Myths and history

The Red River (Sông Hồng), which is red from its alluvial deposits, is also called Mother River (Sông Cái). Mother River gave birth to Hà Nội. As the river changed course, it created picturesque scenes by leaving Hà Nội with ponds, ancient streams (Tô Lịch, Kim Ngưu), and lakes (West Lake, the Lake of the Restored Sword, Bảy Mẫu Lake, etc.). The Mother River Basin was the cradle of Vietnamese civilization in the Bronze Age.

The Red River has four bridges: Long Biên, formerly called Doumer Bridge for a French governor general of Indochina, built by the French between 1898 and 1902, and renamed Long Biên after the colonial period; Thăng Long (Soaring Dragon) Bridge, built with Chinese and then Soviet assistance between 1974 and 1985); Chương Dương Bridge, built by Vietnamese between 1979 and 1985); and Thanh Trì (Rampart and Moat) Bridge, built with Japanese loans between 2002 and 2007).

My friend, French novelist Marie France Briselance was on her first trip to Việt Nam and had to leave Hà Nội with regret after a stay of eleven days. Hà Nội had much to tell her, for she was of the “Việt Nam Generation.” Marie had wanted to cross Pont Doumer (Doumer Bridge), but hadn’t had the time. She had reason to regret her missed chance, for the three-kilometer walk (going and coming) between the sky above and the water below on a crisp autumn morning would have better prepared her for the hustle and bustle of Paris.

Long Biên Bridge has been reserved for pedestrians, bicycles, and motorbikes since construction of the three newer bridges. Every time I stroll across Long Biên, I feel contradictory sentiments for the alluvium-laden river below that flows on a turbulent course across more than a thousand kilometers. On one hand, I think of the flight of time and the vanity of this world as described in these melancholic lines by Chinese poet Li Po:

Seest thou not the Yellow River coming from the sky,

Downward to the Ocean flowing, never turning back?

(Translated by W.B. Fletcher)

On the other, when I look upstream at the swirling waters, my heart fills with gratitude and tenderness for my distant ancestors, who forged the Vietnamese national identity by creating the Red River Civilization in the first millennium before Christ.

Eminent Vietnamologist Hoàng Xuân Hãn wrote, “An autonomous culture took form in a geographical space distinct from that of China. It can be said that this space first straddled the present Sino-Vietnamese border and extended from Yunnan to the Red River Delta. This became what we call the ‘Bronze Drum Civilization.’”

The Water Genie Continues Pouring Forth His Wrath
The youngsters between three and fourteen watched the stage, applauding wildly when the Forces of Good (forest beasts led by the Mountain Genie) routed the Forces of Evil (sea monsters led by the Water Genie).

We were at one of the Sunday children’s matinees run by the Youth Theater (Nhà Hát Tuổi Trẻ) on Hà Nội’s Ngô Thì Nhậm Street. Poet Hồng Ngát had written the play, Vua Hùng Kén Tể (King Hùng Chooses a Son-in-Law), based on a legend dating back to the origin of the Việt. Students from the theater’s drama class had produced the play, with financial assistance from the Swedish-Vietnamese Fund for the Promotion of Culture.

According to the legend, both the Mountain Genie and the Water Genie admired the daughter of King Hùng, one of the founders of the country of the Việt. King Hùng told the suitors: “Since I can’t give my daughter to both of you, tomorrow morning, I will choose whoever first brings me one hundred plates of steamed glutinous rice, two hundred rice cakes, an elephant with nine tusks, a rooster with nine spurs, and a horse with nine red manes.”

The Mountain Genie was the first to arrive at the palace with all the gifts and took the princess to his home at the top of a high mountain.

The Water Genie arrived too late. Wild with rage, the Water Genie unleashed one typhoon after another. The storms shook Heaven and Earth, carried away houses, uprooted trees, and destroyed all the crops. In response, the Mountain Genie caused hills to rise as fast as the flood waters could swell. A violent battle ensued, which ended with the victory of the Forces of Good.

However, the victory was not decisive. The Water Genie has returned again and again with each year’s monsoon season, when the deadly battle resumes.

Leaders should seriously consider a project to evacuate the population in the delta and rebuild the capital somewhere in the midlands (for example in Hà Tây Province) in order to demolish the dikes and allow for periodic flooding.

