Standing on the pavement of Nguyễn Trãi Street, you see little at first, a narrow frontage, bare brick walls and a roof of yin and yang tiles. You have to look up to see the most remarkable thing about this place, a band of small ceramic figures running the whole length of the ridge, people, horses, city walls and pavilions, arranged in layers like a stage set up on end against the sky. Step through the door, and the smoke from hundreds of incense coils hanging across the ceiling falls in streaks of light.
People in Saigon call this place chùa Bà, the Lady's temple. But the name carved on the signboard is Tuệ Thành Hội Quán, and the word hội quán, assembly hall, tells its true origin. This was first of all the common house of the Chinese from Guangzhou prefecture in Guangdong province, where they met and handled the affairs of their fellow migrants, and only then a place to worship Thiên Hậu Thánh Mẫu. The two functions share one set of walls, and that is what defines this kind of building.
IThe deity worshipped here and the community that founded the temple
The figure seated at the center of the main hall is Thiên Hậu Thánh Mẫu, known in Chinese as Mazu, the goddess who watches over the sea in Chinese folk belief. The title Thiên Hậu means Empress of Heaven, the highest in the series of honorific titles that successive Chinese dynasties conferred on her. Here she has three statues set in a row rising from low to high, with two jade maidens standing in attendance on either side.
The name Tuệ Thành is the Sino-Vietnamese reading of the two characters for an old name of the city of Guangzhou. Putting the name of one's home region on the signboard was the common practice of the Chinese assembly halls in Chợ Lớn, so the name alone tells which group founded each one. The library gives the four Chinese characters in the standard form of that name rather than copying them from a photograph of a particular plaque.
In the view of Chinese folk belief, a person of great merit in life may be taken into the ranks of the gods after death, and then receive honorific titles from the court, one after another, up to the highest rank. Thiên Hậu was formed in exactly this way, rising from a young woman of Fujian, through the faith of seafaring people, to the position of the goddess who governs wind and waves.
Her role of rescuing people on the water explains why she became the principal deity of almost every group of Chinese who crossed the sea to southern Vietnam, whether from Guangdong, Fujian, Chaozhou or Hainan. Her incense bowl was often brought along on the very first boat, and a temple to her was often the first building a group raised once it had found its footing.
In terms of organization, it should be made clear that this is an assembly hall, not a pagoda run by a community of monks. The assembly hall was the form of self-government of Chinese migrant groups, gathered by home region and by dialect. They looked after each other in matters such as receiving newcomers, settling disputes, helping in sickness and at funerals, and pooling money for their children's schooling. The temple to the shared deity was where the whole group gathered, and also where the group's standing was kept.
The stone stelae recording the names of the people and trading houses who donated are the very records of that community. Reading the stelae in an assembly hall tells you not only the years of restoration but also how many merchants the group had at the time and who led it.
There are two common misunderstandings, which the library sets out in the voice of the historical record.
The first is the word chùa. In Vietnamese, chùa originally means a Buddhist pagoda, but Vietnamese people in the south have long used the word more widely for Chinese temples to deities as well, since they share the same yin and yang tile roofs, the same incense smoke and the same purpose as places of worship. Inside there is no altar of the Three Jewels, no Buddha image on the main altar and no community of resident monks. Strictly speaking, this is an assembly hall with a temple to a deity, belonging to Chinese folk religion blended with Taoism, not a Mahayana Buddhist pagoda of the Kinh, the Vietnamese majority.
Second, this place is not the Thiên Hậu Temple in Thủ Dầu Một. Both honor the same goddess and both were founded by Chinese communities, but they are two separate heritage sites about thirty kilometers apart, and the library has a page for each. The Chợ Lớn temple is tied to the Tuệ Thành Assembly Hall of the Cantonese alone, and its festival for the Lady falls on the 23rd day of the 3rd lunar month. The Thủ Dầu Một temple is kept by four Chinese communities together and holds a procession of the Lady's palanquin through the streets on the 15th day of the 1st lunar month.
