Huong Liem Ancient House

On Cù lao Minh, a river island in what used to be Bến Tre province, a wooden house has stood for more than a hundred years. From its ironwood columns to its carved panels, it is still almost intact. People there call it the Hương Liêm Ancient House.

The house also goes by two other names, the Huỳnh Phủ Ancient House and the Đại Điền Ancient House. All three point to the same building and to one man, Huỳnh Ngọc Khiêm. He was born in 1843 and died in 1927, and people in the area usually called him Hương Liêm. He came from central Vietnam. He moved south to make his living and became one of the richest men on the island in his day. The house he built shows that wealth. More than that, it shows the skill of the carpenters of old.

The ancient house and the Huỳnh family tombs were ranked a national monument of architecture and art by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. The decision was number 1251, dated April 14, 2011. The house stands in Khu Phố hamlet, in Đại Điền commune. The commune was part of the former Thạnh Phú district of Bến Tre province. Since the administrative reorganization, the area has belonged to Vĩnh Long province.

Seen from the yard, the house stretches long and steady, as if it had put down roots. The house is about 17 meters wide and about 25 meters long, and it rises 5.7 meters. It is a rectangular timber house of the type called xuyên trính, with three bays and two side wings. The roof is laid with yin and yang tiles. The frame rests on 48 columns of lim ironwood, each 40 to 50 centimeters across. In the fourth row of columns stand 32 brick columns. They replaced wooden ones that were damaged in the years from 1945 to 1954.

Each of those ironwood columns is so thick that a child with arms spread wide can hardly reach all the way around it. Yet what holds visitors longest is not the size. It is the carving on every rafter, every wall panel and every altar piece. The large wooden rafters are shaped into curves, edged with fine grooves and carved in relief. The rafter ends are carved as dragons. The front walls of the central bay carry large carved panels of the river delta's landscape, its fruit trees and its creatures. The motifs include the four sacred creatures, the plants of the four seasons, the eight precious objects, lotus and cranes, pine and deer, and a hundred birds. There are also scenes from the old tales of filial piety known as Nhị Thập Tứ Hiếu.

The altars in the central bay follow a clear order. In the middle is an altar to Phật Bà Quan Âm, the bodhisattva of compassion. On the left, the family honors its ancestors of many generations past. On the right, it honors Huỳnh Ngọc Khiêm and his wife. The altar pieces are finely carved, lacquered red and gilded. Horizontal boards, ancestral tablets and signboards bear Chinese characters carved in wood. Some are lacquered red and gilded, others inlaid with mother-of-pearl. These details reflect the taste and culture of a well-established family at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th.

As for when it was built, no one knows exactly the year work began. But one horizontal board celebrates the Huỳnh family's housewarming, and it is dated the year of Giáp Thìn, 1904. So the house was finished in that year or before. People in the area still say the house was built over the years from 1890 to 1904. That is local memory of a long and painstaking build, not a finding of researchers.

That build has a well-known story of its own. As the story goes, the carpenters were not paid by the day or by the stage of work. They were paid by the wood shavings, the scraps planed off in each day of work. That strange way of paying points to one thing. The owner wanted the house made slowly and carefully, so that every piece of wood was worthy of the Huỳnh name. Of course, it is a tale handed down from the old days, part of the memory of this land, and no one has ever fully verified it.

Behind the house is the old Hương Liêm well. It is about 10 meters deep and lined with 12 courses of dressed stone. It is said to have been finished before work on the house began, around 1890. What makes it special is that its water stays fresh all year, though the Thạnh Phú area suffers badly from salt water creeping in from the sea. Those 12 courses of stone lie quietly underground, keeping the water sweet for the people nearby through many dry, salty seasons. They have lasted as well as the ironwood columns above.

More than a hundred years after the housewarming, the house still stands on the island. The dragon heads on the rafter ends still rise in the shadows under the tiled roof. Light filters through the carved walls and still lays golden streaks on the brick floor, as it did when Hương Liêm sat receiving his guests. Inside that house, it is almost possible to hear the chisels of the old carpenters. Patient and exacting, they struck the ironwood blow by blow, to leave something worthy of lasting for generations.