Slavery in Vietnam

During the Hồng Bàng period, the society was divided into three classes consisting of kings, citizens and slaves.

[1] A large trade developed where the native girls of Nam Viet were enslaved and brought north to the Chinese.

[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] Records show that the Vietnamese performed castration in a painful procedure by removing the entire genitalia with both penis and testicles being cut off with a sharp knife or metal blade.

[29] The eunuchs served as slaves to the Vietnamese palace women in the harem like the consorts, concubines, maids, Queen, and Princesses, doing most of the work.

[49][50] A 1499 entry in the Ming Shilu recorded that thirteen Chinese men from Wenchang including a young man named Wu Rui were captured by the Vietnamese after their ship was blown off course while traveling from Hainan to Guangdong's Qin subprefecture (Qinzhou), after which they ended up near the coast of Vietnam, during the Chenghua Emperor's rule (1447–1487).

Twelve of them were enslaved to work as agricultural laborers, while the youngest, Wu Rui (吳瑞) was selected for castration since he was the only young man and he became a eunuch attendant at the Vietnamese imperial palace in Thăng Long.

The local chief planned to sell him back to the Vietnamese, but Wu was rescued by the Pingxiang magistrate and then was sent to Beijing to work as a eunuch in the palace.

[61] Since the 1980s, some women from Vietnam have become victims of kidnapping, the bride-buying trade, human trafficking and prostitution in China.

[62] Human traffickers, such as in Bangkok, trick, kidnap and detain the women for the purpose of raping them, making them surrogate mothers, and selling their babies to clients in Taiwan.