The Three Incarnations of Hội An

                                               

                                   by Jim Goodman

Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai Street

       Lying near the mouth of the Thu Bồn River in Central Vietnam’s Quảng Nam province, the picturesque town of Hội An is one of the country’s top tourist attractions.  No wonder.  It features a well-preserved old town that has been a World Heritage Site since 1999, lies near several ancient Chăm vestiges, especially the Chăm religious sanctuary at Mỹ Sơn, itself a World Heritage site, and is close to sparkling beaches, offshore islands, riverside craft villages, attractive rural scenery and offers a range of local culinary delights.  That makes it a major factor in Vietnam’s tourist industry and thus a contributor to the country’s rising prosperity.

boats in the Hội An River, a branch of the Thu Bồn

       It used to be much more.  It was the main port of ancient Chăm states in the area, long before any Vietnamese resided here.  And in the 16^th to 18^th centuries, when it was known as Faifo, it was the main center of international commerce under the regime of the Nguyển Lords and the busiest port on the entire coast of Vietnam.      

       The Chăm are an Austronesian people who began settling along the central coast over 1500 years ago.  They established different states from Nình Thuận in the south to Quảng Bình in the north.  From the 7^th to 10^th centuries the strongest of these was Amaravati in the Quảng Nam region, with its capital at Simhapura, the Lion City, today’s Trà Kiêu, about 20 km west of Hội An.  The state and society was modeled on that of their Indian-influenced Khmer neighbors.  The important difference was in the economy.

boat and fish trap on the Thu Bồn River

       The Khmer state was based on agriculture.  The Chăm states occupied narrow strips of good agricultural land and relied more on commerce, in particular maritime trade.  Chăm ships sailed great distances to trade and in Amaravati Hội An was its main port.  After Amaravati’s demise, the destruction of both Simhapura and the successor state of Indrapura at the end of the 10^th century, and the shift of power to Vijaya further south, Hội An’s role declined; still an active port, but less important to the Chăm economy. 

casting a net on the Thu Bồn River

       Hội An’s revival began in the mid-16^th century, when civil war raged in the north, migrations began to the former Chăm territories of Vijaya (conquered and annexed in 1471), and rivalries climaxed among supporters of the Lê side—the Trịnh and Nguyển families--in the war against the Mạc Dynasty.  Fearing for his safety from the Trịnh commander, Nguyễn Hoàng angled himself an appointment from the Lê Court as Governor of the areas from Quảng Bình to Phú Yên, 

       The Lê side largely defeated the Mạc by 1592 but the restored monarch was but a figurehead.  All power was in the hands of the Trịnh Lord.  Nguyến Hoàng wouldn’t accept this breach of legitimacy, as he interpreted it, and so became the first of the Nguyễn Lords, setting up his own fief in Central Vietnam.  And as part of his administration he began building up maritime commerce through the port of Faifo (Hội An), already home to Chinese and Japanese merchants, taking over the trade links previously established by the Chăm.  A big portion of the government’s revenue came from taxing commerce, which it encouraged.

Nguyển Hoàng, the first of the Nguyễn Lords

       Nguyễn Hoàng died at 88 in 1613, having successfully established the foundations of an autonomous state.  His very capable sixth son, Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên, already a veteran of several years of administration, succeeded him.  By then it was becoming obvious that a showdown was inevitable with the Trịnh regime in the north.  The new Nguyễn Lord took firm steps to strengthen the realm’s administration, defense and commerce.  This included patronizing Faifo. 

       He permitted the Portuguese to set up in the port in 1615, who eventually became his suppliers for cannon and advisors on shipbuilding. He also established a customs office to collect import duties and control the trade in ivory, aromatic oils and woods, rattan mats and caulking resin.  A very pro-business ruler, he even married off one of his daughters to a resident Japanese merchant.  Relations with the Trịnh regime in the north came to a head in 1627, after Nguyễn Phuc Nguyên refused to pay tribute and the Trịnh Lord sent his armies south to compel compliance. 

