The village’s traditional band came to play religious music in the evening. Called Bat Am, or the Eight Sounds, its instruments derived from the eight natural elements that produced sound: calabash, earthenware, leather, wood, stone, metal, silk and bamboo. The band was composed of amateur musicians who performed at religious ceremonies in the Communal Hall and were also available to play at private functions. The musicians sat on decorated mats in front of the altar. They played traditional pieces devoted to the spirits of departed ancestors. Family and guests sat around to listen. Villagers crowded into the inner courtyard. The altar at night was an impressive sight. The brass, gold and lacquer all glowed in the light of dozens of candles and gave to the room a strange brightness. The sweet scent of aloes wood burning in the urns mingled with the fragrance of incense sticks. The sixth lunar month was the height of summer, on the eighteenth day the moon rose a bit late, but was still big and bright. I can recall with what enjoyment we listened to the rhythmic and melodious music, as incense floated in the air and moonlight shone over our altar house. It was a strange tradition that the only reward received by those musicians was a good meal. Their talents earned them no social consideration, only derisive comments from villagers, as shown in this proverb: “Puffing your cheeks and scratching your lips to get a mouthful of glutinous rice!”
The next morning, people were up early. There was great excitement among the children, for pigs were going to be killed. The animals made a deafening noise as young village guards carried them from the sty to the steps of the pond where their throats were cut and they bled to death. Steaming hot water in large cauldrons was poured on to shave off their outer skin and hair. A crowd of onlookers, mostly children, stood by and once we were given an on-the-spot anatomy lesson by my grandfather. He taught us the name and function of different organs inside the pig, recalling that in his time, that was the way students learned how organs in the human body looked. The guards did their job expertly and swiftly; in no time, the pigs had their dark skin removed and were turned into white carcasses. Then, they were opened up, cleaned and soon it was over. The carcasses, offal and blood were brought into the kitchen, the rubbish thrown into the pond for the fish and the steps swept clean.
Three services were held that day, corresponding to the three daily meals. The morning service consisted of cups of perfumed tea, which my grandfather prepared and presented to the altar on a carved tray inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The main ceremony took place at about ten o’clock in the morning. The altar full of food offerings looked like a banquet table. Indeed, the fare served was that of a traditional banquet. It started with cups of rice brandy and appetizers consisting of boiled pork tripes, chicken giblets and a specialty of northern Vietnamese cuisine, duck blood pudding. The brandy served on our altar differed from the usual colorless brandy. It was made from black rice which gave it a reddish color, and had been buried for many years to mature. Then came a variety of soups: swallow’s nest soup, shark fin soup, and a soup made of a seafood called by the imaginative name of dragon’s beard. Next came some special dishes: sautéed abalone, pork rind, to be savored with the brandy. Rice followed, served with meat pies, boiled pork, chicken and sautéed vegetables. Dessert included lotus seeds cooked in syrup, a custard-like sweet made of soya bean and sugar, and various fruits. When everything had been displayed on the altar, candles were lit, incense sticks and aloe wood were burned, and the service commenced. Witnessed by the rest of the family, my grandfather walked to the altar, sounded the drum and the gong, and knelt down. It took him a long time to say-in a low voice not audible to us-the prayers and consecrated formulas inviting our ancestor to accept the offerings. After a while, grandfather got up and poured rice brandy into the cups on the altar. By that gesture, he expressed his belief that the offerings had been accepted and the banquet in the realm of the spirits had started. Then, he bowed and knelt again several times. After he had finished, family members took turns to come before the altar. Being of the youngest generation, I was nearly last. Eagle-eyed, my grandmother watched all of us youngsters to see whether we knew how to kneel and bow in good style. She never liked my style. “Next time, watch your grandfather again and see how he does it,” she told me. A few years earlier, the main ceremony was conducted according to a more formal ritual. The entire household performed the rites before the altar at the same time. In the first rank was my great-grandmother, behind her my grandparents, great-uncle and great-aunt, then down the generations until us great-grand-nephews and nieces and lastly the other members of the household. One rank followed another in a row extending from inside the altar house to the verandah outside and down the hallway. The scene was one of great solemnity. But grandfather had decided to simplify the protocol.
