Shallow shrub and fern roots tussle to send shoots, tendrils and stalks up and outwards, sprawling across uneven ground and grasping at patches of light. A musky, funky, fetid soil stink emanates from crooks, crevices, and holes ungoverned by grubs, spiders, snails, beetles, and flies. Flowers bloom in vibrant bursts of color amongst vines, the collapsing pulp of decomposing logs and uncompromising boulders; birds trill, cicadas whine, and the air offers its inexhaustible exhale of droplet-rich molecules. We live in the tropics. Often, we forget this. Tao Đàn Park allows us to remember.
Everyone knows what and where Tao Đàn is. The city’s largest downtown park has been a green oasis for longer than any living resident can remember. But despite its size and centrality, I was shocked to discover via informal discussions with friends and co-workers that most people spend very little time there. Some have never even stepped foot inside.
Colonial plans for Tao Đàn (left) and scenes from the park of decades past (right). Photos via Chuyện Xưa.
When the French began their long-lasting Saigon subjugation process and started constructing the Norodom Palace in 1868 in what was then the city outskirts, the massive expanse of open land behind it was cultivated as the palace orchard. When the French opened Miss Clavell Street (now Huyền Trân Công Chúa), the garden was separated from the palace and renamed “Jardin de la ville” (city flower garden), but it remained a place of pleasure primarily intended for the colonialists and their rich associates. Once the French withdrew in 1955, it was given its current name. From then until 1976, Tao Đàn was home to a primary school and hosted a variety of leisure and educational activities. It gradually evolved into what we know it as today.
Tao Đàn in 1976. Photo via Đỡ Buồn.
But the park’s history is not what first interested me in Tao Đàn. I began spending time there out of pure convenience: it was merely the fastest route from the Saigoneer office to my apartment. Cutting through it every morning and evening not only provided a pleasant dose of shade and reprieve from dodging sidewalk-hoping motorbike hooligans, but it also allowed me to notice the park’s charming, at times baffling, elements and characters.
Tao Đàn's collection of curios
In particular, Tao Đàn’s strange assemblage of unmarked statues first aroused my curiosity. A thumbs up slammed through a wall, a child reading a book on the back of a modernist buffalo, a bust of Beethoven with his name misspelled beneath the title of one of his most famous piano sonatas, what appears to be a giant tailpipe beside a doorstop and the silhouette of a nun impaled by spikes. The statues have no accompanying information such as title or artist name. Packed together towards the southern end of the park, they are an incongruous mix of styles and motifs. Where did they come from? Why are they here?
It turns out that the artworks were produced during a month-long sculpture creation camp in 2005 that focused on beautifying the park. Artists from around the country were invited to create pieces without any requirements or directions for subject matter. Such activities have occurred in other parts of the country as well, including Huế and An Giang. While such attention to supporting art and making public spaces more visually appealing is admirable, there could have been greater thought behind the presentation of what would become a permanent installation. Speaking in Vietnamese about the camps in general, sculptor Lê Xuân Tiên noted: “The way of displaying and preserving works in each camp is not scientific or artistic. Such a display method not only fails to honor the works but also makes them look more miserable, in a cramped environment lacking landscape, space, and perspective.”
Indeed, many of the individual works have merits that would benefit from more respectful installation, including basic details about the artist and consideration for how they capture sunlight and occupy space. As they currently stand, they remind one of the stock photos hotels hang to cover bare walls without the intention of inviting much thought or emotion. Or perhaps the sculpture garden as a whole can be likened to a fashion designer presenting a new collection by hanging the clothing on a balcony laundry line.
Other statues in Tao Đàn are more clear in their origins and intent. A bust of Mahatma Gandhi, for example, comes with an inspiring quote and details of the sculptor and the Indian Council for Relations that provided for it. A small-scale replica of the Po Nagar Chăm Tower in Nha Trang was built several decades ago as a pleasant monument that nods to the history of the thalassocratic Champa in Vietnam. The original was crushed by falling trees during a heavy 2021 storm, but a new one was quickly erected, underscoring its assumed value to the park.
The Lâm burial complex across the park, at least, has some brief identifying material that offers context. A plaque notes that it was built by Lâm Tam Lang, an immigrant from Guangdong, and his wife, Mai Thị Xã. The Chinese text on the tomb walls indicates he died in 1795, during the tumultuous period in southern Vietnam when the Tây Sơn toppled the first reign of the Nguyễn lords in the south. The Inventory List of Historical-Cultural Relics in Ho Chi Minh City claims that the ancient tomb was built in 1895, when southern Vietnam’s brief independence was coming to a close. The monument’s construction materials — quicklime, fine sand, shell powder mixed with molasses, and sticky jungle tree sap — denote the family to have been wealthy. In 2014, it was recognized as a city-level architectural and artistic relic. I have never seen anyone visit it or leave offerings, suggesting familial duty and legacy can only extend so many decades. Perhaps, we should take advice from renowned pugilist, Mike Tyson, who said this week, after one dies: “We're just dead. We're dust, we're absolutely nothing. Our legacy is nothing.”
