Leaving the new blocks of Long Biên for the village of Ngọc Trì, you come to a brick-paved courtyard, a row of tiled buildings with upturned eaves and, at the very back, a rear sanctuary with a two-tier roof. In the shadows of the sanctuary sits a bronze statue nearly as tall as two people standing one on the other, legs lowered, in a dark robe, one hand resting on the hilt of a sword whose point stands on the back of a turtle, with a snake coiled around the blade.
This is Huyền Thiên Trấn Vũ, the same god as the statue at Quán Thánh Temple across the river, but this is a village temple, not a Taoist temple of the capital. People come here for two things, the statue recognized as a national treasure, and the festival of the 3rd lunar month with its tug of war in which the players sit on the ground to pull.
IHuyền Thiên Trấn Vũ in a village temple
The god worshipped here is Huyền Thiên Trấn Vũ, the Taoist god who guards the north and governs water. Along the Red River, the villagers worship this god as a water-governing deity of rice farmers, protecting the harvest of villages that live off the alluvial flats and yet fear the rising water. The name of the temple therefore states the god's role exactly, a Taoist god whom a village on the edge of the city worships as the protector of the whole village. VietnamPlus records that the tutelary god of Ngọc Trì village is Saint Linh Lang, so Trấn Vũ here should not be called the village tutelary god (thành hoàng).
The three Chinese characters at the top of this page are the library's way of writing the name Trấn Vũ Temple after its data table, not copied from a particular horizontal board in the temple. Người Hà Nội records that the wooden spirit tablet behind the statue is carved with the words Hiển linh Trấn Vũ quán, and that the head of an old stele also calls the place the Trấn Vũ quán.
In Taoist teaching, Xuanwu (Huyền Vũ) is the sacred animal of the north, corresponding to the Water element and the color black, and takes the form of a turtle and a snake entwined. In time this creature was personified as a great emperor in black robes, hair unbound, holding a seven-star sword and treading on the turtle and the snake. The turtle stands for steadiness and the snake for suppleness, and both belong to water. A god who masters both is believed able to govern water, and that is why riverside villages worship him as a water-governing god.
According to the folk account recorded by Người Hà Nội, and to the stele erected at the temple in 1820 as cited by Nhân Dân, tradition holds that King Lê Thánh Tông, on his way to campaign in the south, stopped in the Cự Linh area, where the god manifested his power in support of him, and afterwards the king had the temple founded. Người Hà Nội adds that the wooden spirit tablet in gold letters reading Hiển linh Trấn Vũ quán dates from that time. This belongs to legend, and the years of the king's reign (1460 to 1497) only indicate the period in which the temple's legend places the founding, not a building date that has been verified.
The firmer evidence lies in the objects. The temple keeps 23 original royal decrees (sắc phong) on dó paper, recognized by the Hanoi People's Committee as rare archival documents in 2018. On their dates the sources do not agree. Quân đội Nhân dân, VietnamPlus and Nhân Dân give 1740 to 1940, but VietnamPlus and Nhân Dân also say the earliest decree bears the reign date of the 44th year of Cảnh Hưng, which is 1783, not 1740. VOV2 instead gives 1470 as the start of the decrees. The library has not seen a list of the individual decrees, so it records only that the set runs from the late Lê period to the Nguyễn period and gives all the figures so that readers can see the discrepancy.
Many people hear the name Trấn Vũ Temple and take it to be Trấn Vũ Quán, that is, Quán Thánh Temple by West Lake. It is not. Quán Thánh is the Taoist temple that guarded the north of the capital Thăng Long, one of the four guardian temples of Thăng Long and also one of the four great Taoist temples of the capital. Trấn Vũ Temple at Thạch Bàn is the temple of Ngọc Trì village on the left bank of the Red River, and does not belong to the four Taoist temples of Thăng Long, nor to the four guardian temples. The two places worship the same god and both have great bronze statues that are national treasures, but they are two separate treasures, with different roles, statues cast in different periods and different communities of worshippers.
