Pen Tower and Ink Slab

Three Chinese characters are cut into stone, pointing at the sky. They read "Tả Thanh Thiên", which means write on the blue sky. They are the first thing a visitor meets before stepping into Ngọc Sơn Temple.

The Pen Tower, Tháp Bút, and the Inkstone Stand, Đài Nghiên, stand at the outer gate of the Ngọc Sơn complex, just before the path out to the Thê Húc Bridge. They are two small stone works, nothing grand. Yet their meaning is far bigger than their size. They stand for learning and the written word, which the people of old Thăng Long held to be the noblest thing of all. Thăng Long is the city now called Hanoi.

According to the Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports, in 1865 the Confucian scholar Nguyễn Văn Siêu led a major restoration of Ngọc Sơn Temple. His contemporaries called him "Thần Siêu", the divine Siêu. In that restoration he did more than repair the worship hall and build the Thê Húc Bridge. He also set up the Pen Tower and the Inkstone Stand at the entrance. They were not extra decoration. They were a statement about culture.

The Pen Tower rises from a mound of stone, shaped like a giant brush pointing straight up at the sky. According to the newspaper Nhân Dân, three Chinese characters are carved on the tower. They read Tả Thanh Thiên, write on the blue sky. The words speak for the ambition of a writer: do not write small, do not write to fit. Write high and wide, as if sight itself reached the sky. It is the spirit of the class of Confucian scholars who built the culture of Hanoi over many centuries.

Right beside the tower, the Inkstone Stand is set close to the wall. According to the newspaper An Ninh Thủ Đô, it was carved from a single block of stone in the shape of half a peach, wide on top and narrowing below. It rests on the backs of three stone toads. The top is hollowed out like the well of an inkstone. On its body is an inscription of 64 characters, composed by Nguyễn Văn Siêu himself. The inscription records his views on learning, and on what the written word means to human life.

Side by side, the Pen Tower and the Inkstone Stand are like a scholar's writing set in miniature, carved in stone. The brush is for writing, and the inkstone is for grinding ink. This is no accident. Nguyễn Văn Siêu placed the two images at the entrance so that anyone walking into the temple would understand at once. This is a place that honors the written word no less than it honors the deities.

The tower and the Inkstone Stand are outside the temple entrance, before the walk onto the Thê Húc Bridge. They belong to the public space along the lakeshore, part of the Hoan Kiem Lake scenery that people of Hanoi look at every day. The Prime Minister ranked the whole complex a Special National Monument under Decision 2383, signed on December 9, 2013.

The Pen Tower and the Inkstone Stand are a reminder from a scholar who lived more than a hundred and fifty years ago. In Thăng Long, the written word was never only the trade of those who studied. It was an ambition: to write on the blue sky, with no limit at all.