Compared to the Lâm tomb, a far more frequently visited structure in Tao Đàn is the Hùng King Shrine which was built in 2012 and refurbished a decade later. I’ve frequently observed park visitors stopping at it to light incense, offer respects, and make prayers. Modeled after the much larger temple in Phú Thọ, the shrine’s ridged, upturned roof, stone lions at the entrance, and plants contained in attention-drawing ceramics all reflect Chinese influence as reinforced by the Chinese script on its pillars. These are contrasted by the Đông Sơn drum at the top entrance flanked by a familiar chim Lạc. These images, attributed to the Đông Sơn culture in the Red River Delta over 2,000 years ago, are cited as one of the few uniquely Vietnamese ancient aesthetics remaining today.
Before my last visit to the park, I'd just finished reading Architects of Dignity, a book that examines early and mid 20th century debates about Vietnamese independence and identity including the role of outside influences. This no doubt led me ruminate on the structures in Tao Đàn in the context of how they reflect the challenges of separating uniquely Vietnamese culture from that of the many nations that have ruled Vietnam over the centuries. In addition to the park’s very existence, many of its gargantuan trees are not native to the area. Rather, the French transplanted them from the highlands and elsewhere per their cultural understanding of shade, city use, and urban development.
So where does the French end and the Vietnamese start in Tao Đàn? Is the Chăm sculpture an example of appropriation or does thinking of it as such ignore the fact that Kinh is not synonymous with Vietnamese identity? What should we say of public parks and many of the activities they allow for being foreign concepts?
Such overwrought topics slipped from my mind when I reached the cactus garden. Cactus, a species not even native to Asia in general, let alone Saigon, throw up their spiky arms with no regard for our notions of nationhood. To tell the history of Tao Đàn requires Vietnamese, French, English and a bit of Chinese. Cacti have their own language; one with no past or future tenses. Cacti only speak of now.
Tao Đàn in use today
Enough static ruminations on what Tao Đàn is; let's turn to what Tao Đàn is used for. If you venture there early in the morning, before the city lathers itself up in layers of smog and humidity, you’ll find people exercising. Walkers and joggers weave around organized dancing, aerobic and yoga groups. While their competing music, which varies from modern global pop hits to classic Vietnamese slow jams, can be a bit jarring, it's an overwhelmingly peaceful atmosphere. Aunties and uncles use the workout equipment and strike slow-mo martial arts poses. Badminton players block off stretches of the sidewalk to nearly no one’s concern. Kids climb and clamber on playground equipment. These people focusing on mental and physical wellness seem calm and happy. It’s a scene that repeats itself in the evening and stands in stark contrast to the agitated motorists that snarl the city’s boulevards, honking and huffing like caged ferrets.
Sports have a long history in Tao Đàn, dating back to when the French first developed it. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they built numerous athletic facilities, including what is thought to be the nation’s first football field. Because the sport was unknown amongst locals at the time, it hosted games between mostly foreign soldiers and port workers. Tao Đàn was also a major site for bicycle integration into Vietnam. In 1896, Tao Đàn held what was possibly Vietnam’s first bicycle race and organized classes to teach people how to use what was at the time a new and strange invention. Back then, the colonial administration had already taken a liking to horse racing, so the space on an adjacent plot on Nguyễn Du was devoted to the Horse Riding Association which raised and trained horses for the racetrack elsewhere in the city.
Tao Đàn’s tennis courts as photographed in 1948 by Jack Birns of TIME and LIFE magazines.
Imagining what Tao Đàn’s sporting scene must have been like back then conjures images straight from Vũ Trọng Phụng’s satirical epic Dumb Luck which lambastes 1930s Hanoi bourgeois society and their pursuit of what they considered “civilized society” as mimicked from the French. Tennis plays a central role in the work, with the pomp, circumstance, and politics surrounding the game exposing the flawed logic and immoral behavior employed by the elite to gain and maintain power. Or as its main character experiences it: “Red-Haired Xuân felt the road to fame and success opening wide before him. The driveway was full of beautiful cars. Elegantly clad Vietnamese and French men entered and exited along with fashionable Vietnamese ladies and French madames. They all exuded the luxurious air of the upper classes. Xuân knew that he had truly arrived. Oh, sports! Glorious sports! What can't you accomplish? Hip hip hooray!”
