobang, an academic degree of the second class.

p In old Vietnam, people usually had more than one name. The first was given at birth. At school age the child received an official, " scholarly" name. So, the boy’s father gave him a name that reflected the elation he felt at having passed his civil service examinations Nguyen Tat Thanh, meaning Nguyen the Triumphant.

10

p In feudal Vietnam the title ofphuobang gave its holder the right to take some important office in the central administration. But Thanh’s father declined the post he was olfered in the imperial capital. Young men often recalled his explanation: "Officials are slaves among slaves, perhaps even worse.”

p Not until eight years later, when the family suffered financial difficulties, did he accept the post of county chief in Bingding Province. But he defied the higher authorities by refusing to punish those who failed to pay their debts, backing peasant protests against excessive taxes, and allowing the unjustly imprisoned to go free. So, within a few months, the governor dismissed him.

p Thanh’s father belonged to the peculiar feudal estate of provincial scholars. Traditionally, they were devoted students of the doctrines of Confucius and Meneius (Meng-tse) that had reached Vietnam from China in the 15th century. But Confucianism, say present-day Vietnamese historians, was not an entirely correct appellation, because on Vietnamese soil the teaching of Confucius came under the influence of local patriotic tradition, and acquired some essentially progressive features.

p The Chinese feudal rulers and their Vietnamese collaborationists sought to cultivate the more reactionary Confucian maxims, those of worship of authority, conservatism, dogmatism, and scholastic education, while the patriotic and progressive members of the feudal Vietnamese educated class laid emphasis on Confucianism’s rational and positive elements. They went farther still, and adapted the teaching to the needs of the struggle for national liberation, changing it into a spirited patriotic doctrine that was often even anti-monarchic. That was why in Vietnam Confucian scholars were often revered as national heroes, leaders of liberation wars, chiefs or participants in peasant rebellions.

p One of the principal Confucian commandments, ckun, loyalty, meant unquestioning obedience to the emperor, whereas its Vietnamese variety, trung, meant loyalty with reservations—if the emperor was a patriot it was associated with him; if he bowed to the enemy, loyalty to him was not obligatory.

p With the coming of the French, the Confucianists, those nobles of the spirit, were the mainstay of the Vietnamese monarchy as long as it headed the Resistance. But most of them turned their backs on the Nguyen dynasty when it finally went into the conquerors’ service after the defeat of the Can Vuong movement. In contrast to Christianity, which the colonialists forcibly cultivated, Confucianism was then considered the symbol of everything truly Vietnamese.

p Thanh’s father was a faithful follower of the patriotic Confucianist party. He wanted to instil the party’s patriotic ideals in his children. And it was thanks to his beneficial influence that Thanh, who studied 11 the Confucian classic’s like other boys of his age, absorbed a system of ideological and political views that were a variety of the Confucian teaching steeped in Vietnamese patriotism.

p The villagers were fond of Thanh’s father. They respected him. In 1901, shortly before the examinations, his wife died at the age of thirtytwo, followed to the grave by the youngest, fourth, child. The grieving father sent his two sons and a daughter to live with his late wife’s parents, and went to Hue. On learning how well he had passed his civil service examinations, the people of his village, Cimhen, agreed at a communal meeting to allot him, their first pkuobang, a plot of land and to build him a new house. He and his children soon moved into a fairly roomy straw-roofed bamboo structure between the smithy and the village pond.

p The furniture in Thanh’s room consisted of a hammock and a roughly made wooden table and bench. The family turned the yard, surrounded by dense thickets of bamboo trees and banana palms, into a garden with areca palms, lemon and pomelo trees, and a lone breadfruit tree which bore them large round rough-skinned fruits as big as pumpkins.

p Cimlien village had several ponds where the greenish duckrced was studded here and there with the white and pale pink lotus, king of all flowers. Indeed, Cimlien meant Village of the Golden Lotus. Little Thanh liked watching the villagers pull out the morning’s catch of fish, and would himself angle with other village boys now and then. Water buffaloes escaped from the heat and flics in the ponds, their black heads sticking out of the water, and their sad eyes looking la/ily upon the world. Always, village boys would climb upon their backs, and play on their reed-pipes.

The boys and girls of Golden Lotus village, like those of the surrounding villages, were fond of music from infancy. The people of Nghe-an were convinced that Nguyen Du, the pride of Vietnamese classic literature, grew up to be a great poet because he was born in their province, and had learned the art of improvisation in childhood. People hereabouts were fond of folk songs and old lullabies extolling nature and cultivating love for the native land. Nguyen Tat Thanh knew those songs by heart. In fact, his aunt was renowned up and clown the county as a firstclass singer, and was often invited to neighbouring counties.

