Hoa Vân Pagoda

From the entrance of Hoàng Xá Cave, go about 200m, then turn right to reach Hoa Vân Pagoda. The pagoda includes items such as the front hall, upper sanctuary, guest house, ancestral house, and mother goddess house.

The front hall is a five-bay, two-wing building with gable walls and arm-shaped braces, roofed with ri tiles; the front roof is two-tiered with a necked ridge. At both ends and in the middle of the roof ridge are three nine-grade lotus stupas, indicating that this pagoda worships Buddha according to the Pure Land sect. The front is a door system made in the upper-lattice, lower-panel style. The interior trusses are structured in the “upper giao chien con nhi, lower ke bay” style on four rows of columns.

The upper sanctuary is a longitudinal building connected from the middle of the front hall to the rear, consisting of 3 bays; here stepped altars are built to arrange Buddha statues.

Hoa Vân Pagoda, together with Văn Xương Đế Quân Temple and Hạ Temple (burned by French invaders in 1949), and Hoàng Kim Pagoda, forms a unique complex of temples and pagodas, suited to the beautiful natural scenery.

In front of the pagoda, adjacent to the inter-communal road, is a large lotus pond, commonly called Giếng Cả, shaped like a giant carp with its head resting toward the cave entrance. In the middle of the fish pond is the fish navel (ngư đỗ), with a raised earth mound on which a shrine called Quán Gió is built, connected to the shore by a semicircular bridge.

Outside Giếng Cả, across the inter-communal road, is Gò Mãng Xà, resembling two dragons flanking and facing the cave entrance. Today this area is the commune’s Martyrs’ Cemetery. In front of the cave, diagonally to the right, is Hoàng Xá Communal House. Behind the communal house is a shrine dedicated to General Lữ Gia, who was honored as the village tutelary deity.