by Jim Goodman
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| life in ancient Văn Lang, the first Vietnamese state |
Founded in 1010, Hanoi is the
oldest capital city in East Asia.
But it was not the country’s first. It was the third capital since Vietnam recovered its
independence in 938, after more than a thousand years of Chinese rule. Before that there were two capitals,
the one the Chinese conquered and the earliest one, the capital of the first
Vietnamese state 2500 years ago.
It lay in the foothills bordering the Red River Delta plain, northwest
of Hanoi, but no one knows exactly where it was. No trace of it has survived; not even its name.
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| An Dương with his crossbow |
We do know the name of the
state it served, however. It was
called Văn Lang, ruled by a succession of semi-legendary monarchs known as the
Hùng kings, the first of whom is supposed to have taken power in the late 7th
century BCE., at the dawn of the Bronze Age. Vietnamese historians have identified 18 kings in the Hùng
Dynasty, which lasted about four and a half centuries. They were the first to establish
authority beyond their immediate vicinity, amalgamating disparate peoples
living in small, autonomous units into a state with a common identity.
Văn Lang was the hub of the
Bronze Age Đông Sơn Culture, the originator of the bronze drum cult,
influencing places beyond its borders, especially southern China, northern
Thailand and eastern Burma. Văn
Lang artisans used bronze to make drums, weapons, farm tools, utensils, votive
objects and funeral offerings. In tombs of the ruling class of those
times excavation has revealed that many fine bronze artifacts were interred
with the corpse.
Đông Sơn relics have survived
to confirm the state’s existence and high level of achievement. But little else has. The Hùng Kings’ tombs have never been
found. No ruined buildings from
that era exist. Văn Lang had no
writing system, so records were not kept.
Yet researchers have identified a tract of hilly land in Phú Tho
province as the probable site of Văn Lang’s capital. Today’s Vietnamese revere the Hùng Kings’ era as the birth
of their nationality. Every year
the government sponsors a festival here, held for several days in the third
lunar month, attracting tens of thousands.
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| Cổ Loa today |
Unlike its origin, Văn Lang’s
demise is better known. The state fell to an invader from a mountain
kingdom to the north in the 3rd century BCE. He took the royal name An Dương
and established a capital and citadel at Cổ Loa, a little north of
present-day Hanoi and at that time on the Red River. Cổ Loa means ‘snail’ and refers to the series of
concentric walls, like a snail shell, built to protect the city. An Dương called the new realm Âu Lạc,
combining the name of his own mountain state Âu Việt with the
ancient name for the Red River Delta lands—Lạc Việt
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| Cổ Loa crossbow reconstruction in a Hanoi museum |
Local culture did not
experience any disruption in its development. In fact, An Dương even paid a visit to the
former capital and, at a spot known today as the Swearing Stone, promised to
venerate the souls of the departed Hùng kings and preserve the kingdom. The only real novelty about the
establishment of his rule was that it was the first time the local people had
been beaten by a foe from the north.
Previous invasions they had always repulsed. An Dương’s success foreshadowed what was to become a
permanent potential danger in centuries to come.
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| village elders at the Cổ Loa festival |
Myth embellishes history in
the story of Cổ Loa’s rise and fall. When An Dương began building the city, every night
whatever was built during the day was mysteriously dismantled. The culprits turned out to be the
spirits of the land, acting on behalf of the sons of the dispossessed former
king. Their leader was a
thousand-year-old white chicken, residing on Tam Đào Mountain, northwest of Cổ
Loa. The new king An Dương
was at a loss how to deal with these spirits.
Suddenly a golden turtle
appeared on the scene, fought and defeated the white chicken, and remained at Cổ
Loa until the citadel was completed.
Upon departure he gave the king one of his claws to be used as a
crossbow trigger. The power of
this would insure An Dương defeated any potential foe, for with this magic
trigger the crossbow could fire one shot that would multiply into a thousand
bolts.
