Pho Hien

An old saying goes: first comes the capital, and second comes Phố Hiến.

That saying has come down through many centuries. The capital was Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. Phố Hiến is the place where you are standing, in Hưng Yên province. The saying does not weigh one place against the other. It is the old way of saying that, for one particular period in history, this was the most prosperous town in the country after Thăng Long.

That period ran from the late 16th century through the 17th and 18th centuries. Phố Hiến was then a trading port along the left bank of the Red River. The river was the main artery of the land. Goods poured out from the interior, and boats came in from the sea. Merchants arrived and communities took shape. Pagodas went up, assembly halls were built, and temples and shrines followed. That is how a trading port becomes a town.

In the early 17th century, Phố Hiến was likened to "a little capital of the four directions," a small royal city where people from every direction came together. It was both a busy trading port and a thriving town. On December 31, 2014, the Prime Minister ranked the whole Phố Hiến heritage complex as a special national monument. It is the highest of the three ranks that Vietnam gives its heritage sites.

What sets the complex apart is that its value does not lie in any single building. This special national monument is made up of 16 component sites. The first is the Xích Đằng Temple of Literature, followed by Mây Temple. Next come Chuông Pagoda and the Mẫu Temple. Then there is the Trần Temple, and the communal house and pagoda of Hiến. The list goes on with Đông Đô Quảng Hội and the Thiên Hậu Temple. There are the Bà Chúa Kho Temple and the An Vũ communal house. There are Kim Đằng Temple and the temple of Cửu Thiên Huyền Nữ. There is a military shrine, the võ miếu, and there is Phố Pagoda. The list ends with Nam Hòa Temple and Nễ Châu Pagoda. Each one is a piece of the larger picture of Phố Hiến.

From one site to the next, layers of culture appear, woven together in the small space of an old town. It helps to look at them one layer at a time.

The first layer is Confucian learning. The Xích Đằng Temple of Literature is the most natural place to begin a story of the love of study and of examination success in Hưng Yên. Even in a trading port, the Confucian scholars kept their place and their voice. The temple of literature is the proof of that.

The second layer is Buddhism. Chuông Pagoda, whose formal name in Chinese characters is Kim Chung Tự, is one of the most representative Buddhist sites in Phố Hiến. Its architecture follows two styles. One is known as "Nội công ngoại quốc." The other is known as "Tứ thủy quy đường." The pagoda keeps a rich collection of statues. Among them are the Eighteen Arhats, the Ten Kings of Hell, the Four Guardians and the Eight Vajra Guardians. The arhats are disciples of the Buddha who reached enlightenment. A pagoda like this, in the middle of a trading port, shows that this port was a place to live, worship and look after the life of the spirit, as well as to buy and sell.

The third layer is folk belief. The Mẫu Temple and the Trần Temple honor figures tied to Vietnamese belief within the old town. Under those old temple roofs lives the memory of a community that lived and believed here, generation after generation.

The fourth layer is the meeting of cultures. It is the most interesting layer, and the one most particular to Phố Hiến. Đông Đô Quảng Hội and the Thiên Hậu Temple are tied to the Chinese community. Its merchants and residents once lived and traded in the port. Thiên Hậu is a Chinese goddess of the sea. In a port where Vietnamese, Chinese and people from other lands came and went, it was only natural for each community to leave its own mark. That mark shows in its places of worship and in its shared community life.

When you stand before Đông Đô Quảng Hội or the Thiên Hậu Temple, remember that these are not "foreign imports" set apart from the Vietnamese town. They are traces of a time when many streams of culture truly met in Phố Hiến, on a foundation of rivers, boats and trade.

The fifth layer is daily life in the neighborhoods and villages. The communal house and pagoda of Hiến and the An Vũ communal house were not only places of worship. Neither were Nễ Châu Pagoda and Phố Pagoda. They were the centers of community life for the villages, wards and streets of the old town. Phố Hiến was not only a trading port. It was a place where people made their homes, named their streets, formed guilds and built a community.

The image to carry home from Phố Hiến is of a port that was once among the most prosperous in the land. Many communities lived, worshipped and built a town together here beside the river. Curved temple roofs rise against the sky. The sound of a pagoda bell drifts across a mossy courtyard. And out beyond, the Red River still flows quietly, as if it has never forgotten the ocean-going ships that once lay at anchor here.