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Story: Huynh Phuong
Photos: Le Huy Hoang Hai
Always solemn and reserved, Hue is even more mysterious on misty spring days, when dawn lingers in our blurry and dazzled eyes.
In every season and at all times of day, the former citadel is splendid. But it is especially so in the eerie glow of dawn on a chilly, misty morning.
When the “mist season” comes, a thin, amorphous veil is loosely draped over the imperial mausoleums, pagodas, and palaces, both within and outside the Imperial Palaces. The fog billows and miraculously coils over corners blanketed in moss, or sneaks into sleepy alleyways and paths that evoke nostalgia.
The fog falls hard on Truong Tien Bridge. It lies over the Perfume River. All of a sudden, a little boat may be seen, flitting away, like a deliberate drop of ink to accentuate a poetic and heavenly landscape painting.
The thin veil also wraps the rows of frangipani trees and the perpendicular moats in the Imperial Forbidden City. Against that bleak and solemn backdrop, the haunting mirage of a Hue maiden in a pure white áo dài may blur the divide between dreams and reality.
At dawn, just bike along mist-drenched trails to inhale the breaths of the soil and the wind. Embrace the calm as you hear the dim cries of vendors in the mist. All mental burdens and weights are chased from your mind.
As the early sun peeps out, the veil dissolves into oblivion, leaving our five senses a bit off edge, after the fleeting happiness of heaven.