2

p The people of Golden Lotus village were poor. There was not enough arable to feed all of them. Besides, much of the land was owned by a few rich families. Most of the others were tenants dragging out a miserable existence. For lack of clothes, the men wore cotton trunks the year 12 round, earning their village the nickname Dai Huo, the trouserlcss.

p Thanh saw poverty and suffering each day. Officials pitilessly exacted taxes, and the village headman, a member of the gentry, rivalled their greed. Whatever was left was requisitioned by the rich landlords.

p Take old man Dien’s family living in the house next door. Did they ever eat their fill? Just once a year, during the Tet holiday, when the peasants slaughtered the last of their chickens and pigs, and bought rice wine to at least forget their misery for a while.

p Seeing how poor people were, and how ruined villagers went to town to earn a livelihood, never to be heard of again, Thanh remembered the splendid carriages of the royal dignitaries and the foreign administrators in Hue, where his father once took him to watch the sacrificial rites at the Altar of Heaven and Earth atop the picturesque hill south of the capital.

p Why was life so unjust?

p Thanh was an impressionable child. Other people’s pain hurt him as if it were his own. And the most staggering impression, one that left an indelible mark in his heart, was the tragedy that occurred on the Quia Dao Road project.

p Quia Dao was a canyon in the upper reaches of the Blue River on the Vietnam-Lao border. The road would run along the canyon, through jungle that few men had ever trodden, to connect Laos and the western part of Nghe-an Province with the shoreline of the Bay of Tonkin. The colonial authorities required all males of 18 to 50 to do forced labour on it. The conditions were unbearable: marshy jungle, wild animals, snakes, poison insects, and rniasmic air. The labourers were half-starved. They slept on the damp soil in the jungle, and, were mercilessly beaten by the overseers. Many died. And those who did return, were haggard and, starved, and suffering from tropical fever or rheumatism. They told their fellow villagers how people died on the Quia Dao Road, and how the dead were wrapped in straw mats and buried on the spot because coffins were in short supply.

p In Thanh’s impressionable mind the days the villagers left for the Quia Dao Road project were associated with funerals. Women wept. The entire village came to see off the departing. Thanh stood on the roadside with the other village boys, and watched the bedraggled procession. And one of the sad songs that people sang, Thanh would remember all his life:

p Tall are the Purple Mountains,
Deep is the Great Sea.
The King has sold himself
To the French, dooming his
People to Grief and Misery.

13

p One night, a clamour awakened Thanh. Tarn-lams were beating, women were crying in grief, and the village dogs were barking furiously. Torches slashed the darkness now in one, now in another end of the village. The frightened, sleepy boy asked his father what was up.

p “Calm yourself, son. They’ve probably caught another wretch,” his father replied quietly. He stroked his son’s head with a shaking hand.

p Thanh and his elder brother and sister saw a sad group of people in ihe dim lighl of ihe torches: three men with hands tied, and a few soldiers behind them. One of the prisoners was the father of his friend; Thanh and he had flown kites together from the top of a near-by hill. No, Thanh could not fall asleep that night, sobbing for pity or constructing scenes of revenge.

p There had been many more such troubled nights. Fleeing from backbreaking forced labour into the neighbouring jungle, the peasants were relentlessly hunted by guards.

p The boy’s family was relieved of labour duties thanks to Father having the tille of phuobang. But the scholar was not indifferent to the lot of his fellow villagers, many of whose children he had taught to read and write. After agonising speculation on how to help (he wretched community, he sold the land the village had given him, and divided the money among families whose breadwinners had been forced into the road gangs.

p The Quia Dao Road tragedy hurt Thanh’s sensibility. It made him ponder in earnest. The suffering he saw opened his eyes to many of the ills and injustices that reigned in colonial Vietnam. Thoughtful beyond his years, he turned to books for answers to his many questions.

p His father spoke with scorn about the outdated classical education. It gave none of the knowledge needed in those days, though it did open the door to an official’s career. But precisely an official’s career was contrary to the feelings of the boy’s scholarly father. He preferred telling the children instructive talcs out of the country’s past. He taught them the maxims and aphorisms of the old sages.

p Patriotic thoughts struck a chord in Thanh’s heart. He enjoyed the romantic prose of Nguyen Trai, thinker, poet, general, and first Vietnamese Utopian who dreamed of a prosperous life for all. Thanh wept when reading the Proclamation of Victory Over the .Ngo(ngo being the generic term for invaders):

p The people burnt in flames
Or buried in tombs of disaster.
To deceive Heaven and to deceive men,
The invaders killed and oppressed.
Humanity and justice were trampled, and
Taxes squeezed dry the living.

