Hà Tiên, situated in the western Mekong River Delta and Gulf of Siam littoral not far from Vietnam’s present border with Cambodia, thrived as an entrepôt over much of the eighteenth century. The Chinese merchants who frequented there called it Gangkou, or The Port. The pioneer who built up this thriving settlement was Mo Jiu (Mạc Cửu, 1655-1735), a native of the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. After his death in 1735, the fortunes of The Port reached new heights under the management of his son and successor, Mo Tianci (Mạc Thiên Tứ, 1708-1780). He played upon the rivalry between the southern Vietnamese regime of Cochinchina and Siam for domination over Cambodia. He paid tribute to all three states and accepted their ranks and titles while offering them the protection of his formidable navy from each other and pirates. He also cultivated cordial ties with Qing China and the Dutch East India Company. He built up The Port into a transit point and financial center by forging connections with the major trans-regional networks that plied the trading lanes in maritime East Asia, including Qing, Malay, and Bugis. He welcomed Viet and Khmer settlers to open up and populate his hinterlands and exploit them for resources and minerals.
Besides his political and economic achievements, Tianci founded a poetry society that brought together a large network of Confucian gentry and merchants in southern China and Vietnam. Along with Tianci, they collectively contributed verses to several shared anthologies. The participants might compose their verses remotely and forward them to him on trading ships. Or they might sail personally to The Port as guests of Tianci, who covered all expenses associated with their visit, from transportation to accommodation and entertainment. The most famous output from the society centered around ten spots in The Port and its surrounding areas that Tianci had selected for their remarkable scenic vistas. Tianci, along with 31 other poets from China and Vietnam, each contributed ten verses on the different views. The resulting anthology of 320 poems, entitled the Ten Verses of Hà Tiên, was published in 1737.
My new book offers a comprehensive narrative of the rise and fall of The Port and the remarkable clan that governed it throughout the eighteenth century. Over the course of my research, perhaps what shocked me the most was discovering the scale and extent of their commercial and cultural reach. For instance, I had initially assumed that The Port’s ties with China were limited to Guangdong, the native province of the Mo, and neighboring Fujian. However, I discovered that ships from The Port often paid call at Ningbo and Zhoushan, near present-day Shanghai.
Moreover, from the late 1750s to early 1760s, Mo Huang (Mạc Tử Hoàng), Tianci’s son and designated heir, was tasked with compiling a second edition of the Ten Verses of Hà Tiên anthology. After collecting the poems from the contributors, he personally journeyed to Jiangnan, the economic and cultural heartland of the Qing. There, some 4,500 kilometers away from The Port, he requested one of his business associates, a Fujian merchant-scholar named Guo Jie, to introduce him to Zhao Pilie, a Shanghai-based literati who was renowned throughout the empire for his literary and artistic talent. Zhao must have been quite impressed with the exotic credentials that Huang presented to him: “Prince of the Hà Tiên Kingdom.” He agreed to read over and suggest corrections for the Ten Verses anthology. He then wrote a postscript as a sign of his endorsement. Huang rewarded Zhao richly for his labor, gifting him with a massive limestone for the decoration of his garden and expensive sticks of eaglewood from the highlands of mainland Southeast Asia.
The Mo Clan Shrine in Hà Tiên
While I had a great time writing the book overall, this episode undoubtedly left the deepest impression on me, because I could relate to it in so many ways on a personal level. I am a native of Shanghai. But I never imagined that a subject of my studies who I thought operated in an entirely different spatial dimension would visit my hometown and stay for so long! Secondly, Zhao Pilie’s scrutiny of the contributions to the Ten Verses anthology bears a striking resemblance to the peer review process that every member of the academic community seeking to disseminate their findings currently has to undergo. Indeed, it reminded me of the arduous labor involved in transforming my initial ideas into my recently published product. From inception to completion, it took a total of ten years! How many ten years do we have in our lives?
The Port by Xing Hang
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