Hoi An Ancient Town

In the 17th century, trading ships from Japan, and Chinese ships from Fujian and Guangdong, came one after another to a small stretch of riverbank in central Vietnam. Portuguese and Dutch ships came there to trade too. The Japanese and the Chinese stayed on, each setting up a quarter of their own and opening shops. That riverbank was Hoi An, then the largest international trading port of Đại Việt, an old name for Vietnam.

On December 4, 1999, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee met in Marrakech. At that session, it officially inscribed Hoi An Ancient Town on the World Heritage List.

UNESCO recognized Hoi An under two criteria. The first is an outstanding meeting of cultures: Hoi An is physical evidence of many cultures blending within one international port. The second is that it is a perfectly preserved example of a traditional Asian trading port. Together they speak of two things: cultural richness and an urban space that has stayed whole.

Hoi An stayed so intact through a strange coincidence of history. From the late 19th century, the Thu Bồn River slowly silted up. Large ships could no longer dock, and the deep-water port moved to Da Nang. Hoi An fell quiet, with decades of little investment and little new building. That stillness is what kept its wooden structures, dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries, as they were. The paradox is that decline preserved Hoi An.

The town of Hoi An was once called Faifo. The name appears in the Vietnamese, Portuguese and Latin dictionary that the missionary Alexandre de Rhodes compiled in 1651. He explained it as the name of a village where Japanese people lived, in Đàng Trong, the southern realm then ruled by the Nguyễn lords.

Today the Old Town covers about 2 square kilometers along the north bank of the Hoài River, a branch of the Thu Bồn River. Inside it are more than 1,000 old houses. There are 38 family chapels, and 19 communal houses and pagodas. There are also five assembly halls of Chinese communities from different regions: Fujian, Teochew, Guangdong and Hainan, plus the Ngũ Bang hall, shared by all of them.

Trần Phú Street was the main trading street of the old port. When you walk along it, you are on a road once lined on both sides with the shops of Japanese and Chinese merchants. In about 1617, there was already an official Japanese quarter here. But in 1635, Japan's Tokugawa government issued the Sakoku edict, closing the country and forbidding Japanese people to go abroad. The Japanese community in Hoi An gradually left, or merged with the people around them. That is why, in the whole of the Old Town today, only one Japanese structure remains: the Japanese Covered Bridge.

It is a roofed wooden bridge, 18 meters long and 3 meters wide, spanning a small branch of the Hoài River. It goes by three names. The first is the Japanese Bridge, because the Japanese built it, beginning in about 1593. The second is Chùa Cầu, the Bridge Pagoda, because a small pagoda sits at its center. The third is Lai Viễn Kiều, a name written in Chinese characters. Lord Nguyễn Phúc Chu gave it that name in 1719, while touring Đàng Trong. The name means "the bridge that welcomes guests from afar."

According to a Japanese folk legend, the Japanese built this bridge to hold down Namazu, a water monster. In the legend, Namazu is a giant creature living under the earth, with its head in India, its body in Vietnam and its tail in Japan. Whenever it stirs, all three lands are struck by disaster. This is a folk legend, with no support in official historical records. Still, it reflects a deep spiritual bond between the Japanese community and this land.

Look at the two ends of the bridge. On the west side stand two stone monkeys, and on the east side two stone dogs. A popular explanation says the bridge was begun in a year of the Monkey and finished in a year of the Dog. These four sacred animals are honored in pairs, as a prayer that all goes well for the people of Hoi An.

In February 1990, the bridge was listed as a national historic site. In 2006, its image was printed on the back of the 20,000 dong polymer banknote. From late 2022 to July 2024, the bridge went through a major restoration. The work cost more than 20 billion dong. The official reopening came on August 3, 2024. Afterward, some people felt the paint looked too new, and that the bridge had lost its old character. The Hoi An authorities explained that the materials would age with time. They added that the bridge had been restored many times before, including in 1817, in 1865, in 1915 and in 1986.

In the heart of the little bridge is a small shrine dedicated to Bắc Đế Trấn Vũ. This deity of Taoism and folk belief holds back natural disasters and floods. The shrine is not a Buddhist pagoda, and it has no main Buddha statue. It is a space for folk worship, and three cultures meet in it. The Japanese built the bridge, the Chinese added the shrine, and the Đại Việt authorities named it and looked after it.

Beyond the bridge, Hoi An is also known for its Old Town Full Moon Night. The program began in 1998, one year before UNESCO's recognition. On the 14th night of every lunar month, the whole Old Town switches off its electric lights, and traditional lanterns are lit. Visitors set flower lanterns afloat on the Hoài River, and their golden light glows back from the water late into the night.

In 2017, UNESCO also added the art of Bài Chòi in central Vietnam to its list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. Bài Chòi is an art that combines music, poetry, acting, painting and literature. Hoi An is one of the places that keeps Bài Chòi alive and performs it regularly for visitors, often on a small stage beside the Hoài River.

The Old Town of Hoi An is a living town, not an open-air museum. People still live, trade and worship in those old wooden houses. Every roof tile and every wooden pillar holds the story of the merchants who came and went through this place over the centuries.

On the 14th night of the lunar month, the electric lights go off and the lanterns are lit. Then the row of wooden houses along the Hoài River shines on the water again, warm and golden, like a harbor still waiting for ships from far away.