Ho Nguyen Trung

A great workshop glows with heat. Charcoal burns red in the furnace. Molten bronze, shimmering like honey, is poured slowly into a mold of clay. The air is full of smoke, the knock of hammers and the voices of workers calling to one another. In the middle of it all stands a young prince with his sleeves rolled high, his eyes fixed on the flowing metal. This is Hồ Nguyên Trừng, a most unusual prince of old Vietnam.

Hồ Nguyên Trừng was the eldest son of Hồ Quý Ly. His father founded the Hồ dynasty. The prince lived more than 600 years ago, in the days of that dynasty. His family was tied to the Thanh Hóa region, where the stone Citadel of the Hồ Dynasty still stands today.

As a prince, he could have spent his days inside the palace. But he loved something else. He loved making things. He liked to watch the craftsmen at work, and to find out why one thing worked and another lasted. His head was always full of questions, and his hands always wanted to try.

He was famous in Vietnam for his skill at casting bronze. And casting is not easy. The craftsman must heat the metal until it melts into liquid and shimmers in the furnace. Then he must watch with great care and pour it into the mold at exactly the right moment. Only then, once it cools, does it become one solid piece, with no crack and no break. A little haste spoils the whole batch.

Hồ Nguyên Trừng could do hard things like this. People say he cast fine objects of bronze, the kind that few in his time could make. To do it, he had to try again and again with patience. When a piece failed, he made it again. Sometimes a whole batch had to be thrown away, and the prince quietly began from the start, steady as a stream that keeps flowing around a stone. If he was not satisfied, he kept adjusting the work.

But the most interesting thing about this prince is that he was skilled with more than his hands. He was skilled with the pen as well. He loved words and stories, and he wanted to write down many fine tales of Vietnam so that people of later times would know them.

So he wrote a book. It was called Nam Ông mộng lục. The title sounds strange and gentle. It means the recorded dreams of an old man of the southern land. He signed the book with a pen name he chose himself, Nam Ông, which means the old man of the southern land. It was not his real name. It was a humble, gentle name that he gave himself.

The book has 31 chapters, small tales set side by side like a row of windows. Each window opens onto one gifted figure of old Vietnam. Some tales are about people of the Lý and Trần dynasties. Others are about people of the Hồ dynasty. They are talented people, and fine examples set by the ancestors. Hồ Nguyên Trừng gathered these stories the way a grandfather tells tales to his grandchildren, so that good and beautiful things would not fade with the years.

Later in life, he lived and worked in a faraway place. But wherever he was, he remembered his homeland and kept writing about his country. On late nights in that foreign land, by the light of a small lamp, he dipped his pen in the inkstone and carefully shaped each character on the paper. He wrote about the people of Vietnam whom he missed so dearly. Nam Ông mộng lục was his heart, sent home from a very distant place.

Hồ Nguyên Trừng was truly a special person. A prince who liked standing by the furnace more than sitting on the golden throne. Hands that could cast bronze and also hold a pen. A mind that was always curious, always wanting to make something new.

His family came from Thanh Hóa, where the Citadel of the Hồ Dynasty stands. But the gift this prince left behind does not lie in stone. It lies in the pages he wrote with all his heart. That flame of curiosity, after so many years, is still warm.