Cát Linh Street today is a street of high-rise buildings and an elevated railway. Walk along it to number 14 and you will find the small gate of a temple tucked between the buildings on either side, easy to pass without noticing. On weekend afternoons, the steady tap of clappers and a long, slow voice, slightly catching at the end of each line, sometimes drift out from the courtyard. That is ca trù, the old sung poetry of northern Vietnam, and the singers are often pupils of the class taught right inside the temple.
The temple honors Trần Tú Uyên and the fairy Hà Giáng Kiều, the husband and wife whom Hanoians know from the tale Bích Câu kỳ ngộ, the strange encounter at Bích Câu, and from the painting of a maiden who stepped out into real life. Unlike Taoist temples that honor gods guarding the directions, Bích Câu is a temple of the way of the immortals (tiên đạo). Those honored here are people who cultivated themselves and became immortals. This page tells both sides, the tale and what can still be verified.
ITú Uyên, Giáng Kiều and the way of the immortals
The magazine Người Hà Nội records that the temple honors three figures, Trần Tú Uyên, given the title An Quốc Chân Nhân, the fairy Hà Giáng Kiều, and their son. The title chân nhân, Perfected Person, is a Taoist title for someone who has attained the Way through cultivation, unlike the titles of great king or supreme deity used for village gods.
Bích Câu is not one of the four great Taoist temples of Thăng Long (Thăng Long tứ quán), which are introduced on the page for Quán Huyền Thiên. It is a small temple of the way of the immortals, and that is exactly what makes it deserve a page of its own.
Taoism has two broad paths that people often run together. One worships the gods, the beings who govern heaven, earth and the directions, such as Huyền Thiên Trấn Vũ or the Jade Emperor. The other is the way of the immortals, which holds that an ordinary person can cultivate themselves and become an immortal, living beyond the cycle of birth and death. The familiar images of this path are riding a crane, rising to heaven in broad daylight, and a fairy descending to guide a person who is destined for it. The tale of Tú Uyên contains all three, which makes this a typical place of worship of the second path.
Two versions of one tale
The first version is the one from Taoist writings. Người Hà Nội cites the book Hội chân biên, which records that the Perfected Person of the Trần family, named Uyên, was poor and built a thatched hut on Kim Quy mound in Bích Câu ward to study. One day, out walking, he met a girl in a pink dress at Chùa Ngọc Hồ (also called Chùa Bà Ngô). She said her name was Hà Giáng Kiều and that she would help him attain immortality. Three years later two cranes came flying down with books in their beaks, and the two of them rode the cranes up to heaven.
The second version is the one from the story. In the tale Bích Câu kỳ ngộ, Tú Uyên is a poor scholar in the reign of King Lê Thánh Tông who meets Giáng Kiều at a pagoda festival and then loses sight of her. Later he buys a painting of a fairy who looks exactly like the girl he met, and hangs it at home. The fairy steps out of the painting and becomes his wife. In the end Tú Uyên learns medicine to heal people, and then rises to the immortals with his wife. The newspaper Hà Nội Mới also records Tú Uyên as a skilled physician.
The two versions share the core of a fairy who guides a mortal to immortality, and differ in where they meet and in the role of medicine. Both are legends. There is no historical record of a real person named Trần Tú Uyên.
Many people read the story and assume that Tú Uyên is purely a literary character, given a temple because the story became famous. The sources show that the reverse may also be true. The book Hội chân biên records Tú Uyên as a Perfected Person of the Taoist way, which suggests that the worship and the religious tale may have come first, with the story as a literary layer laid over it later. The library does not have enough sources to say which came first, and asks only that readers not regard this as a shrine to a character from a novel.
IIFrom a tale of the marvelous to a ca trù mat
The Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports and the newspaper Hà Nội Mới record that, by tradition, the temple was built in the reign of King Lê Thánh Tông, in the 15th century. Người Hà Nội is more specific, giving the Hồng Đức era, one of that same king's reign names. No founding stele has been found. Note that the tale of Tú Uyên is also set in the reign of Lê Thánh Tông, so the date of the temple and the date of the story are easily pulled together. The year in the story is not the year the temple was built.
The Department also records that in the past the temple was frequented by the poets and men of letters of the capital, many of them students connected with the Temple of Literature and Imperial Academy, about 310 meters away. For Confucian learning, readers are referred to that page. Here it is enough to say that scholars of the classics coming to an immortals' temple to discuss poetry is very much a trait of Thăng Long.
- 15th centuryThe temple is builtBy tradition under King Lê Thánh Tông. Người Hà Nội gives the Hồng Đức era. No founding stele has been found.
