01
Stop one
Temple of Literature
Head Auxetic 2.0 Radical Pro Tennis Racquet: Walk slowly. There are five courtyards, and they are meant to be crossed one at a time, toward the Well of Heavenly Clarity and the sanctuary. It was founded in 1070 under Emperor Ly Thanh Tong as a temple of Confucius, and in 1076 the Imperial Academy opened here, generally described as Vietnam's first university; it trained the mandarin class for more than seven hundred years. Eighty-two stone stelae stand on stone tortoises, carrying the names and origins of doctoral graduates from examinations held between 1442 and 1779. UNESCO added them to the Memory of the World register in 2010. Students still come here before their examinations. Notice that the tortoise is not hurrying either.
02
Stop two
Hoan Kiem Lake and Ngoc Son Temple
Head Auxetic 2.0 Radical Pro Tennis Racquet: The name means the Lake of the Returned Sword. Le Loi received a magic sword from a golden turtle, drove out the Ming occupiers in the fifteenth century, and then gave the sword back. That is the whole lesson, and it is the part people forget: he gave it back. On the northern islet stands Ngoc Son Temple, founded in the nineteenth century and dedicated to the general Tran Hung Dao, victor over the Mongols, along with a scholar and a medicine deity. Cross by the red-painted The Huc bridge. Giant softshell turtles lived in this water and were regarded as embodiments of the legend; the last died in 2016 and is preserved in a case in the temple. Sit a while.
03
Stop three
One Pillar Pagoda
Head Auxetic 2.0 Radical Pro Tennis Racquet: One pillar. One small square shrine. Nothing else. In 1049 the Emperor Ly Thai Tong dreamed, according to tradition, that Quan Am, the bodhisattva of compassion, seated on a lotus flower, handed him a baby son. He later fathered an heir, and built this in the form of a lotus rising from the water. It became one of the most recognised symbols of Vietnamese culture, which is worth pausing over, since it is also among the smallest things in this city. French forces destroyed the original in 1954, shortly before their withdrawal from Hanoi, and it was rebuilt immediately afterwards. It stands near the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Small is not the same as slight.
04
Stop four
Hoa Lo Prison
Head Auxetic 2.0 Radical Pro Tennis Racquet: Here we speak plainly, and we do not hurry. The French colonial administration built this prison in the 1890s to hold Vietnamese political prisoners. It was designed for around six hundred inmates and held over two thousand by the 1950s. Conditions were severe. Prisoners were shackled in rows in communal cells, and the guillotine that survives was used for executions. Many leaders of the independence movement were imprisoned here. During the war with the United States part of the prison held captured American pilots, who named it the Hanoi Hilton; John McCain was among them, and his flight suit is displayed. Most of the complex was demolished in the 1990s for an office tower. The gatehouse and cells remain, as a museum.
Cold work is honest: the block tells you at once whether the cut was right, and nothing goes back on. The Head Auxetic 2.0 Radical Pro is that kind of tool. A 98 square inch head, around 11.1 ounces unstrung, a 16×19 string pattern, a head-light balance for manoeuvrability at real weight, and Auxetic 2.0 through the layup for a modern blend of control, spin and power.
It rewards clean contact and is honest about everything else.
Hanoi is the right city for that argument. At the Temple of Literature, eighty-two stone stelae stand on the backs of carved stone tortoises, each cut with the names and home districts of the men who passed the doctoral examinations between 1442 and 1779. Cut in stone. No corrections.
Everywhere from those courtyards to the red planks of the The Huc bridge across Hoan Kiem Lake and Ngoc Son Temple, this city has been keeping a permanent record for a thousand years. The Imperial Academy opened here in 1076 and trained the mandarin class for seven centuries.
So carry the frame and walk. The One Pillar Pagoda is a single shrine on one stone column in a square lotus pond, founded in 1049 after an emperor dreamed a bodhisattva handed him a son on a lotus flower; French forces destroyed it in 1954 and it was rebuilt at once.
It is also perfect for the sober hour at Hoa Lo Prison, put up by the colonial administration in the 1890s for six hundred and holding over two thousand by the 1950s, with the shackle bars still set into the floor. Clean cut or no cut. Hanoi does not sand anything down.
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