14

p It seemed to Thanh that Nguyen Trai had written those lines quite recently, yesterday perhaps, not five centuries ago.

p Thanh’s family liked the poetry of the great Nguyen Du, who was born in a neighbouring village. His splendid novel in verse, (Jailing the Wandering Souls, the harrowing tale of Kieu, a young courtesan, victim of feudal morals, was filled with a haunting beauty, grace and charm. But what impressed itself on the hearts of young people was its rebellious content. Nguyen Du’s novel was a challenge to the medieval feudal morality that still reigned in the country. The loftiest characters in it were those of Kieu, who had sold herself to save her father and eldest brother from the debtors’ pit, and Thu Hai, chief of the rebels, or " bandit”, as he was named at the imperial court. Thu Hai’s monologue is, in fact, an anthem to liberty:

p By sea or stream I sailed where I unshed.
So how can 1 be out of it now cringing, not flying?
Submissive to the emperor’s wishes?
Is there no other way?
Am I to he an overfed dignitary?
Wear rich clothes and bow my head?
Not me. As long as my men are true
I’ll practise my creed
Pay gift for gift,
Sword thrust for sword thrust,
Just to be free...

p The image of the unsubmissive Thu Hai, who refused to surrender and died standing, pierced by enemy arrows, was for the patriotic young people an incarnation of mythical heroes.

p Lofty feelings, love of country and hatred of its conquerors were inspired by the blind South Vietnamese poet, Nguyen Din Thieu. The first bard of armed resistance, he called on his countrymen to fight the French colonialists:

p The living are fighting,
The dead are fighting,
The souls of the killed are in battle array.
Mo, the people will never surrender!
7he day of reckoning will come.

p Thanh grieved for the country’s lost freedom and admired those who refused to bow to the invaders. In the village of Cimlien there were reminders of past battles and glorious men. Near Thanh’s house was the Cormorant Fond, grown over with lotuses. The old men said a few do/en years before the rebellious soul of their countryman, Vuong Thuc Man, 15 found repose in its waters. Responding to the call of the Can Vuong movement, Man had formed a large guerilla unit and hit the enemy. The last battle of his life occurred in the streets of the village. When Mau was sci/.ed, he cursed his captors, tore himself free, and dived into the pond. His hands were tied behind his back, and he drowned.

p All Cimlien revered Hoang Suan Hanh, a man-legend who was the uncle of Thanh’s mother. He had fought bravely in Hoang Hoa Tham’s rebel detachment, and was seized when he came home. Tortured right before Nghe-an’s provincial governor, he bit ofl part of his tongue and did not betray any of his comrades. He was banished to death island Poulo Condore. But he did not die. Alter serving the term of his exile, mute and sick, he returned to his native village and was, to the end of his days, a faithful comrade of all patriotic villagers.

p Thanh heard from his father of his famous relatives and fellowvillagers, and of other heroes of the glorious past and bitter present of his country. His first school teacher Vuong Thuc Qui, the eldest son of a rebel chief, told him tales out of history.

p Vuong had sworn revenge on his father’s grave. He became a highly educated man. He passed his civil service examinations, and started a primary school on returning to his native village. He cultivated in his pupils love of country and knowledge of its heroic history. Ho Chi Minh remembered Vuong all his life with deep warmth. When he was a professional revolutionary, he had, indeed, used the name Vuong as one of his many party aliases in remembrance of his first teacher.

p Thanh and his childhood friends wanted to know the surrounding world. Legendary events had occurred in bygone days on the bank of the Blue River, in whose quick waters the boys found relief from the heat. When they climbed to the top of the hill outside the village, a breathtaking view opened before them.

p Northward, they saw a hill where, as legend had it, the chief of one of the biggest uprisings against the rule of the Celestial Empire, Mai Hak Du, was born. This uprising in the year 722 culminated in victory, with the Chinese feudal lords being driven out of Vietnam for a time.

p On the other bank of the river, almost exactly opposite the hill on which the boys were standing, lay the native village of Fhan Dinh Phung, the memory of whose guerilla army had not yet faded into the fog of time. Any grownup could tell the inquisitive boys a lot about him. They learned, for example, how he was hated and feared by the French. After he had died, brought down by sudden illness, the enemy found his grave, dug out his body, and burned it. The French loaded their rifles with his ashes, and fired them so no trace of the hero should remain on the Earth.

