Emperor Le Kinh Tong

Dusk is settling over Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. Along one street, the oil lamps in the shopfronts are lit one by one. One spark, then two, then the whole row of stalls glows a warm gold. Vendors call out, people laugh, and footsteps hurry home in time for the evening meal. The capital is coming back to life, one evening at a time.

For a very long stretch, this capital had been quiet. For many decades, under the Mạc dynasty, the line of Lê emperors had to stay away from the capital. The old streets were still there, and so were the temples and pagodas, but the liveliness of a capital was gone. It was like a big house whose owner has been away for years, with the door shut and the yard still.

Then the long wait ended. In 1592, the Lê army won back the capital, which was once also called Đông Kinh. Around 1597, the court could settle there for good. The city slowly took back its place as the center of the realm, like an old house with people living in it again.

In the middle of those years of recovery, a young emperor took the throne. In 1599, Emperor Lê Thế Tông died, and his son, whose personal name was Lê Duy Tân, followed him. This was Emperor Lê Kính Tông. His father had been the emperor in the years when the court returned to the old capital. The son lived through the years when Thăng Long was growing warm again.

One can picture the mornings in the capital of that time. Mist still hangs over the tiled roofs, and the shops are already opening. One person carries vegetables on a shoulder pole, another hauls water, another lays out goods on both sides of the street. There is the clatter of wooden clogs, the creak of carrying poles, and neighbors calling to each other at the mouth of the alley. With each such morning, the streets grow a little more crowded and a little merrier.

In the pagodas, incense smoke rises quietly again. An old man comes to light a stick, and a mother leads a small child across a mossy step. A pagoda bell tolls slowly in the evening, drifting over the crowded rooftops. Places that had stood empty for years now have footsteps, whispered prayers, and a little of the warmth of everyday life.

And then there is the market. Think of a market in the reviving capital. The smell of hot cakes mixes with the smell of new cloth and the leaves used to wrap goods. Stalls of cloth, rice and cakes stand in rows. Buyers and sellers press shoulder to shoulder, haggle for a few words, and then laugh together. Children slip between the stalls, wide-eyed at toys made of paper and bamboo. A living capital is a capital with a crowded market like this, full of voices.

Emperor Lê Kính Tông sat on the throne for about 20 years, until 1619. In that time he took two reign names, Thận Đức and Hoằng Định. Those names traveled across the land on royal edicts and marked a time when the capital grew busier and fuller every day, a time of lamplit streets and lively markets.

In the old quarter of Hanoi, on the very ground of old Thăng Long, there may once have been an evening 400 years ago when oil lamps were lit in just this way. A capital coming back to life, a row of streets glowing gold, and a young emperor quietly looking out and watching his city grow livelier by the day.

Some emperors are remembered for great battles. Others reigned in times as gentle as a street lighting its lamps. The time of Emperor Lê Kính Tông was like that. It was a time when Thăng Long was healing, filling up bit by bit after long empty years.