Bac Ai Pagoda

This pagoda belongs to the people who dared to open new land in the mountain town of Kon Tum. It has held its ground for nearly a hundred years, behind a row of old trees on Nguyễn Gia Thiều Street.

This is Bác Ái Pagoda. Its formal name is Tổ đình Bác Ái, also given as Sắc tứ Bác Ái Tự. Among local people, it is still known by the familiar words Chùa Bác Ái Kon Tum.

The pagoda has been ranked a provincial historic and cultural site since January 8, 2009. A provincial ranking means that the local government recognizes the place as holding real value for the memory and identity of the region.

The pagoda was built in the early 1930s, and the date is usually given as about 1932 to 1933. Just inside the courtyard, the main axis is easy to read. The Tam Quan gate opens onto the main hall, and on either side stand the east and west side halls, the Đông lang and the Tây lang. The whole is described as Hue style, laid out in the shape of the Chinese character Môn. Seen from above, the plan of the buildings looks like that character.

That Hue style is no accident. To see why, it helps to look back at the story of Võ Lâm village.

The Kon Tum newspaper tells how this pagoda was the first base that helped form Võ Lâm village. Villagers from Trung Lương and Lương Khế asked an official to create the pagoda. He held the post of Quản đạo, and his name was Võ Chuẩn. The place they asked for was the land of the Âm Linh Shrine. After the pagoda was built, many households came up to settle around it. Some came from Bình Định and Quảng Nam. Others came from Quảng Ngãi, from Hue, and from nearby villages. The pagoda became the first place where people who had come to make a living in the mountains dropped anchor.

That is what sets Bác Ái Pagoda apart. It is a place of worship and also a witness to a journey of migration, clearing land and shaping a Vietnamese community in the Central Highlands in the early 20th century.

The name itself is said to mean open compassion, a love that draws no line between religions or communities. In a land where the Kinh, the Bahnar, the Gia Rai and the Xơ Đăng live together, that name suits the place. The Kinh are the majority ethnic group of Vietnam. The Gia Rai are one of the peoples of Vietnam's Central Highlands.

The Nguyễn court once granted the pagoda gifts by royal decree. The Nguyễn dynasty, Vietnam's last royal dynasty, reigned from 1802 to 1945. Records say that in November 1933, the court gave the pagoda a Đại hồng chung, a great bell, along with some items for worship. That great bell is no longer kept in Kon Tum. It left this land in 1991.

The pagoda has been restored many times, so some of its first architectural features have changed. That does not lessen the historical value of the place. Each new coat of plaster is one more layer of time laid over nearly a hundred years of standing in the mountain town.

In the quiet of the grounds, another side of Kon Tum shows itself. This mountain town has more than its nhà rông, its gongs, and the Đắk Bla River, soft as a ribbon of silk. A nhà rông is the large communal house at the center of a Central Highlands village. It also carries the footprints of people who walked a long way up from central Vietnam to open land and build a new life in the great forest. And they left pagoda roofs like this one, which still stand for a long and brave journey.