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n a warm, humid Saturday in February, two American friends and I drove our motorbikes west of the city to visit some Buddhist and Taoist temples in Cho Lon. Cho Lon, or “big market” in Vietnamese, is Ho Chi Minh city’s massive Chinatown, noted as possibly the largest Chinatown in the world, in fact, and has been here for as long as the main section of the city has been. Even before the French made of this slice of Vietnam its Cochinchina, building up Saigon’s most emblematic buildings, Cho Lon was already a separate Chinese township, its homes packed together like any dense section of Hong Kong, existing in its own particular sphere of culture and housing the many immigrants from China living, trading, and setting down roots here.
A tour of Saigon’s pagodas, and my mother’s year of living in one
19 Sunday Feb 2017
Posted Saigon life
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