The Cham ethnic group

Language: Cham language belongs to the Malyo-Polynesian language family.

History: The Cham, who have lived along the coast of central Vietnam for a long time, possess a rich culture profoundly influenced by Indian culture. Until the 17th century, the Cham had successfully maintained their own nation, known as Cham Pa. The local population is composed of two groups: those living in Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan believing in Brahmanism, with a smaller group following Bani (old Islam). Those residing in Chau Doc, Tay Ninh, Dong Nai and House Chi Minh City follow what is referred to as new Islam.

Production activities: The Cham have a tradition of wet rice cultivation. They are experienced in intensive farming and gardening and use irrigation. Apart from wet rice cultivation, the Cham also cultivate an annual crop of rice on dried swidden fields located on the mountainsides. Meanwhile the economy of the Cham living in the South is characterized by fishing, agriculture, textile weaving and small-scale enterprise. Handicrafts are fairly well-developed, especially silkworm textiles and handmade pottery wares that are baked in open kilns. The Cham engaged early on in external trade with other population, as the central coast used to be a busy hub for commercial transactions by famous merchant ships.

Diet: The Cham eat rice cooked in large and small earthen pots. It is often accompanied by fish, meat and bulb vegetables, which are obtained from hunting, gathering, husbandry and agricultural production. Popular drinks are rice and can (pipe) wines. Betel chewing is very important to people’s daily life and traditional rituals.

Clothing: Both men and women wear long one-piece sarongs or cloth wrappers. Men wear shirts fastened down the center with buttons, while women wear long-sleeved pullover blouses. The main color of their daily dress is cotton white. Nowadays, the Cham dress like the Viet in other parts of central Vietnam, with long-sleeved blouses which is only worn by elderly women.

Lifestyle: The majority of Cham live in Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan. They build their houses on the ground, with the rooms being arranged according to a particular order: the sitting room, rooms for the parents, children, and married women, the kitchen and warehouse (including the granary), and the nuptial room of the youngest daughter.

Transportation: Te chief means of transporting goods and produces is the back-basket. The Cham are also expert boat builders, which serves river and sea fishing. They also make heavy-weight buffalo carts for transporting large quantities of goods by land.

Social organization: The Cham family is traditionally matriarchal, though in the past Cham society was a feudal one. In areas where people follow Islam, the family structure may be somewhat patriarchal, although traces of matriarchal still exist in family relationships and ancestors worship. The local population was originally divided into two major family lineages, including Cau and Dua, such as the Nie and Mlo of Ede then became a working class, while the Dua was the class of aristocracy and priests. Under each lineage were the mother-governed sub-lineages, always headed by an aged woman, of the youngest lineage. The lineages can have numerous family branches. The ancient Cham society also set out ranks for different social classes, including that of the ancient Indian society. The social classes lived in different areas, and there were certain barriers between them that prevented cross-marriage, co-existence in the same village, eating from a shared tray of food.

Marriage:  Cham women take the initiative in marriages. The couple lives with the wife’s family, and children are named after the family name of the mother. Wedding gifts are prepared by the bride’s family. Monogamy is a principle of all marriages.

Funerals: Cham traditions have two forms of sending the deceased to the world beyond: burial and cremation. Brahmanists often cremate the deceased according to their religious principles, while other Cham bury their loves ones. Members of the same family lineage are buried in the same place as their mother.

Building a New House: the Cham living in Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan believe that they have to perform certain religious rituals before the building of a new house, particularly praying for the land’s god and asking for his permission to cut down trees in the forest. A ritual is also held to receive the trees when they are transported to the village. A ground-breaking ceremony called phat moc is also held.

Festivals:  Various agricultural rites are performed each year. These include ceremonies for the opening of a canal and embankment, for young rice, for the appearance of paddy ears. The most important event, called Bon Kate, is held by the Cham towers in the tenth moth of the lunar year.

Calendar: The Cham make their agricultural schedule based on the lunar calendar.

Education: The Cham developed their own writing system early. Many literary works written on stelae and ancient manuscripts are still preserved today. The Cham script is based upon Sanskrit, but its use is limited to the upper classes of the aristocracy and priests. Instruction and professional training is essentially transmitted orally and by memorization.

Artistic activities: Among the more striking Cham musical instruments are their drums with leather drum heads, called Paranung, cylindrical drums, and the xaranai clarinet. Cham folk songs and ancient Cham music have influenced considerably the music and folk songs of the Viet people in the central parts of Vietnam, particularly cylindrical drum music, songs relating sad or tragic stories, and traditional songs of Hue. Traditional Cham dances are also found in the important annual event of Ban Kate held by the Cham towers.

