Chùa Hải Tạng

This guide to Chùa Hải Tạng on Cu Lao Cham near Hoi An opens in seventeen fifty-eight, when a boat carrying timber for a mainland temple got trapped here by foul weather, and a hermit monk named Huong Hai raised a small retreat from the wood that stayed. It follows the pagoda through a typhoon in eighteen forty-eight that tore it apart, and the decision by islanders and merchants to carry the pieces two hundred meters inland against the mountain instead of rebuilding on the same spot. The narration takes in the rice paddies fed by the valley's rainwater, a centuries-old bronze bell carved with a dragon, and a stone wall built to keep out pythons rather than thieves. Look up at the triple gate before stepping inside.