Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [68]
Exiting Cha Tam Church along Tran Hung Dao, you’re swallowed up by Cho Lon’s vast and colourful cloth market, while a further five minutes’ walk towards the river brings you to the eastern end of Hai Thuong Lan Ong. Shops specializing in Chinese and Vietnamese traditional medicine have long proliferated here, identifiable by the sickly-sweet aroma that hangs over them. Named after a famous herbalist who practised and studied in Hanoi two centuries ago, the street is lined by dingy shophouses banked with cabinets whose wooden drawers are crammed full of herbs. Step over the sliced roots laid out to dry along the pavement and peer inside any one of the shops, and you’ll see rheumy men and women weighing out prescriptions on ancient balances. Steepled around them are boxes, jars and paper bags containing anything from dried bark to antler fur and tortoise glue. Predictably popular is ginseng, the Oriental cure-all said to combat everything from heart disease to acne. Also available are monkey-, tiger- and rhino-based medicines – despite a government ban on these products.
Ho Chi Minh City and around | The City | Cho Lon |
Nguyen Trai and around
Cho Lon’s greatest architectural treasures are its temples and pagodas, many of which stand on or around Nguyen Trai, whose four-kilometre sweep northeast to Pham Ngu Lao starts just north of Cha Tam Church. North of Nguyen Trai’s junction with Chau Van Liem, on tiny Lao Tu, Quan Am Pagoda is the pick of the pagodas in this part of town. Set back from the bustle of Cho Lon, it has an almost tangible air of antiquity, enhanced by the film of dust left by the incense spirals hanging from its rafters. Don’t be too quick to dive inside, though: the pagoda’s ridged roofs are impressive enough from the outside, their colourful crust of “glove-puppet” figurines, teetering houses and temples from a distance creating the illusion of a gingerbread house. Framing the two door gods and the pair of stone lions assigned to keeping out evil spirits are gilt panels depicting petrified scenes from traditional Chinese court life – dancers, musicians, noblemen in sedan chairs, a game of chequers being played.
When Cho Lon’s Fukien congregation established this pagoda well over a century ago, they dedicated it to the Goddess of Mercy, but it’s A Pho, the Queen of Heaven, who stands in the centre of the main hall, beyond an altar tiled like a mortuary slab. A pantheon of deities throngs the open courtyard behind her, decked out in sumptuous apparel and attracting a steady traffic of worshippers. Twin ovens, flanking the main chamber, burn a steady supply of fake money offerings and incense sticks.
Phuoc An Hoi Quan Pagoda (aka Minh Huong Pagoda), three minutes’ walk north on Hung Vuong, is a disarming place. Beyond the menacing dragons and sea monsters patrolling its roof, and the superb wood carving depicting a king being entertained by jousters and minstrels hanging over the entrance, is the temple’s sanctuary, in which stately Quan Cong sits, instantly recognizable by his blood-red face, and fronted by two storks standing on top of turtles fashioned from countless plectrum-shaped ceramic shards.
Along Nguyen Trai, at Thien Hau Pagoda local women come in numbers to make offerings to Me Sanh, Goddess of Fertility, and to Long Mau, Goddess of Mothers and Newborn Babies. When Cantonese immigrants established the temple towards the middle of the nineteenth century, they named it after Thien Hau, Goddess of Seafarers. New arrivals from China would have hastened here to express their gratitude for a safe passage across the South China Sea. Three statues of her stand on the altar, one behind the other, while a large mural on the inside of the front wall depicts her guiding wildly pitching ships across a storm-tossed sea. The temple’s most attractive aspect is its roof, bristling with so many