Walking along Hải Thượng Lãn Ông Street between rows of Chinese herbal medicine shops, you come upon an unexpected recess, a broad courtyard, a low three-entrance gate, and behind it a roof of tubular tiles laid in several tiers, both ends of the ridge sweeping up like the prow and stern of a boat. In the courtyard a pair of stone qilin stand guard, their carving worn smooth. Step over the threshold and light pours down through an opening to the sky in the middle of the building, falling on a row of red-lacquered wooden columns nearly seven meters tall.
People in the neighborhood call this place chùa Ông Bổn, the Ông Bổn Pagoda. But the name carved on the signboard is Nhị Phủ Hội Quán, and the words nhị phủ, two prefectures, state the most important fact. The place was built jointly by Chinese of Fujian origin from the two prefectures of Zhangzhou (Chương Châu) and Quanzhou (Tuyền Châu), even though each prefecture also had its own assembly hall, Ôn Lăng for the people of Quanzhou and Hà Chương for the people of Zhangzhou. A temple shared by two groups is unusual, and it is the key to reading the whole building.
IThe names and the deity worshipped here
Three names for this place are in use, and each tells one side of it. Nhị Phủ Hội Quán is the name of the organization, saying that this is the common house of two prefectures. Miếu Nhị Phủ, Nhị Phủ Temple, is the name of the building. And chùa Ông Bổn is the popular name, after the deity seated at the center of the main hall.
The word phủ here is an old Chinese administrative unit, a prefecture, above the county level. Zhangzhou and Quanzhou were two coastal prefectures of Fujian province, the starting point of most of the Hokkien Chinese who came to southern Vietnam. It should be made clear that this is a community of Hokkien Chinese, speakers of Southern Min, different from the Cantonese who founded the Tuệ Thành Assembly Hall or the Teochew who founded the Nghĩa An Assembly Hall, even though these groups lived in the same neighborhood. The library gives the four Chinese characters of the hall's name in the standard form of that name rather than copying them from a photograph of a particular plaque.
Bổn Đầu Công, popularly shortened to Ông Bổn, is a deity who guards the land and watches over the people of a place in the worship of the Hokkien Chinese. The word bổn means root, what belongs to a place by origin. A deity bearing that word is the god of the very ground one stands on, not a god shared by the whole world.
For a community that had just left home to live on someone else's land, establishing a god of the land was the first thing to do. It answered the most pressing question of any newcomer, which is who keeps this ground. That is why in Hokkien temples Ông Bổn usually sits on the main altar, while other deities such as Guan Di (Quan Thánh Đế Quân) or the god of wealth are honored on either side.
The exact identity of Ông Bổn is a point on which the sources differ, and the library says so plainly. The researcher Lý Văn Hùng held that the figure worshipped here is Châu Đạt Quan (Zhou Daguan), an official of the Yuan dynasty and author of A Record of Cambodia (Chân Lạp phong thổ ký), an account of the southernmost part of the Indochinese peninsula in the 13th century. Another current of opinion holds that Ông Bổn is not a historical figure at all but a general title for the earth god (Thổ Công), sometimes identified with Phúc Đức Chính Thần, the Upright God of Fortune and Virtue.
It is worth noting that these readings coexist within the worshipping community itself, and none has fully displaced the others. This is a common feature of folk religion. The title becomes fixed first, and the biography is built up afterward. The library records all of these readings rather than choosing one at random.
The usual misunderstanding here is the word chùa in the name chùa Ông Bổn. 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. Inside there is no community of resident monks, the main altar holds the shrine of Ông Bổn, and statues of Shakyamuni Buddha and Guanyin stand only in the rear hall, on either side of the Jade Emperor's shrine. 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.
The second point is the idea that an assembly hall is only a place of worship. In fact, a Chinese assembly hall was the form of self-government of a migrant group. It received newcomers, settled disputes, helped in sickness and at funerals, and saw to schooling for the children. This place is also special in being the shared temple of two prefectures rather than one, so it is both a place of worship and a common ground where the two groups meet.
IIOne of the earliest Chinese temples in Chợ Lớn
No document records the year the temple was built decisively. What remains is a series of dated objects, bells, stone qilin, shrines, horizontal plaques and couplets. Read by the dates inscribed on them, the building was added to continuously throughout the 19th century, while its oldest part reaches further back without being fixed.
- 18th centuryThe temple is foundedNo document records the founding year decisively. Sources give around 1730, or 1765, or say only that the temple existed by the second half of the 18th century at the latest. The details follow below.
- 1825The bronze bellThe bell is inscribed with the cyclical year Ất Dậu. Many sources read this as 1825, while one source, citing District 5 records, takes it as 1765 and treats it as the founding year. Either way, it is one of the earliest dated objects still kept on site.
