by Jim Goodman
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| Hoàn Kiếm Lake |
What distinguishes Hanoi from
other cities in the region is the large amount of water within its urban
boundaries. Every visitor knows
picturesque Hoàn Kiếm Lake in the center of the old city, and probably
the much bigger West Lake, and its subsidiary Trúc Bạch. But the city has many more lakes, plus
innumerable scattered ponds.
Altogether, Hanoi has more water than any city east of Venice.
It used
to have much more. West Lake began
as a lagoon of the Red River until the early Lý Dynasty, when a landfill
separated it. Hoàn Kiếm
Lake was connected to the Red River until the beginning of the 19th
century. Hồ Bẩy
Mẫu
sprawled all the way to the southern wall of the Lý Citadel. Other lakes, long since vanished,
occupied most of what are now the city suburbs. Many ponds lay within the old town environs until the French
began filling them in.
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| the Red River at Hanoi |
In prehistoric times the site
of Hanoi was a lagoon within a gulf that lay at the confluence of the Red and
Đuống
Rivers. Over countless eons the
gulf receded, disappearing under the layers of silt deposited by the two
rivers. The lagoon turned into a
swamp with channels, lakes and densely forested islands. The first pioneers arrived during the
Bronze Age, settling on the islands and along the banks of the Tô Lịch
and Nhuệ
Rivers, which are now in the western part of metropolitan Hanoi, grew rice,
vegetables and fruits on small plots and supplemented this with hunting and
fishing.
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| houseboats on the Red River near Long Biên Bridge |
Nobody knows the original village name, though in later
centuries it became identified as Long Đỗ--“dragon’s navel.” Near the Tô Lịch River
stood a small hillock, which the villagers believed was linked to the center of
the earth by a long hole within the hillock. The village continued to grow during the Chinese occupation,
and when the Tang Dynasty came to power the Chinese shifted their
administrative center from east of the Red River to Long Đỗ,
which was becoming a more concentrated population and commercial center in the
Delta. In 621 they constructed a
small citadel, of 1600 meters length, beside the Tô Lịch.
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| West Lake, formerly Foggy Lake, in its usual weather conditions |
Chinese rule was never very
secure, subjected to periodic local revolts and clashes with their rival
Nanzhao, a kingdom in what is today Yunnan. In the late 9th century the Chinese enlarged their
citadel, renamed it Đai La and built a protective dike along the Red River. But the Tang Dynasty fell in the early
10th century and in 938 Ngô Quyền captured Đai La, expelled the
Chinese and re-established Vietnam’s independence.
Ngô Quyền made Cổ
Loa, the last capital of Vietnam before the Chinese conquest, the capital of
his new state Đại Cồ Viêt. Đai La’s citadel fell into ruins, and
some of the population moved to Cổ Loa, but many residents
remained. The town was still inhabited
when King Lý Thái Tô journeyed from Hoa Lư, the country’s capital since 968, to visit
the site in 1010 and decided to transfer the capital. According to legends, the king witnessed a dragon rising over
the ruined citadel upon his arrival and so named the city Thăng Long—Rising
Dragon.
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| preserved Hoàn Kiếm Lake turtle |
The new citadel, like Đai La,
lay just south of West Lake, with the Tô Lịch River serving as its
northern moat. Another large and long
lake lay just west of the citadel.
The royal family, retainers, guards and high nobles all lived within its
walls, while the commoners, mostly craftsmen and traders who served the palace,
lived between the eastern wall and the Red River--the nucleus of what would
later be the Old Town. Stilted
houses were still the norm and every house likely had a boat. And some folks probably lived along the
rivers in floating houses, a feature that has persisted down to the present on
the western side of the Red River.
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| earliest map of Hanoi |
Lý Thái Tô’s successors
created West Lake with a landfill to cut it off from the Red River. Until 1547 it was called Hồ
Dâm Dàm—Foggy Lake—after its usual misty weather conditions. Royalty rode pleasure boats on the lake
and the earliest recorded water-puppet performance took place on the southern
shore in the 11th century.
They also established the Temple of Literature on an island near the
citadel in Hồ Bẩy Mẫu, extended
the dikes and built canals.
Because most nobles lived on
estates far from the city, Thăng Long did not become very large during the Lý
Dynasty, nor in the Trần Dynasty that followed. Mongol invaders
destroyed it three times in the 13th century and Chăm armies sacked
it thrice in the 14th century.
Ming Dynasty Chinese occupied it 1408-28. Only after their expulsion, and the foundation of the Lê
Dynasty, did the city, now called Đông Kinh—the Eastern Capital—finally
develop.
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| Bẩy Mẫu Lake today |
The Lê Court demanded
officials live in the city. They
mostly resided near the citadel, but the old town grew with guilds set up to
service the palace and its government personnel. Many ponds still existed in the old town, the Tô Lịch
River, wider and deeper than the scraggly creek that’s left of it today, was a
prime transport artery from the city to the countryside and the body of water
beside the old quarter, still connected to the Red River, changed its name from
Lục
Thuỷ--Green
Lake—to Hồ
Hoàn Kiếm—Lake
of the Restored Sword, after a legend about the dynasty’s founder Lê Lợi.
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| Đông Kinh (Hanoi) riverfront, 1679 |
A nobleman from Thanh Hoá
province, he is supposed to have visited the lake when contemplating launching
a rebellion against the predatory Chinese occupiers. Casting his net for fish, he instead
caught a magic sword and used it during the insurrection. When he finally expelled the Chinese in
1428 he took a boat out onto the lake and a huge turtle, for which the lake had
long been famous, emerged from the water and took the sword from his hand. Mission accomplished, the sword had to
be returned.
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| Hanoi in the late Lê Dynasty |
A specimen of one of these
turtles, over a meter long, has been preserved at the temple on Ngọc
Sơn
Island at the top end of the lake.
