Prince Canh

A boy of about four stood on the deck of a ship, gripping the wooden rail and watching his homeland sink away behind the waves. Ahead there was only sea, and more sea, and more sea. The boy was Prince Cảnh, and he was setting out on a voyage far beyond anything he had ever known.

The story goes that his full name was Nguyễn Phúc Cảnh, and that he was born in 1780 in the land of Gia Định. He was the eldest son of Nguyễn Ánh, the man the whole country would later call Emperor Gia Long. While the boy was still very small, his father sent him with a bishop named Bá Đa Lộc to a country very far away, called France. He was still a small child, at an age when most children cling to their mothers, and yet he had boarded a ship to cross the sea to the other side of the world. The little ship left home around 1784.

The way was long. The ship sailed day after day across strange waters. On some nights the moon lay bright on the sea, and the boy lay listening to the waves slap the hull and missing home. On some days the sun burned, the salty wind stung his face, and the horizon stayed as distant as ever. They sailed on and on, through several seasons of rain and sun.

Then one day the ship reached France. It was early in 1787. The boy set foot in a country that was nothing like his own. The houses were tall, the people wore clothes he had never seen, and the language sounded soft and gentle, though he could not understand a word of it. To a child from so far away, everything was new, like a dream.

And then came the most wonderful day of all. On May 5 of that year, Prince Cảnh was taken into the palace of Versailles, one of the grandest palaces in France. There the king of France, Louis the Sixteenth, received him together with Bishop Bá Đa Lộc.

A boy from a river village in the far south now stood in a golden palace, face to face with a king. People say he was bold and polite, and that everyone who met him grew fond of him.

His days in France were full of new things. He tried on French clothes to be presented at court. A painter sat down to paint his portrait, keeping the face of a boy from Vietnam on French soil. And the man who always combed the hair of the queen of France bent down to comb the hair of a boy from the river country of the south. Every day brought something strange or fine to look at and remember. Prince Cảnh was a boy who loved to travel, loved to learn, and loved to look at the wide world.

But however strange and lovely the foreign land was, the boy's heart kept turning toward one place. It was home, and his father, who watched the far horizon day and night for his young son.

Then the day to return came. After several years away, Prince Cảnh boarded a ship for home. This time every wave carried him a little closer to his own shore. On June 24, 1789, the ship came into port at Saigon. The boy of those years before was older now. He had gone very far, and he had come back.

One can picture his father holding the son he had missed for so long. And the boy, with a head full of wonders, would tell him everything: the long waves, the golden palace, the king from far away, and all the marvels he had seen on the other side of the ocean. He had carried home a whole new world of sea and sky, and he gave it to the father he loved.