Empress Dowager Ngo Thi Ngoc Dao

A hedge of green bamboo wraps around the hamlet. Smoke from the evening kitchens drifts up into the sky. Beside a river in the Thanh land stands a small village called Đồng Bàng. It is now known as Đồng Phang. Here, in the far-off year 1420, a baby girl cried out for the first time. Her name was Ngô Thị Ngọc Dao. Her village now lies in Định Hòa commune. That is in the Yên Định area of Thanh Hóa Province.

The fields of the plain stretched wide in those days. Roosters crowed at noon. Ngọc Dao grew up in this setting, gentle and hardworking, like many daughters of the Thanh land.

At the Lam Kinh Relic Site, her life is written down. Lam Kinh is the homeland of Lê Lợi, who founded the Lê dynasty. The site's account says she grew into a woman known for her virtue. She lived frugally and disliked luxury. She often did good deeds and cared for the poor. People at court and among the common folk all held her dear. In some places, people even spoke of her with reverence, calling her as gentle as a living Buddha.

Then she gave birth to a son. That boy would grow up to be Emperor Lê Thánh Tông.

Her own name may be unfamiliar, yet every history of Vietnam mentions her son. Under him, Đại Việt reached one of the most prosperous times in its history. Đại Việt is an old name for Vietnam.

In 1460, her son took the throne as emperor. The moment he did, she was honored with the title of Empress Dowager. The gentle mother of a village in the Thanh land had become the mother of an emperor.

But the finest thing about her was not a lofty title. It was the son she had borne and raised.

Emperor Lê Thánh Tông ruled for 38 years. That is a whole lifetime on the throne, and in it the people had enough to eat. His reign is regarded as the peak of prosperity in Đại Việt. He valued farming and cared about the rice on every family's table. He widened education, so that children everywhere could go to school and read the books of the sages.

A land at peace, crops growing green, schools open wide. An age like that does not come about by itself.

People often say that a child is taught not by empty words but by the way a parent lives. Ngọc Dao lived frugally, so her son learned to treasure every grain of the people's rice. She cared for the poor, so he learned to look after the people's food and clothing. A mother's virtue seeped into her son like water into the soil.

From a girl of Đồng Bàng came a son who was an emperor, and a grandson who was an emperor too. She was the mother of Emperor Lê Thánh Tông and the grandmother of Emperor Lê Hiến Tông. These were three generations in a row of the Later Lê dynasty, and all of them carried the blood and the family ways of the village girl of long ago.

She lived a long and peaceful life. She died in 1496, at the age of 76. Her tomb now lies inside the Lam Kinh Special National Monument. That is in the Thọ Xuân area of Thanh Hóa Province. It rests among quiet trees, near the resting place of the Lê descendants.

The people of her home region have not forgotten her. The Thanh Hóa newspaper reports that a festival is held every year in Định Hòa commune, her birthplace. It is the Phủ Nhì Festival, held to honor the virtue and good works of a kind mother.

Behind the glow of the Lê dynasty's golden age stood a plain mother from a village in the Thanh land. She lived gently, she cared for others, and she raised a son who loved his country and his people. Each festival season, the drums still sound across Đồng Phang village, like her descendants softly calling her name.