Hai Phong news

Hai Phong port city has been famous for various interesting and impressive spiritual places, including Hang Temple, a thousand-year sacred ancient temple placing  numerous precious artifacts bearing historical imprints.    Du Hang Temple (normally called Hang Temple)   Hang Temple or Du Hang Temple was ancient temple in Ho Nam ward, Le Chan District, Hai Phong City whichh was supposed to be built in the Le Dynasty (980-1009). In 1986, Hang Temple was recognized as the national historical and cultural relic. Central courtyard of Du Hang Temple After thousands of years, the temple has retained its original appearance and ancient features. The temple was constructed following the ancient architecture style in the shape of a Chinese word Dinh 丁. the 7-room Buddha hall is located in the center of the Temple, made of wood with tiled roof, built in gong trusses style with large columns made of lim wood. Inside the center, there arehorizontal paintings, gilded couplets and hammock doors with intricate carvings in the Nguyen Dynasty’s aesthetic and artistic style.   In front of the Buddha hall and in a distance of large yard for Tam Quan, there is a 5-room bell tower with 3 floors of curved roofs sculptured in shape of dragons and phoenixes; inside of which there is a huge bell made of copper labelled “the Bell of Phuc Lam Tu”; laid on the right-hand side are 5 compartments of Ancestor’s house, general house and horizontal house; on the left-hand side are 5 compartments of backing houses. Besides, the temple has the worshiping room for the Mother Goddess house, staff house, monks residence, etc.     Front side and inside of the Hall.   Ancient and solemn architecture of Du Hang Temple Tam quan, the Buddha – the main central architecture of the temple From the main gate inward, there is a garden of plants and statues of the temple where fruits and flowers are abundant all year round. There are 12 statues surrounding the lake, in which the Buddha Tathagata statue located in the center on a lotus platform under the shadow of Bodhi tree with a majestic appearance as main highlight, the black Maitreya Buddha statue is placed to the opposite of the Buddha Tathagata statue whereas the remaining 10 white stone statues surrounding the lake and the garden symbolize venerable monks with various appearances, attitudes, and poses.   Such a pure and peaceful garden in the temple   Statue Garden - a feature of Du Hang Temple The Statue of Great Buddha sitting on a lotus pedestal platform under the Bodhi tree. To the left of Tam quan is the tranquil tower garden consisting of 11 small stone towers, where place the remains of the Truc Lam Yen Tu Zen monks, precedent monks and abbots who passed away peacefully at the temple. All created a solemn architecture matching the peaceful nature. In addition to the architectural values formed and accumulated over years, Hang Temple has preserved a lot of antiques since feudal period such as bells, bronze peaks, ceramic decorations, green stone, excellently carved copper statues, particularly the set of Trang A Ham Sutras, an ancient document on Buddhist teachings with historical and spiritual values to Vietnamese Buddhism. Ancient bell at Du Hang Temple   Containing priceless values in regards of landscape, architecture, relics, Hang Temple has become a place for local people to frequently visited and express respect, praying for fortune and health to themselves and families; participating in volunteering activities or immersing themselves in such peaceful landscape of the Buddha.    

Hai Phong is famous for various long-standing, unique and valuable traditional craft villages, such as My Dong Casting Village, Ha Lung Flower Village… among which the 500 years old Wood Carving Village of Bao Hais considered as the cradle of Vietnamese sculpting profession, an interesting destination for domestic and international tourists with its own unique features.   A workshop in Bao Ha Wood Carving Village (Photo: Collection)   Bao Ha Village (also called Linh Dong) is located in Dong Minh Commune, Vinh Bao District, the sacred land with extraordinary people of Hai Phong City, nearly 3km away from the road connecting Lang Am Bridge to Nhan Muc Bridge. The place is famous for studious traditions and  traditional values. Bao Ha is considered as the cradle of statue sculpture of Vietnam because of its long history of formation and development. According to the village legend, more than 600 years ago, in the 15th century, when Vietnam was under the Ming Dynasty colonization (1407-1427), many young men were arrested and brought across the border to build Chinese mausoleums and temples.     