KVT – The Festival of Quach Tang at Dai Cat

KVT gets wrapped up in the visual splendor of a post-tet festival near Hanoi

It’s 8am. The festival parade has been under way for half an hour, winding slowly along the main village street as it heads towards the village gate and beyond

The lion dance, announced by young men with loud blasts on buffalo horn and conch shell, bursts through the village gate

Behind, two virtuous maidens carry a wreath of fresh flowers and more hold aloft a phalanx of blood red flags. Behind them, more maidens bear a floral bedecked bier carrying a portrait of Uncle Ho

Following is a small contingent of men and women from the village who volunteered or were conscripted for the American War. Small because age and death has caught up with too many.

Some of the strongest, proven loyal and patriotic unmarried village men have been selected to parade with valuable Items from the villages’ cultural collection.

Up the steep stairs to the dyke road one group pulls the wheeled guardian horse

Directly behind, warrior females carry the throne of the eldest Hai Ba Trung sister who is ultimately responsible for all this wonderful carry on!

After a swirl and a twirl of flags…..

……come the male warriors with symbolic representations of cut and thrust and slash weapons that are more usually displayed on the walls of the villages’ Dinh *

All this martial flaring is readying the air for the arrival of the village sacred hero whose grandly cloaked effigy, seated in its grand throne, is borne high above the throng. This is Quach Tang, one of the Hai Ba Trung sisters’ most effective generals and who spread a short reign of peace in this part of the Red River Delta

To prove his wisdom and scholarship, the hero is followed by a procession of scholars and aged Mandarins

Immediately behind are muscled up bearers carrying the general’s provisions of food and drink

A parade shouldn’t progress without a clang and a bang! Near the front were trumpets, flutes and strings, but now comes the thunder of drum and gong. Before they were banned, fireworks would have thundered out!

It can’t be forgotten that behind all the pomp and pageantry for Quach Tang lies the story of the two sisters who led the rebellion against the Chinese and who, for 4 years, were joint rulers of the first, actual, Vietnamese royal realm

Thus a ladies drum and cymbal corps lead the way for be-pearled village matrons who were inveigled along by two dancing ,prancing males. Then came female pennant bearers and then biers loaded with floral tributes and offerings for their highnesses.

Last of all, personal tributes from female village elders and dignitaries

The paraders at this stage have two hours of procession facing them so it’s chivalrous to show the older, brave women in their finery at 7am as the parade just started at the village Dinh.

The adjoining villages of Dai Cat, Thuong Cat, and Dong Ba are about 15km north of Hanoi, separated from the waters of the Red River by a dyke road.

Their festival to celebrate the exploits and protection of Quach Tang is a 3 day affair. On days one and citizens bedecked the streets and alleys with bunting and built ceremonial gates and arches into alleyways. Families had visited the Dinh and offered votive gifts to the altar of the hero and to their ancestors.

Celebratory meals were eaten and dancing and karaoke filled the late and early hours.

The festival used to be an annual event but now, due to burgeoning expenses, it is held every fifth year and the festival parade is the culminating event before the decorations, the costumes and the paraphernalia are put into mothballs for the next re-enactment

On the last day, the day of the festival parade, the world is up early. The village streets are a-wave in steamers…..

……families and alley neighbors put last minute touches on arches and votive tables that will be looked upon by Quach Tang….

….extended families have photos taken

….people wander in from the furthest reaches

……all along the long route kids get excited

….and with then it’s upon them, sweeping past and into through the gates of Thuong Cat

By 9.30 they’ve brushed through the village streets and stream past the fields of Dong Ba.

Although energies are flagging they carry on….up to the Dyke Road

30 minutes later they see the Dinh’s huge, special festival flag waves above the areca trees

….they pause to gain their breaths

….before entering the Dinh and presenting themselves and their offerings to the deities

By 11am it’s all over. The last lion dancers have pranced and cavorted and fire eaters have bellowed flames into the humid sky and everyone goes home for a family festival meal of lemon steamed chicken and lots of other special mon an dac biet

The villages were once famous for their tofu which farmers used to make early in the mornings, load it onto bicycles and pedal into the city to peddle to discerning restaurants and in the markets. It was the most sought after variety throughout Hanoi

Later they became more famous for the flowers they still grow

Now the suburbs are gradually encroaching and it won’t be too many years before soya beans, tofu production and rose growing are distant memories for their populations which are overflowing with children and adolescents

The villages featured prominently in two foreign occupations last century.

After the Japanese surrender in 1945 Japanese occupying soldiers were encamped in the villages before repatriation. Japanese canned meat and other rations shared by the soldiers with the villagers saved many from the locals from the slow death by starvation that over two million Vietnamese suffered due to lack of rice and staple food that had been forcibly confiscated and sent to Japan

Nine years later surviving French soldiers from Dien Bien Phu were camped around the villages until they were moved on to ships in Hai Phong , Villagers in their eighties and nineties still recall food shared.

Hopefully the French decided to apologize for the ancient village Dinh that Vichy French forces burnt to the ground in 1941 because they believed that it may be a hiding place for guerilla fighters

Hopefully too they apologized for the Buddhist nuns they raped and killed around about the same time in the temple next door to the Dinh….the temple and the nun population is still existent .

The Dinh was begun to be renovated after the government gave official approval for Dinhs to re-exist in 1975.

However it’s due to a Chinese occupation, about one thousand nine hundred and seventy yeas ago years ago, that the villages are historically celebrated, thanks to the courage and fighting spirit of the Hai Ba Truing sisters and their 70 generals….several of whom were feisty women

This month the nearby village Hat Mon on the banks of the Hat River celebrates their special festival to commemorate the defeat of the Hai Ba Trung forces by a re-invading Chinese Imperial Army in 43CE. The sisters, facing defeat drowned themselves in the river and General Quach Trang followed suit

This festival is extra special and very different as its processional members are just about all female and they all process with trays of floating cakes on their heads…because tradition has it that the sisters were enamored of such cakes that the villagers made for them as they bivouacked near-by….a gnarled mango tree near the Hai Ba Trung Temple is said to be the result of a seed spat there before the final battle.

MY APOLOGIES IF I’VE GOT SOME FACTS ABOUT THE FESTIVAL A BIT INCORRECT and if my poetic licentiousness carried me away. My congratulations to all the participants.

FOR MY OPINION PIECE ABOUT A FESTIVAL IN A DIFFERENT PART OF VIETNAM AND A DIFFERENT HERO

CLICK HERE

* The Dinh is a combination of the temple and the community center in many Vietnamese villages. It is within the Dinh that people offer prayers not said at home and where they also offer food to the guardian spirit called “thanh hoang” in. At such times, the “thanh hoang” is asked for protection against the various natural disasters and for his good will toward the individual worshipper or the worshipper’s family.