Chem communal house, in Thuy Phuong commune, Bac Tu Liem district, Hanoi is among the most ancient communal houses in Vietnam which dated back over a thousand years ago.

As the legend goes, the temple - originally a small shrine - was built after Ly Ong Trong’s death. The first year of Trinh Nguyen of the Chinese Tang dynasty (785 AD), Zhao Chang, who was sent to serve as a governor of An Nam, then the Chinese colony, felt deep respect for his merits, ordered the shrine to be re-built with the multi-layer style. 

In 864, Cao Bien came to An Nam as governor and ordered to expand the temple into an even larger-scale construction; to carve wooden statues painted with gilded lacquer and re-named it as Ly Hieu Uy temple.

Chem communal house was built in the most common and sophisticated architectural style called “nội công ngoại quốc”, i.e the inside shape looks like the letter I encircled by a rectangle. 

The external gate consists of four high pillars decorated with lanterns on the top. The lanterns are painted with the images of four sacred animals and four sacred plants depicting the four seasons. 

There are parallel sentences in Chinese characters praising the merits of Ly Ong Trong. The internal gate (also called Tàu tượng) is a four-roofed house with three rooms, two wings which are roofed with shoe-shape tiles.

The roof corners are curved in the form of the lance blade roof corners which were carved with the image of dragon head. The internal three-door wooden gate is widely opened leading to the place where the statues of the elephant trainer, the war elephants and horses are located. 

The structure in the shape of letter I includes the stele chamber, communal house yard, two parallel blocks of chambers on both sides of the communal house yard in front of the main worshipping hall, eight-roofed square house, the main worshiping hall (the outer block in the architectural cluster of the central Communal House, where people pay ritual visits) and the back house (or Forbidden Chamber, where the statue of the Saint is placed).

The main area of the temple consists of the antechamber and the main worshipping hall. These two buildings are similar in structure and joined together by the system of supporting beams. 

Each block consists of 5 compartments, 2 pylons and is in the 4-roofed house style. The interior has 6 rows of wooden supporting columns placed on the green stone bases to hold the roof.

On the short trussels, there are sculptures engraved with the images of cloud dragons, water dragons, carps turning into dragons, and four sacred animals carved in the art style of the late Lê dynasty in the 18th century. 

This is not only the place where the altars and other important items of the temple are placed but also the place where important ceremonies take place every year during the festival.

The back house connects with the main worshipping hall through a small house in the middle. The back house consists of three blocks connected together to form the structure of the word "Công".

The outer house and the inner house are parallel, separated in the middle by “ống muống” - the annex which links the Bái đường (the reverence chamber) and the sanctuary hall. This is the most sacred place in the Chèm temple. 

The throne and the 3.2 meter-high statues of Đức Ông (His Grace), Đức Bà (Her Grace) (the two people who donated the land to build the temple) are placed here. 

Also on the two sides are the statues of the six children of the Tutelary god, also known as The Six Kings. Legend has it that Saint Lý Ông Trọng ranked the third after Tản Viên (Mountain) Saint and Gióng Saint in the Vietnamese four Immortals.

At present, Chèm communal house still preserves many artifacts of high historical and artistic values including 16 books of Chinese characters, 3 stamps of Nguyễn Kings, 4 stone steles, 10 statues, ancient horizontal pictures, 8 laquared boards, 15 parallel sentences, 2 bronze bells casted in the Nguyễn dynasty; valuable worshipping objects such as 8 worshiping boards, 4 altars, 4 thrones of incense, long ngai bài vị (worshipping  boards of the kings), incense bowls, candle lamps, phoenix statues, worshipping palanquins, worshiping altar, the chariot, the porcelain vase, the ceramic vase, etc.

Particularly, Chem communal house still preserves a thousand-year-old incense burner, a rare and precious thiên mệnh (destiny of God) tree. There was a system of rain gutters casted in bronze in 1748 and 1756, during the reign of King Lê Hiển Tông and the reign of Minh Mệnh (Nguyễn dynasty) in 1824. The entire relics in the temple were arranged according to the zodiac axis: East North West South.

In 1990, Chem communal house was recognized as a national historical-cultural vestige according to Decision No. 34/VH/QD of January 9, 1990 by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

Hanoitimes