Games: Children are font of games such as kite flying, mock combats, flag seizing, hide and seek, etc.

Read Full story

Dao ethnic group

Language: The Dao language belongs to the language family of Hmong-Dao.

History: Dao people originally came from China, immigrating between the 12th or 13th century and the early 20th century. They claim themselves descendants of Ban House (Ban vuong), a famous and holy legendary personality.

 

Production activities:  Dao communities cultivate swidden fields, rocky hollows, and wet -rice paddies. These cultivation activities play a dominant role among different groups and areas. Dao Quan Trang (white trousers) people, Dao Ao Dai (long tunic) and Dao Thanh Y (blue clothes) specialize in wet-rice cultivation. Dao Do (Red Dao) people mostly cultivate in rocky hollows. Other Dao groups are nomadic, others are settled agriculturists. Popular crops are rice, corn and vegetables, such as gourds, pumpkins, and sweet potatoes. They raise buffaloes, cows, pigs, chickens, horses, goats in the middle regions of mountains and highland areas.

Cotton farming and weaving are popular among the Dao groups. They prefer garments dyed indigo. Most village wards have forge kilns serving for farming tools repairing. In some places, people make matchlock and flint-lock rifles and cast-iron bullets. The silversmith trade, handed down through generations, mostly produces necklaces, earrings, rings, silvers chains, and betel nut boxes.

Dao Do (Red Dao) and Dao Tien (Coin or Money) groups are well-known makers of traditional paper. The paper is used when writing history, story and song books, when making petitions, when sending money for funeral services, and on other occasions. Other Dao groups are noted for pressing certain fruits to extract oils which they use to illuminate their lamps. Sugarcane is also refined.

Diet: Dao people have two main meals a day-lunch and dinner. Breakfast is eaten only during the busy harvesting season. The Dao eat mostly rice. However, in some places, people eat corn or soup instead of rice. Popular rice meal is made of wood and bamboo. Mortars are divided into several types, such as pillar-shaped mortars or water sprout mortars, with rice-pounding pestles controlled by hands or feet or by water power. The Dao prefer boiled meat, dried or sour mixed meat and sour bamboo shoot soup. When eating is finished, the Dao have a tradition that they never put down the chopsticks on the bowl because it signifies that there is a death in the family. Dao people usually drink distilled alcohol. In some places, they drink a kind of local wine, having a slightly sour and hot taste. Dao people smoke cigarettes or locally grown tobacco with pipes.

Clothing: In the past, men had long hair with chignon or top tuft, with the rest shaved smoothly. Different groups have different types of head-scarves and ways of wearing them. They wear short or long shirts.

Dao women’s clothes are diverse. They usually wear a long blouse with a dress or trousers. Their clothes are colorfully embroidered. When embroidering, they create designs based on their memories. They embroider on one side of the cloth so that the design is seen on the other side. They have several designs such as the letter “van”, the pine tree, animals, birds, humans, and leaves. Their method of creating batik garment is unique. They put the batik stylus or pen into hot bee’s wax and then draw the design onto the cloth. The portion of the cloth receiving the waxed patterns resists the indigo blue dyeing a cloth of beautiful blue and white patterns.

Housing: Many Dao communities are found about half-way up most of the northern mountainous regions. However, there are several Dao groups that live in valleys, such as the Dao Quan Trang (white trousers), as well as high-mountain dwellers like the Dao Do (Red Dao). Wards and houses are scattered around. There are a variety of architectural styles, as some Dao build their houses directly on the ground while others build them on stilts. Some Dao houses combine both these elements.

Transportation: Dao people in highland areas use black baskets with two straps to transport goods and produce. Those living in the lower elevantor carry goods with a pair of containers suspended on each end of a carrying pole that rests on the shoulders. Cotton bags or net bags or net back-packs are preferred here.

Social organization: Village relationships are essentially regulated by parentage or by being neighbors. The Dao people have many family surnames, the most popular being Ban, Trieu. Each lineage or each branch possesses its own genealogical register and a system of different middle names to distinguish people of different generations.

Birth: Dao women give birth to their children in the seated position, and usually in the bedroom. The newborn is given a bath with hot water. The family of the expectant mother usually hangs green tree branches or banana flowers in front of their door to prevent evil spirit from doing harm to the baby. When the baby is three days old, they celebrate a ritual in honor of the mother.

