by Jim Goodman
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| ritual boats on the Red River at Thô Khôi |
The Red River originates in central
Yunnan, southwest China, flows southeast through the province and enters
Vietnam at Lao Cài. From here it
continues running southeast all the way to the Gulf of Tonkin. The alluvial plain alongside it, straddled by
many tributaries, is the heart of ancient Vietnam. Ancestors of its contemporary inhabitants
tamed the mighty river, prone to flooding, with dikes, canals and irrigation
channels, turned the land into prosperous farms and created a civilization to
go along with the achievement.
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| dancing at the Thô Khôi đình |
Such incidents were rare, however. The river and its biggest tributaries also
provided a transportation route for the movement of goods and people, knitting
scattered and remote settlements together into a social whole and laying the
foundations for a nation. Waters drawn
off from the river system nourished the crops that fed the people. When the French conquered Vietnam they named
it the Red River, after the reddish brown color of its water, a name which
persisted after Independence. But to
traditional Vietnamese in the Delta it was Sông Cái—the Mother River. And the aspects of the material life enabled
by the river’s exploitation, like wet-rice cultivation and fishing, would be
replicated along other rivers, further south, as the Vietnamese community gradually
expanded out of the Red River Delta.
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| all dressed up for the Thô Khôi festival |
It was inevitable that the river, so
essential to everyday material life, also acquired a sacred character. Whether ancient animist Vietnamese had a
divine name for the river, or believed it the dwelling place of supernatural
beings, is not known, for the mythology has not survived. But even today people still believe in the
sacred character of the river. Water
from the middle of the Red River is considered the most efficacious for any
kind of ritual act requiring some kind of ‘holy water’.
Ancient Vietnamese traditions include a
ritual designed for collecting such water.
Called mộc dục, it involves taking a large jar
aboard a boat that heads out for the middle of the river, where the officiating
priests collects water from the river and pours it into the jar. Back on land, people will then use this water
to bathe images, ancestral tablets and gravestones. In theory, any organized party can carry out
a mộc dục rite for their own private purposes, but if it were ever a widespread
occurrence, it is not at the present time.
Nevertheless, it remains the central feature of two major festivals each
year, at the riverside villages of Thô Khôi and Chèm.
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| stately procession of the guardian deities |
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| girls bearing one of the 'reluctant' deities |
Thô Khôi is in Gia Lam, on the other side of
the river from Hanoi, about 16 km south, on the way to Bát Tràng
ceramics village. The village đình
and its temple sit behind a pond a little below a bend in the embanked main
road. Houses and fields stretch out
behind. Together with four associated
villages, Thô Khôi stages its annual festival for three
days in the latter half of the second lunar month.
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| boys carrying one of the 'fickle' deities |
The first day is rather sedate, with no
scheduled activities. Five palanquins
which will be used to carry images of the tutelary deities stand in the temple
yard and devotees occasionally come to venerate them. In front of them stands the rack with the
very large blue and white porcelain jar, with dragons on the side and little
animal heads near the brim, which will be used to store the water.
On the second morning participants dressed
in bright costumes arrive at the đình. While one woman beat a large drum, a group of
women perform dances around the parked palanquins. After they conclude, bearers pick up the palanquins,
six to each, to take the deities on a procession, along with the water jug, to
a point on the riverbank just north of the Vĩnh Tuy Bridge. Their purpose is to invite the deities to
witness the mộc dục ritual.
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| boarding the boat with the vessel for mộc dục |
Three of the palanquins proceed in a
slow and solemn march along the 2 km or so of paths to the riverbank. But two of the deities are reluctant to leave
Thô Khôi,
one borne by young men and one borne by young women. They do not follow the others in a measured
and stately straight line. Instead they
dart back and forth, move in circles and loops, go zigzag and back and forth,
careen and teeter wildly. Crowds have to
jump out of their way.
Yet despite coming precariously close,
they never fall over or hit anyone. No
director stands in front of either palanquin to guide the movements. The bearers themselves claim that they have
no control over their bodies once they pick up the palanquin. The deity makes them go forward or backward,
bend down or straighten up, lean this way or that and run or walk. The bearers cannot make conscious decisions
of their own and the deity manages to control the movements of all six bearers,
simultaneously and in synchronization.
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| dragon on the prowl at Chèm |
The ritual part of the festival is over,
but the very definition of lễ hội, Vietnamese for festival, implies
more. Lễ is the ritual and hội is
the entertainment. The hội for the second afternoon is quan họ,
a special style of romantic singing, in solo or duets, a well known tradition
of nearby Bắc Ninh province.
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| women's rituals at Chèm |
The entertainment for the third morning
is competitive duck-catching. Four ducks
are set loose in the pond and when they have swum out to the middle five youths
jump in the pond to catch them. On the
occasion I witnessed one boy quickly grabbed two ducks and after a few minutes
another boy caught one after cornering it.
That left one duck and three hunters.
