Hoa Lai Towers

The car is running along National Route 1, heading south toward Phan Rang. The midday sun pours down. On both sides the rocky hills glare white, and the trees grow thinner and thinner. Then, in the middle of that open, empty land, there they are.

Two dark red brick towers, standing right beside the road.

There is no need to leave the road. There is no hill to climb. They stand right there, at the edge of the road, as if they had been standing here since before the road existed. And in fact, that is exactly the case.

The grandfather asks for the car to stop. Not because of a sign. He has known this place for a long time.

These are the Hòa Lai towers.

The towers stand in Thuận Bắc commune, Khánh Hòa province, right beside National Route 1. This is the old land of Ninh Thuận, once a province of its own and now part of Khánh Hòa. The towers lie about 14 to 15 kilometers north of Phan Rang. Long ago there were three towers here, built between the 8th and 9th centuries. Today the site is a special national monument.

But that date, the 8th to the 9th century, is what is truly worth stopping for.

Near Phan Rang stands Po Klong Garai, a large and famous tower. Po Klong Garai dates from the late 13th or early 14th century. That already makes it an ancient tower, more than 700 years old. Yet the Hòa Lai towers came before Po Klong Garai by about four to five centuries.

The grandfather looks up at the towers and speaks slowly. When the Cham builders laid the first brick here, he says, the great tower at Phan Rang had not even been imagined yet.

In the 8th century, the kingdom of Champa held the coastal lands of central Vietnam. This part of Ninh Thuận was not some remote frontier. It was the heart of a civilization that was growing strong.

The Cham of that time worshipped three great gods of the universe, known together as the Trimurti. Brahma, the god of creation. Vishnu, the god of preservation. And Shiva, the god of destruction and rebirth.

And in this place, they built three towers to worship Shiva.

Today only two towers stand, the North Tower and the South Tower. Of the middle tower, only the base remains. The North Tower is the most intact and the best preserved. Its fired red bricks fit tightly together, holding firm through more than 12 centuries of Ninh Thuận sun and wind. On its walls are false doors, carved with great care. They are doorways that never open, yet they are shaped like real ones. It is as if they were saying that this is the way into another world, a way entered with the mind and not with the feet.

But what fascinates the grandfather most is not the towers themselves. It is the name that scholars have given to this period.

They call it the Hòa Lai style, after this very group of towers beside the road. It is one of the earliest styles of Cham towers still standing today.

That means that whenever someone tells the story of Cham art, some of its earliest pages are here. They are in these towers, right beside National Route 1.

The grandfather sits down in the shade near the North Tower. Not because he is tired.

Think of the Cham builders, standing on this empty ground more than 12 centuries ago. They were looking for a way to use fired clay bricks to speak with Shiva. They were learning.

From what they learned here, later generations went on to build the newer temples of Mỹ Sơn. They went on to build Po Klong Garai. Many Cham towers in central Vietnam carry the lessons learned in this place.

Architecture in the Hòa Lai style has lines of its own. The towers look sturdy and yet graceful. On the pilasters of the North Tower, leaf scrolls are carved with great care. Look closely and there is something of ancient India in each carved detail. It comes from builders trying to translate a distant language of stone into a brick language all their own. Early steps like these always matter most.

The sunlight stretches long across the yard. Ninh Thuận gets little rain and has few trees to give cover, so the towers stand bare to the light, with no shelter and nothing hidden. The bricks are deep red, and green moss climbs in patches in the shaded corners. At the top of each tower, the roof tiers narrow as they rise, in an early form of Cham architecture.

A truck comes down from the north, its engine roaring past and then fading away. The towers do not tremble. They have stood here through far too much to be shaken by a passing truck.

More than 12 centuries ago, this was already a place of worship.

Before the family climbs back into the car to go on, the grandfather says one small thing.

They were learning, he says, and they are still teaching us today.

The two towers fall behind as the car rolls away. National Route 1 curves south, toward Phan Rang, toward the later towers that are bigger and grander. But all of those towers are the students. This place is the school.