From “La Cochinchine en 1876,” Le Correspondant, 10 octobre 1876, pp 303-307.

The Messageries Maritimes steamships which serve the Far East convey travellers from Marseille to Saigon in a minimum of thirty days and a maximum of thirty-five days: it depends on whether the monsoon is favourable or unfavourable. The accommodation on board is quite comfortable, and the journey is usually made in the company of islanders from across the Channel, reserved and stiff ladies with gentlemen in bowler hats, who are travelling to India or the coasts of China.

The Suez Canal significantly shortens the crossing, which was once so long and arduous. Passengers call at Aden, Pointe de Galle (Ceylon), and Singapore, and finally arrive in Saigon, after sailing up the magnificent Saigon River, navigable by the largest vessels.

Arriving in Saigon brings great pleasure to the traveller: more than three thousand leagues from his homeland, he feels as if he has rediscovered his native land; he sees the French again, still lively, cheerful, and enthusiastic, just as he left them barely a month ago.

Two cannon shots, fired from the naval port an hour apart, salute the entrance of the steamer into the Saigon River and announce its arrival to the merchant fleet. The steamer anchors alongside the main building of the Messageries Maritimes, a handsome structure of a style quite unique to the country, half-buried beneath mounds of greenery.

On both the starboard and port sides, you are besieged by native boats called sampans; they vie for the honour and profit of taking you ashore. You disembark at a large jetty surmounted by the Signal Mast, on which all the signals for the naval and commercial ports are hoisted. Before you stands a vast, two-storey house, once yellow, now painted grey: this is the Maison Wang-Tai, named after the Chinese banker-entrepreneur who owns it. This “son of Heaven” wields considerable power in Cochinchina, thanks to the abundant capital he moves.

Once ashore, you must resolutely settle into one of those square boxes you’ve already seen in Singapore; they’re called palanquins in proper parlance, but in Saigon, they’re known as “malabars,” because the drivers are generally Hindus. The Malabar coachman calls out to you from afar: “Voiture, capitaine!” In Asia, any well-dressed European is a captain.

Don’t even think about telling your coachman the name of a street or hotel: it would be pointless; every newcomer is supposed to know the city, and the Malabar coachman knows no more than you do; his education is quite incomplete.

So you have to head off rather haphazardly, shouting: right! left! You always end up getting there. Later, when you’re familiar with the local way of doing things, you can boast, “Kiri, kanan,” thinking you know the language, when in reality you’ve spoken pure Malay, the language widespread on the peninsula and spoken mainly in business.

Once in the carriage, you follow the riverbank, lined with uneven and rather unattractive buildings. After passing the Hôtel de l’Europe, the most fashionable in the city, with a café on the ground floor, the car turns onto rue Catinat, a street lined with high-end businesses and European-style houses which give it a rather imposing appearance.

The rue Catinat is something like the Broadway, Nevsky Prospekt, or Canebière of the area; the buildings are only a few years old, and there are many gaps to fill. In the very middle of the street, one can see large empty spaces; to the right, a vacant lot; to the left, ugly wooden shacks, home to a wretched population..

We continue our journey through the city. At the end of rue Catinat, where it meets rue de La Grandière, are grouped the buildings dedicated to public services: the Ministry of the Interior, the Telegraph Office, the Prison, the Gendarmerie, the Palace de Justice, the Public Works Department, the Indigenous Court, the Treasury, and the Post Office.

There, too, will rise, in a year or two, the Cathedral whose designs are currently being considered for a competition; this building, which will crown the top of rue Catinat, is expected to cost one million francs.

The rue de La Grandière is a magnificent thoroughfare lined with splendid tamarind trees; it serves as an extension of the road to the Chinese town, and leads to the asylum of the Sainte-Enfance, passing in front of the Hospital and the Engineering Corps, remarkable buildings recently constructed at great expense.

At the end of the rue Catinat, turning left, one arrives in the affluent area of Saigon, the Saigon of pleasure. It is a plateau covered with private houses, surrounded by small gardens and inhabited by high-class merchants or government employees who can afford luxurious residences.

At the top of the plateau stands the Palace of the Government, with its elegant and grandiose architecture. it consists of a central pavilion with two large wings, each leading to a striking end pavilion.

The palace is surrounded by a beautiful park, well-maintained and designed with impeccable taste. Behind the palace lies the Jardin de la Ville, the main city park which is particularly beautiful during the rainy season when the rich vegetation of the region bursts into bloom.

Leaving this remarkable and interesting western part of the city, we take rue Chasseloup-Laubat and pass the Camp des Lettrés, which is occupied by the Marine Infantry; we then arrive at the Citadel, a magnificent two-storey iron structure, occupied by our troops.