Marriage: Boy and girl who want to get married must have their dates of birth compared and consult with a diviner who interprets their future in a ritual using chicken legs to see if they are a compatible match. During the course of the marriage ceremony, the Dao have the custom of stretching a piece of string in front of the procession, or exchanging songs between the couple’s families before entering the house. When the bride comes to the groom’s house, she is carried on his back, and she must step over a pair of blessed scissors when crossing the threshold into the husband’s home.

Funerals: A men called thay tao plays an important role in the funeral. When there is a death in the family, the deceased’s children will have to invite him to supervise the rituals and fine a piece of land for the grave. Care is taken so that the corpse will not be laid out at the same time someone in the family has been born. The deceased, who may be wrapped in a mat, is placed in the coffin inside the home. Then it is carried to the grave. The grave is built of earth and lined with stones. In some Dao areas, the body is cremated if the deceased is older than 12 years old of age. Funeral rituals celebrated to ensure that the deceased rests in peace may take place mane years after the burial. The ceremony usually coincides with initiation rites (cap sac) for a Dao man of the family. The celebration takes place over the course of three days. The first day liberates the spirit of the deceased, and is likened to a break from jail. On the second day, the deceased is worshiped in the house. Then, on the last day, the man’s initiation rite takes. At this point, a particular rite returns the deceased’s spirit to its homeland, Duong Chau.

Building a New House: the age of different members of the family must be considered before a new house is built. This is especially true in the case of the age of the head of the household. The Dao ritual for selecting the land for a new house is considered very important. It takes place at night and involves digging a hole as big as a bowl, arranging grains of rice to represent people, cows, buffaloes, money, rice, and property. And this is placed into the bowl. Based on the dreams that follow in the night, the family will know whether it is good to build the house. The next morning, the family inspects the hole to see if the rice remains and if it is possible to build the house.

Beliefs: Dao religious beliefs include traditional practices and agricultural rituals mixed with elements of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Ban vuong is considered the earliest ancestor of the Dao people, so he is worshiped together with the ancestors of the family. In Dao tradition, all grown-up men must pass an initiation rite, cap sac, which expresses the traits of Taoism and the ancient rituals.

Calendar: Dao people use the lunar calendar for all of their activities.

Education: In most wards, people know Han nom (Chinese) characters and the Dao language. Instruction is necessary for reading the ritual texts, folktales and poems.

Artistic activities: The Dao have a rich folk literature and arts with old stories, songs and verse. The Gourd and the Flood Disaster and the Legend of Ban vuong are particularly popular Dao stories. Dancing and music are performed mostly in religious rituals.

Games: Dao people like playing swings, spinning top, and walking on stilts.

Read Full story

The H'mong Ethic

Language: The Hmong speak a language that belongs to the Hmong – Dao language family.

Production activities: Farming is done on terraced or swidden fields where corns, rice, and wheat are planted. The farmers inter-plant other crops together with the main product, including such crops as lotus, potato, vegetable, peanut, sesame, beans, etc. The plough of the Hmong is famous for its good quality as well as its efficiency. Growing flax, poppy (in the past), and fruit trees such as apple, pear, peach, plum, together with weaving flax are distinctive activities of the Hmong. The Hmong raise water buffaloes, cows, pigs, chickens, and horses. The horse is the most effective source of transportation in these mountainous areas, and they are beloved animals of each Hmong family. The Hmong handicraft industry is well-developed with works like embroidery blacksmithing, and the making of horse saddles, wooden furniture, rice paper and silver jewelry. All of the above items are produced according to need. Though the Hmong practice their crafts part-time, their products, such as ploughs, barrels, and wooden furniture are quite famous and well known. Local markets of the Hmong satisfy not only the trading need but also fulfill their other social pursuits as well.

Diet: The Hmong usually eat 2 meals per day, but during harvesting time, they increase to 3 meals per day. There are traditional dishes in a daily meal, like steam corn flour or rice, fried vegetables and soups. The Hmong use wooden spoons to eat the corn flour, and rice on holidays and Festivals. The Hmong like to drink wine made from corn and wine. They smoke tobacco in long pipes. Offering guests pipe which the tobacco is stuffed by the host is an affectionate gesture of hospitality. In the past, smoking opium was fairly popular.