The initiator of statue sculpture Nguyen Cong Hue (Photo: Collection)   Among them, a young man of Bao Ha Village named Nguyen Cong Hue, has learned the precious techniques of statue carving and lacquer painting. After returning to his homeland, Nguyen Cong Hue shared the passion for the sculpture profession and taught his family members, relatives, and Bao Ha villagers necessary skills, knowledge for. Since then, in addition to farming activities, Bao Ha villagers had sculpting statues as a new livelihood, soon making  the village famous in the Red River Delta region with the profession of sculpting Buddha statues. When Nguyen Cong Hue died, Bao Ha villagers had built a temple, sculpt a statue and worship him as a professional ancestor to express their gratitude. This temple still remains now and is always warm and fragrant with incense all year round, as a natural and clear proof of the strong vitality of the sculpture village and the quintessential traditional values of the statue carving profession in this place.   Bao Ha Temple, the place to worship Linh Lang Dai Vuong and the initiator of the statue sculpture profession  of Nguyen Cong Hue (Photo: Collection)   Duc Linh Lang Dai Vuong carved by Nguyen Cong Hue is a 500-year-old statue considered unique one in Vietnam, because of the combination of sculpture and puppetry, enabling the statue to stand up and sit down (Photo: Collection)   During the feudal period, the profession of sculpting statues in Bao Ha was always maintained and well-known throughout the East. The village had many skillful and talented artisans who were respected by the King and assigned to sculpt his throne. Many of them were conferred by Vietnamese dynasties such as: Artisan To Phu Vuong, Artisan To Phu Luat, Artisan Hoang Dinh Uc… The carving statue artisans of Bao Ha Village had traveled to many places inside and outside the region such as: Ninh Giang (Hai Duong), Tien Lang (Hai Phong), Dong Hung (Thai Binh)… to sculpt statues for big pagodas, make puppets for famous puppet guilds… Their masterpieces have a unique artistic style, quality and win the hearts of people from all walks of life.   Despite the country’s ups and downs, Bao Ha sculptural art has always been maintained and developed. Also derived from the sculpting profession, statue and shallow puppetry carving were also born and flourished these days. Bao Ha Village has now nearly 1,000 profession households, over 200 of have 20 workshops. Products of craft villages are increasingly diverse meeting the current social demand (altars, couplets, contemporary statues, lacquer paintings...) besides traditional products (Buddha statues, holy statues, puppets...)....     The statue carving profession requires workers to have ingenuity and love for the profession to make realistic statues (Photo: Collection)   For more than six centuries, the profession of statue carving has been closely related to the fine traditional beliefs of Vietnamese people, preserving the national cultural traditions, guaranteeing prosperous lives for Bao Ha people.   The Bodhisattva statue with meticulous and skillful sculpture (Photo: Collection)   To create a product, artisans must use dozens of tools for design, smoothing works and painting, including dozens of different types of chisels, painted steel, brushes, following a set of steps: researching sample, selecting materials, shaping, stamping, chiseling simply and detailedly, peeling, scraping, polishing, assembling and attaching details, painting many times, and decorating statutes with gold and silver. Tourists from all over the world and Hai Phong people from other districts come to Bao Ha to witness the "vitality" of a long and unique traditional craft village, blending into the lives of local people; the vibrant working atmosphere; the talent, ingenuity, meticulousness with technical, artistic and cultural understanding in each stage to create lively, diverse and sophisticated masterpieces ... imbued with traditional cultural values of the Vietnamese nation.   With such positive and valuable contributions, in 2007 Bao Ha statue carving village was recognized by Hai Phong City People's Committee as the "Traditional village of woodcarving and lacquer".   Currently, Bao Ha Village attracts a large number of tourists to visit and admire the artisans creating the arts first-hand (Photo: Collection)   The uniqueness of statues comes from the solid, well-balanced shapes, realisitc breath and imbued with traditional cultural values made by the talented and creative Bao Ha sculptors, making it more and more popular with customers.