Chinese Assembly Hall of the Cantonese community 

       The campaign failed, as did four subsequent invasions in following years, which included one unsuccessful Nguyễn campaign against the north.  Finally, in 1672 the two sides agreed to a truce that would last over a century.  None of the Trịnh attacks touched Faifo, however, and the port’s importance grew.  This was Hội An’s golden age.  Every year the town hosted great international fairs, attracting Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese traders and all three had resident communities in the port.  Besides luxury goods like silk and aromatic woods, these fairs also offered a wide variety of domestic use items, particularly ornaments for local consumption, an indication of the population’s relative prosperity.

Bạch Đằng Street on the Hội An River

       The Nguyển regime exported silk, sugar, pepper, rattan, cinnamon, musk, deerskins, eaglewood, lac and gold.  Imports included ceramics, silver, utensils, swords, armor and copper coins—the good ones re-circulated, the inferior ones made into cannon.  China banned trade with Japan, so merchants from the two countries met in Faifo to mostly exchange Chinese silk for Japanese silver.  After the Japanese government closed its doors to the outside world, Vietnamese trade with Japan was indirect, via Chinese merchants who were allowed to enter Nagasaki.  The Japanese community in Faifo, however, remained for a time and monopolized local silk production.

      While trade with China and Japan was more substantial, the Nguyễn regime also promoted commercial links with Southeast Asia.  Ships regularly arrived from Siam, Cambodia, Philippines and Java.  And for the first time since the Lý Dynasty, Vietnamese merchants took trading ships overseas to Manila, Java and Siam, and even formed a sizable resident community in Ayutthaya.

shop houses in old Hệi An

       Besides allowing Portuguese merchants to set up a base in Faifo, the Nguyễn Lords also permitted the presence of Christian missionaries.  The Jesuits had established a base in Japan in the 16^th century, but the government expelled them in 1614.  A group of Portuguese and Italian missionaries relocated to Hội An and a decade later Alexander de Rhodes arrived, staying for three years studying the Vietnamese language.  He would later become the most instrumental person in devising the alphabetic system, adapted from Latin letters, called quốc ngũ, that eventually replaced the Vietnamese version of Chinese characters and is the official orthography of the language today. 

       In the 18^th century, as Vietnamese migrants moved into the Mekong Delta and established large rice plantations, the port of Quy Nhơn became equally important to the Nguyển regime.  Ships from there sailed to the Mekong Delta to pick up the rice so needed to feed the increasing population around Huế and in Quàng Nam.  Faifo was still the regime’s principal international port, but that role began to abate when the Court, by then already in the throes of terminal decline, began imposing exorbitant taxes on overseas trade in mid-17^th century, effectively cutting off its main revenue source.       

       In 1771 the Tây Sơn Revolt broke out in the area that was formerly the Chăm state of Vijaya. A few years later Tăy Sơn forces and their Chinese mercenary allies attacked Faifo and slaughtered most of its Chinese residents.  The town never recovered.  The Tây Sơn state lasted until 1802 and the establishment of the Nguyển Dynasty.  But although the new state made nearby Huế its capital, it did not favor commerce like that of its Nguyển Lords predecessor state.  International trade was only permitted at Danang and anyway by then silt deposited by the Thu Bồn River ended easy access to Faifo.

waterfront street

typical old town street and houses

       From then on Hối An was just a minor river port servicing very local commerce.  The Japanese community was long gone, though the bridge they built is still one of the great attractions of the town. Chinese communities stayed on, rebuilt their houses in a new style and added the community centers and temples that are some of the main tourist attractions in contemporary times.  But its economic importance to the state was now negligible.  In colonial times it served as an administrative center and a small French neighborhood existed just east of the original town, but the French never tried to revive Hội An’s historic role. They built a railway link to Danang, but a storm destroyed the tracks in 1916 and they were not rebuilt.  Thanks to the silting, big ships could no longer travel up the Thu Bồn, and no new port was constructed on the coast.

boats and ferries on the river

       Hội An did not suffer any war damage during the anti-colonial struggle.  It was neither bombed nor fought over during the American War and when Vietnam launched its renovation policy in the late 80s, while nearby Danang experienced fast development that replaced its old buildings with new ones, Hội An was virtually unaffected.  As a consequence, its antiquated architecture remained intact, providing the basis, with the inauguration of Vietnam’s Open Door policy, for its third incarnation as a major tourist attraction.

