Phan Boi Chau - The man who embodied the soul of the nation.

(Baonghean) - In the late 19th century, the Can Vuong movement was severely suppressed by the French colonialists and their collaborators, leading to its failure.

The Vietnamese people groaned under two layers of oppression and exploitation; their already miserable lives became even darker. In this context, national history presented an extremely urgent and harsh demand to the patriots of the time: to find a method and path to national salvation that was in line with historical requirements, continuing the tradition of national liberation and salvation passed down from their ancestors. It was at this moment that Phan Boi Chau emerged as a savior, creating faith, light, and a new ray of hope for the 20 million Vietnamese people under the harsh colonial regime. As Nguyen Ai Quoc respectfully remarked: "Phan Boi Chau – a hero, a messenger of God, a selfless figure for independence, revered by 20 million people in slavery." Cultural researcher Dang Thai Mai once wrote: "Just because they read Phan Boi Chau, thousands of young men cut off their braids, threw away all their books, literary pursuits, and the shameful dream of fame and fortune attached to them, left their villages, homes, wives, and children, and braved mountains and streams, regardless of hunger, danger, and hardship, to go to Siam, China, and Japan to learn and plan the fight against the French. That was a great success."

The Phan Boi Chau Memorial House in Nam Dan. Photo: Sy Minh

Phan Bội Châu, whose real name was Phan Văn San, also known as Hải Thụ, later adopted the pen name Sào Nam. He was born in 1867 in Đan Nhiệm village, Xuân Hòa commune, Nam Đàn district (Nghệ An province). Born into a family of Confucian scholars, Phan Văn San was renowned throughout the region for his exceptional intelligence from a young age. Despite his outstanding innate talent, he was born into a country plagued by hardship, war, and poverty. He chose teaching as a means of livelihood. He also pursued a scholarly career, but apparently recognized the outdated and backward nature of the education system at the time. In 1898, after being wrongly accused of "illegible documents" for bringing materials into the examination hall and sentenced to "life imprisonment and inability to take examinations," Phan Văn San left for Huế. In the imperial capital, he met and befriended renowned scholars and high-ranking officials holding important positions in the city. Phan's talent quickly became known to many people in Hue, and he became close friends with like-minded individuals such as Phan Chu Trinh, Nguyen Thuong Hien, Dang Nguyen Can, Huynh Thuc Khang, and Tran Quy Cap. Also in the capital city of Hue, with the help of his friends, Phan Van San's unjust accusation of "literary intrigue" was cleared. In 1900, he returned to his hometown of Nghe An and participated in the provincial examination. He passed with flying colors, earning the praise "A name renowned throughout the literary world." From this point on, Phan Van San "had the false fame to deceive the world"—as he put it. This was also the time when he embarked on a life of intense and turbulent patriotic activities under the name Phan Boi Chau.

Mr. Phan Thieu Cat (grandson of Phan Boi Chau) converses with former students of Phan Boi Chau School at the Phan Boi Chau Memorial Area in Hue City. Photo: D.T.

In 1904, Phan Bội Châu, along with Nguyễn Hàm and others, founded the Duy Tân Society, choosing Kỳ Ngoại hầu Cường Để – also known as Nguyễn Phúc Đan, a descendant of the Nguyễn dynasty – as its leader. In 1905, he, along with Đặng Tử Kính and Tăng Bạt Hổ, traveled to China and then to Japan with the aim of seeking Japanese assistance to help the Duy Tân Society expel the French. During this period, Phan Bội Châu wrote the book "History of Vietnam's National Loss" to awaken the patriotism of the people and began to form a path for sending young people abroad to study in order to return and save the country. Through the Đông Du movement, from 1905 to 1908, Phan Bội Châu and like-minded individuals sent approximately 200 outstanding young Vietnamese people to Japan to study, hoping they would become the core of the national salvation and liberation movement in the future. In September 1908, following the rise of the anti-tax movement in Central Vietnam and its spread to other provinces, the French colonial authorities severely suppressed it. Many members of the Duy Tan movement were arrested and sentenced, including the patriot Nguyen Ham – a core figure of the movement. Subsequently, with the compromise and cooperation between the French protectorate government and the Japanese authorities, the students involved in the Dong Du movement were expelled from Japan, thus ending an important activity that Phan Boi Chau and his colleagues had painstakingly built.