Clothing: Hmong Clothing is rich in color and types. White Hmong women grow flax, and weave it into textiles. They dress in white skirts, and buttoned shirts ornamented with embroidery patterns on the sleeves and back. They shave some of their hair, and wrap a long scarf around their head. Chinese Hmong women wear indigo skirts with a flower patterns embroidery design. They wear quilted tops which split above the under arm. Hmong women wear their hair long, and wrapped in a bunch affixed with a twig. Black Hmong wear skirts made from indigo, ornamented with batik flower-patterns, and buttoned shirts. Green Hmong women wear long wrapped skirts. Those who are married arrange their hair in a chignon or bun on the top of their head, and fastened with a little bone or animal hoof comb. On top of that, they wear a scarf that is tied in the shape of two horns. The main decorations on their dresses are made by quilting and embroidery.

Housing: The Hmong live gathered in villages, each one composed of several dozen households. Their houses are one story, with 3 rooms, 2 wings, and 2 or 3 doors. The family altar is located in the middle room. The houses of well-to-do families may be decorated with wallpaper, have wooden columns placed on pumpkin-shaped stone, tiled roof, and wooden floors. The altar is placed in the middle room. More typical, though, are houses made with bamboo walls and straw roofs. Food-staffs are stored on high shelves. In some places, there are food storage areas right next to residential houses. Cattle barns are paved with planks, and are high and clean. In high mountainous areas, there is often a big space between two houses, and there are 2-meter-tall stone walls to separate them.

Transportation: The Hmong use horses for transportation. They use carrying baskets that have two handles.

Social organization: There are many skin lines in a village, and several prominent lines that tend to play a more decisive role in the village’s social structure. The head of the village takes care of all the disputes, either by fine or by social pressure. Inhabitants of each village voluntarily follow its rule in agricultural production, cattle raising, forest protection, and more over in helping each other. The Hmong pay a great deal of attention to family branches which share the same ancestors. Each of these has some special traits, which are evident in rituals to honor the ancestors and the spirits, and include how many incense bowls there are, where they are placed, and how to pray. There are also differences in the funeral customs of different branches of a family: where the corpse is placed in the house, how to leave the dead outside before burying, where to locate the graves, etc. People in the same kinship line, though do not necessarily always knows each other, and though they belong to different generations, could still recognize each other by these special customs, it’s a taboo for people in the same family line to marry each other, because those kinsmen are very close. The head of a family tree has much authority, is respected and trusted by every one. The Hmong have small patriarchal families. The bride, once she is introduced in the wedding ritual and walks through her husband’s family’s doorway, is said to completely belong to the husband’s family line. Husbands and wives are very affectionate, and are always side by side; they go to the market, work in the terrace, and visit relatives, etc, together.

Beliefs: There are many sacred places in the house that are reserved specifically for worshiping, such as a place for ancestors, for house spirits, door spirit, and kitchen spirit. Those men who are traditional healers or ritual specialists have altars to worship the founders of their profession, there are many rituals duding which the strangers are forbidden to walk into the Hmong’s houses and villages. After worshiping a spirit to pray for someone, a good-luck charm is worn.

Education: The Hmong writing though edited like the national alphabet since the 60s is no longer widely used today.

Festivals: While the Vietnamese are busy to finish those last days of the year, the Hmong have already started those first days of the next year. Counting by the Vietnamese Lunar Calendar, the Hmong’s New Year is in December to coincide with their traditional agricultural calendar, and it is about one month earlier than the Vietnamese Tet. During the New Year’s Festival, villages play shuttlecock, swing, flute, and sing and dance at public areas around the villages. The second biggest holiday is the 5th of May (lunar calendar). Outside these two, depending on location, some places celebrate the 3rd of March, 13th of June, or 7th of July holidays (of the lunar calendar)

Artistic activities: Young people like to play pan-flutes while dancing. Flutes and drums are also used in funerals, when visiting someone, or during worshipping. Flutes made from leaves and whistles are vehicles for young people to express their feelings.

Read Full story

The Thai ethnic group

Language: Thai language belongs to the Tay-Thai group (of the Tai-Kadai language family)

History: The Thai originated from inland Southeast Asia where their ancestors have lived ancient times.

Production activities: Early in their history, the Thai adopted wet rice cultivation, using suitable irrational networks. The work can be summarized in the Thai saying “muong-phat-lai-lin” (which means digging of canals, consolidating of banks, guiding water through obstacles, and fixing water gutters) in the fields. While the Thai once grew only one sticky rice crop a year, nowadays they have converted to two crops of ordinary rice. They also cultivate swidden fields, where they grow rice, corn, and subsidiary crops, especially cotton, indigo and mulberry for cloth weaving.

