The Dao’s dance with devils

At the start of the ceremony, the leader of sorcerers begins with a dance to a slow beat

Spring means white man flowers cover Vietnam’s northern mountains, it also marks the time when Dao minority people hold fascinating festive activities to pray for fertile crops, prosperity and health for the New Year.

Nam An is a small village on a 1,000 meter high mountain in Ban Qua District in the northernmost province of the country, Ha Giang Province. There is a selection of different minority people living there but most are Dao. At Spring time, tourist can attend their festive activities, among which the Blessing and Fire jumping ceremony are the most interesting.

Old people said the Dao village deep in the jungle used to be frequented by devils and other dark powers. To protect them, villagers depended on a powerful man supported by sorcerers to meet the Almighty and ask him for blessings to fight against the demons. The blessing ceremony is the most important ritual that every Dao man has to take. 

During the ceremony that takes about two hours, the most prestigious man, who has the most power and experience in rituals against devils in the village leads four or five sorcerers or more. They call for the Almighty to come and offer blessings for a certain man, no matter what his age. The blessing will bring him faith and power in the fight against devils, protection for his family and village against plagues and pests.

A dancer jumps into the burning coals - Photos: Pham Thai

The man and his attendants wear colorful brocatelle, in red, their beautiful traditional costumes. With a sacrificed animal, the leader reads a long prayer in Chinese to call for the Almighty’s participation. The sound of the music gets louder, the men now dance in a big circle with their hands beating small Chieng, a traditional musical instrument. Finally, the rituals reach a crescendo with the fire jumping ceremony, when all the sorcerers and the newly blessed man jump bare foot into a fire and glowing coals, to prove their courage against devils.

Traditionally, the blessing ceremony could last three days with rituals, dancing, singing, drinking corn and rice wine, but it now takes only takes one day. Tourism has brought with it influences that have made many changes to the most sacred ceremony of the Dao people. Tourists on organized tours can now request a ceremony to be performed any time of year.

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Spanish-Vietnamese bicycle around the world

Guim Valls Teruel and Nguyen Thuy Anh will set out to complete their solar powered bicycle world tour from Hanoi this weekend - Photo: The organizers

A Spanish-Vietnamese couple, Guim Teruel and Nguyen Thuy Anh will become the first people to travel around the world using solar-energy powered bicycles, the Spanish Embassy in Hanoi announced on Monday.

The journey will promote renewable energies and the virtues of exercise.

Guim Teruel began his journey around the world alone, departing from Beijing in China. During his journey, he traveled 14,000km, passing through 11 countries and territories including China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia and Vietnam.

He arrived in Vietnam in 2009 and was interviewed by Nguyen Thuy Anh, a reporter from Vietnam Television’s Channel VTV6. They fell in love and later got married in 2010.

Teruel and his wife will continue the journey from Hanoi on February 18 to London in the U.K., traveling through 20 more countries including Laos, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Greece, Persia, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and Poland.

During their journey, the couple will write articles and film short video-clips of the places they have visited and send them to Channel VTV6 to broadcast, Thuy Anh said.

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Teen anime fans throng festival

A stage adaption of Katekyo Hitman Reborn, one of the hottest manga and anime in the otaku community in Vietnam - Photo: Thanh Hang

The HCMC community of otakus –  fans of anime and manga – gathered at their annual festival on Sunday at Le Thi Rieng Park, 835 Cach Mang Thang 8 Street, District 10.  At the one-day event called “Teen and Otaku Festival 2011” the young comics fans bought Anime and Manga artbooks, posters, and gifts at 25 stands.

Other activities included Cosplay competitions, music contest and performances and a Manga knowledge test.

The festival was standing-room-only at some of the stalls as young people crowded to buy merchandise of their favorite characters. Thao Nguyen, 16, explained that the colorful artbook she bought came with the Nabari No Ou manga, and said she thought that VND250,000 was totally worth it. Another young girl in costume who asked the Daily to refer to her by her nickname Fuko had another way to show her passion for Manga. “I’m cosplaying as Enma-Ai in Jigoku Shoujo. I started to cosplay two years ago at fourteen because I wanted to be my favorite character in every way, from the costume to the gestures,” she said.

