The White Horse of Bach Ma

That wall would not stand.

In the morning, the builders raised it to shoulder height. Earth was carried in by the basketful, tipped out, stamped down hard and patted smooth. In the afternoon, the workers came back to look, and the wall had grown lower. The earth had slid down and spread out to both sides. It slumped, soft as a heap of mud that had just sat down to rest.

No one understood why.

Vietnamese people have told this story to one another for a very long time. It happened in a place that is very well known today. That place is Hanoi. But back then, it did not yet have that name.

In 1010, Emperor Lý Thái Tổ moved the capital. The old capital was called Hoa Lư. The emperor chose a wide, flat stretch of land, known at the time as Đại La. Then he gave that land a new name, a name that seems to lift into the air: Thăng Long, meaning the dragon soaring up.

A new capital needed a wall around it.

In those days, walls were not made of cement, and they were not poured in concrete. They were built of earth. People carried earth in, laid it out in a long band, stamped it down very hard, then built another layer on top. Done well, an earthen wall like that grew as hard as stone and could stand for a very long time.

And yet this wall kept sinking.

They tried again. This time they made the base wider, chose the earth more carefully and stamped it longer. The next morning, a shower of rain came down. The rainwater ran along the new band of earth, and the earth washed away again.

They tried on another stretch. The same thing happened.

These workers were not weak. The earth was good, and their hands knew the work. Yet wherever they built the wall up, it sank. No one knew where the wall ought to run.

News of the wall that would not stand reached Emperor Lý Thái Tổ.

The emperor sat in silence for a while. Then he went to seek an answer.

On the eastern side of that land stood a small temple. It honored the spirit who guarded the land of the whole region, a spirit called Long Đỗ. People nearby believed this spirit had been there long before, long before there was any capital. They believed he knew this land down to every tree root and every puddle.

The story goes that the emperor sent people to the temple to set out incense and pray. The prayer was short. The emperor only asked the spirit to show where the wall should run.

Then the whole group stood waiting in the temple courtyard.

People say that at that moment, footsteps sounded inside the temple. Out of the temple walked a white horse.

It had no saddle on its back and no reins. No one led it. The white horse, its coat as white as fresh whitewash, stepped over the temple threshold on its own. It walked to the middle of the courtyard, then kept going, out beyond it.

The horse did not run. It walked, slow and steady, like someone who knew exactly where he was going.

It walked around that land. The ground was still wet after the rain and soft under its hooves, and each step left a small round print sunk in the earth. It went along one side, then curved around to the next, until it had passed all four sides. One circle.

The white horse walked the whole of that circle. At the end, it came back to the very door of the temple where it had started.

It stepped inside.

And it vanished.

The whole group still stood there in silence, staring at the empty courtyard. There was only the wind, and the sweet smell of incense.

But on the ground, something remained.

A ring of hoofprints lay clearly pressed into the soft earth. It ran around all four sides, then closed exactly where it had begun.

A closed circle. It was so simple that a finger moving across a tabletop could trace it again.

Emperor Lý Thái Tổ came out to look at that ring of hoofprints.

Then he gave a very short order: "Build the wall exactly along the horse's track. Not outside it, not inside it. Wherever the hoofprints go, the foot of the wall goes."

The workers carried earth in once more.

This time, they set the base of the wall right on the line of hoofprints, stamped it down and built it up higher and higher. When afternoon came, they went back to look.

The wall was still standing.

The next day, it still stood. Rain fell, and the water ran along the foot of the wall and flowed away, but the earth did not wash off. The wall kept growing taller and longer. It ran all the way around the capital of Thăng Long and closed up exactly like the circle the white horse had walked.

When the wall was finished, Emperor Lý Thái Tổ did not forget the place that had shown him the way.

He gave the spirit of that temple a title: Thành hoàng quốc đô Thăng Long. It means the guardian spirit of the whole capital. And the emperor gave the temple a new name.

He called it Bạch Mã Temple. Bạch means white. Mã means horse.

Since that season of wall building, streets have been built on top, then more streets on top of those, for more than a thousand years.

The temple still stands in the same spot, on Hàng Buồm Street. People still call it the temple that guards the eastern side of the capital.

No one can see the white horse's ring of hoofprints anymore. The story says it lies beneath what is now the road.

But the name the emperor gave that day is still in use in Hanoi. Ask for directions on Hàng Buồm Street, and you will be pointed straight to an old temple: Bạch Mã Temple.