- 18th centuryThe version in classical ChineseBích Câu kỳ ngộ ký is a story in a collection of tales of the marvelous that the Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports and the Vietnam Museum of Literature associate with Đoàn Thị Điểm.
- 1830Stone inscriptionNgười Hà Nội records that the temple keeps a stone piece measuring 1.6 by 1.38 meters with a text carved in this year, which the article calls a stone chime, together with a stele recording the history of restorations.
- Year unknownThe verse tale in NômThe Nôm verse version of Bích Câu kỳ ngộ runs to 648 lines. According to the Vietnam Museum of Literature, its author has not been identified.
- 1950sRebuiltThe temple had fallen into ruin and was rebuilt by local residents, according to Người Hà Nội.
- 1990National rankingNational historical and cultural heritage site, decision of 2 March 1990.
- 2008The ca trù class opensThe artisan Vân Mai and her husband opened a free ca trù class inside the temple, according to Nhân Dân.
- 2018Bích Câu Ca Trù TheaterThe two artisans also founded a ca trù theater named after the temple, according to Nhân Dân.
On the authorship of the tale, the sources do not agree, and the library records exactly that. The classical Chinese version, Bích Câu kỳ ngộ ký, is placed in a collection of tales by Đoàn Thị Điểm. The Nôm verse version, the one that generations of schoolchildren learned by heart, is recorded by the Vietnam Museum of Literature as of unidentified authorship. So the common saying that the tale of Tú Uyên is by Đoàn Thị Điểm is true of one version only, not of every version.
IIIStatues, stone inscriptions and the singing mat
Public sources say rather little about the temple's architecture, and the library does not want to fill the gap with guesses. What is certain is that the temple was rebuilt by local residents around the 1950s, so the architecture seen today belongs to the mid 20th century and later, not to the Lê dynasty. Người Hà Nội records that the temple keeps a stone stele recording the history of restorations, a stone piece with a text carved in 1830 that the article calls a stone chime, a monk's stupa, and sets of statues of the Three Holy Ones of the Avatamsaka (Hoa Nghiêm Tam Thánh), the Jade Emperor, and Nam Tào and Bắc Đẩu, the gods of the Southern and Northern Dipper. Buddhist statues and a monk's stupa in a Taoist temple are a familiar sign of the practice of honoring the Three Teachings together in northern Vietnam, which also fits the article's note that the old An Quốc pagoda stood beside the temple.
Người Hà Nội records that the temple keeps sets of statues of the Jade Emperor, Nam Tào and Bắc Đẩu, figures of the Taoist pantheon, alongside the worship of Tú Uyên, Giáng Kiều and their son. This is the clearest Taoist mark in the temple.
Người Hà Nội records a stele on the history of restorations and a stone piece 1.6 by 1.38 meters with a text carved in 1830, which the article calls a stone chime. 1830 is the earliest date the sources give.
A set of statues of the Three Holy Ones of the Avatamsaka and a monk's stupa, according to Người Hà Nội, stand beside the place of worship of the immortals, showing that the temple too follows the practice of the Three Teachings, like many other places of worship in Hanoi.
Not an object but a living space. The ca trù class opened in 2008 uses the temple itself as its place to teach and sing, and Nhân Dân reports that the class keeps a steady number of about twenty-five pupils.
The temple is also called Đình Bích Câu or Đình Tú Uyên. The word đình, communal house, leads some to think it is a village communal house for a tutelary god. Not quite. The one honored here is a Perfected Person of Taoism, and the word đình reflects the fact that the surrounding community uses the place as a shared meeting space, especially since local residents themselves rebuilt the temple. The official name in the heritage file is still Bích Câu Đạo Quán, and this is one of the few places in Hanoi that still keeps the words đạo quán, Taoist temple, in its everyday name.
As for the name, bích means jade green and câu means a stream or ditch. Read literally, Bích Câu means the jade-green stream. The Chinese characters at the top of the page are the library's rendering of the name and have not been checked against the characters on the temple gate.
IVThe lie of the land and the facing
This section is a reading, not something that can be verified. The library sets the temple in the frame of traditional feng shui to offer readers one more angle, and the temple has no document that speaks of how its site was chosen.
Today this is city ground, with the temple gate opening onto a large street and houses at its back. The library does not look for a dragon vein (long mạch) in such a place. What is worth reading lies in the place names and the neighbors.
The first name is Bích Câu, the jade-green stream. A name like that is rarely given for nothing. It keeps the memory that water once flowed here. For the way of the immortals, clear and quiet water is the most fitting place for cultivation, because the qi there is pure. The second name is Kim Quy, the Golden Turtle, the mound where the book Hội chân biên says Tú Uyên built his hut to study, and also the plot on which Người Hà Nội says the temple was built. The golden turtle is a creature of endurance and long life, well suited to a place that honors a seeker of the way of longevity. The library offers these two names as traces of how people of old saw the land, and reads no further into them.