IIFrom the temple legend to a statue of the late Tây Sơn period
The history of the temple has two layers of differing certainty. The legend places the founding under King Lê Thánh Tông. Among the objects, the earliest is a stele in the Lê style of the 17th century, its text worn away, whose head reads Cự Linh tự Trấn Vũ quán trùng tu bi ký, a stele recording the restoration of Cự Linh Pagoda and the Trấn Vũ quán, according to Người Hà Nội. After it come the set of 18th-century royal decrees and the bronze statue begun in 1788. The buildings seen today bear the marks of the Nguyễn period, after a major restoration in 2006 to 2007.
- 1460 to 1497The temple is founded, according to legendFolk accounts and the stele erected at the temple in 1820 tell that the god manifested his power in support of King Lê Thánh Tông at Cự Linh, and the king then had the temple founded. These are the years of the king's reign, and no exact building date has been established.
- 18th centuryThe earliest royal decreeQuân đội Nhân dân, VietnamPlus and Nhân Dân give the set of 23 decrees as running from 1740 to 1940, and VietnamPlus and Nhân Dân say the earliest bears the reign date of the 44th year of Cảnh Hưng, which is 1783. VOV2 gives 1470 as the earliest date.
- 1788Casting of the bronze statue beginsWork begins on the statue of Huyền Thiên Trấn Vũ, and the casting goes on for many years.
- 1802The statue is completedThe statue is finished at the end of the Tây Sơn period. Người Đưa Tin, VOV2, Nhân Dân and Người Hà Nội, citing a stele at the temple, record that the casting took fourteen years.
- 1990National heritage siteThe Ministry of Culture and Information ranked the temple a national architectural and artistic heritage site, according to Người Hà Nội and Nhân Dân.
- 2006 to 2007Major restorationThe restoration gave the buildings their present form, keeping the layout and the architectural style of the Nguyễn period.
- 2015National treasure and UNESCOIn December, the statue of Huyền Thiên Trấn Vũ was recognized as a national treasure in the fourth round by Decision No. 2382/QĐ-TTg of 25 December 2015 of the Prime Minister. In the same year, Tugging rituals and games were inscribed by UNESCO in a multinational nomination.
- 2019Receiving the certificateIn April, the UNESCO certificate of inscription for the tug of war rite was presented at Trấn Vũ Temple, according to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
The list of national treasures of the Department of Cultural Heritage records the statue of Trấn Vũ at Trấn Vũ Temple, Thạch Bàn ward, as number 89, under Decision No. 2382/QĐ-TTg of 25 December 2015 of the Prime Minister, in the fourth round of recognition. The newspaper Người Đưa Tin gives that date correctly, while the newspaper Quân đội Nhân dân gives the 22nd. The statue at Quán Thánh Temple is a different treasure, recognized a year later under Decision No. 2496/QĐ-TTg of 22 December 2016, so the dates of the 22nd and the 25th are easily confused between the two statues.
IIIArchitecture and the bronze statue
According to VOV2, the temple is laid out in three parts along one axis, the front hall (tiền tế), the middle hall (trung đường) and the rear sanctuary (hậu cung). The newspaper Người Hà Nội adds that the middle hall is five bays wide with two side bays (dĩ), its roof braces carved with dragons and clouds, and that the innermost building is a nearly square upper sanctuary, two tiers and eight roof slopes, joined to the middle hall by a short covered link. The temple and the neighboring Cự Linh Pagoda form one heritage cluster, an arrangement familiar in villages of northern Vietnam, where a temple to a god and a pagoda to the Buddha stand side by side on the same village land.
The statue of Huyền Thiên Trấn Vũ
The statue in the rear sanctuary is the object that has made the temple's name. The god sits with legs lowered, looking straight ahead, in a black robe, his right hand resting on the pommel of a seven-star sword whose point stands on the back of a turtle, a snake coiled around the blade, and his left hand forming a ritual hand sign before his chest. The whole group of figure, turtle, snake and sword is the image of Xuanwu in human form, standing for the god's power over water. This is where the Taoist mark is clearest in the temple. The seven-star sword corresponds to the seven stars of the Northern Dipper, the hand sign is the mudra of a Taoist priest, and black is the color of the north.
| Source | Height | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| VOV2, Người Hà Nội, Nhân Dân article on the restoration | 3.8 meters | Người Hà Nội gives 9 tonnes, Nhân Dân 4 tonnes |
| Người Đưa Tin, Nhân Dân article on the national treasure award, 2016 | 3.96 meters | about 4 tonnes |
| Nhân Dân festival article, 2024, VietnamPlus | over 4 meters | over 4 tonnes |
The outermost building, where the incense table stands and the sacrifice of the village festival is performed.
