ExclusiveFrom orphan to emperor - The story of Lý Thái Tổ | Vietnam Within Us

In the heart of Hanoi today, beside Hoan Kiem lake, stands a statue that thousands of people walk past every day. The man carved into that statue is the reason there is a Hanoi for us to love, a place we can call the land of a thousand years of civilization. He is Ly Thai To, the emperor who gave birth to the capital of Phan Long. Today on Vietnam Witnesses, we would like to retell his story and the story of a source we sometimes forget without meaning to. What few could guess is that the man who laid the foundation for a thousand-year capital began from the humblest of origins. His real name was Ly Cong Nguyen, born in 974 in the Co Phap region in the land of Bac Ninh. His mother died just after giving birth to him. Orphaned, he was taken in and raised by a monk at Co Phap pagoda from the age of three and grew up amid temple bells and the teaching of eminent monks. From an orphan boy at the Buddha door, he walked a long road to become the emperor who opened a dynasty lasting more than two centuries. The greatest achievement later generations remember him for is his decision to move the capital. At that time, the capital sat at Hoa Lu, a region of steep and rugged mountains, better suited to defense than to building something lasting. In 1010, Ly Thai To wrote the edict on moving the capital in his own hand, deciding to move the seat of power to the citadel of Dai La. In that edict, he wrote a line that still carries the whole heart of a ruler when we read it together. To move the capital is to plan for our descendants for a thousand generations to come. Which means that from the very start, he was not thinking of himself, but of generations not yet born. Legends had it that as the royal boat reached the landing at Dai La, a golden dragon soared up into the sky. The emperor took it as a good omen and named the new capital Thang Long, which means the ascending dragon. But founding a capital tells only half of who he was. The other half is a son who never stopped aging for his own roots. Remember, he was an orphan child. His mother died as she gave birth to him. And of his father, the history do not even record a clear name. And yet, right after taking the throne, one of the first things he did had nothing to do with enjoying wealth and glory. He granted posthumous titles to the family he had lost. His mother was honored as Empress Dowager Minh Duc. His father was given the title Prince Hien Khanh. Then his elder brother, his younger brother, his uncle, and a few years later, his grandmother as well. Picture it, a son who was never sent to sleep by his mother, who barely knew his father's face. And when he became the most powerful sovereign in the land, the first thing on his mind was to offer his parents his heart. Perhaps because he went without family love from so young, he understood the duty of a child more deeply than anyone. That gratitude reached well beyond his own family. In every year he moved the capital, he returned to visit his home village of Co Phap and gave money and silk to the village elders. Remembering the Buddhist temple that had sheltered him in his poorest days, he had many pagodas built, first of all, on his own home soil. But his gratitude to the Buddha door went further than just pagodas. As soon as the capital was moved, he declared a general amnesty and waived taxes across the Rhines for three years running. Through his whole range, he was known as gentle and kind, loving his people as his own children. The compassion he had learned at the Buddha door, he turned toward all his people. That, perhaps, is the deepest way of repaying a debt. And so the story of Ly Thai To is the story of remembering one's roots in two directions. He remembered the sword that made him, his parents, his ancestors, his home village, the Buddha's door, and he found every way he could to repay it. At the same time, he became a larger sword himself, the sword of Phan Long and of Hanoi, of a capital that has stood and shone for more than a thousand years. So that today, every street, every communal house roof, every layer of moss in Hanoi traces back in the end to the visions and the heart of one man more than 10 centuries ago. Today, in his home village of Den Bang, Den Doi still stands, the temple where he is honored together with the eight emperors of the Ly dynasty. A thousand years have passed, and the incense there has never gone out. Generation after generation still come back, bowing before the man who gave birth to a dynasty and a capital. And in today's Hanoi, with its traffic rushing both ways, every time we proudly say the words, a thousand years of civilization, we are quietly thanking the man who laid down the first brick. Because in the end, knowing whose foundation you stand on, and knowing how to be grateful for it, is the very root of a decent human being.