ANNAM: Mandarins in Batches

Mandarins in Batches

To the last Chinese “forbidden city” in the world, to Hue on the River of Perfumes, a youth of 19 returned from Paris to ascend his Throne last week.

Silk-robed mandarins with ornate shoes turned up at the toes hailed the bland, plump youth as Emperor of Annam, the “Absolute Master and Father and Mother.” In the mountain of royal baggage, unseen by Annamites, were 7,000 phonograph records, a French-English-Italian library, ten ping-pong sets and a hundred dozen ping-pong balls. Not for nothing has 19-year-old Emperor Bao Dai spent half his life in Paris, coached by Frenchmen to rule Annam as France directs. On his return to Hue the perfectly drilled Emperor replied in rapid, flawless French to greetings voiced by the real ruler of French Indo-China, white-whiskered, punctilious Governor General Pierre Pasquier.

Annam, the only empire in French Asia, lies facing the China Sea between the French protectorates of Cochin China and Tonking. With an area as large as Kentucky’s and a population twice as great, Annam exports prime rice & pepper, fair tea, trinkets. Beyond a doubt her young Emperor would have preferred to remain in Paris and he almost had a chance to stay on. The August Messenger from the Regent of Annam who set out last spring to recall His Majesty traveled by the brand new French luxury liner Georges Phillipar. When she burned up and sank at sea last May, August Messenger Thai Van Toan barely escaped with his life. Last week he had the satisfaction of seeing Emperor Bao Dai enthroned in the Palace of Supreme Peace. For hours & hours & hours His Majesty had to sit motionless, extending his white jade scepter while brigades of mandarins bowed in batches. According to Imperial Chinese etiquet, now observed exclusively at the Court of Annam, “no man’s eyes may rest upon the Emperor enthroned, no woman may be in the Throne Room and the Emperor’s eyes must dwell motionless upon utter vacancy as his mind is filled with the August Thoughts.”

In Paris, to which the French brought him when he was nine years old, jolly little Bao Dai tried his best to learn everything, mastered modern languages and mathematics, took tennis lessons from Henri Cochet, learned from stern French cavalry tutors to jump a horse. In the end His Majesty came to excel at ping pong.

When his father died in 1925 the French returned Bao Dai to Hue, crowned him in 1926, appointed a Regent and rushed him back to a town house in Paris where he played more ping pong, rounded out his magnificent collection of phonograph disks. Last week he disappeared with finality into the Forbidden City where (etiquet decrees) the Emperor of Annam must live invisible to his subjects, remote, mysterious, awesome.

Also invisible is the Young Annamite Party, driven into hiding by the French. Much like the Turkish Revolutionists in 1918. the Young Annamites of today demand proclamation of an Annamite Republic. They refer contemptuously to Ping Pong Player Bao Dai as a “French Emperor” and are not above hatching bomb plots against French Governor Pierre Pasquier who has had several narrow escapes.

Most fun was had in the Purple Forbidden City by Annam’s late Emperor Thanh-Thai. Was there any rule of etiquet. demanded this ingenious monarch, which barred him from setting up a market in the Palace courtyard, with eunuchs to sell meat & vegetables, the Empress & concubines as buyers and His Majesty as the fishmonger? Abashed, the Keeper of the Book of Rites replied that His Majesty might have a market. Next day and every day thereafter the courtyard hummed with haggling, especially furious around His Majesty’s fish booth.

For months the Court had fun until one day the audacious Empress screamed at the height of her haggling, “Your fish are not fresh!” Insulted beyond measure His Majesty broke Her Majesty’s arm, declared himself disgusted with fishmongering, asked the French Government to install a tramway in the Palace grounds with himself as motorman.

Not etiquet but French thrift blocked this scheme. Finally His Majesty decided to play surgeon, cut open the stomach of a concubine ”to see what was inside.” Soon afterward French doctors formally certified that His Majesty was mad and in 1905 he was banished to Reunion Island off the coast of Madagascar. On Reunion today languishes famed Abd-el-Krim, onetime bandit-chieftain of Morocco, who displeased the French exceedingly by fighting them with vigor, castrating captured Legionnaires (TIME, Sept. 20. 1926).