PLACES
PLACE · QUARTERThe Chinese QuarterSixteenth century · to nowChinese merchants reached Hội An on the monsoon and meant to leave on the monsoon, which is why the town called them người Tàu, the people who came by boat. Then some of them stayed, and the state had to invent a status to put them in.PLACE · ANCIENT TOWNThe Japanese Covered BridgeJapanese merchants paid for it, Vietnamese carpenters built it, a Chinese village kept it, and a Nguyễn lord gave it a name. After eight dismantlings, the part of the four-hundred-year-old bridge that is close to intact is the foundation.PLACE · TEMPLEThe Quan Công TempleBuilt before 1653Before 1653, the Minh Hương community and the Vietnamese of Hội An built a temple together facing the town market, to worship a defeated Chinese general who had become the guarantor of good faith for the whole trading street.PLACE · ISLANDSCù Lao ChàmInhabited from ~3,100 BP · biosphere reserve 2009Eight islands stand off Cửa Đại, screening the trading port of Hội An for centuries. Twenty kilometres out to sea, a fifteenth-century cargo ship lay undisturbed until fishermen's nets began pulling up plates still glazed whole.PLACE · ANCIENT WELLBá Lễ WellSaid to date to Champa times (8th–9th c.) · renamed early 20th c.No one in Hội An remembers what the square well in the Bá Lễ alley was called before the early twentieth century, when a woman paid a hundred piastres to have it rebuilt and the town began calling it after her.PLACE · ASSEMBLY HALLThe Fujian Assembly HallFounded 1697 · rebuilt 1757–1900A small riverside temple from 1697 grew, renovation after renovation, into the largest of Hội An's five Chinese assembly halls.PLACE · CRAFT VILLAGEThanh Hà Pottery VillageFormed c. 16th century · national ICH 2019In the sixteenth century eight clans from Thanh Hóa and Nghệ An settled a bend of the Thu Bồn river and founded Thanh Hà village. Five hundred years later their descendants still sit at the same kind of wheel, and part of the old quarter's roofline still carries their name.PLACE · CRAFT VILLAGEKim Bồng Carpentry VillageFormed 16th C · national heritage 2016From the sixteenth century, carpenters from this village across the river built most of Hội An's old town by hand-cut joints, no nails, and today the same trade is what keeps those roofs standing.PLACE · MERCHANT HOUSETấn Ký Old HouseBuilt c. 1800–1820 · listed 1990A Minh Hương merchant family built this house before the street outside it existed. Nearly two centuries later, it still stands, its columns carrying the carved waterlines of every flood that has reached them.PLACE · RIVERThe Thu Bồn RiverSince the plain existed · to nowAbout 20 km³ of water reaches the sea down the Thu Bồn each year, more than any other river in central Vietnam, and 80 to 90 per cent of it arrives between September and December. The old town of Hội An stands on a sand ridge that the same river built.