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| in the procession at Cổ Loa's festival |
All went fine for Âu Lạc
for about a generation. But then
political changes to the north threatened the state. The Qin Dynasty, whose expansion to the south had prompted
An Dương
to move south and seize Văn Lang, fell and the Han Dynasty took over. But it did not assert control over the
southern parts, which reverted to their pre-Qin Dynasty independence. One of these states was Nan Yue in
southeast China, and its ruler Zhao Tou, shortly after being confirmed as king
by the Han Court in 196 BCE, decided to invade Âu Lạc.
An Dương’s
supernatural crossbow kept Zhao Tou’s forces from taking Cổ Loa and the attack
stalled. Another strategy was
necessary. Zhao Tou called a truce and sent his son Trọng
Thủy
to An Dương’s
court. The young man made a
favorable impression, won the heart of Princess Mỵ Châu and married her. After time passed he persuaded her to
let him gain access to the armory.
There he secretly stole the turtle claw crossbow trigger and then made
up an excuse to visit his father’s camp.
Feeling qualms about his departure, Mỵ Châu showed him her mantle,
padded with goose-down, and told him that if, in his absence, she should have
to leave Cổ
Loa, she would strew feathers from the mantle on the trail so that he could
find her.
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| Mỵ Châu's tomb at Tết |
Knowing the magic crossbow was
now useless, Zhao Tou renewed
hostilities and soon took the citadel.
An Dương fled on horseback to the sea, the princess
riding pillion. When An Dương
reached his destination the local genie informed him that the cause of his
misfortune was right behind him.
Realizing it was his own daughter who betrayed him, he beheaded her and
then flung himself into the sea. Today, at the đình in Cổ Loa Historical Complex, an altar to the princess
stands in the rear of the building.
Here supposedly is interred the headless corpse of Mỵ Châu
and oddly enough, during Cổ Loa’s annual festival, shortly
after Tết,
Vietnamese lay offerings here.
Back at Cổ
Loa, after Zhao Tou captured the citadel, Trọng Thủy went
searching for his wife Mỵ Châu.
He soon discovered the trail she had marked out with goose-down feathers
during her escape. When he came to
the end of it he discovered her headless corpse. He returned with it to Cổ Loa, had it buried properly
and then killed himself.
Vietnamese have mixed feelings about Mỵ Châu, for if on the one hand
she betrayed her father, on the other hand she was loyal to her husband.
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| Ngô Quyền |
Zhao Tou maintained Nan Yue’s
independence until his death in 136 BCE, but the kingdom eventually fell to the
Chinese 25 years later. That was
the end of any kind of Vietnamese independence, a period that would last over a
thousand years and have a permanent impact on Vietnamese society and
culture. But the long occupation
never extinguished the Vietnamese desire to run their own affairs. Chinese control
of northern Vietnam depended on the strength of its ruling dynasty. When the state was strong, so was the
administration. When it weakened,
fell victim to power struggles and such, Vietnamese revolted and at times
briefly achieved autonomy again.
The Chinese established administrative centers, first in Long
Biên, across the Red River from Hanoi, and later at Long Đỗ, on the site that
is today Hanoi, where they built the Đai La citadel in the 9th
century.
Taking advantage of the
continuing chaos in China following the fall of the Tang Dynasty, in 938 CE Ngô
Quyền led native forces to expel the Chinese from the garrison at Đai La. Counter-attacking, the Chinese sent a
large naval force into Hạ Long Bay, intending to sail up the Red River to Đai
La and suppress the revolt. To
stop them Ngô Quyền ordered his men to plant sharpened stakes in the bed of the
Bạch Đằng River, the main tributary here to the Red River. The stakes were
invisible at high tide.
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| battle on the Bạch Đằng RIver, 938 |
The invading fleet sailed in
at high tide. At a bend in the
river, the Vietnamese came out in small boats to engage the enemy and delay
them until the tide lowered. With
that, the Chinese fleet found itself impaled on the stakes and
immobilized. The Vietnamese in
their small boats then advanced, burnt the ships and destroyed the fleet. With that victory the Vietnamese
finally won back their independence.
