Trung sisters' rebellion

A walled-Han house figure dated 1st-3rd century, from Thanh Hoa

One prominent group of ancient people in Northern Vietnam (Jiaozhi, Tonkin, Red River Delta region) during the Han dynasty's rule over Vietnam was called the Lac Viet or the Luòyuè in Chinese annals.[12] The Luoyue had been indigenous to the region. They practiced non-Chinese tribal ways and slash-and-burn agriculture.[13][14] According to French sinologist Georges Maspero, some Chinese immigrants arrived and settled along the Red River during the usurpation of Wang Mang (9–25) and the early Eastern Han, while two Han governors of Jiaozhi Xi Guang (?-30 AD) and Ren Yan, with support from Chinese scholar-immigrants, conducted the first "sinicization" on the local tribes by introducing Chinese-style marriage, opening the first Chinese schools, and introducing Chinese philosophies, therefore provoking cultural conflict.[15] American philologist Stephen O'Harrow indicates that the introduction of Chinese-style marriage customs might have come in the interest of transferring land rights to Chinese immigrants in the area, replacing the matrilineal tradition of the area.[16]

The Trưng sisters were daughters of a wealthy aristocratic family of Lac ethnicity.[17] Their father had been a Lac lord in Mê Linh district (modern-day Mê Linh District, Hanoi). Trưng Trắc (Zheng Ce)'s husband was Thi Sách (Shi Suo), was also the Lac lord of Chu Diên (modern-day Khoái Châu District, Hưng Yên Province).[18] Su Ding (governor of Jiaozhi 37–40), the Chinese governor of Jiaozhi province at the time, is remembered by his cruelty and tyranny.[19] According to Hou Hanshu, Thi Sách was "of a fierce temperament".[20] Trưng Trắc, who was likewise described as "possessing mettle and courage",[21] fearlessly stirred her husband to action. As a result, Su Ding attempted to restrain Thi Sách with laws, literally beheading him without trial.[22] Trưng Trắc became the central figure in mobilizing the Lac lords against the Chinese.[23]

In March[7] of 40 AD, Trưng Trắc and her younger sister Trưng Nhị (Zheng Er), led the Lac Viet people to rise up in rebellion against the Han.[7][8][24] The Hou Han Shu recorded that Trưng Trắc launched the rebellion in avenge the killing of her dissent husband.[18] Other sources indicate that Trưng Trắc's movement towards rebellion was influenced by the loss of land intended for her inheritance due to the replacement of traditional matrilineal customs.[16] It began at the Red River Delta, but soon spread to other Lac tribes and non-Han people from an area stretching from Hepu to Rinan.[17] Chinese settlements were overrun, and Su Ting fled.[23] The uprising gained the support of about sixty-five towns and settlements.[8] Trưng Trắc was proclaimed as the queen.[7] Even though she gained control over the countryside, she was not able to capture the fortified towns.[7]

Han dynasty army represents as terracotta miniatures

The Han government (situated in Luoyang) responded rather slowly to the emerging situation.[7] In May or June of 42 AD, Emperor Guangwu gave the orders to initiate a military campaign. The strategic importance of Jiaozhi is underscored by the fact that the Han sent their most trusted generals, Ma Yuan and Duan Zhi to suppress the rebellion.[25] Ma Yuan was given the title Fubo Jiangjun (伏波將軍; General who Calms the Waves).[7] He would later go down in Chinese history as a great official who brought Han civilization to the barbarians.[25]

Ma Yuan and his staff began mobilizing a Han army in southern China.[7] It consisted 20,000 regulars and 12,000 regional auxiliaries.[8][26] From Guangdong, Ma Yuan dispatched a fleet of supply ships along the coast.[7]

