The Golden Buffalo of West Lake

Late in the afternoon at West Lake, when the sun touches the water on the west side of the city, something strange happens. The lake seems to catch fire, shining gold from one shore to the other. People in Hanoi look at that gold and remember a very old story. It explains why the largest lake in the heart of the city carries such a lovely old name: Kim Ngưu, the Golden Buffalo.

This is a folk legend. It is told in many versions and has been handed down from one generation to the next. It is how the people of old Hanoi looked at the vast lake west of the royal city and wondered where it had come from.

The old tale says there was once a Vietnamese Zen master. Many versions of the story call him Khổng Minh Không. He traveled all the way to the north to study the spiritual path and the craft of casting bronze. He learned not from books, but from long years of hard training and from magic powers gathered on his long road. Then he came home to Đại Việt, an old name for Vietnam. He brought back something no one expected.

The story goes that the monk used his magic powers to gather bronze from the land of China and carry it back to Đại Việt. From that bronze he had a giant bell cast. The bell was so large that its sound did not stay in one village, or even in one region. It spread out to every horizon. When the bell was struck for the first time, its bronze voice rang out and simply kept going. It crossed mountains and rivers and passed beyond the border. It carried back to the north, the very place the bronze for the bell had come from.

At that time, far away in the north, there lived a golden buffalo. It was a sacred creature that had lived since ancient times. No one had ever seen a buffalo like it.

The golden buffalo was lying still. When the sound of the bell arrived from the south, it suddenly lifted its head.

The tale gives the reason. The bell was cast from bronze of the north, the bronze of the buffalo's own homeland. As the bell rang, its sound reached the buffalo like the voice of the land it came from. It was like a mother calling her child from far away. The golden buffalo heard the bell and thought it was its mother's voice echoing back. It thought its homeland was calling it.

And the buffalo ran.

It ran toward the sound of the bell. It ran south. It crossed mountains without stopping and rivers without resting. The ground shook under every step. The buffalo knew no tiredness and no hunger. It only knew to follow the bell ringing out from the south.

At last it reached the land to the west of the royal city of Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi.

In those days the place was rich land beside a stretch of river. Here the golden buffalo began to butt the earth, to stamp and to thrash about. It was searching for the bell it heard ringing up from the ground below. The earth caved in, piece by piece. Water welled up from deep underground. The ground heaved, the water rose, and a great lake began to form. It grew wider and deeper, vaster with every step and every thrust of the tireless buffalo.

Then the buffalo dove down. It went deeper and deeper into the lake it had made itself. It vanished into the dark water far below.

The surface of the water grew calm again.

What remained was a great, wide lake to the west of Thăng Long.

Old geographical writings about Thăng Long give the lake several names. One is Dâm Đàm Lake, a name often explained as the misty lake, because mist and haze drift over the water at dawn. Another is Đoài Hồ, which means the western lake. And above all there is Kim Ngưu Lake, the Lake of the Golden Buffalo. That name is the trace left on the place by a story from a thousand years ago. West Lake is the most common name today. But the old name Kim Ngưu still lives on in the history books and in the memory of people in Hanoi.

Today West Lake is the largest freshwater lake in the inner city of Hanoi, covering about 500 hectares. On its shores stands Trấn Quốc Pagoda, one of the oldest pagodas in Hanoi. Many other temples, pagodas and shrines stand there too, tied to a thousand years of history in this land west of the old royal city. Evenings on West Lake have a light found nowhere else in Hanoi. The water is so wide that the horizon seems to draw closer. The sunset spreads gold across the waves, as if to remind anyone on the shore of the old name: Kim Ngưu, the lake of the golden buffalo.

When the evening light glows gold on the wide water, that gold of course belongs to the sun. But in the imagination of the people of Hanoi a thousand years ago, it was also the glow from the shining coat of the golden buffalo, asleep at the bottom of the lake. The buffalo is still there, silent and full of wonder, forever telling of the day the bronze bell first rang out, and a golden buffalo listened and thought it heard its mother calling from far away.