In June 1912, Phan Bội Châu presided over the "Great Conference" in Guangzhou (China) and decided to dissolve the Duy Tân Society and establish the Vietnam Restoration Society. With this initiative, Phan Bội Châu shifted the struggle's principles from monarchism to democracy to expel the French, aiming to establish a Republic of Vietnam and respond to the changing international situation. After the Vietnam Restoration Society was founded, Phan Bội Châu sent several people back to Vietnam to eliminate some enemies and rekindle the patriotic movement among the people. Believing Phan Bội Châu to be the mastermind, the French colonialists and their puppet government sentenced him to death in absentia. In 1913, the French protectorate government colluded with the Governor-General of Guangdong (China) to arrest Phan Bội Châu, who was imprisoned in Guangdong until February 1917. After his release, Phan Văn San continued his revolutionary activities. In 1922, while studying Sun Yat-sen's ideology in China, Phan Boi Chau intended to reorganize the Vietnam Restoration Society into the Vietnam National Party, but he was kidnapped on June 30, 1925, before he could carry out the reorganization.

With the ambition of "eradicating the root cause" and suppressing the revolutionary movement under the influence of Phan Van San, the French colonialists decided to secretly eliminate this leader. The plot was exposed, and at this time, the Vietnamese people, especially the patriotic intellectual youth, launched a powerful struggle demanding that the French colonialists release Phan. The movement even spread to China and Paris. Under pressure from the revolutionary masses, the French colonialists were forced to abolish the life sentence against Phan. And from 1925 to 1940, Phan Boi Chau was placed under house arrest in Hue and became "Old Man of Ben Ngu" – the most familiar and respectful way the people of his hometown, the land of Ngu Mountain and the Perfume River, referred to him.

In his journey to fulfill his mission of saving the country, Phan Boi Chau, from the humble beginnings of Nghe An province, quickly became one of the most outstanding representatives of patriotic intellectuals and scholars of Vietnam in the early 20th century. Phan Boi Chau embarked on a journey across borders to many regions of East Asia and Southeast Asia, overcoming the narrow limitations of locality and nation to transform patriotism into national pride. In his autobiographies, he humbly stated: “Alas! So many years of wandering, planning a hundred things, yet nothing has come of it. I think my faults are great, my sins are many…” or: “Alas! My history is a history of a hundred failures without a single success.” Yet, it was from Phan Boi Chau's “not accomplishing anything” that he illuminated the path to national salvation and liberation for subsequent generations, providing invaluable practical experience and making the path to national salvation and liberation clearer. These experiences and foundations are extremely important for successive generations to inherit and develop successfully. The most prominent example of this is none other than Nguyen Ai Quoc – Ho Chi Minh.

In the great personality of Phan Boi Chau, there was a close integration of two aspects: political and cultural. Before becoming the leader of the Duy Tan movement and the Vietnam Restoration Society, Phan Van San was renowned throughout the country for his talent in classical Chinese studies. As a revolutionary, he developed both his political and cultural personalities simultaneously. From 1925 until his final years under French colonial house arrest in Hue, although not directly participating in the struggle against the enemy, Phan Boi Chau continued his revolutionary work through his pen, which had the power to deliver powerful and timely messages. Even in this confined environment, a generation of people wholeheartedly embraced Phan Boi Chau's words: "Forge hearts of iron to move mountains and fill oceans / Pour hot blood to wash away the stain of slavery." In Phan Boi Chau's thinking, the youth were the core force with a decisive role in the nation's destiny. He wrote: "It is because of the youth that the nation of youth remains eternally youthful. It is because of the youth that the nation of youth enjoys such immense prestige! To put it accurately, the youth are the soul of the nation of youth."

For 15 years, living in the capital, "the old man of Ben Ngu" lived simply in a thatched house, constantly yearning for his homeland and country. There, in a cramped space within the capital, people saw the image of the well, the rows of betel trees, and the rows of tombstones that Phan Boi Chau had erected to honor his comrades who had fallen for the nation. When his strength and energy were exhausted, he exclaimed: "To save the country and preserve the race, I have the will but not the talent. Now I bid farewell to the nation forever. My sins are great; I hope the nation will forgive me." That alone is enough to show the heart of a son devoted to his ancestral land. Phan Boi Chau will forever be "one of the most beautiful Vietnamese people," as assessed by the writer and literary scholar Hoai Thanh.

In the hearts of the Vietnamese people in general and Nghe An province in particular, Phan Van San - Phan Boi Chau will forever be a shining example of revolutionary qualities, a representative figure of the nation's character and spirit. To express gratitude and educate future generations, this year, commemorating the 75th anniversary of Phan Boi Chau's death, the Nghe An Provincial Party Committee and People's Committee have approved the project to adjust the planning of the Phan Boi Chau Memorial Site in Nam Dan town (Nghe An province) to better reflect his life, career, and stature. Notably, the project is being built thanks to the significant contributions of generations of former students of the Phan Boi Chau school in Nghe An. Within just four months of launching the initiative, over 500 former students of Phan Boi Chau school participated in supporting the project, contributing nearly 1.7 billion VND. This work is a profound and meaningful continuation of the moral principle of remembering one's roots, of the faith and gratitude of today's generation towards the revolutionary predecessors, of which Phan Boi Chau is a shining example.

Hoang Thi Quynh Anh,Deputy Director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism