Tien Chau Pagoda

A folk story is tied to the names Bãi Tiên and Tiên Châu. It says this stretch of the Cổ Chiên riverbank was once as lovely as the realm of the immortals, and a legend tells of fairy maidens coming down to bathe. Legend or fact, the name Tiên Châu has clung to this land through the centuries.

On the land of An Bình islet stands a pagoda with three names. They are Di Đà Tự, Tiên Châu Di Đà Tự and Tô Châu Pagoda.

Local people usually shorten it to Tiên Châu Pagoda.

The pagoda sits in Bình Lương hamlet, in An Bình commune. According to a Cần Thơ newspaper that draws on research writings, around the middle of the 18th century a small bamboo-and-thatch hermitage stood on the riverbank known as Bãi Tiên. The Venerable Giác Nguyên built it to worship Amitabha Buddha. Many abbots later, in the time of the Venerable Tánh Minh, the pagoda was rebuilt in wood and named Tiên Châu Di Đà Tự. The name Di Đà comes from its main object of worship, Amitabha Buddha.

By the end of the 19th century the pagoda had fallen into disrepair, and its followers restored it in 1899, the Kỷ Hợi year. In 1960 it was restored again, this time with modern materials. That work gave it the concrete facade and the upper roof with five pointed towers that stand there today.

So Tiên Châu Pagoda is a living monument. Its history and its faith are very old, but its architecture is the result of many layers added over time.

In 1994 the Ministry of Culture and Information ranked the pagoda a national monument of architecture and art, under Decision number 3211.

The pagoda is built as four parts in a row: a front hall, the main hall, a middle hall and a rear patriarch hall. The same newspaper records that it is 20 meters wide and 46 meters long, with 96 wooden columns. That is enough to picture a roomy, dignified place of worship.

In the main hall, what draws the eye most is the large clay statue of Amitabha Buddha at the central shrine. Around it stand a set of Tam Thế statues and other altars. The Tam Thế Buddhas are the Buddhas of the past, the present and the future.

The pagoda also keeps many horizontal boards, couplets, grave steles and wooden scrolls, most of them from the 19th century according to the same account. Each piece is a page of memory.

Seen from outside, the pagoda shows yin and yang roof tiles, roofs rising in tiers, and elaborate decoration at the gable ends and along the eaves. Inside, light comes through the windows into the worship space. The old wooden bays and rows of columns creak with each breath of river wind blowing in from the Cổ Chiên.

Tiên Châu Pagoda cannot be separated from An Bình islet. It belongs to the islet's world of rivers, orchard houses and đờn ca tài tử. Đờn ca tài tử is an art of music and song of southern Vietnam that evokes life on the Mekong Delta's land and rivers.

People in Vĩnh Long hold this pagoda dear, as a part of the soul of their river country. In the late afternoon the sun pours onto the yin and yang tiles, and the pagoda bell rings out together with the sound of the waves of the Cổ Chiên River.