IITwo hundred years inside one set of walls
No document records the founding year of the assembly hall decisively. What the place has left behind are dated objects, a bronze bell, a stone stele and a band of ceramic figures on the roof. Its history therefore has to be read backward from the objects rather than forward from the chronicles.
- Around 1760Cantonese Chinese found the assembly hallThe date widely used in tourism material and in the library's data table, linked to the first Chinese from Guangzhou prefecture who came to trade in the Chợ Lớn area.
- 1795The earliest bronze bellThe bronze bell in the temple is dated to the Qianlong reign. It is the earliest object still on site and the firmest evidence for the age of the place.
- 1830The stone steleThe stele says that the assembly hall had taken shape more than thirty years earlier, though still on a small scale. This is what calls the 1760 date into question.
- 19th centurySeveral major restorationsThe sources list the years 1800, 1825, 1839, 1842, 1882 and 1890, though the exact list differs from one account to another. Most of the building's present form took shape during this period.
- 1878The second bellA bell dated to the Mậu Ngọ year, cast during a restoration late in the 19th century.
- 1908The ceramic figures on the roofThe band of ceramic figures along the ridge was made by two kilns, Bửu Nguyên and Đồng Hòa. It is the part most often cited when the artistic value of the site is discussed.
- 1993National heritage siteRanked as a national architectural and artistic heritage site by Decision No. 43, signed on 7 January 1993.
The library prefers to state plainly where the sources disagree. For the founding year of the assembly hall, the usual date is around 1760, but the stele set up in 1830 records that the hall had only taken shape more than thirty years before, that is around 1795 to 1800. The most reasonable explanation is that a small temple was built first and became an organized assembly hall only at the end of the 18th century, but the library has not found any document that settles the question, so it gives both rather than choosing at random.
The second disagreement is smaller. It concerns the list of restorations in the 19th century and the name of the kiln that made the roof figures, which some accounts give as Đồng Hòa and others as Đông Hòa. Both point to the same Shiwan ceramic tradition.
IIILayout, roof ceramics and wood carving
The compound is more than sixty-five meters long and about twenty-seven meters wide, built as a timber-framed structure with load-bearing gable walls and roofs of yin and yang tiles. The plan runs along one long axis. From the street inward come the front hall, the sky well (thiên tỉnh), the middle hall, the incense pavilion and then the main hall, with the east and west wings on either side. The sky well is an open courtyard left between the layers of building, letting in light and giving incense smoke a way up. In a temple hung with hundreds of incense coils, that opening is a vital part of the building.
Made in 1908 by the Bửu Nguyên and Đồng Hòa kilns, in the Shiwan (Thạch Loan) ceramic tradition of Foshan, Guangdong. The subjects include two dragons contending for a pearl, with layers of small figures acting out scenes from Journey to the West, the Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea and Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Shrines, carved screens and arched door frames in wood lacquered red and gilded, with birds, animals, flowers and leaves and the familiar stories of Cantonese art. This is the carpenter's work, quite distinct from the ceramics on the roof.
Two bells, the earlier dated 1795 in the Qianlong reign, the later dated to the Mậu Ngọ year, that is 1878. The 1795 bell is the object that fixes the age of the site most firmly.
The main hall holds three statues of Thiên Hậu arranged from low to high, flanked by jade maidens. The associated altars include Long Mẫu nương nương (the Dragon Mother), Kim Hoa nương nương (the Lady of the Golden Flower), Quan Đế (Guan Di), the god of wealth, and Thiên Lý Nhãn and Thuận Phong Nhĩ (Thousand-Li Eye and Wind-Following Ear).
Stone stelae record the restorations and the names of the people and trading houses who donated, along with horizontal plaques and couplets in Chinese characters hanging along the bays. They form the primary documentary layer of the site.
