Temple of Literature (Van Mieu or 文廟)

Temple of Literature is also called Van Mieu in Vietnamese and 文廟 in Chinese. It is founded in 1070 as a Confucius temple. In 1076, the first university of Vietnam was established within the temple for the royal family members and was later opened to talented students.

Talented students were then offered a chance to study in the school. In order to get a title given by the emperor to work for the government, they have to pass the imperial exams. The emperor will then crave the names of the graduates on the stone steles, which were placed above the stone turtles. However, those who do not have any contribution, their names will be scraped off from the stele.


There are ponds in the temple and many trees in the temple. The reason for their existence in the temple is because of ‘feng shui’ (風水). From the viewpoint of ‘feng shui’, ‘yin’ represents tree while ‘yang’ represents pond. ‘Yin” and ‘yang’ should always exist together to have a balance. That is the reason why trees and ponds can be found in the temple.


Initially, I thought that the purpose of having ponds and trees there was to beautify the temple. Thus, I was quite surprised when I found out that it was meant for the ‘feng shui’. I was even more surprised that the Vietnamese believed in ‘feng shui’ as all the while I thought that only the Chinese would believe in such things. Therefore, in this trip to the Temple of Literature, I have learnt additional thing that is the impact of Chinese cultural on the Vietnamese; it has affected the Vietnamese to a certain extent in terms of their belief.

The temple consists of 5 courtyards. There were 3 gates to the second courtyard of the temple which is the main hall. The gate in the center is much bigger than the other 2 gates at the side. In the past, the 3 gates were meant for different people. The gate in the centre was meant for the King while the one to its left was for administrative Mandarins and the one to its right was for military Mandarins.


I was told by Kah about an old man & 3 animal’s story.

An old man tried his best to bring up 3 animals which are the crane, snake and turtle. When they grew up, the old man became even older and could no longer do anything for them. Therefore, the snake and turtle decided to kill the old man for food. When the crane heard of this, it killed them for the old man. The morale of the story is to let us know one of the Chinese idioms which is ‘yin shui si yuan’. This means that one should be grateful to the people that have taught, helped and /or brought him/her up.