Turn from Ninh Kiều wharf into Hai Bà Trưng Street and a few dozen steps on you come to a low row of yin and yang tile roofs, their edges trimmed with green glazed ceramic. Along the ridge runs a line of multicolored ceramic figures, dragons, phoenixes and characters from opera stories standing in layers, and at the two ends two figures holding up the sun and the moon. The front does not open wide onto the street but draws inward, and the incense smoke inside rises to the sky through an opening in the middle of the roof.
People in Cần Thơ call this place chùa Ông, the Ông Pagoda. The Chinese signboard over the door, however, reads Quảng Triệu hội quán, the assembly hall of the people of the two prefectures of Guangzhou and Zhaoqing in Guangdong province. The two names say different things. One is the familiar name used by the Vietnamese around it, the other is the original function of the building. Before anything else, this is the assembly hall of a migrant community.
IGuan Di and the associated deities
The figure worshipped in the main hall is Quan Thánh Đế Quân, Guan Di, whom Vietnamese people usually call Quan Công and the Chinese call Quan Đế. His origin is Guan Yu (Quan Vũ), a general of the Three Kingdoms period in China. Over many centuries of honors and worship he became a major god in the Chinese pantheon, standing for loyalty and good faith.
In the Chinese system of worship, Guan Di holds a place that few other deities share. He is at once a martial god who subdues evil, a god of wealth for the merchant class, and the witness to oaths and to keeping one's word. That third layer explains why his altar stands at the heart of a merchants' assembly hall. Wherever people made agreements by word of mouth, without papers to guarantee them, a god was needed to bear witness. The green dragon crescent blade and the red face of the statue belong to the martial layer, while the reasons people come to pray mostly belong to the layers of trust and prosperity.
As far as can be verified, groups of Chinese from Guangdong settled in the Mekong Delta in several waves, the earliest around the 17th and 18th centuries, continuing through the 19th. People from each home region set up their own assembly hall according to origin, halls of the Cantonese, the Teochew, the Hokkien, the Hainanese and the Hakka. An assembly hall did three things at once. It was a place of worship, a place to meet and discuss business, and a source of mutual help for newcomers. The Quảng Triệu Assembly Hall in Cần Thơ belongs to the first of these groups.
Beside the principal deity is Thiên Hậu Thánh Mẫu, known in Chinese as Mazu, the goddess who protects seafarers, worshipped by Chinese who crossed the sea throughout Southeast Asia. According to a newspaper report, her altar stands on the right of the main hall, while the left honors Đổng Vĩnh (Dong Yong), a figure from the Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars. There is an altar to Tài Bạch Tinh Quân, the star lord in charge of money, an altar to Phúc Đức Chính Thần, the Upright God of Fortune and Virtue, whom people call Ông Bổn, in charge of the land, and a separate shrine to Quan Thế Âm, the Bodhisattva Guanyin. Under one roof there are Taoist gods, a protector of seafaring, a god of the land and a figure of Buddhism.
There are two common misunderstandings about this place, which the library sets out in the voice of the historical record.
First, this is not a Buddhist pagoda. The word chùa in the name Chùa Ông is the familiar usage of the local Vietnamese, applied to any place of worship with incense smoke. The formal name on the signboard is hội quán, an assembly hall, and the principal figure in the main hall is a god, not a Buddha. The shrine to Guanyin is an associated altar, not the center of worship.
Second, the worship here is Chinese folk religion blended with Taoism, not the same as the Taoism of the Kinh, the Vietnamese majority. The two meet in that both honor figures of the Taoist pantheon. But the differences are clear. Chinese places of worship are called assembly halls or temples, tied to organization by home region and by trade, keep Cantonese in their liturgy, and follow a calendar set by the festival days of each deity in the Chinese pantheon. Kinh Taoist places of worship are called quán and are deeply blended with local deities and village custom. The library sets out this difference so that readers understand the place they are standing in, without ranking either side above the other.
IIFrom a migrants' assembly hall to a national heritage site
The history of this place is bound to a river landing. Cần Thơ lies where the Cần Thơ River flows into the Hậu River, a stopping point for boats from all over the delta, and so a place where traders gathered. The assembly hall was built right on the front of that landing rather than set back in the streets.
- 17th and 18th centuriesCantonese Chinese reach the deltaGroups of migrants from the two prefectures of Guangzhou and Zhaoqing settled in the Mekong Delta in several waves, making their living by trade and crafts, and then founded assembly halls according to their home regions.
- 1892The bronze bell is castThe bronze bell still in the building is dated 1892, before construction of the present building began. This detail is discussed further below.
- 1894Work begins on the Quảng Triệu Assembly HallThe Chinese community of the two prefectures began building the assembly hall on the front of the river landing, on a plot of 532 square meters according to the heritage records.
- 1896CompletionCompleted after two years. Most of the materials, such as wooden columns, stone column bases, rafters, purlins, couplets and incense burners, were brought from Guangdong, and many items bear the date 1896.
- 1931The kitchen house is builtThe kitchen house, where food for the rites was cooked and prepared, was added later than the main building.
