Thuong Temple Festival

The ancient Thuong Temple Festival, also known as the Lao Nhai village festival, was held in association with the historical and cultural relic of Thuong Temple. The festival aims to honor and commemorate the merits of National Duke Tiet Tran Hung Dao - a national hero who defeated the Yuan and Mongol armies three times.  Besides, the festival also means a special milestone in national culture and history, affirming the territory and national sovereignty of Vietnamese people at the border. Currently, the festival held annually on January 13, 14 and 15 has become a cultural specialty of Lao Cai, a major festival of the Northwest region attracting tens of thousands of visitors, and has important local economic, cultural and political significance. Therefore, the Thuong Temple festival was included in the list of national intangible cultural heritage by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in Decision No. 3247/QD-BVHTTDL dated September 16, 2016. The ritual part of the Thuong Temple festival includes folk sacrifices, opening ceremonies, god processions and incense offering ceremonies. The folk sacrifice ceremony takes place on the afternoon of the 14th day of the first lunar month in the main yard of the Temple. The god procession, opening ceremony and incense offering take place on January 15. Participating in performing the rituals include dignitaries, elders of Lao Cai ward, men's worship team, and women's worship team. All of them wore ceremonial clothes made of brocade and wore formal hats with royal characteristics. The rituals are performed under the witness and participation of a large number of Lao Cai ethnic communities and tourists from everywhere. Each ritual performed during the festival begins with music, drums, and gongs, making the festival atmosphere even more sacred and majestic. Along with the ceremony, fun, entertainment and other activities also take place in the jubilant atmosphere of the Thuong Temple festival. The festival is a convergence of folk games, folk performing arts, culinary culture, etc. of 13 ethnic groups living together on the land of Lao Cai. Each ethnic group brings to the festival typical performing arts performances such as love song, singing through the village, reaching Giay, Khen Mong, Round dance of the Xa Pho people, Xoe Tay, cheo singing, quan ho singing of the Kinh people, bell dancing of the Dao people,...  The Thuong Temple Festival also has the presence of traditional games of 13 ethnic groups creating an extremely exciting atmosphere. Besides popular games in festivals such as cockfighting, swinging, stilt walking, in the Thuong Temple festival there are also many unique folk games such as stick pushing, tug of war, crossbow shooting, tu lu game,... with the participation of young people of the Mong, Dao, Tay, Giay, Kinh,... The cuisine of 13 ethnic groups is also a unique feature of the Thuong Temple festival. Offerings are usually roasted pig, sticky rice, chicken, fruit cakes, betel and areca nuts, wine, etc. Some localities prepare specialties to offer, associated with stories and miracles of the ethnic group. A typical offering is day cake with white buffalo nipples of the Giay people. This type of cake is associated with the legend of the Giay people about how the white buffalo helped the Giay people find water sources during a great drought in history. Many Giay people drank white buffalo milk and were saved. Not simply a dish, but associated with the cake is the ethnic cultural identity, the tradition of remembering the source when drinking water - the common identity of the Vietnamese people. In addition, each ward and each group participating in the festival prepares unique dishes to worship the gods and compete with each other such as giant raspberries shaped like betel leaves and areca nuts, peanut candy weighing up to a hundred pounds, a 3 meter long tube of bamboo rice, a thick cake weighing a hundred pounds, a box of tea weighing a hundred pounds, etc. Most of Lao Cai's specialty dishes are featured in the Thuong Temple festival such as: bamboo-tube rice, colored sticky rice, Chinese sausage, kitchen-smoked pork, dried buffalo meat, etc. In particular, Thang Co dish has been voted as a specialty dish of the entire festival. It is a rustic dish that does not limit the number of people who can eat it, regardless of class or class. Everyone who sits on the tray of thang co is equal. Distance and all boundaries that distinguish titles, rich and poor,... seem to be eliminated. There are only diners there. All diners are treated equally, eat the same dish, drink the same wine, and sit on the same mat.