16

p Down the river was a string of villages where great poets had lived, one of them being the inimitable Nguyen Du.

p Beyond a twist in the stream, lay the native village of Quang Trung, whose name is known to every Vietnamese. He had been chief of the victorious peasant rebellion known as the Tay Son brothers movement. Quang Trung also won fame when, in 1789, he led his peasant detachments against Thanglong, city of the Flying Dragon (as Hanoi was called in the olden days), and drove out a 200,000-strong army of invaders after a five-day battle. We read in Vietnamese chronicles that the invaders fled.

p Thanh had never been in Hanoi. But he knew from stories that a temple had been built on one of its hills where the historic battle had taken place in honour of Quang Trung’s great victory.

p The boys liked climbing the low hills around the village, where, in the thickets, they came upon time-worn rocks, the remnants of old fortresses. The fortresses had been built in the early 15th century by kings Ho Quy Ly and Ho Han Thuong, to block the way south for the Ming armies.

p Some time later, Le Loi, son of a fisherman, came here with his men. From here, after establishing control over the province, he led his men north against Chinese feudal lords who had seized the land. He routed them, and liberated the country.

p Learning more about the history of his country, Thanh recalled the sad questions he had asked his father. Now he was able to reply to them himself: Vietnam had known times of glory, Vie’tnam had its great heroes, for nearly a thousand years, at intervals, Vietnam had been ruled by Chinese feudal lords, but never submitted. It squared its powerful shoulders and threw off the chains of slavery. These days, too, the boy knew, there were as many heroes as there had been in the past. Only there was no one to unite them, no one to give them arms.

p Old Uncle Dien, the village smith, was a favourite among the children. Thanh often visited the smithy to watch Uncle Dien swing his sledgehammer, sometimes helping with the bellows. One summer night, after the heat had receded, the children gathered round Uncle Dien. He lit his long bamboo pipe, and began telling them one of his tales.

p The splendid lake in Hanoi, the northern capital, Uncle Dien said, was called Lake of the Returned Sword. A pagoda rose out of the water at its centre, called Turtle Pagoda.

p “The story of the Turtle Pagoda and the Sword will take your breath away,” Uncle Dien added. "Long long ago, before the French had come, our land was overrun by a people who called their country the Middle Kingdom. We Vietnamese finally lost patience, and rose up against them. A poor fisherman, Le Loi, was the people’s leader. Magic powers made him undefeatable. One day, when he was crossing the lake 17 in a boat, the head of a huge turtle appeared out of the water. It held a sword that was radiating light. ’Take this magic sword,’ the turtle said, ’it will help you crush all enemies.’

p “Le Loi took the sword, and thereupon succeeded in beating all foreign invaders, thus liberating our country. Then Le Loi and his comrades went to the lake to thank the turtle . As the boat reached the middle of the lake, his ama/ed retinue saw the sword leave its scabbard, and the turtle, whose head appeared out of the water, took it back to the bottom of the lake. Lver since then, the lake has been called Lake of the Returned Sword."

p Old Uncle Dien said the turtle was still there and still had the magic sword. He also said that if the Vietnamese ever found themselves in trouble, some brave man would come, and the sacred mistress of the Lake would give him the magic sword again.

Thanh reflected on Uncle Dien’s story. "It’s a fairy-talc”, he would say to himself, "but there must have been something that helped Le Loi rally the nation and beat the powerful enemy."