Here we are at the Botanical Garden; the patient care of a learned director has brought together the most varied flora; the garden itself is quite picturesque; we regret that the zoological section has been so neglected until now. Cochinchina offers marvellous riches in this respect, which we hope will be exploited in the near future.

We have toured Saigon; it is not without interest to know how people live there, and what the general aspect of colonial society is like. In the morning, everyone goes to their offices, some for business, others for administrative matters, because in Saigon, Europeans are all either merchants or civil servants.

From seven to ten o’clock, they work; at ten o’clock, they have lunch, then a siesta, a necessity of the tropical climate. From two to five, they resume their business; then they go home, get dressed, get into a carriage for a drive around the city and the gardens; they have an aperitif at a café or a club; at seven o’clock, they have dinner.

It is fashionable, when one can afford it, to own a carriage in Saigon; These carriages are miserable, patched-up carts, barely functional until they are completely worn out; fine teams of horses are a rare sight. As for the horses, they are small Annamite breeds that trot perfectly. The price of a good horse is about 75 piastres (416 francs); for a well-matched pair, one must pay up to 250 piastres (1387 francs).

After Saigon, the capital of our Annamite realm, the most important city is Cholon, commonly called the Chinese city. Cholon, a corruption of Chợ Lớn (big market in Annamite), is the quintessential trading city; it is where all the rice trade of Cochinchina is concentrated, and where, in the form of partnerships, are located those large Chinese companies that hold the most significant portion of the country’s wealth.

Saigon can be reached from Cholon either by car or by boat for the modest sum of five sous – the price of the Bateaux Mouches on the Seine. Be wary, however, of this mode of transport if you value your comfort or if your sense of smell is not accustomed to the aromas of the Far East.

The boat journey takes half an hour along the Arroyo Chinois; arroyo is a Spanish word meaning stream: it probably dates from the conquest and is still used in the local dialect. On its banks, one sees a number of Annamite houses with sloping, low-pitched roofs covered in paillotes (the local style of thatched roof).

The first thing which strikes you upon arriving in Cholon is a large, single-story house known as the Maison Samuel; it belonged to the founder of a silk mill which is now bankrupt.

Following the quay for more than three kilometres, one sees nothing but junks moored to the bank in front of the Chinese trading houses which line the river; it is a most striking sight.

Everywhere there is astonishing activity; coolies (the English colonial name for porters) come and go from the ships to the shophouses, their loads on their shoulders; street vendors hawk their wares and foodstuffs; the compradores (a Spanish word meaning trusted man or manager) jingle their piastres; everything is noise and movement; the feverish, profit-driven Chinese activity deploys all the resources of its voracious industry.

Cholon is not only the great trading centre of the Chinese, it is also the pleasure city of the Annamites; it is interesting to visit in March and April, the time of the sacred festivals; lavishly decorated theatres are built at great expense, only to disappear afterward; crowds throng there, the actors display a great luxury of costumes: silk, embroidery, feathers, glittering gold — that’s for the eyes; as for the ears, there’s no shortage of noise! The singing in Mandarin is a kind of drawn-out, shrill chant, modulated on the six notes (without semitones) that make up the Chinese scale.

Clarinets and stringed instruments mingle with the voice, and the brass drum adds a deafening bass to all these chants: it’s a forced harmony which a European ear struggles to find charming; it seems that musical sensibility doesn’t have the same standards among all peoples.

A few more details about the Chinese city. After walking along the quay from the commercial area, one arrives, via a footbridge, at the Binh-Tây district market, a new market of elegant design; the two buildings adjacent to it are Chinese constructions of pleasing effect; the market’s owner, a prominent Saigon merchant who commissioned them, drew inspiration from memories of a trip he had made to China.

Heading north along a rural path bordered by rice paddies, one soon returns to the city; one glances at the rue de Canton, lined with Chinese shops, and at the Maison du Doc-Phú, then takes the road leading from Cây-Mai Fort to the Inspectorate, and returns to Saigon.

Let us not forget, in passing, to take a look at the charming garden of the Cholon Inspectorate; the work of an exceptionally intelligent inspector; it is to him that we owe most of the improvements that have made Cholon a true city, as pleasant to look at as it is to live in.

Leaving Cholon by the road called the Route-Haute (High Road), one passes the Maisons des Mores, where a model farm has been established for the past year, intended to acclimatise and develop various productive crops of future interest.

L.B.

Tim Doling is the author of the guidebooks Exploring Huế (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2018), Exploring Saigon-Chợ Lớn (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2019) and Exploring Quảng Nam (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2020) and The Railways and Tramways of Việt Nam (White Lotus Press, 2012)

A full index of all Tim’s blog articles is available here.