Emperor Tran Minh Tong

In the emperor's hall, a golden throne stands raised high. The man who sits on it today does not care to talk much. He prefers to sit still and listen. Around him, learned teachers and good officials are deep in talk about one matter: how to give the people a good harvest, enough to eat, and a happy life. The gentle ruler listening to them is Emperor Trần Minh Tông.

His given name was Trần Mạnh. He was the fifth emperor of the Trần dynasty. The Trần dynasty ruled Vietnam from 1225 to 1400.

His family was a remarkable one. His father was Emperor Trần Anh Tông. His grandfather was Emperor Trần Nhân Tông. So Trần Minh Tông was born into a house where the grandfather, the father and the son were all good emperors of the dynasty. A whole line of one family, one after another, looked after the people and the country.

He took the throne in 1314, at a very young age. His own father handed it to him, then stepped back to become Thượng hoàng, a retired emperor, and quietly guided his son.

People remember one thing about him above all: he valued talented people. His court had men of great learning. There was Trương Hán Siêu. There was Nguyễn Trung Ngạn. And there was Đoàn Nhữ Hài. The emperor trusted them and raised them to the great tasks of the country. He also opened examinations, to find still more gifted people to serve the country.

And he did not only honor talent. He took the trouble to listen to it. An emperor who listens while wise men discuss how to care for the people is a rare thing. He understood a simple truth: one emperor alone cannot know everything. When many good hearts join their efforts, the people are better for it.

That care did not stay in the council meetings. It went all the way out to the riverbank dikes and the fields.

In those days, when the water rose each season, floods could sweep away the harvest and whole villages. As soon as he took the throne, Emperor Trần Minh Tông turned to building dikes, to hold back the floods and protect the rice crop and the people's livelihoods. When a great flood came, he did not sit still in his palace. He oversaw the dike building himself. An emperor rolling up his sleeves to build a dike for his people makes a fine picture.

Thanks to this, the country stayed steady under his rule. The crops grew well, and ordinary families slowly came to have enough. What his ancestors had left him, he not only kept, he made brighter.

There was one more lovely thing about him. Amid the endless work of ruling, he kept a corner of his heart for poetry. He loved the written word, and he wrote poems himself. Sadly, most of his poetry was lost over the years, and only about 25 poems remain. Few as they are, they are enough to tell later generations that the person on the throne in those years had a soul that loved beauty.

He reigned for 15 years. In 1329 he gave the throne to his son and became a retired emperor, just as his father had done before him.

But stepping back did not mean resting. For a long time, from 1329 until he died in 1357, he stayed quietly in the background. He guided the two emperors who came after him, Trần Hiến Tông and Trần Dụ Tông. Through a whole lifetime he went on caring for the people in this steady way, first as emperor and then as a pillar of support for his children and grandchildren.

Emperor Trần Minh Tông is not remembered for great battles. He was an emperor of the heart. He was a gentle man who valued good people, who sat and listened to wise and honest words, and who spent a whole life caring about one thing: that his people might live happily.

Back in that hall, the emperor still sits high and still, smiling as he listens to the wise people around him talk about caring for the people. Outside, the dikes are growing firm, the fields are turning green, and the villages are calm and content.