Northwestern Vietnam is the home of colourful traditional costumes, festivals, upland markets and seductive melodies of the khen (pan-pipe). Spring breezes touch mountain slopes, white clouds, peach blossoms and boys and girls of Thai, Mong, Dao, Giay, Tay, Muong, Lo Lo, Pa Then and Kho Mu ethnic groups in colourful costumes.
H’mong Gau Tao Festival to Pray for Good FortuneThe H’mong ethnic people hold a Gau Tao festival each spring to pray for good fortune and welcome the New Year. In Sapa, Gau Tao starts on January 1 of the lunar calendar, but in Muong Khuong the festival meets on the third day of the New Year.
Right at the end of December as the wizard asked to celebrate the Gau Tao festival, H’mong families must ask a brother or sister-in-law to cut a large, tall plum tree with thick leaves to set up a Tet pole. The Tet pole in Muong Khuong’s Pha Long is decorated with a strip of red cloth and another strip of black, while that in Sapa is hung with only a strip of red cloth. A wine gourd and a rope of paper money are tied into the strip. H’mong families pray to the ancestors and godhead at the foot of the pole to wish for health, progeny, safety and luck in business. As the Tet pole is set up, relatives and friends of the family from other villages know that the Gau Tao festival is held and come to join the festival, on horses carrying corn, wine jars and a pair of chickens.
After the worship rites, H’mong people will organize traditional games and performances such as archery contests, spinning a top, swings, horse riding, juggling balls, dancing to khen music and singing love songs. At night festival-goers continue the party amid bonfires. If the wizard’s house is near, people will come to there to join dha thang dance. Such dances will last till the end of the festival.
H’mong people welcome New Year festival under their own calendar as the crops have been harvested, often in the end of the solar year. However, in recent years H’mong people expect those living in Moc Chau to also welcome Tet holiday like Kinh people. The Tetbanquet for the H’mong always has a kind of rice-cake, because they believe that this kind of cake symbolizes the moon and the sun which are origins of the universe and human beings.
Can Cau Market in DewThe Can Cau market is held on the only road linking Bac Ha town with Lao Cai province’s Simacai border township. The market opens early each Saturday morning as the bumpy road is still sunk in darkness and spring fog is dense. The market lies on a lonely mountain slope amid terraced fields. Ethnic people sell local specialties like brocade, embroidery thread, herbal medicines, vegetables and fruits, dishes and domestic appliances. In the valley not far from the market is a place to sell and purchase cows and buffaloes.
The early highland market attracts thousands of ethnic Mong and Giay people. In the peaceful and quiet atmosphere, visitors can even hear cooking fires crackling under copper pots of boiling horse bowel. The harmonious melodies of khen, Meo flute and leaf-horn – musical instruments of the H'mong – echo on the mountain slopes. The cattle market is noisy and crowded. Tubby buffaloes with small copper bells hung on their necks follow their new owners back to their village. There’s no place like the Can Cau market, where spring comes early and ardently.
Eating Tet cakes with ethnic Thai PeopleCakes of tum hik, khau tum dam and khau cop are integral in the New Year celebration of the Thai people in the northwest. Ingredients are simply glutinous rice, beans, pork side and spices selected carefully by Thai girls.
From December, Thai girls enter the forest to pick phrynium, fetch firewood, and select rice and beans to prepare for making cakes. One important spice is the mak khen seed, an aromatic forest pepper.
The khau tum hik cake, made from white glutinous rice, is packed cylindrically like tay cake of the Kinh people. Meanwhile, khau tum dam cake is mixed with many forest spices including cardamom, and the rice is dyed black by coal powder of burned nuc nac (catalpa) tree in order create the colour and delicious flavour of the dish and prove the house master’s sincere heart for the ancestor and guests. Khau cop cake is packed like te cake and tied into couples. No one knows when this kind of cake first appeared, but Thai ethnic families love to make khau cop every spring festival. The flavour of glutinous rice and the green colour of phrynium are like spring in the northwest, which is fresh with tender buds, the sweet scent of legendary bauhinia flowers, and silky and white on costumes of Thai girls.
The fire dance of Pa Then People The Pa Then ethnic minority group has a population of only approximate 5,000. Previously, the Pa Then people lived in high mountains, but nowadays they have settled in lower areas. Pa Then villages are mainly seen in Tuyen Quang and Ha Giang province. Few ethnic minorities are as keen on the red color as the Pa Then people. In spring, Pa Then girls dress in colourful costumes to welcome the New Year.
The fire dance festival is often held at the end of the year in the period of severe winter weather. Big fires are built, full of blazing red charcoals. After the wizard makes offerings for hours, Pa Then youth sit down opposite to the wizard and enter a state of trance amid prayers and chanting. Each person can enter into the fire dance many times, representing their strength, cleverness and agility. The Pa Then people believe that their time of dancing on fire will last according to the strength endowed by the godhead. As the strength ends, they themselves will be pushed out of the fire. They will continue sitting for trance and wait opportunity for a new dance.
Minh Chau –Thanh Nga
Vietnamese
