Hội An
— — the river the lanterns float down on the full moon.
Not only on a wall.
“An old trading port on the Thu Bồn River in Quảng Nam province, kept largely as it stood when Chinese, Japanese, and Dutch merchants ran wares through it from the 15th to the 19th centuries. The Japanese Covered Bridge has crossed a small canal here since 1593. On the fourteenth night of each lunar month the electric lights go off and the town reads by silk lantern alone.
Hội An, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Hội An sits about thirty kilometres south of Da Nang on the Thu Bồn River, a few kilometres inland from the South China Sea in Quảng Nam province. From the 15th through the 19th century it was one of Southeast Asia's busiest trading ports, drawing Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, and Portuguese merchants who left assembly halls, shophouses, and the Japanese Covered Bridge still standing along Tran Phu street. The harbour silted up in the late 1800s and the trade moved north to Da Nang. UNESCO inscribed the Ancient Town as a World Heritage Site in 1999.
On the fourteenth night of each lunar month the town runs a lantern festival: the electric lights along Bach Dang and Nguyen Thai Hoc are turned off and the old town reads by silk and paper lantern alone. The lanterns are made in the workshops of the Cam Pho ward and along the river; the prevailing shapes are spheres, garlic-bulb, and longer drum forms in red, gold, and indigo silk. Floating paper lotuses are released onto the Thu Bồn from small skiffs. Crowds gather along the riverbank and on the An Hoi footbridge.
The Ancient Town zone covers about thirty hectares and is best walked rather than driven. A single admission ticket sold at booths around the perimeter covers entry to five of the heritage houses, assembly halls, and the Japanese Covered Bridge on a rotating basis. The town floods most years between September and November when the Thu Bồn rises; locals move ground-floor goods upstairs and life continues from boats along the streets. Tailors take measurements for next-day delivery, a trade that has run here since the 1990s.