After our immediate family had finished, the ceremony was opened to other relatives and guests. The band returned. Meeting at the gate house, the musicians formed into two lines. Playing music, they slowly marched towards the new house, entered it by the two side doors, went through its lounge and out into the hallway, then into the altar house. In front of the altar, the lines joined together, band members bowed and played a few pieces before separating again to settle on both sides of the altar. There, they rested and only struck up a tune for important guests, such as the prefect of Thanh Oai or village delegations.
Visitors brought offerings of incense sticks, votive papers, betel leaves, areca nuts, flowers, fruit and various kinds of food. There was an abundance of lichee and jack fruit, which grew well in our region. Flowers were mostly white lilies and white or pink lotus, the lotus bunches usually coming with lotus pods full of green seeds, which were delicious to eat. There were impressive-looking food offerings made by the association of grandfather’s students, the village council, high officials and wealthy guests. For instance, a suckling pig roasted to a beautiful dark red color and placed on a yellow brass tray; a boiled head of a pig sitting on a bed of cream-colored glutinous rice in a red-lacquered wooden tray; boiled capons richly decorated with flowers; tray after tray of cooked glutinous rice, some with white coconut meat, others with yellow beans, still others with monordica, a fruit which gave to the rice an orange color. The colors of the offerings, the shining brass instruments, the red and gold furniture, all combined to give the altar room a festive look. In fact, the whole atmosphere at the anniversary was festive. The occasion was not a sad one. My great-grandfather died a long time ago, in 1909. Only my great-grandmother cried a little.
After his offerings were brought in and incense sticks were lit, a guest was invited to proceed to the altar. As he knelt and bowed to our ancestor, a member of our family, standing next to the altar, knelt and bowed back to him. That was the rite of dap le, or reciprocation. The guest not being a member of our family, his paying respects to our ancestor was gratefully acknowledged but must be returned. Therefore, my father or one of his brothers had to stand ready near the altar. It was an established ritual that the guest would protest and beg our family not to reciprocate, while my father would insist in doing so. Their exchange, done in good spirit and usually with a lot of banter, went on until the guest had to accept because other people had arrived and were waiting to perform the ceremony. But as my father had knelt and bowed to him, the guest must return the compliment; so after completing his rites to the altar, the guest turned to face my father, then knelt and bowed to him. Whereupon my father, this time the recipient of the guest’s gesture, had to reciprocate once again. Once more, he knelt and bowed to the guest and there ended the rite of reciprocation.
A more delicate situation developed when a visitor of my grandfather’s rank and age group presented himself. As the honored guest stepped out in front of the altar, the band started playing religious music. But, seeing that my grandfather had placed himself next to the altar to reciprocate, the guest objected, the band stopped and negotiations began. In this case, however, it behooved the guest to be adamant, not only out of consideration for my grandfather’s position, but also because a
s an old man, it would be too much for him to kneel and bow repeatedly to guests. Finally, a compromise was reached, according to which my grandfather would stand on one side of the altar and limit himself to bowing, while on the other side his eldest son, my father, would perform the full rite by kneeling and bowing to the honored guest.
Following the ceremony, it was customary for all relatives and guests to stay for the midday meal. Food was served in round brass trays placed on wooden platforms or at tables for guests of high status. Each tray provided for four or six persons; it should be an even number because odd ones were considered unlucky. Strict rules of precedence were observed and those sharing a tray must be of similar rank. To place someone at the wrong place would cause loss of face and resentment, which could last a long time. The number of dishes, the parts of pig or fowl served also depended on the guests’ status. As the midday meal progressed and rice brandy was consumed, our ancestral home resounded with cheerful talk and laughter. The anniversary became an occasion to be enjoyed, by hosts and guests alike. As a family, we were gratified by the large attendance, for it was a measure of our standing within the community.
