The Trung Sisters vs China

The Trung sisters were daughters of a Vietnamese lord in the first century, when Vietnam was occupied by the Han Dynasty. Listen in and learn how these remarkable leaders fought to free their kingdom and why they remain highly revered in Vietnam today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And if you
follow us on Twitter a missed in History or you're

(00:20):
a Facebook fan of ours. I put up an opinion
poll the other day asking one if you would marry
a dragon lord and two if you would bear him
one hundred eggs. There was a reason for that. People
were very opinionated about it for one thing, weren't they.
But there are a lot of egg opinions, yes, pro
and anti egg. You know, if your country's origin mythology

(00:42):
includes dragon lords and dynasties that start with the hatching
of one hundred sons from one hundred eggs, you have
to do something pretty impressive to stand out in history, right, well,
like strap on your golden armor, rebel against your Chinese
overlords and for your country. Well for why for a while.
So our subjects today are the Chung Sisters in their

(01:05):
first century Vietnamese heroines and according to Women in History,
which was this great brand new multi volume set of
encyclopedia as I found at my local library to check
it out, they are considered models and inspiration for centuries
of Vietnamese resistance against foreign occupation, so pretty tall order,

(01:26):
they're right, so why were they rebelling? And to understand that,
we have to go way back, although not quite all
the way back to those one dred eggs, and instead
we'll start with the last member of the egg founded
line of kings, the Home dynasty, which supposedly prevailed for
centuries until the warlord took Fun overthrew the Home king

(01:47):
in either two eight or two fifty seven b C.
And took Fun forms a new kingdom and calls it
oh Lack. And it's not that long before this kingdom
becomes part of a larger kingdom called non viet which
is ruled by a former Chinese general. And it's kind
of interesting here, but this is where mythology, the the

(02:09):
line that descends from those eggs meats recorded history. So
despite being Chinese and despite ruling from near Guangjo, the
general adopts the native people's customs, so this isn't quite
Chinese rule yet, We're going to get to that later.
This is this is still an independent kingdom until one
eleven b C, when after one years of trouble with

(02:30):
the Chinese. Non Viat is finally conquered by the Han Emperor.
The Vietnamese remain under Chinese control for ten centuries, always
trying to assert themselves and regain their independence. So giving
you some more information about the Chinese rule, which is
where our story will be set. The Chinese split up
the empire into nine military districts, and they do a

(02:53):
lot of work to modernize the country, building roads, building
harbors and waterways, and they introduced some new useful things
for the people, new forms of agriculture, new weaponry, and
they don't meddle too much with the local administration, at
least at first, so there's there's not that much trouble initially.
They're letting the local feudal lords do their ruling just

(03:15):
like they had before in the Non Viat kingdom, and
they're not trying to make the people Chinese think of
this more as a Chinese protectorate. And that lasts until
the first century a d. When the Han emperors decide
they want more control because this country has some precious
resources forests, metals, ivory, pearls, and lots of people who

(03:36):
they can tax and make work. But most of all,
they want control over the Red River Delta because international
trade is picking up and the Chinese want to have
control over the resources and the ports. Yeah. So at
this point, the Chinese start going about trying to make
the Vietnamese people Chinese people. So imagine, it's take our religion,

(03:57):
learn our language, follow our customs. Some of this it's
okay for your average person, but as a whole people
don't go for it. And according to Encyclopedia Britannica, even
the educated Vietnamese who started to write only in Chinese
still speak their local language in private to these minor
acts of rebellion exactly, people, people are not into this.

(04:18):
But who is ready to rebel in a much bigger
way The Chung Sisters in a D thirty nine and
more specifically Chung Check and Chung Ye. So the Chung
sisters have a few bones to pick with the Chinese.
I would say they have two really good reasons to rebel,
and namely their daughters of the nobility and their women.

(04:40):
So starting with the nobility point, the sisters are members
of the landed aristocracy. They're born in may Lang and
their father is a lack lord who's a sort of
feudal lord. Their mother is supposedly descended from that Dragon
Lord line of kings, so they're very fancy ladies, and
they've been trained up to be independent and patriotic and martial,

(05:02):
good at good at Dragon r exactly. So the Chinese
are obviously clamping down on this landed aristocracy. These are
the people who hold the power, and who have held
the power for a long time. So they placed Chinese
officials in charge, and they pile on taxes. And obviously
this is not popular with the lords. And the second

(05:23):
reason has to do with their gender. Right, these these
policies meant subordinating women, because women had very different places
in Vietnamese society than they did in Chinese society. Um
For example, in Vietnamese society, they had legal rights. They
could take these civil service exam and become bureaucrats or
judges or work in trade, and they could inherit property.