When I was small, I was passionate about books celebrating King Lý Thái Tổ, the eleventh-century monarch who chose to build the capital of the country then known as Đại Việt on land “where dragons pay homage and tigers bend their knees” and where he had seen a “dragon taking off in flight.” He named the new capital “Thăng Long” (Soaring Dragon). Today, at the beginning of a new millennium, I would like to examine from a geographical and historical perspective the development of the northern delta and its heart, Hà Nội, a city transversed by the Red River.

The Geography of Hà Nội and its Dikes

Seen from the point of view of sustainable development, the geographic position of Hà Nội is not ideal for a national capital.

Hà Nội lies on the banks of the Red River along a long subterranean fault line dividing northern Việt Nam almost in two. Fault lines, especially deep ones such as those of the Red River, constitute the most unstable places on the earth’s crust and are exposed to vigorous pressure from seismic shocks and earthquakes.

Is the Red River fault line stable? It’s difficult to say. According to a team of scientists led by Dr. R. Lacassin, the part of the fault line on the Chinese side from Yunnan to the Tibetan Plateau is presently sliding at a rate of around five millimeters per year. However, the scientists did not have Việt Nam in mind when they did their study.

The system of river dikes in northern Việt Nam has restricted the natural development of the Red River Delta. The first dike was built in 1108 during the Lý Dynasty in Cơ Xá solely to defend Thăng Long. This marked the debut of a gigantic dike system constructed by successive dynasties until its present-day length of 3,000 kilometers.

The low dikes of the Trần Dynasty (1225–1400) prevented water from entering rice paddies and permitted summer rice cultivation. After harvest, water freely entered the paddies. This solution was acceptable. However, other dikes built and reinforced during the Posterior Lê Dynasty (1428–1527)—notably the branches crossing Sơn Tây and Hà Nam Provinces—ran contrary to nature.

Pierre Gourou remarked at the beginning of the twentieth century, “The Red River Delta died in its adolescence.” The Red River has not developed naturally since the Lê Dynasty. The dikes essentially broke the delta’s organic relationship with the river that maintains it by hemming in the river’s alluvial deposits so they could not overflow into the rice fields. Unable to wash into the sea, most sediment settled in the river bed or along its banks. As a result, the river floor has been constantly rising.

Sandbanks and alluvial plains have formed, particularly from Sơn Tây to Nam Định. In many places, the river bed and the alluvial plains became higher than the rice fields. Sandbanks under Long Biên Bridge have gradually risen closer to the bridge itself. Dikes must be constantly heightened, adding to the risk of breakage

The dikes did break several times during the Nguyễn Dynasty. The question of dike maintenance or demolition first arose in 1833 during the reign of Minh Mạng. Mandarins Đoàn Văn Trường, Đặng Văn Thiêm, and Trịnh Quang Khanh wanted to demolish the dikes in Hưng Yên, Hải Dương, and Nam Định and dig a canal instead. Minh Mạng was intelligent, dynamic, and resolute. He agreed to demolish those dikes, reversing ten years of consolidation and construction, and dredge the Cửu An River to divert flood waters. Later, this positive measure was wrongly considered as proof of the weakness and irresponsibility of the Nguyễn.

Nguyễn Đăng Giai, the interim governor of Hà Nam Province, raised twelve disadvantages of dikes in 1847 at the end of Thiệu Trị’s reign. He proposed replacing dikes with canals (such as Nguyệt Đức and Nghĩa Trụ) to divert Red River floodwaters to the east and lessen the water that poured into the rice fields. However, King Thiệu Trị turned down his proposal and, instead, continued to build dikes and even a dam at the mouth of the Cửu An River.

In 1857, during the reign of Tự Đức, Nguyễn Đăng Khải proposed maintaining the dike on the left bank of the Red River and demolishing the dike on the right bank, allowing rice fields there to flood. In 1861, Vũ Văn Bình suggested that all dikes in Sơn Tây, Bắc Ninh, Hà Nội, Hưng Yên, and Nam Định be destroyed. Around 1873, Trần Bình and Hoàng Tá Viêm thought it was more worthwhile to demolish dikes than to build more. Indeed, we should remember that during Tự Đức’s reign, the Văn Giang Dike in Hưng Yên Province burst eighteen years in a row, with enormous human and material losses.

