Vietnam Temples

The camera stands in the middle of the hall, on worn stone, under a roof carried on heavy round columns painted deep red. Everything above head height is carving: gilded friezes running along the beams, painted panels, and vertical boards of gold characters fixed down the face of each column. Coiled incense hangs from the rafters in cones, several feet across, burning slowly and putting a haze into the light. Ahead, past two low steps and a floor of red and yellow tile, is the altar, lit and stacked with offerings, with two people kneeling in front of it. To either side are long counters where the temple’s business is done - bundles of red joss paper stacked up, glass cabinets, a man working at a desk under a fluorescent tube. Daylight comes in only at the door and through a light well, so the whole interior is dim and orange.

This is a temple hall in Cho Lon, the Chinese quarter of Ho Chi Minh City and the largest Chinatown in Vietnam. The halls here were built by the Cantonese, Teochew, Hokkien and Hakka congregations who settled the district, and they are still working temples rather than monuments: people come in off the street, buy incense at a counter by the door, and leave again. The coils hanging from the roof beams are large spirals of incense, lit at the bottom and left to burn down over days or weeks, each one bought with a paper prayer attached to it.

The furniture is the giveaway of the tradition: red and gold lacquer over carved hardwood, altar tables set well back from the door, and a roof carried on timber columns rather than walls, so the hall stays open to the courtyard and the smoke has somewhere to go. Ceramic figures crowd the ridge line outside. Phong thuy - what most of the world knows by its Chinese name, feng shui - decides where the doors and the altars sit, and is taken seriously enough that a professional geomancer is consulted before anything is moved.

Cho Lon sits southwest of the centre, around the Binh Tay market, and the temples are within a short walk of each other. They are free to enter and open through the day. The one rule that matters is the one every visitor gets wrong: step over the raised timber sill in the doorway, never on it.