Colours of Cultural Heritage

While each festival is organised with different traditions and in different time, they all have a common purpose: Praying for family happiness, prosperity, good health, better weather and other blessings. Thanks to that sense of humanity, festivals and customs have continuing vitality from generation to generations until today. Visiting Ha Giang province, you will have the chance to try on colourful costumes of the Pa Then, Mong, Dao, Pu Peo, Lo Lo and other peoples; lovely sounds of panpipes, drums and folk melodies; warm tastes of maize wine, fragrant rice, barbecues, and dried meat.

 

Particularly, covering four districts, the Dong Van Karst Plateau Global Geopark has many national intangible cultural heritage festivals. The unique feature of upland festivals is the high degree of community although they are held by a family or a clan. Typically, the Cap Sac ritual ceremony of Dao people in Quan Ba activities is organised by families with sons aged 10 - 16 years. Although it is held by a family, it attracts the participation of the entire village community. This is an important ceremony that marks the change of a boy. After the rite, he is seen as a true man who must live with defined responsibility to his family and his clan and is strictly banned from bad deeds.

 

In Yen Minh district, you will see the spring festival space featured with garishly colourful costumes of Mong girls or panpipe love melodies of boys that herald the start of Gau Tao Rite. Chairman of Duong Thuong Commune People’s Committee, Ha Mi De, said: "Gau Tao Rite is the most typical formal procedure of the Mong people. In Mong language, it means the festival of playing with hills and mountains. Usually it is held at the beginning of the year to pray for the whole village." On the third day of the lunar year, a family without sons will host a Gau Tao ceremony and repeat it in the next two years. This is considered a major festival of the Mong people as it lasts until the ninth day of the lunar year. All villagers will play together, dance together or sing together among other collective activities.

 

The sacred Forest God Sacrificial Ceremony of the Pu Peo people in Pho La commune, Dong Van district is organised on the sixth day of the sixth lunar month. This is an important practice of a people living on mountain and forest resources. God protects impenetrable forests and watersheds and protects the fountain of water for the people. The rite also educates younger generations about the need to protect the forests and habitats. Another unique ceremony is the Ancestor Worship Ritual of the Lo Lo people in Lo Lo Chai village, Lung Cu commune, Dong Van district. The Lo Lo people host an ancestral worshipping rite in the seventh lunar month. Performers in disguise of forest grass dance with ceremonial steps to pay tribute to their ancestors. They believe that, with their sincere hearts and attitudes, their ancestors will bless their offspring, families, clans and villages with a prosperous and happy life. Each group has a different tradition and philosophy of life associated with its living conditions, which creates the cultural diversity of Ha Giang province.

 

However, livelihoods here are still very tough. With harsh climate, local people create these unique products like Lung Tam woven linen in Quan Ba district. A Mong woman laboriously and patiently experiences 21 stages, from growing the linseed to finishing the linen, to make beautifully-woven linen. Vang Thi Mai, Head of Hop Tien Traditional Linen Production Cooperative based in Lung Tien commune, said “The cooperative has 130 members, all of whom are women. Since the inception, the cooperative pays good incomes for them to support their daily needs like buying school things for their children or buying fertilisers to enrich their farming soil. A member is paid quite high, ranging from VND5 million to VND7 million a month, although the work is typically seasonal.” The cooperative’s products are exported to France, the US, Japan, Canada, the Netherlands and Australia. Many customers come to discuss designs and place orders with the cooperative to make hotel and cafeteria interior decors like table linens, bed linens, glass holders, personal items and coin bags. Embroiled patterns are very meaningful and they usually symbolise friendship, love couples and four-generation family. Despite poor material life, the spiritual life of the Mong people is very rich and warm.

 

In this rock plateau, you will unlikely forget the warmth of maize liquor. Local residents have to carry soil to fill up rock hollows to grow maize. Only those experiencing the farming on the rock in Meo Vac understand all the hard work and skill of ploughing of local farmers. Here, however, you still sense the hospitality and generosity of the local people during the festival time. In festival eves in time-honoured Dong Van Town, you will see young boys and charming girls in traditional costumes optimistically singing folk songs with gracious dances in panpipe rhythm.

 

There are lots of other unique cultures of other ethnic groups in Ha Giang province, handed down from generation to generation. Cultural life invigorates them to live through the typical destitution of this national border-sharing locality. This place also contains hidden charms of intangible cultural heritages that need to be conserved in time.