Ha Noi is fairly unique in being a vast and rambling Asian metropolis that nevertheless has an easily walkable (apart from the traffic!) downtown. And the city centre isn’t full of skyscrapers, with their nature-destroying cement, marble and glass.
The centre of Ha Noi is instead a lake, but not just any small body of water. Hồ Hoàn Kiếm is the Vietnamese equivalent of Camelot, with a legend reminiscent of King Arthur and Excalibur. Except this is a real place, with a hero that actually lived. And even more unbelievably, there was a sea monster (of sorts) lurking in its depths that turned out to be not so make-believe.
The best way to see a depiction of this myth-turned-reality (and watch as Vietnamese children squeal with knowing delight) is to visit the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre, at the northeast corner of the lake.
This theatre, which hasn’t changed much from the time I first attended back in 1991, is a classic Vietnamese government enterprise that also happens to be protector of one of the most unique forms of performance folk art anywhere in the world.
Beginning in the 11th century, troops of puppeteers would tour the rural villages in Viet Nam, and put on plays depicting all the ancient stories for a population with access to very few other forms of entertainment.
And since in many places a rice paddy was the only open, flat space available for the performers to put up their sets, it must have seemed only natural to make the puppets water-borne, too.
Just as they once did in the paddies, the present-day puppeteers at Thang Long hide behind a green bamboo blind, framed by a pagoda-like façade, which floats atop a jade-green pond. But in this case the pond is inside the theatre itself, with the audience arrayed in tiered seating all around the front and sides.
The performance starts with traditional musicians playing their ethereal instruments, including the single-stringed đàn bầu, and the đàn tam thập lục, a Vietnamese-style hammer dulcimer. In my experience, the puppet theatre is still one of the best places to hear live performances of traditional Vietnamese music.
Once the audience has settled, and the house lights have dimmed, out front, from under the water pops a little wooden man with a plough attached to an equally wooden water buffalo.
Brightly-coloured fish begin to circle the farmer, and frogs jump to and fro. Then a swimming snake makes an appearance, and is chased away by stick-wielding puppet children. And a dragon slithers forth underwater, with fire breathing right out of its nostrils.
Finally a group of fairies appear, and perform a dance while holding coconuts that another boy has tossed into the water after climbing a miniature palm tree.
Amazingly, all of this is being controlled under water, from behind the blind, by the puppet masters using long bamboo sticks and string. The whole thing is almost magical, and when it is done really well, there is a control and ingenuity that simply takes you far, far away.
I can only imagine what it must have been like on hot summer nights many years ago, with the sounds of the village all around, and flames from coconut oil lamps the only source of light. Joy would have been universal, and young and old alike would have been totally transfixed.
ooOOoo
A favourite tale that was always told by those travelling performers, and the one you can often see today at Thang Long Theatre as well, is the legend of Le Loi. He was an emperor who most definitely existed, and in many ways was the person who brought together for the first time all the many lands and lords that forever after have been the country of Viet Nam. He did it in spectacular and cunning fashion by vanquishing the dreaded Ming dynasty invaders from China to the north.
Le Loi set up his palace and grounds at Ho Hoan Kien, and often paddled his boat around its shores. It was said that Le Loi got much of his power from a magical sword, just as King Arthur did, although in this case it was supposedly given to the emperor by a giant turtle.
However, the story goes that after Le Loi had defeated the Chinese, the turtle confronted him in the lake and forcefully took back the sword, grasping it in his mouth and then diving into the depths. In the centre of the lake there is still the Turtle Pagoda (Tháp Rùa), the symbol of Ha Noi. Ho Hoan Kien means “Lake of the Returned Sword”.
The citizens of Ha Noi always claimed that a giant turtle does in fact live in the lake, but outsiders have been more than a little sceptical. I well remember the comments from overseas beekeeping scientists who were attending a conference in Ha Noi along with me in 1995.
They were shown what was supposed to be a stuffed turtle, on exhibit in the Temple of Literature, site of Viet Nam’s original university founded in 1010. To a man (and woman), they all thought it was a fairly tatty piece of Communist myth-making.
But then in 1998, taking a page from the Loch Ness Monster story, an amateur cameraman snapped a photo of what appeared to be a very big turtle. There still were many doubters, though, until in 2011 an object the size of a large dining room table surfaced on the lake, and made its way to the shore. It was 1.8m long by 1.2m wide, and weighed 200kg.
It was most definitely a turtle (Rafetus leloii), and it appeared to be suffering badly from injuries that many believe were brought on by pollution in the lake. The creature was cared for in a special enclosure, but its chances of survival (and the continued existence of the world’s rarest species of turtle) didn’t look all that bright. The turtle, known as “Cụ Rùa”, (“great grandfather turtle” in Vietnamese), finally died in January 2016.
~Originally composed in 2011, with additions following the turtle’s death~