POSTSCRIPT TWO

In the past, I read the accounts of various foreign countries in Chancellor Ye of Futang’s [Ye Xianggao, 1559–1627] Cerulean Cloud Collection (Cangxia Ji), which included biographies and discussions. Annam was the only country in the southeast [included in the text]. Starting from the time of Yao and Shun, all the way to Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming, it listed the imperial lineages, narrated rebellion and conquest, and occasionally touched on local customs. The chancellor had never been to Annam. During the Ming dynasty, while the families of Mạc, Lê, and Trần competed for the throne, the Ming first took Annam and administered it as their territory and then later abandoned it. As they say:

The great troops were thrice dispatched

And they were thoroughly outmatched.

Maybe the court did not think it through,

but then there was nothing they could do.

The chancellor heard stories and consulted historical records and therefore used it as a warning.

Now, Mr. “Source of Fragrance” [Cai Tinglan] of Penghu entered the sea from Heron Island [Ludao]. The sailors did not read the winds correctly and catastrophically ran into the storm, drifting ten days to arrive in Annam. No matter their social status, southerners welcomed [Cai], accommodated him, and asked for his poetry and calligraphy. After more than a month, he learned that two routes from Yunnan and Guangxi led to China and then asked to enter Guangxi from their country. He then crossed into Guangdong and arrived at the Tingzhang Imperial Circuit. He returned to Heron Island and went home from there. Traveling on a boat and returning on land, the trip lasted more than four months. He wrote the three chapters “Record of Peril on the High Seas,” the “Travelogue of the Fiery Wasteland,” and “Vietnam Chronicle.”

Mr. Cai entered the raging seas with loyalty and trustworthiness, treading through danger as though it were flat ground, and the gods did not forsake him. This has already been fully addressed in the prefaces by the circuit intendant and the prefect.¹ He left tracks from the royal capital to the border. His interviews and translations were extremely detailed and thorough. Does this not exceed merely filling in some gaps in the historical records? Annam has great reverence toward our dynasty. Since the royal Nguyễn family held the country, they knocked on the pass and paid tribute since the beginning years of the Jiajing reign [1522–66]. The current king especially follows his duty as a subject. This is tremendously different from the previous dynasty [the Ming], which was neither able to pacify or appease them, failing in taking and abandoning. It is a historian’s convention to record the general ideas of local buildings and customs. As he traveled, Mr. Cai also wrote down an overview of the topography, the positive and negative aspects of their practices, and the merits and demerits of their governance. Based on where he went and what he discovered and published, is it just empty words on paper?

Ye Wenzhong [Ye Xianggao] was a famous official of a vanquished county [the previous dynasty]. His book was more comprehensive than previous histories. Mr. Cai’s record is even more comprehensive than the Cerulean Cloud and is closer to the recent situation. He used his firsthand experiences to generate his analyses. People who read this collection will get a good sense of how Mr. Cai could assist the governance of the dynasty someday.

The Previous Tingzhou Prefecture school superintendent, and your humble brother, Ke Longzhang