Flying colours - the temple flags of Vietnam

Flying Colours

Traditional flags in Vietnam

Flags have been used to communicate meanings, directions and identities for over 6,000 years. The earliest known is a bronze relic from Iran dated around 4,000bc.

I never thought much about the meanings of flags until I moved to Vietnam where flags are far more common than in my native England.  Neighbourhoods are transformed on festival and national holiday days by the brilliant  red and yellow national flags and are sometimes festooned with striped bunting which is strung from post to post in the vicinity of temples.

The National Flag with its red ground and yellow star takes its styling from the Soviet ‘hammer and sickle’ flag which also includes a yellow star. In Vietnam, the star represents the five sections of society; the farmers, intellectuals, factory workers, businessmen and the military. Yellow is the colour of the Vietnamese people and red is universally used to signify revolution, strength and courage.  In the alleys and narrow streets of Hanoi, a few scarlet and yellow flags projecting from balconies and upper story windows instantly injects a feeling of national pride and celebration.

The large temple flags with the jagged or toothed edges make a bold statement don’t they. These are Buddhist in origin but have been adopted more widely within the special blend of religion and ancestor worship practiced in Vietnam. The flags outside a large temple will each have a different colour for the central square. Blue is the colour of compassion, yellow is balance, red is for the blessings of Buddha’s teaching, orange is for wisdom and white represents purity and liberation. 

The size of the flag will denote the importance of the site, ancient temples display much larger flags than more modern or lesser temples and meeting houses. Sometimes you will see a small flag outside someone’s home – this usually indicates that there is a monk resident within. So, don’t display Buddhist flags at your house unless you want the neighbours to bring offerings to your door!

Triangular flags mark the route to the home of the deceased during the funeral week. Black and white is often used for these flags in Hanoi. In Hoi An and Da Nang I saw maroon and dark blue and ochre to mark these sad occasions.

Small striped and squared flags will lead the way to the temple door. The closer to the temple, the larger the flags become. Once inside the temple enclosure, the positioning of flags around main courtyard convey meanings about festivals or other temple events. Usually, a yellow flag representing the sun occupies a central position, Blue and green flags representing nature and sky will be in the eastern corners. A white flag for the moon and metal will be in the west and black or indigo in the north represent water.

For parades, the flags take on even more meanings. The red flag representing the Phoenix should take the lead. Behind that the dark turtle is flanked by the Blue dragon to the left and the white tiger to the right. These complex messages are easily read by locals, but I just marvel at the spectacle and now I know never to pass a massive temple flag without stopping to explore the ancient temple within.

Postcard from Vietnam 3

My Son A1 tower

the A1 tower in 1895

When you visit the Cham ruins at My Son, you can almost feel history replaying itself like some ghostly video.  Up here in the mountains in the overcast misty silence you can hear echoes of the American planes and the relentless bombs as they thunder into the soft earth. 


This drawing of the A1 tower was created as a record of the ruins in the 1890s by Parmentier and his team. You can see the scale of the building by the little figure in the bottom right hand corner. Apparently this was not the tallest temple by far.

You can sense the despair of the freedom fighters watching from their encampments up on the 'Ho Chi Minh Trail' in the mountains behind. 

This trail was a series of ancient trade routes used by the Vietnamese from the north to infiltrate and free the southern provinces.

Up here amongst the forests where beautiful little flowers can be spotted in the undergrowth and the Lotus grows wild in the streams, you get a real sense of the beauty of this exotic country and a flavour of the history that underpins its emergence as a modern nation.

A12 and A13 towers in 1890s

A 12 and A13 today

Christmas wishes

A tiny little Santa Claus and a lotus candle

One of Hoi An's best lantern makers

It is Christmas Eve and, here in Hoi An, everyone has come out onto the streets to enjoy some special Christmas events. There is an open air concert of some traditional dancing and singing as well as some with a wonderful voice is singing some Abba hits and I confess, I was feeling a little wistful so I bought a lotus candle and floated it down the river to wish all of my friends and family a peaceful Christmas from half way across the world. 

Fireworks at the open air concert

All the lantern stalls were a blaze of colour and there was a real buzz around the town which has been rather quiet this week. I bought two lanterns to put up for 'Tet', the Vietnamese New Year celebrations in early February. 

The riverside

The streets are lit by lantern light at night

In the oldest part of town all the streets are closed to motorbikes and some to bicycles which all adds to the party atmosphere.

The night market on An Hoi Island

This is still the rainy season for this part of Central Vietnam and the town suffers from flooding. Tonight, the river actually broke its banks and I cycled through a few centimetres of water to reach the concert by the bridge. 

The largest remaining temple at My Son

Earlier today, I went to visit the ancient site of the Cham temples at My Son, about 50 kilometres from Hoi An. This religious site which is comparable to Ankor in Cambodia, was deserted by the Cham in the 1500s as the Chinese drove them south to the Mekong Delta. The whole area quickly became overgrown by jungle and lay untouched until the French rediscovered it in the 1890s.  My Son is older than Ankor by some 5-700 years and its architects used a method of mortarless brick building that repels any incursion of lichens and mould that still confounds modern day archaeologists. 

Unfortunately, this magnificent relic was mostly destroyed in 1969 by American Bombs during the Vietnam War  and now visitors have to walk amid deep bomb crators to view the 50 or more temples and monuments.

Bomb crator

It was the Germans and Italians who came into clear the site of unexploded amunition and land mines so work could begin on restoring the relics some day. 

Types of bomb that littered the site

Conservation works

 The French have extensive and detailed records of the site as they found it and the Italian government is funding some experiments to discover how they were constructed so that rebuilding can begin.

This site was established for the worship of Shiva, the three in one god who is the Creator, Conservator and Destroyer, the characteristics of all men. 

This Christmas let us wish for a more peaceful world in which we can all be more creative and conserve all the good things we have. Let there please be an end to mindless killing and destruction.