Hai Thuong Lan Ong, Hung Yen

In 1791, a man of 67 died in a small village in Hưng Yên. He left behind 28 volumes of writing, divided into 66 books. They covered medicine and philosophy, and a careful study of nature and human illness. Then in 2023, the General Conference of UNESCO accepted a file marking 300 years since his birth. The file sits on UNESCO's list of world cultural figures for 2024 and 2025.

That man was Lê Hữu Trác, who took the name Hải Thượng Lãn Ông.

The Hải Thượng Lãn Ông heritage site stands in Liêu Xá village. That is in Yên Mỹ, Hưng Yên. It is the ancestral home of the Lê Hữu family, and the place where Lê Hữu Trác was born. Most of his life, though, he lived and practiced medicine in other places, especially in the Hương Sơn area of Hà Tĩnh.

People call him a great physician and the founding father of traditional Vietnamese medicine. He was born in 1724 in Liêu Xá village, in the old Đường Hào area of Thượng Hồng prefecture. He was far more than a doctor. He was also a writer, a poet and a scientist of the 18th century.

His greatest achievement is the work called "Hải Thượng Y tông tâm lĩnh". It has 28 volumes and 66 books, and it is regarded as an encyclopedia of traditional medicine in Vietnam. The books record remedies and ways of treating illness. They also set out a whole system of medical thought, with his observations on how people, nature and disease are bound together.

The site is more than a single temple. It is a complex built around a family. Inside stand the memorial house of Lê Hữu Trác and the main ancestral hall of the Lê Hữu family. Next come the Doctoral Laureate Gate and the ancestral hall of Hoàng giáp Lê Hữu Danh. There is also a shrine to Quận công Lê Hữu Kiều. The family's ancestral tombs are here too, along with a shrine to Bà Tổ Cô.

The Doctoral Laureate Gate deserves a closer look. It honors the family's tradition of success in the royal examinations. Here are kept stone steles raised in the Lê period, couplets and large inscribed boards, and several royal decrees from the Nguyễn dynasty. The decrees granted honors to family members who had reached high rank in the examinations. Lê Hữu Trác was not alone. Many people of this family left their mark on learning and public service in Vietnam.

The memorial house is a place of worship and remembrance. It also shows his life, his career and his writings. The exhibition hall covers more than 200 square meters, and the grounds cover more than 1,000 square meters. Construction began in March 2002 and was finished in September 2004. Earlier, in 1992, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Health had invested in the first restoration and enlargement of the site.

The site was ranked a National Historic Site by Decision number 1539, dated December 27, 1990.

Each year on the day of his death, the 15th day of the first lunar month, local people offer incense and hold a ceremony. Over time a festival grew up around it, with folk games such as the lion dance, rooster fights and Chinese chess.

Through the UNESCO file, a physician born in a small village on the northern delta was now remembered on a UNESCO list, nearly 300 years after his birth.

Lê Hữu Trác lived in a century when illness and its cures were both mysterious and dangerous. He observed, took notes, tested his ideas and put what he learned into order. For decades he wrote. And all these years later, Vietnamese people still speak of those pages.