3

p The road to the ruins of the old fortresses, where Thanh and his friends liked to roam, passed through the village of Dan Nhicn. A fine man lived there by the name of Phan Boi Chau: Thanh knew him, he was his father’s friend and had visited their house several times.

p Everybody spoke of Phan’s extraordinary life, his extraordinary abilities and gifts. At the national civil service examinations in Hue in 1900, he had won the title of dainguen, which was the top academic degree bestowed each time on just one examinee the first among equals. Phan could have had a brilliant court career. But he refused to serve a throne that had betrayed the nation’s interests. He devoted himself to revolutionary activity.

p He travelled a lot about the country, met patriotic officials, scholars and students, and, taking advantage of his academic title, tried to win over some of the emperor’s retinue. Prince Cuong De was one of those whom Phan won over. In May 1904 he formed the secret Renovation Society, with Prince Cuong De at its head. At the constituent conference, it was decided to prepare for an armed rising against the colonial authorities and to restore a true Vietnamese monarchy.

p It was also decided to appeal for aid to the Japanese. This idea was prompted by the results of the Russo-Japanese war: a great power, tsarist Russia, had been defeated by a small Asian country that had a short time before been only a little stronger than Vietnam and barely escaped 18 becoming a colony. Asiatics, the Vietnamese nationalists concluded, were quite strong enough to drive out Westerners.

p Thanh respected Phan Boi Chau, a distinguished member of the scholarly estate, and a man of great charm. Whenever Phan came to visit Thanh’s father, the boy listened respectfully to their learned talk. Phan liked to recite Chu Yuan, an ancient Chinese poet. Thanh remembered two lines that struck a special chord in his heart:

p It is hard to breathe, I keep back tears,
For I grieve over the pain of my people.

p Phan himself was a poet, though, of course, all educated people wrote poetry in those days. Because of the specific qualities of the Vietnamese language a language of tonalities, with a lot of rhyming words, and hallowed by literary traditions that went back to remote ages. Though Phan’s poetry followed the old poetic canons, one clearly felt in it the breath of the new age, a patriotic spirit and combative mood.

p The last time Thanh saw Phan had been in early 1905. Six months had passed since then. People said Phan had gone abroad, probably to Japan. Then, one hot July day, lying in his hammock, Thanh saw Phan’s familiar figure approaching their house.

p Phan inquired about Thanh’s father.

p “Father is in town,” Thanh’s elder brother replied.

p “Well, it’s you who I really wanted to see,” Phan said to the boys. He tapped Thanh’s shoulder, and observed that he had grown. That was true Thanh was fairly tall for a Vietnamese. "I’ve just returned from Japan,” Phan said. "I met people from the Emperor’s court there, and got to know some forward-looking Chinese exiles. I hope you’ve heard ot K’ang Yuwei and Liang Ch’ichao? They’re fighting for reforms and a constitutional monarchy in imperial China. I had a talk with young Dr. Sun Yatsen, the rising star of the Chinese patriotic movement. Japanese and Chinese friends support our just cause. All Asia is on our side. But to beat the French, we must have educated people. So we’ve decided to pick a group of fine young men and have them study at Japanese universities. I said to myself you two would be a fine choice. How about it, boys?"

p The two brothers listened to the guest in silence. When he finished, they glanced at each other surreptitiously and lowered their heads.

p “If you could only see that great country, Japan,” Phan continued enthusiastically. "Out of all the countries of the yellow race, Japan is the only great power. Japan alone can help us regain our freedom. We’ll never succeed without outside help. Today, all true patriots must turn their eyes to the Empire of the Rising Sun."

p Thanh thanked Phan for his kind offer, but said he and his brother 19 could not leave their lather, whose health was failing. "Besides,” Thanh added, "we cannot venture on so important a thing without his blessing."

p Phan said there was still time for them to think over his proposal.

p The boys’ reference to their father had been an excuse. It was not thoughts of his lather that were holding back Thanh. Though at fifteen it is very hard to withstand the lure of foreign lands, and though Thanh respected Phan Boi Chau, he would not agree with his plan. Uncle Phan meant to liberate the country with the help of influential mandarins and members of the royal house. Yet all of those people were living a life of plenty under French rule. Nor did Thanh trust the Japanese. As people said, it was like driving the tiger out by the front door and letting the panther in through the back door.

p Thanh was right. Soon, Phan’s illusions were shattered. The imperialist powers came to terms when the activity of Vietnamese patriots in Japan grew to dangerous proportions. In 1908, at the request of the French, tin-Japanese government closed clown all the organisations that Phan had formed in Japan. Phan, Prince Cuong DC, and other prominent members of patriotic organisations, were ordered out of Japan.

p What was to be done? Which was the way to freedom? Perhaps Phan Chu Trinh, another bright star that had risen then in colonial Vietnam, was right? Thanh’s father said he was a bitter opponent of the royal house and called for republican government. Yet he was not opposed to the colonialists, and only demanded some socio-economic reforms.