- 1993National heritage siteOn 21 June 1993 the Ministry of Culture and Information issued a decision ranking Chùa Ông a national architectural and artistic heritage site. Through later rounds of repair, the timber frame, the glazed tiles and the original ceramic panels have largely survived intact. In 2010 the whole building was raised by more than one meter to protect it from flooding at high tide.
Here the sources disagree, and the library says so plainly. The city's heritage records and most articles give the dates as begun in 1894, completed in 1896, and those are the dates the library uses. But one local introduction to the site dates the building part by part, with the main hall built in the middle of the 19th century, the guest house at the end of the 19th century and the kitchen house in 1931. For the main hall, the two accounts differ by several decades.
The bronze bell cast in 1892 complicates matters further, since it predates the start of construction. This can be explained in two ways. The bell may have been cast in Guangdong and shipped over, or it may have belonged to an earlier temporary place of worship. The library has not found a document that settles the question, so it gives both rather than choosing at random. It should also be added that one local tourism site lists the bronze bell among the materials dated 1896, so the 1892 date itself needs to be checked against the inscription on the bell. The area also differs slightly, 532 square meters in one account and more than 533 in another.
IIIThe enclosed plan, the sky well and the roof ceramics
The whole building is laid out in the shape of the character Quốc, ranges of building closed off and set at right angles to one another around an open space in the middle. This is the usual way of building a Chinese assembly hall. The four walls are closed to the street, every door and every altar opens inward, and the whole block has only one opening to the sky.
The open space in the middle, called thiên tỉnh in Sino-Vietnamese, the sky well. It is the only place in the building open straight to the sky, and it does three jobs. It lights the main hall, lets incense smoke escape, and keeps the interior from becoming stuffy. Above it is a movable roof that adjusts the light and keeps out the rain.
Along the ridge and on the roof edges runs a band of multicolored glazed ceramic figures, dragons, phoenixes, qilin, and a layer of characters from opera stories arranged in scenes. At the two ends of the band are two figures holding up the sun and the moon. These ceramic panels were brought from Guangdong and belong to the handmade ceramics of Chinese craftsmen of the Qing period.
On the doors, the carved screens, the balustrades and the eaves are wood carvings in both high and low relief. Their subjects come from Chinese legends and stories, mixed with flowers, leaves, birds and animals. To read these carvings in order is to read a whole collection of stories that the migrants carried in their baggage.
Most of the materials, from wooden columns, stone column bases, rafters and purlins to couplets and incense burners, were shipped from Guangdong, many of them dated 1896, so the building keeps a very pure Cantonese craftsmanship. Only the carved screens at Guan Di's altar were made in Chợ Lớn. Inside are the bronze bell dated 1892 and a dense array of horizontal plaques and couplets in Chinese characters hanging on the rows of columns, most of them donated by members of the assembly hall.
Building a house closed on four sides and leaving a sky well in the middle is not a matter of looks but of living. A migrants' assembly hall usually stood right on a busy trading street, noisy and dusty. Closing all four sides cut that noise off from the place of worship. But a closed building is dark and airless, so an opening to the sky was needed. The result is a patch of light falling straight down into the middle of the building while the sides stay dark. This is the most characteristic feature of Chinese assembly hall architecture, not to be confused with a Buddhist pagoda or a Kinh village communal house (đình).
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 records from interpretation. It should be added that the land reading of the Cantonese Chinese and that of the Kinh share many principles, so what follows applies to both.
First is the position. The assembly hall stands right on the front of Ninh Kiều wharf, where the Cần Thơ River is about to flow into the Hậu River. In the reading of land, the place where two waters meet is called the water mouth (thủy khẩu), and the water mouth is regarded as the place where the qi of a whole region enters and leaves. For a community living by river trade, it was also where boats came in to land. Two reasons, one from the old rules and one from business, coincide at the same point on the map.
Next are water and wealth. The old rules say that mountains govern people, water governs wealth (sơn quản nhân đinh, thủy quản tài lộc). This whole delta has no mountains, only water. Read in the old way, it is land heavy in wealth and light in descendants, better suited to a merchants' assembly hall than to a village temple. The altar of Tài Bạch Tinh Quân inside the building, and the weight worshippers give to Guan Di's role as a god of wealth, both follow the same line.
As for the facing, the main gate opens onto Hai Bà Trưng Street, that is toward the water, with its back to the town. The old rules call this water in front (tiền thủy). It differs from the textbook pattern of backed by mountain, facing water (tựa sơn hướng thủy) in having no mountain to lean on. The support here is the closed block of streets behind it, and in the urban reading of land a continuous row of buildings can stand in for the mountain.
Last is the sky well, the most notable point when reading this place by the old rules. Four ranges of building close into the shape of the character Quốc, sealed on all four sides, so qi does not escape outward but circulates within the courtyard. This pattern is called sheltering from wind and gathering qi (tàng phong tụ khí). But if it were fully closed the qi would stagnate, so an opening to the sky had to be left. The sky well is both where heaven pours light down and where incense smoke rises, one path down and one path up in the same open space. The Chinese call that place a well, and a well is always where the whole household draws its water. The name states exactly the function the old rules assign to it.
