I really do keep telling myself to tweet from love and trời just laughs at me every day.

Ok let's talk about what's wrong with the tweet by OP.

OP is a professor at a major institution, w a pulitzer prize and has a large platform with lots of white & non-Viet followers. So OP has a certain kind of credibility. His tweets can be taken as The Truth About Việt Nam. But the article linked is full of inaccuracies.

Immediately, the first sentence is already misleading.

Nam Việt or Nanyue is an ancient kingdom covering today's Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hong Kong, Macau, southern Fujian and northern Vietnam. Saying "Nam-Viet was defeated by the Chinese" makes no sense.

There is a longer history of the Baiyue / Bách Việt which I won't go into. But suffice to say Nanyue or Nam Việt people were a part of the conglomerate of Yue peoples who lived roughly below the Yangtze River some 2000+ years'ish ago.

The article implies there was a Vietnamese "peaceful Triệu dynasty" minding its own business when the Han empire invaded.

In fact, Viet historians have constantly gone back & forth on whether Zhao Tuo/Triệu Đà who established the Triệu dynasty was a Viet king OR an invader.

This is because the founder of the Triệu Dynasty, Zhao Tuo/Triệu Đà was the military general for the state of Qin after the Warring State period, himself coming from the defeated Zhao state.

(The Qin dynasty was the first dynasty of Imperial China, lasting only 15 years from 221-206 BCE.

The emperor's legacy lasts until this day, however, with his terracotta army, and he also ordered the construction of the Great Wall of China.)

The Qin Emperor ruled with so much brutality that the suffering was immense, especially for peasants and farmers. When he died, wars broke out, combined with floods and droughts. When his son was killed in 207 BCE, the whole dynasty collapsed.

When the Qin dynasty fell (in 221 BC), Zhao Tuo/ Triệu Đà declared himself King Wu of Nanyue.

Chaos reigned until the petty official Liu Bang from the Qin Dynasty established the Han Dynasty in 202 BC.

In 196 BC, the Han emperor formally recognized Zhao Tuo as a local ruler, but Zhao Tuo was unhappy with a trading ban and declared himself the same status with the Han emperor, and attacked a constituent Kingdom of the Han empire.

*some stuff happened* an enraged Empress Lu sent people to Zhao Tuo's hometown to kill his extended family and desecrated his ancestral tombs and troops to punish him.

Zhao Tuo retaliated and then annexed Minyue, Yelang & a few other states as subjects.

You can see them here:

In 179 BC, the empress died, another Han emperor came into power and reversed the harsh trade policies and took steps to reconcile with Zhao Tuo and the Kingdom of Nanyue. He made offerings to Zhao Tuo's ancestors and hometown to make peace.

Zhao Tuo withdrew his title of "emperor" and went back to "king" and made Nanyue a Han subject state again, but only on the surface. Internally he was still called the emperor.

Zhao Tuo / Triệu Đà lived for a reallllly long time, until 103 years old.

Triệu Mạt or Zhao Mo, Zhao Tuo's grandson, took the throne, just as when the king of Minyue attacked Nanyue/ Nam Việt. Zhao Mo sent for help from the Han court, which sent troops to aid Zhao Mo fight against Minyue.

This event was significant because during this the Han army was able to:

1. Figure out a route to send 100,000 elite soldiers into Nanyue

and

2. Got the feudal lords of Yelang to pledge allegiance to the Han empire.

(I really wanna explain why the narrative of "The peaceful Trieu Dynasty of Nam-Viet was defeated by the Chinese in 111 B.C." is so bogus I'm spending my Saturday night debunking it with all this ancient history. Thanks for following along.)

Anyway, after the Mingyue invasion was resolved, Zhao Mo/Triệu Mạt sent his son Zhao Yingqi/ Triệu Anh Tề to the Han court to join the emperor’s guard.

There he married a Han woman who gave birth to his second son, Zhao Xing/Triệu Hưng.

Zhao Yingqi was a total a**hole.

Prior to leaving Nanyue, he had already married a Yue woman and had his son Zhao Jiande/Triệu Kiến Đức.

(That's not why he's an a**hole. He murdered people randomly.)

Zhao Mo/Triệu Mạt died and Zhao Yingqi/Triệu Anh Tề returned to Nanyue/Nam Việt to take the throne.

After becoming the king of Nanyue/Nam Việt, Zhao Yingqi/Triệu Anh Tề got the Han Emperor to appoint his Han wife as queen and Zhao Xing/Triệu Hưng as crown prince.

This move would eventually doom Nanyue.

Zhao Xing/Triệu Hưng became king and his Han mom became Queen Dowager in 113 BC.

The Han emperor sent a senior minister named Anguo Shaoji to Nanyue and...

are you ready for some court drama...

Before marrying Zhao Yingqi, rumors had it that the Queen Dowager had had an affair w Anguo Shaoji.

AND that they got back together when he was sent to Nanyue.

With Zhao Xing being young, & the Queen Dowager being new, Nanyue citizens did not have confidence in her rule.

Worried of losing her power, the Queen convinced her son Zhao Xing and the ministers loyal to him to fully submit to Han dynasty rule.

She told the Han emperor that the borders between Han China and Nanyue would be dissolved.

This plan, though, would not come to fruition.... yet.

In the Nanyue court, the Prime Minister Lü Jia/Lữ Gia – who had served since the reign of Zhao Mo – was furiously against Nanyue's submission to the Han dynasty and began planning a coup.

Zhao Xing, the Queen Dowager, and the Han diplomats were assassinated.

Lü Jia/Lữ Gia installed Zhao Jiande/Triệu Kiến Đức to the throne.

Do you remember him, he was Zhao Yingqi/Triệu Anh Tề's eldest son with his Yue wife.

As an aside, Lü Jia/Lữ Gia is the name for a lot of streets in Việt Nam today from North to South.

I also lived in an area called Cư xá Lữ Gia as a kid.

Reminiscing...

*Skipping some stuff*

As you would expect, in 111 BC, the Han Emperor Wu sent 100,000 men to attack Nanyue, yup, using the very same route they figured out a few generations back when they came to help Nanyue.

And that is how the Triệu Dynasty fell.

Here is the map of Nanyue again, with Panyu as the capital. It's now the capital of Guangdong, China.

After Panyu fell, there was also an unsuccessful revolt of Tây Vu.

111 BC is the beginning of First Era of Bắc thuộc, or Northern Domination, for Viet history, which ended in 40 AD when the Trưng sisters revolted, continuing the history of the revolts of the Giao Chỉ people.

As you can see, the story of Nanyue/Nam Việt and Zhao Tuo/Triệu Đà is the story of both Việt and Cantonese history.

There's a lot more that's wrong with the article, I am not done but I gotta take a break. Enjoy your Saturday night!

Ok it's Sunday night before Tết so why not do some more history reading especially about Hai Bà Trưng.