Grandparents in the time of opening the country

Mr. Mai Hoai Thao's ancestors were originally from Quang Nam.

homesick

Research by Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Duy Thieu - former Deputy Director of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology said: In the early 17th century, a new migration of Vietnamese people from Thuan Hoa, Quang Nam and Phu Yen provinces came to explore and settle in the land of Thuy Chan Lap (present-day Southern Vietnam). A group of residents entered the South by sea and stopped at Phu Quy island, living together with the indigenous people.

We went to Ganh Son (Chi Cong commune, Tuy Phong district, Binh Thuan province), which is considered the place where most of the sailing boats and sampans stop on the sea. This locality is also where people from Quang stopped before going to Khoai Xu island (called Thuan Tinh island during the Nguyen dynasty).

Mr. Mai Hoai Thao (born in 1952) lives in a house with a sign built in 1953 right in Chi Cong commune, recalling memories of hearing about Quang region.

When he was young, Thao often heard his father Mai Hue tell the story of his grandparents, whose last name was Mai, originally from Quang Nam, who were caught in dragonfly nets and drifted all the way to Ganh Son (now Chi Cong commune).

There were three Mai brothers, one drifted to Phu Quy island and two stayed on the mainland. All three brothers stayed to make a living, giving birth to the Mai family lineage that exists today.

I returned to Phu Quy Island for the third time, in mid-April 2024. The island is in the tourist season, with thousands of visitors, the atmosphere is as bustling as Hoi An ancient town. Mr. Nguyen Van Ba in Tam Thanh commune of this island said that people here always ask the question "our ancestors went fishing hundreds of years ago and drifted out to the island, not knowing which village or commune Quang Nam originally came from".

Mr. Ba showed me a place with the same name as Quang, which is Hai Chau tomb built in 1845. On the engraved stele placed in the tomb, there are lines telling about the difficult life of people in the past on Phu Quy island, women sometimes had to cross the waves to the mainland to work as rice gleaners in the villages. Therefore, here still maintains the custom of carrying a backpack like the people of the mountains.

Located in Tam Thanh commune, there is a communal house and a temple in Hoi An built around the end of the 18th century. The communal house and a temple in Hoi An are places to worship the local tutelary god, the god of the South Sea and the ancestors of the village. Every year, at the communal house and a temple in Hoi An, there are three main ceremonies, one in spring and two in autumn, according to the custom of "spring prayer and autumn report" and a memorial service for the deceased on the first day of the sixth lunar month.

Hoi An communal house on Phu Quy island. People on the island still maintain the custom of carrying baskets. Photo: Van Chuong

Origin through the song

In the past, even though living on a remote island, people from the mainland could still enjoy cultural performances. Popular shows were hát bội and bài chòi.

The Tan Lap opera troupe (now named Dong Tam) was founded in 1880 by Mr. Tran Doi, who was the founder of the xoe and bai choi singing, following the tradition of the merchant Dao Hat and some fishermen who used nets in Binh Dinh to land on the island to avoid the wind.

Mr. Tran Thanh Phong, a former official of Long Hai commune, is now the successor in charge of the opera troupe. Mr. Phong still has a deep concern for his father's origin.

He visited every old house, every communal house, every temple, and met with elders to record parts of history that had been forgotten after a hundred years. He brought back all the recorded documents and transformed them into more than 200 folk songs and poems to tell history to the people through performances.

According to the Binh Thuan Provincial Museum, Phu Quy Island is a locality with many ancient documents such as royal decrees, land registers, parallel sentences, horizontal lacquered boards, land registers, administrative documents, Nom poems, and operas. There are 154 funeral oration poems, 93 royal decrees, 380 parallel sentences, and more than 2,000 pages of Nom script, including administrative documents, land registers, land registers, and poll tax receipts. This is also an important source of historical data to go back in history to find the origin of the residents.

Dong Duong appearance

Tam Thanh Commune, Phu Quy Island District has the oldest pagoda in Binh Thuan Province, Linh Quang Pagoda, built in 1747. In 1996, Linh Quang Pagoda was recognized as a national scenic spot. At the end of the 17th century, the pagoda was burned down, destroying many of the ancient relics.

The stele at Linh Quang Pagoda, Tam Thanh Commune reads: “Remembering the past, our ancestors went to open up new lands, from the mainland riding the waves across the ocean… amidst the stormy waves, human lives seemed to hang by a thread…”. In the pagoda, besides the statue of Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara and Nhien Dang, there are also statues and archaeological researchers have seen a coincidence.

These are statues with round faces, flat noses, nearly intersecting eyebrows, quite open decorative motifs, the overall appearance of the statues is very similar to the statues found at the Dai Huu and Dong Duong sites of Quang Nam.

This Buddha image has the Mahayana Buddhist style of Champa. It is known that the Dong Duong Buddha statue is a statue of Buddha Sakyamuni found by French archaeologist Henri Parmentier in April 1911 in Dong Duong, Binh Dinh commune, Thang Binh district.

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