The Triều Khúc village festival is held from the 9th to the 12th day of the first lunar month every year at Triều Khúc Communal House, managed, operated, maintained and protected by the authorities and the community of Triều Khúc residential group, Thanh Liệt ward, so it is not much affected, interfered with or influenced by other social factors. Therefore, the worship ceremonies are held solemnly and reverently, attracting a large number of visitors from all over.
One of the distinctive and unique features of the Triều Khúc Festival is the Trống Bồng dance and the running flag dance... The Trống Bồng dance, also called con đĩ đánh Bồng, is a ritual dance of a spirit-medium nature, expressing the gratitude of the Triều Khúc village community, and also a way for the villagers to pray to the Saint to bless the village with a new year of a warm and happy life. According to legend associated with the event of King Phùng Hưng gathering soldiers and stationing troops at the site of present-day Triều Khúc village. Initially, the Trống Bồng dance was performed to entertain soldiers when celebrating victory over the enemy; because there were no women in the army, the soldiers dressed as girls and danced joyfully. Today, those chosen for the Trống Bồng dance team to serve the Saint must be men of good character, from respectable and harmonious families. During the performance, the dancer wears makeup like a girl, wears a wooden headpiece with a bright red mỏ quạ scarf outside, wears white clothes, over which they wear a black coarse skirt reaching the ankles, around the neck a small silk piece with a stylized lotus leaf and flower-and-leaf embroidery (with five-color strips hanging down); around the waist they tie a long green silk sash.
Besides the Trống Bồng dance, there are other dances that are also very famous and frequently used in the festival, namely the Sênh tiền dance and the Dragon dance. The Sênh tiền dance is a court dance serving kings and lords in the past; its flexible hand movements re-enact weaving movements, one of the traditional crafts of Triều Khúc village. The Dragon dance not only prays for favorable weather and peace for the country and people but also contains educational content on the martial spirit and the tradition of remembering the source when drinking water, praying for prosperity. The Dragon dance is grand with many vivid and varied shaping movements such as dragon greeting, dragon crouching, dragon attending, dragon flying high, lowering, dragon coiling, dragon gliding, dragon winding, dragon chasing the pearl, holding the pearl...
In addition, the Triều Khúc Festival also has other entertainments such as Chinese chess, lion dance with ball, wrestling, ornamental plant exhibition, football, badminton, shuttlecock, air volleyball competitions... The Triều Khúc wrestling arena is also one of the famous arenas, attracting quite a lot of wrestlers from other places to participate...
The 12th is the closing day of the festival; on this day there is a ceremony to conclude the festival and it ends with a very unique running flag dance, which is said to re-enact the battle of Phùng Hưng's insurgent army in the past. The dance takes place amid chanting and drum beats with groups of flags, both dancing and running, creating an atmosphere like military units going into battle and then gathering together into the strength of solidarity that can defeat every enemy. When the ceremonies end, everyone sits at the mats to enjoy the saint's blessings and pray for a new year with favorable weather, wealth and good fortune.
Organizing the festival is also a way for the people to show respect to their ancestors who brought them a peaceful and prosperous life; it is also a way to promote Vietnamese culture to domestic and foreign tourists when they come to this homeland that still retains many ancient features. The ritual of worshipping the Saint, the Saint procession, and the Trống Bồng dance and running flag dance of Triều Khúc village have become very famous and have many times participated in performances at cultural events and folk festivals of the nation and the capital Hanoi.
2. Some customs and practices in cultural and religious life
+ Ancestor worship custom It is organized by the people of Triều Khúc according to clan, together with the custom of “quan họ work”. The ancestor death anniversary is also an occasion for elders to advise descendants to do good deeds and preserve the clan's reputation. Clans exercise very high community responsibility. When families have major events such as funerals, weddings, or longevity celebrations, the clan takes responsibility and organizes everything thoroughly.
+ The custom of blocking the alley gate during the wedding ceremony: When the groom's family comes to fetch the bride, the bride's family usually closes the alley gate; this is called the 'blocking the alley gate' custom. The bride's family must appoint a person skilled in handling situations; this person asks many questions and fun riddles, requiring the groom's family to answer, and only when the bride's family is satisfied does the gate open for them to enter. This is merely an intimate game that makes the young couple's wedding day more warm and profound. After the ceremony of asking for the bride, the groom and bride perform the ancestor-worship ceremony at the bride's house, and when they return to the groom's house, the two perform the ancestor-worship ceremony at the groom's house and are symbolically given a little money and gold by the groom's parents as startup capital. A unique feature rarely found elsewhere is that after the wedding, the bride returns to her parents' house with relatives, and in the evening the groom comes to ask his wife's parents for permission to take his wife home.
+ The custom of increasing longevity: In the past, due to various reasons, people aged 60 or 70 were very rare, and 80 even rarer; therefore, those with high longevity were joyfully celebrated by the villagers and given very solemn longevity celebrations. Particularly in Triều Khúc village, people aged 70 in the 1930s were still very rare, which is why the provincial mandarin asked the king of the Nguyễn court for a special favor to add 02 years for the elderly, meaning that at 68 years old they were allowed to organize a 70th birthday celebration, and every 10 years thereafter one level was added for an 80th or 90th celebration. That is, they celebrated the elderly at the ages of seven, eight, and nine decades, but in reality the elderly were only 68, 78, and 88 years old.
