This communal house is located in Phil Lao village (Dao My commune, Lang Giang district, Bac Giang province). It is not located in the centre of the village, but in the vicinity. It faces a large swamp of several hectares…
This communal house is located in Phil Lao village (Dao My commune, Lang Giang district, Bac Giang province). It is not located in the centre of the village, but in the vicinity. It faces a large swamp of several hectares, which is contiguous to a fertile alluvial land.
The present floor space is much less than it was originally built. The first structure is the Anteroom (comprising two chambers and 2 wings), and behind it is the courtyard. Behind the courtyard is the Big Hall, the central and largest structure, which faces the south-east. After the Big Hall comes the Inner Room, which is smaller and comprises 2 blocks of houses connected by a roofed corridor.
The interior part of the communal house contains a wide variety of carvings depicting life in the village, scenes of horse riding, swords fighting, wresting, romances, the latter being associated more or less with religious beliefs and the cult of fertility.
The inscriptions in the central hall mention “24th of the eleventh lunar month of 1688” as the date of construction of the communal house, while a tablet dated 1694 gives the name of the donator, Mrs. Dao Thi Hien, from the village who was married to a duke.
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