The Hung Kings

On one day of the year, a crowd as thick as flowing water climbs toward the Ancestral Land. Those in front and those behind all carry a stick of incense and a full heart. This is a tale of origins, which grandparents have told from one generation to the next. It is not a biography written in a history book. The Hùng Kings are honored as the people who built the state of Văn Lang, the first state in the nation's history. Vietnamese people honor them as their ancestors.

In that crowd, a child walks beside the grandparents. The child looks up and asks the grandfather where they are going. He smiles and rubs the child's head. "We are going to visit the ancestors of our whole family, from very long ago."

On the way, the grandfather tells the child about the kings. The old people pass down that in those days, some kings did not sit forever inside the palace. Early in the morning, while dew still clung to the leaves, a king rolled his trousers high and waded calf-deep in the water to plant rice beside the villagers. Mud reached his elbows. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Looking at him, no one could have guessed he was a king.

The child closes both eyes and seems to see what the grandfather describes. A sunburnt hand pushes each rice seedling into the mud, straight, every one in line. Fields stretch to the horizon. People say the king often told the villagers that every grain of rice in the bowl begins here. In the mud. In the water. In the soaked back of the shirt of the one who grows the rice.

The grandfather says the king taught his descendants something simple and very deep. A country is built not only with swords and spears, but with ripe harvests and hardworking hands. To love the country is first to love a rice field, a bamboo hedge, a stream that runs through the village.

The land under the child's feet, the old people called the land of the kings. By the legend, the capital of Văn Lang stood at Phong Châu. That was the Bạch Hạc area, which today is part of Việt Trì, in Phú Thọ province. The throne passed through 18 generations of Hùng Kings. 18 generations. The number sounds like a fairy tale, so it is best heard as a beautiful story of the ancestors. What stays longest is not the number, but the heart the kings left to their descendants, generation after generation.

Then came a day when the whole country agreed to set aside a time to turn back and remember its roots. In 1917, the governor of Phú Thọ province, a man named Lê Trung Ngọc, proposed the tenth day of the third lunar month as a shared day of remembrance. From then on, every year on that day, people find their way back. It is the death anniversary of the Hùng Kings, held at Đền Hùng in Việt Trì. It is the national day of remembrance, observed by the whole country.

The child opens both eyes and sees that very scene unfolding all around. A stream of people without end, from every province, and even some who live far from home abroad, all making the pilgrimage to the Ancestral Land. Millions of hearts turned toward one place. The world has nodded too. On December 6, 2012, UNESCO inscribed the worship of the Hùng Kings in Phú Thọ on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. That list is for living traditions, passed on from one generation to the next. This is not a religion. It is a heart of reverence and gratitude for the merit of those who built the country, in the spirit of the old saying "When you drink water, remember its source."

And that child has grown up. Many years later, every time the rice ripens, the memory comes back of the morning spent climbing to the Ancestral Land with the grandfather. The memory of the tale about kings who waded through the fields. Every grain of soft, fragrant rice in a bowl carries the sweat of generations of grandparents, and of the hardworking hands that built a shared roof for the children and grandchildren of today.