+ New Year's Eve welcoming ceremony It is held very solemnly at the Đình thờ sắc. The main ritual of this ceremony includes the proclamation ritual 'Tống cựu nghênh tân' (sending off the old and welcoming the new). Before the New Year's Eve ceremony, the officials gather fully, in neat hats and robes, and stand in position to perform the New Year's Eve welcoming ceremony at the Đình thờ sắc. Then the two 'từ' elders in turn present the drumstick to the 'cai tân' elder and the gong stick to the 'cai cựu' elder. The two presiding elders perform the ritual and then return to their positions, leaving the drum and gong empty.
At exactly New Year's Eve, the cai tân elder solemnly strikes the first drumbeat, and the cai cựu elder strikes the gong next.
Thus the drum and gong are sounded three times, each later round lasting about 5 minutes longer than the previous one. The New Year's Eve welcoming ceremony, the ground-breaking ceremony, and the night-watch ceremony last about two hours. After that, the attendees disperse to their families to be the first to enter the house and perform the spring-welcoming ceremony at home.
The custom of eating communal meals The people of Triều Khúc attach great importance to arranging meals according to age groups. This custom is expressed quite strictly in arranging trays when inviting the village to a communal meal.
Whether it is a village affair held at the communal house or a family occasion such as a funeral, wedding, or longevity celebration inviting neighbors and relatives to eat, the trays are arranged in order from top to bottom, men separately and women separately. The person arranging the trays on behalf of the host must be someone who understands kinship and neighborly relations and the ages of the guests in order to arrange the trays correctly; at the top are the trays for the cửu elders, then the bát elders, then the thất elders, and afterward trays are arranged in order according to age so that everyone eats the communal meal once in the morning.
When the meal is finished, the lower trays must look to the first tray; if the elders' tray has not finished eating and has not been carried out, the lower trays, even if finished, must still wait.
This custom of arranging trays teaches village children respect for elders and a way of life in which superiors are respected and inferiors are yielded to, not only in the custom of communal meals but also in daily life.
The residential architecture of Triều Khúc bears strong Eastern architectural features and the stylistic lines of communal-house architecture.
Some families in the Triều Khúc residential group today still preserve the old house style. These are wooden houses with surrounding brick walls and Vietnamese tiled roofs. The length and width of the house depend on whether the land is wide or narrow, but commonly there are three or five main bays plus a 'side' house and outbuildings. The yard also depends on the land, but generally it is proportionate to the house. When the family has an event (funeral, wedding, longevity celebration), the yard can be covered with a tent connected to the main house to form a large hall.
The five-bay or three-bay main house has a very noteworthy wooden architectural section. In particular, the central bay contains the ancestor altar, with two main columns, two minor columns, and a crossbeam. The most common roof frame is the kẻ truyền or chồng giường type; more elaborate ones are giường cánh, carved with flowers, leaves, birds, and animals; the veranda of the main house is mostly spacious, with supporting columns, and the roof has bẩy, also carved with beautiful patterns. Many houses have horizontal lacquered boards, parallel sentences, curtained doors, and ancestor-worship thrones lacquered and gilded.
Today, in both villages there are many more multi-story houses built intermingled; families with large land and good economic conditions, even when adding high-rise houses, still preserve the old house style.
The people of Triều Khúc and Yên Xá villages have a tradition of playing with miniature landscapes, ornamental plants, and shaped trees such as sanh, đa, vạn tuế, mai chiếu thủy, and some other flowering plant species.
Each family's ornamental plants are shaped according to the player's ideas and aspirations; common forms are the upright form, horizontal form, dragon-descending form, waterfall form, crawling mai, father-and-son, mother-and-child, husband-and-wife... Not a few people who play ornamental plants, miniature landscapes, and bonsai have found for themselves a poetic idea to contemplate the scenery and leisurely recite poetry.
III. Traditional craft villages
Triều Khúc is an ancient land that has existed for a long time; the village land was built up by alluvium from the Red River and Tô River, creating fertile areas, while the fields also have many marshes and mounds that are not favorable for agricultural development. From when the first inhabitants set foot to live until the formation of the village, a long process passed. Closely linked to that process is the effort, sweat, and wisdom of many generations of local people who built it, from reclaiming wasteland and establishing camps to founding the village.
The economy of Triều Khúc in the past relied on agriculture; with skillful hands and creativity, the people of Triều Khúc village, in addition to farming, were also good at handicrafts and fine arts, so it soon became a traditional craft village from the end of the Lê Trung Hưng century. Notable among these is the craft of making quai thao straps for thúng hats (a type of flat hat without a top)… Today, along with the rapid urbanization process, the economy of the Triều Khúc residential group, Thanh Liệt ward has developed at a high speed, with the economic structure shifting toward industry, trade, and services, and many types of business, services, and occupations being expanded.
