Hai Ba Trung Temple

The wind off the Red River runs along Hương Viên Street and carries the scent of incense from inside the temple gate. This is Đồng Nhân, in the Hai Bà Trưng area of Hanoi, and the area's name belongs to the two women honored in this temple.

The temple honors two sisters from Mê Linh. They are Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị. In the year 40, the country was under the rule of the Eastern Han. The Eastern Han was the dynasty then ruling China. The sisters began an uprising and took back 65 towns, and for a time they won self-rule for the country. In the history of Vietnam, no woman general before them had led a war on that scale.

According to the Hanoi Moi newspaper, the temple was first built in 1142, under Emperor Lý Anh Tông. That was the third year of the Đại Định era. It stood on a silt bank beside the Red River, in the village of Đồng Nhân. A legend says that stone statues of the two sisters drifted down to this bank, and a Lý emperor ordered a temple built there. No archaeological finding confirms it. In 1819, the riverbank was washing away, and the local people moved the temple to where it stands today on Hương Viên Street.

The grounds cover about 4,000 square meters. The buildings follow a single line from front to back: the front ritual hall, the middle ritual hall and the rear sanctuary. The temple gate faces east, toward the Red River. In the rear sanctuary stand statues of the two sisters riding elephants, an image tied to them in the minds of Vietnamese people.

Beside the temple stand Viên Minh Pagoda and Đồng Nhân Communal House, so that the three buildings form one group. The newspaper Nhân Dân reports that this group was recognized as a Special National Monument on May 28, 2020. The group keeps 27 royal decrees from the Lê and Nguyễn dynasties, along with stone steles, dragon thrones, processional palanquins and ritual objects lacquered red and gilded in gold.

The festival runs from the 4th to the 7th day of the second lunar month, and the main day is the 6th. It includes an incense offering, a palanquin procession, a performance that recreates the two sisters riding out to battle on elephants, and traditional folk games. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism recorded the festival as a national intangible cultural heritage in February 2025.

In the rear sanctuary, a visitor can look up at the two statues on their elephants, in the yellow lamplight and the incense smoke. Nearly 2,000 years ago, on this land, two women did not wait for anyone to act first. They stood up themselves, for their country.