Boc Pagoda

From the street, Bộc Pagoda in the Đống Đa area looks like nothing more than an old pagoda in the city. Inside, it holds a thick layer of history.

The pagoda's formal name is Thiên Phúc Tự. Some documents also record it as Sùng Phúc Tự. It stands in Quang Trung Ward, in Đống Đa, Hanoi. The location is no accident. This is the heart of the ground where the Battle of Đống Đa was fought, one of the most famous battles in Vietnam's history.

In the spring of the year Kỷ Dậu, which was 1789, Emperor Quang Trung led the Tây Sơn army north at great speed. The Tây Sơn were three brothers who led an uprising from 1771 and for a time ruled Vietnam. Their army defeated the Qing forces that held Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. The Qing were the dynasty then ruling China.

The Đống Đa area saw some of the heaviest fighting, and Bộc Pagoda stood right in that area. According to the website of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha, the pagoda was destroyed in the fighting. Three years later, in 1792, the fourth year of the reign of Emperor Quang Trung, it was rebuilt on its old ground.

The new pagoda was given the name Thiên Phúc Tự. Among the people, though, the name Bộc Pagoda stayed in use. One local explanation holds that Bộc carries a meaning linked to the battle. It is not an official linguistic conclusion.

What makes Bộc Pagoda most special is not its architecture. It is a single statue.

The same website says that under the Nguyễn dynasty, worship linked to the Tây Sơn was strictly forbidden. The Nguyễn dynasty was Vietnam's last royal dynasty, which reigned from 1802 to 1945. Even so, the people around Bộc Pagoda hid a statue of Emperor Quang Trung in the form of Đức Ông, a guardian spirit often seen in Vietnamese pagodas. The statue was carved in an imperial robe with a hidden dragon and a celestial official's hat. Behind its head is carved a line that means: in the year Bính Ngọ, this statue of Quang Trung was made. That year was 1846.

In the middle of Thăng Long, while the Nguyễn were in power, the local people quietly kept the memory of the emperor alive. They did it through a form of worship that no one could find fault with on the surface. It is a story of folk memory.

The Ministry of Culture formally ranked Bộc Pagoda as a national historical and cultural monument on January 13, 1964.

Close by, Đống Đa Mound still stands as an open-air trace of the same battle of 1789. The mound is the larger presence, while Bộc Pagoda carries the quiet depth of a memory kept in the earth and in stone.

Bộc Pagoda is still a place where people come to pray every day, a living space and not a museum gone to sleep.

A small pagoda. A statue hidden in a hall. And a layer of history.