How pitiful the plight of tortoises!
Up at the communal house, they pack cranes, Down at the pagoda, they shoulder steles.
This folk ballad illustrates the popularity of tortoises in Vietnamese life. In almost every village communal house (đình), a proud crane stands on the back of a tortoise on either side of the central altar. Steles, or stone tablets found in temples and at historic sites, are rarely placed directly on the ground but instead are built on the backs of tortoises. Eighty-two tortoises in Ha Noi's Temple of Literature (Van Mieu) have been patiently carrying steles of doctoral laureates for centuries.
In East Asian cosmology, the tortoise symbolizes the universe, with the tortoise shell representing the sky and its belly, the earth. The tortoise also has a very special place in Vietnamese history. According to legend, a divine tortoise helped King An Duong Vuong (258-179 B.C.) build the spiral-shaped citadel of Co Loa in Dong Anh (north of Ha Noi). The tortoise also gave the King a magic crossbow that could shoot a hundred arrows at a time. Centuries later, another sacred turtle lent King Le Loi (1385-1433) a magic sword to fight the Ming Chinese invaders.
Since tortoises and giant water turtles are considered to be holy beings, whenever a turtle surfaces in Ha Noi's central Hoan Kiem Lake, people interpret the event as a good omen. No one dares to harm turtles in the lake for fear of bad luck; many people pray to them instead.