The chance to have is quite small, however the expected frequency is not too small due to thousands of words in there.

Middle Chinese is quite different from Mandarin. nh is already very close to Middle Chinese (comparing with Japanese n and Cantonese y).
s->t and sh->th is quite strange, but maybe many native words in Vietnamese also undergo that sort of change.
t-th difference is artificial because Pinyin chose to represent t' sound by t and t sound by d.
Sino-Vietnamese also has confusion of voiced and voiceless, but I'm not sure why.

Chinese 割 is also similar to that word. (Sino-Japanese: katsu)

You mean, Cantonese, eh?
In Mandarin, the sound is very far form Cut in English.
How about the sounds in other dialects?

in tai-lao language "thut" means cut, pretty similar to the english translation.

I meant, Sino-Xenic and modern Chinese dialects in general (esp. those who preserve the Ru tone consonant).
And 'ge' and 'cut' differs a little bit in first 2 sounds. (btw, there is an ambiguity of Pinyin letter 'e')

It feels farther than Mandarin.

I suggest when you compare vietnamese with chinese languages, please don't compare with mandarin as this chinese language is the furthest from middle chinese. Mandarin has influences from the altaic language.

You should compare with cantonese or hokkien as they are closer.

If you can list a few typical examples so that everyone can learn. Let me start. I am using the real sound of b,d,g,p,p',t, t' and not mandarin pinyin. Please correct my vietnamese guesses.

character/ Cantonese / Hokkien / Vietnamese

煩 / (F)aan / (H)uan / (P)aam ?
心 / (S)am / (S)im / (T)im ?
珍 / Can / (T)in / ?
願 / (Y)un / (G)uan / (Ng)uen ?

So you are saying that vietnamese has these initial consonants ?

d, t, t'
p (does it have b and p' ?)
(g, k, k' ) ?

How does 'nh' sound like ? Is it the same as 'ny' as in 'nyugen' or the cantonese 'ng' ?

Tea definitely originated from china and not vietnam. Even the english version of 'tea' is just a borrowed hokkien word.

The chinese may have absorbed some culture from the surroundings (such as the manchurian dress) but usually the surrounding nations borrow more from china because of its long and rich culture.

Eg. japan, korea, vietnam.

I know it is difficult to swallow, but usually the less powerful nations borrow from the more powerful nation.

We see a lot of nations borrowing from the english eg. words, jeans etc.

The 'kwan' in cantonese is actually 裙 skirt. Your 'ku' is 'fu' 褲 in cantonese.

Correction ! It had chinese influence since zhao tuo ruled nam viet which is much earlier. Nam viet was not part of china but it still has a chinese ruler.

In cantonese, it is 'Kot'
In hokkien , it is 'Kuat'


Both are not close to "Cut" which in my pinyin is "K'at"

I am not using the mandarin pinyin.

Cut's Mandarin pronounciation is "ker" in rasing intonation.
Putting the intonation aside, the sound is not very close to cut as it is in Vietnamese.
In this case, the same sound of a word in both Vietnamese and English is a coincidence.
I just want to say, the odd of coincidence between Vietnamese and Chinese is higher.

A word adopted from Chinese can be a coincidence to start with, and after thousands
of years, we take it granted that the word is definitely adopted without its origin in
Vietnamese language.

I'm not sure what you're trying to compare. Sino-Vietnamese or what?
Btw p->h "unnatural" change appeared in Hokkien because of languages speaking the sound with f.

d (spelt as đ in Vietnamese), t, th, b, k, kh, g are found in Vietnamese words as initials.
There are ph->[f] and p->b changes so those sounds are not found. (btw, 'f' is spelt as 'ph' in Quoc Ngu)

'nh' sounds like Malay 'ny'. (actually should be Portuguese nh or Spanish ñ).
'nyugen' is typo. 'nguyen' is right.

If you remove the aspiration, then it will be very similar. English does not distinguish k from k', so to an English spekare they would be very similar already.

'ker' without the aspiration and the 'r'. With rising pitch syllable.
Maybe more like cơ or câ if written in Quoc Ngu.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that the 'c' in 'cut' is aspirated while it's not in Vietnamese.
Conservative speakers pronounce 'kh' as an aspirated 'k', not the velar fricative.
So maybe "khăt" is better approximation for "cut" than "căt".

