Binh Thuy Ancient House

Beyond a curving iron gate, time seems to pause.

The gate is all soft curves, with climbing flowers and trailing branches in the French style of the early 20th century. Among them are dragons, phoenixes and birds in an East Asian style. Inside stands a house of three bays, with a roof of yin and yang tiles and carved wooden columns. A green orchid garden runs along the path.

This is the Bình Thủy ancient house. It is also called Phủ thờ họ Dương, the ancestral worship house of the Dương family. Its story spans 150 years and many generations of one family. It also includes a film that carried this house out into the wider world.

Who were the Dương family? They were a wealthy family of Chinese origin in the Cần Thơ area during the French colonial period. The family came to settle in southern Vietnam around the late 18th century. In the third generation, Dương Văn Vị chose a plot of land near the mouth of the Bình Thủy canal to make his living. He traded in rice and salt, and little by little he grew rich.

In 1870, around the reign of Emperor Tự Đức, the family began building this house. Tự Đức was an emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, Vietnam's last royal dynasty, which reigned from 1802 to 1945. The first part was the main house, with three bays and two side wings in the traditional Vietnamese style. It was built of precious hardwoods, such as lim. The roof was laid with yin and yang tiles. Columns and crossbeams were finely carved with dragons and phoenixes.

Later, as French influence grew stronger, the family added architecture with a French imprint. The iron gate and fence follow the Art Nouveau style. Art Nouveau, meaning new art, was a French art movement popular from the late 19th century to the early 20th. Its hallmarks are soft curves and winding flowers and leaves. Inside, the family added French chandeliers, French porcelain and a set of French salon furniture.

In all, the house took 41 years to build. The work ran from 1870 to 1911, across two generations of owners. Dương Văn Vị laid the foundations. After he died, his youngest son, Dương Chấn Kỷ, carried the work through to the end. The result is neither purely Vietnamese, nor purely French, nor purely Chinese. It is a meeting of all three, typical of the southern Vietnamese upper class in the early 20th century.

In 2009, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism recognized the Bình Thủy ancient house as a National Architectural and Artistic Monument.

But one thing carried this house beyond Cần Thơ and out into the world. That was the film The Lover, whose original French title is L'Amant.

L'Amant is an autobiographical novel by the French writer Marguerite Duras, published in 1984. She was born in 1914 in Gia Định, near Saigon, the child of a French couple who taught in Indochina. In the novel, she tells the story of her love for a wealthy Chinese Vietnamese man in Sa Đéc in the 1920s. The book won the Goncourt Prize in 1984, one of the most prestigious literary awards in France.

In 1992, the French director Jean-Jacques Annaud adapted the novel into a film. It was shot on location in Vietnam, in Saigon, Sa Đéc and Cần Thơ, and on the Mekong. Jane March, an English actress, played the French girl. Tony Leung Ka-fai, from Hong Kong, played the Chinese Vietnamese man.

The Bình Thủy ancient house was chosen as one of the main settings of the film. After the film came out, the house became a destination for French visitors and for film lovers from around the world.

Still, this was one of the film's settings, not the only one. Many scenes were also shot in Sa Đéc. And the original house, where the real Chinese Vietnamese man of the Duras story once lived, is the Huỳnh Thủy Lê ancient house. It stands in Sa Đéc, in Đồng Tháp.

The most remarkable thing about the Bình Thủy ancient house today is that the Dương family still lives here. The family is now into its fifth and sixth generations. This is not a museum set apart from life. It is a family home and a heritage site at the same time. In 1980, a fifth-generation descendant brought many rare orchids to plant in the garden. That is why many people also call it the orchid garden house.

The large reception room still has its French chandelier. The cẩm lai wood table and chairs still stand there, as in the days when the family elders received guests. In the altar room, ancestral tablets for five generations look down on the courtyard. The descendants of the Dương family still cross it every day.

This is a house where history does not sit behind glass. It still breathes, and it is still alive.