Jade Emperor Pagoda

This guide to the Jade Emperor Pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City opens on a locked-down morning in May 2016, when Barack Obama's motorcade made its first stop in the city at this small, smoke-blackened temple. It follows the Taoist belief in the Jade Emperor as the ruler who outranks every soul, living or dead, and the Cantonese immigrant Luu Minh who built this shrine to him around the turn of the twentieth century. Newlyweds still buy live turtles from a vendor outside and write their names on the shells before setting them free in the courtyard pond.