The neighbors, on the other hand, are very clear. The temple stands only about three hundred meters from the Temple of Literature, the greatest seat of learning in the capital. On one side is the place where people studied to become officials, on the other the place where people cultivated themselves to become immortals. In the thinking of yin and yang, the two make a pair, one engaged with the world and one withdrawn from it, standing close without encroaching on each other. That is perhaps why scholars of old, having finished their studies on one side, crossed to the other to discuss poetry.
VThe festival of Tú Uyên's attainment of the Way
The Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports gives the temple's main festival as the 4th day of the 2nd lunar month, the day Tú Uyên attained the Way. Người Hà Nội adds a second rite on the 12th day of the 8th lunar month. The two sources do not contradict each other, each simply mentions one of the occasions.
| Lunar date | Occasion | Content | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4th day of the 2nd lunar month | Main festival, the day Tú Uyên attained the Way | Chanting of scriptures, sacrifice, a performance of the tale of Tú Uyên and Giáng Kiều, and ca trù singing | Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports |
| 12th day of the 8th lunar month | Second rite | Rite at the temple, not described in detail by the source | Người Hà Nội |
The most notable part of the main festival is the performance of the tale. Tú Uyên meeting Giáng Kiều, the painting and the ride on the cranes are acted out for the onlookers, which means the legend is not only told but staged again every year. The ca trù singing on the festival day links to the ca trù class held all year round, making the temple both a place of worship and a keeper of an old Hanoi singing tradition.
VILocation And How To Get There
- Address
- Số 14 phố Cát Linh, phường Văn Miếu - Quốc Tử Giám (phường Cát Linh cũ, quận Đống Đa cũ), Hà Nội. Hà Nội Online xếp đạo quán vào danh sách di tích của phường Văn Miếu - Quốc Tử Giám mới
- Getting there
- 14 Cát Linh Street, Ô Chợ Dừa ward (formerly Cát Linh ward, former Đống Đa district), Hanoi. About three hundred meters on foot from the gate of the Temple of Literature.
- Coordinates
- 21.0287, 105.8326
The temple is both a place of worship and a place where singing is taught, so its customs cover both. Visitors are expected to dress modestly and remove hats before the altars of the immortals. When the ca trù class is teaching or singing, visitors are asked to sit quietly to the end of the stanza, not to talk, and not to step between the singer and the person keeping time on the clappers. Those who wish to photograph the singers should ask the artisans first.
Nearby places in the library
VIIContribute To This Page
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Góp ảnh, thông tin hoặc video cho Bích Câu Đạo QuánEveryone is welcome to enrich this page: a photo you took, a detail the page misses, a short video. Every contribution is read and answered.
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?Quick Questions
Who is honored at Bích Câu Taoist Temple
Trần Tú Uyên, given the title An Quốc Chân Nhân, the fairy Hà Giáng Kiều and their son, according to Người Hà Nội. It is a place of worship of the way of the immortals, honoring people who became immortals through cultivation, not gods who guard the directions as at Quán Thánh. The temple also has Buddhist statues.
What does the tale of Tú Uyên and Giáng Kiều tell
There are two versions. The book Hội chân biên tells that the Perfected Person Trần Uyên built a hut to study on Kim Quy mound, met the fairy Giáng Kiều, and three years later rode up to heaven with her on cranes. The tale Bích Câu kỳ ngộ tells of a poor scholar who buys a painting of a fairy, who steps out to become his wife, and who later learns medicine to heal people and rises to the immortals with her. Both are legends.
Is Bích Câu one of the four great Taoist temples of Thăng Long
No. The four are Trấn Vũ, Huyền Thiên, Đồng Thiên and Đế Thích. Bích Câu is a small Taoist temple of the way of the immortals and is not one of the four. The library's page on Quán Huyền Thiên introduces the four temples.
When is the festival of Bích Câu Taoist Temple
The main festival is on the 4th day of the 2nd lunar month, the day Tú Uyên attained the Way according to the Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports, with chanting of scriptures, sacrifice, a performance of the tale of Tú Uyên and Giáng Kiều, and ca trù singing. Người Hà Nội adds a rite on the 12th day of the 8th lunar month.
Who wrote the tale Bích Câu kỳ ngộ
The classical Chinese version, Bích Câu kỳ ngộ ký, is placed in a collection of tales associated with Đoàn Thị Điểm. The Nôm verse version of 648 lines is recorded by the Vietnam Museum of Literature as of unidentified authorship. Both versions tell the same tale and set it in the reign of King Lê Thánh Tông.