'Madam Nhu Tran Le Xuan': The birth of a royal mother

The woman covered in sweat and blood lying on the table was Mrs. Truong, Princess Nam Tran, a member of the royal family.

The book Madam Nhu Tran Le Xuan - The Dragon Lady's Power about the life of Mrs. Tran Le Xuan (Mrs. Nhu, 1924-2011) has just been released to readers. Mrs. Tran Le Xuan was the wife of Mr. Ngo Dinh Nhu, a government advisor in the former South Vietnam.

On the occasion of the book's release, VnExpress publishes chapters three and four of this 16-chapter book. The excerpts are named by the editorial board.

Part 1:The Royal Mother's Birth

The more I learned about Madame Nhu’s early years, the less glamorous her family’s past seemed. The smiling faces of the elderly couple in a Washington newspaper photo from 1986 were hard to reconcile with the somber portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Chuong that emerged. The “miserable” pieces of Madame Nhu’s childhood memories fell into place when I realized that no one, other than her parents, had ever imagined that this tiny baby girl, born in a Hanoi hospital on August 22, 1924, would eventually become something important.

A traditional birth would take place at home with a midwife who would say that the creature was unwilling to be born because it was in a breech position, and therefore refused to slide down the birth canal. She would object to forceps, small instruments, and modern science as interfering with the will of heaven. A midwife would abandon the baby, pale, weak, mute, and motionless, to whatever crossroads between heaven and earth the unincarnated souls wander.

Book cover about the portrait of Mrs. Tran Le Xuan. The book is published by Phuong Nam Book Company in association with the Writers Association Publishing House.

But there was no midwife that day. The baby would be a boy. The mother was so sure of it that she arranged for the birth to take place in a hospital. She had gone through the horrors of the long labor, knowing it was worth it - for a son.

The French doctor was probably afraid of being reprimanded if anything went wrong. It was the first time he had delivered a Vietnamese baby since he arrived in Indochina, but this was an unusual case.

The woman covered in sweat and blood lying on the table was Mrs. Truong, Princess Nam Tran, a member of the royal family.

The beauty of this fourteen-year-old girl was so rare that she later won a medal from the French admirers, who nicknamed her “The Pearl of Asia”. Although she was taught the arts of housekeeping, as well as singing and embroidery, she never had to lift a slender finger, except to ring the bell to summon the servants. Her most important duty as a wife was to bear her husband a son to inherit his throne.

Her husband came from a powerful landowning family. The eldest son of a provincial governor in French Tonkin, Mr. Chuong had been blessed with all the best things in life, from a Western education to a bride of royal lineage. His Tran family was related to the king, so Mr. Chuong was also a distant relative of his wife.

The French doctor must have felt a tremendous pressure to save the pale figure that had finally emerged from the bloody, viscous membrane. This was his chance to prove himself—and the superiority of Western medicine. He gripped the baby’s ankles and spanked the tiny buttocks repeatedly until the first cries escaped.

That cry was the newborn baby's first greeting to the world. It was a girl.

What did a young mother like Mrs. Chuong, fourteen, do with her newborn baby, a lump of flesh with a red face, crying loudly in her arms? When she was born, there was little reason to believe that her fate would be any different from that of centuries of women who had come before her. In the East Asian Confucian tradition, sons were expected to care for their parents in their old age, and only sons were important in the Vietnamese practice of ancestor worship. A traditional Vietnamese proverb sums up the frustration of having a daughter: “Nhat nam viet huu, thap nu viet vo,” or “A hundred daughters are not worth a son’s testicles.” On the wedding day, the man brings home a possession more precious than all else: a daughter-in-law, who will not be freed from her role as a true servant to her husband’s family, especially his mother, until she has a son. The vicious cycle continues.

Mrs. Tran Le Xuan (right) and her mother, Mrs. Than Thi Nam Tran. Photo: Archive.

Mrs. Truong had already given birth to a daughter. Her first child, Le Chi, had been born less than two years earlier, and Mrs. Truong had convinced herself that this second child would be a boy. She was so sure of it that she bought many boyish toys and clothes.

This second daughter only delayed Mrs. Truong’s freedom. Until she gave birth to a son, she was the lowest rung on the family ladder. What’s more, her mother-in-law had made some ominous threats. She wanted her son, Mr. Truong, to take a concubine if this second child was not a son. Mr. Truong was, after all, the eldest son of the prestigious Tran family—he should seize every opportunity to carry on the family’s greatness through his own blood. Polygamy had been part of the cultural tradition in Vietnam for centuries. A woman who bore only daughters, whether faithful daughters-in-law or not, was of little value. The failures should be wiped out as quickly as possible.

It was a dismal prospect for a fourteen-year-old woman like Mrs. Zhang. If her husband took a second wife, and if that woman succeeded where she had failed, in giving his family a son, Mrs. Zhang and her daughters would have to live the rest of their lives in servitude. She soon made up her mind that she would do this again—and again—until she had the son she longed for. And the son they expected of her.

The newborn daughter was named Le Xuan. Even though it was not spring. August in Hanoi is usually the beginning of autumn, and that year was no exception. It seemed that the first days of autumn had brought a chill to the city, bringing a refreshing breath after the long, hot summer days. The willow branches gently touched the surface of the lake, inviting a gentle breeze to dance in the leaves, and the city’s residents poured into the open air to enjoy the brief temperate season before the cold winds from China swept in.

Little Le Xuan and her mother did not enjoy a single moment of that happiness. Vietnamese tradition required that newborns and their mothers be confined to a dark room for at least three months after birth. The room was a cocoon for mother and baby. Even bathing practices were restricted. This custom arose from practical concerns about the mortality risks of newborns in the tropical delta, but in reality the gloomy scene after birth must have been suffocating. Except for the traditional healer and fortuneteller, who were indispensable, Mrs. Chuong’s visitors were limited to the closest family members.

The family fortuneteller was one of the first to see the baby. His job was to predict the baby's fortune by comparing the date of birth, the zodiac season, and the hour of birth with the positions of the sun and moon, not forgetting to take into account passing comets. In all likelihood, in an attempt to cheer up the poor mother, who had been locked in a dark room for three months with her unwanted little girl, the fortuneteller exclaimed about the child's fate: "It's beyond imagination!" The child, he told a trembling Mrs. Truong, would climb to great heights. "Her star could not be better!" The girl would grow up believing in her own destiny, and the brilliant prophecy would make her mother deeply jealous. The result was a life of strained mother-daughter relationships and endless suspicion.

To be continued...

According to VNE