Nguyen Cong Tru Memorial

In the old village of Uy Viễn, a quiet temple remembers Nguyễn Công Trứ. His mark lies in newly opened lands and in songs passed down through the generations. It lies in this temple too.

Nguyễn Công Trứ was born in 1778 in the village of Uy Viễn. Today it is Xuân Giang commune, in the Nghi Xuân area. That is in Hà Tĩnh province. He died on December 7, 1858, at the age of 80, in his home village.

It was a long life of 80 years, and he gave nearly 30 of them to work as an official, serving under several emperors of the Nguyễn dynasty. The Nguyễn dynasty was Vietnam's last royal dynasty. It reigned from 1802 to 1945. The official website of Nghi Xuân records that his mark runs across many fields: politics, the military, the economy, culture and the arts.

What many people remember most about him, though, is the story of reclaiming land along the coast. He proposed and carried out a plan to gather displaced people and militia, build dikes to push back the sea, and open up wasteland. In this way he founded two new areas. One is Kim Sơn, in Ninh Binh. The other is Tiền Hải, in Thái Bình. Both still exist today, and hundreds of thousands of people live on land that their ancestors cleared with help from Nguyễn Công Trứ. This legacy is not kept only in the temple, and not only in a line of verse. It is in the soil itself, which people still farm and live on.

In literature and art, he left more than 150 works of poetry. Most are in ca trù and in Nôm. Ca trù is a form of sung poetry from northern Vietnam. Nôm is an old character script for writing Vietnamese. The Nghi Xuân source credits him with making hát nói a complete poetic form, which opened a golden age for hát nói and ca trù. The art is complex. It has a singer called a ca nương and an instrument called the đàn đáy. It also has a drum called the trống chầu. For many centuries it was closely tied to the literary life of Vietnam's Confucian scholars. In 2009, UNESCO placed Vietnam's ca trù on its list of intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding. Nghi Xuân is one of the lands tied to ca trù. To speak of Nguyễn Công Trứ here is also to speak of a whole line of musical heritage that still needs to be carried on.

The memorial site holds his grave and his temple, in Lam Thủy hamlet of Xuân Giang commune. The state ranks it as a national monument. Every year, on the 14th day of the 11th lunar month, Nghi Xuân holds a memorial rite for him at his family chapel. The rite honors him by his title, Uy Viễn Tướng công.

The tourism office of Hà Tĩnh presents the site as part of a cultural route through Nghi Xuân. The route links the memorial site of the great poet Nguyễn Du with Cổ Đạm, a village of ca trù. It also takes in Hội Thống communal house and the sea at Xuân Thành. And it takes in the scenic Hồng Lĩnh mountains by the La River. It is a way to understand Nghi Xuân as a land of famous people, music and scenery.

One detail the tourism office mentions is that a ca trù club named for Nguyễn Công Trứ once held regular sessions and performances at the site, two each week. Few places could offer that: the sound of the đàn đáy and a ca nương's voice in the very place that honors the man who helped shape the art.

Nguyễn Công Trứ lived in the 19th century. He had no machines and no large state funds. Yet he drew settlers, built dikes and founded two new areas. He wrote poems and ca trù, and people still read those poems today. This is a kind of heritage that needs no glass case. It lies in the fields and in the songs.