To re-establish the new
nation’s link with its past, Ngô Quyền made Cổ Loa the capital. The Red River had changed course by
then and the city was no longer next to it. Whether he rebuilt the same kind of citadel is unknown. Unfortunately, after five years Ngô Quyền
died. Since he did not establish a
successor, for twenty-four years twelve clans fought it out. The winner, Đinh Bộ Lĩnh, moved the
capital to his hometown Hoa Lư, in today’s Ninh Bình province.
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| Đinh Bộ Lĩnh |
Cổ Loa gradually became a
ghost city and its buildings disappeared.
A thousand years later it was resurrected, not as a city, but as a
reconstruction. It did not include
rebuilding the ‘snail’ walls of ancient times, but did include a temple to An
Dương, a statue of him with the famous crossbow and a temple to the hapless Mỵ Châu. An annual festival began, starting the
6th day of the first lunar month with a spectacular procession of
men and women in ceremonial costumes, flags, ancient weapons and a miniature
royal court. The twelve villages
belonging to Cổ Loa district organize the events, which also feature a great
range of traditional games, contests, dramatic shows and fireworks. The huge attendance at this event,
particularly the first day, testifies to the continuing relevance of Cổ Loa in
the national psyche.
But that’s also true for Hoa
Lư. The festival there, honoring
its two famous kings, held the same time as the one for the Hùng Kings, also
draws thousands. Temples
venerating Đinh Bộ Lĩnh and Lê Hoàn lie on the far side of Hoa Lư and, except
for Đinh Bộ Lĩnh’s tomb on a hill above the temples, are virtually all that is
left of its ancient vestiges
The town today lies
in the middle of surrounding hills, obviously easier back then to defend than Cổ
Loa. It was a hundred kilometers
away from the old capital’s intrigues and a place where Đinh Bộ Lĩnh could
count on local loyalty. He ruled
for eleven years until he and his son were assassinated in 979.
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| contemporary Hoa Lư |
A child was next in line and the Chinese
saw this as an opportunity to recapture Vietnam. To meet this emergency the Hoa Lư Court deposed the boy and
selected Lê Hoàn, the military commander, as the new king. He stopped the Chinese invasion by
employing the same trick used by Ngô Quyền: planting sharpened stakes in the Bặch Đằng River to impale
the Chinese ships.
Lê Hoàn died in 1005 but left
no heir. A succession struggle
broke out and after four years the winner was Lý Công Uẳn, commander of the
palace guard, an orphan raised in a Buddhist temple. Buddhist influence
at the Hoa Lư court had grown in the last years of Lê Hoàn’s
reign and among the changes they advised the new king was to move the capital
closer to the original Buddhist heartland, back to the old Chinese
administrative center at Đai La.
Since its loss of status in 938 it had reverted to a village at more or
less subsistence level. But it
still had an ideal location, with good water access to all parts of the delta
as well as the sea.
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| gateway to historic Hoa Lư |
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| Lý Thái Tổ, founder of Hanoi |
The founder of the new Lý
Dynasty, from then on known as Lý Thái Tổ, agreed. The country seemed safe from any
Chinese invasion and remote, mountainous Hoa Lư was far from the major areas
of population and trade. In 1010
he decided to take a trip to old Đại La and see for himself
whether it would make a suitable site for a new national capital. When the king’s boat arrived at the
site of the ruined citadel, a dragon allegedly rose into the sky. Taking that as a good omen, Lý Thái Tổ
decided to stay and build a new capital city here. He called it Thăng Long, Rising Dragon, the ancient city
that eventually became Hanoi. Over a thousand years later, it’s still the
capital of Vietnam.
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| at the annual Cổ Loa festival |
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Hoa Lư is one of the stops on Delta Tours Vietnam's journey through the country.
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