- 1864The earliest horizontal plaquesStudies count twenty-eight to thirty horizontal plaques, dated from this year to 1901.
- 1875Restoration and a cast iron bellA major round of repairs, which included casting an additional bell in cast iron.
- 1878The pair of stone qilinThe pair of stone qilin statues in the front courtyard bears this date.
- 1894The shrine of Ông BổnA wooden shrine lacquered red and gilded, more than three meters tall, on the main altar. It is the central object of the building.
- 1901Major restorationA round of repairs that closed a long cycle of additions. The fourteen pairs of carved couplets in the temple are dated from 1895 to this year.
- 1998National heritage siteOn 31 August 1998 the Ministry of Culture and Information ranked it a national architectural and artistic heritage site by Decision No. 1811. Another major restoration had been carried out earlier, in 1990.
The library prefers to state plainly where the sources disagree about the founding date. Some accounts give a specific figure of around 1730. One source, citing District 5 records, reads the cyclical year Ất Dậu on the old bell as 1765 and takes that as the founding year. The study published in Thanh Niên newspaper is more cautious, saying only that the hall existed by the second half of the 18th century at the latest, since it is mentioned in works describing the Gia Định region. The three ways of dating differ by as much as half a century.
The sources agree on two things. First, this is one of the earliest surviving Hokkien temples in the Chợ Lớn area. Second, apart from the old bell, whose date is read in different ways, every object with a fixed date belongs to the 19th century, meaning that the form you see today is the result of that century's restorations, not the original state of the building.
IIIThe timber frame and the enclosed courtyard plan
The compound covers more than two thousand five hundred square meters, built as a timber frame with tiled roofs and stone walls. The plan takes the shape of the character khẩu (口), four ranges of building at right angles enclosing an open courtyard in the middle, called the sky well (thiên tỉnh). The main axis runs from the front hall through the sky well to the main hall, then through a second sky well to the rear hall. This enclosed arrangement keeps out slanting rain and sun while leaving open exactly what needs to be open.
The most notable point of the carpentry here. The building does not use the trusses of Vietnamese timber houses but a system of stacked brackets (đấu củng), blocks of wood piled one on another and spreading outward to carry the roof. This is a core technique of Chinese timber architecture, and few places in southern Vietnam preserve it as clearly.
Wooden columns up to seven meters tall, lacquered red, carry the whole roof system. The height of the columns gives the interior its sense of space, even though the plan is not very large.
Roofed with tubular tiles and edged with green glazed tiles, the ridge curving up at both ends in a shape often likened to a boat. On the ridge are the motifs of two dragons contending for a pearl and a carp turning into a dragon, with multicolored reliefs, the decoration characteristic of Fujian temples.
A wooden shrine lacquered red and gilded, more than three meters tall, dated 1894, on the main altar. Carved in many layers, it gathers the finest of the building's carving work.
Carved wooden screens and a screen wall from the 19th century, with the pair of stone qilin of 1878 in the front courtyard. The motifs include bats, cranes, flowers and leaves, all images carrying wishes for good fortune.
Twenty-eight to thirty horizontal plaques dated from 1864 to 1901, and fourteen pairs of carved couplets made between 1895 and 1901. The writing on them records the names of the people and trading houses who donated.
The sky well and the role of the assembly hall
The open courtyard in the middle is not only a way to ventilate the building. In an assembly hall it is also where the whole group gathers, where offering trays are laid out on festival days and where members stand to discuss common business after the rites. The enclosed courtyard plan is therefore an architectural form suited to a community that needs both to worship and to meet.
This is also where the distinctive character of the site is clearest. In a temple founded by one group, that courtyard belongs to that group. In a temple founded by two prefectures together, it is common ground, and everything arranged there has to be balanced between the two sides. Researchers regard Nhị Phủ Temple as a site that marks the settlement and integration of the Hokkien Chinese in this land.
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 the enclosed courtyard plan. In the reading of land, a building closed on all four sides around an open center forms the pattern of sheltering from wind and gathering qi (tàng phong tụ khí), considered the steadiest pattern of all for a place that needs calm. The four ranges form four screens, and the sky well in the middle is where qi collects. If the building opened wide onto the street, qi would pass straight through without stopping. Enclosed, the qi has a place to stay.
Second are the two sky wells on one axis. Read by form, qi comes in through the front hall, pauses in the first courtyard, passes on into the main hall, pauses for another beat in the second courtyard, and only then settles into the rear 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 cramped plot in the middle of a trading street the sky well is the only way to achieve this.
Third is where the temple stands. The building lies in the middle of a long-established trading street of Chợ Lớn and does not withdraw to a secluded spot. According to Thanh Niên newspaper, the hall was originally built on the bank of the Chợ Lớn creek, which was later filled in to become Khổng Tử Street, now Hải Thượng Lãn Ông Street. In the traditional reading, the market is where people gather (tụ nhân), and where people gather, qi gathers with them. To set the temple right in the middle of the community's place of business is to set it where qi and people flow to the same point. For a god of the land like Ông Bổn the choice is all the more fitting, since a god of the land should sit in the middle of the land he keeps, not at its edge.