We can find out if it's not Chinese just by looking at the form. Newer Sino-Vietnamese are very strict on form. For example, you can't have "ra".

Tea can be found in China, India, and many countries beside Vietnam.
How far to the north the Tea plant can go? It is a tropical plant.

There is a oldest and biggest tea (Hexlatifoia) in North Vietnam
Its root is 2 meters diameter. Its trunk is 30 meters, covering 25 square meters.
http://vietnamnet.vn/vanhoa/tintuc/2006/07/590732/

There are many teas in other villages that are more than a century old.

I just want to say, tea is a native plant in Vietnam, regardless who drank it first.

I think it's subtropical as usually the tea plants in Indonesia are planted in the height of hills.
Most of the words around the source are cognates, so possibly only there are only one source.

I think the tea we usually drink is from Camelia, not "Hexlatifoia". (btw, is it mispelt?)

Hehe, this debate is fundamentally flawed.

Firstly, there is no such thing as a Han ethnic group, and i think Vietnam is also made up of many different ethnic groups.

Even among southern Chinese, the diversity is obvious, the Cantonese look distinctly different from the Min people from Fujian, and both groups look different from the Wu people (ever seen Shanghainese features?) from Zhejiang province.

If one compares a Cantonese with a Northern Chinese like a Henan or Shanxi Chinese (with REAL SLIT eyes and tall thin nose), the difference is drastic - so different, that a Cantonese looks more similar to a Vietnamese or in some cases, even Japanese than a Northern Chinese.

That some Vietnamese look like Cantonese only meant that "some" Southern Chinese (mostly Cantonese i guess) people mixed with Vietnamese in the early days.

Regarding the thick lips issue, i must agree that i've seen that feature in many Vietnamese photos. This rather sexy feature is seldom found in "Han" Chinese.

There are many tea plants as many chickens, many dogs, many cows in the world.

In Vietnam, teas are classified in at least 3 kinds: Western tea, Chinese tea, and Fresh tea.
The classification is based on how tea is processed and drank.
A certain tea is grewth, havested, and processed for the taste of the Western world.
The Vietnamese do not drink that kind of tea.
Most of teas are havested and processed as Chinese teas, and most Vietnamese enjoy it.
I can process Chinese tea from fresh tea bulbs, for it is easier to process than Western tea.
In the country side, another tea is planted, then picked from the tree without processing
it, then put in hot water (about boiling degree) to drink. That is the reason it is called Fresh tea.
This drink are very common along the roads or in countryside market places in North Vietnam.
People drink it at a larg glass (10 ounces or more), rather than only few ounces when they
drink Chinese tea.

Amongst these above teas, Chinese teas are most common, popular, and in many kinds.
The tea plant in the website I quote the link is only one of those kinds.
In HaGiang (near China border) there is Snow Tea, the kind of tea grow in high mountain,
in low temperature. The name come from its look. After processing, the tea look like
beans with some snow stick to the seeds. The Snow Tea tree is very big, with very long
branches, but not very tall. People can climb and seat on the branch when they pick tea.
In SonLa, there are also Snow Tea, but the tree is not the same. People call it Snow Tea
for it grow on high mountain, the peaks are very cold in winter. SonLa has border with
Lao, far from HaGiang. The tea in the website is in LangSon, near YouYiGuan, also far
from either HaGiang or SonLa. It is definitely different tea plant.

Most of the tea trees I know are small and low. It is the first time in my life, I know that
the tea tree can be as tall as 30 meters. The woman who owns this tea plant did not know
that it was a tea plant. After someone teached her, she knew it was a tea plant.

Tea is planted in the south for export more than in the north. However, in local market,
tea in the north is about 10 times more expensive than in the south. In the north, tea
is sold in 1/10 of a kilogram, and in the south, tea is sold in Kilogram.

I don't see any difference between Min and Cantonese. Also, the difference between Cantonese and Shanghainese or 'Northern Chinese' is not that great either. In many cases there is no difference at all, 'Northern Chinese' often have southern features and vice-versa. Some Cantonese may look distant from Northern Chinese, but their difference with Vietnamese is as great if not even greater.