Why Shiwan ceramics sit on the roof
Shiwan (Thạch Loan) is a pottery-making area in Foshan, Guangdong province, famous for multicolored glazed ceramic figures set on the roofs of buildings. The Cantonese carried this style of decoration with them when they traveled abroad, and their assembly halls across Southeast Asia can be recognized from afar by the band of figures on the ridge.
As a craft, these small figures were modeled and fired separately in clusters and then fixed to the ridge, arranged in several layers with depth, like a stage. Each cluster is a familiar episode that members of the community recognize at a glance. In other words, the roof here does not only keep off the rain. It also does the work of a narrative picture, placed where anyone passing in the street can see it.
IVThe lie of the land and the facing
This section is the library's reading through the eyes of traditional feng shui, not something recorded on stelae or in the heritage dossier. It is marked as such so that readers can tell which parts are records and which are interpretation.
The first thing worth reading is not the temple itself but its place in the neighborhood. The assembly hall does not withdraw to a secluded spot. Its front opens onto a main street in the busiest trading quarter of the Chinese. The choice makes sense both for daily life and in the reading of land. An assembly hall had to be where members of the group could easily find it, and in the traditional reading the market is where people gather (tụ nhân), and where people gather, qi gathers with them.
In terms of the five elements, Thiên Hậu is a goddess of the sea and belongs to Water. Old Chợ Lớn was a land of canals and creeks where goods moved by boat, and the assembly halls rose along the landings. This temple therefore belongs, in the literal sense, to the class of buildings beside water at the time it was built. According to a newspaper article citing a stele set up in 1859, the assembly hall stands where the rivers meet before it, with dragons dancing and tigers prowling on either side, and across the street there was also a pond for releasing fish to gather qi and hold the vein of the land. As the water receded, the position beside water (lâm thủy) was replaced by a position beside the flow of passing people, and in this reading the function of gathering qi (tụ khí) remains, only its material has changed.
As for layout, the long axis of many layers with sky wells between them is a structure worth noting. Read by form, qi comes in from the street through the front hall, pauses in the first sky well, passes on through the middle hall, pauses for another beat, and only then settles into the main hall. Each open courtyard plays exactly the part of a small bright hall (minh đường). The old books on the land require the bright hall to be light and open, and on a long, narrow plot in the middle of the town the sky well is the only way to achieve this.
Last is the roof. The ridge curves up at both ends. Read through feng shui, a straight roof cuts the wind into sharp currents, while a curved roof lets the wind slide away, and a place of worship needs slow qi, not hurried qi. It should be repeated that the builders worked in the visual tradition of Cantonese architecture, not from any particular book on the land. What the library writes here is only how an eye trained in feng shui would see the building when standing in front of it.
VThe Lady's festival and the custom of hanging incense coils
The largest rite of the year is the Lady's festival, on the 23rd day of the 3rd lunar month, which Chinese belief holds to be the birthday of Thiên Hậu Thánh Mẫu. Beyond that day, the place has a life of its own that follows no calendar, the custom of hanging incense coils, which means the temple is almost never without smoke.
| Lunar date | What | Details |
|---|---|---|
| 23rd day of the 3rd lunar month | The Lady's festival | The most important rite of the year, held on the Lady's birthday. There is an offering in the Chinese manner with roast pork, chicken and fruit, carried out by the assembly hall's management board, together with lion and dragon dances. The night before there is a rite of bathing the Lady's statue. On the morning of the 23rd the Lady is carried in procession, her statue placed in a palanquin and paraded through the streets around the temple, followed by a dragon boat and lion and dragon dance troupes. |
| From the 1st to the 15th day of the 1st lunar month | New year worship | The busiest period. Visitors come to offer incense, ask for blessings and hang incense coils to pray for the whole year. The temple hangs red lanterns across its ceilings. |
| 15th day of the 1st lunar month | Lantern Festival | The Lantern Festival (Nguyên tiêu) of the Chợ Lớn Chinese community, with incense offerings and the shared activities of the assembly hall. |
| 15th and 1st day of every lunar month | Regular worship | The customary offering of incense by the lunar calendar, on a modest scale, kept steadily all year. |
| All year round | Hanging incense coils and asking for blessings | Visitors buy an incense coil, write their name and prayer on a slip of red paper tied to it, and ask the keepers to hang it from the ceiling. The coil burns slowly over many days, and this is the most familiar image of the temple. |
The custom of hanging incense coils deserves one more word. A large coil burns slowly, some for many days, so the prayer tied to it is understood to remain in the temple for all that time. People do not simply pray and go home. They leave behind something still burning in their place. Hundreds of coils hung in overlapping layers form the characteristic ceiling of smoke, and this is also why the building's sky wells had to be as wide as they are.