Five bays with two side bays according to Người Hà Nội, roof braces carved with dragons and clouds, the work of Nguyễn-period carpenters.
The innermost building, two tiers and eight roof slopes, housing the bronze statue of Huyền Thiên Trấn Vũ.
The neighboring pagoda, which together with the temple forms the village's heritage cluster.
Some people put the two Trấn Vũ statues of Thạch Bàn and Quán Thánh side by side and assume one was recast or moved from the other. The two are entirely different, and are two separate national treasures. The Thạch Bàn statue was recognized by a decision of 25 December 2015, the Quán Thánh statue by a decision of 22 December 2016. The Quán Thánh statue was cast in 1677 under King Lê Hy Tông. The Thạch Bàn statue was begun in 1788 and finished in 1802, more than a century later. The figure of 3.96 meters that Người Đưa Tin and Nhân Dân in 2016 give for the Thạch Bàn statue is the same as the figure commonly used for the Quán Thánh statue, so when you meet that number, check which statue the source is talking about.
IVThe lie of the land and the facing
This section does not rest on the temple's own records. It is the library's reading of the temple's site through the eyes of traditional feng shui, to be taken as an interpretation for comparison, not as something recorded in the legend or the royal decrees.
The most unusual feature is the facing. According to VOV2 and Người Hà Nội, the temple faces north, whereas most temples and shrines in northern Vietnam face south to receive the sun and turn away from the winter monsoon. Read in the traditional way, that facing matches the god himself. Huyền Thiên Trấn Vũ guards the north, belongs to Water and to the color black. A god who guards the north, seated looking straight toward the quarter he guards, is a god in his rightful charge, and the villagers of old perhaps accepted a small loss against the wind in order to have that rightness.
The second point is water. Ngọc Trì village lies on the left bank of the Red River, flatland where every flood season brings worry for the dikes. To worship a water-governing god in such a place is to set the god exactly where he is needed. In the reading of land, a great river carries qi, but it can also destroy land. A god of the Water element guarding the water's edge is using Water to govern Water, a familiar principle for people of old when choosing a god for a riverside area.
It must be said plainly that the lie of the land today is very different from when the temple was founded. Around the village now are main roads, new housing and the urban pace of eastern Hanoi. There are no longer open fields in front, no longer an open stretch of alluvial flats, so one should not force a reading of the dragon vein (long mạch) or the bright hall (minh đường) for land that has become urban. What can still be read is the temple's axis and its place in the village. The grounds of the temple and Cự Linh Pagoda still keep a quiet space amid the houses, and that quiet space is the clearest feng shui that remains.
Last is the relation with the far bank. As the crow flies, the temple is about seven kilometers from Quán Thánh, with a river between them. One is a Taoist temple guarding the north for the capital, the other a village temple guarding the dikes for the flatlands. The same god, one side caring for the city, the other for the fields. Read the two places side by side and one sees how Huyền Thiên Trấn Vũ traveled from the capital out into the countryside.
VThe festival of the 3rd month and the seated tug of war
The temple's main festival falls on the 3rd day of the 3rd lunar month, which the village regards as the Saint's birthday. The most distinctive part of the festival is the rite of seated tug of war (kéo co ngồi). The young men of the village are divided into three quarters (mạn), mạn Chợ, mạn Đường and mạn Đìa, and after the offering to the Saint they draw lots to choose the teams. The rope is a length of rattan passed through a post of ironwood set in the ground, and the pullers sit on the bare earth, one leg bent and one stretched out, pushing with their heels, seated alternately, one facing one side of the rope and the next facing the other, quite unlike the familiar standing tug of war. The villagers regard it as a rite and not merely a game. It takes place within the festival for the god, after the sacrifice, and according to the legend VietnamPlus recounts, it began in a season of drought, when young men of the hamlets struggled over carrying poles and buckets at the last well of the village that still held water, so the rite is tied to a prayer for timely rain and favorable wind.
