The Communal House of a Vietnamese Village

                                                             by Jim Goodman

    From ancient times Vietnamese villages have always been semi-autonomous social units, with their own hierarchies, administrators, history and heritage, rites and customs, clubs, mutual aid groups, and local guardian spirits.   When the Lý Dynasty set up its administration, organized the defense of the state, promulgated laws and the obligations and taxes required of its citizens, it opted to deal with the villages as individual units.  The Court established the amount of taxes and the number of men required for military service or corvée labor and it was up to the villages themselves how they went about meeting those requirements. 
    Villages had a representative called lý trưởng who dealt with Court affairs, the one who received the government communications and orders and was held responsible if they were not implemented.   The village chief (phố lý) was in charge of security and a Council of Notables ran village affairs.   This entailed carrying out state directives, establishing village regulations, budgets, tax shares, law enforcement and the management of village funds and the periodic re-distribution of communal property.

Đình Sồ, west of Hanoi

    The venue for deliberations was the đình, which translates as “communal house,” though the only actual resident here was the village tutelary deity, its guardian spirit, known as thành hoàng.  The đình grew out of conditions in the waning decades of Chinese rule in Vietnam, when villages took advantage of the fading Chinese power structure to set up their own administrations.  The Lý Dynasty formalized the institution by issuing an edict in the 11th century requiring every village to have one. 
    The đình was not the only public building in a village.  It might also have a văn chi, a temple for the Confucian scholars, a võ chi, temple for the martial gods and heroes, a Buddhist or Taoist temple, and in more recent centuries a church.  But the đình was the most important building in the village, serving as the office of village administration, the venue for the tribunals that adjudicated disputes between villagers and the site of the communal feasts.   As it also housed the village thành hoàng, it was the main venue for the great festival and entertainment programs.  Thus it was the most imposing building, for it was the village’s political, social and cultural center, the focal point of its identity.

the đình of Đình Bảng, Bắc Ninh province

     The earliest đìnhs have all succumbed to the ravages of time and war.  The basic architecture probably hasn’t changed much over the centuries, for surviving buildings from the 17th century on show a basic similarity.  They were set a bit apart from the main residential area, preferably beside a pond with some greenery in the vicinity.  Ideally, this should include acacia, palm, frangipani and jackfruit trees.  Geomancers determined the exact spot on which to build.  It was laid out like an inverted T, with the altar for the village deity to the rear of the building.  It featured a heavy, wide, low-hanging, tiled roof with upturned corners, open sides and thick pillars, on a rectangular raised platform of brick or earth, appearing as if it were floating on its base.

terracotta plaque of farming life, Giá village đình wall

    A long wall enclosed the đình and the open yard around it.  Occasionally these walls, as at the đình in Giá village, west of Hanoi, sported decorative terracotta plaques of scenes from everyday life, like plowing with buffaloes or boating on the river.  An ornamental gate marked the entry point, with tall columns topped by sculpted animals.  Gates constructed in the Nguyễn Dynasty, like the one at Lệ Mật, near Hanoi, are more ornate, with several roofed tiers, similar to those of Buddhist temples.
    In the 17th century, despite the demise and fall of the Mạc Dynasty and the restoration of a much weaker Lê Dynasty, the architecture of the đình continued to develop.  Having established the basic shape, the architects now worked on embellishments, especially on the roof and the interior.  They created a molded ridge along the roof sections, often latticed, and added ornamental elements at the apex and at the end of the roof slopes.

