Two Girls and An Army


There have been women in history who showed incredible courage and skills against odds that would daunt even the hardiest of men.  

For sheer badassery, however, few could top the Trung Sisters (Trung Trac and Trung Nhi), who are regarded today in Vietnam as national heroes.
The Trung sisters were born in China-dominated Vietnam sometime during the first century (no one was really sure of the exact date).

Coming from a military family, the sisters grew up well-versed in martial arts, which meant they were no strangers when it came to some serious ass-kicking.
Not really known as a benevolent overlord, China was then pursuing a policy of forcible assimilation of the Vietnamese people, an idea that did not sit well in the Trung household.
Thi Sach, Trung Trac’s husband, decided enough was enough and made a stand against the Chinese. 
As you can imagine, the Chinese invaders did not take this well; they promptly executed him as an example to other would-be heroes; after which they raped his widow because 1, to show others what might happen to those who defy China, and 2, because why the hell not.
The Chinese thought that that story would end there, with Thi Sach as another casualty and Trung Trac just another widow, but they were wrong. 

They were wrong big time. 

Instead of just grieving for her husband and moving on, Trac, together with her sister, Nhi, raised an army of around 80,000 seriously pissed-off women and proceeded to kick the Chinese invaders where it hurts most.
Not only did the women liberate their own village, but they went on to take back 65 Chinese strongholds, eventually liberating their country. It took the sisters and their army just a few months to accomplish this.  

What leadership they must have shown, to inspire an army composed mostly of women to deliver such an ass kicking to the army of the foremost “superpower” nation of the period. 

The sisters and their army were eventually defeated, but their struggle against the Chinese was so awesome that one would think the entire saga was a product of some Hollywood hack. 
Statue of the Trung Sisters in Ho Chi Minh City

Their story has all the stuff legends are made of (as they say), like the one about a noblewoman named Phung Thi Chinh, who was one of the Trung sisters' generals and was heavily pregnant during the epic final battle. 
You’d think being pregnant would be enough of an excuse, don’t you, for her to stay at home; but no, she went on to the battlefield to serve some Vietnamese kickass-flavored dishes to the Chinese horde. 

That in itself was pretty badass, but the really badass part was when she gave birth on the frigging battlefield, and it didn’t even stop her.
Hell no; she strapped her newborn to her back and with a sword in her hand, killed a few more enemies. 

Makes John McClane look like a wuss, doesn’t she. 

Another legend is that the soldiers China sent to face Trung’s army were naked. 
These soldiers faced an army of (mostly) women with their schlongs blowin’ in the wind, so surprising the female warriors that they fled from the battlefield, leaving the army in a weakened state.
It is no surprise then that Chinese historians wrote just a few paragraphs about the Trung sisters.  

And who could blame them?

Comments

Post a Comment

So, what do you think? Post it here:

Popular posts from this blog

Vincent

Image
Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings are valued today at hundreds of millions of dollars. One of the world’s greatest painters, he is also one of the most influential figures in Post-Impressionism art. Ironic, because nobody wanted his paintings when he was alive.  He was a “weirdo” and nobody really understood him. Except for the few friends he had with other struggling, unsuccessful painters, one of whom he quarreled with, a quarrel that resulted in Van Gogh cutting off his ear with  a razor.  He also suffered from delusions and had psychotic breaks. He seldom ate and drank heavily. He was one of those tortured souls who had so much to give but was largely ignored. His genius and artistry nobody really got while he was alive. He was an idealist, a sensitive soul who had too much empathy. Imagine somebody like that living today.  At age 37, Vincent Van Gogh - struggling with depression, mental illness, and thinking that he was a failure - killed himself.  You...
Read more

86-Year Old Man Tells His Life Story

Image
Sometimes, we find something in the internet that makes us smile, something that touches us, and makes us feel happy, even for a brief and fleeting moment. Whoever this old man is, his account of his life throughout the years, told in rage comic, made me shed a few manly tears. And as this is November , he reminds of my own father.  Click here for a larger image: 86 years old...
Read more

The Square Cube Law and How It Killed Giants

Image
We are so used to the idea of giants that we take it for granted that they exist, or must have existed at one point in our history.  You know, those very large and very tall human-like creatures, carrying a humongous club, and being very nasty. Like this: And if you are a typical, god-fearing Catholic Pinoy, you would swear that not only are they true, you even saw one beside that big-ass, scary-looking tree not far from your home, one night when you were going home after an evening of binge-drinking with your buddies. And the bastard’s smoking a cigar as long and as big as your leg! Or you know someone who saw one of those cigar-smoking monsters. This creature is called a kapre —a cigar-smoking giant wearing a loincloth. Or maybe a tikbalang —a half-man, half-horse creature about as tall as a kapre. Unlike a centaur, however, a tikbalang is a giant with the torso and arms of a man, and the head and legs of a horse.  Scary creatures, these—and...
Read more

From Cross-stitching to Explosions

Image
Misis Djyli is the username of a young housewife who, for the past few months, had been uploading her cross-stitching projects on YouTube. It’s her hobby, and clearly she loves it—you can hear the happiness in her voice as she presents her cross-stitches. I am not an expert on cross-stitching, but hers look beautiful, at least according to the few comments on her YouTube channel.   Here's one of her earliest uploads: Almost nobody watches her cross-stitching videos, but it didn’t seem to bother her—she just kept making and uploading them.   Her latest video, however, has currently over a million views, and it does not show her cross-stitching. It shows her town being bombed, and her normally happy voice is gone.  She is crying and sounds very afraid on the video, and you can hear a baby crying in the background. The woman, you see, lives in Ukraine. She lives in a town called Kramatorsk, and the town was recently attacked by Russians (or perhaps ethnic Rus...
Read more