Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 453- How Real Are Vietnamese Legends? Professor Nam C. Kim and Professor John Phan.

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453- How Real Are Vietnamese Legends? Professor Nam C. Kim and Professor John Phan. · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast today.
• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have a very different kind of podcast.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have friends that are in the Anthropology business.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have Namsi Kim who's been on the podcast many times and Professor Johnny Fan who has been my co-host in our sub-series of Vietnam origins.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: I welcome both of you.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: in there to be, great to be back, hi John.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: This has got to be here.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is making me very nervous to be honest with you.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to figure out, like, get that out of the way.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I think about my time as a young man in my 20s, going through USC, the Anthropology Department, you guys would be my future icons to explain and to walk me through the history of Vietnam,
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: We often hear about all of these legends and these mythic stories that come out of the early days of Vietnam, whether it's a thousand years ago or earlier, and we hear all these stories come out, and I think today we're here to really dive into
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: the what what Nam has told me, you know, many years ago about the records, this idea of the records.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what can we see and what can we learn from things in the earth?
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now a John, we understand the records, quote, of what the records in our linguistic tracing is what we can find out that the things have moved.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to really,
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: go back in time and talk about, you know, are some of these things real?
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are some of the legends that we, you know, um, Oka and Lankun, you know, we could probably start there as the, the first, a story and all of these ideas about Goroa and, you know, our Camelot, are these things real?
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, first of all, I just want to say how much of a privilege it is to be on this podcast with the both of you.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Can you and I have done a lot of things together and, you know, I'm honored to be on your show once again.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And John, as you probably know, I've been following your work and I've been a big fan of yours for many years.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I've learned a ton from from your work.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: So to answer that question, that's a huge, huge question.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it doesn't apply just to Vietnam, and to Vietnamese history.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: It applies anywhere, really, in the world, when we talk about legends, mythical tales.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: How much of it might be rooting in reality?
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think that if it is a kind of generic answer, there's always some element of veracity in some of these stories because they come from somewhere and they usually incorporate parts of knowledge and history from a long time ago and some of those histories maybe weren't written down, maybe they were passed on through oral traditions.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there's plenty of archeological and anthropological research about this if you're interested from many parts of the world about how oral traditions are actually quite accurate in describing events environments things that existed thousands of years in the past.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I'll preface by saying that because we know this.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: it's quite possible that many of the folktales that we hear about it for Vietnamese culture have grassy.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: That being said, there are elements that we can point to and say, well, that might be hard to believe, right?
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: So if there are supernatural events or if there are stories about magical occurrences, that's going to be a little bit more difficult.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: But if we start getting into some of those stories, I think depending on how far back we're going and what is actually being described, there are intriguing ways to use records.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: And when we say records, I'm not talking about just history, I'm talking about the material record, to try to validate or substantiate elements of those stories.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And for Vietnam, I, you know, I can't speak to the deeper recesses of history, the time period that I work in, as you know, is the first millennium BCE.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And here we have a mixture of legends as well as archaeology and text within that millennium.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so that's where I'm comfortable talking a little bit more.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: But if we're going back to the,
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: the dragon and the mountains and the seas and all that.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: I can't comment on that.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, yeah, I agree with everything that Nams at first.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: I also would like to say it's great to sit down with both of you here.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's been such fun doing the Viewt Origins subseries with Kenneth and Nams.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: I've also been a huge fan of yours.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: I teach your book every year in my class, so it's great to sit down in the podcast together to discuss this stuff.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: you know, this question about like our legends real.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think the first, you know, one thing I say in my classes all the time, just to echo part of what Nam said is that like there's a difference between historical veracity and what you would call real.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like the legends are definitely real.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: In the sense that they play a role in Vietnamese culture, their part of Vietnamese identity, and
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, like, was Jesus born in the 25th of December, like did King Arthur exist?
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, these are separate questions than the role that they play in the culture that they inhabit.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, Lachlampuanoka, whom kings, all of that is real in the sense that it is truly part of our Vietnamese culture.
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: But the way in which it became part of it and this culture is very complicated and the relationship between the way in which these cultural traditions emerged, the relationship between that and actual historical events is even more complicated.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: I agree, and I want to emphasize, but Nam said about the oral tradition as a kind of historical record.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: My advisor Keith Taylor did a lot of that work, and it's super important.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so I'm emphasizing that as a caveat to say,
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're never really sure, there's always this possibility at something was transmitted early across these generations that has more ancient provenance than we can really point to with something explicit like the textual or material record.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: But from the textual perspective, the Oakland-Lachlanquin story, like so many of our stories that are important to us, is really a 15th century story.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: Um, and I would say one thing about this story, it is definitely part of the 15th century political situation, which was a very important moment in building history.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: The Vietnamese Kingdom had just come out of 20 years of Ming occupation.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: So there was a very specific social, cultural, and political moment.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: And there's this huge production of stories as a result of that.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: That takes older stories and we work them.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: That said, as Keith Taylor and Le Tanan, and I think Oscar Salamik, as well.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: Rest in peace.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: May have mentioned
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's an older current to that Lachlumquen and Oko story that has to do with other stories we might talk about today, which is the contrast or the relationship between the Highlands and the Lowlands.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: So Lachlumquen is a water deity.
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: He's a water dragon.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oko is a mountain spirit.
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: She's a fairy or an immortal, but associated with the mountains or the Highlands, or at least something that's contrasting with the Lowland or the Wetland.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: So there's a kind of, you can detect a more ancient contrast between the highlands and the lowlands that we see in other stories like certain things we think, for example.
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that might be this thing, I think, you know, that nam is pointing out.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like it might be a kind of cultural memory.
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: that survives through oral tradition that then is reinterpreted and composed into a new story in the 15th century.
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: John, there was so much in what you said that I wanted to I've been writing down things and I wanted to respond to them because it's fascinating and by the way this this is really really fun for me because I've had conversations separate conversations with both of you about a lot of these these kinds of topics and so to have this now in this space but the three of
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is, this is great.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is a lot of fun.
• 8:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: But what you were talking about, John, that I really appreciate it was how these stories have been curated by different communities and different societies for various reasons, various cultural motivations, various political motivations.
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: and clearly they come from a very deeper ancient space, but they continue the echo across centuries across millennia.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And as they echo, they're going through this sort of game of telephone, right, where people change, maybe they add or they subtract details, and they reflect the times that they're living in at that moment, and it kind of suits whatever purposes they might have had.
• 9:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I like what you also said about this contrast between Upland and Lola, because the topography has not changed.
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: The geographies are similar, and it's quite likely that the kinds of societies that inhabited those spaces would have had perceptions about these environments.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: about what it means to live in the delta, what it means to farm, what rice farming, what it means to have certain kinds of environments versus other environments where you have different kinds of subsistence practices, and maybe there are sorts of cultural perceptions about this, we're civilized, we do farming, you don't.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: And maybe those kinds of perceptions bleed into the political as well.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so whatever we see in the sorts of medieval periods of Vietnamese history or in the modern, might have been going on many, many centuries prior to that as well.
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just different players and different actors, but the situations might have been kind of analogous.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the larger thrust of this is, you know, there's an agency to those stories.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: because they do persist and they take on these different meanings and the lives of their own as generated by the people who are receiving them and spreading them and using them.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I think that's fascinating and super interesting and I agree, you know, one of the, I have two simultaneous thoughts.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: So the first thought is that
• 11:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's amazing how a structure like Highland versus Lowland, something that persists can persist and be a kind of linkage between the way we think about things or the way we perceive things or the stories we tell in this century versus that century.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: And it's also amazing how very different as you say the actors or the people in these particular spaces can change.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: So just over the lip of a mountain for X century,
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: would have been perceived as savage, and then just a little bit later, that is a center of culture and civilization, even though it's a little high or a little low.