Last is the roof. The ridge curving up at both ends in the shape of a boat is a visual motif of coastal Fujian. Read through feng shui, the curve has a further meaning. 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. It should be repeated that the builders worked in the visual tradition of Fujian architecture, not from any particular book on the land.
VThe festivals of Ông Bổn
The temple has two major festivals a year, both on the 15th day of a lunar month and both tied to the life of the deity as the community tells it. The 15th day of the 1st lunar month is his birthday, and the 15th day of the 8th lunar month is the day of his death.
| Lunar date | Rite | Details |
|---|---|---|
| 15th day of the 1st lunar month | Ông Bổn's birthday | The largest festival of the year. Offerings follow Hokkien custom, with the five meats and the five fruits, carried out by the assembly hall's management board. The sky well is where offerings are laid out and performances are held. |
| 15th day of the 8th lunar month | Anniversary of Ông Bổn's death | The second festival, with the full sacrifice and incense offering, on a smaller scale than the one in the 1st lunar month. |
| From the 1st to the 15th day of the 1st lunar month | New year worship | The busiest period. The temple hangs lanterns, and visitors come to offer incense and ask for blessings at the start of the year. |
| 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 | Common affairs of the assembly hall | Beyond worship, the assembly hall looks after the common affairs of the community. The lower secondary school next to the hall was originally the Fujian secondary school built by the assembly hall. |
One point worth noticing in the rites here is the shared custom of two prefectures. Because the temple was founded by two groups together, the festivals are occasions when people from both Zhangzhou and Quanzhou are present, and the tasks in the rites have to be balanced between the two sides. Alongside each prefecture's own assembly hall, Nhị Phủ Temple serves as the place where the two groups meet.
VILocation And How To Get There
- Address
- Số 264 đường Hải Thượng Lãn Ông, phường Chợ Lớn, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh
- Getting there
- At No. 264 Hải Thượng Lãn Ông Street, Chợ Lớn ward, in the middle of Chợ Lớn's herbal medicine quarter. Within walking distance of Kim Biên Market and of the other Chinese assembly halls in the area.
- Coordinates
- 10.7508, 106.6564
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 shrines, the carved wooden screens, the two bells or the pair of stone qilin in the courtyard. Offerings and incense should be left where the keepers indicate. During the two festivals on the 15th day of the 1st and of the 8th lunar month the sky well is used for the rites, and visitors are asked to leave space for the ceremonies.
Nearby places in the library
VIIContribute To This Page
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Góp ảnh, thông tin hoặc video cho Miếu Nhị PhủEveryone 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 worshipped at Nhi Phu Temple
Bổn Đầu Công, popularly called Ông Bổn, a deity who guards the land and watches over the people of a place in the worship of the Hokkien Chinese. His wooden shrine, lacquered red and gilded and more than three meters tall, stands on the main altar. On either side of it are the shrines of Quảng Trạch Tôn Vương and Thái Tuế, around the sky well are the shrines of Guan Di and Kim Hoa Nương Nương, and the rear hall honors the Jade Emperor, Shakyamuni Buddha and Guanyin.
Why is it called Nhị Phủ
Because the temple was built jointly by Chinese of Fujian origin from the two prefectures of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou. A phủ is an old Chinese administrative unit, a prefecture, above the county level. Each prefecture also had its own assembly hall, Ôn Lăng and Hà Chương, but Nhị Phủ Temple keeps its role as the common ground where the two groups meet.
Is Ông Bổn Pagoda a Buddhist pagoda
No. It is an assembly hall with a temple to a deity, belonging to Chinese folk religion blended with Taoism. Vietnamese people in the south are used to applying the word chùa to Chinese temples to deities as well. Inside there is no community of resident monks, the main altar holds the shrine of Ông Bổn, and statues of the Buddha and Guanyin stand only in the rear hall, on either side of the Jade Emperor's shrine.
When was Nhi Phu Temple built
Sources disagree. Some accounts give around 1730, another source puts it in 1765 based on the cyclical year Ất Dậu on the old bell, and one more cautious study says only that the hall existed by the second half of the 18th century at the latest. Apart from the old bell, every object with a fixed date belongs to the 19th century.
When is the festival of Ông Bổn
Twice a year, both on the 15th day of a lunar month. The 15th day of the 1st lunar month is Ông Bổn's birthday as the community tells it, and also the largest festival. The 15th day of the 8th lunar month is the anniversary of his death, on a smaller scale. Offerings follow Hokkien custom, with the five meats and the five fruits.