What would 17th century Vietnam look like through the eyes of Westerners? Here are some notes from the missionary Marini. He spent 14 years in the northern region and later published a book about this land in Paris in 1666. Marini was born in 1608 and died in 1682. These sections were translated by author Nguyễn Trọng Phấn and published in Thanh niên newspaper. First are the notes about the houses of the northern people.
Houses made of wood and straw
The houses of the northern people and their construction style are very simple, not well thought out and without any particular intention. Therefore, they do not need to rely on architects or skilled craftsmen. Because in my opinion, it does not take much cleverness to build such houses. There are no intricate carvings, no beautiful rooms like castles, everything is made of wood and straw. The people erect four round columns planted on a round stone block.
Since they cannot bury the feet of those columns into the ground, unless the columns are made of a very rare and expensive wood that does not rot underground. They place many other pieces of wood on top of those four columns. Whenever the people are in need and want to build more rooms, they add more columns, walls, or bamboo, plastered with a very fine powder, light blue in color. The ground is well-packed earth, the roof is thatched with straw or palm leaves, the houses are built far apart, surrounded by reed fences, with gardens and fish ponds, a common food for the poor. The beds are placed about two meters off the ground, consisting of a long wooden plank of four meters attached to four wooden pieces on which bamboo is laid, or a woven net made of string, on top of which they spread mats to sleep without mattresses or blankets.
The rich and officials also have houses at ground level, so when you reach the door, you step right into the house. These houses are spacious, built in an orderly manner and made of better materials than those of commoners. In front of the house, the entrance has a wide yard that can accommodate many people who come to ask for favors or plead for something, with a roofed corridor shaped like a semicircle running around the house. The frames of the windows are placed on large wooden columns very well, evenly spaced. The entrance doors of commoners are low and small to make it difficult for thieves to carry away the items they steal. The doors of the officials' houses are wider because they are not afraid of thieves; in fact, the thieves fear them and always watch over them with guards.
However, the officials' houses also do not have carpets or valuable curtains, only small beautiful mats dyed in different colors, with many beautiful patterns, and wealth is stored in rice. The person with the most rice is considered the richest. Therefore, when we say someone has a lot of rice, we mean that person is very wealthy and prosperous. In the country, there are no wide roads, no stone-paved streets divided into sections like in our country. But the houses are spaced apart and scattered throughout the fields. A large number of houses gather to form a village, in which there is a public house, that is, a communal house. Now we turn to the imperial city to know the splendor of the capital.
Hanoi City
Although foreign countries briefly call it the capital because the king often resides there. The locals call it the market town, meaning market, market day. Because whatever good products are in the country, foreign goods brought in for sale are all brought here. There are two large market days each month on the 1st and 15th of the lunar month. The market occupies a very beautiful and fertile plain, stretching for many miles and located on the banks of a river originating from China. The river wraps around the city in a wide bend, making trade easy.
Boats can always travel on the river. The river also branches into many channels, many useful canals for transporting goods and facilitating trade between the provinces and the city. Any European who visits the capital or the market, depending on how each person calls it, will see that the houses here are not something to praise. Because the houses are no different from those in other regions of the country. To build more beautiful houses, one must spend more because digging two or three meters deep will find water. To be convenient, each house digs a small pond to raise fish, with water used for washing clothes, bathing, and watering vegetables.
The tallest houses may have a second floor, but there are many high places built above. Rooms are raised up during floods. The streets are not paved with stones, and the people almost always walk barefoot throughout the country. Although there are dirty and shameful places, we should also acknowledge that this city has many splendid and magnificent spots. The city has 72 streets, each street is as wide as an average city in Italy, with 72 neighborhoods full of craftsmen and merchants wanting to avoid chaos and help us find what we need.
At each neighborhood entrance, there is a sign indicating the quality of goods, so it is rare for anyone, including foreigners, to be mistaken about the price of goods, the quality of good or bad goods, or the quantity of goods sold. As I mentioned earlier, all the products from the country and foreign goods are brought here more than anywhere else in the country. For this reason, the king wants all foreign goods to stop by the country. And he only allows Chinese, Japanese, Cambodian, Portuguese, Spanish, Filipino, Dutch ships, and other Eastern countries wishing to enter the country to sail upstream on the Nhị Hà River, not to dock anywhere other than the market dock.