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: The capacity for humans to change the geography that the living is also very powerful.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and I think, you know, one thing that, as we start to talk about these stories, the specific stories and their relationship to the material or linguistic or historical record, I think the other capacity just want to emphasize again is how much we are just we are only paying attention to, you know, give in moment what we care about or like how, how a set of facts relates to our particular time, you know, and it's always good to remember things like.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: how different a particular figure is viewed.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, like, for example, the two sisters in for so many centuries were savages, and then they become heroines, you know, and someone like Maya and or someone like Jowtowal is for so many centuries and ancestor or like a venerated figure, and then turns out to be an invader at a certain point.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, the capacitor for humans to rewrite our own stories is basically limitless, you know?
• 12:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that's what I want to say.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Can I ask a question about that?
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I don't know that much about how these perceptions of these historical figures have changed and one day you've changed.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: So you mentioned something that I find very interesting.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: The view of Hyba Chung as savages and then becoming heroines and vice versa when we're talking about Joutou and Mavi,
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, when, when does that happen?
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: How does that shift take place?
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, the first thing I want to say it, why if you're asking specifically about how I can, so the first thing I will say is that the idea that they have been venerated as, as like freedom fighters is, it's not even a 15th century intervention.
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's like a, like a modern invention.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: representatives in the long line of Vietnamese freedom fighters is very modern phenomenon for sure.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: And one way to track this is to look at who is worshiped, you know, who is worshiped as a figure.
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: and Ma Yuan is the one that's worshiped for a long time.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: And especially if you look at someone like Shingyip, Shushyip, although this is a little speculatory because Shushyip left no writings that talk specifically about how he felt about the Jung sisters or Ma Viet Ma Yuan.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like certainly as a confusion governor of the Han.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: who is trying to maintain order as the Han Dynasty is falling.
• 14:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: Though he is, I think, a six-generation Zouti person, you know.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: Those things are not in contrast for him.
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: And for him, I think it's very safe to speculate that he would have culturally felt much closer to magia than to the Jung sisters.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: The Jung sisters would have been an example of unrest for him, you know.
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: And magia would have been an example of someone who restores order.
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: in here, personal culture.
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: And even when we get to reach on dynasties, figures like Tio Dass and Mavian are the ones that are venerated.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, the junstisters, as you pointed out, there's evidence that the junstisters survive in a cult worship.
• 15:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, like, uh, yeah.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: And, and, and the, the Qing sisters are also, uh, that cold is also represented.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's like a lot of Southeast Asian, like twin female or like sisters' cults.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: And it seems like it, and the Qing sisters might fit into a broader worship of that type.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: But they're not state heroes, they're powerful spirits, and that's a totally different kind of, they're changed into a state hero later on.
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so that's actually part of my follow-up question.
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: When you say venerated and maybe castigated or viewed negatively, there's a sort of monolithic perspective here that maybe is born by the state as opposed to, we're not talking about everybody within the Reverend River Delta,
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're looking at different communities of people who have probably very different views about whether they should be governed by this entity or not governed if they should be independent.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Whatever the case might have been.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there might have been different communities that had very different ideas about the role that the Trump system has played.
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, 100%.
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think that it's a really, really important point.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're not talking about a single society, but I do think that when sometimes this idea is raised with the sneak, like a little sneaking idea that maybe like the real Vietnamese are like these peasants who who's worship, high-baked, and don't worship mavian.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that just emerges as like the true Vietnamese culture by the modern period, and I would argue against that idea.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because actually the people who create the modern culture, high-biking as freedom fighters, are part of the political elite.
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: And they have, and it's exactly...
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: That the transformation of the political elite that I'm talking about.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: So like different popular cults exist and And they have always existed.
• 16:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think to NAMM's point in a great diversity of forms of worship, but if but I think and this is like this is my favorite so bucks as I'm you know Kenneth knows Like like that the
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: That like the mission to identify what is truly Vietnamese and what is truly Chinese going back centuries is I think a really poisonous thing like You know, we we keep on confusing ourselves by doing that and like very often
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, the, you know, those lines cross over and over and over again, you know, like over history.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: And this example that it's the political elite who are in shrining high back in the, in the 19th and 20th centuries is a good example of that.
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's not like like these, you know, like these village, these villagers in, in the rural hinterland that all of a sudden say, no, this is what we've been worshiping all along and this needs to be enthrined, you know, and in fact, in many of those areas, when we speculate, I think with great credibility that,
• 17:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: that there, you know, alongside Haibachin, you know, there's cults to, yeah, there's cults to a mavi, and there's all these types of cults.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: And the real difference is that in like the Huangtaing, the kind of local, tutelary god kind of worship,
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: They're not political.
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: They're just they're thought of as powerful spirits.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: I've thought of powerful protective spirits.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: And the moment when those enter into the political realm is the gen dynasty, that in the gen when the viety and ooling that was written because the Mongols are invading.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: So the the king goes around to all these little cults.
• 18:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: all these little, and then he's like, who is the most powerful spirit in this area?
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: And if they're that powerful, let's give them an official title and bring them into the spiritual service of the empire or the kingdom, because we're under this massive attack.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, yeah, I mean, the diversity, yes, it's so interesting.
• 18:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, the reality is high-buddhum,
• 18:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: come from a source that is almost politicized, right?
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like much later, and they were savages before, and all of a sudden they become heroes or deity or people that, like the script is completely flipped.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, well, I mean, I guess I want to say one thing,
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: NAMM's point is really right, like they are savages from a particular perspective, and that is the perspective of cynic rulers of the region, right, and at the same time as they are.
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: viewed as, as I would maybe not savages but like rebels, you know.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: So like in the lists of the great leaders of the of the of the area like when you get to the leet and a lay dynasty they're not listed but jowtow has listed.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: Maavian has listed.
• 19:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: Seeing yip has listed.
• 19:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: Those types of people are listed.
• 19:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: But high by jing are not listed.
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: But in good, in the link up they are, there's a story of them.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, the story is is recorded there and it probably does correlate to some kind of persistent
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: cult and the kernel of that story as with many of those stories isn't that they fought for the freedom of Vietnam It's that there was a great
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, there was a great violence and a great kind of emotional, a spiritual sort of set of events that had such, that had spiritual potency.
• 20:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: And for that reason, they seem to linger and have an effect in the area.
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, so all of the stories in Bid and Ewing Tape, even when they overlap with political stories, like Aung Zun, Vuong, et cetera, the thing that really gets them to be a call is that there's some kind of,
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: there's kind of some kind of spiritual potency, some kind of tragedy, you know, some deeply emotional spiritual thing that then persists, you know, like, you can think of them as ghost stories, you know, like unfinished business or something like that per gives them the platform to become,
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: this spiritual figure, you know, and that's like a very different thing.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: It speaks exactly to what Nam was saying about the difference, like the different communities that are that are thinking about worshiping or interacting with these figures.
• 21:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: And they almost, the one almost has nothing to do with the other, you know.
• 21:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this is fascinating to me.
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I guess one one observation or question is,
• 21:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: If they are viewed as rebels by certain entities or certain parties, maybe by those that are in control.
• 21:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: the fact that and I don't know how accurate these details are, but it seems as though they when they let the uprising, they attack many, many, I mean, dozens that apparently of strong holds and citadel and destroyed them.
• 21:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: And my, my suspicion then is for those that are part of that,
• 21:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that endeavor, they're viewed as leaders in heroes because they are leading this rebellion against an oppressive force.
• 22:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 22:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so there are probably many kinds of perspectives about them and different people have different ideas of what they're doing and whether it's legitimate or illegitimate.
• 22:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I can see how that like any political time you're living and things are going to always going to be complicated with various viewpoints.
• 22:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: how much of those details can we can we put stock into?
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: So what do the tech say about what they actually did?
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: And what do we think about that?
• 22:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I'm so big question.
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: I would like, you know, this is one of the things I would I want to talk to Nama about because this is a place where I think both Nama and I have thought a lot about the
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: correlation between the historical and material record, because the material record, I know now you've worked so much on the material record of gold law just before this moment and then, you know, and then this moment as well.
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I'd love to hear what the material record says about this moment.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: The historical record for high-by-cheng is way better than the historical record for Anzun-Vlo and Gola.
• 23:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Gola is not even named until many centuries later, but the Juncisters are named in the Han record.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: So we have an almost
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, an almost contemporaneous, you know, it's written later, but it is as close almost as we can get to the event.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: And we have two accounts of it, you know, in the book of later, Han.
• 23:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: So we have account of it in, like sort of the barbarian treatise, which is about the ginsisters themselves, and then we have an account of it in Mayuens biography.
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: So two versions of the story, and they corroborate with one another very well.
• 23:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think that, you know, with any of these historical records, obviously this is something that's written slightly later based on primary text.
• 23:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: So the way we understand it is that they had maybe memorials and commands and accounts and then that is compiled and then rewritten into the historical record.
• 24:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: But nevertheless, it is a very valuable record and almost in the time, and the details are pretty clear.
• 24:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, like as Nama said, you know, they do overrun many, many commanders, you know, all the way up into, you know, both south and north of the Red River plain.
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then the other really important detail I think to mention is that when they're defeated, Maoyan kills thousands of people.
• 24:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like he kills a huge number of the leadership of whatever this rebellion is.
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that's, you know, let's deploy and I wanna emphasize because when we think about a story like this, going back to the early part of our conversation, I think there's two things to bear in mind.
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: One is that the architecture of the story
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: different things to us in different moments of time.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that means we can identify with different actors in the story, depending on who we are and in what time we're living.
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: So in X time, maybe we're identifying with the people who are being attacked by Hibachin.
• 25:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: And in another time, maybe all of a sudden, we're like, no, we are Hibachin, you know?
• 25:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: So like, are you Luke Skywalker or are you Darth Vader?
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: It depends on where you are in your life.
• 25:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: Maybe you're identifying with one or the other.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: who the Vietnamese identified with, and you can't see me because this is a podcast, but I'm putting Vietnamese in square quotes, like who the Vietnamese identified with in that story is consistent over the centuries of history, and it's not, that's the main point I'm trying to write.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, and many Vietnamese of different classes would not have identified with Hayback Jung, you know, in large tracks of history.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: And the other point I want to make,
• 25:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: And this is where I want to ask some questions about the material record, because now I'm you and I have talked about Catholic church and work a lot.
• 25:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: But you know, the evidence of the Domson material record after the first century, in the second century, third centuries,
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, and this is where I would like now, you know, I'd love none for you to speak more about what happens to that record because as far as I understand it, it does basically disappear or move north and east.
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that poses a really important question about what happens to the society of the Red River plane after the Jung Sisters rebellion.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: We all, you know, the nationalist story is that
• 26:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: that they are Vietnamese and the Vietnamese persistent that region, but then we have historical and potentially a material indication that whatever society that they represented, the elite of that society is essentially eradicated.
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: So what I'd like to ask NAM about is what does the material record say about domesal and material elite culture, you know, like in the centuries following the Han
• 26:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I want to answer your question, but I also want to talk a little bit more about what you've just said because there's a lot to absorb here.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: The short answer for the question about don't sun the material culture is that we do see elements persisting, right?
• 27:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, there is this idea, there are a couple of ideas where folks have pointed to the annexation of the Red River Delta area.
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: At the Ascribe Data 1-11 BCE, by the Han.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the reality from the material record is just because they describe this in text doesn't mean that actually things change all that much at one eleven.
• 27:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
• 27:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: We do see persistence of daily lifeways, cultural lifeways that had been there for generations prior, we see them persisting for generations.
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that doesn't seem to be a major turning point.
• 27:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: Right.
• 27:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: Not one 11, right?
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: But not one 11.
• 27:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: The gene sisters is in 43, right?
• 27:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: So it is for, yeah, it's later.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we're talking now in the next century or the next two centuries later, there does seem to be more of a sea change at that point.
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it appears, it doesn't appear that things change completely overnight, because my understanding of the material record, at least for parts of Buckbowl.
• 28:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: is that the don't-sun cultural practices don't disappear.
• 28:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: They continue.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: They persist.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: There is a growing kind of hybrid culture if you want to call it that.
• 28:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Han-viet or Viet Han kinds of cultural practices.
• 28:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we see this reflected in Brickstot Han Brick tombs.
• 28:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
• 28:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: where you have a mixture of material culture, not only on sorts of culture, but also local don't sun culture as well, what we might call Vedic culture.
• 28:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: It might be just a certain class of folks, it might be maybe the elites, but I think that maybe what we could say is those
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: with the suppression of that rebellion, either they're killed, they're scattered, or they move away.
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
• 29:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we have descriptions about the general, the great pacifier of the South Mafia, confiscating symbols of authority and power, like the bronze drawing.
• 29:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: So if that's actually all true and that's happening,
• 29:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: There is a change at the top, but with the local communities, how much does life change immediately?
• 29:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: That I'm not sure about, and I suspect because the persistence of doing some materials, that doesn't change all that much, not at least not right away.
• 29:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, can I ask you what the what the specific materials are that are found that persists?
• 29:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because what I understand is that the elite artifacts, you know, things like drums, we do find a few drums afterwards and some, I think, with Chinese characters as well, but that the main production of drums moves to
• 30:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: uh, you know, the hilly region between the red and pearl rivers and essentially out of the red river plain, right?
• 30:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 30:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 30:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: Is that right?
• 30:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: So what are the, what are the kinds of objects that you do find, say, second, third, four centuries that are, you would consider Domsonian.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't know that record quite as well.
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I would preface this by saying that I don't think when I hear my colleagues and be and I'm talking about it, I don't think it goes on to the fourth century.
• 30:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
• 30:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Most people who are referring to it, I think are referring to more utilitarian kinds of items and maybe bronzes as well that are sort of part of the typical don't-son assemblage.
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: various kinds of farming implements and maybe hunting implements, utilitarian tools, maybe styles of pottery, but those I don't think folks talking about the fourth century.
• 31:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think first and second century common era, and that's pretty much it.
• 31:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'd have to do more research to know how to answer that question more specifically.
• 31:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: That makes a lot of sense to me and it's interesting because I had a thought.
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, first second century is, makes perfect sense to me.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: When I think about it, I 100% agree with what you said.
• 31:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think even the historical record bears out what you're saying from the material record with regard to the initial conquest.
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, I mean, conquest should be in scare quotes, because the thing that was conquered in 111 BCE is non-via, is non-via.
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's not the red-word-replained specifically.
• 31:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: And the red-word-replained is kind of left to its own devices.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: The other detail in the Tune Sisters Rebellion story that is worth noting is that the impetus for the Rebellion is that Thoating the governor in Tangles Tune Tech with laws.
• 31:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: So she's angry about some kind of administrative legal thing.
• 31:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: So that means what that really suggests to me is that
• 32:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: between one-eleven BCE and 40 CE, the Han are just slowly increasingly pervacively present, starting to change laws, change customs, and in 40, Jim Chek is like, what the hell is going on?
• 32:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: This is unacceptable, and that's the beginning.
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: So you really do see a slow process between one-eleven and 40, and then if you go from 40 to 200, like to see in the Epstein, you see another, like a more rapid sort of
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, Leetana, we're getting a little in the weeds, but Leetana describes that that period is as the period in which really Zawati becomes the the important Han port city.