       Its designation as a World Heritage Site in 1999 insured that its old town, three long blocks along the river, would be preserved, with regulations put in place governing the height and appearance of its mostly early 19^th century shop houses, temples and Chinese community halls.  No other town in Central Vietnam so evokes the atmosphere of pre-modern Vietnam.  Most of its houses have become restaurants and shops catering to the tourist trade, selling clothing, souvenirs, local crafts, lanterns and paintings, but are still run mostly by native residents rather than outsiders.  Cars and taxis are prohibited from the old town, so it’s a pedestrian zone, quiet and unhurried, bereft of the hubbub characterizing virtually every other town in the country.

       Besides the traditional shop houses, Hội An’s attractions include temples, Chinese assembly halls, a few museums and rich merchants’ houses.  Some of these are participants in a ticketing scheme, in which for the purchase of a single ticket a visitor can explore the interiors of one building in each category.  The money is for the maintenance of the town, but not all the interesting sites are on the ticket list.  The most beautiful structure in town, for one, the 16^th century Japanese Covered Bridge, spanning a creek in the western quarter, is not. 

16th century Japanese covered bridge 

       According to legend, the Japanese built the bridge over the site of the heart of an underground beast whose head was in India and tail was in Japan.  When angry the beast shook its tail and caused violent earthquakes in Japan.  So geomancers directed the bridge to be built over the heart, so that the bridge’s piles would magically drive a sword through its heart.  With the beast dead the earthquakes ceased.

       Various Chinese communities from Fujian, Guangdong, Chouzhou and Hainan erected the Assembly Halls in Hôi An, serving as social and religious centers.  Lavishly decorated, these mainly date from the 18^th and 19^th centuries and a separate hall existed for all resident and visiting Chinese communities.  The old merchant houses and family chapels feature exquisite wooden furniture and interior decorations, but this is also true to a lesser extent for many of the restaurants.  In addition, the traditional shop houses along all the streets are attractive, with yellow facades, wooden beams and shutters, sometimes carved, with railed balconies and suspended lanterns.

       Taking an early morning walk through the old town, before the shops have opened, is like a stroll back in time.  And for the more history-minded visitors, various small museums specialize in exhibits of 17^th-18^th century trade ceramics, bronze artifacts, Chăm relics, pre-Chăm Sa Huỳnh Culture artifacts, contemporary handicrafts, minerals and gemstones, historical maps and costumes and a Folk Museum displaying traditional tools, agricultural implements, musical instruments and fishing gear.

local residents conducting a ritual in the old town

       Besides these heritage attractions, Hội An also has a typically lively local waterfront market, modern Buddhist temples, a river busy with small boats and ferries, a couple of Cao Dài temples, street stalls selling local snacks, tea and fresh beer, a variety of restaurants and some delicious local specialties.  It has a tourist-oriented theater for shows of traditional music and dance, plus a local platform where residents gather for particularly Hội An-style games and amusement, for themselves, not for visitors.  And on unspecified days a group might gather for an elaborate ritual on a public street.  A large part of the population is not at all involved in the tourist business and they simply carry on with their traditional ways in spite of it.  

       For all these reasons Hội An will continue to lure ever greater numbers of visitors, even Vietnamese tourists.  The number of businesses and facilities catering to tourists has more than doubled in the past decade.  Every year it will get gaudier and more crowded.  But that’s inevitable.  For a place as intrinsically beautiful and interesting as Hội An and its environs, there will always be so much to see and savor.

full moon in Hội An

                                                                                       * * *      
         Hội An is one of the stops on my Vietnam tour program:  see http://deltatoursvietnam.com 

                

