Visiting the temple of over a hundred years old

Binh Nham Mazu Goddess Temple at Binh Nham ward, Thuan An city) is one of the few shrines in the province aged more than 100 years old, being intact after two wars.  Having witnessed the independence day as well as the renewal of the homeland and the country, Binh Nham Mazu Goddess Temple is truly a "witness" of history and a place to keep many historical and cultural values.

Binh Nham Mazu Goddess Temple is a testament to the talent and ingenuity of the craftsmen in Binh Duong land

Historical and cultural values preserved

Returning to Binh Nham Mazu Goddess Temple, when it was being repaired and embellished, we had the opportunity to know better about the local architectural beauty.  According to Nguyen Van Dam, deputy head of the Department of Culture and Information of Thuan An city, Binh Nham Mazu Goddess Temple was built in 1914 thanks to the contribution of local people to worship Ba Chua Xu.  Legend has it that she was originally a child of Binh Nham land, due to her many merits in building the homeland, when she died, people set up a shrine to commemorate and consider her as the Ba Chu Xu (Lady of the land).  Initially, the temple was just a simple house, then by the contribution of people in the area, the temple was restored and embellished many times, the last time was in 2002 to make the temple look as spacious as it is now.

The temple has a relatively massive architecture, arranged in style (the parallel and adjacent rooms, including the martial arts hall and the main hall). The main hall is the place to keep some original artifacts of the temple for the age of up to a hundred years such as columns, trusses, diaphragm, wooden material.  This is the place where the altar is put to worship the Goddess, the gods left and right committees, the ancestors and inheritance.  The martial arts hall was built of reinforced cement material, and roofed with tiles. The roof has been embossed with boat shape and decorated with the images of the bipedal dragon paintings. On the roof banks of the temple, many images of the Moon and the Sun gods were glazed with green glaze and dragon scale was enameled with gold.  The shrine's guesthouse was built in 1996.

The inside of the main hall of the shrine of Binh Nham Mazu Goddess Temple

Every year, the festival of dedicating to Binh Nham Mazu Goddess takes place from the evening of lunar August 13 to the next day’s noon.  Although the worshiping ceremony at the temple is simpler than that of the communal house, the noble committee has done very solemnly with the An Vi ceremonies, the To List ceremony and the most expected is the Dia Nang chorus.  Visiting Binh Nham Mazu Goddess Temple on ceremonial occasions, many people acknowledge that this is a temple of beauty and unique architecture, a combination of wood and tile and carving arts, aka, the combination of culture of the Vietnamese and the Chinese, of tradition and modernity and a testament to the talent and ingenuity of Binh Duong land workers. The shrine has a number of diaphragms while the parallel sentences are relatively more that other shrines in the region.

To protect and promote the value of the temple

Nguyen Van Dam said that, in February 2019, Binh Nham Mazu Goddess Temple was recognized by Binh Duong provincial People's Committee and ranked as a historical and cultural relic at the provincial level. Currently, the shrine is a place for retaining artifacts of bronze bells, command drums, trays, wooden bells, bronze weapons, and wooden diaphragms.  In order to protect and promote the typical values ​​of the temple of Binh Nham Mazu Goddess, the Department of Culture and Information of Thuan An city is building a fence and painting some new items of the site.

According to Vo Huynh Ngoc Thuy, Secretary of Party Committee and Chairwoman of Binh Nham Ward People's Committee, historical, cultural, and artistic architectural values ​​crystallized in Binh Nham Mazu Goddess Temple are important tangible and intangible heritages, which are the main potentials for tourism, scientific researches and traditional cultural education. Therefore, every year, the Youth Union of the ward organizes teams to clean up the temple grounds and learn about historical and cultural traditions;  thereby, arousing in young people the love of their homeland an the will to strive, practice and study to join hands to build up Binh Nham in particular, Binh Duong in general for them to becomes richer and more beautiful and civilized.

“In order to protect and promote the relic value effectively, Binh Nham Mazu Goddess Temple needs more attention from organizations and individuals in the whole society for the restoration of architectural items of the temple;  thereby contributing to the preservation and promotion of the traditional cultural identity of the nation and locality, serving the traditional historical-cultural education for the younger generation today and tomorrow,” Thuy added.

For more than 100 years of existence and development, Binh Nham Mazu Goddess Temple has become a relic containing historical, cultural, architectural and artistic values ​​expressed through tangible and non-tangible heritages of objects present in the temple. It is a valuable asset that generations have forged, preserved and passed on to their descendants constantly. The protect and promotion of the value of Binh Nham Mazu Goddess Temple have their practical meaning in today's social life, expressing the gratitude of today's generation to its predecessors, taking it as a source for construction and  development of an advanced Vietnamese culture imbued with national identity.

Reported by Thuc Van - Translated by Vi Bao