• 32:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
• 32:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: So like we, you know, it becomes the richest southern port of the Han in that time.
• 32:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: So it makes a lot of sense to me to see a change in the material record in the exactly those centuries.
• 32:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: The other thing I want to mention is that with regard to daily life,
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like if you look at the linguistic record, I've worked on this and Mark Elvis has worked a lot on this.
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, you know, early sign of Vietnamese is what we call it.
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, early sign of Vietnamese vocabulary.
• 33:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, let me back up and say, Mark is an excellent work about vocabilly that he believes indicates a consistency with domes and culture vocabilly around canoes and Michel Therese has done work on the word pestle and some other things.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: And but at the same time, there's no need for a but and at the same time, we see a lot of technological vocabulary in early sign of Vietnamese like acts, you know, hammer things like that.
• 33:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: So we do see, you know, like in the linguistic record also interpenetration of synetic and non-synetic, even at the, you know, this kind of basic level, not not just at the elite level.
• 33:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think that we have to imagine over those centuries.
• 33:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: not just an elite ruling on class, but like a, you know, a true sort of demographic shift, you know, in the entire region of the low map.
• 34:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I think that's an important point.
• 34:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: And my understanding is after that, that significant date of 43, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there, then in influx, folks from the north that are coming
• 34:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so beyond the changes at the top, beyond the changes of the elites and the political figures, now we have the everyday folks, the commoners that are intermingly with different populations that are coming in, from elsewhere.
• 34:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so that might be behind the major changes that are starting to happen.
• 34:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, there is, I mean, Keith Taylor has mentioned has theorized that the militia that
• 34:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: you know, they stayed in the region.
• 34:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then there are refugees from rebellion.
• 34:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then, and then that happens over.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: And when senior is in charge, you know, 150 years later, as the Han Dynasty is falling into the three kingdoms, we have historical indication that his reign was so peaceful, that people from all over the empire flocked to Zauti.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: So that he got another
• 35:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: right you know yet another wave so there's way after wave after wave yeah coming down into his out here right so i'm curious about something um we start talking about this a few minutes ago and sorry kid i don't know where he is dominating this conversation we get carried away i think no i think that's where we're here okay okay it's to watch this uh rabbit hole you know we're throwing down the rabbit hole and i'm like i fascinated
• 35:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't get a chance to ask John all these questions.
• 35:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I say, same, you know, you know, there's so few of us working on the first millennium that when we get together, it's like, it's a little too fun.
• 35:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: Hey, we get geared over it.
• 35:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: We could go on for hours, for days.
• 35:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's what the audience is here to, okay, it's a really witness.
• 35:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: The really, the, the die hards that follow John, I think they're having a, I'm, I'm, because I'm having a good time.
• 36:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, okay.
• 36:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right.
• 36:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: we should get to those legends eventually, right?
• 36:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 36:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, okay.
• 36:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, let's talk a little, let's start getting into that.
• 36:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, I want to ask, we talked earlier about these commandories, these sit-in bills that were attacked and raised during this rebellion over the course of a few years, right?
• 36:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm curious how much textual detail there might be about this.
• 36:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: To we have specific places,
• 36:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: To me, this is fertile ground and I don't know if anybody's actually done this.
• 36:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know when I ask my colleagues in Vietnam about the archaeology of this time period, about how about Jung specifically, I'm told, well, you know, in one part of Vietnam, not that far west from Hanoi, there is, I think, in the mailing area.
• 36:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: There are the remains of an earthen rampart that people speculate are part of maybe the Citadel that's associated with their headquarters or something like that.
• 37:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: But aside from that, I haven't heard any discussion, and the reason I bring this stuff is because we can point to legends and folktales and history elsewhere in the world.
• 37:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: actually that are eerily similar.
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we go back to that first century.
• 37:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: We talk about Boudica, or Boudicia in the United States.
• 37:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, he's talking about Boudica and the dancers using my class.
• 37:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's hilarious.
• 37:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: The same century they lead an uprising against the Roman Empire.
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we see actual archeological evidence of it.
• 37:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: because they're at least two settlements that they put that put it a purportedly destroys.
• 37:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: She leaves her army and destroys them.
• 37:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: And if you look at the archaeological excavations of those areas, you can act people have pointed out, you can actually see a destruction horizon, which they associate with that event.
• 38:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, it makes me wonder, can we do the same thing in Vietnam?
• 38:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, first, I just think that's so awesome that you mentioned Boudica because I literally like, when we talk about gin sisters and senior, I, I mentioned Boudica,
• 38:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: Anglo-Romanic culture, you know, I think that's the term, you know, for this, you know, sort of hybridized culture that arises in the lower part of the British Isles, you know, and then King Arthur, you know, because King Arthur is so similar to seeing yep, like as a kind of hybridized figure.
• 38:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: who is then remembered as a kind of succeeding in creating stability and otherwise really unstable time.
• 38:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: So as you mentioned, so almost contemporaneous, almost exactly contemporaneous.
• 38:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's nuts, like the parallels.
• 38:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: But for your specific question, like I need to go back to confirm what I'm about to say,
• 39:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: The hunt map of the region of the Red River Plane is very unclear until after the gym sisters.
• 39:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: So we do have like the major three commandories, right?
• 39:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: We have in the area and we present in each of those commanders presumably has a Citadel, you know?
• 39:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then, as you said, there's a number of cittitals that are mentioned, like the number, not the names, but the number of cittitals is mentioned.
• 39:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: And we do have names of places like it from all of Zouti region, which stretches from Central Vietnam all the way to the Pearl River.
• 39:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: So we do have indication that there are walled towns.
• 39:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: And actually, there's even an earlier
• 39:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: uh... nanny at times so the reason why before the jim sisters we have a less good view of the hunt is because because it was not yet and the hunt did not have an internal map of nanny
• 40:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: So all that we have is the hands understanding of NAMIya, which is not that good.
• 40:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: And all that we have from that is that there were wall towns.
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: There were wall towns, or, you know, fortified cities, whatever you want to call it, across that region.
• 40:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then that is combined with the census.
• 40:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: So the Hansen says is very clear.
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: And the Hansen says makes it very clear that the demographic center is of the entire Zoutje region from Pearl River down to Central Vietnam is Red River Plain.
• 40:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: like Reverend complain is much, much more heavily populated than the anywhere else in the area.
• 40:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: So that would suggest that if there are walled cities, there's going to be more of those in that area.
• 40:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: But this makes me raise it because I know you work, I mean, I love your book, especially you know, and your work on to go a lot, particularly so I want to ask you a lot of questions
• 40:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: Why is there no mention of Gaurah in the Han record?
• 41:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: And the junksisters do not set themselves up at Gaurah.
• 41:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: They go a little further to mailing.
• 41:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, there's all sorts of things we could say.
• 41:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Maybe Gaurah was raised to the ground at this time, and that's a real possibility.
• 41:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I would love to hear you talk about, and let me, before I post the question, I will say, there's lots of, like, I mean, in a six-century, we get references to what probably is Gaurah.
• 41:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's not called Gaurah.
• 41:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: but it's like Vietueng, Citadel or sometimes it's called Kado, Citadel, like there's some kind of Citadel there that's probably Gova, you know, but not until six century.
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so, you know, you mentioned the mailing site and we know from the historical record that that is where the Juncester set up their court.
• 41:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, I just wonder, has anyone done a kind of material comparison between mailing area and the Gova area?
• 41:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: you know, because I would love to hear, because I know from your book, really, just from your book, that there's all these crossbows and crossbow triggers and even molds for those weapons in Kola.
• 42:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: But what about, you know, further up into my link, you know, and how do you understand the difference between those two sites from the material record is the real question.
• 42:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's okay.
• 42:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: before I see your question.
• 42:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have more questions.
