Hội quán Ôn Lăng - Chùa quan âm

This guide to the Ôn Lăng assembly hall in Ho Chi Minh City starts with the porcelain-shard dragons overhead, pieced from smashed plates and bowls, and traces the 1740 falling-out that split a group of Quanzhou merchants from their shared community hall nearby. It follows why they named their breakaway hall after their home city and dedicated it to Quan Âm, the bodhisattva said to answer the cries of the suffering, whose statue still stands in the courtyard by the pond. Bells and iron cauldrons cast under a Chinese emperor's reign still sit on the altars inside.