Ho Chi Minh City D3 — Cho Lon
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- Doha — Ho Chi Minh city Qatar Airways QR974 Flight Report / Vietnam arrival
- Ho Chi Minh City D1 — downtown Saigon
- Ho Chi Minh City D2 — Cu Chi Tunnel
Recommended song for this article: Tết tết tết tết đến rồi (Vietnamese new year song)
Let’s begin our 3rd day in Ho Chi Minh City with photos of me awkwardly sleeping and eating in this fancy hotel.
After another fancy InterContinental breakfast, we went to Saigon’s Chinatown “Cho Lon” by Grab. Cho Lon, literally “big market”, lied on the left bank of Saigon River. In Chinese the place is called “thay ngon” (堤岸), literally “river bank.”
On our way I spotted this magnificent Cao Dai Temple, and was lucky enough to pull out my cell phone instantaneously for this shot. Cao Dai is a Vietnamese religion established in the early 20th century that worships a series of “gods” including Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Confucius, and even Chinese poet Li Bai, Isaac Newton, Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, and Sun Yat-Sen. The biggest Cao Dai Temple is in Tay Ninh (close to the Cambodian border), which could be combined with Cu Chi Tunnel to make a day tour. I was quite interested in visiting, but gave up because the ride would have been too long. I had plans to visit the one in Cho Lon too, but realized it‘s far from the main street. Very fortunate to at least spot it on our grab ride.
Cho Lon’s Chinese population could be dated all the way back to the beginning of the Nguyen Dynasty. Under the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), Cho Lon was a thriving trading hub where American soldiers came to trade. Its nickname “Little Hong Kong” clearly summarized the prosperity of its sizable Chinese population. After the communists took over, however, many of the Chinese Vietnamese people, who were wealthy merchants, were labeled as bourgeois and persecuted. Today Cho Lon is off most tourists’ radars and barely talked about in travel guides. Only a couple of day tours were available online, mainly for Westerners to experience Chinese culture and food.
Entering Cho Lon, many stores with Chinese signs started to appear. We first visited Thein Hau Temple (天后宮), a temple worshipping Mazu and also served as the center of local Cantonese community. The temple is also known as Canton Huiguan (穗城會館), literally the association of people from Canton.
Local Chinese newspaper (lit: Saigon Liberation Post) and donation bulletin showed a continuous presence of the Chinese community to this day. Inscription on the side recorded the temple’s renovation in the 70s. Interestingly, Republic of China (ROC) calendar was used (民國五十九年), even though the ROC had retreated to Taiwan by then. South Vitenam, as a member of the Western bloc, did not recognize the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in mainland China, and always saw ROC as China’s only legitimate government. ROC also had significant presence among oversea Chinese due to historical reasons.
This kind of circular incense hanged above seems like a feature of Cantonese temples, rarely seen in Hokkien temples in Taiwan. The temple’s exterior setting and interior decorations both reminded me of the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall I visited in Guangzhou (Catnton), China in 2017.
In the back, a sign says “meeting hall” (議事堂), which reveals the temple’s important role as the community center in early days.
Around the temple, most stores had traditional Chinese signs.
Next we visited the Minh Huong Gia Thanh Hoi Quan (明鄉嘉盛會館), which is arguably one of the most special temples in Cho Lon. The Minh Huong people (lit: Ming Dynasty origined, 明鄉人) were descendants of China’s Ming Dynasty who opposed Manchurian rule and migrated all the way to Vietnam in the 17th century, as one of the earlier Chinese immigrants here in Cho Lon. The Nguyen Dynasty treated them as Vietnamese, instead of the Chinese who came later. Most Minh Huong people have assimilated into Vietnamese today, and no longer speak their native languages. This temple is the cultural and religious center of the Minh Huong community of Cho lon.