• 42:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know the crazy thing about this episode is what I'm realizing is how little cross research, cross referencing is happening within the anthropology field in Vietnam.
• 42:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, we get little chances to like, I'll reuse the word again, to jam solve with each other.
• 42:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like we're doing now, which is the thing that is like the funnest.
• 42:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I think we use each other.
• 42:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, like, no, your book is all over my book.
• 42:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, like, everything that has to do with Gola is basically from Nam's book in my book.
• 43:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: So we do, I think you use each other.
• 43:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there's no question.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Our research benefits from each other.
• 43:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the opportunities for us to sit down like this and just exchange, that's rare, that's rare.
• 43:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so, I can't I think you're a larger point about how few interactions there, how it's true to some extent.
• 43:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: But all the people that the genre has sort of referenced throughout this conversation, I know their work as well, and it's very important work for me.
• 43:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so we all kind of know each other, but how much we get to collaborate, that's a different story.
• 43:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, we would love to collaborate.
• 43:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I would love to collaborate with John and actually this question I have about the tomb sisters raises an interesting possibility, right?
• 43:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: if we were to hypothetically come up with a project where let's try to find the material correlates for some of these events.
• 43:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: So these historical descriptions about the sites that were part of these stories and these histories where they occurred, what sites were attacked,
• 44:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe we can find a way to marry the historical evidence with a search for the material correlates, and we do this as a sort of large scale international collaboration with our colleagues in Vietnam.
• 44:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just throwing stuff on the wall here, but to me that would be fascinating.
• 44:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: I had to love that.
• 44:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that's why I wish you were coming in the spring now.
• 44:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: We have a, we're trying to get a collaborative conference together.
• 44:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: And now I hope we'll be part of it in some way.
• 44:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: Also, this is a total on-secret or but, but the other reason we can't get together is we have no funding.
• 44:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: So if you're listening, please do drop a dollar, drop two dollars for us every cent counts.
• 44:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: Thank you so much.
• 44:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, sorry, kind of go ahead.
• 44:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: They've done.
• 44:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do have a question about this direction to kind of come together.
• 44:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: You all researchers put it all together.
• 44:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: But now I'm wondering how the Vietnamese government would feel about the things that you would like to stake in the ground and say, this is what we're
• 45:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: or will there be some real pushback?
• 45:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, for me, I think it depends on which histories you're talking about, which archaeological sites you're talking about.
• 45:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: because Vietnam is not just one person, right?
• 45:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's not just one entity.
• 45:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: You've got different provinces, you've got different authorities and different viewpoints about how history should be preserved, how it should be presented, how it should be researched.
• 45:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: What are the kinds of questions you should be asking?
• 45:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: How do you prioritize that?
• 45:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: How do you invest funding for it?
• 45:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: and how do you put things into museums and encourage people to come and learn?
• 45:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: All of that's going to depend on the specific history, the specific time period, and the specific materials.
• 46:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: That being said, I can only speak to my experience directly.
• 46:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Excavenia, goloia.
• 46:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I wasn't sure what the reaction was gonna be when I first got to Hanoi, 20 years ago as a graduate student, asking about possible collaborations between American archeologists and Vietnamese archeologists.
• 46:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And what I found was my local colleagues, even though we had just met.
• 46:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: they were very open to collaboration, and they were very open to different kinds of questions.
• 46:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: We might not have the same kinds of theoretical priorities, but where we do overlap, there's plenty of room for collaboration and differences in opinion and interpretation.
• 46:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, for example, when I proposed working at Goldwell specifically, I was interested in, you know, anthropological theories about early governments in early states and how war might be part of that sort of development process.
• 47:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: My colleagues weren't as interested in those questions, right?
• 47:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: They weren't interested in the early forms of urbanism and mainland Southeast Asia.
• 47:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: What they were interested in was, was Anzung Weng Real.
• 47:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Was there, was there in Ola Kingdom?
• 47:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: How does the site prove, how does the archeology of the site prove what they thought they already knew?
• 47:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
• 47:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: So those are different kinds of questions.
• 47:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: But we had to look at the same site, and we had to excavate the same place, and we had to get material data out of the ground to address the kinds of questions we all respectively had.
• 47:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: So from that standpoint, to answer the question you just posed, can I think they would be open?
• 47:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it all depends on how you couch the research itself.
• 47:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you came in and said, I'm looking for the material proof that the Han constructed the walls of Galois.
• 47:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: If that's how you led, right?
• 48:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure you would have a lot of support locally.
• 48:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I would say that if you have mutual interest,
• 48:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: there's plenty of potential collaboration.
• 48:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, John, if you have a different perspective on this.
• 48:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, no, I think that was really well put.
• 48:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: I agree a hundred percent.
• 48:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it goes back to the fact that, you know, like we were talking earlier, like you have to separate like cultural and political reality from historical veracity.
• 48:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: And you can't be a bully about that.
• 48:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like like Vietnamese culture is real.
• 48:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: You have to respect it.
• 48:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like you have to like,
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: You can't go in, you know, like being a bully about historical factuality to the disregard of contemporary Vietnamese culture.
• 48:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think that that is a really important thing and it's it's not as non you put it earlier It's not something that just applies to Vietnam.
• 48:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's just it's just polite like for anyone in the world It's just like a thing that you ought to do anywhere in the world and I think my experience has been the same like what you know And I say some inflammatory things in my book about Sinitic or Vedic identity, you know, but
• 49:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: But like my experience, you know, talking about the contents of my book and Vietnam has been incredibly positive.
• 49:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, if you're not going, if you're not trying to be insulting, I think that, you know, especially the scholarly community is just brilliant and creative and cutting edge and open to collaboration and, and yeah.
• 49:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: you don't need to pick a fight like, uh, uh, uh, like, it's not necessary.
• 49:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: And there's plenty of space, you know, where, uh, between our objective, whether it's so much overlap for collaboration, you know, my book is being translated.
• 49:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: I am curious how it's going to be received once it is fully readable in Vietnamese, but
• 49:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, because there is, you know, I guess even though I said what I just said, there is always some discomfort, right?
• 49:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because with any kind of deep digging, you do confront sort of assumptions about your own past and your own identity that are maybe deeply held.
• 50:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, and it's not comfortable to hold a paradox in your mind.
• 50:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's not comfortable to be a, to be raised to devout Christian and not only devout Christian, but someone who truly believed as a child that the 25th was Jesus's birthday.
• 50:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then to learn about the historical Jesus, you know, and then like that's difficult.
• 50:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's, I think, important and necessary, and to push the analogy, it doesn't necessarily need to lead to a crisis of faith.
• 50:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: you know, you don't have to stop being a Christian because you learn more about the historical Jesus.
• 50:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: It could in fact have the opposite effect.
• 50:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that's what I say in my classes all the time.
• 50:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like we are breaking down national identity in our class, but in the end I hope that it will deepen you know, your appreciation for Vietnamese identity and culture.
• 50:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: But that is, it is uncomfortable and it's difficult.
• 50:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so there's there are always moments along that pathway that there's the potential for kind of that discomfort.
• 50:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 50:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's so, but I we welcome warrior.
• 50:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a really good point, John.
• 51:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: This whole, you know, maybe years of I learned that before the actual cyclical side of the birth of Christ and the resurrection of Christ.
• 51:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: These are agricultural patterns that maybe 20 deities before Jesus Christ was institutionalized in the Catholic faith, perhaps.
• 51:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you're right, it doesn't take away from my meditations of life, right, the birth and the death of Christ.
• 51:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: To know that
• 51:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: that could have been built on many stories, 20 stories of sun gods that came from the Egyptian sort of culture or Babylonian, you know, whatever you name it.
• 51:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think learning more about Vietnamese culture day in and day out has also given me this sort of this perspective that things are changing and it's okay to hold three or four different things that are different from each other.
