Traditional Vietnamese Events

Hanoi Grapevine is focused on contemporary art and culture happenings in Vietnam. But from time to time we have had requests to post information about some of the hundreds of traditional events that take place every year in Hanoi and across the country.

We recently met Mr. Roman Szlam, who has a passion for attending and learning about the rich world of Vietnamese traditional cultural events. He has offered to provide us with the information that crosses his path about such events in Hanoi as he explores this aspect of life in Vietnam.

Here is his first offering.

Communal House (Đình) Festival
Ngũ Xã Island (east end of Trúc Bạch Lake), Nguyễn Khắc Hiếu street, Hanoi
01-03 Mar 2010

From the 1st to 3rd of March, 2010 visitors can come and join the village’s three-day festival at Nam Tràng communal house at Ngũ Xã Island, Nguyễn Khắc Hiếu street, Tây Hồ district, Hanoi to enjoy many traditional folk song performances like Quan Họ, Cải Lương, etc., and participate in a Xianqi board game. This is a traditional annual festival celebrated from 16th to 18th of the first lunar month at this famous bronze-casting village in the heart of Hanoi.

Read more about the festival and the fascinating history of Trúc Bạch.

A Đình, or Communal House, is always dedicated to the Patron of the village in which it is built.  The patron may have been a real person, a deity, or a legendary person or hero.  Đình Nam Tràng was built about 400 years ago. It is dedicated to Nguyễn Minh Không (1066-1141) who was an enlightened Buddhist monk who practiced traditional medicine and healing the time of the Lý dynasty.  While Minh Không was in Beijing, the Chinese Emperor Song asked him to cure a member of his family of an illness. He succeeded where Chinese healers had failed, and, in gratitude, Emperor Song offered him the keys to different storage rooms and told Minh Không to choose whatever he wanted.  Minh chose the black copper storage room. He brought all its contents back to Thăng Long and offered it to King Lý Thần Tông, a descendant of King Lý Thái Tổ.  The King asked him to cast a bell from the metal, and so Nguyễng Minh Không became the master of bronze casters.

– from the Friends of Vietnam Heritage publication:
“Quán Thánh Temple, Hanoi”, Thế Giới Publishers, © 2001

Ngũ Xã was always an island in what is now Trúc Bạch Lake. When General Lê Lợi assumed the throne as King Lê Thái Tổ in the 1600s, he wanted bronze smithing to be concentrated closer to Thăng Long. He asked 5 bronze-casting families When the 2nd Lê dynasty took power in the 16th century, they wanted bronze smithing to be concentrated closer to Thăng Long. The king asked 5 bronze-casting families from around the capital to move onto the island in order to mint coins, cast bells and cannons, and make bronze objects both for the royal court and for the pagodas and temples around Thăng Long. The island was a good location not only because of its proximity to the Citadel, but also because it is surrounded water, thus minimizing the chance of fire burning down the entire city, as bronze casting requires constant very hot fires. Also, the quality of the soil in this are was very favorable for making moulds.
One of the first and most important objects cast on Ngũ Xã Island in approximately 1677 was the giant 3.7-ton statue of the black Genie, Protector of the North, Trấn Vũ, which replaced the then existing wooden statue in Quán Thánh Temple (one of the 4 cardinal-direction temples built or dedicated by King Lý Thái Tổ upon founding Thăng Long in 1010). The statue is exquisitely and intricately detailed and is made of black bronze, an alloy which includes pewter to turn the copper black. In the early 1950s, Ngũ Xã Pagoda comissioned an enormous bronze statue of Buddha which was poured on site inside the Pagoda.  This statue is the largest single-pour bronze object in Vietnam.