Viet Nam. Hữu Ngọc

“Only when a house burns, do the rats appear” warns that only amidst trying circumstances does a person’s real personality show.

      • “Corrupt households are corrupt from the roof down” uses “nhà” to refer to a family, society, a business, or a government.

      • “When the house lights go out, rich and poor are alike” warns of the equalizing effect of life’s challenges.

The Communal House

      Lines from an oral folk poem describe a traditional Vietnamese village’s communal house. Here, “nón” is the emblematic Vietnamese conical hat.

      Crossing the bridge, tilting her nón,

      The bridge, many spans: How she misses him.

      Passing the communal house, tilting her nón,

      Its roof, many tiles: How she loves him.

      Nearly half a century ago, Chu Hồng Quý, a ten-year-old boy hunkering in a bomb shelter, composed the following lines in six-word, eight-word meter to begin his poem, “The Ceiba Trees at Our Communal House” (Cây Gạo Đình Chung). The ceiba (kapok), sometimes called a “cotton tree,” has a straight trunk and red flowers.

      My village has a communal house,

      Its well water dances with the moon’s glow;

      Nearby, ceiba trees watch the sky,

      A winding, sandy road runs past the gate.

      Ceiba flowers cover everything in March,

      Half the flowers for fish, half for birds;

      The communal house seems sleepy-eyed,

      Its roof curving upward, looking at the sky.

      A noted painter, Phạm Tăng (1924–), also writes poems. He speaks wistfully with six-word, eight-word lines in “Song for My Ancestral Home” (Bài Ca Quê Hương), which is the opening poem in his collection Phạm Tăng: Poems (Phạm Tăng: Thơ, 1994):

      Gone: the village banyan’s roots, the river’s flow.

      Is our well’s water still clear?

      Do lotus blooms cover the communal-house pond?

      These quotations show the vivid presence of the đình (communal house) for ordinary Vietnamese as a temple, a town hall, a house of culture, and the focus of village life. The đình dominates a traditional community’s spiritual life, together with the Buddhist pagoda (chùa), Confucian shrine (văn chỉ), and the many small shrines (đền) dedicated to spirits in Vietnamese animistic worship, which has been tinged with Taoism. English speakers sometimes use “temple” when referring to a Buddhist place of worship. However, in Việt Nam, to avoid confusion with the temples for the worship of ancestors and tutelary spirits, we use “pagoda” when referring to a building for the worship of Buddha.

      Villagers meet at their communal house to worship their village tutelary god, thần thành hoàng, literally, “god” (thần) of the “rampart” (thành) and the “moat” (hoàng) surrounding the citadel. This god could be a historical personage (such as a national or local hero), the benefactor who taught the villagers a trade or helped them claim virgin land, a mythical figure (such as a celestial being like the God of Mount Tản Viên), a deified animal, or an unidentified person (in some instances even a thief or a beggar, who died a cruel death at a sacred hour).

      Residents conduct their major rituals honoring the tutelary spirit in spring (at Tết, the Lunar New Year), autumn, and on the anniversaries of the god’s birth and death. These solemn ceremonies and joyous festivities may last several days. Village leaders organize games and entertainment on the đình grounds, including tuồng and chèo operas, traditional wrestling matches, buffalo and cock fights, and human chess games with young men and women, who are moved about as the players’ chess pieces.

      In contrast to the Buddhist pagoda, which is a closed building in a secluded place for funeral rites and for events affecting future life, the communal house is an open structure conveniently situated for social activities and meetings. There, adult male villagers meet to address administrative matters (distribution of taxes and communal lands, recruitment of soldiers, allotment of labor) and to settle minor judicial proceedings (conflicts between neighbors and punishment for transgressors of village customs). In former times, the communal house guarded the Confucian order, which determined village social structure during the Lê Dynasty (1428–1788). The đình probably first appeared in the 1500s and peaked in the 1600s and 1700s but declined during the 1800s because of feudal disintegration and French intervention.

      The traditional communal house began in northern Việt Nam and spread southward with Vietnamese territorial expansion. However, some scholars suggest ethnic-minority longhouses in the Central Highlands may have been the model for Vietnamese communal houses, while other scholars cite boat-like images engraved on the Đông Sơn bronze drums from the first millennium BCE. In any case, Vietnamese communal houses constitute a priceless cultural patrimony with traditional architecture and collections of ancient wooden sculptures. The most famous examples of communal houses are: Tây Đằng (late 1400s, early 1500s, Hà Tây Province, now part of Hà Nội); Lỗ Hạnh (1576, Bắc Giang Province); Thổ Hà (1500s to 1600s, Bắc Giang Province); and Ðình Bảng (1736, Bắc Ninh Province).

The Head and the Heart of the Traditional Village

      To understand the soul of the traditional village, you must visit the countryside. There, lies the village, the social cell and the administrative, economic, and spiritual unit that is the repository of Việt Nam’s oldest cultural values. Each village has a communal house (đình) dedicated to its tutelary god; temples (đền, miếu, phủ) for the worship of spirits or saints (deified heroes and tutelary gods); one or two pagodas (chùa) to worship Buddha; and sometimes a temple (văn miếu) or a shrine (văn chỉ) for the worship of Confucius.

      Despite a very strong religious syncretism, one can classify these buildings into two groups according to the endogenous (internally caused) or exogenous (externally caused) origin of the worshiped divinities. The first group—the đền, miếu, and phủ—are used to worship spirits and ghosts of autochthonous (indigenous) origin, that is, the veritable Vietnamese religion according to French researcher Léopold Cadière (1869–1955). Some popular animist beliefs of the Việt from the Red River Delta date to the beginning of recorded history. These include worship of natural forces (thunder, lightning, rain, rocks, plants, and animals), ancestors, the mother goddesses (mẫu), and heroes. The second group of religious buildings serves beliefs imported from India and China. Buddhism and Confucianism were grafted onto autochthonous stock (the worship of spirits), which was already firmly rooted and which remains alive today.

      In the traditional village, the four elements—the autochthonous animist stock, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism—harmonize and amalgamate. In particular, Buddhism and Confucianism complement each other in meeting two needs. Confucianism responds to the social element and reason, while Buddhism addresses the individual and sentiments. In brief, Confucianism and Buddhism represent the head and the heart.

      Confucianism as the “head” reflects Chinese influence. Strictly speaking, Confucianism is not a religion but, rather, a philosophy of social ethics. Confucianism summarizes the precepts for all social relations to achieve universal harmony (hòa) by virtue of humanity (nhân) governed through rites. In a strongly hierarchical and patriarchal Confucian society, everyone—from kings and mandarins to scholars, peasants, artisans, and workers, to men and women, husbands and wives, parents and children—must accept his or her specific role in society and accomplish his or her duty.

      How does Confucianism manifest itself at the village level and on the cultural plane?

      The Confucian rites at local temples (văn từ, văn chỉ)