p Thanh looked for the answers in books. One day, he came upon Jean Jacques Rousseau’s works. He picked up one of the volumes. It was difficult reading. Thanh did not understand most of it. But he discovered simple verities on almost every page. Like precious pearls on the bottom of the ocean, arousing the imagination: man is born free, yet is kept in chains everywhere; to renounce liberty means to renounce human dignity and human rights; the strongest is never strong enough to always rule; if a nation can throw off the yoke and does so, it does right. Out of these dissociated thoughts a real programme of action appeared. A programme of struggle lor freedom. Thanh was impressed by the spirit of freedom, free thought, contempt for traditional canons and dogmas, and the militant atheism, that imbued the book. He was excited by its calls for liberty, equality, and fraternity. He kept asking himself: how could Rousseau’s countrymen oppress his people so cruelly? He also wondered if the present order of things would ever change.

Where to find the magic sword, the all-powerful truth that would show the way to the liberation of the Vietnamese nation, the offspring of mythical parents, the Dragon and the Fairy, a nation with heroic traditions and worthy of a far better late?

20

4

p At the end of 1904, Thanh’s father received strirt orders from the royal court to take an official post in Hue. He took his two sons along, and left the daughter at home. For more than a century, Hue, a modestsized city in the centre of Vietnam, had been the residence of Vietnamese emperors. Royal palaces and ancient pagodas were scattered on the hilly green banks of the River of Fragrance, one of the most beautiful of Vietnam’s rivers, so called because it had its source in the pinewoods of the Triongshon range where fragrant medicinal herbs grew in abundance, lending their sweet aroma to the waters of the stream.

p In Hue, Thanh and his elder brother were enrolled at a newly opened school, Dong Ba, where they were taught French and literature. On finishing it, the brothers were admitted to Qiioc Hoc National College.

p The college was quartered in a former royal marines barracks. On top of the massive gate was an observation tower and a bell, like those in pagodas, with porcelain dragons standing guard on both sides ol the entrance.

p National College was then considered the finest educational establishment in Vietnam. The word “national” meant that the doors of the college were open to those who wanted a Vietnamese as well as a Western education. The college courses were in quoc-ngue, based on the Latin alphabet that had at the turn of the century replaced the old characters. There was also a special class where young people were taught in the ancient classical tradition.

p In its early years, a certain Nordemand, a businessman by profession, was director of the college. Married to a Vietnamese, he knew the language and was called Nguo Da Mang in the Vietnamese vernacular. Later, the office went to a Monsieur Lojoux, a Foreign Legion officer. He was the butt of jokes among Vietnamese patriots. For he had fought against Hoang Hoa Tham’s guerillas, had been captured, and spent several months in a guerilla jungle camp. There he went about barefooted like the guerillas, carried water, and milled rice. The stories of how Tham had made the "master race" labour in the sweat of its brow was widely circulated and gave much pleasure to young Vietnamese.

p Thanh soon saw the college was meant to bring up loyal servants for the colonialists, and was depressed over the ways that reigned there.

p The time of Thanh’s education coincided with that period in world history which Lenin described as "the beginning of the awakening of Asia" when the nations of the Orient came into motion under the impact of the Russian 1905 revolution. In Vietnam, too, the national liberation movement gathered momentum.

21

p Stormy events were unfolding outside the college gates, evoking a lively response in Thanh arid other students. In the spring of 1908, Thanh received his first lesson in political struggle. A campaign for the " renovation of the life and morals of the nation" was started in the country by the followers of Phan Boi Chan. Men who wore the long Manchu pigtails had their hair cut. People were urged to wear modern clothes, give up old customs, establish purely Vietnamese schools and trading firms, and to buy nothing but Vietnamese wares. Members of the Renovation Movement distributed proclamations exposing corrupt taxation practices and urging people to refuse to pay taxes.

p Disturbances spread throughout Central Vietnam. Peasants in their thousands streamed into Hue from neighbouring countries. The Renovators established special posts along the roads leading into the city, where hair was cut forcibly and long clothes were shortened. The peasants, many of whom had come with their families, carrying straw mats to sleep on, a supply of rice, and cooking utensils, set up camp on the bridge across Fragrance River, round the French governor’s residence, the court house, and on the sidewalks downtown. For three days and nights they waited for their demands for lower taxes and abolition of forced labour to be granted.

p Some college students joined the demonstrators. Thanh was at their head. He said to his mates: "Our countrymen are asking the French to repeal taxes. It’s our duty to help them, because we know French."

