One Dragon Descends, The Other Bleeds In The Water
This is the first of a series of posts telling the story of, and leading up to how Gia Long came to rule Vietnam, and restore the Nguyễn family to the throne as rulers of the entire Vietnam.
It all started in the year 207 BCE, when the Chinese general Zhao Tuo (Triệu Đà) seized an opportunity to create his own kingdom. Amid the chaos of the crumbling Qin dynasty, he seized sovereign control of his region from the Chinese state of Zhao, to create the Nan Yue (Nam Viet) kingdom. To the south of Nan Yue, Thục Phan, ruled over the ancient kingdom of Au Lac. Thục Phan rose to the throne as king An Duong Vuong when he defeated the last king of Van Lang, and renamed the kingdom Au Lạc. Even before the time of Zhao Tuo, the Qin Chinese empire sent many envoys to conquer Au Lac, but all failed. Until Zhao Tuo marched south …
After becoming king of Au Lạc, Thục Phan decided to construct a new capital for his land. However construction of its citadel posed to be a hugely complicated affair. When King Thục Phan started construction of the citadel, for a long period, whatever was built during the day was totally demolished at night by some invisible force. An Duong decided to organize a ceremony, during which he asked the Spirits permission to build his new capital. The River Spirit appeared in the form of a golden turtle, Kim Quy, whose advice finally led to the decision not to locate the citadel directly on top of its carapace and to build the fortifications. The long walls followed a spiral, rising in successive floors, in the shape of a conch shell, each one separated from the other by a wide moat. Building a city like this was a brilliant idea, as its moats combined with the rivers and streams in the area provided easy transport to its residents. The king named it Loa Thanh, “the citadel in the form of a conch”.
With the citadel completed the turtle spirit returned to the water. As a reward to thank the king, the turtle deity gave An Duong one of his claws, and ordered him to build a crossbow with the claw as the trigger. Together with his military engineer, An Duong built a crossbow using this claw that magically multiplied its arrows by the thousands for every single arrow shot. This was An Duong’s secret weapon, and allowed him to repeatedly defeat all Qin attempts at taking his land, including those of Zhao Tuo. Loa Thanh is located on the site of the present day village of Co Loa. Soon after completing the citadel, his new city and empire prospered.
Zhao Tuo was at a loss as to how Thuc Phan was able to defeat him, and those before him, every time. Eventually he came up with a different strategy. He got his sun Trong Thuy to marry Thục Phan’s daughter, Princess My Chau. My Chau fell head over heels in love with her husband. Vietnamese custom dictated that the husband came to live in the residence of his wife’s family, which was in the Loa Thanh royal residence in this case. Zhao Tuo couldn’t hope for a better spying opportunity than this. It wasn’t long before he found out about the miraculous claw, and informed his farther. Zhao Tuo then told Trọng Thuy to steal the miraculous claw and crossbow and replace the current one with a fake.
With this new powerful weapon Zhao Tuo immediately launched his army against Au Lac. Noticing that his crossbow had lost its magical powers, the King Thuc grabbed Mỵ Chau and fled with her mounted behind him. However he couldn’t escape Zhao’s army, because My Chau, blinded by love dropped feathers from her dress for her husband to follow.
Cornered in on one side by the sea and on the other by the Chinese army, Thuc Phan called on the Spirit of the Waters: “O, deity turtle, why have you forsaken me? Why did you betray me?” The golden turtle then appeared and replied: “I did not betray you. The traitor is sitting right behind you.” The king looked back, and realized, his daughter was the one who betrayed him! Without hesitation he drew his sword and cut hear head off, then jumped into the sea with the golden turtle.
Frantically looking for his beloved wife, Trong Thuy soon discovered her decapitated body, with her blood flowing into the sea and saw that it changed into pearls. Overcome by guilt and grief, Trong Thuy returned to the citadel where he placed the pearls in the My Chau temple and holding her body in his arms, threw himself into the Jade Well. That’s why pearls become more radiant when washed in the well’s water.
In the citadel in Co Loa there’s a small sanctuary dedicated to the cult of the Princess, represented by a boulder which worshipers dressed up into a headless female deity.
After the fall of Loa Thanh, Zhao Tuo quickly conquered the rest of Au Lac, and added it as two prefectures, Jiao Zhi and Jiu Zhen, to his Nan Yue kingdom. The new Nan Yue spanned today’s provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi of China, northernmost Vietnam and the Red River Delta in north Vietnam. About 25 years after Zhao Tuo’s death in 137 BCE, the new ruling class of China, the Han, took over control of Nan Yue. From then on, for more than a thousand years, Vietnam was ruled by China. That was until 939 CE, when Vietnam regained its independence …
References
- A Story of Vietnam by Truong Buu Lam
- Ancient Vietnam: History and Archaeology by Anne-Valerie Schweyer
- Trieu dynasty
- Nguyen lords
- Au Lac
- An Dương Vương
