Uncle Ho Memorial House

A townhouse on Chau Van Liem Street where Nguyen Tat Thanh lived before leaving to seek a path to national salvation in 1911

The townhouse at No. 5 Chau Van Liem in Cho Lon is where Nguyen Tat Thanh lived from 1910 to June 1911, before leaving his homeland to seek a path to national salvation. In 1988, the site was ranked a National historical relic. In 1906, from an idea of the patriot Phan Chau Trinh, the Lien Thanh Company was founded in Phan Thiet and then opened a Lien Thanh branch at Nos. 1, 2 and 3 Quai Testard – Cho Lon, now Chau Van Liem Street. In 1910, arriving in Saigon with papers under the name Van Ba, Nguyen Tat Thanh was taken to stay at the house of Mr Le Van Dat on Rue Dumortier (now Co Bac Street); two days later, he moved to the Lien Thanh headquarters. During this time, he taught, worked at the Mechanics School and sold newspapers around the port to earn a living, while learning about the lives of working people and the ships coming in and out of Saigon Port. After 1911, the house passed through many owners. After 1975, the District 5 authorities kept one unit, repaired it and collected documents and photographs to turn it into a memorial site; it was extensively restored in 1997, most recently in 2018. It is a one-storey-above-ground townhouse, 4 m wide and 8.8 m long, with a yin-yang tiled roof, encaustic cement tile floors, a wooden staircase and a small balcony above. The ground floor holds an altar to Uncle Ho, flanked by displays of photographs of his home village, the establishments of the Lien Thanh Trading House, a 1911 map of Saigon – Cho Lon and a picture of the ship Amiral Latouche-Treville; the upper floor displays documents and paintings about the life and moral example of Ho Chi Minh. The site is the opening stop of the "Memories of Saigon – Cho Lon" tour, together with Tue Thanh Assembly Hall and the Cho Quan Hospital Prison.

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