1. For a comprehensive treatment of the post-Tiananmen “craze” of Mao Zedong, see Geremie R. Barme´, Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1996). See also the very brief but promising treatment of a Mao Zedong temple in Gushui, Shaanxi, by Begonia Lee, “Houses of the Holy,” Far Eastern Economic Review, June 6, 1996, 52. Shrines to Ho Chi Minh are mentioned briefly by Hue-Tam Ho Tai, “Monumental Ambiguity: The State Commemoration of Ho Chi Minh,” in Essays into Vietnamese Pasts, ed. K. W. Taylor and John K. Whitmore, (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1995), 273, 278. For Indonesia and its commemoration of pahlawan, see Klaus H. Schreiner, Politischer Heldenkult in Indonesien: Tradition und Moderne Praxis [Political Hero Cult in Indonesia: Tradition and Modern Practice] (Berlin: Reimer, 1995).

2. See, e.g., Jo Blatti, ed., Past Meets Present: Essays about Historic Interpretation and Public Audiences (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, Institution Press, 1987); Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1992); Ivan Karp, Christine Mullen Kreamer, and Steven D. Lavine, eds., Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992); Robert Lumley, ed., The Museum Time-Machine: Putting Cultures on Display (London: Routledge, 1988); Susan Pearce, ed., Objects of Knowledge (London: Athlone, 1990); Kevin Walsh, The Representation of the Past: Museums and Heritage in the Postmodern World (London: Routledge, 1992).

3. I am, of course, not uninvolved in these matters. See my “Telling Life: An Approach to the Official Biography of Ton Duc Thang,” in Essays into Vietnamese Pasts, 246–71.

4. Information provided by Bui Cong Duc and Ngo Quang Lang, cadres of the An Giang Province Culture and Information Department and the provincial VCP Propaganda Board, Long Xuyen, May 4, 1992.

5. Museum of the Revolution, Ho Chi Minh City: “Ecole des me´caniciens, Registre matricule, commence´le ier De´cembre 1907, termine´ le … 1918, Thang Ton duc.” The matriculation register was given to the museum in 1980.

6. This point is argued in detail in chapters 1–3 of my dissertation “Ton Duc Thang and the Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1996).

7. See ibid., chap. 5, and my forthcoming Striking Images: Ba Son 1925— A Case Study of the History and Historiography of Vietnamese Labor (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program).

8. The French crackdown was triggered by a botched inner–Thanh Nien political murder in Saigon's Rue Barbier that exposed much of the clandestine organization to the French. Not surprisingly, the Rue Barbier case and Ton Duc Thang's significant role in it, remains a taboo subject in Vietnam. Since it is omitted from the commemoration of Ton Duc Thang, it will not concern me here. For details on the case, see my “Telling Life.”

9. Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1945 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), 254f. n. 49, discusses the length of incarceration as a “qualification for advancement.”

10. An Giang provincial branch of VCP, circular no. 06/TT-TU, Long Xuyen, March 13, 1987 (document no. 39, Ton Duc Thang Museum, Ho Chi Minh City).

11. See Lam Binh Tuong, “Trung Tu Di Tich voi Viec Phuc Hoi Noi That Ngoi Nha cua Chu tich Ton Duc Thang o My Hoa Hung (An Giang)” [“Re-constructing Historic Sites with Interior Renovations of President Ton Duc Thang's house in MHH (An Giang)”], and “Bao Ve Ngoi Nha Luu Niem Chu tich Ton Duc Thang o My Hoa Hung, Tinh Chat Phong Canh va Canh Quan” [“Protecting President Ton Duc Thang's home in My Hoa Hung, the Landscape Character and Beauty”], in Ban tuyen giao Tinh uy An Giang [An Giang Provincial Propaganda Commission], To Thanh Tam, ed., Mot con Nguoi Binh Thuong—Vi Dai. Ky Yeu Hoi Thao Khoa Hoc ve Chu Tich Ton Duc Thang Nhan Dip Ky Niem 100 Nam Ngay Sinh 20–8–1888–20–8–1988 [A Great Ordinary Person: Proceedings of the Symposium on President Ton Duc Thang Commemorating the Centennial of His Birth] (An Giang: Provincial Propaganda Commission, 1989), 59–64. Articles on the constructions in An Giang (July 27, August 5, 12, 1988) (document no. 149, Ton Duc Thang Museum, Ho Chi Minh City). Pamphlet of An Giang Culture/Information Department about the commemoration site, 1988 (document no. 84, Ton Duc Thang Museum, Ho Chi Minh City). Dang Kim Quy, “Ngoi Nha Luu Niem Thoi Nien Thieu Chu tich Ton Duc Thang” [“President TDT's Childhood Home”], Tap Chi Lich Su Dang [Journal of Party History], no. 5 (1991): 36.