• 52:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, and just kind of like sit on it and think about that all competing with each other and being okay with it.
• 52:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and I think if I can just jump in again, because you just maybe have a thought, which is that like, you know, we were talking about how stories are reinvented over time, you know, like
• 52:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: You just may be thinking that, you know, we can imagine how like the psychology that moment in a very personal way like maybe, you know, this intellectual or that figure or that person at a different moment in history is rereading the story, you know, and like they're having that moment they're like,
• 52:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: They're like, feeling uncomfortable about their own understanding of Vietnamese history, of Vietnamese past, and then something in, when they re-read at this time, it strikes them differently.
• 52:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, it just resonates differently.
• 52:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that is, that is how culture is created or changed, right?
• 52:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like they now,
• 52:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: are reacting to that story differently and they're interpreting it differently.
• 52:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: It means something different to them and then, you know, that different meaning starts to spread, you know, like, I think it's a very natural process.
• 53:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: And when you think about it that way, then you get a sense of richness, you know, from these stories, you know, that I think is precious.
• 53:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 53:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I totally agree with everything both of you are saying and I I think it brings to mind how choices are being made, right?
• 53:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: So when these stories come to us and we interpret, we analyze and then we disseminate.
• 53:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're making choices because the lens that we are using is a sort of product of the time that we're living in.
• 53:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it's also what we choose to promote what we choose to bring forward and to record for posterity.
• 53:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's of conscious decision.
• 53:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there are certain things we're leaving out because you can't record every single detail.
• 53:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you're going to promote one view versus another.
• 53:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Those are all conscious choices or subconscious choices.
• 53:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's subjectivity that's happening.
• 53:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's unavoidable, right?
• 54:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it is very much a product of the time.
• 54:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: I had a question that I want to come back to for John.
• 54:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Earlier, you mentioned two things.
• 54:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I want to ask about those two things.
• 54:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: One was the phrase, wall town, is that the, is the etymology for tank full, for city, right, in Vietnamese, does that come from that idea, that concept?
• 54:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: The tank part does.
• 54:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's another word, I think it's bad.
• 54:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: I have to look it up, but tank.
• 54:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: the tangy and tang full, I think is essentially a wall town as a town with a wall.
• 54:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's like a little earth radical on the left of the character.
• 54:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: But there's another term, the term that is used in the book of Han to describe the wall towns in Nanyae is not that term, it's
• 54:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's bar with bar or E, which means like, mounted, mounted fortification.
• 55:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I don't remember the detail exactly.
• 55:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I can find it very easily for you.
• 55:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: After this.
• 55:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: OK.
• 55:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: So two questions, two follow questions that.
• 55:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Tanks full.
• 55:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then where does that, for the entire etymology of that phrase?
• 55:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Where does that come from?
• 55:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we know about tank.
• 55:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I'm, again, I have to, this is one of those things that you've made in the Jack Morgana to correct later, because I didn't look it up before this, but, but I'm pretty sure full comes from, uh, it's full as I focus on, it's like, um, um, port.
• 55:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
• 55:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, no, no, pho means like a market avenue, right?
• 55:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't remember.
• 55:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: It is a Chinese way.
• 55:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: I just can't remember the etymology of pho at this moment.
• 55:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 55:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 55:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 55:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it might be walls and streets as a sort of representation of an urban space or city.
• 55:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 55:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, the the the Chinese really
• 55:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, full city and then tying his wall, right?
• 56:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So city wall, city wall, city wall, city.
• 56:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: Full, I have to look up the etymology of full.
• 56:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't think it is market.
• 56:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: Is it market?
• 56:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it means like avenue.
• 56:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: like brought out.
• 56:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, like foe, like foe, high-by-tee, but I can't remember.
• 56:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: But you're right that like the Chinese, the modern Chinese word for city is market and wallet.
• 56:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like it's a tongue shit, which is, was it tainty?
• 56:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: We would say tainty in Vietnamese.
• 56:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
• 56:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the other one that you mentioned is the mound, right?
• 56:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: But you said I'm fortified mound.
• 56:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that's that is something like that.
• 56:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm pretty sure is the term in the Hanshu for when they're describing all of like 40 wall towns.
• 56:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 56:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I find that fascinating because as you know, my, my reason I got into anthropology and archeology in the first place is that there's
• 56:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: pre-occupation, it's sort of unhealthy interest in war.
• 56:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: And for me, some of the research on the earliest cities of the world and whether or not people come together for various reasons and if they're all walled, what does that indicate to us, right?
• 57:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: This idea of security.
• 57:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: They may be defense against outside human thread.
• 57:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I find it fascinating to think that some of the terminology in this part of the world, East and Southeast Asia, for some of the earliest urban spaces, have to do with walls.
• 57:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, themselves specifically.
• 57:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just an aside.
• 57:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: The other question I have.
• 57:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: So interesting.
• 57:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, for you is you mentioned earlier in this discussion that go law was named later and I'm curious when we actually see that named tango law, um, when is it written in under what kinds of sort of political conditions?
• 57:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, well, we, so like, there are earlier references to, as I said, a citadel that is associated with Anzum Boom, but it is not named go raw.
• 58:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's, and this is from the Shrating tool, the commentary on the classic waterways, which is like a geographical treatis that talks about.
• 58:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: like this river in that river and what is what it's around, you know.
• 58:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: And they call in that text, again, this is one of those things where some smart person whose listening is going to correct me.
• 58:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: So God bless you, whoever you are, future person.
• 58:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I think it's like, I think it's called either Viet Tang, like the citadel, like the walled city of the time of the Viet people, or maybe it might even be associated with a term Viet Tulum, which is a classical term for Southern kingdom.
• 58:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
• 58:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, Chang.
• 58:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: And also I know that another term that is used.
• 58:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think in the classic of waterways is is tadpole Citadel kind of hangs something like that.
• 58:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: What what what centuries is that that
• 58:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: So the classical waterways is from the 6th century, and I will say shout out to Liam Kelly because he did a lot of this estimation work early on.
• 59:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: But the classical water raises from the 6th century, and it cites an older text that's specifically about zouti, which is lost.
• 59:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, and that was presumably closer to the period of time, of course, probably on dynasty time.
• 59:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: But so that text describes Anzenvung, and it also describes a city, or like a fortification, but it does not call it gola, so the term gola is only found in a 15th century.
• 59:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: So that's Lady Dynasty, 15th century, in when it's called Lauchem, for the first of like, you know, Lauchem, and then eventually gola.
• 59:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, and that I think it's in the 15th century text where it's it's given this etymology of like nine level nine lawyers of Spion of Enwalls.
• 59:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so I have an observation and a question about that, right?
• 59:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'll start with the observation.
• 1:00:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: The nine walls, right, this nail shape.
• 1:00:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 1:00:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: My colleagues and I, this is Russ Quake.
• 1:00:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: And others, Russ and I went to grad school together.
• 1:00:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: We worked with the same professor.
• 1:00:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: We had the same advisor, Larry Kuele.
• 1:00:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Russ and I have been looking at Coloff for a few years now and he pointed this out to me from lighter imagery and satellite photos and all this stuff and on the ground surveys that we've been doing.
• 1:00:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: where he thinks he can see nine walls, or the railing?
• 1:00:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: The remains of nine walls.
• 1:00:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Shut up, for real.
• 1:00:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because I always thought that was a lie, but keep going.
• 1:00:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: He thinks, if you look hard enough, you can actually see the remains of, because over centuries, much of that has disappeared, right?
• 1:00:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's erosion, it's development, people come and go.
• 1:00:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: People have been living there for what?
• 1:00:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: 4,000 years or so.
