Hey Hue - June 19th

Hue (pronouced Hway) is the home of the old Vietnamese imperial city. Today we caught this chair on a bicycle thing (picture right...self portrait)to the old imperial city and citadel for a look. Much of it has been destroyed by the french during the war, and what wasn't destroyed hasn't been well maintained. It's a spattering of things that have been nearly destroyed, and things which other countries have helped them rebuild.

The picture to the left is one of the only remaining standing buildings of the the "Forbidden Purple City", it's called the Thai Binh Reading Room. The Forbidden Purple City was the most inner part of the Citadel, were only the emperor and his direct family and servants were allowed. It was mostly burned to the ground in a fire in 1947.


Here is one of the gates to the Imperial City which has been restored, and a close up of what the detail is like. All three dimensional, mostly primary colors, just a ghost really of what this entire city must of have once looked like before the war.



And here is an example of what most of the other gates look like, not maintained, still beautiful, plants growing out of the top of it. We find it ironic that the French helped design the city, modeling it after the Chinese forbidden city, and then they were the same people that destroyed it decades later.







The flag tower shown here was originally constructed in 1807 and is considered to be one of the national mounments for the Vietnamese people.