One-pillar pagoda in Guyana

One-pillar pagoda in the symbol of Marine Regiment 9

It is hard to believe that there is a Vietnamese one-pillar pagoda in Guyana. But it is a fact. It is harder to believe that the owner of the one-pillar pagoda is a French military unit: Marine Regiment 9 stationed in Cayenne, the capital city of French Guyana.

It also comes as a surprise that there were Vietnamese soldiers sent to fight in the cold of Siberia in Russia. History reveals new information about Vietnamese appearances in many places in the world.

Receiving me in Guyana was a Lt. Col., second commander of Regiment 9, and a former officer named Jean Mercier, now in charge of the unit’s tradition department. The symbol on their collars was not the female general Jeanne dArc (symbol of the resistance war in France) or a French landscape, but the one-pillar pagoda of Vietnam.

How can the Vietnamese one-pillar pagoda have become a symbol of a colonial unit? The answer is available on the unit’s website: the regiment was founded at the end of the 19^th century and stationed near the one-pillar pagoda in Hanoi.

The website states: being called 3A regiment (Asia, Africa and America), our unit can not choose any symbol better than the pagoda to remind us that the first letter (Asia) was the place that the unit was found. Where is it in Asia? It is Hanoi, in front of the one-pillar pagoda.

However, the “place of birth” reason was not enough to lead to the decision of making the one-pillar pagoda the symbol of the unit. The love and respect for the “place of birth” made them decide that the one-pillar pagoda must be the symbol of the unit.

“The one-pillar pagoda was built in 1049, during the Ly Thai Tong Dynasty. The original pagoda stands in the middle of a water mirror with a brick pillar, wearing a wooden crown-shaped house, connected beautifully with each other by wooden joints. The whole pagoda symbolises a blossoming lotus.

One-pillar pagoda built in a park in Guyanne.

This introduction about the one-pillar pagoda in Hanoi and its replica in Cayenne shows respect for the symbol. For this respect, the replica of the one-pillar pagoda stands impressively in the regiment’s headquarters in Guyana. It looks like the original one but not all of its characteristics resemble the original model. However, it an impressive structure, besides being the biggest Vietnamese symbol in South America.

I brought from Vietnam to Guyana a wooden block of the one-pillar pagoda and three photos of its taken three weeks before, and compared it with other pictures hanging in the tradition room of the regiment nearly a century ago.

“These pictures, showing a crowd of visitors, lets us imagine the pagoda’s real size,” Jean Mercier said when he saw the new pictures of the one-pillar pagoda that he has never seen before.

Yes, officers and soldiers of Regiment 9 are the forth and fifth generation of their ancestors, members of Bac Ky (North Vietnam) Infantry Regiment, which was founded in 1890. It is surprising how history changes over the course of a century: this regiment used to fight against Son Tay-Yen Bai movement (Vietnamese movements against the French colonialisation) at the end of 19^th century; now, together with Regiment 3, stationed in Kourou, they protect the launch of Vinasat 1, the first Vietnamese satellite. This unit was not involved in the Vietnamese-French war from 1946 to 1954 due to its deployment in Africa at that time.

The long history is the reason why the offspring of the Marines Regiment 9 asked me many questions about the one-pillar pagoda as if they were trying to find their place of birth. For example, “Where is it located exactly in Hanoi?”, “What about the surroundings?”, “What kind of wood is it made of because it is so durable?”, “Are there any relics of our unit there?”, “Do you have any soft copies of these pictures? If yes, please give them to us so that we can print a bigger copy”, “Of course, we will go to visit this pagoda”.

Jean Mercier (L) and second commander of regiment 9

Then, these soldiers led me back through their history through the exhibits in the tradition room. The exhibits show that the unit was deployed in Thailand in 1893, in Beijing and Tianxin (China) in 1990, and Tuyen Quang, Thai Nguyen (Vietnam), and Africa etc.

They said that they left Vietnam for Africa a long time ago and have been stationed in South America since 1976.

“In our unit, there were Vietnamese soldiers. They went to China, Thailand... and in 1918, there were two companies of Vietnamese origin that went to fight in Siberia,” Jean Mercier said.

His last sentence made me surprised. How could Vietnamese fight in Russia 90 years ago?

(To be continued)

Source: Tuoi Tre

Translated by Ngoc Hung