Lord Nguyen Hoang

Lord Nguyễn Hoàng spent a whole lifetime on one road, to open a new home for his descendants.

Nguyễn Hoàng was born in 1525. He lived to the age of 89, a very long life for those times. But people remember him less for his long years than for one journey. He left his old home in the north and followed the roads south, into a distant land.

In 1558, he left home and went to take charge of a strip of land beyond the pass, a region called Thuận Hóa. At that time the land was thinly settled, and much about it was unknown. It took great courage to go to such a place. Yet he went, and he stayed, bound to that land until the end of his life.

The people who held him dear called him Chúa Tiên. He was the first lord of the Nguyễn family, the man who began its fortunes in the south. The old histories call that land Đàng Trong, the southern realm then ruled by the Nguyễn lords. Generations later, his descendants gave him an imperial title after his death, Thái Tổ Gia Dụ Hoàng Đế, in memory of the man who laid the foundation. That grand name came from later times. While he lived, he remained a lord, a diligent one who spent his days building a new home.

Opening a land takes more than building roads and clearing fields. People of old believed that hearts can settle only where the land is good. And here there is a story that country people have told from one generation to the next.

The tale goes that beside the Perfume River stood a hill named Hà Khê. Night after night, people whispered, an old woman in a red blouse and green trousers appeared on the hill, gentle in her manner. She said that a true lord would one day come there to build a pagoda. It would gather the sacred energy of the land and keep its dragon vein strong, so that the new country would grow ever more prosperous. The old folk passed this tale along as a folk telling, not as something the histories record. Hooves tapped steadily on the road beside the Perfume River. On horseback, the lord quietly told this story to a boy who sat behind him, both hands gripping tight, while his own eyes stayed on the distant hill.

The boy listened to the end, looked up, and saw the lord's eyes brighten. Nguyễn Hoàng took it for a good omen for the land he was raising. In 1601, he had a pagoda built right on Hà Khê hill, on the left bank of the river. That distant year would be remembered as the birth of a pagoda that would stand for several hundred years. He named it Thiên Mụ, which means a fairy lady, an old woman of the heavens, in memory of the old woman in red.

The hill lies just west of Hue, a short way along the river. On top, a cool breeze blows off the water, and the river glitters below. It is easy to see why a man building a new home would choose this place to rest his faith.

In later times this pagoda came to be regarded as the oldest in Hue, the old capital. But what lasts longer than the weathered roof tiles is the heart of the man who dared leave his old home and spent decades patiently nurturing a new land.

Beside the Perfume River, where Hà Khê hill casts its shadow on the water, a quiet moment might bring back those hooves from long ago. It might bring back a man who traveled very far only to open a new home for his descendants.

Lord Nguyễn Hoàng died in 1613, after a long life bound to Thuận Hóa. The boy of that day grew up, and whenever he passed Hà Khê hill, he remembered the afternoon behind the lord, listening to the hooves beside the river. What the lord left does not fit in a statue or a line of writing. It lies in the fields, the river landings and the roofs of the generations who came after on that land.