Another part of the festival was a cosplay competition that was held throughout the day. In two categories of group and single performance, the contest challenged the cosplayers to demonstrate the talents of their character. Some sang the soundtrack from the anime, some did the traditional dance, while others made stage adaptations of the manga or anime.

Hosted by Vang Anh Cultural Company and thegioitruyentranh.vn, previous festivals had received good feedback from anime and manga lovers.

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Local hiphoppers perform in Hanoi, HCMC, Paris, Berlin

A play called “Faces,” created in 2008 will be on in Hanoi and HCMC late this month, followed by performances in Paris and Berlin.

In the dance/theatre performance, German-French choreographers Raphael Hillebrand from Germany and Sébastien Ramirez from France work with nine dancers from three hiphop crews, Big Toe, Milky Way and Sacred Crew and two musicians from Hanoi.

“The dancer’s masks raise questions about modern-day society. Do people wear so many different masks that, in the end, they are afraid to see their real faces?”

Faces that is produced by Goethe Institute Vietnam and the French Cultural Exchange Center, L’Espace, and supported by Fonds Elysée asks questions about the youth such as: What is the biggest dream in my life? Where will my future go if I become a hiphop dancer? What is love?

The show suggests there are many ways to preserve traditional customs and pass them on to young people. It merges traditional and contemporary music and dance. Faces reveals Vietnam to be dynamic, opening and modern, but also traditional and culturally rich.

The performance will be staged at Tuoi Tre Theater, 11 Ngo Thi Nham Street in Hanoi at 8 p.m. on February 25 and at Ben Thanh Theater, 6 Mac Dinh Chi Street, HCMC’s District 1, HCMC at 8 p.m. on February 27.

Tickets are free at Goethe Institute in Hanoi and HCMC.

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A generally disappointing venture

A scene at the circus show Xin Chao! in September 23 Park in HCMC’s District 1 - Photo: The organizers

I am a fan of circuses, and the more traditional they are the better I like them. But Xin Chao!, though staged in the circus tent in Saigon’s September 23 Park on Pham Ngu Lao Street, is not a circus, but rather a pageant representing two episodes in Vietnam’s history plus an epilogue, all told in mime together with would-be-elegant costumes and lighting. There’s plenty of sound and fury, but in the end it doesn’t signify very much.

This show is neither a circus nor anything interestingly different. On the one hand you’re not going to learn much Vietnamese history from Xin Chao!, and on the other the thrills and splendour of the old circus are amost entirely absent. Various circus acts are incorporated to liven up what turns out to be a brief story (only Vietnam’s mythic origins and the ancient struggle with China are featured), but the music is unmemorable, whereas it’s the vibrant popular music that drives a traditional circus. Missing too is the circus’s sense of timing, and its characteristic panache.

 It might be argued that, with harmonised costumes and lighting, this show adds an artistic dimension to the old routines. But it’s pointless to try to incorporate a sense of beauty into the genre because circuses are beautiful already, as the works of many old painters (such as Picasso) testify. And acrobats are the purest form of theatre there is.

 Under a hundred patrons were present at Sunday’s performance, most of them foreigners. Indeed, the short last section of the show, supposedly representing Vietnam on Tuesday, could only be received with derision by any contemporary Vietnamese.

 More attractive, because more authentic, is the animal-based circus from Hanoi that shares the venue over the Tet period. Only small animals are used (though there is a sleepy crocodile and a rather large snake), and the truth is that this is primarily a show for children. But the many children present when I attended responded to the event with clearly genuine, and extremely vocal, enthusiasm.

