Dong Do Quang Hoi

All the materials for this hall, and all the objects used in its worship, crossed the sea from Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian. The hall is Đông Đô Quảng Hội, an assembly hall in the lower part of Phố Hiến. That is in Hồng Châu ward, in Hưng Yên province.

A folk saying ranks Phố Hiến second only to the capital. Phố Hiến is the memory of a trading port where people from many regions lived side by side, and the hall is one of the physical proofs of that shared life. Together with the Thiên Hậu Temple, it belongs to the Phố Hiến Special National Monument, which is made up of 16 sites.

The Cultural Heritage Department describes Phố Hiến as once a thriving port town on the left bank of the Red River. It had a river harbor, a market, and neighborhoods of streets. It even had trading posts run by the Dutch and the English.

The hall was built in 1590 by 14 Chinese clans, working together with the people of Phố Hiến. That is not one family or a small group. It is a community strong enough to build an assembly hall together and keep it going, a sign of how alive the Chinese community of Phố Hiến was in the 16th century.

The hall was never only a place of worship. It was where Chinese merchants gathered to meet, to talk business, to set the price of goods and to run their trade. For a community far from its homeland, an assembly hall was the center of everyday life. It joined belief, trade and the ties between people from the same hometown.

The hall honors three gods, known together as the Tam Thánh. One is Thần Thái Y. One is Thần Hoa Quang. The third is Thần Nông. Thần Nông means the Divine Farmer, a god honored for teaching people to farm. The heritage board explains that these three gods answer practical needs of the community: healing, handicrafts and farming. In other words, the merchants of Phố Hiến prayed for health, a livelihood and enough to eat, the things any community needs.

Inside the complex stands the Thiên Hậu Temple. It honors Lady Lâm Tức Mặc, a goddess of the sea whom the people of Fujian deeply revere. For merchants who often traveled by sea, devotion to Thiên Hậu was a spiritual support, a way to pray for voyages with the wind behind the sails. A temple to a sea goddess beside a river port shows how sea routes, river routes and trade with other countries were joined in those days.

The hall today is built in the style called chữ Công, named for a Chinese character. Its look is Chinese, woven together with Vietnamese architecture. The ceremonial gate is roofed with fish-scale tiles, and its roof frame follows the style called giá chiêng, which means gong stand. The rear sanctuary has a frame of stacked beams, called chồng rường, and its columns stand on waisted stone bases. These details show a blend of the craft and the art of two cultures.

Professor Trần Lâm Biền observed that the hall still keeps parts of its architecture and art from the 17th and 18th centuries. That is rare among the Chinese assembly halls in Vietnam, and it shows how highly scholars value the monument.

The festivals here follow the birthday and the day of passing of the Holy Mother Lâm Tức Mặc, and the birthday feast of the Tam Thánh. There are three main feast days. They fall on the 23rd day of the third lunar month, the 9th of the ninth, and the 10th of the 10th.

Moss has gathered on the fish-scale tiles of the roof, and there is something here that more than 400 years have not erased. People far from home joined hands to build a place to remember their homeland, to worship, to meet and to keep on living. Phố Hiến has lost the bustle of its port. The hall is still here, quietly telling the story of the people who chose this place as home.