Although Got Ferry to Cat Ba Island has been familiar to every single Hai Phong person,  this place always evokes different emotions for me standing in front of the vast sky and sea waves whenever I pass by . The vehicles continuously flock into the ferry terminal and slowly move in rows when approaching Got Ferry, which requires passengers’ patience. Almost everyday, the volume of people and vehicles passing through the terminal are very huge, making people, even the easy-going feel a little uncomfortable because of the smell of engine oil mixed with car dust and smoke at the departure time, even worsened by the loud engine sound. I often start to get excited when feeling the salty sea breeze on my skin, the sea breeze in my hair makes me quickly look up and turn my gaze toward the offshore ships. The strong sea breeze appears to wash away the noise and dust of the ferry. After about two minutes, things on the ferry will become more comfortable. Passengers can stand or sit at any position to enjoy the scenery. I like to climb up to the top deck for the romantic sea air. Once the ferry is all surrounded by the vast water and waves, the landscape is like a picture with the green border of Cat Ba island’s hills and forestsstretching out. No words could describe the poetic landscape surrounded by the sea. The waves bouncing up and down become gentle when touching that calm blue shore no matter how fierce they are, inspiring those with passion for the nature and homeland to overcome the bobbing waves to reach the ferry station. Turning around to the ferry terminal, I discover that Lach Huyen International Port from this view is also very beautiful with the image of a giant ship carrying many colorful containers, demonstrating the City’s ambition of development. This is a port specializing in welcoming large ships to import and export cargo everywhere in the world. For those who do not like the crowd of Got Ferry, there is another way to Cat Ba Island by cable car without motorbikes or cars transported. It will also be excited to watch the sea and island from the above view. Otherwise, it is enough for passionate hearts to fall in love with the port city’s sky looked up from the ferry. Watching the cable car moving leisurely, I suddenly think of the flying iron lamps beside white clouds in a huge space. Like many passengers, I took a lot of pictures as a souvenir. Got Ferry is like the gate to the love and embrace of the sea, sky, island, forest... towards visitors, in which the time on the ferry is just the beginning of a beautiful journey ahead where each person will find their own meaningful moments to multiply their love for  homeland.

Being the soul Vietnamese Tet – Chung cake, Mochi Rice cake (Banh day) and Tet cake (Banh Tet) are foods that are not only delicious but also carry a lot of national meaning. Going to Thuy Duong Village of Chung cake in Thuy Nguyen district on this occasion to feel the hustle atmosphere of Tet coming soon.  (Photo: collected) For a long time, Chung cake of Thuy Duong has been well-known domestically and internationally. If ordering Chung cake as a gift for expatriates or for worshiping the Tet at home, Chung cake of Thuy Duong is the first dish to be chosen. In Thuy Duong Village, there are about 30 families making Chung cake, and the best Chung cake makers through generations belongs to families of Mrs. Chien, Mrs. Truot, Mr. Vuot, Mr. Hoai, Mr. Them, Mr. Na, etc.   Chung cake is wrapped with dong leaves and banana leaves, with addition of pork meat, green bean, scallion, pepper, fish sauce for a completion of taste (Photo: collected) Visiting Thuy Duong Village this time, you will observe that households are busy making Chung cakes. Each family is like a small factory and the working atmosphere is always vivid. Residents of Thuy Duong Village consider making Chung cake as a traditional career, a pride, and an economic source of families there. Delicious slides of pork meat are cleverly wrapped in a layer of green bean paste (Photo: collected) To remain the reputable name of Thuy Duong Village’s Chung cake, it requires a strict and careful selection of ingredients to guarantee the delicacy and taste of Chung cakes. To make such Chung cake, sticky rice needs to be “yellow-flower sticky rice” (nep cai hoa vang), soaked for at least 2-3 hours in warm water. Pork is pork butt or belly (about 300 grams) to make the cake fattened and enriched. Then, the meat is sliced into thick sizes and marinated with pepper, fish sauce, and monosodium glutamate for a fragrant smell and taste. The cake is wrapped with dong leaves for the cover and additional banana leaves inside, the leaves need to be washed and dried. Beside well-done preparation, technical factors, ingredients, fest water from the village’s wells contributes to create such a special taste of Thuy Duong Village’s Chung cake. The village’s residents mentioned that Thuy Duong’s Chung cake is made with a ratio of 4:1 (meaning 4 rice with 1 green bean) to ensure that rice covers around the green bean paste and two sides (top and bottom) have equal ratio. After putting into the cake, a pork meat slice wrapped by green bean paste, the cake is quickly wrapped, tied and adjusted for good shape before and after boiling the cake. Specifically, the cake is made and wrapped by hands, without using molds. Even though, under skillful hands, such beautiful and square-shaped cakes are made. Chung cakes are usually boiled for 8-10 hours, weigh around 1 kg to 1.2 kg. From 15 December to Tet according to the Lunar Calendar, households making Chung cake have to work through noon, wrapping cakes until midnight, then taking turns looking after pots boiling Chung cakes until morning to make sure all Chung cakes well boiled in good-shape and good-taste to be delivered to customers. (Photo: Collected) (Photo: Collected) When Chung cakes are well boiled, they are squeezed out of  water and left overnight to be solid in cohesion (Photo: Collected). Seeing Chung cakes is to see Tet! So, whatever and wherever Vietnamese people are, they always look forward to being reunited with beloved people, telling each other old stories, inhaling fragrant scent of dong leaves, glutinous rice and sweet taste of green bean, fatty enrichment of pork meat inside Chung cakes. (Photo: Collected) Thuy Duong Village’s stoves are always on the warm fire and hustle atmosphere. The flaming stoves never go out to express love for the career of making Chung cake and that was lit by the elders in Thuy Duong Village and being protected and nurtured through residential generations of Thuy Duong Village as a charm of culture born by that land./.

