On February 7, people of Van Ninh commune, Mong Cai city, enthusiastically participated in the opening ceremony of Van Ninh communal house festival 2025. This is the first festival in a series of traditional Spring festivals in Mong Cai city.
Van Ninh Communal House in Trung Village, Van Ninh Commune, Mong Cai City, was built around the 15th century to worship Ly Thuong Kiet, who was honored as the village's tutelary god. This is also the place to worship King Tran Nhan Tong, King Le Thai To, Hung Dao Vuong Tran Quoc Tuan, General Pham Ngu Lao, General Yet Kieu, Zen Master Khong Lo, Zen Master Giac Hai .
The festival is held from the 10th to the 11th of the first lunar month every year and is the spring festival, opening a series of traditional festivals in Mong Cai city. This is the only festival in Mong Cai city with 02 intangible cultural heritages listed in the list of national intangible cultural heritages.
According to history, during the war to protect the country, General Ly Thuong Kiet used Van Ninh land as a place to gather the navy. Van Ninh people were proud and to commemorate his achievements, they built a communal house, worshiping Ly Thuong Kiet as the village's tutelary god and worshiping him together with other tutelary gods in the communal house. Van Ninh communal house was ranked as a provincial historical-cultural relic in 2011. In 2023, the traditional festival of Van Ninh communal house was recognized as a national intangible cultural heritage.
From ancient times to the present, the communal house has always had an important meaning in the spiritual life of the village community of Van Ninh commune in particular, and of the people of Mong Cai city in general. It has become an annual tradition that Van Ninh commune organizes the communal house festival on the 10th and 11th of January with many rich contents including both the ceremony and the festival, in which the ritual of welcoming the god from Dong Ha area to the communal house according to the traditional ritual with many cultural characteristics of Van Ninh residents. Besides the ritual, the festival also has many folk games such as: Sack jumping, blindfolded duck catching, blindfolded pot smashing, tug of war, soccer... 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, Cua Dinh singing, Chau Than singing or Chuc Than singing. This art form is considered the soul of the festival, a cultural "specialty" that only exists in the Northeast coastal region. Cua Dinh singing is closely associated with the Vietnamese custom of worshipping the village's tutelary god. With many unique features, Nha To singing and Cua Dinh singing have become intangible cultural resources of origin, a source of pride not only for Van Ninh people but also for Quang Ninh province.
The Van Ninh Communal House Festival aims 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.
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