Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [200]
The central provinces | Da Nang | The City |
The Cham Museum
Even if you’re just passing through Da Nang, try to spare an hour for the small Cham Museum at 2 Duong 2 Thang 9 (7am–5pm; 30,000đ), particularly if you plan to visit the Cham ruins at My Son (see "My Son"). The museum – whose design incorporates Cham motifs – sits in a garden of frangipani trees at the south end of Bach Dang, and its display of graceful, sometimes severe, terracotta and sandstone figures gives a tantalizing glimpse of an artistically inspired culture that ruled most of southern Vietnam for a thousand years (see "The Cham towers and Tuan Tu Village"). In the late nineteenth century French archeologists started collecting statues, friezes and altars from once magnificent Cham sites dotted around the hinterland of Da Nang, and opened the museum in 1916. Though this is undoubtedly the most comprehensive display of Cham art in the world, it’s said many of the best statues were carried off into European private collections.
Recurring images in Cham art are lions, elephants and Hindu deities, predominantly Shiva (founder and defender of Champa) expressed either as a vigorous, full-lipped man or as a lingam, but Vishnu, Garuda, Ganesha and Nandi the bull are also portrayed. Buddhas feature strongly in the ninth-century art of Indrapura, a period when Khmer and Indonesian influences were gradually assimilated. The most distinctive icon is Uroja, a breast and nipple that represents the universal “mother” of Cham kings.
As the Viets pushed south during the eleventh century, so the Chams retreated, and their sculptures evolved a bold, cubic style. Though less refined than earlier works, the chunky mythical animals from this period retain pleasing solidity and a playful charm.
The exhibits are grouped according to their place of origin and are positioned in two main halls. In the first hall, a massive, square altar pedestal (late seventh century) from the religious centre of My Son is considered a masterpiece of early Cham craftsmanship, particularly its frieze depicting jaunty dancing-girls, and a soulful flute player. However, experts and amateurs alike usually nominate two lithe dancers with Mona Lisa smiles, their soft, round bodies seemingly clad in nothing but strings of pearls, as the zenith of Cham artistry. The piece also features two musicians on a fragment of capital produced by Tra Kieu sculptors in the late tenth century, just before the decline of the Champa kingdom.
Da Nang’s Cham Museum
The second hall is a new extension at the back; three times larger than the first hall, it includes a further 146 stone sculptures, dating from the seventh to the fourteenth centuries.
The central provinces | Da Nang | The City |
Cao Dai Temple
Da Nang’s Cao Dai Temple, at 63 Hai Phong opposite the hospital, was built in 1956 and is Vietnam’s second most important after Tay Ninh (see "The Cao Dai Holy See at Tay Ninh"). An elderly archbishop, assisted by fifteen priests, ministers to a congregation said to number 50,000 here. The temple, which sees few tourists, is a smaller, simpler version of Tay Ninh, dominated inside by the all-seeing eye of the Supreme Being and paintings of Cao Dai’s principal saints, Lao-tzu, Confucius, Jesus Christ and Buddha ((see "Cao Dai") for more on these tenets). Services were banned between 1975 and 1986 and the building locked up, but now adherents gather to worship four times a day (6am, noon, 6pm & midnight). The occasional tourists who do turn up find it has more erratic opening times than its larger sister temple outside Ho Chi Minh City; you may find the gate locked when there is no service on.
The central provinces | Da Nang |
Eating and drinking
Da Nang has no shortage of places to eat, ranging from