It is fair to say that ALL Cantonese have ancestry in Central Plains one way or another, the difference is how recent it is. Throughout history, there has always been a flow of settlers from Central Plains to Southern China since the Qin/Han dynasty to present day. The natives, were either pushed to Guangxi or North Vietnam or were sinicised. The earliest settlers, from the Han-Tang period, would of mixed with the Bai Yue so that by the Song dynasty, the concept of Bai Yue in Guangdong was non-existent. From then on the term 'Yue' simply meant the province Guangdong or the Cantonese language, not Yue ethnicity. The bulk of modern Cantonese descended from the settlers of the Song-Yuan period where majority of Central Plain Han shifted south to flee from Liao, Jin and Mongolians. During the Qing dynasty people fled south from Manchus and even in the 1940s an influx of 'northerners' fled south from Communists who were comming down from the north. In the end, the cultural presence of Bai Yue in Cantonese is 0 and the genetic presence of Bai Yue in Cantonese is close to 0.

In regards to your comment that some Vietnamese look like Cantonese, ethnic Chinese presence in Vietnam is very great, not to mention all the ethnic Chinese which assimilated into Vietnamese.

you dont see it doesnt mean there isnt any. just like westerners doeant see the difference between chinese,korens and japanese.but ofcause there are some differences.
but the fact is that there are differrnces between the cantonese and the fujianese. most of my chinese friends are cantonese and fujianese and the fujianese girls seemed have smaller and rounder faces, and the cantonese have thicker lips and more flattened out noses and their faces seems bigger than the average fujianese.

i think i'm more qulified to judge the differences between the northern chinese and southern chinese since that i was born and have lived in northern chinese(henan zhengzhou) for 14 years.

let me tell you a bit of my own story:i'd get the weird feeling of being an outsider whenever i go to chinatown and 8th ave in nyc( both places are dominated with cantonese and fujianese) because most of the people there looked too differentlly from where i used to live. believe or not,the difference between northern chinese and southern chinese is HUGE.



what southern features?

Well, I know this Fujianese family and they all have dark skin, really big eyes and a very flat nose. There is no typical Cantonese look and typical Fujianese look. There are plenty of HK Chinese whose ancestry is Min, yet none can be distinguished by their looks as they look exactly the same as the HK Cantonese. Also, there are plenty of HK Chinese whose ancestry is Shanghainese, yet they cannot be differentiated with the main HK populace.
(By the way, theres alot of HK girls with small and round faces and alot of Fujianese with thick lips and flat noses)


Some northern Chinese have so called 'southern features' eg. big eyes, dark skin etc.
Southern Chinese oftenly have so called 'northern features' as well, eg. white skin, small eyes, tall nose

But alot of northern Chinese have dark skin and big eyes and alot of Southern Chinese have white skin and small eyes. Though there seems to be some regional differences, there is no STARK contrast between the subgroups of Han so that they should be classified by their looks. Northern Chinese and Southern Chinese both share similar facial features that sometimes the difference between them are blurred.

Hehe, have you lived in Chinese societies (not Chinatown but really chinese communities)?

There is really a typical Fujianese look and a Cantonese look (we talk about normal people, not pretty actresses and actors that gone through plastic surgery). Of course, you got people migrating there and here and intermarriages, so not everyone from Guangdong will have that Cantonese look, but i would say that 60 to 80% of people living in Guangdong will have that look - the Teochews/Chao Zhou people and Hakka people (also from the Guangdong province) will also look slightly different from the Guangdong dialect speaking people.

But put a Henan or Shandong person and Fujian person side by side, in most cases, you will find that the difference is greater than a 'Henanese' versus a 'Korean'. If DearCoolZ goes to a small Fujian city like Quanzhou or Putian with big native population, a local can tell from 50 metres away that he is a foriegner.

It's easy to see a Chinese with the nose cocurving down, but most of the Vietnamese have the nose
that is concurving up and still lower the nose of the Chinese.

Nose is a bad comparison, my ancestors are from Fujian, and many Fujianese have broad(also flat) noses, definitely flatter than Cantonese in general,

The ones with really tall noses are the Manchus and maybe northern Chinese from Henan and Shandong, like DearCoolZ.

