In September 2008, I was invited by the colleagues of the Museum of Kuangsi to visit Hop Pho - now a locality, a port-town before, at 250km to the east of the capital Nam Ninh. Hop Pho was before certainly a flourishing port-town, according to historical documents the material proof of which is the presence of tens of thousands of tombs dating from the time of Dong Han, as an irrefutable indication of the concentration of population in Hop Pho at the time.
In September 2008, I was invited by the colleagues of the Museum of Kuangsi to visit Hop Pho - now a locality, a port-town before, at 250km to the east of the capital Nam Ninh. Hop Pho was before certainly a flourishing port-town, according to historical documents the material proof of which is the presence of tens of thousands of tombs dating from the time of Dong Han, as an irrefutable indication of the concentration of population in Hop Pho at the time. Brick tombs, earth tombs, with structure, material, and technics completely different from those of the Han tombs found in North-Vietnam and studied by archaeologists of Kuangsi, are not all, seemingly, tombs of the nobility, but belong mostly to the class of rich merchants, which is another proof that Hop Pho was a rather flourishing commercial center of the time of Dong Han.
Nowadays, Hop Pho was at about 20km from the sea, its old place is taken by the city of Bac Hai, a port town, which is difficult for us to imagine that twenty centuries ago there was here an important seaport of the region of the two Kuang, playing a great role in trade relations with countries of Asiatic South-East, among which Giao Chi and Cuu Chan of Vietnam.
At the recent international symposium on Hop Pho, the chinese and foreign historians and archaeologists all agreed that the goods concentrated in this port-town have had an influence on the trade relations in the first time of the silk road on sea, after the annals and the archaeological documents. The role of storehouse of goods of Hop Pho for the south market is not less important and certainly port-towns such as Lach Truong (Thanh Hoa), Cu Lao Cham (Hoi An, Quang Nam)… have contributed to the sea trade network, as shown archaeologists such as O. Janse before, Nguyen Viet and Lam My Dung today, on the basis of important discoveries of archaeology and human geography. The presence of the ceramic jar with the inscription “Cuu Chan Quan” in the tomb no 31 of Hop Pho is a proof of the bilateral trade relations of the first centuries of the christian era, and at the same time a suggestion for researches of archaeologists of Kuangsi on these bilateral trade relations.
The chinese professors of history and archaeology told me that the silk road on land has been proposed by related countries to be classified as mundial cultural patrimony. In the future, the silk road on sea will also be classified and certainly the port-towns of Vietnam will greatly contribute in the establishment of documents of classification. This will require that vietnamese archaeologists set forth more concentrated and more complete researches on port-towns, theme of research on which the vietnamese researchers so far have not invested enough, in man power nor in material.
I have written this paper on occasion of a visit.
Phạm Quốc Quân