The Chăm Legacy of Quàng Nam, Vietnam

                                                          by Jim Goodman

Chăm temple ruims at Mỹ Sơn

       Quảng Nam province lies roughly in the center of Vietnam, adjacent to Đà Nẵng and south of the Hải Văn Pass.  In ancient times Đèo Hải Văn marked the boundary of the extent of Chinese influence.  Quảng Nam did not become part of a Vietnamese state until the late 15^th century.  Before that it was home to an Austronesian people known as the Chăm, who established several independent states along the coast of central Vietnam.  Quảng Nam was the site of two Chăm capitals.  The first was Sinhapura, at what is now Trà Kiêu, on the Thu Bồn River southeast of Đà Nãng, established after 446 in the wake of a Chinese invasion that looted and destroyed the previous capital near Huế.  The second was Indrapura, now the village of Đồng Dương, founded in 875 and vanquished in 1044.

       While very little remains of Sinhapura other than a bit of its walls, or of Indrapura besides a small remnant of its main temple, vestiges of Chăm monuments remain at four sites in the province.  The most famous is Mỹ Sơn, a World Heritage Site since 1999, a Chăm royal sanctuary a little west of Trà Kiêu, founded in the late 4^th century and containing the ruins of religious monuments erected up to the 14^th century.  Other towers, at Khương Mỹ, Chiên Đan and Bằng An, date from the 10^th and 11^th centuries, the last period of the state of Amaravati.    

Tháp BằngAn

       The Vietnamese state the Chinese conquered in the 2nd century BCE only included about the northern third of what is today Vietnam.  The Chinese claimed jurisdiction all the way down to the Hải Văn Pass, but the territory south of Nghẹ An was very lightly populated, mainly by non-Vietnamese people, and only nominally administered.  It was also subject to periodic revolts and in 192 CE the southernmost district of Tượng Lâm, corresponding to today’s Quảng Trị and Thưa Thiên Huế provinces, declared its independence as a state the Chinese called Lin-yi.

       Over the next several centuries it would expand north, contract now and then, be known from the 8^th century as Huan-wang, and by the time of Vietnamese independence in 938, be identified as Champa.  The new state distinguished itself by modeling its government and society on Indian models rather than Chinese.  Central Vietnam is very narrow compared to the Deltas of the north and the south, so agriculture could not be a state’s major economic input.  The Chăm were also seafarers.  Regular contact with proto-Khmer in the federation of ports known as Funan led them to adopt the Indian civilization then spreading in Cambodia and southwest Vietnam.     

Chăm warriors, Tháp Chiên Đàn

      The king identified himself as an incarnation of the Hindu god Shiva.  The first monument erected at Mỹ Sơn, established in the late 4^th century when the capital was still north of the Hải Văn Pass, was dedicated to Shiva.  This first tower and subsequent ones were made of wood and all burnt down in a 6^th century fire.  Subsequently, the construction materials were brick and stone.  The baked bricks were fitted together with glue made from a local resin and some of the exterior carvings were done directly on the brick surface.  Columns were generally stone, as were most of the free-standing sculptures.

Mỹ Sưn stele of Chăm life

       The shapes of the buildings, exterior designs, sculptures and motifs reflected heavy Khmer influence.  The revered deities were mostly Hindu—Shiva primarily, but also Vishnu, Laxmi, Surya, Indra, Krishna, etc.  In sculpting these gods Chăm artisans followed the Khmer styles, themselves derived from Indian models with precise, written instructions on what a particular deity was supposed to look like.  The rules allowed for a bit of stylistic variation, which made Chăm sculptures slightly different from Khmer, especially in the depiction of real and mythical animals.  Examples of this are the monkeys in a Khương Mỹ frieze, elephants at the base of one of the Chiên Đàn towers and the mythical beasts at Bằng An.

elephants at Tháp Chiên Đàn

       While most Chăm kings identified themselves as Hindu, the founder of Amaravati in 875 was a Mahayana Buddhist, as were his immediate successors.  While the state religion subsequently reverted to Hinduism, for a brief period Buddhist themes dominated Chăm art.  Surviving sculptures, such as the bronze Tara and the reliefs and Buddha images from Đồng Dương in the Đà Nãng Chăm Museum, exhibit a high quality of technique.