VILocation And How To Get There
- Address
- Số 710 đường Nguyễn Trãi, phường Chợ Lớn, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh
- Getting there
- At No. 710 Nguyễn Trãi Street, Chợ Lớn ward, in the heart of Chợ Lớn. Within walking distance of Bình Tây Market and of the other Chinese assembly halls along the same street.
- Coordinates
- 10.753, 106.6606
This is an active temple, not a museum, so its customs are the ones to follow. Visitors are generally expected to dress modestly, remove hats on entering the main hall, walk softly and speak quietly, and not touch the statues, the carved wooden screens or the two bronze bells. Incense coils should be left where the keepers indicate, and visitors should not climb up to hang them themselves. On the Lady's festival on the 23rd day of the 3rd lunar month and in the first days of the new year, the courtyard and halls are very crowded and the paths are often one-way.
Nearby places in the library
VIIContribute To This Page
Contribute photos, information or video for Thien Hau Temple, Cho Lon
Góp ảnh, thông tin hoặc video cho Chùa Bà Thiên Hậu Chợ LớnEveryone is welcome to enrich this page: a photo you took, a detail the page misses, a short video. Every contribution is read and answered.
Thầy Ưng Khiêm mời cộng đồng cùng làm giàu trang này. Ảnh chụp tận nơi, một chi tiết lịch sử chưa được nhắc, một đoạn video ngắn: mọi đóng góp đều được đọc và trả lời.
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?Quick Questions
Who is worshipped at the Thien Hau Temple in Cho Lon
Thiên Hậu Thánh Mẫu, known in Chinese as Mazu, the goddess who watches over the sea in Chinese folk belief, with three statues set in a row rising from low to high in the main hall. The associated altars include Long Mẫu nương nương, Kim Hoa nương nương, Quan Đế, the god of wealth, and Thiên Lý Nhãn and Thuận Phong Nhĩ.
What does Tuệ Thành Hội Quán mean
Tuệ Thành is the Sino-Vietnamese reading of an old name of the city of Guangzhou, and a hội quán is the common house of a group of Chinese migrants from the same home region. Together, the name says that the place was founded by Chinese from Guangzhou prefecture in Guangdong province, to meet, look after the affairs of their fellow migrants and worship their shared deity.
When was the Thien Hau Temple in Cho Lon built
Sources disagree. The usual date is around 1760, but the stele set up in 1830 records that the assembly hall had only taken shape more than thirty years earlier, that is around 1795 to 1800. The earliest dated object still on site is the bronze bell of 1795.
What kind of ceramics are on the roof
Shiwan ware, from a pottery-making area in Foshan, Guangdong province, famous for multicolored glazed figures set on roofs. The band here was made in 1908 by the Bửu Nguyên and Đồng Hòa kilns and acts out scenes from Journey to the West, the Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, arranged in several layers with depth.
Is the Chợ Lớn temple the same as the Lady's temple in Bình Dương
No. They are two separate heritage sites about thirty kilometers apart. The Chợ Lớn temple is tied to the Tuệ Thành Assembly Hall of the Cantonese, and its festival for the Lady falls on the 23rd day of the 3rd lunar month. The Thủ Dầu Một temple is kept by four Chinese communities together and holds a procession of the Lady's palanquin through the streets on the 15th day of the 1st lunar month.