Da Hoa and Da Trach Temples

Vietnamese folk belief honors four deities known as the Four Immortals. People believe these four never die. One of them is the saint Chử Đồng Tử. The ground here is bound up with his story.

This is one of the most important historic sites of Hưng Yên. Late in 2024, the Đa Hòa and Dạ Trạch site was ranked a Special National Monument.

The complex has two main temples, Đa Hòa Temple and Hóa Dạ Trạch Temple. They stand some distance apart, and each has its own character. Both honor the saint Chử Đồng Tử and his two wives. One of the wives is Princess Tiên Dung.

The story of Chử Đồng Tử and Tiên Dung is a folk legend, not a recorded historical event. Still, it is a layer of cultural memory that the community has kept and handed down for many centuries. And folk memory does not keep stories that mean nothing.

Đa Hòa Temple stands on a plot of 18,720 square meters. The temple faces west, looking out over the Tự Nhiên sandbank on the Red River. According to legend, this sandbank is where Princess Tiên Dung met a poor young man named Chử Đồng Tử. She was the daughter of the 18th Hùng King. Vietnamese people honor the Hùng Kings as their ancestors. The tale says she had cloth screens put up on the sandbank to make a bathing tent. By chance, the young man lay buried in the sand at that very spot. He was so poor that he had no clothes to cover himself. The unexpected meeting turned into love. Tiên Dung, a king's daughter, was determined to marry him, whatever his station.

Đa Hòa Temple is made up of 18 old buildings with tiled roofs. They are laid out like 18 boats with curved prows. The number recalls the 18th Hùng King of the legend. Beyond the Ngọ Gate, which has three entrances, the path runs through the great courtyard, the Hall of Great Offerings and the Incense Hall. Then come the Second Sanctuary, the Third Sanctuary and the Rear Sanctuary. Step by step, the way leads deeper into the sacred heart of the temple.

Inside Đa Hòa Temple is one object worth a close look. It is a pair of ceramic vases called the Bách thọ vases, a name that means a hundred longevities. A hundred characters meaning long life are carved on their sides. What makes them special is that no two of those characters are alike. The vases carry wishes for long life and good health. Each way of writing the character was invented by people long ago, and each one sent a wish for a long and abundant life.

From Đa Hòa Temple, the way leads on to Hóa Dạ Trạch Temple. The word Hóa in its name comes from a legend. In the legend, Chử Đồng Tử rose to heaven here, together with his two wives. In this layer of legend, a palace and its walled city vanished in a single night. They left behind a vast stretch of marsh water. Folk tradition calls it Đầm Một Đêm, the One-Night Marsh, or Đầm Dạ Trạch. This is a legend, not an event proven by archaeology. But it is how the people of the Red River Delta explain the origin of their marshland and tell of the gods they worship.

Dạ Trạch Temple as it stands today was rebuilt in 1890. The work was designed and led by Chu Mạnh Trinh, a doctoral laureate. Doctoral laureates were scholars who had passed the royal examinations. No one knows for sure when the site was first built. Yet the marks of restoration remain in every roof tile and every wooden pillar. They date from the Later Lê dynasty and from the Nguyễn dynasty, Vietnam's last royal dynasty.

What sets Dạ Trạch Temple apart is its bell, named Dạ Trạch Từ chung. It was cast in the 14th year of the reign of Emperor Thành Thái, which was 1902. The bell is 1.5 meters tall and 80 centimeters across. Its surface is engraved with a record of the temple's restoration.

In 2023, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism formally added two festivals to the national list of intangible cultural heritage. They are the festivals of Đa Hòa Temple and Hóa Dạ Trạch Temple. Both run every year from the 10th to the 12th day of the second lunar month. Beyond the offering of incense, they are a time when the local community brings the story of Chử Đồng Tử and Tiên Dung back to life, through processions, rites, singing and folk games. The love story that crossed the lines of rank is still told, and still lived again, once every year.

What made Chử Đồng Tử one of the Four Immortals was not that he was a war hero or a great scholar. He was as poor as anyone can imagine, without a single piece of cloth to cover himself. Yet his story has outlasted every age. And every year, when the festival of the second lunar month comes round again, Đa Hòa Temple still faces the Tự Nhiên sandbank on the Red River, where, as folk tradition tells it, that poor young man met the princess.