Interview with Ton Duc Thang's nephew Ton Duc Hung, My Hoa Hung, May 4, 1992.

12. President Ton Duc Thang himself is buried at Mai Dich state cemetery outside Hanoi, where, in the absence of Ho Chi Minh's remains, his grave occupies the “No. 1” position in the hierarchical layout of the cemetery. His grave's appearance is standardized with those of other state and party leaders; since it is thus obviously not meant as a focal point for rituals, it will not concern me in this discussion.

13. Dang Kim Quy, “Ngoi Nha,” 36. I am grateful to Hue-Tam Ho Tai for suggesting to me the former symbolism. Cf. Danny J. Whitfield, Historical and Cultural Dictionary of Vietnam (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976), 255.

14. Whitfield, Historical and Cultural Dictionary, 275f. See also the helpful, if awkwardly presented, materials in Nguyen Tien Huu, Do¨rfliche Kulte im

15. Stephen O'Harrow, “Men of Hu, Men of Han, Men of the Hundred Man: The Biography of Si Nhiep and the Conceptualization of Early Vietnamese Society,” Bulletin de l'Ecole Franc¸aise d'Extreˆme-Orient 75 (1986): 251.

16. See, with such an emphasis, Yamamoto Tatsuro, “Myths Explaining the Vicissitudes of Political Power in Ancient Vietnam,” Acta Asiatica: Bulletin of the Institute of Eastern Culture 18 (1970): 70–94.

17. Keith W. Taylor, “Notes on the Viet Dien U Linh Tap,” Vietnam Forum, no. 8 (1986): 26–59. See also an earlier brief discussion in his The Birth of Vietnam (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 352ff. Oliver W. Wolters, “Preface,” in his Two Essays On Dai-Viet in the Fourteenth Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 1988), vii–xi.

18. Taylor, “Notes on the Viet Dien U Linh Tap,” 45.

19. Wolters, “Preface,” xix, xxviii, xxxv.

20. First quotation: O. W. Wolters, “On Telling a Story of Vietnam in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 26(March 1995): 67. Second quotation: Wolters, “Preface,” xvi. The differences in perspective of Wolters's two generic sketches are, however, addressed in neither publication.

21. See David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920–1945 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), 263.

22. Oliver W. Wolters, “Possibilities for a Reading of the 1293–1357 Period in the Vietnamese Annals,” Vietnam Forum, no. 11 (1988): 97.

23. Keith W. Taylor, “Looking Behind the Vietnamese Annals: Ly Phat Ma (1028–54) and Ly Nhat Ton (1054–72) in the Viet Su Luoc and the Toan Thu,” Vietnam Forum, no. 7 (1986): 51.

24. Wolters, “Possibilities,” 116f.

25. To Thanh Tam, Mot con Nguoi Binh Thuong—Vi Dai.

26. Dang Kim Quy, “Ngoi Nha,” 36.

27. This happened in 1954, after Stalin's death, but before Khrushchev's denunciation of the Stalin personality cult.

28. See my “Telling Life.”

29. The archetypal image persisted despite the fact that, several years after Le Loi's death, Nguyen Trai and almost all his family met with a violent end in a court intrigue.

30. Tran Quoc Vuong, “Traditions, Acculturation, Renovation: The Evolutional Pattern of Vietnamese Culture,” in Southeast Asia in the 9th to 14th Centuries, ed. David G. Marr and A. C. Milner (Singapore: Institute of South-east Asian Studies, 1986), 271.

