Emperor Dinh Tien Hoang

On a grassy plain in the old land of Đại Hoàng, a boy who herded water buffalo was busy playing with his friends. The children staged a battle. They broke off white reed plumes along the road and stuck them up as flags. One boy rode on a buffalo's back, swung his arm and shouted orders. The whole gang cheered and ran after him, and the white plumes swayed like banners flying. The boy's name was Đinh Bộ Lĩnh.

The Ninh Binh newspaper records that he was born in 924, in Đại Hữu village. It lay in the old region of Đại Hoàng. That land is now part of the Gia Viễn area of Ninh Binh. He lived with his mother and grew up among rice fields, grassy hills and buffalo.

But his game was quite different from the others. The other children only fooled around, while Đinh Bộ Lĩnh laid out a whole battle drill. He often led the buffalo boys into mock battles, with reed plumes for flags. A reed is soft and white and bends flat the moment the wind blows. Yet in his hand, every stem turned into the banner of a small army. He rode ahead on his buffalo to lead the way, calling out like a general.

People later called this the tale of the reed flags and the drill. The picture of white reeds waving in a buffalo boy's hand was passed from one generation to the next. According to the People's Public Security newspaper, people saw in this tale a natural gift for war, showing in him since early childhood.

In those days the country was not yet gathered into one. Each region was ruled by its own leader, 12 regions in all. History usually calls this the chaos of the 12 warlords. Villages were cut off from one another, and people longed for a day when they could live in peace under one shared roof.

The boy of the reed flags grew up inside that longing. He gathered people who shared his purpose, and he made the rugged land of Hoa Lư his base. From there, step by step, he brought the lands back together into one.

People honored him as Vạn Thắng Vương, which means the king who wins wherever he goes. But his worth lay in his skill at leading an army, and in something more. He also knew how to join people and bring them into harmony, so that the lands could come together as one house. Little by little, the 12 scattered regions were linked into one unbroken stretch.

Then came the year 968, the great turning point. That year Đinh Bộ Lĩnh took the throne as emperor and chose Hoa Lư as his capital. He named the country Đại Cồ Việt, which means the great Viet country. History knows him, as emperor, by the name Đinh Tiên Hoàng.

So the buffalo boy who made flags out of reeds became the first emperor of Đại Cồ Việt. He founded the Đinh dynasty and opened an era of independence and unity for the country. Now this land had an emperor, a name for the country and a capital of its own.

The reign title he chose was Thái Bình, which means calm, warm peace. A soft reed in a buffalo boy's hand had grown, over the long years, into a dream of one shared home for the whole country. In the end, the reign title Thái Bình that the boy once chose was the very thing he had raised on a reed flag in a windy field: a peace whole and calm.