Hue: Unique traditional cultural features at Hue Nam Palace Festival

This is a folk festival but it blends the unique royal cultural elements of Hue . This festival has been formed and developed for hundreds of years and increasingly attracts a large number of people and tourists from all over the world to participate; this shows the strong and everlasting vitality of the Hue Nam Palace Festival.

Procession in front of Van Lau area (Hue Imperial City).

In the early stages, the Hue Nam Temple Festival only took place within the temple area, later on, the villagers of Hai Cat joined in and gradually became widespread among the people. Today, the Hue Nam Temple traditional festival has the characteristics of the Holy disciples worshipping the Mother Goddess in Vietnam, and has truly become one of the typical cultural products of the Hue region.

Dragon boat carries the procession from Van Lau area to Hon Chen temple.

Moreover, the Hue Nam Temple Festival has a strong influence on many regions of the country, receiving special attention from tens of thousands of people. Although it has gone through many different stages, the Hue Nam Temple Festival is still held regularly twice a year in the third and seventh lunar months, with important forms such as the ceremony to welcome the Holy Mother and the deities at the 352 Chi Lang Temple through the procession by road and waterway, the Cao Nieu ceremony, the Chanh Te ceremony at the Hue Nam Temple and Hai Cat communal house, religious activities, and performing the Hau Dong ceremony on the altars.

The priests performed the ceremony.

The Hue Nam Temple Festival demonstrates its influence and scale with the participation of a large community of the Holy Mother's disciples and domestic and foreign tourists attending the festival. Since the country's complete independence exactly 50 years ago, for the first time within the framework of Hue Festival 2022, the Hue Nam Temple Festival in March organized a ceremony to welcome the Holy Mother and the Four Palaces Council by road to recreate the unique and large-scale folk scene of welcoming the Holy Mother, which was once held in the 1960s.

Chief Priest at Hue Nam Palace.

This is also the basis for the Hue Nam Temple Festival Organizing Committee as well as the Mother Goddess worshiping community to continue to maintain this ritual by road (every 2 years), just as the previous generations have done. It can be said that this traditional festival has brought people closer together, contributing to building an advanced Vietnamese culture with a strong national cultural identity.

Through many historical ups and downs, the Hue Nam Temple Festival is still held according to traditional rituals imbued with Vietnamese folk culture. This is also an occasion for the beauty of the practice of the Vietnamese Mother Goddess worship (an intangible cultural heritage recognized by UNESCO) to be uniquely expressed.

The Hue Nam Temple Festival is a form of cultural and folk belief activity, aiming to satisfy spiritual and cultural needs and contribute to enriching the local cultural life. The festival is a manifestation of people's faith in the spiritual space, to express the morality of "remembering the source of water when drinking", the admiration for the gods through specific gratitude activities, creating a means of connecting people with supernatural powers.

Procession through the central streets of Hue city.

Accordingly, rituals such as the ceremony to welcome the Holy Mother and the deities, the announcement ceremony, the main ceremony, the spirit mediumship ceremony as well as the offerings that people offer to the Mother are products they themselves make from farming, raising animals or fishing activities, etc. are vivid evidence of the respect of the holy disciples towards the divine.

Through the festival, the boundary between gods and mortals is brought closer together, seemingly able to find each other in a dialogue that seems to be the words of relatives caring about each other's joys and sorrows.

The uniforms.

Forms such as traditional ceremonies, Mother Goddess processions, singing, and spirit mediumship performed in the Hue Nam Temple Festival are considered a living museum preserving history and culture over time. It is a treasure trove of legends and myths associated with the Mother Goddesses and deities in the Mother Goddess worship belief. It is also a living environment for forms of ceremonies, performances with music , singing, dancing, forms, decorations, humanistic concepts, cuisine, and traditional dress of the Vietnamese people.

All of these have created the unique cultural value of the festival. Along with preserving and promoting the values ​​of Hue's cultural heritage, the Department of Culture and Sports has coordinated with the Hue Monuments Conservation Center and the Hue City Mother Goddess Cultural Heritage Association to build a scientific dossier on the intangible cultural heritage "Hue Nam Temple Festival" to propose the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to include it in the List of national intangible cultural heritage.

The trains run on the Huong River, the section across Nguyen Hoang Bridge has just been opened to traffic.

On December 10, 2024, the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism issued Decision No. 3981/QD-BVHTTDL to include the traditional festival "Hue Nam Palace Festival" in the List of National Intangible Cultural Heritage. This is a common heritage of the community, held by the community and joined hands to protect and promote sustainable values.

Cai Van Long

Source: https://www.congluan.vn/hue-net-van-hoa-truyen-thong-doc-dao-co-tai-le-hoi-dien-hue-nam-post340713.html