Do Pagoda

In the middle of Hải Phòng, a pagoda lifts a block of stacked roofs 26 meters into the air. It has three floors and 20 roofs, all in gold and red, and they catch the eye from far down the street. People call it Chùa Đỏ.

But the name Chùa Đỏ does not come from the paint on the walls. It comes from a story told through many generations.

According to legend, this happened in 1288, during the Bạch Đằng campaign. Prince Hưng Đạo, whose name was Trần Quốc Tuấn, came to this land. It was the An Dương area, the old land of Hải Phòng. He was studying a naval battle that would destroy the fleet of the Mongol commander Ô Mã Nhi. The army's cooking unit camped at the pagoda, called Linh Độ Tự, to prepare meals for the command staff. Their cooking fires burned red day and night. From then on, local people called the place Chùa Đỏ, in memory of the prince. This is a folk legend and is not recorded in the official histories. Still, it shows how special the prince is to the people of Hải Phòng.

The official name of the pagoda in Chinese characters is Linh Độ Tự. Linh means sacred. Độ means to save or to set free, in the Buddhist sense. So the name speaks of a sacred pagoda where the Buddha saves the souls of the unfortunate. Above all, this is a Buddhist pagoda, not a temple to a hero.

The present pagoda is built in a style called cổ diêm chồng đấu, a style of roofs stacked in layers. It has three floors and 20 roofs. The front hall, the middle hall and the rear sanctuary are joined by overlapping roofs, so the whole feels like one connected block and not separate parts. Seen from the gate, the building looks like a tower rising toward the sky.

On the first floor, four stone columns stand in symmetrical pairs. Each is 50 centimeters across and 4.2 meters high, carved with dragons and phoenixes. Between the columns runs a stone balustrade carved with pine, bamboo, chrysanthemum and plum. The Vietnamese calls them the four gentlemen of East Asian culture, four noble qualities. Here, though, the four plants are turned into dragons. Leaves and stems curl into the shape of a dragon, a motif very typical of Vietnamese carving.

On the roof of the front hall stands a seven-story tower, 5 meters tall, on a base 1.2 meters high. At its top are a lotus flower and a flagpole 5 meters long, used for flying flags at festivals. This is a rare detail, because the tower sits right on the pagoda roof instead of standing apart.

After Prince Hưng Đạo died in 1300, villagers built two small shrines on either side of the pagoda. They honored him and his close commanders, among them Phạm Ngũ Lão, the prince's son-in-law. So the Buddha is worshiped at the front and the national heroes at the two sides. It is a very common pairing of beliefs in northern Vietnam, especially near river mouths and the coast, where honoring heroes has long gone together with Buddhism.

Chùa Đỏ is small. Yet in its courtyard, with the noisy city all around, three floors and 20 roofs rise overhead. This is what the people of Hải Phòng have kept for centuries: a place that honors the Buddha and remembers the general who kept the waves calm for the whole nation.