       Whether officially Hindu or officially Buddhist, the Chăm state of Linyi-Huanwang-Amaravati never had friendly relations with its northern neighbors.  The original state expanded north into contemporary Quảng Binh and periodically raided the southern districts of Chinese-occupied northern Vietnam.  This continued

Avalokitesvar, Quảng Binh, 10th c. 

 after the Vietnamese won back their independence in 938.  The Vietnamese retaliated in a major way in 982, capturing Indrapura, but eventually the Chăm recovered and resumed raids.  In 1044 King Lý Thái Tông led an expedition that destroyed Indrapura.  His forces also captured all the Chăm Court’s entertainers and dancers and took them back to their capital Thămg Long (today’s Hanoi).  Chăm dancers then became part of the Lý Court’s entertainment. 

       Amaravati ceased to exit as a state, but the Vietnamese only annexed the area north of Đèo Hải Văn.  Control of Quảng Nam passed to the nearest Chăm state south—Vijaya.  Its kings continued to erect monuments in Mỹ Sơn now and then, until the Vietnamese conquered Vijaya in 1470 and annexed its territory from Quảng Nam to Phú Yên.  They did not attack the Chăm monuments, unlike the Khmer in earlier wars with Viyaya, but without state power behind them anymore these fell into neglect and decay.

       The Chăm people practically vanished from this part of Chăm territory.  Many fled south or west, while those who stayed behind submerged themselves into the growing Vietnamese population, hiding or abandoning their ethnic identity.  The monuments their ancestors left behind remained basically ignored until their discovery by French archaeologists at the end of th^e 19^th century.  To them it was the discovery of a “lost” and unknown civilization and excavating and cataloguing the monuments, assembling and translating the stone inscriptions, particularly at sites like Mỹ Sơn, soon commenced.  

Mỹ Sơn ruins

       Mỹ Sơn contained nearly seventy monuments of one kind or another, some of them mere heaps of collapsed components.  Besides recording everything that lay in place, archaeologists also had to determine which pieces belonged to which structure and what it was supposed to look like when it was first erected.  Finally they were able to begin the even more painstaking work of reconstruction in the mid-1930s.  The work had to cease in 1943 because of the war situation and could not resume afterwards because of the ensuing battle between the colonial forces and the Việt Minh. 

       Following the end of the war and the separation of the country into two parts, the government in South Vietnam did not take up restoration and reconstruction in Mỹ Sơn.  The sanctuary returned to its former condition of neglect and gradual decay.  In the 60s the armed struggle against the Saigon government intensified and prompted the Americans to intervene.  National Liberation Front guerrillas, the Viet Cong as they became known, established control over most of the countryside and set up bases in remote areas everywhere, including around Mỹ Sơn.

gajasimha, half-lion, half-elephant, Tháp Bằng An

       In August 1969 American planes carpet-bombed Quảng Nam’s Chăm heartland.  The bombs practically obliterated the remains of Đồng Dương and destroyed much of the Mỹ Sơn sanctuary, including some of the restored works.  It was one of the war’s great cultural tragedies.  Even today there are unsafe, no-go zones in the vicinity, suspected of being littered with unexploded ordinance and land mines.  The bombing did not destroy the guerrillas, of course, and they simply moved bases and carried on with their ultimately successful campaign.  

       Fortunately, the smaller Chăm tower sites, being near the coast, were not targeted and today look pretty much like the original French photographs.  The smallest is Tháp Bằng An, a few km west of Hội An.  A single, bullet-shaped tower with an appended entrance section, it is the only Chăm tower on an octagonal base.  Much of its external decoration, like the friezes on the arch above the doorway and the designs along the columns, has eroded.  But in the yard stand two large stone statues of the gajasimha—a mythical beast half-lion and half-elephant.

