Ngu Xa Bronze Village

From the small bridge onto the island, you can hear lake water lapping on both sides. Ahead lies Ngũ Xã Island, set in the middle of Trúc Bạch Lake like a piece of land apart from the rest of the city. Few people know that this small patch of earth was once the most famous bronze foundry in the capital, Thăng Long. Thăng Long is the city now called Hanoi.

The story begins in the early 17th century. The newspaper Hànộimới tells it this way. Five men from five different villages in Thuận Thành, in Bắc Ninh, came up to the capital to look for work. They met on a stretch of wild grassland east of Trúc Bạch Lake. There they put up rough huts, built furnaces, and began to cast bronze. One by one, each man brought his wife and children to join him. Five craftsmen became five families, and the families became a village. People called it Ngũ Xã Village, meaning the village of five communes. In the folk way of telling it, it was the village of five young craftsmen.

For centuries afterward, Ngũ Xã was the biggest bronze foundry in the capital. The newspaper Nhân Dân passes on an old saying that names the four finest crafts of Thăng Long. Flowered silk of Yên Thái, pottery of Bát Tràng. Goldsmiths of Định Công, bronze workers of Ngũ Xã. Ngũ Xã stands on that list as the representative of Hanoi's traditional art of casting metal.

The bronze workers of Ngũ Xã made more than altar pieces. They cast large statues. The black bronze statue of Trấn Vũ at Quán Thánh Temple is 3.95 meters tall and has stood there since the 17th century. It, too, was made by Ngũ Xã hands. But the work seen as the village's greatest, and as the peak of modern Vietnamese bronze casting, is the statue of Amitabha Buddha in Thần Quang Pagoda, right on the island.

According to a Buddhist website, this statue was cast from 1949 to 1952. The artisan Nguyễn Văn Tùy led the work, together with a group of skilled workers. The casting took three years. When it was done, the statue stood 3.95 meters tall and weighed 10 tons. It was cast in one piece and is hollow inside, by a technique that only the best craftsmen could carry out. The lotus throne beneath it is 1.45 meters high and adds another 3.9 tons, with 96 finely carved petals. On May 11, 1993, the Ministry of Culture and Information ranked Thần Quang Pagoda and Ngũ Xã Communal House as a national historic site for architecture and art. It was the official recognition of what the bronze casters had left on this land.

As for the craft today, Nhân Dân reported in 2023 that only about two families on the island still keep up the traditional trade. The big furnaces of old are gone. Yet step into Thần Quang Pagoda and look up at the statue glowing in the quiet, and you will see why people still call Ngũ Xã the heart of Hanoi's bronze casting. More than 400 years on, that fire has still not gone cold.