I think lips should be a better gauge. "Han Chinese" very seldom have thick lips. There's an exception - Shuqi - that actress.

Hehe, btw, i just read the thread on Hmong or Miao, do you think Miao look more like Southern Han Chinese or Northern Vietnamese?

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=1407

I have lived in HK and been to China several times...


All 'Southern Han' were originally migrants from the north and how they look depends on how recent they migrated south (earlier the migrants, more gene flow recieved from natives). Because of this, theres a great variation of looks in Southern Han and its hard to define which people look Cantonese/Fujianese.


Maybe... but we had a 'pure' Henan tour guide and she looked more southern than all of us. Some mistakened her to be Philipino... As I've said before some Northern Chinese have 'southern' features and some Southern Chinese have 'northern' features, in the end, they are both Han.


This is exactly opposite to the 'typical' Fujianese look that DearCoolz had given. This proves that there really isn't a typical Fujianese/Cantonese look as their population is diverse- Some are more northern/southern then others depending on how recent they migrated south.


IMO, Hmong looks more like Northern Vietnamese.

when did having big eyes become a southern features? when the majority of europeans have big eyes and they are a northern people.
dark skin has more to due with the environment than anything else. a really pale person can get really dark if he or she works outside alot of just being outside alot with out protection from the sun.
I was in nyc for 5 days last week and most of the time i was walking on the streets shopping with my g/f, my neck got really dark because the hot weather we had in last week,but the rest of my body is really pale. how do you explain that?





not so oftenly as you have thought,i have been around with southern chinese for quite a years and thier do seems to have bigger eyes, and thick lips, and flattened out nose.



same thing can be said between northern chinese, manchurian,korean and japanese.

some photos of my cantonese friends











a friend of mine from harbin,heilongjiang,northern china













my family from henan,zhengzhou

my uncle

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v223/3drambo/uncle.jpg[/img]

my grandpa

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v223/3drambo/grandpa.jpg[/img]


my cousin

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v223/3drambo/86733EF95DBA9A611A05C59B06D6EB33.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v223/3drambo/D9D4F964-E762-46D3-88B3-8B95271ADB92.jpg[/img]

NOTE: Please note that I put "...." around southern and northern and I said 'so called'. This is because people relate these features to southern Chinese.

Click to view attachment

The girl on the left is from Beijing while the others are from HK. Note that she has the flattest nose, biggest eyes and darkest skin. This is what I mean by 'Northerners' having 'Southern' features.

It is true that Cantonese is originated from the South Yue kindgom. But south Yue is not related to the other Yue people. The king of South Yue is a Chin general who decided to go independent after Chin was overthrowed by Han dynasty. The people of South Yue are settlers/soldiers sent to south by the First Emperor. There are historist believe that since settlers/soldiers were all from diffferent part of China, in order to communicate, they had no choice but to speak the national language. This was the argue point for the Cantonese supportors, Cantonese is the ancient chinese, when China was debating about which language to be seclected as national language.

However, most Cantonese today claim to be immigrant from cental China during Tang/Sung period. This is from family record of a Cantonese.

i dont even know why you are using an individual example to justify your claim.

The earliest Han settlers dated since the South Yue Kingdom but its not exactly correct to say that Cantonese originated from the South Yue Kingdom. This is because majority of Cantonese migrated south from Central Plains in a much later date, though Han settlement was continuos since the Qin/Han period.


In fact, majority of Cantonese trace their origins from the Tang - Yuan period. This is because of the political turmoil and constant foreign invasions from the north which pushed majority of Han in Central Plains to the south. This can be further supported as the Cantonese dialect closely resembles Middle Chinese (which was spoken during the Tang and Song periods)

what a strange theory. even during the unified qin dynasty or anyother dynasty,there were no naitonaly language in northern china or the whole of china.

Yes that is just an individual. But there are plenty of examples in China.

i think we are talking about the majority not the pleanty here,right?i mean there are pleanty blondes in italy,but the majority are dark haired
in the case of northern china: the majority are northern looking altho you may find some southern looking chinese here and there.

Yes.

