Not a Buddhist Temple

It was late January, 1970 when I took this picture of what I thought was a Buddhist Temple.  I had been in Vietnam for about two weeks at this point.  The Army had me pulling guard at Bien Hoa Air Base at night.  So during the day, there were times when I wandered around the village of Bien Hoa.  It was in Bien Hoa where I ran across this building.

 I was attracted to the strangeness of the architecture and the Vietnamese words over the door.  Cows were roaming close to the building for some reason.  A couple of Vietnamese soldiers in the doorway (it's hard to make them out) were shooing them away.

Recently I scribbled down the Vietnamese words over the door and googled them.  To my surprise, the building was not a Buddhist temple at all.  It was a temple in honor of Confucius.  Confucius brought three essential values to the Vietnamese as part of what is termed, Vietnamese folk religion.  They are respect for ones parents in life and to remember them in death, the care and concern for other human beings and the respect for ritual or the proper way of doing things.  The rituals focus on what is considered the great moments in life: birth, marriage and death.

It is a shame, but this particular building was likely destroyed between 1975 and 1979 when anti-religious fanatics destroyed most of the temples.  Beginning in 1985, the state realized the mistake that was made and began to rebuild.