Last year, I visited the Temple of the Jade Mountain located on Jade
Island near the northern shore of the Lake of the Returned Sword (Ho
Hoan Kiem) in Hanoi. Image below shows the island with the temple lit up at night.
The lake has this epic name that come from a legend. I am not going to repeat
Wikipedia here, but it’s basically a Vietnamese version of the Excalibur story
and the bottom line is “If you have been given a magic sword, one day you need
to give it back”. Just like in real life good things don’t last and that is
what makes them “magic”. In the legend, the sword is returned to the Golden
Turtle God which is shown in the image below left. The belief in this deity was
inspired by the presence of a large species of soft-shell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) in the lake. It is believed
to be locally extinct and the last known individual was found dead just four
months before my visit.
The
temple dates back to the 18th century and is dedicated to several historical
figures. Among them a couple of scholars, but my favorite is general Tran Hung
Dao who repelled three Mongol invasions during Kublai Khan’s rule in the
13th-century.
The
temple has several architectural landmarks. The image below left shows the gate
with a large ink-slab placed on top of it (Dai
Nghien). The center image shows the Welcoming Morning Sunlight Bridge (Cau
The Huc) connecting Jade Island with the mainland. The image below right
shows the Moon Contemplation Pavilion (Dac Nguyet).
I
understand that it’s a Taoist and Confucian temple. The main temple
building shown in the images below was antique and quaint as opposed to freshly
painted buildings in the images above.
Some of the temple furniture was impressive. The door panels were
beautifully carved (images below). Statues of the temple deities looked
interesting too. There was also something different about the main incense
burner, probably the handles featuring horned qilin heads and the feet
featuring lion heads (centre image below).
My visit to Vietnam had nothing to do with my interest in bonsai, but
bonsai was there for me to find it. Buildings, hedges and parapets in the
temple grounds form many secluded areas decorated with many cay canh trees. Typically, they were large
size, styled trees grown in decorated concrete containers.
Examples of such courtyards with cay
canh trees are shown in the images above and below.
The temple’s three most impressive cay
canh trees are shown in the images below.
They are located on a platform housing the
Pavilion Against Waves (Dinh Tran Ba). This pavilion can be seen in the
very first set of images of this post. Below are more images showing the
platform with the trees arranged on it.
Other cay canh trees in the
temple were not as refined and images below show some examples.
Finally, one cannot talk about the Temple of the Jade Mountain and the Lake of the Returned Sword without mentioning the
Turtle Tower (Thap Rua) located in
the middle of the lake. Images below show this scenic landmark.