I think Vietnamese should abandon claims to Guangdong and accept the fact that we are already a mixed race and culture. We are no longer YUE.
[/quote]


We are not a mixed race and culture of vietnamese and Chinese. The logic of Vietnamese to claim Guangdong based on both Guangdong and North Vietnam were part of the South Yue kindom is funny to the best. South Yue was estabished by Chinese in China. Based on the history, I can only come to the conclusion that Vietnam was part of China, not the other way around.

Central Chinese look different from Southern Chinese or Cantonese. I remembered people from Hunan having that pumpkin shaped face and big eyes - features deemed beautiful in ancient China.




Your cousin - i doubt you can find any Cantonese with that kind of look. Not even if you search through 10,000 people.

Depends on which part of Fujian, people that are closer to Chao Zhou (Shantou) in Guangdong province tend to have higher noses.

What does a northern look like? It is more than just the nose. Andy Lau has the typical southerner look even though he has high cheeks and tall nose.

Looking at the enclosed photos, I can see that the Chinese like glasses more than the Vietnamese.
I started to wear glasses only after I was 50 years old.

wow ..you are over 50 already.... my apologies if there was any disrespect in past exchanges.

maybe u can say our eyes are more prone to short-sightedness than Vietnamese?

It depends how recent their ancestors migrated south. The earlier they migrated south the more likely they would of mixed with natives thus, have southern looks. On the other hand, the more recent migrants wouldn't look so southern.

A national langague does not mean it is legally the national language. It can be a de facto national language that the government used to conduct business. If Japan, Korea and Vietnam used to use Chinese as their national language, China was much larger and complicated, how can China run the government without a common language?

During Waring State Period, people could be prime minister of a foreign country. Clearly there was some kind of common language that they understood. How can their million strong army go to war if the soldiers do not understand the order? Language got to be part of their basic training. The fact that the First Employer did not order"Talk the same" is a good proof that there was some kind of de facto national language.

well -said, .. there was probably a semi-official standard language which peoples of different states, especially learned men could use and understand..not sure thou 'de-facto national language' s a good name...the idea of a Chinese nation was probably alien then.

also, this standard could be defined more loosely than the so-called national languages of modern age... i.e. there was no strict standards on accents, tones, pronounciations, so on , and more built along the spread of common words everywhere.

You get the wrong way when think the modern Vietnamese aren't from BaiYue. BaiYue is a name of non-Han different people groups in south Jiangtze area. Although they aren't closely related to one another but Vietnamese are mixed blood people of BaiYue peope, mainly from Ou Yue (Tay, Nung, Zhuang) and Luo Yue (Son Tinh for example). I think the Lou Yue are Vietnam native (Muong people today) but the Ou Yue are certainly from south China. That's why Tay, Nung have over 2 millions people in Vietnam today and Muong is less than them.

Nope,TrueViet was CORRECT in pointing out Viets' ancestors have always dwelled in northern half of Vietnam eventhough might have been included as one of loosely collective " Bai Yue " tribes.

Yup, it's so truth; highlight of ancient Vietnamese culture is demonstrated by the Dongsonian folks who settled in the Ca, Ma, and Red River's delta areas since milleniums ago, which is quite diversed and different from Han's culture!

Dear,

I think YUE people has a very long path of history since prehistory.

...THE PEOPLE WITH M119 MAKER TO BE THE HISTORICAL "HUNDRED YUE PEOPLE"

.....................Please talk about "SHENNON"...Is he a YUE ?

Thanks

According to my research, Tay, Nung, Zhuang are all Tai-kadai people similar to the Thai/laotian people.

If that is so, why is the vietnamese language classified as Mon-khmer instead of Tai-kadai ?

But what is Son Tinh and Muong ? Are they khmer people ?

So you are saying that the Tai-kadai people (Ou yue) are the majority in vietnam ?

Vietnamese language is classified as Mon Kh'mer language because the experts say so.
I have no objection to whatsoever the experts say.
I hope non-expert-persons listens to experts without objections or keeping their objections to themselves.

Kinh, Muong and other ethnic groups speaking Mon Kh'Mer need not be Kh'mer or Cambodians.

Please, search Internet with keyword "language family" for more information.