carvings beneath the apex of the roof

    These molded ridges generally end, at the upturned corners of the roof, in a stylized dragon or lion.  The tail or mane is often curved into a coil.  Depending upon the artist, this ornamental roof would end with a pair of lions or dragons, or perhaps one on top of the other.  And another one might be mounted halfway up the ridge.  Details like scales and whiskers are usually part of the sculpture as well.
    Artistic adornment was also a feature of the triangle beneath the apex.  Either the head, and maybe the paws, of a mythical animal filled the space in a single, low-relief carved plaque, or a floral design, in open, lattice-work wood or mortar, hung from the top of the triangle, its pattern standing out against the shadowed background.
    Mythical dragons or lions, without the coiled tails, stood flanking the đình’s compound gates, as well as the three-step staircase at the entrance to the building itself.  Sometimes the dragons are independent sculptures, which descend from the top of the staircase.  Sometimes they are carved in low relief on stone plaques at the bottom of the steps.  Because they are likely to be touched, stroked and sat upon by humans, these sculptures were made of hard stone instead of mortar.

mythical animals on the roof corner

    The coiled dragons arched near the upturned corners of the roof enhanced the building’s majestic silhouette.  The guardian lions or dragons at the đình’s entrance added to its imposing appearance. It looked like the important building it was.  Inside the building, đình artisans produced intricately carved altars, furniture, decorative brackets, plaques, column heads and statues, depicting subjects both religious and secular.
    The first visible examples of their work were the altars, incense tables, carved figures and statues, which stand right in the middle of the interior. The altar itself is basically a multi-level table, upon which rest the images of the guardian spirit or the ornate miniature thrones by which they are sometimes represented.  The small incense table in front of it, standing closer to the worshiper, was something to which the đình artisans imparted the best of their skills, featuring panels of dragons, lions, phoenixes, floral vegetation, etc., while on the four corners stood openwork carvings.
    Mounted above the altar was the large, ornamental panel called cửa võng.  These were done in a variety of shapes and styles, no two alike, employing an array of carving and chiseling methods and the most ornate designs.   They could take the shape of a three-sided canopy, as at Đồng Kỵ in Bắc Ninh, or a multi-paneled arrangement of carved elements on the frames and posts of a triple window, as in the cửa võng of Đình Diên Lộc in Gia Lương, Bắc Ninh.  And above this the ceiling itself might be intricately decorated with red lacquered plaques, flanked by low-relief carvings, gilded so that they stand out.

the interior of Đình Văn Phuc, Hanoi

    When a visitor enters the central compartment of a đình the eyes first behold the altar and its paraphernalia.  Tall thin cranes perched on turtles flank the altar and in front of it stand the ceremonial protective weapons—lances, halberds, swords, etc.—and the ornate incense table.  These are the familiar components of temples and evoke a religious atmosphere.  But as the eyes move up to the elaborately crafted cửa võng and the ornamented ceiling, the effect is one of palatial splendor, enriching the setting and the luster of the community rituals performed beneath it.
    Further examination of the interior, though, reveals how the đình artisans further enhanced the interior with the art of woodcarving.  Their favorite motif seems to have been the dragon.  It symbolized power, majesty and prosperity and was part of mythology and folklore.  Its monstrous head, with flaring nostrils, bulging eyes and bared fangs, was inherently eye-catching.  Its long, sinuous body lent itself to myriad styles of depiction.  Dragon heads stuck out from the junctures of the posts with the horizontal crossbeams.   They formed the ends of the roof beams.  Long and winding dragons climbed up columns and sprawled across rafters.

dragons in the đình

    Sometimes carvers filled a large panel, door or plaque with intertwined dragons, with clouds, flames or plants in between, each spaced harmoniously apart.  The work as a whole is an aggregate of curling and swerving lines.  And on close inspection the details emerge.  A dragon is dragging a baby lion by its tail.  Two recumbent dragons face each other, both jaws locked on the same single pearl between them. A dragon’s whiskers turn into swirling flames that terminate in a straight sword.  The mane and whiskers of dragons’ heads turn into bamboo shoots, atop which fairies dance.
    Carvers worked in teams and specialized in individual tasks.  Some were dragon-carvers, while others only did dragon heads.  Others did lions or phoenixes.  Some took care of the arabesques or flaming swords.   Still others carved the clouds or ocean waves or the human figures.   Classical models existed for all the motifs.  But these served as guidelines, not as exacting requirements.
    What makes the wood-carved artworks of the đìnhs particularly special is its deployment of both religious and secular themes.  While the religious imagery had to follow more or less established standards, mostly imported, the secular imagery had no restrictions.  Scenes of village life were part of the đình’s ornamentation and it was in this field that the carvers had the greatest liberty of expression.  Today their extant works of art are a valuable source of insight into the daily life of times long past.

