Just arrived in the ancient capital of Vietnam that is called Huè, I buy a T-shirt for my friend Elena who, being from Naples, and being a frequent user of the exclamation uè, will certainly appreciate. Vietnamese is a strange language. It used to use Chinese ideograms, a legacy of Chinese domination. But little by little, thanks to the work of a Jesuit missionary, Alexander de Rhodes, during the French domination, switched to Latin letters that had the advantage of representing the actual pronunciation. The Vietnamese added a series of accents, apostrophes, coupons and various markers to vary the tones. The result is that we Italians listen to words that we do not understand but sometimes we believe to understand. The forbidden words are monosyllabic. So there are no accents like ours that make words slippery, squishy, truncated and flat. So for Vietnamese it is difficult, when they learn Italian, do not miss it. Luna, our guide, speaks Italian well but does not get an accent. Dice “ètnia” e “andàvamo” e “passeggiàno” e noi, che siamo ipocriti ma cafoni, facciamo finta di non ridere ma ridiamo dentro.
Huè, I was just saying. The Nguyen dynasty, thirteen emperors who ruled Vietnam from 1802 to 1945, chose it as the capital and fortified it with walls and moats. Because, let’s face it, the Vietnamese were fighting hard, and all they did was beat the crap out of each other, as well as fighting the enemies outside. The emperors of the various dynasties also changed the names of those who called themselves like the previous kings and renamed them with their own. The Nguyens were no less: they killed more Ho who could and gave many privileges to those who called themselves Nguyen or who decided to take their last name. So if at that time you met a friend named Ho and said hello to him, “Good morning Mr Ho”, he replied, “Mr Ho tell your sister, my name is Mr Nguyen”. Then the French added that, wanting to make a census, they decided that they called themselves Nguyen all those who were so poor that they did not even have the surname. That’s how the Nguyens grew out of all proportion and today they are about 40 million and represent the fourth most common surname in the world. How do they distinguish one from the other? Simple. They give themselves another name, called middle name, which stands between the surname and the first name. Something like this has happened in my original village, in Luserna, where all are called nicolussi, but they have also given themselves another name. One year the town council of luserna was composed of twenty nicolussi. And think of the casino of the class appeal: “nicolussi”“Presente”“nicolussi”; “Presente”; “nicolussi”; “””; ”Presente””“”””“”””””” “nicolussi is absent lady teacher” And think of the radio chronicle of a game if the Luserna was a football team. “nicolussi passes the nicolussi ball
But weren’t we talking about Huè? So, we visit the beautiful citadel. An hour and a half between temples and pagodas and buddha and monuments. And then the afternoon visit of the tomb of the Emperor Tu Duc. To see it written so seems easy. But our guide, Luna, pronounces it td and every time it seems to have hiccups with that accent on“d”. Tu Duc built the tomb before he died. And it was so beautiful that he decided to live there. It was practically a royal palace. We now know where Berlusconi was inspired. Tu Duc broke relations with European countries and being devoted to Confucius persecuted Christians killing many missionaries. It was his mistake that gave impetus to French colonization. On the stele of his tomb Tu Duc made the Vietnamese people write his apologies for not being able to defend him.
But there’s a mystery. Where’s his body? Moon shows us a vast area where he might be. But not the exact spot. Because a vice that the dynasties had, Luna tells us, was to desecrate the tombs and make the bodies of those who had preceded them disappear. So Tu Duc ordered to hire 50 diggers, bury the body in a place known only to them, and then eventually kill them all 50. What people these Vietnamese.
