Mai Thuc Loan, the Black Emperor

History remembers a ruler as the Black Emperor, Mai Hắc Đế. His story begins in the mountains of Nghệ An, on a dirt track under the noon sun, where, as the old tales picture him, a barefoot boy carries a heavy load on a pole. Sweat runs down his face. The pole has left a mark on his shoulder. He lost his parents early, and his family was poor. He grew up in the heat and hardship of Hoan Châu. His name was Mai Thúc Loan.

Many tales of kings begin in a palace. This one starts in a poor village, with a child who had to look after himself very early.

Mai Thúc Loan was born and grew up in the village of Ngọc Trừng. Today the village is part of Nam Thái commune. The commune lies in Nam Đàn, in Nghệ An province. The Nhân Dân newspaper says he came from a poor family and lost his parents when he was small.

Yet the boy who carried loads grew into a young man known across the region as a fine wrestler and hunter. He knew the forest and the mountains. He lived among hardworking, struggling people and understood their burdens as he understood his own. When a man like that speaks, the people around him listen.

The people of Nghệ An also tell tales of his childhood, such as the one about the boy hired to carry cloth along long roads. This tale has passed from mouth to mouth for generations. It is the way people have shared their love and admiration for him. It is not a page of history that was clearly written down, so it is best heard as an old story.

What the record does show is that in 713, Mai Thúc Loan rose to lead a great uprising in the Hoan Châu region. People left their fields and their clearings. They followed him in crowds. A poor man's son, with no power and no rank, had won the hearts of the people. That is what made his name last.

Out of that uprising he founded a state of his own, called Vạn An. The Nghệ An newspaper says it lasted from 713 to 722. He took the title of emperor, and the old books call him by the name everyone knows today, Mai Hắc Đế.

People of long ago explained the name Black Emperor in several ways. Some tie the name to his skin. Others tie it to an old belief that the element of water goes with the color black and fits his own direction in the heavens. People still tell it and still argue about it, and that only makes the name more mysterious. It is best taken as a lovely tale.

His capital was the Vạn An citadel. Today the place is the Sa Nam area, in Nam Đàn. Among the mountains and forests, beside a river, a citadel rose. It was not the splendid capital of an ancient dynasty. It was the refuge of a whole region, raised by ordinary people themselves. Picture it. Where the boy once bent under a carrying pole, a king now stood on the walls of his own citadel. He looked down at the river and at the roofs of the people who had believed in him.

The uprising came to a hard time. In 722, the Tang dynasty sent the general Dương Tư Húc with a large army to put it down, and the state of Vạn An could not hold. Mai Hắc Đế died around that time. But the people of Nghệ An never forgot him.

They built a temple and a tomb for him in his homeland of Nam Đàn, and they kept and restored them through the generations. On December 29, 2022, the temple and the tomb together were ranked as a Special National Monument, by decision of the Prime Minister.

A poor man's son has been remembered and honored by the people for more than 1,300 years. The reason is something simple: a will to rise out of hardship, and a heart the people trusted.

In the shade of the trees of Nghệ An, incense smoke still hangs over his temple and his tomb. Every year in early spring, from the 13th to the 15th day of the first lunar month, the Emperor Mai Temple festival opens. Drums sound, and lines of people make their way to his homeland. And the name of the Black Emperor is told again to the children.