depiction of an elephant vs. a tiger

peasant life depicted in  a đình carved panel

    For those carvers assigned to the secular themes, though, no such classical models existed.  No traditional aesthetic standards instructed them how to depict real animals and real people or what details to include in vignettes of everyday life, or even what those vignettes should portray.  The artists simply made careful, attentive observations of the world around them and then re-created it in wood.  They got the shapes of the animals right, the proportion of limbs and heads on the people correct and covered a huge range of activities.  Far from being crude folk art, the carvings often reach a high level of execution.  Even moods and facial expressions are discernible.  Taken as a whole, the body of secular woodcarvings in the đìnhs is one of the most outstanding legacies of the indigenous imagination.
    The most impressive of these carvings are the long friezes of processions of various people and animals.  Sometimes they are peasants going to market, leading their animals or riding buffalo carts.  Other times they are royal or military parades.  Some of the officers ride horses or elephants, soldiers brandish weapons and trumpeters blow conch shells.  And in the midst of such processions an irreverent detail might slip in, like in the frieze at Đình Đệ Tam Đông in Nam Định, where a mandarin fondles the breast of one of three naked bathing girls.  She covers her lower parts with a lotus leaf, but she and the other girls, and the mandarin as well, are all smiling.

leisure time in old Vietnam

    Another saucy example is of flirting youths, in Đình Hưng Lộc, Nghĩa Hưng, Nam Định.  A smiling boy sits with a scantily clad girl on his lap, she looking quite contented, while a third youth, grinning as well, tickles the boy’s face.  The figures are in full relief and wedged into the open jaws of one of the dragons in a large portrait of an assembly of dragons and fairies.
    One of the most unusual friezes is the vibrant vignette in a rafter in Đình Liên Hiệp, Phúc Thọ, west of Hanoi.  In a crowded scene one man rides a galloping horse through a gathering of peasants.  In front of him a soldier points his rifle at a seated peasant, while another man holds up a pig by its hind legs.  The carving has been given two names—“Officials Plundering Peasants’ Wealth,” which is certainly what it looks like, and the less seditious-sounding “A Hunting Party.”
    Artisans didn’t like to leave smooth, unadorned surfaces on any of the wooden components other than the big pillars.  Besides the long horizontal friezes, they carved scenes from daily life on posts, beams, cabinets and wall plaques.  The portraits could be realistic, like a woman carrying her children in baskets suspended from a pole, an acrobatic performance, two buffaloes locked in head-to-head

boating scene in Đình Tây Đằng

combat, a pair of wrestlers, a game of chess, etc.  Or they could be a little fanciful, like an elephant plowing a field, two men playing badminton while a tiger watches their game, military commanders riding leopards, etc.

    When a villager entered the đình, then, two sets of contrasting imagery caught the eye.  The religious imagery was a reminder of the belief system that ordered life.  The secular imagery was a reminder of the everyday reality in which those concepts operated.  The Vietnamese saw no contradiction in including both kinds of imagery in a single building.  What those images represented was all part of one system anyway—the indigenous way of life.

the compound of Đình Mông Phụ 

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Đình Mông Phụ is one of the stops on the itinerary of my cultural-historical tours of Vietnam.
                                       Go to http://deltatoursvietnam.com for details.

