Bac Son Uprising Site

On the evening of September 26, 1940, in a small village communal house in the Bắc Sơn area, Lạng Sơn province, no lamps were lit and voices were kept very low. The people sitting inside knew that across the hill, French troops were stationed in a strong fortified post. Its stone walls were 40 centimeters thick, behind many layers of barbed wire. They were discussing something that had never happened in these mountains: rising up to fight.

The next morning, in the same communal house, a short meeting took place. A decision was adopted. The uprising would begin at 7:30 in the evening on September 27. Its targets were the Mỏ Nhài post and the district seat of Bắc Sơn.

That communal house is called Đình Nông Lục. The historic site around it keeps the memory of those days.

Bắc Sơn lies in Lạng Sơn province, in the limestone mountains of northeastern Vietnam. This is not flat land that is easy to cross. The terrain is rugged, and villages lie scattered among narrow valleys and steep slopes. That terrain also helped secret work, with courier routes through the forest and hiding places in rock caves. For the same reason, Bắc Sơn became a fitting place to build a revolutionary base for many years afterward.

The Bắc Sơn Uprising Historic Site is not a single place to visit. The planning area for the whole site covers more than 234 hectares. It holds twelve sites spread across several communes of Bắc Sơn. Each one is a piece of a long story. It begins in the 1930s, when people here first took up the revolutionary cause. Then comes the armed uprising of September 27, 1940. After that come the founding of the guerrilla base and the birth of the Cứu Quốc quân, a name that means National Salvation Army. Last comes the surge of the movement to take power in 1945.

On the evening of September 27, 1940, the fighters of the uprising split into three prongs to attack the Mỏ Nhài post. The post guarded the road leading out of the old district seat of Bắc Sơn. That road ran on to Trấn Yên and Vũ Lăng. The post was solidly built with thick stone walls, and only one main path led up to it. Even so, the fighters took it. They seized its weapons, along with the papers and official seals of the colonial authorities. Then they held a rally to declare their victory. Nineteen days later, on October 16, the Bắc Sơn guerrilla base was founded. It was the first seed of the people's armed forces in the region.

The best place to begin here is the Bắc Sơn Uprising Museum. It was founded in 1966. In 1985 its exhibition building was finished, shaped like a traditional stilt house of the Tày. That was no accident. The story of the uprising cannot be separated from the people and the culture of this area. The Tày and the Nùng living here took part directly, and they hid, fed and protected the revolutionary cadres. The Tày and the Nùng are two peoples of northern Vietnam with closely related languages and similar cultures. The wooden stilt house recalls all of that.

The museum is laid out in three themes. The first is the area in prehistoric times. The second is the uprising itself. The third shows how Bắc Sơn has carried on its revolutionary tradition. In all, the museum displays 138 objects. Of these, 127 are originals. They are real things, not paintings. They tell the story simply by still being here.

Outside the museum, the place most worth remembering is the Nông Lục communal house. The official tourism site of Lạng Sơn province says it was built in the early 20th century. It covers about 180 square meters. Its plan follows the shape of the character nhất. Nhất is the Chinese character for one, written as a single horizontal stroke. The building blends the style of the traditional communal houses of the northern delta with the Tày stilt houses of Lạng Sơn. It is not a grand building. But what happened inside it on that September night in 1940 was far larger than its size.

The twelve sites also include the Mỏ Nhài post, where the opening battle of the uprising was fought. Today there are traces of stone building foundations, along with a victory monument and a stele marking the event. Then comes the Vũ Lăng School, built in 1927 under French rule and now turned into a hall of traditional exhibits. Sa Khao is linked to the work of hiding and feeding cadres. Khuổi Nọi, in the Tam Tấu forest, was a secret base of the National Salvation Army. At Lân Pán, a delegation of cadres from the Party Central Committee worked. At Mỏ Rẹ cave, fighters broke out of an encirclement on August 28, 1941. And there is Tam Canh Pass on National Highway 1B, a point that links the Bắc Sơn area together. At the top of the pass stands an emblem of the Bắc Sơn Uprising.

The Vietnam News Agency, citing the Department of Cultural Heritage, describes the site as a safe zone. Here people hid and protected the offices and senior cadres of the Party Central Committee and of the Bắc Kỳ Regional Party Committee. Bắc Kỳ was the name then used for northern Vietnam. The area was also a liaison station between the Central Committee and other regions. In the hardest years of the revolution, Bắc Sơn was not only a place of fighting. It was also the foothold that kept steadfast people in touch with one another.

The site was designated a national monument in 1992. In 2016, the Prime Minister raised it to a special national monument under Decision 2499.

Why a remote mountain area like Bắc Sơn became a place where the fire of revolution flared up so early has no simple answer. But standing here, among the limestone peaks and the trails that climb and fall, you can sense part of it. This is a land of people who were never used to bearing injustice in silence.