Van Ninh Communal House Festival (Mong Cai City) is a form of community activity that bears the mark of local culture. Through many decades of ups and downs, Van Ninh Communal House Festival has always been preserved, conserved, and promoted every time Tet comes and spring comes.
Van Ninh Communal House in Trung Village, Van Ninh Commune was built around the 15th century to worship Ly Thuong Kiet. Legend has it that on the way to fight the Song army to protect the country, Ly Thuong Kiet used Van Ninh land as a place to gather his navy. Van Ninh people were proud and to commemorate his contributions, they built the communal house, worshiping Ly Thuong Kiet as the village's tutelary god. Later, the communal house also worshiped King Tran Nhan Tong, King Le Thai To, Hung Dao Dai Vuong Tran Quoc Tuan, General Pham Ngu Lao, Yet Kieu, Zen Master Khong Lo, Zen Master Giac Hai. Van Ninh Communal House was ranked as a provincial-level historical and cultural relic in 2011.
Van Ninh Communal House Festival is held on the 10th and 11th of the first lunar month every year and is the spring festival, opening a series of traditional festivals in Mong Cai City. In 2023, Van Ninh Communal House Traditional Festival was recognized as a national intangible cultural heritage. This is the only festival in Mong Cai City that practices two types of intangible cultural heritage listed in the list of national intangible cultural heritages: communal house festival heritage and folk performance heritage of hat nha to, hat - dance at the communal house.
Mr. Tran Van Canh, Vice Chairman of the People's Committee of Van Ninh Commune, Mong Cai City, said: The communal house festival has many rich contents including both the ceremony and the festival. In particular, the ritual of welcoming the god from Dong Ha area (also known as Nghenh Than mound) to the communal house according to traditional rituals carries many cultural characteristics of Van Ninh residents. Besides the ritual part, the festival part also has many rich folk games such as: Sack jumping, blindfolded duck catching, blindfolded pot smashing, tug of war, soccer... often attracting a large number of local people and tourists.
The most notable point in the Van Ninh Communal House Festival is a very famous folk singing style that people often call Nha To singing, singing and dancing at the communal house gate, also known as Chau Than singing or Chuc Than singing. The female singer usually stands to sing at the communal house gate, supported by Chau drums and Dan Day. Singing at the communal house gate is closely associated with the Vietnamese custom of worshipping the village's tutelary god. This art form is a variation of Ca Tru, considered the soul of the festival, a unique cultural feature in the coastal region of Quang Ninh.
Van Ninh Communal House Festival is a coastal festival to commemorate the merits of our ancestors and pray for a new year of national peace and prosperity, favorable weather, health, peace, happiness, and bountiful harvests. Thereby, it arouses national pride, compassion, and civic responsibility towards the country. At the same time, it educates people to preserve and maintain the traditional cultural beauty of their homeland.
Currently, Van Ninh Communal House Festival is maintained annually and is increasingly expanding in scale, becoming a traditional cultural feature of the people of the coastal area of Van Ninh, full of cultural and religious characteristics, considered one of the "cultural milestones" affirming Vietnam's territorial sovereignty in the northeastern part of the Fatherland.
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