| Lunar date | Rite | Content |
|---|---|---|
| 3rd day of the 3rd month | Main festival, the Saint's birthday | A sacrifice at the temple, offerings to the Saint from the quarters, then the rite of seated tug of war. |
| 9th month | Second rite | The newspaper Người Hà Nội gives the 9th day of the 9th lunar month as the day the Saint departed this world. The source does not describe the scale of this rite. |
| 15th and 1st days | Regular rites | Villagers and visitors from elsewhere offer incense at the temple and at Cự Linh Pagoda. |
In 2015, UNESCO inscribed Tugging rituals and games on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This was a multinational nomination, made by Vietnam together with Cambodia, the Republic of Korea and the Philippines, in which the Vietnamese side includes tug of war communities in four provinces and cities, Lào Cai, Vĩnh Phúc, Bắc Ninh and Hanoi, and the seated tug of war of Trấn Vũ Temple is one particular form among them. Before that, on 19 December 2014, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism had recognized the seated tug of war rite of Trấn Vũ Temple as national intangible cultural heritage. In April 2019, the certificate of inscription was presented at the temple itself. What was inscribed is the practice of a community, not a building.
Set this festival beside the one at Quán Thánh, which also falls on the 3rd day of the 3rd month, and you see the same birthday of one god celebrated in two ways. The capital leans toward Taoist sacrifice, the riverside village toward the agricultural rites of the community.
VILocation And How To Get There
- Address
- Làng Ngọc Trì, phường Long Biên (phường Thạch Bàn cũ, quận Long Biên cũ), Hà Nội. Hà Nội Online liệt kê đền Trấn Vũ trong di tích của phường Long Biên mới
- Getting there
- In Ngọc Trì village, phường Long Biên (formerly Thạch Bàn ward), in eastern Hanoi on the left bank of the Red River, about seven kilometers from Quán Thánh Temple as the crow flies.
- Coordinates
- 21.0222, 105.9013
The temple is the place of worship of Ngọc Trì village, and village custom is the custom to follow. Visitors are expected to dress modestly, remove hats on entering the middle hall and the rear sanctuary, and not touch the bronze statue. During the festival of the 3rd month, the patch of ground set aside for the tug of war belongs to the village quarters, and visitors are asked to stand outside the rope and not cross the ground while the rite is under way.
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?Quick Questions
Who is worshipped at Trấn Vũ Temple, Thạch Bàn
Huyền Thiên Trấn Vũ, the Taoist god who guards the north and governs water, worshipped by the villagers of the Red River as a water-governing god who protects the harvest. According to the temple's legend, the temple was founded under King Lê Thánh Tông after the god manifested his power in support of the king at Cự Linh.
Is Trấn Vũ Temple in Long Biên the same as Quán Thánh Temple
No. Quán Thánh by West Lake is the Taoist temple that guarded the north of the capital Thăng Long, its statue cast in 1677. Trấn Vũ Temple at Thạch Bàn is the temple of Ngọc Trì village on the left bank of the Red River, not one of the four Taoist temples or the four guardian temples, its statue cast from 1788 to 1802. The two places worship the same god.
How tall and how heavy is the Trấn Vũ statue at Thạch Bàn
The sources differ. VOV2 and Người Hà Nội give 3.8 meters, Người Đưa Tin and Nhân Dân in 2016 give 3.96 meters, and Nhân Dân in 2024 and VietnamPlus give over 4 meters. Most sources give a weight of about 4 tonnes or more, while Người Hà Nội alone gives 9 tonnes. The statue is a national treasure under Decision No. 2382/QĐ-TTg of 25 December 2015, distinct from the statue at Quán Thánh Temple, recognized in 2016.
What is the seated tug of war at Trấn Vũ Temple
It is a rite of the festival on the 3rd day of the 3rd lunar month. The teams of the three village quarters sit on the bare earth, one leg bent and one stretched out, pushing with their heels, and pull a rattan rope passed through an ironwood post set in the ground. The rite is part of the Tugging rituals and games inscribed by UNESCO in 2015, and the certificate was presented at the temple in April 2019.
When is the Trấn Vũ Temple festival at Thạch Bàn
The main festival is on the 3rd day of the 3rd lunar month, the Saint's birthday, with a sacrifice and the seated tug of war. The newspaper Người Hà Nội also records a rite on the 9th day of the 9th lunar month. On the 15th and 1st days of each lunar month the temple is open for villagers and visitors to offer incense.