p Thanh and his friends went from group to group, reciting patrioticpoetry and urging the peasants to stand their ground. Townsmen gave the peasants tea and water. People relished the atmosphere of national solidarity. They called each other by a new, recently coined word, dong bao, countryman, which had the sound of music for the ears of patriots.

p The French authorities, troubled by the unrest, tried to manipulate eight-year-old Emperor Duy Tanh into prevailing on the demonstrators to go home. A four-horse carriage drove out of the grounds of the imperial palace with a mounted guard on both sides. But no one would listen to the boy emperor. True, his carriage was allowed to proceed, but the aroused peasants made the guard and the other carriages’that followed the emperor’s turn back. The French stayed in their homes. They were afraid to venture into the streets. The demonstrators became actual masters of the capital. But on the third day, troops summoned by the governor arrived, and the slaughter began. French soldiers opened fire pointblank on unarmed crowds. A hand-to-hand skirmish broke out on the bridge. Bodies of the killed were thrown into the river. The peasants, in despair, threw themselves upon the French soldiers and pulled them along into the water underneath.

p Many college students, too, and especially their leader, came to grips 22 with the soldiers. Bui Thanh managed to avoid arrest, and found refugein the house of a friend of the family. ’The next morning he attended classes as usual.

p Bui soon a French officer with a few soldiers appeared. Accompanied by the college director, they came to Thanh’s class.

p ”We want a siudent of this class a tallish boy and dark,” the officer dec-hired. (Thanh was, indeed, fairly tall, and, being a villager, strongly tanned.)

p The officer added: ”I have been ordered to demand that he be expelled at once."
 

p The several days of the popular demonstration had been equivalent in impact to years of quiet living in Thanh’s (Jolclcn Lotus village. Previously, the suffering and mood of the people had been for him an abstract thing. Now life was delivering severe, grim, useful lessons each day. He thought bitterly of the many patriotic movements that had led to no thing”, the royalist Clan Vuong Movement, the (Jo Hast Movement, and the Renovation Society. All of them had been suppressed by force of arms. And after each such defeat, the colonial authorities only tightened their grip.

p For young men entering life, encounters with evil and violence are always a crossroads. Some are gripped by fear: their spirit weakens, they withdraw into themselves, they slop resisting evil. Those whose spirit is stronger, become seasoned fighters. They turn into revolutionaries and will not spare themselves in the fight for the people’s freedom.

p Lighteen-year-old Thanh knew the road he would follow. His previous life had prepared him. His childhood was over. Independent adult life awaited. From now on, he would live the life of the people and champion the people’s interests. It was time to go to the plain people, to work, to gather experience. Thanh set out on a wandering tour around the country. He wanted to see things for himself.

p From Hue he headed south along the shore of the South China Sea. In those days there were no trains, and only few roads. People travelled mainly on fool, or in boats along the shore. Thanh followed the footpaths, stopping over from time to time for a month or two in seaside towns or villages. In Quinhon he passed a village teacher’s examination. But when the list reached the French resident for endorsement, the latter struck out Thanh’s name for lie was under police surveillance.

p Having travelled some 500 kilometres by the end of 1910, Thanh arrived in the city of Phan Thiet. Here he stayed with a friend of his father’s, an old patriot and teacher, who helped the young man find a teaching job in a recently opened private school. 1 he school, established by local scholars, was known as the most progressive in Central Vietnam.

23

p Thanh had the second and third forms. He wore the traditional while gown and an orange belt, and wooden sandals on his feel as he entered the classroom. Kach morning, he called on two boys and two girls to recite sad quatrains Irom the popular anthology of the Tonkin Public School, an educational society founded by patriots in Hanoi in 1907.

p Oh. Heaven! daii’t vou see our .\ujjenng:’
The nation /.v in chains, languishing in grief.
Foreigners have doomed it to hunger,
They’re robbed it of eii’.rything it had.

p The young teacher taught his pupils more than ]ust reading and writing. He wanted them to be fond of their country. He wanted them to rebel against its sad fate. He cultivated them patiently and fondly like a gardener tending young saplings. Thanh hoped the knowledge he was giving them would in due course grow into a mighty oak stretching its branches to the sun of freedom.

p The young teacher was one of the first to teach the Latin alphabet. He explained things several times over at classes, never raising his voice, never punishing his pupils. He took the class out into the open at five in the morning to do physical exercises, and had a special sports lesson once a week. In those days this was an unheard-of innovation.