Tao Đàn’s role as an athletic center continues today in a more democratized form that no longer resembles that of Red-Haired Xuân’s. In addition to the previously mentioned dancers, aerobic enthusiasts and badminton players, the park caters to residents via the Ammite Sports Club which includes football fields, a swimming pool, basketball courts, an archery range, and tennis courts. While not as fancy as other facilities in the city, the shade offered by enormous trees, the central location, and the time-worn details including frayed nets, wonky unlicenced Donald Duck advertisements, downtrodden canteen, and faded paint all contribute to a feeling of connection with a messy, dynamic city and corresponding civil society. Strolling into the space without the need for a pass or security check imparts the idea that you are welcome, you belong, you are part of the human apparatus that constructed, maintains and is expected to appreciate the communal space.
Such freedom of movement allows one to poke around in the nooks and corners of this area of the park, including the back of the Golden Dragon Water Puppet Theatre. The traditional art form which dates back hundreds of years has long been relegated to primarily a tourism oddity. And even in that context, it is best known in the north where it originated. Therefore, it's of little surprise that few international tourist itineraries include a stop here, to say nothing of domestic guests or Saigon residents. Still, it's well worth wandering around behind the building to observe the puppets in various states of repair and replacement. Streaked by shadows falling from the colonial structure’s stately shutters and pillars, the wooden dragons, phoenixes and villagers rest amongst disheveled shelves of glues, paints, glitter, unmarked goop, naked mannequins and cast-off construction pieces. The blank stare of miniature farmers with wires protruding from their bellies and warped back pieces split by the elements would fit perfectly in a horror movie if a director ever took notice.
But even if you are not one for exercise and don’t even appreciate a bench with some shade in the outdoors to read a book or scroll a phone, the park has one last use: toilets! On its north side, near the children’s playground equipment is a clean and inviting public bathroom. The city features far too few such amenities, so it's great to know where they are. It can save one from having to purchase a coffee to use a shop bathroom, let alone consider peeing along the side of the road. The value of an available public restroom should not be understated when listing Tao Đàn’s merits.
The future of Tao Đàn
So if all that helps us understand what Tao Đàn was and is, let us consider what Tao Đàn will be. Like so many elements of Saigon, the park is at the mercy of modern values and blunt realities. Simply, the city is getting more crowded, and green spaces seem to be among its least respected elements. The people will not allow it to be destroyed all at once, so it gets chipped away, piece by piece; scraped, chunked, and fissured. It’s already well underway.
By 7am, the park’s quiet is fractured and with it the illusion of solitude. In 2003, two periphery roads were connected to become the park-bisecting Trương Định Street. Like a pinhole pierced into a satchel of soup that spills broth into a takeaway bag of dinner, the road has ushered in the city’s noises and chaos. Traffic fumes and engine discord leak across the serene atmosphere. The space cannot be both a thoroughfare and an oasis. One of my friends who remembers visiting the park long ago, decades before the road, claims it has now been ruined. A younger friend argues the road was necessary to make traversing the city convenient. Who’s correct? So it is with matters of public space; the public is always divided.
A similar piecemeal removal of the park occurred just a few years ago. On the western edge, a longstanding bird cafe was demolished to work on an underground portion of a woefully delayed Saigon Metro Line. Transplanted on a busy road, the new bird cafe is a sad facsimile of its former self, welcoming few bird enthusiasts who must struggle to hear the trills of their bulbuls over the dyspeptic groans of unrepentant capitalism careening along the street. The section devoted to metro construction access is a filthy, puddle-strewn stretch of gravel marred by potholes, corrugated sheet metal, and spray-painted cement blocks.
Smaller incursions into the park's natural beauty are ongoing too. Earlier this year, a tree branch fell, killing two people and injuring three. The city rightfully used it as an opportunity to trim other limbs to guard against similar tragedies. This balancing of safety and wild splendor will continue, with errors certainly made on the side of keeping people free from harm. In a perfect world, Saigon would be so filled with parks it wouldn’t have to compromise and could devote itself fully to being a place to savor the city’s tropical botany, or be a mecca for physical fitness, or serve as a showcase for art projects, or a keeper of cultural destinations or space for holding events. Alas, it must be all of these as well as a means for reducing traffic.
Maybe such an understanding of shared use allows us to see the park as a metaphor for public spaces as a whole. They will never please anyone fully. Micro and macro elements will always upset us as we each could offer a different vision better suited to our particular preferences. And yet, this is certainly preferable to the space being held in private hands, be it a wealthy individual or a greedy government. Instead, Tao Đàn is a site to witness and appreciate compromise; an act our species will need to perform with increasing regularity to survive.