Tháp Chiên Đản

     About 50 km south on Highway 1 the triple towers of Tháp Chiên Đàn lie just west of the road.  They have lost most of their domes and vegetation is creeping up the walls, but many of the stone relief carvings have survived around the bases—dancers, musicians, warriors, elephants, etc. The towers rise behind a large courtyard, which must have originally held other buildings, judging by the remains of the foundations.  Off to the right stand a large gajasimha, a stone lingam and a mounted stone slab inscription fragment.  Next to these is a small museum, housing objects found during excavations around the towers, such as 

Khương Mỹ Krishna

segments of friezes, a carving of Durga and other sculptures.

       A little further south, just past the turn to Tam Kỳ, Tháp Khương Mỹ also comprises three towers.  Vegetation has covered their upper sections, but some of the decorative elements are still in good shape, like vegetal patterns on the pillars, a carving of court life and a frieze of monkeys.  Khương Mỹ’s best statues—of a multi-armed Shiva mounted on Nandi and of Krishna holding up a mountain to protect cattle from a storm—were removed to the Đà Nẵng Chăm Museum.

       All these sites attract scant attention.  The emphasis is still on Mỹ Sơn.  That’s understandable, considering Mỹ Sơn has such a large collection of monuments.  Restoration is still going on there and recently an entire section previously closed for reconstruction finally opened to visitors.  Mỹ Sơn is not a Chăm equivalent of Angkor, but it was never intended to be.  It was not a royal city, but a sanctuary, where kings commissioned religious monuments to make merit, not to impress the urban populace as at Angkor, and had their tombs built.

       It’s about a half hour drive from Hội An, a little more from Đà Nãng, in a secluded, wooded valley about ten km west of the ancient capital Sinhapura at Trà Kiêu.  Best to go early morning, before the tour buses arrive and listen to the birds as you take the quiet walk down a long stone path to the site of the first, and biggest, collection of ruins. 

Chăm tower andCat Tooth Mountain

external sculpture,Mỹ Sơn

      The French excavators divided the monuments into eight groups and gave them the rather unimaginative names of Groups A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H, with numbers added to identify each building within a group.  Actually the groups are in just five locations.  The first set encountered after coming down the walkway comprises Groups B. C and D.  This is the most interesting site, where the ruins are not as ruined as at other sites, and the massif looming in the distance behind them, Cat’s Tooth Mountain, which to the Chăm symbolized the holy mythical Indian peak Mt. Meru, is clearly visible.  

assembly hall, Mỹ Sơn

       Towers, temples, stone linga, storehouses and assembly halls are all represented, with some of the external decorations and carvings in fairly good condition.  In addition, one small building houses several statues, steles, stone inscriptions and remnant temple decorations.  Group A, on the other hand, a little southeast of this site, is less well endowed.  Fewer buildings remain standing, carvings are scarce and lots of columns and stone blocks lie on the ground.

       Leaving Group A and turning northeast you come to Group G, a single compound east of Groups B, C and D.  Bomb damage is more evident here than natural erosion, which is also a factor further up the same road to Groups E and F, which lie adjacent to each other.  The last site, Group G, lies all by itself past the cafes northwest of Groups B, C and D and comprises just a part of a tower wall. 

Chăm dancer, from a Chiên Đàn frieze

       A normal walk through all the sites takes about two leisurely hours, though I found myself returning to the B-C-D site for another lingering, appreciative look before leaving.  On the way out I discovered a small stage just before the exit and happened to be in time for the park’s entertainment show.  It began with Chăm folk dances, with rural themes and props like water jugs, baskets and farm tools, followed by soloists on Chăm instruments.

       The rest of the program featured ancient Chăm dances.  Performers dressed in costumes resembling those of the carved dancers on the temple friezes.  The themes were very Hindu, too, as three girls lined up behind each other and waved their arms so that they appeared from the front as one girl (one goddess) with six arms.  All of the choreography seemed to be inspired by Chăm temple art.  It was like a live version of the sculptures, a fitting conclusion to a morning excursion into ancient history.

performance of ancient Chăm dances at Mỹ Sơn

                                                                                * * *
            Mỹ Sơn is one of the stops on my cultural-historical journey through Vietnam.  See                                                                          deltatoursvietnam.com for details