In 1915, Viceroy Hoàn Cao Khải suggested demolishing dikes in upland regions and preserving only those in the lowlands and then looking for a way to raise the ground level in the lowlands to eliminate future dikes. He also suggested widening the river’s course in order to clear flood waters.

Dikes: Build or Demolish?

The question of dikes remains timely, even after the Hoà Bình Hydroelectric Dam regularized the Red River’s flow. Is it time now to let the Red River Delta develop naturally so that rice paddies can receive yearly fertile deposits and so the lowest areas of the delta can fill up to make a more even surface? If this were achieved, the river bed would not continue to rise as quickly as today. However, if we continue to build dikes, then we must constantly raise the ones already along the river. The grandchildren of today’s generation might see a giant dike resembling a wall running through Hà Nội.

The rising floor of the Red River in turn raises the level of annual floods. Hà Nội is on low ground with poor drainage. The floors of many houses are lower than the streets, and the streets in turn are lower than the level of the Red River in flood. Compared with the 1490 plan for Thăng Long, the surface area of Hà Nội’s natural lakes is now minimal. Temporary reservoirs for rainwater have practically disappeared, adding to the problem of floods.

Further, the Hoà Bình Reservoir, which is a hundred meters deep and located above Hà Nội, is another risk. A natural disaster such as a serious earthquake could cause immense losses. In 1995, the Kobe tremor ravaged in a few minutes a key Japanese city where people had lived peacefully for four hundred years, despite billions of dollars spent on earthquake forecasting.

For these reasons, demolition of the Red River dikes is an issue deserving serious consideration.
–Tạ Hoà Phương

(Vietnamese Studies)

For several decades, Thánh Gióng (God Gióng), who is popularly honored with the title “Phù Đổng Thiên Vương” (Celestial Prince of Phù Đổng), has been the patron saint of a broad movement of gymnastics and sports. This movement mobilizes millions of primary and secondary school students and culminates every four years in the National Junior Olympiads (Hội Khỏi Phù Đổng).

The success of the first four Junior Olympiads (Hà Nội, 1983; Hồ Chí Minh City, 1987; Đà Nắng, 1992; Hải Phòng, 1996) has not slowed traditional festivities in Gióng Village. Far from it. The religious and spiritual renascence after the long trials of war have brought a strong revival during the past decade. Each year, four festivals occur in four suburban villages, each re-enacting the life and struggle of Warrior Gióng against the invaders.

The major event begins in Phù Đổng Village on the ninth day of the fourth lunar month. Hundreds of people join a re-enactment of the Battle Against Ân invaders. Participants, especially women, wear costumes of Ân commanders (hiệu) and troops. They are carefully selected and must follow many rituals. On the sixth day of the eighth moon, a procession brings water drawn from a well in front of the Saintly Mother Temple (Đền Mẫu) to the Thánh Gióng Temple. On the ninth day, at the Ceremony of Sacrifice, participants execute sacred songs and dances at the Ai Lao Quarter. Then they perform the flag dance, which symbolizes the unfolding battle. The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth days are for various ceremonies: The waving of flags, the celebration of victory, and the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth.

This legend is the first account exalting victory over foreign invaders, a constant feature of Vietnamese history. The God of Gióng (Phù Đổng) tops the list of the country’s heroic defenders, including historical heroes (e.g., the Trưng Sisters, Dame Triệu, Lê Lợi, Lý Thường Kiệt, Trần Hưng Đạo, etc.), whose names designate streets in Hà Nội and other cities.

Here is a brief version of the “Legend of Gióng”: During the reign of the sixth Hùng king, a mature woman from Gióng (Phù Đổng) Village happened to step on the imprint left by a huge divine foot. She became pregnant and later gave birth to a baby boy. For three subsequent years, the child lay in his cot, unable to sit up, walk, or speak. The Ân invaders from the north arrived, creating havoc. The king sent a herald to all provinces, calling on the people to help defend the kingdom.

One day, the herald came to Gióng Village. With his arrival, the child rose from his cot and announced that he would fight the enemy. He consumed an enormous amount of food and grew to great stature; he asked for armor, a spear, and an iron horse. Riding the horse, he plowed through the enemy ranks and exterminated invading troops. When his spear broke, he uprooted a cluster of bamboo and used it as his staff. Victorious, he rode his horse up to Heaven. A cult in Gióng Village and other localities is devoted to Thánh Gióng.

