by Jim Goodman
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| festival procession, Hanoi |
Rising prosperity and
increasing modernization have not undermined religious traditions in
Vietnam. To the contrary, religion
appears to be enjoying a national revival. It never really disappeared during the decades of war and
austerity, just went private. Now
in the more relaxed atmosphere of contemporary Vietnam, along with material
improvements in their lives, people are freer to indulge in their religious
beliefs and customs, to spend money on temple donations and making their annual
festivals bigger and better than the oldest villager can remember ever having
witnessed.
Devotees throng the temples on
these dates, dressed in their very best clothes and jewelry, bearing offerings
for their deities, murmuring prayers and making requests for divine assistance
of one kind or another. Village
elders, costumed in rick silk robes, carry out rituals. And in the courtyard stalls hawk
incense sticks, flowers, woodcrafts, statues, mobiles and pendants, snacks and
drinks, toy birds made from real bird feathers, colored rice dough figurines, paper turtles and caterpillars
on strings, cotton candy and other items.
The crowd consists mainly of religious-minded local folks, but also
includes both residents and visitors whose interest in religion is token at
best. There have come for the same
reason the devotees linger around the area after performing their
rituals—because festivals are fun.
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| The dragon salutes the deity at the đình in Chèm village. |
The Vietnamese word for festival, lễ hội, like the event itself,
has two parts—the rituals (lễ) and the entertainment (hội). Besides the scheduled hours for the
formal rites carried out by village authorities, the festival program will also
announce the entertainment, which sometimes might occur simultaneously with the
rituals. The nature and type of
entertainment varies from place to place, as well as from year to year, perhaps
depending upon whether it was a good year for agriculture that year. It could include one or more kinds of
participatory games and contests and/or a show staged for the festival
audience.
Actually, the rituals are a
show as well, especially the processions.
Long lines of devotees march through the village or on the roads leading
to it, bearing offerings, beating drums and playing musical
instruments, carrying an ornate sedan chair housing an emblem of their deity,
brandishing spears, lances, halberds and other weapons used to fight nefarious
spirits. Sometimes dragon dancers
lead the way. Sometimes the sedan
chair-carrying sector proceeds to the river and boards a boat to collect water
further out, to be used in the mộc dục
ritual back at the temple.
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| Thổ Khối's recalcitrant deity |
The most interesting mộc
dục procession is that
conducted by Thổ Khối village, across the river from Hanoi in Gia Lâm, 8th
day of the 2nd lunar month.
Five deities, each housed in a separate palanquin carried by six
bearers, participate in the long walk to the river. Two of these deities are petulant, reluctant to go and make
trouble the whole way. A group of
young women carry one and young men shoulder the other. While the other three palanquins march
in a stately manner, these two sway, tilt at such an angle they appear bound to
topple, straighten up, then suddenly run backwards and forwards and scatter
people out of their way.
Nobody stands in
front of the palanquins and directs their movements. None of the bearers stumbles or loses control. Their unpredictable, erratic turns and
tilts are in total synchronous coordination, as if they had rehearsed
everything for weeks in advance. But
in fact they hadn’t. They had just
been selected for the task a couple days prior. One of the bearers, a university student who spoke good
English, told me there was no plan, no rehearsal and he himself didn’t
understand why no one ever fell in spite of the chaotic movements. “I want to go this way and something
makes go another way. I had no
control over my movements.
Something else made me do what I did.” He also claimed the other bearers felt the same
way and no one could explain it. He concluded that perhaps the spirits really did exist.
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| village elders conducting rituals |
Compared to the excitement of
a Thổ Khối procession, or even the pomp and color of village contingents making
their way to the festival site, the rituals at the temple are rather sedate. A group of elderly men in long,
embroidered silk tunics, shoes with upturned toes and tall, tasseled miters on
their heads walk slowly and solemnly to the main altar, bow or kowtow, raise
their arms in supplication, recite prayers and then basically repeat the
procedure a few more times. Then
it’s the turn of the women, also in splendid silk attire, more solemn prayers
and rites. The garments are all quite photogenic, of course, but without a
special interest in the proceedings it’s a bit tedious to watch for very long.
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| quan họ singers o teh pond at Chùa Thấy |
All this takes some time, but
the action is not confined to the temple altar. Outside other shows may be taking place. A local or visiting water-puppet troupe
may be setting up a pavilion for a show in a nearby pond. Quan
họ singers from Bắc Ninh, popular at many northern festivals, could be
performing in the vicinity. Sometimes they sing from a designated place. Other times they sing while riding a
boat in the temple compound’s pond, dressed in what used to be the traditional
northern clothing. A stage might be in place for historical skits, the
performance of Chinese-style tuồng
opera or a drama from the indigenous chèo
tradition.
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| evening stage show at a Hanoi festival |
Elsewhere the festival
activity features contests and games.
Besides the games of skill and chance offered at the market area, this could
include the very complex traditional card game called tổ tôm diếm, with an emcee sitting in a booth and an assistant handing
out cards to several players seated next to a rack to hold them. Another popular game, requiring no
prior knowledge, is that of trying to whack a hanging gourd with a stick while
blindfolded. Participants pay 5000 đồng to try, for a reward far greater
if they succeed. But rare is the one
who does succeed.
