Ba Mu Temple

What you see before you is one of the most hauntingly beautiful ruins in Vietnam. The Ba Mu Temple Gate is all that remains of a once-grand temple built in 1626, and somehow, the fact that only this entrance survives makes it even more powerful than if the entire building were still standing. The original temple was dedicated to Ba Mu, a midwife deity, a protector of mothers and newborn children. In seventeenth-century Hoi An, childbirth was dangerous and unpredictable. Infant mortality was heartbreakingly common. So the Minh Huong Chinese community, those families of mixed Chinese-Vietnamese heritage who had made Hoi An their permanent home, built this temple as a place to pray for safe deliveries and healthy babies. Every expectant mother in the community would have come here. Every grateful family would have brought offerings after a successful birth. The temple itself was destroyed over the centuries by the combined forces of weather, war, and time. Tropical storms battered the structure. Wars swept through the region. Neglect did the rest. By the twentieth century, only this spectacular triple-gate entrance, the Tam Quan, remained standing. But what a gate it is. Look at the craftsmanship. Three arches rise from the...