Mo Pagoda

Mo Pagoda belongs to the Mo temple-and-pagoda relic cluster in Ngu Phuc commune, Kien Thuy district, Hai Phong. The cluster is a nationally ranked historical-cultural relic and is famous for a giant silk-cotton tree over 700 years old.

According to Tran-dynasty royal records, Princess Quynh Tran was a daughter of King Tran Thanh Tong. Devout and compassionate, she asked her father's permission to become a Buddhist nun. In 1283, passing through Nghi Duong (today's Ngu Phuc commune), she found the landscape shaped like a bird in flight and settled there to practice. She established an estate, distributed food and money, and taught local people to reclaim land, farm and weave.

To coordinate the community's daily work she used the sound of a wooden fish (mo) as a signal — the origin of the names Tong Mo, Mo market, Mo temple and Mo pagoda. During the Mongol invasions she recruited soldiers and stockpiled provisions for the court's war effort. After her death the people built a temple beside the pagoda to worship her; twelve royal edicts of investiture were conferred on the site over successive dynasties.

The temple-and-pagoda cluster preserves classical architecture and worships both the Buddha and Princess Quynh Tran. In its grounds stands a silk-cotton tree said to have been planted when the princess settled here — now more than 700 years old and recognized as a Vietnam Heritage Tree — in Kien Thuy, the old Duong Kinh heartland of the Mac dynasty.