In the spring of 42, the imperial army reached high ground at Lãng Bạc, in the Tiên Du mountains of what is now Bắc Ninh. Yuan's forces battled the Trưng sisters, beheaded several thousand of Trưng Trắc’s partisans, while more than ten thousand surrendered to him.[27] The Chinese general pushed on to victory. During the campaign he explained in a letter to his nephews how “greatly” he detested groundless criticism of proper authority. Yuan pursued Trưng Trắc and her retainers to Jinxi Tản Viên, where her ancestral estates were located; and defeated them several times. Increasingly isolated and cut off from supplies, the two women were unable to sustain their last stand and the Chinese captured both sisters in early 43.[28] Trắc’s husband, Thi Sách, escaped to Mê Linh, ran to a place called Jinxijiu and was not captured until three years later.[27] The rebellion was brought under control by April or May.[7] Ma Yuan decapitated Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị,[7][8] and sent their heads to the Han court at Luoyang.[27] By the end of 43 AD, the Han army had taken full control over the region by defeating the last pockets of resistance.[7] Yuan reported his victories, and added: “Since I came to Jiaozhi, the current troop has been the most magnificent."[27]

Dongsonian (Lac Viet) figures, c. 500 BC

In their reconquest of Jiaozhi and Jiuzhen, Han forces also appear to have massacred most of the Lạc Việt aristocracy, beheading five to ten thousand people and deporting several hundred families to China.[29] After the Trưng sisters were dead, Ma Yuan spent most of the year 43 building up Han administration in the Red River Delta and preparing the local society for direct Han rule.[30] General Ma Yuan aggressively sinicized the culture and customs of the local people, removing their tribal ways, so they could be more easily governed by Han China. He melted down the Lac bronze drums, their chieftains' symbol of authority, to cast a statue of a horse, which he presented to Emperor Guangwu when he returned to Luoyang in the autumn of 44 AD.[7] In Ma Yuan’s letter to his nephews while campaigning in Jiaozhi, he quoted a Chinese saying: "If you do not succeed in sculpting a swan, the result will still look like a duck."[29] Ma Yuan then divided the Tây Vu (Xiyu, modern day Phú Thọ province) County into Fengxi County and Wanghai County, seized the last domain of the last Lạc monarch of Cổ Loa.[31] Later, Chinese historians writing of Ma Yuan's expedition referred to the Luo/Lạc as the "Luoyue" or simply as the "Yue".[32] "Yue" had become a category of Chinese perception designating myriad groups of non-Chinese peoples in the south. The Chinese considered the Lac to be a "Yue" people, and it was customary to attribute certain cliched cultural traits to the Lạc in order to identify them as "Yue".[33][34]

The Trưng sisters' rebellion marked a brilliant epoch for women in ancient southern China and reflected the important of women in early Vietnamese society.[28] One reason for the defeat is the desertion by rebels because they did not believe they could win under a woman's leadership.[47] The fact that women were in charge was blamed as a reason for the defeat by historical Vietnamese texts. Vietnamese historians were ridiculing and mocking men for the fact that they did nothing while "mere girls", whom they viewed with revulsion, took up the banner of revolt-the Vietnamese poem which talked about the revolt of the Trung Sisters while the men did nothing was not intended to praise women nor view war as women's work as it has been wrongly interpreted.[48][49][50][51][52][53]

The Vietnamese proverb Giặc đến nhà, đàn bà cũng đánh ("when the enemy is at the gate, even the women go out fighting") has been recited as evidence of Lạc women's respected status.[54] The quote means that fighting in war is inappropriate for women and its only when the situation is so desperate that the war has spread to their home then women should enter the war.[55][56][57]

• Lady Triệu
• Phùng Thị Chính
• Copper columns of Ma Yuan
• Bùi Thị Xuân
• Matriarchy
• Feminism

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• Lai, Mingchiu (2015), "The Zheng sisters", in Lee, Lily Xiao Hong; Stefanowska, A. D.; Wiles, Sue (eds.), Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: Antiquity Through Sui, 1600 B.C.E. - 618 C.E, Taylor & Francis, pp. 253–254, ISBN 978-1-317-47591-0
• Li, Tana (2011), "Jiaozhi (Giao Chỉ) in the Han Period Tongking Gulf", in Cooke, Nola; Li, Tana; Anderson, James A. (eds.), The Tongking Gulf Through History, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 39–53, ISBN 978-0-812-20502-2
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• Tai, Hue-Tam Ho (2001). The Country of Memory: Remaking the Past in Late Socialist Vietnam. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-22267-0.
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• Yü, Ying-shih (1986), "Han foreign relations", in Twitchett, Denis C.; Fairbank, John King (eds.), The Cambridge History of China: Volume 1, The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 BC-AD 220, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 377–463