How the Hùng Kings Obtained a Citadel
The Hùng Kings are an invention. They were not invented out of nothing, but instead were fashioned out of extant written sources. This process of creation, however, was not clean.…
The Real Ông Trọng
Over a year ago I posted a blog entry on The Invention of Lý Ông Trọng in which I argued that there was no evidence that a man by this name had lived in the Red River delta in the third century B.C. and had gone off to fight the Xiongnu for Qin Shihuangdi. I argued instead that a Tang Dynasty administrator by the name of Zhao Chang had “imported” this story into the region and used it to create a story about a local spirit.
I still believe that this story about Lý Ông Trọng is an invention. However, I recently found some information which indicates that there once had been a man by the name of Ông Trọng who was connected to the Red River delta.
(more…)Killing Spirits and 17 Year-Old Girls in Medieval Vietnam
Gao Pian/Cao Biền was a Tang Dynasty official who was sent to the Red River delta in the 860s to put down disturbances caused by troops from the kingdom of…