Between the hours of 5 and 6 every morning, the woman in the house opposite us prays and chants. Mostly what drifts across our narrow alley is a soft tapping, interspersed with the clean strike of a gong. Today this hypnotic sound gently pulled me from slumber. Our plan for this Sunday was to rise early and walk out to Cholon, Chinatown, and visit some pagodas there. Last night's plan didn't seem so great at 5.30 in the morning, but inspired by my neighbour's disciplined devotion, I made myself get out of bed.
Our route was simple, straight down Nguyen Trai street, which would take us directly to the places we wanted to see. This street is always, always busy, I thought as the passing motorbikes kept up a steady stream. It was 6.30 on a Sunday morning. Where were all these people going? I doubted many would be going to work. Although a lot of people in this city have a hectic working schedule, Sunday is still fairly well respected as a day of rest. The word for it is ‘Chủ nhật’ which translates as owner day, your day to do what you please. I suppose I underestimate the fact that what pleases a lot of people in this city of 8 million plus is getting up and out of the house early.
We walked down Nguyen Trai for an hour, stopping only to buy a coconut to drink and then a roast pork roll. At first we passed many fashion shops, as Nguyen Trai is famous for, and why hoards of young people cruise this street in the evenings. Then this stretch gave way to a more diverse range of shops, and I’m sure we passed every kind of soup for sale, most of the vendors being just wagons set on the street, surrounded by a handful of low to the ground plastic tables and chairs, and full of heads down, knees up, noodle slurping customers. We also passed an intriguing number of hospitals, three or four, which with their solid concrete style and details suggested early communist era construction.
Our Pagoda tour began just beyond the Cholon Mosque. We visited four of them, all within a couple of minutes walking distance of each other, built by different (Cantonese, Fujian, Chaozhou) Chinese communities in or around the 19th century. I’m reluctant to go into names and details because honestly, for better or worse, visiting these places is mostly an aesthetic experience for me. I wouldn’t want to sound like I have anything more than a basic understanding of Buddhism and ways of worship.
What I can say is that it was a very pleasant way to spend an hour or so on a Sunday morning, strolling from one charming pagoda to the other, passing intriguing shops selling calligraphy materials, incense, paper, dragon masks and colourful Chinese costumes. This area does have a certain atmosphere. There is still a strong Chinese community living here and that does make it feel a little different from the rest of Saigon. It’s busier, for one thing, denser in buildings and people. And you will see the occasional old chinese shophouse, though they have usually been modernised on the street level, so you need to look up to see the interesting details and character.
The pagodas themselves also need to be looked at for a while to appreciate the rich details. They actually feel older than they are, maybe it’s the smoky atmosphere generated by the hundreds of incense sticks burning at one time. There wasn’t a great number of worshippers visiting today, possibly because many people have been to pagodas recently, during the first few days of the lunar year, and on Ngay Ram, which I wrote about last week. At one pagoda, I saw a well groomed and dressed woman purposefully striding past me, her arms weighed down with offerings of fruit, flowers and paper. I thought of the time I’d visited Chinatown with a Xe Om driver and he’d told me that he’s too busy to visit the pagoda and too poor to buy expensive offerings. His opinion was that a lot of rich people are not doing particularly virtuous things in their every day lives but go to the pagoda with generous offerings to make up for it.
Well, I wouldn’t want to imply that was the situation this woman or the other worshippers I saw today, most looked humble and carried only a few sticks of incense from altar to altar. It was just something I thought of at the time, probably because that Xe Om driver is a character and a story in himself, for another day.
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