Living in a National Relic—Đường Lâm, Vietnam

                                                           by Jim Goodman

    Like its modernizing Southeast Asian neighbors, Vietnam faces the problem of how to preserve its traditional culture against the onslaught of globalization.  Traditional culture, especially one rooted in ancient times like Vietnamese culture, is what gives a people its separate ethnic identity.  Economic development, greater mobility and ever improving communications pose challenges to customs and practices long associated with simpler times and less complicated lives.  To preserve traditions and the national heritage is to maintain a country’s distinct identity in the maelstrom of faster and faster globalization. 

traditional architecture in Đường Lâm

    Since the introduction of the reform era at the end of the 80s, the Vietnamese have simultaneously improved their lives and revived aspects of their traditional culture that had long been dormant or even suppressed.  They celebrate their festivals again, renovate their temples and communal houses, produce exquisite handicrafts in the specialty villages and patronize traditional music, dance and theater.  The government has in recent years abetted this revival by providing funds for renovating historic temples and buildings, sponsoring arts and crafts and subsidizing a few festivals. 
    There’s a limit, though, to how much any government can do to preserve traditions, customs, culture or even architecture.  Vietnam has its share of World Heritage sites, from natural ones like Hà Long Bay and Phong Nha caves to historical ones like the Chăm ruins of Mỹ Sơn, Huế Citadel and the old port of Hội An.  Intangible Heritage traditions like Huế court music and cà tru singing have also won recognition.  But not everything of cultural value can make it to the World Heritage list.  

temple to Phùng Hưng

     So the government has its own list and has gone about declaring as national relics innumerable old buildings, temples and communal houses.  These receive subsidies for renovation and are supposed to follow strict rules imposed by the Bureau of Cultural Heritage.  In addition, the government declared Hanoi’s Old Quarter a national relic, while it still harbored several traditional tube-houses and old communal houses.  In 2005 the Ministry of Culture and Information recognized Đường Lâm commune, 45 km west of Hanoi, in Sơn Tây district, 5 km past the town, as a national relic, the first ancient village to be thus designated.
    Certainly Đường Lâm deserved the award.  Comprising nine villages, it lies just north of Ba Vì Mountain, famous in Vietnamese mythology, bounded by rolling hills and streams to its south and flanked by sprawling fields of rice and sugar cane.  Archaeologists have unearthed artifacts here over 2000 years old and the village layouts have remained virtually unchanged for centuries.  Many of the houses are up to 400 years old, made of local laterite brick, which also covers some of the connecting lanes.  Đường Lâm hosts a greater percentage of traditional Vietnamese house compounds than any other old village in the Red River Delta, which is one big reason it garnered the Ministry’s recognition.

Ngê Quyền

    Đường Lâm also has a special resonance for Vietnamese because it was the birthplace of two of the country’s ancient national heroes—Phùng Hưng from the 8th century and Ngô Quyền from the 10th century.  In mid-8th century Tang China, then ruling Vietnam as its province of Giaochi, the An Lushan rebellion shook the empire to its foundations and left its authority weakened everywhere, especially faraway areas like Vietnam. 

    Into this power vacuum stepped Phùng Hưng, from a rich and influential family related to Vietnam’s ancient kings, before the Chinese conquest.  He raised an army and marched on the capital, defeated the Chinese garrison and effectively ruled the country in a fair and benevolent way for the next several years.  After his death the local people deified him.  The Tang Dynasty eventually recovered in the early 9th century and reasserted its control over the Vietnamese, but never again to the exploitative extent it had done previously.  The Vietnamese had witnessed the fading of Chinese power and the assertiveness of a domestic hero and from then on pressed the Chinese for greater autonomy and recognition as a separate people.  

