Facing the rising sun, Va Temple in Van Gia Village, Trung Hung Ward, Hanoi, is also known as the East Palace, marking its importance as one of the four major veneration sites of the Tan Vien Mountain God, a key figure of Vietnamese spiritual tradition. According to legend the site’s tutelary divinity is the Ancestral Deity of the Southern Heavens and God of the Tan Vien Mountain, one the country’s most ancient deities and one of the principal mountain gods. As such, the Tan Vien Mountain God is venerated throughout the northern plain region of Vietnam by the Viet people and by some of the country’s ethnic minorities as well.