Lam Kinh

At Lam Kinh there is a very strange guava tree. A light scratch on its trunk sets its leaves shaking and trembling, while the trunk and the branches stay still. The tree grows beside the tomb of an emperor, and its story will wait until the end of this visit.

The site lies in the province of Thanh Hóa, about 50 kilometers northwest of the provincial center.

This is the land of Lam Sơn, the homeland of Lê Lợi.

In 1418, on this very land, Lê Lợi raised the banner of revolt. He led a war of resistance against the armies of the Ming, the dynasty then ruling China. After 10 years of fighting, the war ended in victory in 1427.

In 1428, Lê Lợi took the throne as emperor, with the era name Thuận Thiên. He founded the Later Lê dynasty and set his capital at Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. He was later given the temple name Lê Thái Tổ.

But Lam Sơn, the land of his fathers, was not forgotten. In 1430, the emperor renamed this land Lam Kinh.

He died in 1433. After his death, the royal court built halls and temples here as a place to worship the ancestors.

From then on, Lam Kinh became Tây Kinh, the Western Capital. Alongside Thăng Long, the Eastern Capital, it was the second capital of Đại Việt, an old name for Vietnam.

On September 27, 2012, the Prime Minister signed a decision recognizing Lam Kinh as a special national monument.

The first sight on the way deeper into the site is Cầu Bạch, also called Tiên Loan Kiều. It is an arched stone bridge over the Ngọc River. Its style is one the old builders called thượng gia hạ kiều, which means a house above and a bridge below.

It was a working bridge, yet it carried a roof. That roof reflects how court architecture was conceived in the early Lê period.

Next comes the Vĩnh Lăng stele, one of the most revered stone inscriptions to survive in Vietnam. Together with its stone turtle, the stele weighs nearly 18 tons. The stele itself was carved from a single intact block of marine sedimentary stone.

It stands 2 meters and 79 centimeters tall. It rests on the back of a stone turtle 3 meters and 46 centimeters long. It is a national treasure.

What makes this stele most special is not its size but its author. He was Nguyễn Trãi, a poet, statesman and military genius of the Vietnamese people.

He composed the inscription by royal command, to record the whole life, career and merits of Emperor Lê Thái Tổ. It is an original historical text, carved straight into the stone in the 15th century and still intact today.

The main hall of Lam Kinh is a building that leaves many people standing in silence as they enter. It is the largest ironwood building in Vietnam today.

The whole structure has six rows of columns standing on 138 stone bases. Its total floor area is 1,645 square meters.

It was rebuilt in 2010 on the original foundations from the 15th century. The largest ironwood columns measure 62 centimeters across.

The main hall has three buildings. The Quang Đức hall is where the emperors are worshipped. The Sùng Hiếu hall holds the golden throne and the emperor's dragon robe. The Diên Khánh hall is where the emperor rested when he came home to pay respects to his ancestors.

One detail in the Diên Khánh hall deserves a closer look. A great main column there was made from an ironwood tree that fell by itself in the forest of Lam Kinh. The tree was estimated to be about 600 years old. People call it the ironwood that gave itself.

For that column, the builders did not bring in timber from elsewhere. They used this ironwood from the forest of the site itself. It is the old nourishing the new, right on its own ground.

In all, five stone steles at the site are recognized as national treasures. The Vĩnh Lăng stele stands at the tomb of Emperor Lê Thái Tổ. The Chiêu Lăng stele stands at the tomb of Emperor Lê Thánh Tông. The Dụ Lăng stele stands at the tomb of Emperor Lê Hiến Tông.

The other two are the Kính Lăng stele, at the tomb of Emperor Lê Túc Tông, and the Khôn Nguyên Chí Đức stele. That one honors the Empress Dowager Ngô Thị Ngọc Dao, the mother of Emperor Lê Thánh Tông.

And then comes Vĩnh Lăng, the resting place of Emperor Lê Thái Tổ. The tomb was laid out according to special principles of feng shui. In front lies a wide open forecourt, with Mount Chúa standing before it like a screen. Behind, the tomb rests its back against Mount Dầu.

On both sides, ranges of hills enclose it, forming the shape of a crouching tiger and dragons paying court.

In front of the tomb stand two rows of stone statues. They show attendant officials and sacred animals: mythical lion-dogs, horses, rhinoceroses and tigers.

Right beside the tomb grows a guava tree that people in the area call the laughing guava tree. It was offered to the site in 1933 by a man named Trần Hưng Dẫn. He came from the village of Hành Thiện in Nam Định.

In 2001, people first noticed that strange behavior. A light scratch on the trunk, or on the fork where it branches, sets the whole crown of leaves trembling. The trunk and the branches stay still.

The poet Hoàng Ngọc Phác named it the laughing guava tree at the end of that year.

In 2008, the Ministry of Science and Technology set up a national research project. But to this day there is still no official scientific conclusion.

The tree is nearly 100 years old. It is not a thousand-year-old tree from the time of the Lê emperors, as some rumors claim.

Lam Kinh is not a place to visit in a hurry. Here there is open space among the mountains and forests of Thanh Hóa, and quiet air. There are the canopies of 18 heritage trees, the sound of wind over the grassy hills, and the scent of incense drifting from the distant shrine halls.

Here every step recalls that a glorious 15th century once unfolded on this very land of Thanh Hóa. And the people who made that history still rest beneath the familiar stretches of earth all around.