Kien Bai Communal House is located in Kien Bai Commune, Thuy Nguyen District, Hai Phong City. In the past, Kien Bai was also called Ho Bai Trang in Thuy Duong District, Kinh Mon County, Hai Duong Region. (Photo: To Uyen) History of Kien Bai Communal House relic According to "The god stories of Thuy Nguyen District" currently archived at the Institute of Chinese Studies in Hanoi, Kien Bai Communal House was built by the local people to worship two tutelary gods Tong Tien and Loi Cong, who are twin brothers. Legend has it that both of them were handsome and intelligent, but died early. They were very sacred and had many times helped Kien villagers to have peaceful lives and prosperous businesses. When the Mongolian army invaded our country (1287 - 1288), two gods supported King Tran Dynasty to fight the invaders. The King built a temple and conferred the title: the Supreme God Trung Quoc Cam Ung and the Supreme God Loi Cong Uy Dieu. The altars of two gods Tong Tien and Loi Cong (Photo: To Uyen) In 1288, Hung Dao Dai Vuong commanded the navy forces and land forces to come there to establish a battle on Bach Dang River, he let the army rest overnight at Ho Bai Village. That night, two gods Tong Tien and Loi Cong appeared in his dream, promising to raise a "sound wind" - the southeast wind to throw fire rafts, contributing to killing the enemy. After the victory on Bach Dang River, Tiet Che Quoc Cong Hung Dao Dai Vuong saw the miraculous dream, so he gave the villagers 300 mandarin money to repair Kien Bai Communal House more spacious, and at the same time, he asked the King to conferred the title: the Supreme God Trung Quoc Cam Ung and the Supreme God Loi Cong Uy Dieu. Currently, on the column body of Kien Communal House, there is still the inscription "the 6th Year of Chinh Hoa" - the year 1685 of the solar calendar.   Architectural and artistic value of the relic The front of the communal house with two symmetrical stone altars through the middle worshiping compartment was made in 1893 (Photo: To Uyen) The stone steles record the age and existence of the relic (Photo: To Uyen) Kien Bai Communal House was built in the second half of the 17th century, the architecture is completely made of ironwood. It is a rare communal house in Hai Phong that still retains the original flooring system. The outside communal house, also known as the front hall, consists of three compartments, the middle one is the place where the rituals are conducted. The inside communal house (the sacred one) consists of three compartments with the resting place of the tutelary gods. The roof system of the communal house has 4 roofs with lotus-shaped tiles, the roof structure has a square cross-section space with the arrangement of seeds. The sacred hall is squarely connected with the front hall at the middle compartment with a width equal to the width of the middle compartment, and a length of 8.3m. The scared hall has a similar structure to the front hall. The middle compartment with the main altar of the communal house (Photo: To Uyen)      The altar in the communal house (Photo: To Uyen)   Inside the communal house, the wooden floor has still remained as the original (Photo: To Uyen)   The rare carving and sculpturing art on the wooden architecture of the relic (Photo: To Uyen) Kien Bai Communal House attracts tourists and researchers from all over the world because of not only its historical value but also the talented and liberal architectural decoration art of the ancients. The whole relic is a collection of precious wood carvings created on the background of ancient and elegant architecture. The decorative arts in Kien Bai Communal House are mainly focused on showing off their positions with beauty. Dragons are a popular and dense topic in decorative animations. In each piece of sculpture, in the center, there is always a large dragon (mother dragon) with a fat, short body that curves from the bottom up with the raising head and the turning out face. Image of dragon palanquin (Photo: To Uyen)    Image of precious wood carvings of the communal house over the years (Photo: To Uyen) The dragon has a big head, a protruding forehead, a wide mouth, a lion's nose, and hairs as clusters of lance-shaped fire blades flying back to create a movement sensation in a still space. The dragon's body is round-shaped and covered with a layer of snakeskin, the legs have four sharp claws like the spurs of fighting cocks. Around the mother dragon, there are many baby dragons with odd numbers such as: 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13. Accompanying the dragon, there are the four supernatural creatures such as phoenix or unicorn. The phoenix is often shown in the posture of the traditional art performance with graceful dance movements. The dragon is not only shown with its fellow beings or the four supernatural creatures but it also is mixed with other animals on the top of roofs or the outside front. Those are animals that are very familiar to Vietnamese villages and people, such as pigs, dogs, goats, deer, cats, and fish... but with pigs at most. Pigs have fat bodies as shown in Dong Ho paintings but they are also naughty as wild ones. Pigs sit on dragon backs, holding the beards and hairs, and even have the guts to hold the dragon's tails in their mouth. In addition, the communal house also has peaceful countryside scenes such as pigs eating leaves, cats sleeping during the day, people riding elephants, horses and elephants cuddling, and war elephants racing...     