• 1:00:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 1:00:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so, and even in the last, I would say, a couple of decades, parts of the ramparts have been obliterated and roads are cut through people build gardens and homes, all kinds of stuff.
• 1:01:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it's not a surprise, right?
• 1:01:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, bye.
• 1:01:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: But he insists that there are, from the imagery, you can actually see the remains of other constructions, other potential rampart constructions, others parts of it, the larger system, and you could, you could make the argument that maybe it's not exactly an eye, but you could get to nine.
• 1:01:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, once he says this, it's very intriguing for me to think about.
• 1:01:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, that's one observation.
• 1:01:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'll let you respond that in a second.
• 1:01:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the other question I have before for again,
• 1:01:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: when we hear about Moquin.
• 1:01:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah.
• 1:01:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: And according to what I've read, Moquin decides, and I think Keith Taylor actually says this, and in some of his work, Moquin decides to avoid the Hanoi area and the remains of the Chinese fortress, right?
• 1:02:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: That eventually become part of Tang Long, said the Tang Long said a deal.
• 1:02:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: And instead, he goes across the river, chooses the old kingdom, the old site of Galois as his seat of power.
• 1:02:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe because there are echoes of a distant ancestor, or maybe it's a political ploy to show I am the legitimate
• 1:02:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: you know, descendant of these pre-hawn, pre-synetic kings or whatever the political messaging might have been.
• 1:02:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: But what I'm curious about is, if that actually is described, what did they call the site at that point?
• 1:02:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, damn, that's a good question.
• 1:02:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's a good question.
• 1:02:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, let me, let me respond to the 9th thing first because that's so interesting and cool.
• 1:02:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I had
• 1:02:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, the number nine, whenever you have a layer of something like the Chinese word is a layer like layers of clouds, layers of mountains, layers of whatever it's always nine, like even even some Q lump is nine right there are nine tributaries of the make so it's always nine so I
• 1:03:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: I have always thought, and I tend to think that that description is expressive, it's poetic as opposed to deliberate, but I do think.
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: But when you say there are nine layers of something, what you really mean is there are multitude in this layers of it, right?
• 1:03:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: So what you just said makes a lot of sense to me, when we imagined what it must have looked like,
• 1:03:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: If, you know, there are thousands of years of ramparts, then destroyed ramparts and then rebuilt ramparts, maybe it did just look like they were just a bunch of layers, you know, a bunch of layers of walls to give it this particular kind of spiraling look.
• 1:03:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Or maybe they were, maybe they were inspired to actually make it nine.
• 1:03:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: And maybe some of those sort of walls all sat over the years so that they could get to
• 1:04:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: although literally nine means many like that's what it means.
• 1:04:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: But that was fascinating.
• 1:04:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: I love to read the report by your colleague about it.
• 1:04:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: We haven't published that yet.
• 1:04:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're all right.
• 1:04:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're very behind on this.
• 1:04:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: Me too.
• 1:04:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: Look at my desk.
• 1:04:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: But so the question about Locuey and so I don't remember I think that is in what so I actually know it's so funny because I wrote Keith.
• 1:04:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: because we had talked like a week or two ago about the fact that, you know, Keith mentions this anecdote of Ngopuy and moving the capital across the river.
• 1:04:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 1:04:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: And he makes, he notes that it's, oh, this is the side of Ngopuy.
• 1:04:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I wrote him, I was like, oh, I just talked to him, Kim, you know?
• 1:04:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, yeah.
• 1:04:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:04:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: I did not ask him what the site is called and I would have to look at the historical record again and ask it to know the term, but it's definitely not go law.
• 1:04:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's not that.
• 1:04:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's my guess right now is either it is
• 1:05:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: one of those terms from the 6th century, or it may be even something like the Citadel of Anzon Wuhung, that's a possibility, or it's just like across the river, because Golo is literally just across the river from the Thumbing, which is the capital.
• 1:05:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: But that's an excellent question.
• 1:05:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: So
• 1:05:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: Stay tuned.
• 1:05:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 1:05:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Come on, come on.
• 1:05:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Listen.
• 1:05:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the implication is that he was quite aware of those histories and of those.
• 1:05:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 1:05:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: But so in the conversation I have with Keith, so Keith reminded me of this article that he wrote many, many years ago on the 12 lords, so the period in the Vietnamese historical record.
• 1:05:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: of the 10th century, you know, is called the chaos of the 12 lords or they were balling of the 12 lords.
• 1:05:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: And it's a period in which I keep this, I'm really interesting work about whether there are actually 12 lords or whether there is just like it's another figure of speech to describe the fragmentation of anonymous time.
• 1:06:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: But either way, we have a fragmentation of anonymous time.
• 1:06:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: And one of the things I keep,
• 1:06:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think very brilliantly describes is the success of milk when being based on his capacity to unite the different fragments of Anam.
• 1:06:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: So the upland, the sort of mountainous periphery to the northwest, which is essentially go raw as the beginning of it, but really mailing is where that is, is what was called fun with that time.
• 1:06:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's where a firm hummus from.
• 1:06:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: Then the central area around Thumbing, which is the Tang Capital, which is Hanoi,
• 1:06:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, mid-river, the lower delta is another area.
• 1:06:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: Hua Lui is another area.
• 1:06:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: All of these areas are different, are fighting now because there's chaos, because the coupe family has kind of faded away.
• 1:06:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: Right there, there's a power struggle.
• 1:06:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: And Mokuin is from Fum, he's from the area of the mid-river.
• 1:06:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: He's from the area kind of around May Ling.
• 1:06:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: But he has fillyled his family ties to the lower,
• 1:07:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: River Plain, which is the Senate at Cartland.
• 1:07:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: And he was also, if I remember Professor Taylor's work correctly, like he was also made a governor or like a magistrate of the lower provinces, which is I and Ziden, which is Nih An and Tenghua today.
• 1:07:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: So he just as a person had all of these personal ties to the different regions of
• 1:07:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: Anam, and what he is arguing is that his success in becoming the king of Anam is that he mobilized those connections to gather support across the divisions, and that maybe his
• 1:07:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: Decision to move out of Bumbing out of the Tom Capital was motivated somehow to appease one of these factions.
• 1:07:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: Also, I think one should know that it is moving closer to his home area, which is in fun.
• 1:07:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, but I don't think that that means that it doesn't have anything to do with Hansen Vuem.
• 1:07:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: It could have, that might have been one of the reasons why a particular faction wanted him to move there.
• 1:08:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, I think it's all possible, but the overall spirit of the moment is that
• 1:08:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's a deeply fractionalized province, and Mokuin is uniting them somehow, you know, but not necessarily uniting them in an anti-synetic way, is what I would say, you know, because finding common elements.
• 1:08:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: And you know, always with Mokuin, and you see this repeated with Ningbo Ling, and you see it repeated with Lihtaito, like always the most important factions,
• 1:08:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: the most powerful factions are the red river playing factions.
• 1:08:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: And those people have been synetic peoples, you know, a regional synetic people for, you know, essentially a thousand years.
• 1:08:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: So always even when Dingbo ling moves to Hua Lu, you know, because he, you know, professor Taylor argues is he moves that partly because he doesn't feel comfortable.
• 1:08:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: He doesn't feel like he fits in enough with the red river playing, but then he has to cater to the red river playing, you know,
• 1:09:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: culturally catered to them.
• 1:09:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, and then of course, Lee Taekho is from the Red River Plain, you know, he is a Red River Plain person.
• 1:09:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, yeah, you see this special repeated over and over again.
• 1:09:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I, I mean, arguably one of the potential reasons that he moves to go law.
• 1:09:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, Mokuin is the presence of these fortification features, which allows, I mean, it's turned key, right?
• 1:09:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you are setting up your political capital somewhere and you realize you have to have defensive fortifications as well, maybe much of that's already standing, and you can repurpose it fairly quickly.