31. John K. Whitmore, “From Classical Scholarship to Confucian Belief in Vietnam,” Vietnam Forum, no. 9 (1987): 58.

32. Oliver W. Wolters, “Assertions of Cultural Well-Being in Fourteenth-Century Vietnam,” in his Two Essays, 42.

33. Esta S. Ungar, “Vietnamese Leadership and Order: Dai Viet under the Le Dynasty (1428–1459)” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1983), 19, 20. The following exposition is based on subsequent passages of the first chapter.

34. Fan Zhongyan; also transcribed Fan Chungyen in the Wade-Giles system or, in Sino-Vietnamese transcription, Pham Trong Yem.

35. James T. C. Liu, “An Early Sung Reformer: Fan Chung-Yen,” in Chinese Thought and Institutions, ed. John K. Fairbank, 3d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 111.

36. Ungar, “Vietnamese Leadership and Order,” 41.

37. Liu, “An Early Sung Reformer,” 108, 131.

38. Ungar, “Vietnamese Leadership and Order,” 10.

39. E.g., Nguyen Trai, 2d ed. (Hanoi: NXB Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi, 1969). For a very detailed list of Tran Huy Lieu's writings on Nyugen Trai, see Vien Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi Viet Nam, Vien Su Hoc [History Institute of the Social Science Institute of Vietnam], Hoi ky Tran Huy Lieu [Memoirs of Tran Huy Lieu], ed. Pham Nhu Thom (Hanoi: NXB Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi, 1991), 495–97. For a more general bibliography of DRV writings on Nguyen Trai between 1956 and 1968, see Patricia Pelley, “Writing Revolution: The New History in Post-colonial Vietnam” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1993), 207–12, especially notes 65, 75, 77, and 78; and Ungar, “Vietnamese Leadership and Order,” 268 nn. 4 and 5.

40. Chapter 11, “Nguyen Trai voi Viec Danh My Cuu Nuoc cua Chung Ta Hien Nay.”

41. Pelley, “Writing Revolution,” 211f.

42. Tran Huy Lieu, Nguyen Trai, 56.

43. Ungar, “Vietnamese Leadership and Order,” 34.

44. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition, 127–35.

45. Nguyen Khac Vien, Tradition and Revolution in Vietnam, ed. David Marr and Jayne Werner (Berkeley, Wash.: Indochina Resource Center, n.d.[1974?]). Here especially his essay “Confucianism and Marxism in Vietnam,” 15–52.

46. Nguyen Khac Vien, Tradition, 46–51; the quotation is from 48. Neil L. Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 217. See also Marr, Vietnamese Tradition, 135.

47. Alexander B. Woodside, Community and Revolution in Modern Vietnam (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), 237. Note the echo from Fan Zhongyan in the first sentence.

48. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition, 134; Ho Chi Minh is quoted by Nguyen Khac Vien, Tradition, 49f.

49. Whitfield, Historical and Cultural Dictionary, 48.

50. I am grateful to Hue-Tam Ho Tai for suggesting this aspect of timing to me.

51. Alexander B. Woodside, “Conceptions of Change and of Human Responsibility for Change in Late Traditional Vietnam,” Vietnam Forum, no. 6(1985): 108, emphasis added.

52. See, among others who have observed that phenomenon, Hy Van Luong, “Economic Reform and the Intensification of Rituals in Two Northern Vietnamese Villages, 1980–1990,” in The Challenge of Reform in Indo-China, ed. Borje Ljunggren and Peter Timmer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 259–91. In this essay, however, I am less concerned with the effects of

53. Hue-Tam Ho Tai, “Monumental Ambiguity,” in Essays into Vietnamese Pasts, 280.

54. To draw a parallel to premodern times, equal confidence exudes from the Vietnamese tales of heroic guardian spirits and the underlying concept of the spiritual properties of the land, as Oliver Wolters has pointed out with reference to the Spiritual Powers of the Viet Realm (Wolters, “On Telling a Story,” 67). Challenges to the ruling powers and threats to the country's security— recurrent themes in the Vietnamese experience—had been warded off, as one could very well see in retrospect, whenever ruler and tutelary deity had established a “winning” rapport in the proper manner described by the tales.

55. Wolters, “Possibilities,” 129.

56. Oliver W. Wolters, History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1982), 102, emphasis added; and Wolters, “Preface,” xix.