The last duck continued to elude them so long that one boy tired and
left the pool. The other two tried to
corner it, but when they dove under the water to grab it, the duck popped up
several meters away. The crowd began to
cheer for the duck. It managed to stay
free several more minutes.
The evening hội was
chèo
theater, a dramatic tradition dating back to the tenth century Đinh Dynasty. The cast can be rather large, and the stories
somewhat involved, but the costumes are attractive and the dialogue is both
sung and spoken. They are usually dramas
of good and evil and the good guys win in the end.
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| mộc dục on the river at Chèm |
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| tổ tôm điếm booth |
Later in the year, during the three days
around the full moon of the fifth lunar month, an even bigger mộc dục ritual takes place in Chèm, a
riverside village just west of the Thăng Long Bridge. Sited on the south bank of the river, the đình’s layout and architecture date from an early 19th century
renovation. But the original
construction was in the Tang Dynasty years and the village is quite old. It is
reputedly the birthplace of the hero Lý Thang, a general employed by China’s
first Qin Emperor in the 3rd century BCE. to fight Xiongnu
invaders. After vanquishing the enemy he
was given the emperor’s daughter in marriage and invited to stay.
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| after the duck, blindfolded |
He declined because he wanted to return home to take care of his sick
mother. The emperor gave permission and
the princess accompanied the warrior to Vietnam. The Qin Emperor allegedly then had a big
statue of Lý Thang erected on his northern defense lines to try to fool the
Xiongnu into believing their menace was still around.
At Chèm the mộc dục ritual boat goes out on the river all three mornings, accompanied
by a dragon and lion. Supported by a
team of energetic young men, the dragon writhes and prances all over the
courtyard and then marches along the dike with the lion to the landing
pier. The pair descends the steps and
clambers aboard the boat, which is a little bigger than the one at Thô Khôi. Priests in ceremonial robes follow, along
with other ritual participants and some of the festival crowd.
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| cockfighting at Chèm |
After a dragon dance on deck, the boat
departs for its short journey to the middle of the river. Apparently the need for the sacred water is
greater for the five villages participating in the ritual, for the priest fills
three large porcelain jars with it each morning, not just one. When this is
completed the boat returns to the pier and the dragon, lion, ritual participants
and spectators disembark. The dragon dances back to the đình and salutes the guardian
deity with a couple bursts of fiery breath.
That’s it for the dragon and lion performances, but activities in the
compound persist.
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| taking positions for human chess |
The main temple is busy with rituals
involving two groups of elders, one male, one female, who take turns lining up
inside in ranks facing each other, while the group leader in front center makes
the bows to the image and leads the prayers.
The men wear long silk coats, usually blue, black miters on the head
with cloth tails hanging down the back and fancy shoes with upturned, pointed
toes. The women dress in matching pink
silk jackets and skirts. Sometimes the participants twirl banners or make slow
and stately candle processions, but for a show with more action, spectators can
turn to one of the festival’s entertainment programs.
The program will always include a quan họ performance at least one of the
afternoons. There may be a cockpit,
where gamecocks go after each other while the observers (and owners) anxiously
await the outcome. A different mood entirely
pervades the Chèm version of duck-catching.
Instead of a pond, they release a single duck into an enclosed corral
and just one lad, blindfolded, goes after it
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| human chess participant |
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| dragon descending to the pier |
Another
entertainment venue in the compound will be an area for tổ tôm điếm, a
unique Vietnamese card game. Unlike
Western playing cards, those used in tổ tôm điếm are much bigger, long
and narrow, with 120 cards to a deck.
The obverse side features traditional portraits in the center and
Chinese ideographs above and below depicting the card’s rank and suit. The dealer operates from a booth and the
players sit in front at a narrow table.
Players draw and discard until they have a set of 21, the value of which
depends on how many cards are identical, of a progress in a suit, whether of
the same rank, etc. Unless they’re also aficionados of the game themselves, spectators
are unlikely to decipher what’s going on,, or whether the player whose cards
they can see has a good set or not.
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| men's rituals at Chèm |
In some years the đình also sponsors a performance of human
chess, wherein people play the parts of the chess pieces. This is an easier event to follow, even for
those who don’t play chess. The
participants, one side of boys dressed in red silk and one side of girls in
yellow silk, hold staffs with a Chinese character identifying the ‘piece’ they
represent and after a ceremonial entrance they take their assigned spots on the
chessboard painted on the ground.
The two players carry pennants, walk around to survey the set and then
indicate a movement by flagging one of the pieces and leading its move, either
to another spot or off the board altogether.
Because they are operating at the same eye level as the ‘pieces’ and not
bent over a board, it is more difficult to judge which moves to make. Meanwhile a singer narrates the progress of
the game, suggests moves and makes comments.
Like the mộc dục ritual itself and the tổ tôm điếm card game, human chess is yet another unique aspect of Vietnamese
festivals, still part of the culture many centuries after their creation.
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| leaving the pier at Chèm for the mộc dục ritual |
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