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| festival market at Cổ Lễ Pagoda |
Less frequently than cockfighting, festival organizers will arrange fights between smaller birds, the arena being a table with a pair of adjoining cages. The contestants are laughing thrushes. The two cages sit flush to each other, with a thin slab of wood separating the openings in each. When the emcee withdraws the slab the two thrushes fly up and peck at each other. The fight goes on until one succeeds in noticeably wounding the other.
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| wrestling at the festival |
As for the contests, the
participation ranges from just a pair, such as a wrestling match, to a large
number of villagers, like a tug-of-war.
The tug-of-war could be between two neighborhoods of the host village,
between the boys and the girls, or between the youth and the older generation,
as at Tích Sơn in Vĩnh Phúc province.
In the latter case, it’s less of a contest and more of a ritual. Villagers believe if the older men win
the crops will be bounteous. The
youth are expected to put up a respectable fight, but lose, out of respect for
the tradition.
Some đình compounds have a pool that may be used, besides for floating quan họ performers, to stage contests in
the water. Lê Mât’s festival
includes a fishing contest, while Thổ Khôị’s pool is the venue for a
duck-catching contest. Organizers
release four ducks into the pool and a minute later five youths jump into the
water to catch them. The onlookers
cheer on their favorites, who get to keep the duck they capture and it usually
doesn’t take long.
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| boat-racing team at Cổ Lễ Pagoda |
At the event I witnessed
scarcely two minutes had passed before one lad emerged with a duck in hand and
left the pool. A few minutes later
another contestant grabbed two ducks.
But the last duck somehow managed to elude its three pursuers for over fifteen
minutes. One boy tired of the
effort and withdrew. By this time
the crowd began cheering on the duck.
It would appear to be cornered, dive under the water as the boys reached
for it and emerge in the middle of the pool, far from its pursuers, to hearty
applause, until captured at last.
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| boat race at Thanh Toàn, near Huế |
Since many villages lie near streams
or rivers, boat races might be on the festival program. They could be boats with teams of
rowers, like that held at Quan Lan Island’s festival, where teams practiced
their skills in the days preceding the festival. In the climactic encounter one side of the island competes
against the other, in boats modeled after those used in the 13th
century battle against the Mongols.
Or they could be races of several individuals paddling small boats, as
at Thanh Toàn, near Huế, or basket boats as at Cát Bà Island. Other places will hold swimming races,
with lines of long floating bamboo poles separating the lanes.
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| nón-making contest, Thanh Toàn |
Contests also take the form of
competition making something. At
the Chùa Long Đôi Sơn festival, 18th day of the 4th
month, the adjacent village of Đội Tam, a craft village specializing in drum
manufacture, stages, naturally, a drum-making contest. Pairs compete assembling the components
of a large temple drum and fastening on its cowhide head. In Thanh Toàn teams of women race each
other to make the traditional conical cap (nón
la) popular all over rural Vietnam. In these kinds of contests speed cannot be achieved at the
price of skill. Emcees inspect the
results before announcing the winner.
The drum has to sound right.
The conical cap must be perfectly put together.
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| cooking contest, Thanh Toàn |
Several northern villages
include cooking contests in their festival programs. The competitors are
usually young, unmarried women and the spectators are largely older women with
marriageable sons, on the lookout for a prospective daughter-in-law. Contestants are rated both according to
how skillfully they keep the fire going as well as how good the rice is at the
end—fully cooked, nothing raw on top and no burns on the bottom.
Rules and conditions vary. At Tư Trang in Thanh Hoá the contest is
held on bamboo boats and the designated fuel is dried sugar cane, which is more
difficult to keep burning. At Tích
Sơn in Vĩnh Phúc the competitors first boil the rice over a wood fire in a
copper pot and then empty it all into an earthen pot and finish the cooking
over charcoal. At Chuông, the
conical hat village south of Hanoi, the women cook while carrying a 6-7 month-old baby at the hip
and simultaneously prevent a frog from leaping our of the chalk circle drawn
around them.
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| cooking contest, Hai Bà Trưng festival, Hanoi |
At the Hai Bà Trưng festival
in Hanoi the 8th and 9th days of the 2nd month
contestants first start preparations on the ground, lighting the fire under the
pot. Then they suspend the cooking
pot and the fire from a shouldered pole, stand up and walk around. They have to keep the fire going while
in motion and not let the rice boil over.
And of course, in the end the rice has to be perfectly cooked.
In another location it might
just be how fast competing teams can prepare a certain local dish, with all its
peculiar garnishes. The race could
end in a tie, with both results as tasty as required. But no real disappointment follows. The point of the contests is
entertainment; thrilling for the participants and amusing for the
spectators. Like the shows and the
games, they demonstrate that Vietnamese religious festivals are not just dour
ceremonials but also embrace the secular enjoyments of life. Religion doesn’t have to be a strictly
serious affair. It can also involve
a lot of fun.
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| traditional quan họ singer at Chùa Thấy |
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