The house is divided into three bays. In the middle is An’s impressive library and an altar dedicated to Buddha as well as to ancestor worship.
The Y Thao house contains an impressive collection of antiques, including Hue blue-and-white ceramics, traditional glass and silk paintings and wooden panels inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The collection is laid out to delineate between pieces used by the imperial family and those used by the mandarins.
The large stone rocks in the garden symbolize the mountain ranges around Hue and act as a screen against the wind. Tropical plants, bonsai and small rockeries are all typical of Hue’s garden houses.
Compared to many of the garden houses in Hue, the Y Thao house is comparatively modern and was built by its present owners as a place for their collection of antiques. The garden is a combination of seven small gardens, each symbolizing different characteristics of the Vietnamese countryside.
The entrance to the An Hien garden house is from the road which runs alongside the Perfume River. Through the archway, topped by a tiger’s head and the name An Hien in Chinese characters, is a broad path leading visitors through the garden to the house.
Originally the residence of Emperor Duc Duc’s eighteenth daughter, the one-story house was built around 1880 and is a classic example of traditional Vietnamese architecture. An expansive ceramic-tiled roof is supported by large wooden pillars with richly carved beams and doorways. The lily pond in front is to ward off bad spirits.
The main area inside the house is devoted to the ancestor’s altar, while the rest of the interior is sparsely furnished. The ceramic-tiled floor is typical of this style of building in Hue. All the tiles, including the roof tiles, were manufactured locally.
chinese houses of hoi an
Successive generations of the same family have lived in the Phung Hung house since it was first built in 1780. The ground floor was originally used for storage and has an opening in the ceiling to enable goods to be hoisted upstairs during floods. Flooding remains a problem for such merchant houses in Hue.
Traditional wooden furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl was used to welcome traders to this merchant’s home. The house is supported by eighty ironwood columns set in marble bases. All the materials used in the house’s construction, including the wood and marble, were sourced locally and are still being used in today’s buildings.
FROM THE SIXTEENTH to the nineteenth centuries, the harbor town of Hoi An, not far from Danang, attracted merchants from all over Asia. Although they comprised mainly Japanese and Chinese, they also included Portuguese, Dutch, French and British. All came to trade in cinnamon, pepper, paper, ceramics, medicinal plants and, above all, the silk that was – and still is – the region’s main glory.
Sailing requires good winds that are not always blowing at the right time, and trading companies like to have people they trust in harbors. Thus, foreign merchants began to settle in the city. Even if it never had more than a few hundred permanent residents, it often housed thousands of foreigners, especially Chinese and Japanese (until 1637), each living in their own areas, with their own rules. They built their own dwellings, temples and congregation halls. By the end of the sixteenth century, the town was split between a Chinese district and Japanese one.
The Chinese district, where scores of merchant houses have been preserved, is a must for any art and architecture lover. The ground floors of the long, thin houses were devoted to trading, while the second floors housed altars of the ancestors and Taoist deities – customarily just below the ceiling.
One particularly noteworthy example of a Hoi An merchant house is the Phung Hung house. Built in 1780, to date it has been inhabited by eight generations of the same family. The house has kept its original structure because it was built with fine materials and has been very well maintained over the years. Its eighty ironwood columns and their marble bases, all the wooden rafters and shutters, both interior and exterior balconies, and its yin and yang roof tiles are exactly as they were the year the house was built. The structure combines Chinese (architecture), Vietnamese (furniture) and Japanese (roof) design styles but is actually quite simple in layout and structure. The ground floor formerly stored merchandise, although a square opening in the ceiling allowed goods to be lifted upstairs during frequent flooding. A sitting room decked out with gu (wooden furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl) welcomed fellow traders. Today, that sitting room, which dates from the nineteenth century, is on the second floor, as is the altar room, the most important space in the house.
Opposite the Phung Hung house stands a dwelling that offers a beautiful succession of rooms, the second one being topped by an opening in the roof allowing light to enter.
The covered atrium at the center of the house is flooded with natural light and is decorated with traditional furniture and ceramics.
The sitting room on the second floor runs from the front to the back of the house, with a shuttered walkway around the central atrium. There are two altars in the room: one to the left of the picture behind a wooden column, and the other mounted high up on a wall in the center of the room.
Most Hoi An houses have no openings other than on the façade and at the back. The Tran family house illustrates how such houses often had a primarily religious purpose. In 1802, Tran Tu Nhac, one of Emperor Gia Long’s most trusted mandarins, was sent as a delegate to China. Before leaving, he built the house in order to thank his ancestors for their protection. Even though it has some rooms used by family and guests, its main raison d’etre is as the family cult place; this is illustrated by a red panel in front of the main altar, which reads Duong Tu Tran (Tran Temple). In the olden days, men were required to enter the house through the left doors on the façade, while women used the right. The central door is reserved for elders and is used during major festivals such as Tet (the New Year Festival). To enter the worshipping part of the house from the living quarters, one has to go under a timber beam, forcing people to bend their heads in a demonstration of respect. The clan’s main altar displays the usual liturgical objects as well as small boxes, arranged by chronological and social order, in which are kept relics and a biography of each deceased clan member. These boxes are opened only during festivals. On each side two lanterns are a reminder that this is the Tran clan cult house.
In contrast, the Diep Dong Nguyen house has a more vernacular atmosphere. In 1856, Ye Hong Chun, a Chinese merchant, established a shop that traded in silk, commodities and other goods. In 1900 the shop and its façade were enlarged by Ye Jia Song (Diep Gia Tong in Vietnamese), the founder’s fourth-generation nephew. It houses an impressive collection of around 1,000 ceramics and other Chinese antiques. In the second-floor yellow sitting room is a blue-and-white plate purchased by Emperor Khai Dinh. The house has two altars: the left is for