A Cultural Tradition of a Rice-Growing People
Paris was shivering in February 1996, more so than usual in the winter. People wrapped in their overcoats walked quickly, whipped by gusts of wind and snow under a grey sky.

How pleasant it was to linger in a bright, chic, well-heated Sino-Vietnamese shop in the Thirteenth Arrondissement, where they sold the first ornamental Tết plants—dwarf tangerine trees with clusters of golden fruit, narcissuses with gold-hearted white flowers, and peach branches with pink blossoms. These luxury items imported from Việt Nam and China were expensive: 480 francs for a dwarf tangerine tree, 150 francs for a narcissus, and 180 francs for a peach branch.

Tết was still three weeks away, but expatriates from eastern Asia were feverishly preparing for the traditional Lunar New Year festival. My friend, Mrs. Hoàng Anh, who had settled in France thirty years before, offered me a homemade bánh chưng to soothe my nostalgia, for she knew all Vietnamese in middle and old age want to spend Tết at home. Think of it! Making bánh chưng 10,000 kilometers away from Việt Nam!

Bánh chưng is a non-sweet cake made from glutinous rice, green beans, and fat pork and cooked for long hours, most often at night. In rural Việt Nam, the entire household gathers around a big pot simmering over a wood fire. The atmosphere exudes a special charm about which poets and novelists often write. Children listen with bated breath as their parents and grandparents tell ancient tales.

Bánh chưng is as essential an item for Vietnamese Tết as roast turkey is for Christmas in some European countries. Its origin dates back to the dawn or our history, the Bronze Age in the Red River Delta. Lĩnh Nam Chích Quái (Strange Tales of Lĩnh Nam), a collection of stories written in the fifteenth century, recounts the tale:

Here is the story in a few lines:

The sixteenth king of the Hùng Dynasty was growing old and wanted to choose the heir to his throne. Addressing an assembly of his many sons, he said, “Go out into the world and bring back the recipes for the best food you can find. You must be back in a year’s time. The one with the recipe I like best will be my heir.”
The princes set out on their journeys with retinues of various sizes. Lang Liêu, the sixteenth prince, had been orphaned by his mother when he was very young. He had few resources and stayed at home, sinking into depression. One night, a deity appeared to him in a dream and said, “Don’t despair. I will help you. You know that rice is the staple. Take some glutinous rice and steam it. Shape the rice into a round cake to form the vault of Heaven. Then, make another cake with the square shape of the Earth and add green beans and meat, the symbols of flora and fauna.¹ Take the cakes as offerings to your father and in this way also pay tribute to Heaven and Earth.”

As soon as he awoke, the prince did as he had been told. When the long awaited date arrived, the princes presented their father with all kinds of rare and precious foods—fruits never seen before, fish from far-away seas, and spices with captivating aromas. However, the offerings did not please their father, who found them worthy only of curiosity with ingredients that would be difficult to procure.

The father made his choice as soon as he learned of the supernatural symbols in the recipes used to make the round and square cakes. He made Lang Liêu his heir. From that day on, Vietnamese have made bánh dấy (round cakes) and bánh chưng (square cakes) in early spring to honor the Earth (which fosters crops) and Heaven (which protects the crops).

Let us return now to Mrs. Hoàng Anh’s bánh chưng. It looked just like a bánh chưng made in Hà Nội, with only one slight difference: This cake was not bound with find bamboo strips but, rather, with bands of red plastic. However, this was already enormous progress compared with the square cake offered me in Paris by a Việt Kiều (expatriate Vietnamese) woman eight years before. She had wrapped her cake in a piece of plastic. In contrast, this time, Mrs. Hoàng Anh’s had used several layers of the traditional dong leaves² sent from Việt Nam by air.

But it doesn’t matter whether someone uses plastic or tropical leaves. Either way, the tradition of bánh chưng shows the attachment of people in the Vietnamese Diaspora to the ancient cultural values of a Southeast Asian rice-growing people.

Was the Princess to Blame?
The Cổ Loa Citadel, which dates from two centuries before Christ, is in Hà Nội’s Đông Anh District eighteen kilometers from the city’s center. Tourists often visit because the site was Việt Nam’s second capital.

