Tan Ky Ancient House

Among the hundreds of old roofs of Hoi An, the Tấn Ký ancient house is one of the places that still keep the old port alive in its timber beams and in the marks time has left on its walls.

Hoi An was once one of the largest international trading ports of Đại Việt, an old name for Vietnam. Merchant ships came to the Thu Bồn River from Japan, from Fujian and Guangdong, from Portugal and the Netherlands. Along Trần Phú Street and the small lanes around it, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese merchants built houses, opened shops and raised assembly halls. Tấn Ký was the home of one merchant family, set inside that same busy world of trade.

What sets Tấn Ký apart is that the house still shows clear traces of life in the port. It shows the flood seasons gone by. And it shows the hands of the carpenters of Kim Bồng.

The Kim Bồng carpenters are craftsmen from the village of Kim Bồng, across the Thu Bồn River. The sound of their chisels and planes raised most of the old houses at the heart of Hoi An's heritage area. They knew how to choose timber that stands up to water. They fitted their joints without nails, and built the vì kèo, the timber roof frames, to endure centuries of damp and rain in central Vietnam. Standing inside Tấn Ký, one can look up at the roof's timbers, the rui mè and the kèo, and at the columns that lift it. What one sees is the work of hands that calculated closely for weight, for wind and for water.

And water in Hoi An is no small matter. In the rainy season the Hoài and Thu Bồn rivers rise and spill into the streets. The old houses here are built as nhà ống, long and narrow, on a high foundation, with a staircase inside up to the upper floor to escape the floods. On the columns and walls of Tấn Ký, marks still record the flood levels of different years. They are like a diary without words, written by the owners just by living through each season of rising water.

Tấn Ký carries the mark of a whole age of trade across cultures. The timber frame and structure are the craft of the Kim Bồng carpenters. The rooms inside reflect the way of life of a merchant family that kept its Vietnamese roots and also lived in the atmosphere of trade. UNESCO called that atmosphere an outstanding meeting of cultures when it inscribed Hoi An as a World Heritage site.

Hoi An has more than 1,000 old houses. In this one, the tiled roof is only the outside. Within lie the places where a merchant family of old bought and sold, worshipped, and lived.

In the courtyard at the middle of the house, light filters through a small glass roof and falls on dark timber columns. The smell of old wood mingles with the damp of the years. A photograph cannot carry this. It is the same air in which generations of merchants lived, bargained, prayed to their ancestors and waited out the flood season. Tấn Ký is small, but it tells enough of a story about Hoi An.