For centuries Hanoi residents kept their eyes open for a glimpse of one
of these turtles whenever they walked along the lake. Their sight of it would
be brief, as the turtle sucked up some air and plunged back beneath the
surface. Never a favorable
environment for them after it was blocked from the river, the last turtle died
just two years ago. But before
that, at the lakeside opening ceremony for Hanoi’s millennium celebrations in
October 2010, the Hoàn Kiếm turtle popped his head above the water in full view
of thousands.
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| Trấn Quốc Pagoda |
In the early 16th
century, after a succession of four weak, incompetent, teenaged Lê emperors, Mạc
Đăng Dung seized the throne and founded a new dynasty. Some of the Lê family escaped to Thanh
Hoá and, backed by the powerful Trịnh and Nguyễn families, eventually waged a
long war against the Mạc and in 1592 captured Đông Kinh and restored the Lê
Dynasty. However, the victors had
a falling out and another civil war resulted, this time pitting partisans of
the Trịnh and Nguyển against each other.
The Nguyển wound up with autonomy over the south, while the Trịnh ruled
the north. The Lê emperor was just
a figurehead for both sides.
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| Trúc Bạch Lake |
Within the city itself, the Lê
emperor and his entourage stayed inside a smaller, rebuilt citadel. The Trịnh Lords set up their palaces
near Hoàn Kiếm Lake, including one on Ngọc Sơn Island. From here they would observe naval
maneuvers on the lake, the boats sailing in from the Red River. In the 18th century the
palace was replaced first by a Buddhist pagoda, then temples to the god of war
Quan Công and the spirits of literature and the soil. In the early Nguyễn Dynasty a temple to Trần Hưng Đạo, hero
of the Mongol Wars, also went up on the island.
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| fishing at Bẩy Mẫu Lake |
In the late 18th
century, the city experienced another round of turmoil with the collapse of the
Trịnh Lords regime, a brief occupation by the Chinese, the Tây Sơn Revolt and
the capture of the city by Nguyễn Ánh in 1802. Founding a new dynasty, he moved the national capital to Huế
and ordered the old citadel demolished, a new one made and landfills to separate
the Red River from Hoàn Kiếm, now truly a lake.
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| June flowers on the lake |
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| Thê Húc Bridge |
More changes in the city’s
water ratio ensued in the next few decades. By the time Emperor Minh Mạng changed the city’s name to
Hanoi in 1831, the big lakes that had sprawled over the southern and western
parts of the area were much reduced.
Bẩy Mẫu split twice, with reclaimed land now separating it from its
western half, creating Hồ Giảng Võ, and a road running directly south bisecting
the eastern part. And the Temple of Literature was no longer on an island,
though a small lake survived just across the street from the compound, where
scholars still went for quiet study.
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| Tháp Rùa--the Turtle Tower |
More drastic changes occurred
as soon as the French took over.
They began filling in the ponds in and around the old town and the lower
part of the Tô Lịch where it ran into the Red River. No ponds exist in the old town today, but the memory of them
is still sharp. The street Cấu Gỗ (wooden
bridge) got its name from the bridge that crossed the stream coming from Hồ
Thái Cực (Lake of Abundant Fish) next to it to Hoàn Kiếm Lake. The next street up, Gia Ngu, means ‘fish
market’ in literary Sino-Vietnamese.
The streets branching off Hạng Bông--Hàng Mành and Hàng Hòm--run
slightly downhill, because there used to be a pond at the end.
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| Hanoi,1924 |
Before this development, in
1886 a Vietnamese mandarin working for the French persuaded authorities to
allow him to build a tower on an islet in the middle of Hoàn Kiếm Lake, where
the turtles used to bask in the sun and lay their eggs. Called Tháp Rùa (Turtle Tower), it honors
the magic turtle that seized Lê Lợi’s sword. The mandarin who built it intended to lay the remains of his
father there, but local people objected and removed the body.
The tower remained, though,
and in later years the French added a statue on top similar to the Statue of
Liberty in New York. The
Vietnamese official the Japanese installed during their occupation removed the
statue in 1945. Ever since, the
tower has become the best-known monument in Hanoi.
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| B-52 wreckage in a Ba Đình pond |
When the French finally departed
from Hanoi in 1954 the city core was rather densely populated, but vast areas
of farms and pastures still surrounded the settled area. This situation continued until the late
1980s, when the new renovation policy (đôi
mới) inaugurated rapid development of the city. The rural belt around Hanoi quickly filled in with roads and
buildings and in a few years a quarter of the city’s water area disappeared. West Lake lost twenty percent of its
water before the government stepped in to halt further encroachment. Other lakes in the city, like Giảng Võ
and Bẩy Mẫu also shrank considerably, while a quarter of the lakes existing a
decade earlier completely disappeared.
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| Triiều Khúc Pagoda and its pond |
The smaller ponds largely
survived because they were often part of temple compounds. One pond in Ba Đình district became a
monument to the America War because it contains the wreckage of a B-52
bomber. Currently, it seems likely
that the size of the remaining lakes and ponds will remain constant. After all, they do add to the city’s
beauty, for the buildings around them that reflect in the water and the careful,
harmonious layout of the ponds.
Like the beautiful, mid-19th century red wooden bridge to Ngọc
Sơn Island, called Cấu Thê Húc (Morning Sunlight Bridge), they represent a
prominent cultural characteristic and artistic achievement of Old Hanoi—the
aesthetic marriage of architecture and water.
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| summer flowers at Hoàn Kiếm Lake |
*
* *
Hanoi and its lakes are part of Delta Tours Vietnam’s
cultural-historical journey through Vietnam. See the schedule at https://deltatoursvietnam.com
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