The Hùng Vương kings established the Việt Kingdom’s first capital in the first millennium before Christ at Bạch Hạc in Việt Trì Province at the Red River Delta’s apex, where the Middle Region meets the Low Region. During the middle of the second century A.D., King An Dương Vương, ruler of the Việt country already established in the Mountainous Region, annexed the Hùng Vương Kingdom to found the Second Việt state, which was called Âu Lạc.

King An Dương Vương moved his capital farther south in the Red River Delta, to Cổ Loa in an area that had already developed at the beginning of the Iron Age. No cultural gap between these first two Việt states is visible.

We stepped out of a small moss-grown shrine that is part of the Cổ Loa ruins. We’d been standing pensively before the stone representation of beheaded Princess Mỵ Châu in the sanctuary’s dim light.

“What do you think?” I asked my friend Bob Krauss, a columnist for the Honolulu Advertiser. My granddaughter, Vân Chi, then a high-school student, had joined us. “Was the princess to blame?”

“She was,” Vân Chi said. “According to the concept of the individual at that time, Mỵ Châu was at fault, even though she was not responsible for what happened in light of the patriarchal principles of right and wrong.” The animated discussion that followed between a veteran American journalist and a Vietnamese girl illustrates the universal character of this story about politics and war, love and death.

Here is the legend from twenty-two centuries ago:

With the help of Genie Kim Quy (the Golden Tortoise), King An Dương Vương built his citadel at Cổ Loa. The name suggests he shaped it like a spiral with its center protected by solid ramparts. Before departing, the genie gave the king one of his toenails, saying, “Use this as a trigger for a crossbow, and your army will be invincible.”

In those days, Triệu Đà, a powerful tribal chief in southern China, often raided Âu Lạc. The crossbow’s magical power foiled Triệu Đà’s attempt to seize the citadel. Before long, Triệu Đà sent his son to An Dương Vương’s court with lavish presents and vows of friendship. However, Trọng Thủy’s real mission was to penetrate the secret of the Việt’s extraordinary military power. Trọng Thủy made approaches to Princess Mỵ Châu and eventually won her love. King An Dương Vương consented to give the Chinese prince her daughter’s hand.

Trọng Thủy learned from his wife the secret of the crossbow’s magic trigger and fashioned a replica. He secretly substituted the fake trigger for the real one and then concocted a pretext to visit his father in China.

As the couple said farewell, Mỵ Châu showed her departing husband a mantle padded with goose down. “One never knows what can happen in these troubled times,” she said. “If something does happen and I must leave Cổ Loa, I will sow these soft feathers along the way. Then, you can follow my trail.”

Soon thereafter, Triệu Đà attacked Cổ Loa, this time successfully. King An Dương Vương fled, with his daughter riding pillion. When the king reached the seashore, he entreated Genie Kim Quy for help and protection.

The genie appeared. “Oh, King,” the genie said, “the one causing your ruin sits behind you.”

King An Dương Vương understood everything in a flash. Enraged, he drew his sword, beheaded Mỵ Châu, and drowned himself in the sea.

Trọng Thủy had been following Mỵ Châu’s trail of goose down. He came upon the beheaded body of his wife. Weeping, he carried her remains back to the citadel and buried her there. Then, he threw himself into a deep well.

Trọng Thủy’s Well stands in front of the temple to King An Dương Vương in Cổ Loa Village. Legend has it that Mỵ Châu’s blood trickled into the sea and was absorbed by oysters. Vietnamese say pearls take on extraordinary brilliance if washed with water from Trọng Thủy’s Well. This, they say, is evidence of Princess Mỵ Châu’s innocence.

Visitors to Cổ Loa can see King An Dương Vương’s throne hall, the temple dedicated to him, the shrine dedicated to Princess Mỵ Châu, “Trọng Thủy’s Well of Pearls,” and vestiges of the ramparts. Visitors going on the sixth day of the first lunar month can join the Cổ Loa Village Festival.

The magic crossbow trigger is the fruit of popular imagination, but King An Dương Vương’s armed resistance is historical. The annals tell us that his citadel had the spiral shape of a snail, hence perhaps its name Cổ Loa. Archaeologists excavating at Cổ Loa have discovered thousands of bronze arrowheads, the remnants of our ancestors’ early and stubborn resistance to defend the Vietnamese state.