Phiem Ai Tax Protest of 1908

On a day when the Trương clan gathered to honor its dead, a petition was written in the village of Phiếm Ái. The village heads and the clan's descendants were all there. Besides remembering the departed, they sat down to talk about heavy levies and heavy taxes, and together they drafted a request that the authorities go easier on the people.

Two burdens weighed on the people. They paid taxes, and they also had to work for the state without pay. In 1908, the road from Đại Lộc to the provincial seat was repaired, widened and paved with stones. The work was shared out unevenly among the villages, and people in the area felt wronged.

Phiếm Ái lies on the north bank of the Vu Gia River, where each year the silt builds soft banks of land. The villagers grew rice, raised silkworms on mulberry leaves, and spun and wove silk. The village is old, and its name already appears in a book of the 16th century, the Ô Châu cận lục. In those days it was also the only village in the Đại Lộc area with a place set aside to honor learning. Many people of the Trương clan had passed examinations, and they read the new books and newspapers too. At that time a call for renewal was spreading across Quảng Nam. It was called the Duy Tân movement, and Phan Châu Trinh had started it in 1906. The Trương clan of Phiếm Ái felt its pull.

The elders first meant to collect the signatures of 108 village heads in the area before sending the petition on. But word reached the magistrate ahead of time, so they decided to set out at once, with only 35 signatures. Three elders led the way. Trương Hoành was the village head of Phiếm Ái. Hứa Tạo was head of the neighboring village of Ái Nghĩa. Lương Châu was head of the village of Hà Tân. The three led the people out to the village communal house, and from there the long walk began.

The group went first to the office of the Đại Lộc magistrate, a few hundred people in all, and asked him to pass the petition upward. Then they walked on, down to the provincial office and down to Hoi An, where the French Resident had his office. Under French rule, a Resident was the French official who oversaw a province. Along the way, people in the villages on either side heard that the marchers were asking for lower taxes, and many joined them. From a few hundred, the column grew to thousands, in ragged shirts and battered hats.

The elders gave one clear instruction: do no harm to the lives or the property of the officials. They only wanted the petition to reach the right place. When the column arrived in Hoi An, the townspeople let them rest for the night and supplied them with food.

The story of Phiếm Ái did not stop there. Crowds in Điện Bàn and Thăng Bình went the same way, to the offices of their own magistrates, to ask for lower taxes. So did people in Tam Kỳ and Hòa Vang. People in Duy Xuyên followed. In Quảng Nam, this went on for more than a month. Then the call for lower taxes spread to Quảng Ngãi and Bình Định. It reached Phú Yên, and went as far as Hue. Farther north, people in Nghệ An and Hà Tĩnh took it up. Thanh Hóa followed. All of central Vietnam seemed to speak with one voice.

In Hoi An, three champions of reform had once founded a trading company, Thương cuộc Quảng Nam. Phan Châu Trinh and Huỳnh Thúc Kháng were two of them. Trần Quý Cáp was the third. Refusing taxes and unpaid labor had long been one part of the Duy Tân movement, so people regard that year's appeal as one of its high points. Yet most of those who walked that day were farmers.

Afterward, the Governor-General of Indochina had to adjust his policy to some degree. Taxes were reduced, and the number of days of unpaid labor was cut. The provinces were told not to send a whole village to work at the same time, above all in the harvest season. These small changes were the result of a long walk, and of thousands of feet.

Today, Phiếm Ái belongs to Đại Lộc commune in the city of Da Nang. The commune was newly formed in 2025 from the town of Ái Nghĩa and four communes around it. In 2018, the Phiếm Ái communal house and the house of a scholar known as Ông Nghè were recognized as a national historic site. Ông Nghè is an old title for a man who passed the highest examinations. The official name states that this is where the 1908 protest against taxes and unpaid labor began in central Vietnam.

The communal house has a long history. At first it stood at a place called Bến Đình. When the Vu Gia River ate away its bank, the house had to be moved. In 1878 it was moved to the north side of the village, and it has stayed there since. Storms and rain damaged it, and in 1940 it was rebuilt. Every year the village festival is held twice, on the 16th day of the first lunar month and on the 16th day of the last lunar month. The young people of the village gather in the yard of the communal house. That yard, where the first meeting took place long ago, is part of the historic site too.

In Đại Lộc, some primary schools now carry the names of people of 1908. One is the Trương Hoành school, and another is the Hứa Tạo school. The petition of that year was meant to have 108 signatures, yet the elders set out with only 35 in their hands. From a patch of yard at the communal house, one small petition went farther than the people who carried it.