dragons on the pagoda, Chùa Mía

     The Tang Dynasty collapsed in 907 and it was not until 960 that the Song Dynasty, the next relatively durable one, took control.  The Vietnamese began preparing for their opportunity.  Revolts broke out during the dynastic struggles in China, culminating in the seizure of the Chinese administrative capital in 938 by another Đường Lâm-born hero--Ngô Quyền.  When the Chinese sent a naval invasion against Ngô Quyền he anticipated their move and had stakes planted in the Bạch Đằng River, the main water route to the Red River Delta heartland.  When the Chinese vessels appeared he sent his forces, in smaller boats and with full knowledge of the location of the stakes, to engage and slow down the enemy.  When the tide fell the Chinese found their ships impaled and the Vietnamese then burnt and destroyed them.  With this victory the Vietnamese regained their independence.
    The communal house and temple honoring Phùng Hưng lie in the southwest quarter of Đường Lâm.  Huge, leafy old trees stand in the rather large courtyard.  The building is a modest, one-story structure with tiled roof.  A statue of the hero sits in the rear sanctuary.  The temple to Ngô Quyền is just a few minutes further on, slightly smaller, with his tomb nearby on the bank of the stream. A sculpture of him also sits in the rear sanctuary, dressed in yellow and red silk and wearing a huge golden crown.

Quan Âm Thị Kính

  At the northern end of Đường Lâm is Chùa Mía, one of the most attractive Buddhist temple compounds in the north.  Already several centuries old when it was rebuilt and expanded in 1632, it features a twelve-tier pagoda in the courtyard, with dragons crawling up its four sides and what looks like trisuls in between.  The shape resembles a stalk of sugar cane, and in fact the temple’s name translates as Sugarcane Pagoda.  A giant old banyan towers beside it.  In the rear sanctuary stands a collection of painted clay sculptures depicting scenes from Buddhist mythology, including an exquisite rendition of Quan Âm Thị Kính, heroine of a popular traditional chèo drama.

    The heart of Đường Lâm is Mông Phụ village, home to an impressive, classical-style đình, or communal house, originally built in the Lê Dynasty.  A pair of white gates, topped by sculpted lions, marks the entrance to a spacious courtyard, with two smaller flanking buildings and the đình itself, with its very wide, tiled roof and its upturned corners festooned with sculptures of the four mythical animals—dragon, phoenix, lion and turtle.  Resting on a slightly elevated platform, its massive roof is supported by thick wooden pillars, while carved dragons embellish the posts, brackets and tympani in the interior. 
    The central altar honors the tutelary god Tản Viên, the mythological Ba Vì Mountain god.  It is here that the village elders meet on issues of common concern to the villagers, like planning for the annual festival honoring both Tản Viên and Phùng Hưng.  Smaller đìnhs exist in other villages within the commune, as does a Confucian temple and a Catholic church, making Đường Lâm a microcosm of most of Vietnam’s traditional belief systems.

Đình Mông Phụ

    Mông Phụ village is the largest in the commune and comprises most of the preserved national relic area.  Whether on foot or on motorbike it makes for fascinating exploration, a real picture of traditional village life.  The houses are generally single story, in a compound enclosed by a wall, with a garden, well, and usually with a small building comprising a kitchen and storeroom and a larger building with the bedroom and family ancestral altar. 
    The main construction material is laterite brick.  The adjacent hills are full of laterite pebbles, rendering the land unfit for agriculture, but the stone is easy to mine and make into bricks, plastered with mud from the local ponds. One sees piles of it resting against compound walls on a tour through the village.  Laterite bricks are one of Đường Lâm’s important products, sent to other villages, along with carpentry, knitted wear and molasses.  The commune has also produced many scholars over the centuries and Đưừng Lâm teachers have found employment across the Delta.

    When the government notified Đường Lâm residents that their commune was now a national relic, they felt quite flattered, pleased to have official recognition of their cultural importance and confident the award, and the increase in tourism, would bring them benefits.  However, they had not reckoned with the new rules and restrictions they would have to deal with as a result.  Renovation and restoration of public buildings and temples proceeded at once, but the Ministry chose only eight private houses to finance renovation.  As for the remainder of the families, under the Heritage Law now in effect for them, they were not permitted to change, expand or even repair their houses without government authorization and supervision, virtually impossible to procure.  Their dilemma is identical to that of families in Hanoi’s Old Quarter still living in houses that have been classified as national relics. 