Minh Huong Gia Thanh Hoi Quan, unlike the Thien Hau Temple, had no visitors at all during our visit. After learning that we come from Taiwan, the temple keeper happily let us in. He then went back to sit and chill with 3 other fellow old men (unsure whether they were talking Cantonese or Vietnamese.)
This couplet is specific in this temple: rather being a guest in the south; shamed being a vassal in the north (寧為南國客，恥作北朝臣）. It depicts how those who were loyal to the Ming Dynasty decades after its collapse go overseas to preserve the orthodoxy they believed. Several centuries later, reminiscent scenes happened yet again here.
Streets in Cho Lon are full of traditional stores selling cloth, dry foods and items related to the lunar new year (even though it was still November when we visited)
This was unfortunately not a very pedestrian-friendly area, made even more difficult by the scorching sunlight (can’t believe I was freezing several days ago somewhere on the same hemisphere.)
We visited another Chinese temple: Hoi Quan Nhi Phu (the association of the two prefectures in Hokkien, 福建二府會館). This is the Hokkien equivalent of the Canton Association (Thein Hau Temple) we visited before. The two prefectures are presumably Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, where most people Taiwan were originally from.
The temple looked similar to typical ones seen in Taiwan — architecture, decorations and paintings — much more so than the previous Cantonese Thein Hau Temple. Interestingly it also featured the circular incenses that I haven’t seen in Taiwan. Cho Lon’s Chinese community was predominantly Cantonese, which may have had influenced the Hokkiens.
A pond in the back for life release of turtles. Such religious practice had negative environmental effects, which is also an ongoing issue in Taiwan.
Last but not least (in fact probably the most important site I wanted to see), was the San Francis Xavier Church of Saigon.
The church features a rare mix of Gothic and Chinese cultural elements. Its entrance was a typical Chinese archway, with a Chinese plague and a cross on it. I haven’t seen a church with such significant Chinese cultural influence even in Taiwan.
But my visit was not mainly for its architecture. In 1963, after President Ngo Ding Diem and his brother fled from his Gia Long Palace via underground tunnels, they escaped to a supporter’s mansion in Cho Lon. When the coup army arrived to arrest them, as devout Catholics, they found shelter at the San Francis Xavier Church. They were arrested here and later executed inside a military truck.
Ngo’s rule collapsed partially because how he favored the Christians and persecuted Buddhists in a Buddhist-majority country. Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation became a trigger for the Americans to give up on the Ngo brothers and acquiesce the coup. On the same year, the devout Catholic ended his presidency and life.
John F Kennedy, another devout Catholic who acquiesced the coup but didn’t expect Ngo’s death, was also deeply shocked by how the event unfolded. He was assassinated later on the same year.
Unfortunately, the church was under construction. We couldn’t go inside to see the exact seats Ngo was at before being dragged out of the church by soldiers. A Chinese incense burner was placed in front of the church to worship Mary, Mother of Jesus. After seeing an atheist leader of the communist party being worshiped with incense the day before, now we’ve seen the holy Santa Maria worshiped with incense as well.
On our way back, I decided to add another stop on our Grab ride to bore Wiew even more — the Russian Market. Judging by its name, I thought this must be a relic of the Cold War, when the Soviets funded Vietnam first to resist the Americans, then to resist the Chinese. Still to this day, the famous beach destination Nha Trang (close to the Cam Ranh Bay military base) is full of Russian tourists. After visiting the Chinese community in Saigon, it’s worth visiting the Russian diaspora in Ho Chi Minh City.
To my disappointment, however, Russian market was basically a 2-story department store selling heavy winter clothes. I didn’t see any Russian merchant or buyer here — all were local Vietnamese. Far from my expectation, there were no stores selling Russian souvenirs, no Russian restaurants, no exhibition halls showing the history of the two countries……..just clothes.
But at least, I saw some stores with Russian signs, and the advertisement of “Russian Logistics and Trade Company” above the escalator. This is some kine of Cold War relic, isn’t it?
