Xiem Can Pagoda

A pagoda near the coast has a gate that makes people stop and look. It stands in what used to be the Bạc Liêu area and is now part of Cà Mau province.

This is Xiêm Cán Pagoda, known in Khmer as Komphisako. Building began in March 1887, led by the Venerable Lâm Mau, who served as abbot. More than a century later, the Venerable Dương Quân is the eighth abbot, and the grounds now spread over nearly 50,000 square meters.

The name Xiêm Cán is often explained through the Teochew language, as meaning "next to the water." It recalls the old setting of the place, land that lay close to flats of silt along the coast. This is the popular explanation, handed down from generation to generation along with the pagoda itself.

What visitors meet first is the gate and a sturdy boundary wall, thick with carved reliefs. On the wall on either side, in front of the gate, are Prince Siddhartha and a young woman dancing. In the courtyard lies a statue of the Buddha reclining as he enters nirvana. The decoration is that of a Khmer pagoda in the south: Khmer dragons, the sacred serpent Naga, the sacred bird Krud, and bright colors. It covers the gate, the columns, the stairways and the roofs.

Step into the courtyard, and many parts of the pagoda turn out to face east. In the Theravada Buddhism of the Khmer, east stands for the path of the Buddha's teaching, which traveled from west to east. Theravada is believed to be the oldest form of Buddhism, and it is dominant today in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. So the pagoda is arranged not only for beauty of design but also by an order of religious symbols with real depth.

The main hall is the center of it all. It is rectangular, its front faces east, and 18 steps lead up to it, with a relief of Shakyamuni above them. Shakyamuni is the founder of Buddhism. Inside, murals tell the whole life of the Buddha, from his birth to his entry into nirvana. This is how Khmer art carries a teaching in pictures. People can worship and learn the Buddhist story at once, even if they cannot read.

In the grounds stand more than a hundred statues of the Buddha Shakyamuni in his incarnations. There is also a stone stele in ancient Khmer script, and a bronze bell that dates from 1887, the same year the pagoda was begun.

The complex includes the main hall, the sala, hermitage cells, living quarters for the monks, a crematorium and a tower for ashes. That is enough to make it both a place of monastic practice and a cultural center for a whole community. The pagoda is a shared spiritual home for the ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese and Khmer communities of the region. Khmer people of the south gather here to learn to read and write, to learn dance and song, and to hold their festivals, keeping their identity alive through each generation.

Each year the pagoda welcomes three great seasons of ceremony. Chol Chnam Thmay, the Khmer New Year, runs from about April 14 to 16. Sene Dolta, the Khmer festival of filial gratitude, is held from about October 8 to 10. And the offering of monastic robes takes place from about the sixteenth of the ninth month to the full moon of the tenth lunar month. On those days, music, chanting and the colors of ceremonial dress fill the grounds.

The year 2022 was a memorable one for Xiêm Cán. On June 29, the chairman of the provincial government of Bạc Liêu, as it was then, signed the decision recognizing the pagoda as a provincial site of history and culture. A few months later, on November 29, it was honored as a representative tourist destination of the Mekong Delta.

One early morning, sunlight comes through the trees of the grounds, chanting rises from the main hall, and the gold and red of the Buddha statues glow in a light mist. The pagoda was begun more than 130 years ago on land its name is said to describe as "next to the water". Xiêm Cán is still alive, and it still keeps the soul of a whole community.