• 1:09:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: not to, you know, never mind the sort of cultural symbols and meanings attached to that space that landscape.
• 1:09:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: But now you've got physical attributes as well.
• 1:09:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 1:09:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, let me ask you a question, because it reminds me the question I had before, because is the question, the technical question is, is there a way archiologically to determine like how extensive the ramparts or the walls were at different periods of time?
• 1:10:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's always bothered me that Hyva King did not set up at Gaurat, and yet no queen is doing it a thousand years later, you know, or eight, nine hundred years later, almost nine hundred years later.
• 1:10:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: So is there a way to tell, yeah, or do we know it all?
• 1:10:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: we have some indications.
• 1:10:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now there are ways to tell and this gets impact to a comment you made earlier about our lack of funding.
• 1:10:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: If we had all the money in the world, if we had access, we would excavate and excavate and we would answer as many questions we can.
• 1:10:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: The problem is we don't, right?
• 1:10:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: We don't have the luxury of doing that.
• 1:10:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Not to mention we don't necessarily
• 1:10:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Or maybe would we want to do that?
• 1:10:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because actually, when you activate, you are destroying that context.
• 1:11:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
• 1:11:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: You record as much as you can, but you are actually destroying that context.
• 1:11:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the simple answer is, what we've tried to do,
• 1:11:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Even though my colleagues, you know, 20 years ago when I proposed this idea, they told me, why would you want to do that?
• 1:11:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: We already know that on some of them was here.
• 1:11:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: We know what year that was.
• 1:11:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: We know all that information already.
• 1:11:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: But my response was, we think we know.
• 1:11:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: But until we have material data, it's hard to know for sure or to have any kind of confidence in that.
• 1:11:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: So why not excavate the wall itself and to recover material remains that might be dataable to give us a sense of when that wall might have been built and when the city might have been constructed.
• 1:11:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
• 1:11:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: The problem is,
• 1:11:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: We excavated one portion of three that we could see.
• 1:11:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: It took several years to get samples from other elements, other parts of the rampart system.
• 1:11:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we did do the middle, outer, and inner walls of the three that we can see the extent ones that are still standing.
• 1:12:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: We have with a fairly high degree of confidence data that tell us, they are built pretty rapidly within the same kind of era.
• 1:12:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: We have similar kinds of material remains within them.
• 1:12:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Very specifically, the roof tiles of Goloa.
• 1:12:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: We also have stylistic similarities between certain kinds of artifacts.
• 1:12:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: We have relative dates and we have absolute dates from radio carbon from thermal luminescence and other kinds of dating techniques.
• 1:12:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: The larger thrust here is that it does appear at least from the samples that we have, right, those three excavations which took a decade or more to do.
• 1:12:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, indications that there was one system in place, someone, whether it was unsung growing or somebody else, I can't say for sure, some one or some entity was responsible for planning and then carrying out this construction project that resulted in this monumental system of fortifications.
• 1:13:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 1:13:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: But to answer your question, it's very difficult to know if the entire system was built in exactly the same way at the same exact time, this is our current hypothesis.
• 1:13:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is the best guess that we have.
• 1:13:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: And if I remember your book correctly, did you say that there's some indication that there's another moment of like raising the walls higher or like there's something like that, right?
• 1:13:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's something like that, right?
• 1:13:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Definitely, it's there.
• 1:13:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: There is evidence of refurbishment or amplification phases.
• 1:13:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, yeah.
• 1:13:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: And they occur centuries after.
• 1:13:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: So our best guess is that the earliest,
• 1:13:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: that we see some of the monumental features.
• 1:13:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, even in the middle wall that we excavated, there might have been smaller walls underneath from a couple centuries earlier.
• 1:13:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there was don't-don't-son pottery associated with that.
• 1:14:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we have radio carbon dates for those smaller constructions.
• 1:14:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it's very possible that let's, let's, let's, let's hypothesize let's, let's, let's pretend unzangbong was real let's just call it unzangbong's time yeah it's possible that during the time of unzangbong there are already different communities here building walls maybe on a much smaller scale and some one comes along and on a much larger scale builds right over the top of them extends and builds this monumental system that we have come to know is Tengkultwa
• 1:14:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: during around the third century BCE.
• 1:14:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: So not that far off, not that far off from the what the legends say.
• 1:14:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 1:14:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because they say whatever it would be, eight, right?
• 1:14:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: But we do see even beyond that into the common era.
• 1:14:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: even into maybe like the 10th century episodes of further construction.
• 1:14:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, so this is exactly why I'm like, why did the junstisters not use Golwa?
• 1:14:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: I have two mysteries in my head about Golwa.
• 1:15:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: And we didn't, like, I really wanted to talk to Nama about Golwa and Hansen Williams, so maybe we have to do another episode.
• 1:15:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but I was just gonna say we're like a coming up on the time that I know that you guys both have to go So I just what I I can keep going, but I think maybe John we saved that Well, part two.
• 1:15:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, okay.
• 1:15:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: What do you think?
• 1:15:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, okay, you know, why don't you tease out your question So we can have it on record and then we'll pick it up on the on the next episode with them
• 1:15:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I think the mystery is the mismatch of the historical record of Gola and the material, okay?
• 1:15:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because from what I understand, given Nam's book, there is incredibly rich material evidence for a huge urban or agrarian urban, I think it's what you call it, site there.
• 1:15:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: And as I mentioned earlier, there's,
• 1:15:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: through none.
• 1:15:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: You have even through the junksisters.
• 1:15:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: There is no, there's not even an indication in the Han, right?
• 1:15:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: All the way through the Han record of a single major fortification.
• 1:16:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: There are mentions of fall of wall towns and things like that.
• 1:16:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: But there's not a why would you not describe this single large fortification, right?
• 1:16:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: So that's like for me it's such a
• 1:16:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: Confusion.
• 1:16:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it makes more sense for none.
• 1:16:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, because as I said, the Han could not penetrate the interior of none.
• 1:16:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, like they didn't know so they really might not have known that there was this big city down there, but in the Han times it's very confusing to me and then.
• 1:16:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: we get to milk we in, you know, and on later periods.
• 1:16:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: So that's part of what I want to ask about.
• 1:16:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: And also I want it, you know, there's so much we need to talk about with regard to the legends and the, you know, the actual artifacts, you know, crossbows to be a single word.
• 1:16:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: So we should talk about that next week.
• 1:16:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 1:16:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, that question that you started with.
• 1:16:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have not thought about this, and it is now very, very interesting to me, why the true sisters would not have made use of, of, of, of Coloa, or, I mean, did they ever visit?
• 1:17:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Did they know about it?
• 1:17:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't, I'm not sure about that, but we might, I wonder if it's tied to the other parts of the legends about, um, but none of it.
• 1:17:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, the transfer of the magic crossbow and the invasion and the takeover of Godwawa, right?
• 1:17:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
• 1:17:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I would, I would want to ask you about that as well.
• 1:17:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: So maybe the next time we get together, we talk about all of those sorts of archeological and historical details, here knows.
• 1:17:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, because I really thought we were going to talk about go a lot today and then we just like Hi, I think this is really good.
• 1:17:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: If anyone in the audience has more questions, please leave it in the comments.
• 1:17:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: We will attempt
• 1:17:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: to pick questions that show up over and over in the comment section.
• 1:17:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we'll start to approach John's questions and really getting the call on the next episode.
• 1:18:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think we have to do part two, right?
• 1:18:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm down and sounds like fun.
• 1:18:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's a super fun.
• 1:18:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: There was so much.
• 1:18:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:18:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, John, thank you both so much and we will pick this back up.
• 1:18:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.
• 1:18:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
• 1:18:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie and Crystal Tran.
• 1:18:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese Podcast.