A few days ago, the 25th informal leaders' meeting of APEC (APEC) was held in Vietnam Da Nang (Danang). This beautiful place is not only a tourist destination, but also the third largest city in Vietnam. Just as the Chinese characters used in the city’s names are not common, Da Nang also has an unusual history.
"Danang" is not "Danang"
Many people know that Vietnam has a close cultural ties with China in history. Chinese characters were once a popular character in ancient Vietnam. Therefore, most Vietnamese place names are also named after the meaning of Chinese characters. For example, the meaning of "Hanoi" is "inside the Red River Basin". Although Vietnam changed to the Roman characters after World War II and abandoned Chinese characters in form, the Chinese characters still reflected the Vietnamese pronunciation (Hanyue pronunciation). For example, if "Hà Nội" is restored to Chinese characters, it is still the word "Hanoi". No one will transliterate it into a strange name such as "Hanoi". In fact, the General Rules for Translation and Writing of Foreign Place Names and Chinese Characters formulated by the China Place Names Commission in 1979 also stipulates this: "The place names of countries such as the Korean Peninsula, Japan, and Vietnam should generally be used in Chinese characters in the past or present."
Danang
But "Danang" is not listed here. Its Vietnamese name is written as "Đà Nẵng", which really cannot remind people of the word "Dan Nang". Mr. Ge Jianxiong was confused about this in "The Story of Hue", "thinking that Chinese characters should be used in the category of 'Da Nan'", but "it was impossible to link with the original Chinese characters and place names", and then sighed, "Has Vietnam already left the Chinese cultural circle?" But this is not the case. Whether it is "Danang" or "Đà Nẵng", they are just the marks of the local embrace of Chinese culture. Of course, "Đà Nẵng" is very different from "Đại Nam" in the Hanyue pronunciation, just as different from the Songhua River and Songhua Egg. If the former is restored to Chinese characters, it is actually written as "Tuo㶞". There is no doubt that these two words are both rare and cannot tell what they mean. The reason is also very simple. It is actually a transliteration written in Chinese characters.
The reason for the "DANANG" that confuses the Chinese people is dating back thousands of years ago. In the late 10th century AD, after taking advantage of the chaos and independence of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, the "Da Yue" was basically the corner of today's Honghe Delta. It was the Song Dynasty to the north, the sea to the east, and the Mekong River to the west, and the only expansion direction was Campapura in the south; the "Pulu" in the Sanskrit word "city", so Chinese and Vietnamese historical records also called it " Chameng ". The emerging war between "Great Vietnam" and Champa are endless books, and some even believe that "a Vietnamese history is a true story of the Vietnamese dispute." In 1306, Chen Yingzong married his sister to King Zhimin of Chameng in exchange for betrothal gifts from Wu and Li (later, King Zhan died, and the betrothal gifts were not returned). Today's land in Da Nang was included in the Vietnamese territory since then (but it was repeated in the fifteenth century).
The original owner here called it "Da Nak", which means "the entrance of the Great River (referring to the Han River flowing through Da Nang)" in the divination language. After the Yue people replaced it, for the sake of "using Xia to transform into Yi" (see "Why does Vietnam call itself "China" on February 29, 2016), the pronunciation of this place name "Han (Ju) transform" into "Đà Nẵng" and recorded as "Tuo (Tuo)㶞". In the "Minist Records of Wuzhou" written by Yang Wen'an in 1555, the record of "Songjiang Temple... in Guangnan Tuohaimen" appears. Until Vietnam abolished Chinese characters after World War II, "Tuo" was the official Chinese name in Da Nang.
As for the word "Danang" used in the Chinese circle today, it appeared even later in history. After the 17th century, Chinese people moved south to central and southern Vietnam to settle down. There is a saying that local Chinese discovered that the port "Tuo" is rich in clams, so it is called "Changang". Another statement is slightly different from it, and it believes that the terrain of "Tuo" port is like a clam, so it is named after it.In short, I later realized that the word "金" is not auspicious, so I changed "金" to "金", so I found that "Dan Nang".
clam
From Tuo to Toulon
also began in the 17th century, Vietnam fell into a state of division between the north and the south for more than two centuries. In the north, Zheng Song "handled the emperor to command the princes", and regarded the emperor of the Later Li Dynasty as the king and took over the power; in the south, Ruan Huang, who was close to him, called himself the Great Yue Kingdom, and in the history of Chinese and Japanese, he called it Guangnan Kingdom. Guangnan has mountains and seas, and its land is barren and its people are poor, which cannot be compared with the Red River Delta occupied by the Zheng family. Therefore, the Ruan Master of all dynasties is committed to expanding south, but also realizes that overseas trade is "the determinant of the survival of the local economy."