Diet: Today, ordinary rice has become the main food of the Thai, while sticky rice is still being eaten traditionally. Sticky rice is steeped in water, put in a steaming pot and put on a fire and cooked. A meal can not go without ground chili mixed with salt and accompanied by mini, coriander, leaves and onion. Boiled chicken liver, fish gut, and smoked fish called cheo could be well be added to the meal. Ruminate meat should be accompanied by sauce taken from the internal organs (nam pia). Raw fish should be either cooked into salad (nom) or meat-in-sauce (nhung), or sauced. Cooked food processing ranges from roasting, steaming and drying to condensing, frying, and boiling. The Thai enjoy foods with more hot, salty, acrid and buttery tastes, in contrast to those that have sweet, rich and strong tastes. They smoke with bamboo pipes, lighted by dried bamboo pieces. Before smoking, the Thai maintain their custom of hospitality by inviting others to join in, much as they would do before a meal.

Clothing: Thai women are beautifully adorned in short and colorful blouses, accented down the front with lines of silver buttons in the shapes of butterflies, spiders and cicadas. Their blouses fit beautifully with their tube-shaped black skirts. The bell is a green colored silk band. They wear a key chain round their waists. On Festivals occasions, Thai women can wear extra black dress, with an underarm seam or like a pullover which has an open collar, thus revealing the silver buttons inside. The black dresses are nipped at the waist; include large shoulders and decorative pieces of cloth that are attached to the underarms or to the front of the shoulders in a manner similar to the White Thai. Black Thai women wear the famous pieu shawl with colorful embroidery. Thai men wear shorts with a belt; a shirt with an open collar and two pockets on either side. White Thai men have an additional upper pocket on the left and their collar is fastened with a cloth band. The popular color of all clothes is black, pale red, stripped or white colored.

On Festivals people wears long black dresses, with split underarm seams and an internal white blouse. A head turban is worn as a headdress, around the carrier’s forehead; at times, pack horses are used. Along large rivers, the Thai are famous for transporting goods and people using swallow-tailed boats.

Social organization: The original social structure is called ban muong, also known as the phia tao regime. The Thai lineage is called Dam. Each person has three key lineal relationships: Ai Noong (every born from a common fourth-generation ancestor); Lung Tay (every male member of the wife’s family throughout generations); and Nhinh Xao (every male member of the son-in-laws)

Marriage: In the past, the Thai respected the selling and buying of marriage and the son-in-law’s staying with the girl’s family. To marry a husband, the girl’s family needs to take two basic steps:

Up marriage (dong khun) – means the introduction and bringing of the son-in-law to live with the girl’s family, which is a step to test his personality and hard work. The Black Thai women generally adopt the custom of wearing their hair in as bun or chignon immediately after this first wedding ceremony. The son-in-law will stay at his wife’s home for 8 to 12 years.

Down marriage (dong long) – the bringing of the couple and their family.

Birth: Women give birth in the seated position. The placenta is put into a bamboo cylinder and hung on a branch in the forest. The mother is warmed by fire, fed rice using a bamboo tube, and must abstain from certain foods for a month. The bamboo tubes are hung on a tree branch. There are rituals to educate the child in gender-specific work and a Lung Tay is invited to the house to name the baby.

Funerals: Basically, there are two steps in a funeral:

- Pong: the bringing of offerings o the deceased and bringing the deceased to the forest for burial (White Thai)

- Xong: Calling the spirit to come back and live in the section of the house reserved for the worshipping of ancestors.

New House: Showing the host his new house, the Lung Ta kindles a new fire. In celebrating a new house, people carry out spiritual rites on the spot, reading spiritual texts to drive away bad lucks and to bring good lucks, and to worship ancestors.

Festivals:  The Black Thai worship their ancestors on the 7th and 8th month of the Lunar Year. The White Thai also celebrate the New Year according to the lunar calendar. Villagers also worship the gods of land, mountain, water and the soul of the central post of the village.

Calendar: The Thai calendar follows the ancient horoscope or cosmology (which contains 12 key animals) like the lunar calendar. But the Black Thai’s calendar has a time difference of six months.

Education: The Thai have their own Sanskirt-style writing system. Their language is taught orally. The Thai have many ancient written works on their history, traditions, customary laws, and literature.

Artistic activities: The Thai perform their xoe dance and play many kinds of flutes. They sing out verses and vivid alternate songs.

Entertainment: Thai popular games include con throwing, tug-of-war, horse racing, boat cruising, archery, xoe dance, spinning top, and mak le balls. There are many other folk games for kids.

