An Bien Communal House

Hải Phòng traces its beginnings back more than 1,900 years. One place that keeps the memory of those early days is a village communal house, the old An Biên Communal House. It is a National Historic Site.

The village of An Biên dates back to the 1st century of the Common Era, and it is tied to the name of the woman general Lê Chân. The house stands on Hai Bà Trưng Street.

Several sites in Hải Phòng honor Lê Chân, so it helps to tell them apart. The best known is Nghè Temple, on Lê Chân Street, her main temple. More recently, a monument to her was raised on Lê Chân Square. An Biên Communal House is different from Nghè Temple. It is a village communal house, not a temple. Both honor Lê Chân, but they do so in two different roles.

Another place is also called An Biên Temple. It stands in Đông Triều, in Quảng Ninh. That is the home region of Lê Chân. That is a completely different place, and it is not in Hải Phòng.

Lê Chân was a woman general in the Trưng Sisters' uprising of the 1st century. In the year 40 of the Common Era, Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị rose up against the Han army. The Eastern Han was the dynasty then ruling China. Lê Chân was one of the finest generals of that uprising.

Before the uprising, she had come to the mouths of the Cấm and Tam Bạc rivers. That is where the center of Hải Phòng stands today. There she founded a new village and named it An Biên Trang. The land was then called "Hải tần phòng thủ," which meant defense at the mouth of the sea. An Biên Trang was the forerunner of the city of Hải Phòng.

In the minds of the people here, Lê Chân is the Thành Hoàng, the guardian spirit of the land. The communal house was where the community gathered to discuss village affairs and worshipped her as its Thành Hoàng.

Now look at the building itself. The present house was built under the Nguyễn dynasty, in the 19th century. The Nguyễn dynasty was Vietnam's last royal dynasty, and it reigned from 1802 to 1945. So the house came about 1,800 years after Lê Chân founded the village. She did not build the house. The village community built it to worship her.

Its plan has three parts. Five bays make up the outermost part, the tiền tế. Three bays in the middle form the ống muống. Three bays at the back, the innermost part, form the hậu cung. This three-part plan is typical of a village communal house in northern Vietnam.

The wood carving inside follows two themes, the tứ linh and the tứ quý. The tứ linh are four sacred creatures: Long, the dragon, Ly, the kỳ lân, Quy, the turtle, and Phượng, the phoenix. They stand for four noble qualities. The tứ quý are four plants of the four seasons: Tùng, the pine, Cúc, the chrysanthemum, Trúc, the bamboo, and Mai. They stand for the noble man through the four seasons.

Hàng Kênh Communal House, a few kilometers away, makes a good comparison. That house was built in the Later Lê period, at the end of the 17th century and the start of the 18th. Its carving is bold and free, in a style of dragons surging in coils. An Biên Communal House, from the 19th century under the Nguyễn, is finer and smaller. It concentrates on the four sacred creatures and the four plants. The two are about a hundred years apart, yet their styles are completely different. That is how the art of northern village communal houses developed.

The festival of An Biên Communal House is held on the 8th day of the second lunar month every year, the birthday of the woman general Lê Chân. What makes it special is a procession that links three places. It sets out from the communal house and goes to Nghè Temple, about a kilometer away. Then it goes on to the monument on Lê Chân Square, and returns to the communal house.

The three sites form a cluster of worship for the port community of Hải Phòng. They show a special respect for the woman who founded this land nearly 2,000 years ago.

In the hậu cung, incense is offered to the Thành Hoàng. The village of An Biên Trang, which Lê Chân founded in the 1st century, went through nearly 2,000 years of changing history. It has become a major port city of Vietnam. The people of that city still remember her.