Vietnam's north-south confrontation (1697)
At that time, when the Tokugawa Shogunate implemented the red seal ship trade system, it was unable to trade with the Ming Dynasty due to the bad influence of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasion of North Korea. Located in , Guangnan, located in of the Indochina Peninsula, is adjacent to China and undoubtedly has innate geographical advantages. In order to increase tax revenue and strengthen national strength, Lord Ruan showed goodwill to Japan in various names. "As early as the Nguyen Huang period, the Nguyen family expressed their desire to trade to Japan in various names. Nguyen Huang had frequent letter exchanges with Tokugawa Ieyasu." The two sides hit it off and trade relations became increasingly close, and the Guangnan region also became an important Sino-Japanese trade intermediary.
Take this opportunity to rise to Hoi An Port. This place is located at the mouth of the lower reaches of Qiuban River. It has a convenient waterway and is easy to avoid wind and waves, so it has become an important commercial port. In 1744, a Westerner claimed that "Huai (An)pu was the most prosperous place in Jiaozhichina business." The "Da Nan Yitong Chronicle" of Vietnam in the next century also says that "there is a Shiting Guild Hall in the middle, and the business and tourism gather together. The tea pool in the south is a place where ships from north to south are parked, and it is also a large metropolis." Of course, Westerners also knew the existence of Tuo, just 30 kilometers northwest of Hoi An. Portuguese explorer António de Faria stopped in Tuo in 1535 and became the first European to visit this place. However, in the 17th and 18th centuries when Hoi'an became a prosperous city, the adjacent Tuo area was still sparsely inhabited. Some Western travel notes at that time only described Tuo'an as a former port in Hoi'an.
As time goes by, the Hoi'an River has become increasingly narrow and shallow due to the accumulation of alluvial silt and sand, and it is no longer suitable for large ships with draft sailing and anchoring. Tuo's geographical advantages in this regard become prominent. As the "Danan Yitong Zhi" says, Tuoyu "has deep and wide waters, with mountain barriers outside, without the danger of waves and waves. Whenever the boat sails and sails are not convenient, they are often moored here, also known as Tonglong Bay." As a result, Portugal's navigation data pointed out that "ships with large carrying capacity cannot enter Hoi'an, so they have to unload their goods in Tuo'an."
Vietnam Central map ( Hue , Da Nang and Hoi'an)
Hoi'an Ancient City
Vietnam's domestic political factors have further accelerated the historical process of the translocation of Hoi'an and Tuo'an. In 1802, Vietnam was reunified under the north and south of the country. This last feudal dynasty in Vietnam turned against tradition and built the capital in Hue in central Vietnam. In this way, Tuoyu became the maritime gateway to the capital (just like Tianjin to Beijing), and its status suddenly rose. However, the monarchs of the Ruan Dynasty in history only regarded the permission to trade as a means of "being gentle and distant people", and even said that "if you speak with profit, the country will be short of money, so why should you seek far away?" Therefore, only Western merchant ships were allowed to enter Tuokuan to buy, but "if the matter is clear, you will be ordered to go away" and "do not go ashore to build houses, and transcend the law."
The country is certainly unable to stop the strong ships and cannons of the 19th century colonists. In 1847, the French army used the excuse of massacre of Catholic missionaries in the Hue court and mobilized two warships (the "Gloire" and "Victorieuse") to bombard Tuo (the French call it "Tourane", which is a false pronunciation of "Đà Nẵng" and translated as "Turon").Fortunately, Emperor Nguyen Chaoming praised 20 years ago that "our country uses military forces, and the navy is a good skill, while the five-massed ship is particularly effective." Once he fought with the French, he knew who the navy was truly "effective". Four Vietnamese warships were easily sunk (the other one was severely damaged), and the Vietnamese army suffered more than 1,200 casualties, while the French were zero!
