Hoan Kiem Lake

Everyone in Hanoi knows this story, yet it never grows old.

In 1428, Emperor Lê Thái Tổ had just defeated the armies of the Ming, the dynasty then ruling China. His victory freed the country after twenty years of foreign rule. One day, the story goes, the emperor was out in a boat on a lake in Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. Suddenly an enormous turtle rose from the lake bed. The emperor drew his precious sword. The turtle snapped it up and dove beneath the surface. From then on, the lake was called Hoan Kiem, which means Return the Sword. Hanoians also call it simply Hồ Gươm, Sword Lake.

This is a legend. No one knows whether it really happened. Yet people have told it since the 15th century, for nearly 600 years. And you are standing on the shore of that lake now.

Hoan Kiem Lake is not man-made. It is a remnant of the old Red River, a bend cut off when the river changed course thousands of years ago. What everyone calls a lake is really a dead stretch of river. It covers more than 115,000 square meters, roughly the area of fifteen soccer fields. In 2013, the Prime Minister placed the lake, together with Ngọc Sơn Temple and the memorial to Emperor Lê, on the list of Special National Monuments.

Besides Hoan Kiem, the lake has gone by other names. One was Lục Thuỷ, for its deep green water. Another was Tả Vọng. Whatever its name, the lake was here long before the legend of the Lê dynasty.

From the east shore, you can see a tower standing alone on a mound in the middle of the lake. This is Tháp Rùa, the Turtle Tower. It is not as old as many people think. It was built from about 1884 to 1886, in the late 19th century. It is a brick tower, four levels high, with five arched doorways. Legend says this very mound is where the lake's turtles used to crawl ashore to lay their eggs.

Ngọc Sơn Temple stands on Jade Island, at the north end of the lake. The way to the temple passes the Pen Tower and the Inkstone Stand. Then it crosses a red bridge to the gate tower called Đắc Nguyệt Lâu. The bridge is called Thê Húc, which means the place where the morning sunlight rests. It is 45 meters long, with 15 spans. Painted vermilion red, it curves upward like a rainbow. It is one of the most photographed sights in Hanoi.

But before the bridge, the Pen Tower deserves a pause. In Vietnamese it is Tháp Bút. High on the tower are three large Chinese characters. They read Tả Thanh Thiên, Write on the Blue Sky. The renowned scholar Nguyễn Văn Siêu had the tower built in 1865, when he took charge of restoring the whole of Ngọc Sơn Temple. He was one of the greatest minds of 19th-century Hanoi. He was famous for the resolve of a true scholar, a man who studied not only to win high office, but also to write on the blue sky. Right beside the Pen Tower is Đài Nghiên, the Inkstone Stand. It is a peach-shaped block of stone that represents an inkstone. Side by side, pen and inkstone symbolize the way of learning.

Ngọc Sơn Temple honors two central figures. The first is Đức Thánh Trần, also known as Trần Hưng Đạo. He twice led the Vietnamese to victory over the Mongol armies, and he stands for the spirit of loving and defending the country. The second is Văn Xương Đế Quân, a god of examinations and literature in Taoist belief. He stands for a love of learning. Arms and letters are honored in the same temple. That was the spirit of the people of old Hanoi.

Yet what stays with many visitors is not the altar statues. It is the display room beside them. There lie the preserved bodies of two revered old turtles from Hồ Gươm.

The first is a turtle that died in 1967. It was about 2.1 meters long and weighed about 250 kilograms. The second died on January 19, 2016. It was the last one known to live in Hoan Kiem Lake.

The species is known to science as Rafetus swinhoei. It is one of the largest freshwater turtles in the world, and one of the most endangered. When the last turtle of Hoan Kiem Lake died, the whole of Hanoi seemed to fall silent for a day. It was not superstition. People understood that they had lost something that could never be brought back.

The legend of the golden turtle and the sword has lived for nearly 600 years. The real turtles of the lake lived on for hundreds of years after that. Now only their preserved bodies remain in the display room, a reminder of the turtles that once lived in the heart of Hanoi.

On the west shore of the lake stands the memorial to Emperor Lê. A bronze statue of Emperor Lê Thái Tổ, 1.2 meters tall, looks out over the water. He is the same emperor as in the legend of the sword. He founded a dynasty that lasted more than three and a half centuries, and he left Hanoi the name Hồ Gươm, which Vietnamese people still use to this day.