Hue

Last week we visited Hue, the former capital city of Vietnam, a place of wide rivers with grassy green banks, tree lined boulevards, royal tombs and pagodas a plenty. Compared to Ho Chi Minh, the traffic is a breeze, perpetually Sunday afternoon. So it’s perfect to explore on pushbike, stopping as you come across intriguing old buildings, or you see a woman with baskets of Banh beo or any of the other tasty rice noodle Hue specialties.

The main tourist attractions are monuments from the Nguyen Dynasty, a succession of Emperors in Vietnam from 1802 until 1945. Although they built a citadel and some very impressive tombs for themselves, their role was mostly nominal during French occupation.

Emperor Minh Mang’s tomb, about 20 minutes drive from central Hue, is a very beautiful and tranquil place. It’s a series of symmetrical courtyards and temple like buildings, which finishes with a bridge to an ornate gate and wall, enclosing a grassy mound where the great man rests. Water and trees surround the complex, and a variety of bird song accompanied our walk through it.

So who was this fellow Minh Mang? Who could he have been to inspire such a splendid monument? I happened to pick up a book at Hue airport, which included a chapter on the Nguyen Dynasty’s second Emperor, who ruled from 1820 to 1840. The first point that was clearly made was that Minh Mang was “un-fatigable” in the bedroom, proved by his 142 children and five to six hundred wives. Reading between the lines, it seems that he may have been trying to keep up with the Chinese Emperor at the time, who was reported to have 3,000 wives and concubines. Minh Mang liked to have 5 concubines with him while relaxing daily, one for preparing tobacco, betel and areca, one for fanning (very wise as Hue does get extremely hot in the summer), one for massaging, one for singing lullaby and the last one for doing the chores. However, Minh Mang did have a prick of conscience during his sixth year of reigning, realising that the hundreds of women attending him in the Forbidden Palace may be causing the negative and feminine air not to circulate, and thus the drought that was wreaking havoc on the land. He resolved to reduce the number of his women by one hundred, very wise indeed.

In 1822, Minh Mang visited Ha Noi, and became extremely displeased at the sight of women in skirts, and thus ordered a ban on them, to be enforced by soldiers “watching diligently” at markets and street corners.

To quote my book directly….

‘The natives in Ha Noi were so annoyed with the ironical situation that they composed a folk poem to describe such a tragedy:

In Lunar June, there was a decree issued by the Emperor himself,

He banned wearing skirts, which frightened everybody,

Markets were closed because no women came there,

Otherwise, they had to take their husbands trousers off reluctantly,

Wearing trousers, you could do the selling.

Without trousers, you had to stand at the end of your village to keep watch on the mandarins.’

Visiting his tomb and then reading about this woman loving, skirt hating myth of a man is definitely one of those sublime to ridiculous experiences which you often encounter in this country.