'Experts' also say that Vietnamese belong to sino-tibetan in the past. 'Experts' also say that Pluto is a planet but no longer a planet. When new data comes in that refute past theories or assumptions, facts has to be rewritten.

If most of Ou yue people are indeed tai-kadai, then the language should be classified as tai-kadai. Anyway, this is not a language thread. I just want to know what the original vietnamese ethnicity were.

we do not know what the Ou Yue group spoke. As they were supposed to come from further up north, it would be better to analyse the substratum layers of Min and southern Wu dialects for a better idea.

and anyway, i believe the lac viets made up the bigger element in the lac and au fusion (if the stories are to be believed) and so language wise, they might have contributed more.

The merging of Ou and Lou Yueh could be attributed to the legend of An Duong Vuong, pls review the excerpt from Wikimedia as follows:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Duong_Vuong

The Vietnamese Thuc Dynasty has only one ruler, Thuc Phan himself,last prince of Shu (state), who proclaimed himself king An Dương Vương. He ruled Au Lac, the new name the new king gave to the country, from 257 BCE to 207 BCE. His longevity, said to be around 100 years, is quite disputed.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Thuc Phan's Origins & History
* 2 Thuc Phan and Au Lac’s Administration
* 3 The Legend of Co Loa Thánh and the Magic Crossbow
o 3.1 Co Loa Thánh and Au Lac
o 3.2 The Legend of Co Loa and the Magic Crossbow
o 3.3 Triệu Đà's Scheme
o 3.4 The loss of Co Loa and the Magic Crossbow

[edit]

Thuc Phan's Origins & History

The Thuc family was an obscure family of generals. Thuc Phan himself was sent by his father first to explore the southern Chinese provinces of Quangxi and Yunnan and second to move his family there to escape from China's turmoil at that time (see details below) during the latter stage of the Warring States Period and rise of Qin. Thuc Phan came upon the Au Lac territory (modern-day North Vietnam, Guangdong, and Guangxi province). After assembling an army, he defeated King Hung Vương XVIII, the last ruler of the Hồng Bàng Dynasty around 257 BCE. He proclaimed himself An Dương Vương, "King An Dương". He then renamed his newly acquired state from Van Lang to Au Lac and established the new capital at Phong Khe in the present-day Phú Yên Province in North Vietnam. Co Loa Thánh (Co Loa Citadel), the spiral-shaped fortress/barricade which he also built, lies approximately ten miles north of that new capital.
[edit]

Thuc Phan and Au Lac’s Administration

There is not much recorded and or written about how the new Au Lac was administered and organized. Historians admit there are a lot of writings about other Vietnamese National dynasties such as the Lê, Lý, Trần, Hồ, etc. except for the period of 257 BCE to 207 BCE, which was under his rule. Nonetheless, based on Thuc Phan's accomplishments, he must have been an astute, clever, and significant figure. Certainly he was a talented general who knew how to exploit the confusion and turmoil in China during that period, not only to grab a piece of land for himself but also to secure his state's prosperity and survival. Around that same time, circa 260 BCE - 250 BCE, when Thuc Phan ascended to power, further north in China, various states are fighting each other to take control of China. Eventually, the Qin state rose to power and unified China under Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Upon Qin Shi Huang's ascension to the imperial throne, he descended into paranoia-fueled Legalist practices. Hoping to prevent potential civil unrests and rebellions, he ordered the burning of millions of books, other significant official documents from previously conquered warring states, and forced thousands of intellectual officials to be buried alive. Qin Shi Huang also ordered the beginning of the construction of the Great Wall, and around the same time, further south, An Dương Vương had begun the construction of a spiral-shaped fortress called Co Loa Thánh to fend off future northern invasions and attacks.
[edit]

The Legend of Co Loa Thánh and the Magic Crossbow
[edit]

Co Loa Thánh and Au Lac

After Thuc Phan defeated the last Hung Vương King and ascended to the throne as An Dương Vương, he renamed Van Lang to Au Lac and established Co Loa as the new capital. He saw the strategic and geographic importance of Co Loa. On two of its sides, Co Loa was surrounded by impenetrable mountains and forests. There was also a river flowing by. No one knows why did An Dương Vương favored the spiral, shell-like shape of Co Loa Thánh, but legend has it that its construction was extremely tough, and difficult to complete. Each time it seemed it was almost done, it was undone at night by a coalition of spirits which were thought to be allied to the son of a previous king.
[edit]

The Legend of Co Loa and the Magic Crossbow

An Dương Vương burnt incense, prayed, made offerings, and evoked all the gods of those days to help him. One night, in a dream, a very, very old and venerable man with long, white hair came to him and told him the only person who could help him out of this conundrum was a golden turtle that lived somewhere around Co Loa.

