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It was built nearly 200 years ago. The owner of the house has preserved its interior design and old fourniture, as well as many relics of the prospering trade and cultural exchanges among the Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese in the late 17th century. This is the first old house, along with two other structures in Hoi An, which was granted the title of Cultural Site by the Ministry of Culture and Information in 1985.
The person who built the house was a Minh Huong (a Chinese native) who came to Vietnam to do business in the 17th century. Seven generations of owners have successively lived there. Thanks to their protection and the high-quality construction materials, the architecture of the house has been kept almost intact. Only small repairs have been made.
The house was built from traditional materials by skilled local artisans and was influenced by Chinese and Japanese styles. Its charming and elegant designs give it a cosy aspect.
The front hall of the tube-shaped Tan Ky House overlooks Nguyen Thai Hoc Street, and its back open on Bach Dand Street. It used to be a shop selling cinnamon, tea, silk, wood and medecines obtained from rare animal's bone.
The front hall has two storeys roofed with pan-tiles. The groung floor is 2 meters in length and is divided into three smaller compartments by several columns. The left and the right ones are 2 meters lenght each, and the middle one, 1.2 meters. All the columns stand on round stone bases carved with lotus flowers, for a solid structure.
There is a large wooden door but no window. Above the door are two wooden bolts carved with the yin-yang symbol. Long planks are put together horizontally on the two sides of the door. They can be dismantled for displaying goods and seating the owner when necessary. In the inner wall of the ddor of the second compartment is a red lacquered board engraved with three golden Chinese characters meaning "Le Family Chapel".
The second compartment constitutes the center of the house. It is bigger than he first one, and it used to be a guestroom. Today, it is devoted to worshipping of the ancestors and Buddha, as well as receiving guests. It has only one storey with a high celling. Its rafters are quite special : the lower one are longer the the upper ones. The column that supports the rafter stands on a finger-shaped wooden support. The wall have two bricklayers with thin planks in between them, thus keeping the house cool in summer and warn in winter. Strong peck and jackfruit woods are the main materials of the house. The floor is paved with Bat Trang-made tiles. The stone used in other places of the house comes from Tranh Hoa Province.
Skilled carpenters from Kim Bong Village mortised all parts of the force-resistant frames instead of using nails to assemble them. The ends of the rafters and the columns are decorated with purely Vietnamese designs such as "height weapons", "apricot, orchid, chrysanthemum and bamboo", "dragon, unicorn, tortoise ans phoenix", or "people holding musical instruments reciting poems and drinking liquors". The signboards "Tan Ky" and "Tan Buu" of the shop are hung in the middle room of the house.
In the sitting room, there are an old table and chairs made of black laquered wood. Their surface are made of centuries old marble from Ngu Hanh Mountain.
On the walls are Chinese-inked pictures od mountains, rivers and horses in the old Chinese style. The columns are adorned with different parallel sentences. On two columns, in the middle of the room, are two mother-of-pearl inscriptions named "a hundred birds". Each letter of the sentences represents a bird, the symbol of noble men. The birds have different postures. The sentences read, "A 10 feet-long row of willows waits for rain thousands of miles away. A 10cm-wide moonlight shines up the whole garret full of books".
On the two innermost columns of the second compartment are two parrallel sentences written in old Chinese characters. They are inlaid with mother-of-pearl depicting apricot flowers, birds, orchids, chrysanthemums and bamboo trees. Japanese-style rafters upport the wooden arch between the two compartments. Some other columns are carved with motifs of "carps transforming into dragons", which are commonly found in Chinese architecture.
The two-storey compartment, which serves as a "bridge house", runs on the right of the plot of land and squarely to the second compartment. On the left side is the open yard, which absorbs sunshine and helps ventilate the whole house. There is a rain water resservoir in the yard, which is paved with grey square stones from Tjanh Hoa province.
Yhe balcony of the "bridge-house", and the second compartment are connected to each other by a wooden bar edged with grape leave-shape designs of European origin. The wooden bars that link the columns together are decorated with bas-relief of peaches or finger citrons.
Another two-storey compartment stands parrallel with the first and secon ones. On the celing of the groung fllor, there is a square hole that the owner would use for moving goods horizontally with a pulley. The back door overlooks a warf by the Hoa An River, which was very convenient for loading and unloading goods. |
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