Colonial and War
By June 27, 1858, once again, under the pretext of religious persecution, the French Far East Fleet and Spanish warships bombarded Hue's portal, the port of "Turon", and provoked a large-scale war of aggression. In 1862, the Nguyen Dynasty authorities were forced to cede several southern provinces, and Vietnam gradually became part of the "French Indochina".
1858 French invasion of Da Nang
During the French rule, the colonists established schools, hospitals, post offices and prisons in Hoi An, operating them as political strongholds, and the economic focus was on the development of Da Nang trade, which became an important seaport for sailing activities in Western countries. Statistics in 1887 show that 623 foreign ships carried 65,840 tons of cargo that year, and 719 ships carried 75,676 tons departed from Da Nang. During the colonial era, Da Nang had become one of the five major cities in French Indochina, alongside Hanoi, Hai Phong, Saigon and Hue - of course this was only by Vietnamese standards, until the 1950s, the population of Da Nang was only 50,000.
Ironically, Da Nang has truly become a city in the modern sense, thanks to the catastrophe of Vietnam War . Da Nang's position as a transportation hub in the war is very important, and the railways and Highway No. 1 that run through Vietnam pass here. Between the road and the railway, there is another modern airport that can park hundreds of jet fighters. The city faces Da Nang Bay, with a wide harbor and deep water, and a camellia peninsula outside to protect it, making it an excellent naval base. The US military is attracted by this. In March 1965, the first batch of US Marine Corps two battalions (3,500 people) landed in Da Nang, which also became the first step for the US military to enter the large-scale South Vietnam operation.
The first batch of US troops entered Da Nang
On the one hand, this dragged Da Nang into the continuous war. In the early morning of July 1, 1965, the Southern Vietnamese People's Liberation Army attacked Da Nang. With lightning speed, it exploded 47 US aircraft of various types and killed 140 US troops, including 4 majors. On January 31, 1968 (the first day of the Lunar New Year), the Liberation Force launched a "Spring Festival Offensive" across South Vietnam with a scale of nearly 100,000 people, and major southern Vietnamese cities, including Da Nang, were reduced to the battlefield. In the fierce battle, "To save this city, you must destroy it" has become a famous saying by the US military, and the ancient capital Hue has almost become a ruin. In contrast, Da Nang's losses are slightly smaller, which is of course because as the main base of the US military, it is highly alert.
1965 Da Nang Airport
On the other hand, as the main air force base of the US military, Da Nang Airport during the Vietnam War was considered the busiest airport in the world, with an average of 2,595 takeoffs and landings per day, which is more than any other airport in the world at that time. The headquarters of the 3rd Marine Division of the United States also moved from Okinawa to Da Nang, and the garrison increased to nearly 10,000. For the needs of war, the United States built a series of military facilities in Da Nang, including military training centers. The city streets also expanded around the United Military Base, with gorgeous buildings for American soldiers enjoying it. Therefore, Danang is known as the city of "a barracks with residents". Just as American journalist Frances Fitzgerald sarcastically, refugee towns emerged around the American base, "washing clothes for Americans, selling American cold drinks to American soldiers, and engaging in prostitution for Americans to enjoy." The tide of refugees has caused the urban population of Da Nang to expand rapidly, from 50,000 in 1955 to about 600,000 by the end of 1974. During this process, Da Nang's modern industry has also developed to a certain extent, with the number of workers in the city reaching more than 100,000, and its main industries include alkali production, soap, textile, cement, and electricity.When the U.S. military evacuated Da Nang in 1973 and the Vietnam War ended with the unification of the north and south in 1975, Da Nang had become an industrial center in central Vietnam. Now, this young city has become the third largest city in Vietnam after Ho Chi Minh City (Sai Kung) and the capital Hanoi, and the second largest port in Vietnam after Ho Chi Minh City.
Vietnam People's Army Liberate Danang
References:
Lin Yang: "The Rise and Fall of Hoi An Port and Its Historical Status", Master's Thesis of Zhengzhou University, May 2001
Sun Jiandang: "External Relations in the Mingming Period of Nguyen Dynasty, Vietnam", Master's Thesis of Zhengzhou University, May 2001
