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By Root 1428 0

Khai, Phung Hung House has been home to the same family for eight generations, since they moved from Hué in about 1780 to trade cinnamon and hardwoods from the central highlands, as well as silk and glass. The large two-storey house is Vietnamese in style although its eighty ironwood columns and small glass skylights denote Japanese influence, while the gallery and window shutters are in Chinese style. An upstairs living area features a shrine to the ancestors as well as a large shrine to the protector deity Thien Hau, suspended from the ceiling; prayers were said here for the safe return of family members away on trading trips. A set of seven dice in a bowl on a table in front of the altar used to be thrown to determine the auspicious time to set out on a journey, although a plastic set has replaced the bone or marble originals.

More modest is Quan Thang House at 77 Tran Phu. This single-storey shophouse was founded in the early eighteenth century by a captain from Fujian in China, and was home to a medicine-trading business.

On the face of it, Phan Chu Trinh, one block north of Tran Phu, is an unspectacular road but it hides two “family chapels”, again houses built by wealthy Chinese merchants, but to a design reflecting their spiritual rather than predominantly commercial focus. On Phan Chu Trinh itself is the 200-year-old Tran Family Chapel, within a walled compound on the junction with Le Loi. Over home-made lotus-flower tea and sugared coconut you learn about the building and family traditions, going back thirteen generations (three hundred years) to when the first ancestor settled in Hanoi. The move to Hoi An came, so the story goes, when one son married a Vietnamese woman. Such was the parental disapproval that he fled south to make his fortune trading silk, pepper and ivory in Hoi An, but, miraculously, all was forgiven and the whole family turned up on the doorstep. Succeeding generations continued to shine, with one mandarin to their credit – his portrait and ceremonial sword, bearing the Imperial insignia, are displayed in the reception room. On the altar itself, oblong funerary boxes contain a name-tablet and biographical details of deceased family leaders and their wives – carved lotus blossoms indicate adherents of Buddhism. Each year the entire family – more than eighty people – gather round the altar to venerate their ancestors and discuss family affairs.

The smaller, more elaborate Truong Family Chapel (not covered by ticket scheme; 7.30am–noon & 2–5pm; small donation expected) is hidden down an alley beside 69 Phan Chu Trinh. The Truong ancestors, like many ethnic Chinese now in Hoi An, fled China in the early eighteenth century following the collapse of the Ming Dynasty. The ground-breaking ceremony took place in 1840 at the auspicious moment of 5am on the fifth day of the eleventh lunar month – that is, on the hour of the cat and day of the cat, in the month and year of the mouse. This family also embraces mandarin forefathers and cherishes gifts from the Hué court, but more intriguing is an inscribed panel bestowed by Emperor Bao Dai on the wife of the fifth generation who, widowed at 25 and with three children, nevertheless remained faithful to her dead husband.

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The central provinces | Hoi An and around | The Town | The merchants’ houses |

Unravelling the architectural features of Hoi An

You can’t walk far in Hoi An without confronting a mythical beast with a fish’s body and dragon’s head; though they’re found all over northern Vietnam they seem to have struck a particular chord with Hoi An’s architects. One of the most prominent examples tops a weather vane in the Phuoc Kien Assembly Hall, but there are plenty of more traditional representations about, carved into lantern brackets and beam ends, or forming the beams themselves. The carp symbolizes prosperity, success and, here, metamorphosing into a dragon, serves a reminder that nothing in life comes easily. To become a dragon, and thereby attain immortality, a fish must pass through three gates – just as a scholar has to