(05:45):
After Chinese control, a woman's property belonged to her husband,
and if the couple didn't have a son, the husband
was free to take another wife. I wouldn't stand for
that either. So these are obviously some good reasons for
the Chung sisters too. I feel like maybe you're rebelling
a bit. Well, then things get personal. That's when Chung
Check's husband Tsak, who is a chieftain and actually a

(06:07):
son of a lack lord as well, is executed by
the Chinese governor after he protests yet another tax increase,
and his execution makes the local people very very angry,
and it makes Chung Check extremely angry. So angry she
doesn't have time from mourning, she takes off the traditional

(06:27):
morning headdress, skips through the prescribed morning rights, and along
with her younger sister, she starts stirring up the nobles
and the peasants. Enough is enough, and she writes an oath,
which Sarah will read for you. I swear first to
avenge the nation, second to restore the Hung's former position, third,
to have revenge from my husband. Fourth to carry through

(06:50):
to the end of our common task. And remember this
is a descendant of a dragon lord, so listen up.
She's for real. So the sisters start organizing their army,
and they make it from both men and women, and
they trained thirty six women as general, including their own mother.
So this is a real family affair. One of the commanders,
this is just sort of a side note here to

(07:12):
give you an idea of what these women were like.
One of their commanders, who was a noble woman named
Fung Teaching, supposedly gives birth in the middle of a
battle keeps on fighting with her baby tied to her back.
So for real, I don't know, but still it's a
pretty good good story. Well, and how did everyone know
that the Chung sisters were legit? According to legend, Chung

(07:36):
Check killed a white tiger that no one else could kill,
the sword and the tiger, I guess to prove that
she was the woman for the job. And what should
you do with the skin, of course, but right your
rebellious proclamation right on it? Just imagining what if the
declaration of independence was written on a And if you
want to impress people, of course you have to go

(07:57):
all out. When Chung Checks, General till Hua asked if
the army could wear mourning clothes, she said absolutely not.
Morning could come after the governor is captured. So instead
she straps on her gold armor, which is carved with
the mailing bird, and puts on her belt trimmed with bells.
And supposedly the Chinese soldiers stop in their tracks when

(08:19):
they see her, which isn't that hard to believe, right,
So obviously the first target is going to be the
governor who killed Tea Suck. They attack his home and
he flees, and within the year, the Sisters and their
allies hold sixty five northern Citadels. They have an army
of eighty thousand, and they've defeated the occupying Chinese at Mailane.

(08:41):
In the year forty they jointly proclaimed themselves queens of
an independent state and rule for two years, freeing the
prisoners of the Chinese and giving away the governor's money.
But back in China, the emperor is getting ready to
take it all back. Obviously, the Chinese emperor is not
gonna stand for losing this valuable kingdom, so he puts
General ma Yuan in charge. And the general doesn't have

(09:05):
that much trouble reconquering the kingdom until he finally runs
into the Chung armies southwest of Mailang, and the Chinese,
of course have better trained troops and more supplies. Plus
the Chung Sisters don't have the same momentum that they
started out with. Some of the lords have left them
by this point, and so they're defeated near Hanoi, and

(09:25):
from there they're either caught by the Chinese and executed
or they drown themselves where the Day and the Red
Rivers meet in a d forty three. So after crushing
the rebellious sisters, the Han Emperor's obviously cracked down on
the people of Vietnam and for a time there are
only minor uprisings. We don't get our next major rebellion

(09:46):
for nearly two hundred years, and this time it's led
by Bachu, a nineteen year old noblewoman who is sometimes
called the Vietnamese Joan of Arc, But as we were
talking about earlier, maybe Joan of Arc should be called
the French to you, since this girl obviously pre dates
Joan of Arc. But in two forty eight she and
her brother raised an army of a thousand fighters, and

(10:09):
after her brother is killed in battle, she takes over,
fighting in her golden armor on an elephant's back. All
these all these women have golden I don't know where
they would like. So this resistance movement lasts for six
months before it too is crushed by the Chinese, and
um Ba to You also kills herself, but none of

(10:29):
the subsequent revolts really work much better than that. The
Chinese are very hard to get out of your country
once there there is occupying forces. So finally, in the
tenth century, just as the Tang dynasty that rules China's
starting to fall apart, we have a successful rebellion. No
Quinn defeats the Chinese at a battle on the Bekdong River,

(10:51):
and in nine thirty nine the Vietnamese achieve independence. So
what is the legacy of our famous sisters. The sisters
are revered, are revered today, and they were revered shortly
after their own deaths. Even they helped keep the spirit
of the people alive during that nearly thousand year long
period of Chinese occupation and during twentieth century conflicts in Vietnam.

(11:14):
They became cult figures. Today you'll see a street in
Saigon named for them, and people celebrate the anniversary of
their deaths, which is kind of another example of where
we guess that a country really like certain people, like
we did with King Ludwig. So if you have you know,
your own personal experience to share about how big the

(11:35):
Chunk Sisters are in Vietnam, please email us and let
us know. It's History podcast at how stepworks dot com.
And I would also like to thank my good friend
Tray for this. Oh yes, thank you Traying. She helped
coach us with very patiently Vietnamese pronunciations that we've made mistakes.
They are ours and not hers. It was nice to
have a real live friend of ours to help us

(11:57):
out because usually we're reduced to putting out a call
on our Facebook fan page or on our Twitter at
miss in History, which is pretty helpful too, exactly for help.
So if you're one of those people who's very good
at pronunciations of foreign languages, please follow us you may
be hearing from him. And we also have a good
quiz fee to take. This is where we found out

(12:18):
about the Chun Sisters called fact or Fiction Vietnam, which
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