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Literature |
PastObservancesOfTheTetTrungThuPublished: 2009 May 19 By bảo.thiên.ngô Past Observances of the Tết Trung Thu (Vietnamese Mid-Autumn Festival)Nguyễn Văn Huy is presently the Director of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology and General Secretary of the Vietnam Ethnology Association. He co-edited an anthological compilation "Vietnam: Journeys of body, mind, and spirit" in which one chapter he devotes and writes about Tết Trung Thu, otherwise known as the Mid-Autumn Festival. Although it is not an exhaustive discussion on the festival, it does provide some insight into the older ways the festival was observed. Huy says that ancient Vietnamese used this occasion to pray to the dragon god for the rain that provided a bountiful harvest. The prayers extended to all things part of the life cycle: crops, babies, animals, etc. In time the prayers for children turned into a celebration of children. That's where we get a more modern notion of the festival. There's a few paragraphs the delves the effects of politics on the festival, in particular Hồ Chí Minh's use of the occasion to bolster patriotism and raise his stature among parents. He would tell the children to observe the values of obeying your parents, working hard, love your country, etc. He interviewed elders in villages around Hanoi regarding how the festival was observed when they were young. Many responses resounded of nostalgia: what they remember best was marching with lanterns en masse on the streets. The festival was also an occasion for young men and women to find "life partners" (as he puts it; I would call it "lovers", but remember in old Vietnamese times, when you settled with a significant other, it was usually for life anyway). There was some nice photos of what lanterns looked like back in the early 20th century. I saw some butterfly lanterns; the caption says they are no longer produced today. Quite beautiful though. The star lanterns that you see in Vietnam today is influenced from the star of the Communist flag. The author says that the star lanterns used to be six-pointed. Also there is a practice of food sculptures; creating animals, for example, out of the rind of a pomelo. And descriptions of today: a lot of the lanterns are no longer hand-crafted by local artisans; instead they consist of cheap plastic imports from China (sometimes with electronics like playing melodies or flashy lights). And the meaningfulness of singing songs up to the moon has given way to water gun fights and other childish activities. Also there is a surge of global cultural influences, e.g. children in Vietnam nowadays like to don masks. The masks could be from local lore like Thanh Giong. But they are seeing a rise of influence from Japanese anime, Disney, etc. So it's actually interesting that cultural identity negotiation isn't just a problem unique to overseas Vietnamese. I would say that Tết Trung Thu has become a kind of like a Halloween in Vietnam. In "The Vietnamese Americans" by Hien Duc Do, a sociologist resident at San José State University, he writes descriptions of Tết Trung Thu in San Jose back in the mid-1990s. The festival, in reaching out to other ethnic communities in San Jose, managed to turn the festival, though Vietnamese in origin, into a multicultural celebration. I had a feeling that was their intent all these years when I saw non-Vietnamese performances on stage year after year. On a different note, Mr. Hien, also mentions his concerns about sustainability of the festivals. I suppose this wasn't a new problem. References
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