typical Đường Lâm house of laterite brick

    So, as a result of being recognized as a national relic, most Đường Lâm residents found themselves living under increasingly uncomfortable constrictions.  Money from the ticket booths erected in the wake of the award only seemed to go to public buildings or the handful of private homes, whose owners then benefitted from home-stay tourist customers.  Most villagers did not benefit at all from the award.  On the contrary, their lives got steadily worse.  The population increases every year, babies grow up and require more living space, but villagers are not permitted to add a story or even an extra room to their houses.  As a result, small children sleep with their parents, big children sleep on the ground, for space is too limited for many beds.  When it rains hard enough the roof may leak and the mats on the ground get damp, endangering the sleepers’ health.

    In many of these preserved traditional houses three generations share a room of just ten square meters and half of them sleep on the ground.  For craft workers the single room house is also their workshop and all the tools and materials have to be cleared away to make space for sleeping at night.  With not enough space for a proper kitchen, the families do their cooking at the doorway.  Wandering visitors, marveling at the authentic traditional rural architecture, are largely unaware of the hardships of everyday life in these preserved old houses, for they rarely venture inside the compound walls or examine the cramped living quarters.
    The villagers are certainly aware of their decline in living standards.  Two years ago 78 Đường Lâm villagers from 60 houses signed a petition asking the government to take back the national relic award.  When nothing developed the villagers this year, this time over a hundred residents, signed a new petition and sent it to the People’s Committee of both Sơn Tây town and Hanoi, as well as the Bureau of Cultural Heritage, again requesting the government to take back the award.  Then they could be free to build new houses or extend the ones they have according to their own requirements.

 Đường Lâm house compound

   The request was unprecedented.  No one representing a national relic had ever tried to have the recognition canceled.  Đường Lâm had not applied for the status of national relic; the government had selected the commune and then imposed the usual regulations for such sites.  To agree to take back the award was something the government found impossible to do.  It would entail a tremendous loss of prestige and call into question the whole notion of preserving anything traditional, if it got in the way of improving people’s lives.  If the government has the responsibility of preserving the national heritage, it also is supposed to be taking measures to raise the people’s standard of living. 
    At first, Hanoi and Sơn Tây officials claimed the petitioners represented only a minority of Đường Lâm’s households.  They claimed that, having gotten recognition as an official cultural relic, Đường Lâm was now a “national asset” and its residents had to follow the Heritage Law and preserve the commune’s status quo, because that was in the national interest.  In the end, though, the government softened its stand and the two sides reached a compromise. 

Mông Phụ resident

    The area included in the national relic site includes both the villages and the adjacent fields, ponds and farms; basically, the commune and its immediate environment.  But the preserved area, subject to the regulations of the Heritage Law, comprises Mông Phụ village and temples and đìnhs outside Mông Phụ.  Residents here must continue to follow those regulations.  But families may now construct a new house, multi-story if they want, on land within the commune’s territory but outside the existing settled area.  Admission prices at the entry gates (̣which actually do not stand at every possible entrance to the commune) will go up from 20,000 đồng to 40,000 đồng (just under $2).  The additional money will be used to repair or renovate an additional set of old houses in the preserved area, beyond the original selection of the most ancient eight.
    In coming years then, Đường Lâm will become less congested as members of the extended family start moving to new houses on the commune’s outskirts.    Within a generation cement houses of three and four stories will surround the relic area.  But the people remaining there will have more living space per capita and enjoy a somewhat easier life.  With the Heritage Law still in force Đường Lâm will continue to draw visitors, foreign and domestic, in search of cultural authenticity.   The foreigners will gain insight into traditional rural Vietnamese culture.  The Vietnamese will appreciate Đường Lâm as the kind of place their grandparents grew up in, while young couples looking for a traditional setting will keep coming here for wedding photos.  The villagers will be happier because life will get more comfortable and the government will be pleased that it found a way to reconcile preserving the heritage of the past with satisfying the people’s desire for a better life in the present.  And that’s certainly in the national interest.
           

public well

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