Cai Cuong Ancient House

On the river islands of the Tiền River, a house has stood beside the Cái Muối creek since 1885, and it stands there still. The Tiền River is one of the two branches of the Mekong that flow through Vietnam.

This is the Cai Cường Ancient House. It is in An Bình commune, Vĩnh Long province. The name comes from its first owner, Phạm Văn Bổn, who was usually called Cường. He had served in the area as a cai tổng, a canton chief. That is why the house is popularly known as Cai Cường.

The house was built in 1885 on the plan of the character đinh. Đinh is a Chinese character shaped like the letter T. Two wings of the house meet at right angles, and the main side faces north, toward the Cái Muối creek. Some articles call it the Cái Muối ancient house, because it sits so close to that creek.

The first thing the eye notices is a blend of two styles of building. The outside carries many Western marks: a curved staircase, half-moon arched doors, and reliefs influenced by the Renaissance style. Step through the door, though, and the air changes completely. Inside is a space of worship in the traditional manner, with an altar to the family ancestors and horizontal boards called hoành phi, finished in red lacquer and gold leaf.

People like to put it in a few words: Western on the outside, Vietnamese on the inside.

The house is about 15 meters wide. A row of main columns of lim wood, each about 6 meters tall, holds up the whole roof. The roof is covered in yin and yang tiles, laid in the traditional southern way, with one layer sheltering the layer below. This drains the rain well and keeps the house cooler than a flat roof would.

The finest feature is a set of carved wooden screens, called bao lam, that join the three bays. They are carved with dragons and phoenixes, birds and beasts, and trees, all in red lacquer and gold leaf. When light falls on them, the gold shimmers as the angle changes. They are the work of southern craftsmen of the late 19th century, who used lim and căm xe wood and the delicate technique of openwork carving.

In the middle bay hangs a board with three Chinese characters, Phạm Phủ Đường, meaning the house of the Phạm family. This is the ceremonial heart of the house. Here the family honored its ancestors and received important guests, and the room shows the ways of a well-off family in the orchard country of the 19th century.

At the back are the sleeping rooms, with altar cabinets, wooden divans, plank beds, and tables and chairs of lim, all kept from that time. These are things people really lived with, not objects put on display. Each chair and each cabinet tells of an orchard family who lived here through many generations.

The house was also a place where the sound of the đờn cò and the đàn kìm once rang out. Both belong to đờn ca tài tử. Đờn ca tài tử is an art of music and song of southern Vietnam that evokes life on the Mekong Delta's land and rivers. In 2013 UNESCO inscribed it on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. That list is for living traditions, passed on from one generation to the next. Vĩnh Long is one of the long-standing cradles of this movement.

Inside this century-old house, the wind from the Cái Muối creek slips through the yin and yang tiles. It is easy to see why the people of the Mekong Delta still call the place by its old owner's name. It is as if Cai Cường were still here, in every carving and every layer of gold leaf that still shines after more than a hundred years.