VLunar festival days and the custom of hanging incense coils
The calendar of rites here follows the lunar calendar and the festival days of each deity worshipped, not the holy days of Buddhism. A festival day is the day of a deity's birth or departure, and each altar in the building has its own, so the year holds many small rites rather than one great festival.
| Lunar date | Festival | Details |
|---|---|---|
| 1st to 15th day of the 1st lunar month | New year worship | The busiest period of the year. People in Cần Thơ keep the custom of coming here at the stroke of the new year and in the first days of the year to pray for peace, hang incense coils and ask for blessings. |
| 15th day of the 3rd lunar month | Death anniversary of Ông Bổn | The rite of the altar of Phúc Đức Chính Thần, the god in charge of the land and the locality, whom people call Ông Bổn. |
| 23rd day of the 3rd lunar month | Festival of Thiên Hậu Thánh Mẫu | The festival day of the goddess who protects seafarers, with offerings at Thiên Hậu's altar. |
| 24th day of the 6th lunar month | Festival of Guan Di | The festival day of the principal deity of the main hall, with offerings of vegetarian food and fruit. One local tourism site, however, gives Guan Di's festival as the 13th day of the 1st lunar month. |
| By the hall's own custom | Festival of Tài Bạch Tinh Quân | The festival day of the god of money, valued by the merchant class. A simple rite, mainly incense offered at his altar. |
What visitors remember longest is not a festival but an object, the incense coil, in some places called a khoanh nhang. These are coils of incense wound in a spiral which, opened out, look like an upturned conical leaf hat. Someone praying for peace writes the name of the person they wish to bless on a small tag, in Vietnamese or in Chinese characters, attaches it to a coil, and the coils are hung one inside another on a rack about four meters high in the main hall. Each coil burns very slowly, about two weeks for one coil according to press reports.
Because they burn slowly and hang in overlapping layers, the rack of incense in the main hall is almost never out. The press reports that the main hall can hold up to eight hundred coils at once. Seen from below, the whole ceiling of the main hall is a layer of concentric circles giving off smoke, and the sky well draws that smoke upward. This is where ritual fits into architecture. Without the sky well, hundreds of coils could not burn continuously in a building closed on four sides.
VILocation And How To Get There
- Address
- Số 32 đường Hai Bà Trưng, phường Ninh Kiều, Cần Thơ
- Getting there
- No. 32 Hai Bà Trưng Street, Ninh Kiều ward, Cần Thơ, right on the front of Ninh Kiều wharf by the river. Within walking distance of the old Cần Thơ market and of the boat landing park.
- Coordinates
- 10.0342, 105.7885
A few customs of this assembly hall. Visitors are generally expected to dress modestly, remove hats on entering the main hall, and not touch the wood carvings, the ceramic panels or the bronze bell. The rack of incense coils hangs overhead and is burning, so visitors are asked not to stand directly beneath it for long, and not to remove or move other people's coils themselves. Those who wish to hang a coil write the name on a tag and ask the keeper to hang it for them.
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?Quick Questions
Who is worshipped at the Ông Pagoda in Cần Thơ
The principal figure in the main hall is Quan Thánh Đế Quân, Guan Di, also called Quan Công, who began as Guan Yu, a general of the Three Kingdoms period later made a god. The associated altars include Thiên Hậu Thánh Mẫu, Tài Bạch Tinh Quân, Phúc Đức Chính Thần, whom people call Ông Bổn, and a shrine to the Bodhisattva Guanyin.
Is the Ông Pagoda in Cần Thơ a Buddhist pagoda
No. The word chùa here is the familiar usage of the local Vietnamese. The formal name on the signboard is Quảng Triệu hội quán, the assembly hall of the Chinese from the two prefectures of Guangzhou and Zhaoqing. The worship here is Chinese folk religion blended with Taoism, the same neither as Buddhism nor as the Taoism of the Kinh.
What does Quảng Triệu hội quán mean
Quảng stands for Guangzhou prefecture and Triệu for Zhaoqing prefecture, two prefectures of Guangdong province. A hội quán is the assembly hall of people from the same home region, doing three things at once, worship, meetings to discuss business, and mutual help for newcomers. The name tells at once which community built it.
What are the incense coils at the Ông Pagoda
Incense coils, also called khoanh nhang, are spirals of incense which, opened out, look like an upturned conical leaf hat. Someone praying for peace writes a name on a tag, attaches it to a coil, and the coils are hung one inside another on a high rack in the main hall. Each coil burns for about two weeks, so the rack is almost never out.
When was the Ông Pagoda in Cần Thơ built
The city's heritage records give construction as begun in 1894 and completed in 1896, on a plot of 532 square meters. One local introduction to the site instead dates the main hall to the middle of the 19th century, the guest house to the end of the 19th century and the kitchen house to 1931. The two accounts disagree, so the library gives both.