8/9 -- Temple of Literature and Bat Trang Village

Today did not start well. We woke up at 3:15am to the realization that the air conditioner was no longer conditioning anything. I tried playing with the controller to no avail. The temperature in the room had already gone up to 75, and when it got to 79 before 6am, we gave up trying to sleep and got up. Then to add insult to injury, the Internet connection went kafluey -- still had wi-fi lan, but it turned out that the hotel's provider was offline. And then we discovered a mass of people in the breakfast room, making it difficult to find a place to sit.  Fortunately, it mostly got better after that.

Our first stop was the one delayed from yesterday, the Temple of Literature, which David had said was dedicated to Confucius. Even so, I thought the Temple of Literature was an odd name -- turns out it was a university established here 100 years before Oxford. David pointed out that in Vietnamese, there is a difference between a temple and a pagoda. In English, temples are associated with religion, but here, the pagoda is the religious institution. The temple is based on Confucian teachings and success in studies enabled students to get high-ranking jobs. It is no longer used as a school, but has become a museum.

Entrance to the Temple of  Literature. Its design is much like
Beijing's Forbidden City with a series of ever more
important courtyards.

A decorative dragon at the first courtyard.

Entering the second courtyard, you see several buildings
protecting stone tablets.

This example of a tablet list successful
scholars. It is set on top of a turtle, This one's
head is shiny because in the past, students
would rub it for luck before exams.

There are 82 of these tablets, and each is unique
and constructed over an 800 year period.

Another building on the way to the classroom courtyard, with
protective dragons on the roof.

If this were China, I would say it is a crane on
a tortoise's back, But here it is a phoenix holding
the pearl of wisdom in its mouth. Although they
look much different, both phoenix represent
the empress.

Statue of Confucius

When we left the Temple, we headed to the village of Bat Trang, which has been a center of ceramics for centuries. Everyone here is involved in making, selling, or supporting ceramics. We visited two families: one was a ceramicist whose family has been doing this for six generations. and the other is a famous local chef. 

A happy Buddha in a Bat Trang Pagoda

 At the ceramics 'factory', we learned how they make bottles with a mould, from start (runny clay and silica) to nearly finished (glazed and ready to fire). The wheel they used for trimming was electric, but the demonstration of how to use a wheel to create was done with one that was hand turned. This created a major challenge when we got our own 'potato' of clay to work with, because any downward pressure to create a bowl shape significantly slowed the wheel. Jim did pretty well, but I munged mine up three times and threw in the proverbial towel.

Jim volunteered me to demonstrate how to clean up a green
(damp) ceramic bottle -- I broke both the ones I worked on.

We got to try our hands on making something with a lump of clay
and a hand-turned wheel. This was Jim's effort: a candlestick
which was significantly smoother and more attractive than me
three efforts, which were each worse than the last.

 Then it was time for  lunch and we wandered down the narrow alleys to our hosts' home. Before we got there, a number of other people came for lunch too (although this is not a formal restaurant, people have heard of this lady and pay to sample her cooking) so we were invited in to a private space in their living room for the best meal we have had so far. The chef has a cooking show on TV that is filmed in her home and her first cookbook is due out in October (in Vietnamese so it won't help us).

After lunch, her husband joined  us and told us a little about their past. His family had been landlords and very active in ceramics for many generations. The Communists decided that all landlords were cruel to peasants and separated them from their property. This family lost 11 houses and and their ceramics facilities when the French left in 1954. Eventually, they were given one house back and now entertain people in their home. We brought them a T-shirt from San Francisco, which he quickly modeled for us with his wife.

We had more time to ourselves in the afternoon, and the A/C and Internet connection were both back to normal, so we got to catch up on the stuff we missed earlier. We elected to skip dinner because we were so full from lunch but went out for a walk around the block and again encountered an outdoor impromptu barber shop like we had seen on Friday. All you need is  a mirror, a chair, cutting implements, and a building under construction with a corrugated metal wall along the sidewalk so there is space to hang the mirror. Our first night we saw several  of these and another one tonight. I encouraged Jim to try it out, but no go.