After two thousand years, the historical truth of the two sisters, Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị, has evaporated into the winds of time, carried along by gusts of myth throughout the centuries. In the most traditional account of events, the one most widely reported by historians, the Trưng sisters were born into a noble family, their father part of the Lạc lords living in the Red River Delta valley, in Giao Chỉ province. Presently, this is close to Hà Nội in northern Vietnam. The Lạc lords believed they were descendants of the Hùng kings as part of the origin story of the Vietnamese people. The mountain fairy Âu Cơ and the sea dragon Lạc Long Quân had one hundred children together. When they parted ways, fifty children went with their mother to the mountains where they became the highlanders. Fifty children went with their father to the seashore where they became the Hùng kings of the Lạc people.

Even after two hundred years of governance, the Lạc people had no love for their Chinese rulers of the Han Dynasty. In an act intended to secure obedience, the Chinese Administrator had Trưng Trắc’s husband, Thi Sách, executed for insurrection. This act had the opposite effect. Trưng Trắc set aside her mourning clothes and took up sword and shield in 40 C.E.

The sisters raised a rebellion army of women and men and drove out the Chinese through quick and decisive raids and battles. Trưng Trắc was crowned queen and she ruled for three years. Yet in 43 C.E., the Chinese came back, and defeated the Trưng sisters.

The historical accounts do not mention the sisters riding elephants into battle. There are different accounts of their deaths. The account closest to the hearts of the Vietnamese is that the sisters drowned themselves in the Hát River, preserving their honour for eternity. Yet others have written they were captured, executed, and their heads delivered back to the Han capital.

The Trưng sisters had fallen.

And the legend of Hai Bà Trưng, two sisters Trưng, was born.

The first time I saw the dance of Hai Bà Trưng performed, tears welled up in my eyes and goose pimples dotted along the back of my neck and down my bare arms. The Duckworth Centre at the University of Winnipeg where the Pavilion was held was well air-conditioned during muggy August. Yet I felt heat rise to my cheeks and out through the top of my head. I crossed my arms over my chest to hold myself together, my reaction was so immediate.

Mighty warrior women. Mighty Vietnamese women. I felt this story deep in my bones, resonating through my blood. This was my introduction to the two sisters, my first glimpse into my own history. The Trưng sisters were certainly not part of the curriculum at General Wolfe School in the West End.

Growing up in Canada, I knew about European explorers and I knew about ancient Egypt. Yet I knew very little about the history of the country of my birth. I was three when we emigrated, and I had visited Vietnam only once before entering junior high. The Vietnam War, phở noodle soup, and people on motorbikes came quickest to mind when I thought about where I was born.

I focussed on Jen standing stationary on her war elephant. What was going through her mind? She had just deployed her army to battle the greater force of the Chinese. Was she fearful? Was she determined to see this to the end? When did Trưng Trắc know she was going to be defeated? When did she decide to give up her mortal life? Trưng Trắc, channelled through my sister, reached out from the past. Trưng Trắc illuminated my path through the mists of the spirit realm, highlighting the Vietnamese pull to the otherworldly.

Ever since the summer of the Saigon Pavilion, Trưng Trắc has been nearby. She became my role model; I was a shy girl who loved to read and play games of imagination, but I did not see myself in my cherished Lucy Maud Montgomery books and blonde Barbie dolls. It was the first time I saw myself, a Vietnamese girl, represented anywhere.

Trưng Trắc was a whisper in the wind after I closed the front door. She was a flash of light after I turned off the lamp in my bedroom. She was a heroine from the land of my ancestors. Powerful and proud. A thread wove its way from Trưng Trắc through the generations to me. She was not far, she was close.

I followed the thread that linked me to Trưng Trắc. Through her, I discovered the threads that bound me to my family, that bound me to my dad, in the realm of the spirits.

Ba had passed on before I celebrated my eighth birthday. He went into the hospital and never came out. I only recall flashes—wavy black hair and brown sunglasses, a belly laugh that was contagious and hands tanned like leather, wrinkled yet warm. Everyone said I’d inherited my darker skin from Ba, while Jen took after Má. My memories of him as bone and flesh are faded and fragmented.

And yet, after his passing, I saw him everyday staring through his photo from his altar. We shared meals together of rice, bi soup, pan fried pork, after Má cúnged. I saw him when I cleaned his altar every month. When I envision Ba, I see him in black and white as a young man in his mid-twenties from his altar photo. Even though I never knew that man in real life, the man from the picture has been a presence in my life.

The veil between the living and the dead is thin. Family passes on and yet they remain. My family swirls around me, ghosts without form yet true to essence. A hand at my back, a caress on my cheek. Whispering to me, steadying my feet. They are never far from this world. Not peering down from heaven but walking alongside me. Slipping in between the veil of human breath and shadow existence.

A crack in the window, a doorway not quite shut, a lid slightly ajar.

Enough of an opening through which

light may pass,

air may flow,

water may seep,

and spirit may come.

About Seeking Spirit:

Linda Trinh says she had everything she thought an immigrant woman should want: motherhood, career, and security. Yet she felt empty. Growing up in Winnipeg, Linda helped her mom make offerings to their ancestors and cleaned her late dad's altar. These were her mother's beliefs, but was Buddhism Linda's belief? In her late-twenties, Linda sought answers in Egypt and China and prayed during corporate downsizing, seeking meaning in contemporary life. Via a collection of essays, she plays with form and structure to show the interconnection of life events, trauma, and spiritual practice, to move from being a passive believer to an active seeker.

About Linda Trinh:

Linda Trinh is an award-winning Vietnamese Canadian author of fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. She is the author of The Nguyen Kids series. Her work has appeared in various anthologies and literary magazines, and has been nominated for numerous awards. The Secret of the Jade Bangle co-won the Manitoba Book Award for best first book. Linda immigrated to Canada with her family from Vietnam when she was three years old. She and her older sister were raised by a single mother, surrounded by extended family in the West End of Winnipeg, after her father passed away when she was seven. Growing up, she did not see herself represented in books and that absence influences her exploration of identity, cultural background, and spirituality. She lives with her husband and two kids in Winnipeg, on ancestral lands, Treaty 1 territory, traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene Peoples, and on the National Homeland of the Red River Métis.