 The prices for the two shows are very different - VND80,000 for the Hanoi circus and VND400,000 for Xin Chao! I could find no explanation for the difference except for the fact that more performers are involved in the latter. Neither of the shows, incidentally, is as enjoyable as that of the resident company, the excellent HCMC Circus, currently taking a break from its home turf.

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Russia – key market for Vietnamese tourism

Russia is an important market for Vietnamese tourism and has high
expectations, said Vu The Binh, Chairman of the Vietnam Travel
Association.

Over the past five years, tourists from Russia
have always been among the leading groups of foreign visitors with the
highest growth of 20-30 percent, according to statistics supplied by the
Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT).

However, the
number of Russian tourists was still low in 2010 with about 100,000
visitors due to the geographic distance and a lack of promotions.

Tourists
from Russia like the coastal resorts and luxurious relaxing tourist
destinations. On average they also stay longer and spend more, around
1,600-1,700 USD, an annual increase of 50-80 percent, according to
estimates from Vietnam ’s travel agencies.

They are also interested in local products such as clothes, footwear, embroidery work, gemstones, handicrafts and silk.

Bui
Nguyen Tam Dang, Director of Vietravel’s overseas market group, said
that Russia has always been considered a market with huge potential.
In 2010, the number of Russian tourists welcomed by Vietravel rose by
20 percent against the previous years figure.

In Vietnam ,
Phan Thiet and Nha Trang in the central coastal provinces of Binh Thuan
and Khanh Hoa, are the leading destinations in terms of attracting
Russian tourists, said Dang.

Russia ’s airline Vladivostok Air
opened a direct route to Cam Ranh in Khanh Hoa province in late 2010
and could increase the number of Russian visitors to the central coastal
province by 50 percent in 2011, Dang estimated.

Travel agencies
operating in the Russian market say that Winter time is the high season
for Russian travellers. Their counterparts in Russia have also
promoted tours to Southeast Asian nations like Thailand , Indonesia
and Vietnam , instead of Egypt due to unstable political situation.

To
make the most of the opportunity, Vietravel says it is working with
service providers, especially hotels and resorts in Phan Thiet and Nha
Trang to attract more visitors from this promising market.

Localities
with the potential for maritime tourism like Da Nang City and Quang
Nam province in central Vietnam , are looking at ways of
attracting more Russian tourists.

Tran Chi Cuong, Head of the Da
Nang Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s Travel Management
Division, said that along with the continued investment in coastal
tourist sites, the city will focus on promotions in Russia in the
future.

Vietnam’s tourism industry will attend the MITT
international tourism fair in March in Russia, and is creating a project
to develop key markets, including Russia./.

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Where the sun rises and sets on the sea

A tourist poses for a photo beside the marker for Vietnam’s southernmost point in Ca Mau - Photo: Dang Hoang Tham

Ca Mau at the southern tip of Vietnam has more than 300-kilometers of coastline where the forest meets the sea.

About 350 kilometers from HCMC, the Mekong Delta province is famous for mangrove forests and a bird sanctuary.

We visited the province during the Tet holiday on the recently upgraded National Highway 1A, which made the journey much more comfortable than in the past. Ca Mau City is a proud young city with busy streets and industrial and trade centers.

The Ca Mau Gas - Electricity - Nitrogenous fertilizer IZ in the U Minh Ha Forest is one of the large-scale projects there.

We continued our journey to the southern tip of the country on a cruise to Tan An Commune in Ngoc Hien District, which was where tau khong so (army ships with no numbers) were stationed during the war.

At the tip there is a marker with the coordinates of 8.37.30 North and 104.43 East to mark the southernmost point of Vietnam. The area has been declared nature reserve there and there’s a tourist park.

An interesting fact is that each year, Ca Mau expands another 100m out into the sea.

From a 21-meter-high watchtower, the panoramic view filled us with love for the country, gratitude for the heroes who sacrificed their lives for the nation’s freedom and pride for the beauty of the motherland.

The point at Ca Mau is the only place in the country where people can see the sun rise and set on the ocean.

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