Products of the Northern Region
The people of Đông Kinh have been clever and skillful since the Portuguese, Dutch, and neighboring countries came to trade. They know how to trade not out of necessity but for profit, for money. Moreover, they are rational enough to quickly learn the ways and tricks of the trade to avoid being cheated. Until now, the king has not allowed the mining of gold mines. He has just allowed the mining of a part of the silver mine in Cao Bằng province. There are a few silver mines in the Bắc Chấn area that have just been dug, but when the king allows it, they can be mined? He keeps such precious metal mines because he fears that foreigners will hear about them and come to ask for mining and take them away.
He fears that his subjects will compete for control of those mines and rebel against him. Iron and lead can be mined freely because he does not worry about guarding them like gold and silver. Besides the mines, one should mention the gathering of clams. But now no one gathers them anymore because previous kings have taken all the profits. Who still wants to risk their life to do that hard work? I do not see anywhere in Đông Kinh where fish are abundant; everyone has nets to catch fish, either to eat fresh or to salt. Another more common source of profit, easy to exploit and not dangerous because it grows naturally on the shore. That is the forest mountains with many types of trees older than a thousand years that do not rot, like lim wood, which the Portuguese call palophero, meaning iron stake, to indicate the nature of the wood being heavier than ebony and sinking faster in water, hard like rusted iron, when struck with a hammer, no matter how strong a person is, they cannot pull it up, using pliers is still difficult; lim wood is incompatible with iron, causing rust and eating away at the iron.
In addition, there are many other good types of wood that the king does not allow to be cut down, so we cannot build beautiful warships from ebony. Ebony is not as abundant and good as Mozambican ebony. Cinnamon grows in the southern part of Đông Kinh, in the northern part of Đảng, and in the southern part of this region adjacent to Chiêm Thành is not as abundant and good as Ceylon cinnamon. However, southern cinnamon is more expensive and very favored by the Japanese. Therefore, many people go to seek it, but the king strictly prohibits it. Anyone without permission is not allowed to peel it, and those with permission must return to the royal palace.
Cinnamon is fragrant, but to obtain it, one must venture into deep forests full of fierce beasts and poisonous waters. The fierce animals also have defenses to guard against, and whether the poisonous waters and sacred gases have very good antidotes or not, one does not die under the tree but returns home bedridden. The forest also has tigers, bears, wolves, deer, hares, wild boars, elephants, monkeys, and a few rhinoceroses.
Testing the horn of the rhinoceros with a sword
Rhinoceros horns are highly valued in India and neighboring countries of China. Rhinoceros horns are used for detoxification, so anyone who has them tends to stockpile them in their homes, especially since in these regions, common people have the bad custom of poisoning each other. Some even assert that if one steps on a thorn, just grinding a little rhinoceros horn into powder and mixing it with water, then using that water to wash the painful spot will not cause any pain. The thorn naturally comes out very easily and without pain. High-ranking officials and wealthy people, when hosting banquets for close friends, only pour wine into cups made of rhinoceros horn to show that they are wealthy and not afraid of getting drunk because rhinoceros horn has detoxifying properties.
Just like elsewhere, southern people want to test whether the rhinoceros horn is good or not, they hang a sword on a string and then hold the rhinoceros horn close to the sword. If the hand moves the horn and the sword turns with it, then the horn is good. If the sword stands still, then the horn is worthless. The people of Đông Kinh are more knowledgeable than the Chinese in using rhinoceros horn to make sword handles and knife grips to guard against the poisonous fumes of antidotes that they always carry with them. They also raise goats, cows, buffaloes, and horses as many as they do with small ones, like Polish horses.
Horses bought from neighboring countries are larger and better but have already been castrated. The rulers of these countries either want to keep the profit or fear selling breeding horses to a country that may become their enemy one day, so they do not want their breeding horses to be in other countries. Horses do not have their hooves covered because the land in the countryside has no stones, which does not harm their feet. They also do not use nails to spur horses like holding a whip. They believe that riding a horse without music is ridiculous. Riding like that is no different from riding a cow. However, during the mourning period for the king or the king's relatives, anyone who rides a horse with music will be fined a large sum. And these are the notes of the Italian missionary Marini, a person who lived in the northern region in the 17th century, translated by author Nguyễn Trọng Phấn and published in Thanh niên newspaper.