A few days later, while wandering in a boat on the river and thinking about the meaning of his dream, a gigantic golden turtle appeared suddenly at the surface of the water. The golden turtle told An Dương Vương that he would need one of its claws in order to accomplish anything in his life. Pulling out one of its claws and throwing it to An Dương Vương, the turtle vanished.

An Dương Vương had Co Lo, his weaponry engineer, build a crossbow incorporating this claw. It is said a single arrow shot from this crossbow of the Golden Tortoise could kill hundreds, even thousands of enemies. Indeed right after obtaining this claw, An Dương Vương saw his fortunes change. His capital started taking shape. His kingdom prospered and soon was coveted by neighboring states. Among one of those who coveted his territory was Zhao Tuo (Triệu Đà in Vietnamese), a Qin general under the reign of Qin Shi Huang and his successor. For a period of ten years around 217 BCE to 207 BCE, Triệu Đà attempted many invasions to conquer Au Lac state, but failed each time due to An Dương Vương's military skills and defense tactics.
[edit]

Triệu Đà's Scheme

Triệu Đà having been beaten several times, devised a new plan. Keeping to himself that it was just a temporary ploy to buy time, he negotiated a peace treaty with Au Lac state. He set out to determine where lay the strength and strategies of his foe. He even went so far as to propose marriage between An Dương Vương’s daughter, Princess My Chau (Mei Zhou) and his son Trong Thuy (Zhong Shu'i). In time Triệu Đà found out through his daughter-in-law My Chau that An Dương Vương had a magic crossbow that made him almost invincible. In reality, the secret military technology of bronzed-cast arrows with some kind of fire-attachment invention by the Au Lac state was one of their famous arsenals that was used again the Qin armies and soundly defeated them on many occasions in the past. Eventually, when Triệu Đà figured out a new scheme to infiltrate the war arsenal secrets and military tactics of Au Lac was when he told his son Trong Thuy to sneak into his father-in-law's armory and steal this "magic crossbow", replacing it with a fake. Triệu Đà, with the magic crossbow in his hands, launched a final, decisive attack on his foe and in-law An Dương Vương.
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The loss of Co Loa and the Magic Crossbow

Miraculously enough, Co Loa fortress fell into Triệu Đà's hands. For An Dương Vương this was a major disaster. He grabbed My Chau, his only daughter, and fled the scene of the battle. Riding on his horse with My Chau behind him he called out in despair, “What happened to my crossbow? It does not work anymore! Why? Why?” At that very moment, the giant golden turtle An Dương Vương had not seen for years and years, suddenly reappeared in the river. He replied to An Dương Vương, “The person responsible for this disaster, the enemy you are looking for, is sitting right behind you, your majesty!”

An Dương Vương reined in his horse and confronted his daughter, who was in tears. Angered, feeling betrayed by his daughter and son-in-law, the king slew his daughter. Then he jumped into the river with the giant golden turtle. Some say he drowned himself; some say his faithful servant the golden turtle took him to the depths of the river.

Trong Thuy, searching for his beloved wife, arrived a few minutes later at the scene. The body of his beloved wife was lying in a pool of blood and his father-in-law was nowhere to be seen. In accordance with conjugal fidelity and devotion, he drew his sword and killed himself as well, in order to be with his wife forever and eternity.

Having achieved the defeat of his rival, Triệu Đà annexed the newly conquered territory to his own, ascended to the throne, and proclaimed himself a new emperor, founding the Triệu Dynasty (207 BCE-111 BCE).

Legend of An Duong Vuong could also be reviewed via this link:

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~aaf/quanho.htm