Hung Vuong Museum

Two places in Phú Thọ province carry the name Hùng Vương Museum. The name refers to the Hùng Kings, whom Vietnamese people honor as their ancestors. One museum stands inside the Đền Hùng historic site, on Công Quán hill. That is in Hy Cương commune. The other stands on Trần Phú street, in Gia Cẩm ward. That is in the city of Việt Trì. This story is about the second, a general museum for the whole province. It is not the exhibition space inside the Đền Hùng complex.

The difference matters for two reasons. It keeps a visitor from going to the wrong place. And this museum tells a story much longer than the name "Hùng Vương" leads people to expect.

Construction began on January 1, 2008. The museum opened on April 14, 2010, during the Đền Hùng festival of the year Canh Dần. The grounds cover more than 15,732 square meters. The exhibition building has three floors, with over 9,360 square meters of floor space. The museum's own website says it holds more than 11,000 original objects and collections of them.

The first thing a visitor sees is the building itself. It is modeled on a stilt house of northern Vietnam, with steep roofs on all four sides covered in red tiles. This is no accident. The stilt house is a symbol of the culture of people in the northern midlands and mountains. It is tied to the life of the ancient Vietnamese in the earliest age of their history.

Inside, the permanent exhibition is divided into five themes, following the flow of time.

The first theme is the nature and people of Phú Thọ. This part sets the place: where Phú Thọ lies, what the land is like, and who lives on it. It is the natural ground needed to understand all that follows.

The second theme is Phú Thọ in prehistory and early history. This is the archaeological layer. It shows the prehistoric cultures, the first traces of people on this land, and the link to the age of the Hùng Kings in the nation's historical memory. Here it helps to keep two layers apart. Archaeology says one thing, and folk legend says another. Both have value, but in different ways.

The third theme is Phú Thọ under Chinese rule, and during the building of a self-governing state. This period is often skipped on tours. Yet it is the time when the Vietnamese kept their cultural identity through more than a thousand years of rule from the north, and then won back their self-rule.

The fourth theme runs from 1883, when French colonial rule took hold in the north, to 1975, when the country was unified. This is Phú Thọ during the two wars of resistance.

The fifth theme is Phú Thọ in the work of building and defending the homeland, from 1975 to today.

After the five themes comes the open-air display. Here huge exhibits stand out under the sky: a MiG-21 aircraft, a T-54 tank, and a French warship. They bear witness to the two wars of resistance to defend the homeland. Their iron bodies are marked by the color of passing years. Standing before them, a person feels the weight of an age of fire and gunfire that passed over this land.

A good order is to see the museum in Việt Trì first, to take in the whole length of the region's history, and only then go up to Đền Hùng. Then every stone step, every ritual and every legend on the summit of Nghĩa Lĩnh mountain feels deeper and closer.

In the heart of Việt Trì, under that red-tiled stilt-house roof, thousands of years of building and defending the country quietly remain. They wait for the day their descendants return to listen.