matcha in heaven

In preparation for International Women’s Day, artist Camelia Pham had drawn 10 pictures for 10 amazing women in Vietnamese history.

1.  Trưng Sisters: The 2 sisters who rode elephants and led a rebel army against the first Chinese domination in Vietnam in 40 AD

2.  Bùi Thị Xuân: From an aptitude for martial arts at childhood, Bùi Thị Xuân was always destined to become a strong woman. As general of the Tây Sơn Rebellion, she and her husband earned prestigious titles off the back of many years of victories, until 1802 when she finally lost to the rival Nguyễn faction. She fled to Nghệ An to join her husband, but both, along with their teenage daughter, were captured and executed by a grizzly elephant trampling. To gain her undeniable strength, the executioners ate her heart and liver.

3.  Võ Thị Sáu: she was a schoolgirl who fought as a guerrilla against the colonial France who occupied Vietnam. She was merely 14 when she threw a grenade at a group of French soldiers, killing one and injuring 12. She escaped without punishment but was less lucky four years later, when she threw a dud grenade at a high-ranking official responsible for the execution of Việt Minh sympathizers. At the age of 19, she was captured and executed by the French on Côn Sơn Island; her refusal to wear a blindfold establishing her as a martyr and igniting her cult-like following in modern-day Vietnam.

4.  Lady Triệu: A Vietnamese heroine in the 3rd century who, at a very young age, resisted a Chinese invasion on elephant-back, wearing an iconic gold tunic and crescent nosed shoes.

5.  Head Consort Ỷ Lan: A chance visit in 1063 of Emperor Lí Thánh Tông to the village of Thổ Lỗi was the beginning of Ỷ Lan’s ascent, soaring from peasant girl to concubine to the title of Lady Ỷ Lan, regent in the 2-year absence of the emperor, named for the orchid tree she was found leaning against. During her rule, she granted money for poor women forced into selling themselves as wives of widowers and passed a law prohibiting the killing of buffaloes—an overt demonstration of benevolence that became the driving factor of her second reign as co-regent with her son between 1073 and 1117.

6.  Dương Vân Nga: The empress of two dynasties, Dương Vân Nga was the bridge between the Đinh and the Lê regimes at the end of the 10th century. After the death of Emperor Đinh, she made the decision to cede control of Vietnam from her own 6-year-old son to General Lê, putting borderlines over bloodlines and ultimately securing safety from the invading Sòng army.

7.  Lady of Thanh Quan District: Along with Hồ Xuân Hương, Nguyễn Thị Hinh is another poet immortalized in Vietnamese history through her eloquent use of Chinese character poetry in the 18th and 19th centuries. Her works reverberate with emotions, particularly those of desperation, rage and regret, embodied in landscapes and brought to the boil by a society in the midst of revolving change.

8. Nguyễn Thị Xuân Quỳnh: she was a nationally celebrated poet, as well as a successful dancer in her youth. Her poems, which speak of fervent emotions unleashed through the certainty of nature, are taught nationwide in Vietnamese schools and earned Xuân Quỳnh a posthumous Hồ Chí Minh Prize, Vietnam’s highest artistic honor. She reached widespread admiration for her poem Sóng (Waves), in which the persistency of wind and the ocean portray the intense love she felt for her husband, Lưu Quang Vũ.

Fierce and gentle. Loud and silent. The wave doesn’t understand itself. The wave doesn’t find itself, until it reaches the sea.

9. Hồ Xuân Hương: The Queen of Nôm poetry, Hồ Xuân Hương, helped to advance the esteem of the Vietnamese language through her adaption of Chinese written characters to suit Vietnamese words. Her poems were forward-thinking and possessed a sharp sexual humor, both facets of artistry that went wildly against the grain of Vietnam’s 19th century zeitgeist.

My body is both white and round. In water I may sink or swim. The hand that kneads me may be rough, But I still shall keep my true-red heart.

10. Nguyễn Thị Định: she rose from the obscure backwaters of Bến Tre province to lead two major forces against the French and the Americans. Virtually her entire life was spent in perpetual battle; her wit and aptitude for guerrilla warfare making her perfect for command of the all-women ‘long-haired army’. This grassroots rebellion used crude weapons to great effect in their defense of Bến Tre and in defiance of South Vietnam’s ruthless guillotine executions. Fittingly, her life ended during work in 1992, having crowned her successes as head of the highly successful Vietnam Women’s Union for 10 years.