p On holidays, Thanh and his pupils went on long hikes. He told his young friends episodes from the history of Vietnam, about the four Tring sisters who had ridden elephants in the van of the troops, inspiring soldiers to fight harder, and about the generals Nguo Quen, Tran Hung Dao and Quang Trunh, who defeated the armies of the Chinese feudal lords.

p Thanh advised his pupils to read Vietnamese classics and thus learn the history and culture of their land. He drew attention to books that cultivated the sense of patriotic duty. Speaking of the famous rhymed novel, Liuk Van Thieu, by the blind poet Nguyen Din Thieu, Thanh asked the children: "There’s the following line, ’Loyalty and devotion are the two main virtues’. What can you say to that?"

p One of the boys replied: "Loyalty to the king, and devotion to Father and Mother."

p Thanh shook his head:

p “All of us have distant ancestors. The history of our country is nearly 4,000 years old. That means forty centuries, and in every century our ancestors rose up against foreign invaders, fighting for freedom and independence. That is why the main virtue of every young man is loyalty to the people, to his country. Now the second virtue: every one of you has parents, brothers and sisters. Yon must love and revere your parents, for they gave you life. The two virtues loyalty and devotion are for 24 ever linked. Love and revere your parents, be loyal to your people and country."

p In his free time, preparing himself for a life of privations, Thanh often went to the fishing villages. He helped fishermen repair their nets, asked them about their trade, and learned many new and useful things: how to determine the right tack in the open sea, how to fight seasickness, how to know a storm was about to break. Time and again, he went to sea with the fishermen, and returned with new impressions.

p He did not stay long at the school. His lust for knowledge urged him on. At the end of 1910 he moved to Saigon. There, springing a surprise on his kin, he joined a newly-opened school training merchant seamen.

p The choice of the educated young man may seem strange. But it was logical for a patriot who had set out to find his "magic sword".

p While the other youths recruited by Phan Boi Chau, went east to Japan, which they thought the prototype of the future independent Vietnam, Thanh was attracted by other things. Perhaps due to his knowledge of French history, of the great French educators, but more likely the inborn intuition of an outstanding mind. He gradually became convinced that Europe and only Europe—where so many revolutions had already occurred, including the French Revolution ol 1789 and the Paris Commune, where the exciting words liberty, equality and fraternity had first resounded, where science and technology were developing so rapidly that Europe alone was where he could pick up the requisite knowledge and learn the ways leading to his country’s liberation.

p Evidently, Thanh came to this conclusion when readingjean Jacques Rousseau. He learned from Rousseau’s Confessions that before becoming the great educator that he was, Rousseau had crisscrossed Europe for nearly ten years. That was when he learned the most important and difficult lessons of his life. The world that surrounded him was one of inequality, privation, and real calamities. His experiences enabled Rousseau to become herald of liberty, equality, and fraternity, herald of the great French Revolution.

p In an interview to the Soviet journal Ogonyok in 1923, Ho Chi Minh explained his thirst for travel: "I first heard the French words liberte, egalite, fraternile as a boy of thirteen. And at once I wanted to see the French civilisation and put my linger on whatever was behind those three words."
 

p Seen from Saigon, Europe did not look too far away. Advertisements _r oi the Chargeurs Reunis shipping firm were pasted all over the port city. The ships pictured on them were heading for Singapore, Colombo, 25 Djibouti, Port Said, Marseilles, Bordeaux and Havre. Hands for passenger boats were usually recruited in Vietnamese poris.

p One day, Thanh revealed his plan to a friend he had acquired in the three months attending the sailors’ school:

p “I’ve decided to see how people live in France and other countries, then come back and help my countrymen."

p “Where will you get all that money?"

p Thanh raised both his hands, and exclaimed: "Here’s my money I’ll work my way there and back."

p At noon on June 2, 191 1, Thanh came to the Saigon jetty romantically named Home of the Dragon. There he saw passengers boarding the Admiral Lalmiche Treville. He went up the gangway and asked if there was a job for him. Those who heard him, laughed: the frail boy with a scholarly appearance was an unlikely ship’s hand. But he would not go away, and finally a Vietnamese seaman took him to see the captain. The skipper examined Thanh skeptically, and perhaps the boy’s resolute glance and persistence prompted him to suggest that he could be a cook’s assistant. He asked for his name.

“Van Ba,” Thanh replied after a moment’s hesitation. The name meant Van the Third. Thanh had not transgressed against the truth: he really was the third child in the family.