Read Full story

Nung Ethnic Group

Language: The Nung language belongs to the Tay-Thai language group (Tai-Kadai language family), and is in the same group with the Tay, Thai, and Choang of China.

History: The majority of the Nung immigrated to Vietnam two or three centuries ago from Quang Tay, China.

Nung Ethnic Group - Vietnam ethnic groups

Nung Ethnic Group - Vietnam ethnic groups

Production activities

The Nung are very good at cultivating fields. However, because they live on places where wet fields can not be exploited, they have to work on terraced fields instead. Beside corn and rice, the Nung also plant some other root vegetables, calabashes, and green vegetables.

The Nung know how to make many handicraft products from weaving, metal working, poonah-paper making, and tile making. Though many of those handicrafts are family traditions, they are still secondary professions, and done during spare time when there is a break from farming. Moreover, handicraft products serve mainly family needs. Today, some of them are diminishing (weaving), and some are preserved and highly developed (metal working). In Phuc Xen village (Quang Hoa, Cao Bang), many families practice blacksmithing, and there is at least one person in each family knows how to hammer well.

Nung makets are highly developed. They go to fairs to trade, sell, and buy goods. Young people, especially the Nung Phan Slinh group, like to go to fairs and sing love duets.

Diet: In many regions, the Nung eat mainly corn. Corn is ground into flour to make thick soup. Foods are fried, stir-fried, or well-cooked, but seldom boiled. Many people don’t eat water buffalo, beef, or dog meat.

Clothing: The Nung’s traditional clothes are fairly simple, and are often made from rough, handmade, self-dyed fabrics, and have almost no embroidery or decorations. Men wear shirts with standing collars, which have cloth buttons. Women wear long shirts with 5 panels, buttoned up under the right arm.

Housing: the Nung live in the northeast of the country, and mix in together with the Tay. They stay mostly in stilt houses. Some live in earthen houses built with paper or brick walls. In the past, on the border, there were houses built like a fort with blockhouses and loopholes to prevent and defend robbers.

Transportation: Traditional ways of transportation are carrying goods in the arms, on the shoulders, and using shoulder poles. In some places today, the Nung use carriages with ties or runners, which are pulled by animals as a mean of transportation.

Social organization: Before August Revolution, Nung society had developed as much as the Tay’s. Fields and terraces had become private possessions, and thus could be transferred or sold. Two social classes were formed: landlords and tenants.

Marriage: Young Nung men and women are free to date and to love. While dating, they often give gifts to each other. A young man may give his girl a shoulder pole, a basket for storing cotton (hap li), a basket for storing thread (com lot). In return, a girl may give her young man a shirt and an embroidered bag. It is the parents, however, who decide if a couple can marry each other. They need to see if the two families are of the same social rank, and if the fates of the two children match together. The bride’s family often demands gifts or meat, rice, wine, and some money. The more the gifts are, the higher the girl’s value is said to be. Marriage has to go through many steps, and the most important one is the ceremony to bring the bride to the groom’s family. After the wedding, the wife still stays with her own family until she is about to give birth, then she will move to her husband’s house.

Funerals: There are many rituals with the main goal: to bring the dead person’s spirit to the next world.

New house: Building a new house is one of the Nung’s most important tasks. Therefore, when it happens, the Nung pay close attention in choosing the land, the direction, the day to move in. they do all of these steps carefully in hopes that in the new house, they will have a prosperous life.

Beliefs: The Nung mainly worship their ancestors. The altar is put in the house, and is nicely decorated. In the center of the altar is a monument (phung slan) written in Chinese that records the origin of a family. In addition, the Nung also worship theland God, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, Midwife, door’s ghost (phi hang chan), etc. They hold worshipping rituals when there is natural disaster, or disease plague. In contrast to the Tay, the Nung celebrate the birthday, not the anniversary of an individual’s death.

Festivals: The Nung celebrate lunar New Year like the Vietnamese and the Tay.

Calendar: The Nung use the lunar calendar.

Education: The Nung use a script based on Chinese characters, and read in Nung and Tay-Nung language, which is based on the Latin script.

Artistic activities: Sli is love duet for young men and women to sing in groups. Often, two boys sing with two girls. They sing sli together on holidays and festival occasions, at a fair, or even on trains, cars.

Entertainment: For Festivals and holidays, there are games such as throwing shuttlecock, badminton, spinning top, and tug of war, etc.

Read Full story