Chi Hoa Communal House

An old communal house in an alley off Cach Mang Thang Tam Street, once home to Vo Truong Toan's school, a National Relic

In alley 475 off Cach Mang Thang Tam Street, Chi Hoa Communal House, also known as Hoa Hung Communal House, is one of the City's old communal houses. In 1996, the Ministry of Culture recognised it as a National Relic. According to a publication of the former District 10, the scholar Vo Truong Toan held classes here around 1785 – 1792; many of his students later became famous, such as Trinh Hoai Duc, Le Quang Dinh and Ngo Nhan Tinh. On the 16th day of the 2nd month of the Nham Ty year (1852), Emperor Tu Duc granted the communal house a royal decree conferring a title on its guardian spirit, and this date became the annual Ky Yen festival. The communal house retains the full character of a Southern Vietnamese dinh. The front of the vo ca hall features "two dragons facing the moon", an altar and a relief statue of the Tiger Spirit, flanked by kneeling unicorns; inside is a 1.2 m high brick stage facing the main sanctuary. The roof of the main sanctuary also bears "two dragons facing the moon" along with two ceramic phoenixes, and its four roof tips end in dragon heads. The deity worshipped is the local tutelary god (Thanh hoang bon canh). The Ky Yen festival on the 16th day of the 2nd lunar month is the biggest event of the year: the royal decree, normally kept at an ancestral hall near Vuon Chuoi Market, is carried in procession to the communal house for offerings and rituals, ceremonial drumming and classical hat boi opera, then returned in procession to its place of worship.

English text: machine translation from the Localis platform — proper names kept in Vietnamese.