Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Viet Nam News, March 24, 2003
by Anh Vu

Vietnamese culture is noted for its encouragement of learning for learning’s sake and nowhere more so than Tam Son Village in the country’s north.

Its other claim to fame is being the native village of Ngo Gia Tu, one of the founders of the Communist Party of Indochina.

Rough start

No one knows how long the Viet people have lived along this strip of land by the Ngu Huyen Khe River. Although, when archaeologists excavated parts of Tam Son Hill, they found two pottery kilns dating from the fourth and fifth centuries.

Tam Son’s natural features did not lend themselves to prosperity. Poor soil only yielded one crop of rice a year and its position, according to feng shui teachings, is not good.

Maybe this is why the local people’s tradition of hard work is legendary. It is said that once on his way home a doctor laureate saw his wife pulling up rice-seedlings; he gave up his palanquin, went to the field and worked with his wife until the harvest was finished, he then washed his feet and got home just in time to receive his guests.

Here the thirst for land was an hereditary and deep-rooted habit. People saved every penny to buy land or sold land to buy bigger estates in other areas.

Wherever they went they set up new farms and hamlets and to help their sons remember their roots they named them Son in memory of their native village.

Wherever they lived they continued to work as farmers. But thanks to their ethos of hard work, within a short space of time they had built magnificent and orderly houses.

Before 1930, half of Tam Son’s people also wove silk, supplying the market with a well-known thin fabric made of very soft silk. Tam Son then was among the richest villages in the district, with people doing business in Ha Noi and Sai Gon.

In spite of their wealth, Tam Son people maintained a modest and decent life. Most were fond of learning and their love of education was the pinnacle of cultural life for the whole province.

Tam Son produced 17 tien si (doctors) up until the 17th century, second only to Kim Doi Village which produced 25. However it had higher-graded laureates than Kim Doi with two trang nguyen (first laureate), one bang nhon (second laureate) and one tham hoa (third laureate).

The two great families of the village, Nguyen and Ngo, both had trang nguyen and most of the village’s 17 tien si belonged to these two families.

Education annals

Nguyen Quan Quang was the first trang nguyen of the nation, awarded the title when it was introduced in 1246. He achieved the status of a high-ranking mandarin but asked for an early retirement to return to his native village to live a monk-like frugal existence and devote the rest of his life to education.

When Quang passed away, the people of Tam Son made him a "tutelary god of the village", built a temple dedicated to him on Vuong Hill and a pagoda on the floor of his school. A stone shrine carved with his services to the village was erected in 1679 and still exists.

The second trang nguyen of the village, Ngo Mieu Thieu, received his laureate at the age of 20 in 1518. Like Nguyen Quan Quang, after some years as a mandarin Thieu also retired and devoted himself to teaching.

Under his guidance his two sons Ngo Dien and Ngo Dich also became tien si in 1550 and 1556 respectively. Within less than 100 years the Ngo family had five of its members become tien si, among them was one trang nguyen and one bang nhon.In the 17th century the Ngo family again had three tien si – a father and his two sons.

Although many of the Ngo family’s sons achieved great successes in their education and were appointed mandarins, they remained closely bound to the life of their native village. Most asked for early retirement to look after the training of men of talent in their village.

Tam Son’s traditional love of learning continues today. According to incomplete figures, since 1945 this village has given the country 190 graduates from different colleges and universities, and a dozen professors and doctors. Tu’s brother has four sons who are professors and two grandsons with PhDs.

Socialism rises

In the 1920s and 1930s, a new generation of patriotic people rose in Viet Nam. These young people were determined to follow the socialist waters charted by Nguyen Ai Quoc, who later became President Ho Chi Minh. One of the brightest of these young intellectuals was Ngo Gia Tu.

Giving up school as he was about to sit for the baccalaureate examinations, Tu returned to his village to establish bases for the revolution. At first he set up disguised patriotic organi-sations to train the masses and bring them into the Viet Nam Thanh Nien Cach Mang Dong Chi Hoi (Viet Nam Association of Revolutionary Youth).

Tu was sent to Canton in Guangzhou Province, China, for a political training course held by Nguyen Ai Quoc. After two months he returned to Viet Nam and founded the first communist cell in Ha Noi at the end of March 1929 and the Indochinese Communist Party in late May of the same year.

After the establishment of the Vietnamese Communist Party on February 3, 1930, Ngo Gia Tu was appointed secretary of the provisional executive committee of the party. He was arrested in Sai Gon at the end of 1930 and detained in the notorious Con Dao jail where he touted the slogan: turn the colonialist prison into a communist school.

For the people of Tam Son, Quy Mui (Year of the Goat) took on a special relevance in 1967 when President Ho Chi Minh himself honoured them with the first visit of the new year.

Many of the village’s older residents remember Uncle Ho in his familiar faded khaki uniform and rubber sandals merrily getting out of his car and waving to them. He greeted everyone in town, from the elders, to the tree-planting team and the beaming red-scarved children.

The banyan tree he planted during his visit is still there today and serves as a daily reminder to the people of their village’s notable history. — VNS