Image of drums and gongs placed inside the communal house (Photo: To Uyen) Cultural values of Kien Bai Communal House The recognition certificate of  the cultural and historical relic of Kien Bai Communal House (Photo: To Uyen) In addition to the unique ancient beauty, Kien Bai Communal House is also known as the venue for many big festivals annually held from the 10th day to the 13th day of the first lunar month. On those days, villagers go to the communal house to worship and join festivals: Dum singing festival, Chung cake cooking festival, and folk games on fighting for cotton trees… to unite villagers, improve spiritual life and maintain the uniqueness of Vietnamese culture. People come to worship at the communal house on holidays and Tet Festival (Photo: Collection) Kien Bai Communal House is a typical architectural relic of Post-Le Dynasty period, a cultural product of the 17th century - the century of the most brilliant development of folk art. The carvings are of great value, showing deep nationalism, with diverse themes from people to animals close to the countryside. With those historical and architectural values, Kien Bai Communal House was ranked as a national historical-cultural relic by the State in 1986./.

Hai Phong is one of the localities with many advantages to develop craft villages associated with tourism, because of the cultural value, long history, and beautiful natural landscape. Crystallized from simple ingredients, processing ingenuity and long-standing professional experience, Nong Xa Craft Village, An Duong District is the place where make delicious red rice noodles that is famous throughout the country. The red rice noodle of Nong Xa Craft Village (Photo: Collection) It is 15km far from the city center and only 20 minutes traveling by car, you will be at Nong Xa Village, Tan Tien Commune, An Duong District, Hai Phong City, which contributes to the typical crab noodle dish of Hai Phong. The red rice noodle is an indispensable ingredient of the special crab noodle bowl of Hai Phong (Photo: Collection) The special thing is that the red rice noodle of Nong Xa has a typical red color, made entirely from natural ingredients, so the noodle is shiny, and fragrant and still retains its color when cooking as well as is safe for the health of diners. The craftsman requires a meticulous working attitude. Choosing rice is a very important first step in the process of making rice noodles. It requires the rice to have a good leaven, natural aroma... The rice is picked up from grits and then soaked in cold water for about 1 hour for summer, or 10 hours for winter.   Natural sun-dried rice noodles will be delicious, chewy, and preserved for a longer time. (Photo: Vu Loan) There are two types of noodles, if you want to make white noodles, just use rice flour, and if you want to make red noodles (crab noodles), use condensed cane sugar to make bitter candies. Mill rice into a fine powder, then pour the powdered liquid onto the fabric of the coating machine to run through the heat of the boiler. After completing the coating process, the rice noodle will be spread out the bamboo wattles, dried on the brazier and mainly take advantage of sunlight. When the noodle is relatively dry, stack them on top of each other, and use a stone mortar to press and cut them into small ones of about 0.2 - 1cm depending on the requirements of customers. Finished noodles include two types: dry noodles are sold to other provinces, or used as gifts; wet noodles are sold right in the commune and surrounding areas. For people who made noodles for a long time and had a lot of experience, the taste of rice noodles is the most important one that made the difference and popularity of Hai Phong rice noodles compared to the products of other regions. But to get the good taste of noodles, the rice must be delicious, white and sun-dried.    Instead of the hand-slicing process, the noodle is now using the machine-slicing process for beautiful uniform ones. (Photo: Vu Loan) With the desire to maintain and develop the traditional rice noodle production of the homeland, the households in Nong Xa Village have invested in modern machines instead of manual methods to improve productivity, and product quality.   The method of producing rice noodles by the traditional charcoal oven. (Photo: Vu Loan) The batches of rice noodles that are delicious, crispy,and chewy are still daily and hourly made from skillful, industrious, labor-loving craftsmen of Nong Xa Craft Village. This is a typical craft village, both contributing to preserving and developing the craft village and promoting traditional cultural values, as well as creating jobs and improving the living standard of the local people./.