My grandmother went from one group to another to express thanks and to invite people to eat:
“Your presence at the main anniversary of our family is much appreciated,” she said. “I beg you to feel at home and share this ordinary meal with us.”
“We are privileged to be here,” the oldest member of the group responded. “Please do not worry about us and consider us as members of the family.”
“But you are not eating anything! And we have been indeed failing in our hospitality,” thus saying, grandmother would add another dish to the tray or pour more rice brandy into the cups. There would be a chorus of protest: “We have had far too much to eat and drink!”
Then, grandmother moved to the next group. Vietnamese were by nature shy and guests needed to be constantly invited to eat by the hosts. Country people, in particular, would automatically refuse anything offered the first time and would only accept after having been pressed several times to do so. It was a kind of social game that people played. My grandmother pushed it to the limit. She was determined that guests at our house consumed plenty of food. She pressed on and on even when, I suspected, the guests already had had enough. But no one bore any grudge against her. On the contrary, she was widely praised for being warm-hearted and generous. It may happen that there were not enough guests for a tray; instead of making them wait, someone from our family had to sit in to make up the number. He would not eat, only be present there. That duty often fell to my father and his brothers. On the anniversary day, they may have taken part in several meals, without in fact having eaten. As the guests departed, each of them took home a gift pack comprising a plate of meat, a plate of glutinous rice and some fruits.
Among village officials, the lowest in rank was the crier, whose role was to make public announcements. He did so in the evening before people retired to sleep. Going from one hamlet to another and beating on a hollow block of wood to attract the villagers’ attention, he shouted in a loud voice the announcements. There was only one crier in each village and he being of the lowest rank could not share a meal with anyone. So, at public festivals as well as private functions, he sat alone on a mat in front of a tray of food, a lonely figure amid the noise made by others and the fellowship enjoyed by them. King Le Thanh Ton, who ruled in the second half of the fifteenth century and was one of our greatest kings, was also a poet. He expressed his sympathy for the humble village crier in a poem:
I, a village crier, endowed with a big voice and a long breath,
When people heard me, they knew that it was not a matter to be trifled with.
My woodblock resounded to the four corners,
Issuing orders to young and old.
Making announcements for all to hear...
At festivals, I sat at my leisure, a whole mat for myself.
Everyone could see that the poem was not simply about a crier, it also applied to a king. For there was something in common between the highest and lowest official in our land. Neither could share, in public, a meal with anyone else.
Then, there were the beggars who, after the meal was finished and the guests had gone, were admitted into our compound and given some decent food.
Elders recalled that, when my grandfather was a mandarin, the anniversary was celebrated on a much grander scale. Colleagues of his, civil servants working under him and a lot of other guests attended. In addition to pigs, an ox was killed. A detachment of rifle soldiers was posted to guard the village. My grandfather took the precaution of sending the soldiers to Kim Bai for the anniversary following an incident in 1934, which my mother recalled vividly. An award had been given by the court to my great-grandparents, posthumously to my great-grandfather, in person to my great-grandmother who was then eighty-one. Crowds came from all over the canton and places further away to watch the arrival of the court representatives. On that occasion, Kim Bai’s gates were opened to all corners. Mandarins in ceremonial robes conducted the ceremony of bestowing the awards. Their wives, my mother noticed, wore a profusion of gold jewelry. The official guests stayed in our ancestral home. A banquet was held in the evening, amid great rejoicing. In the middle of the night however, my mother woke up to the cries of “Emergency! Emergency!” Quickly, she picked me up-I was then a boy of four and still sleeping with her-and went out into the inner courtyard. There was great commotion. Menfolk were running to the walls of the compound, their swords drawn. Flames shot up in the sky, quite close, although they did not seem to come from within our compound. From outside came the clamor of a crowd. Voices were shouting: “The mandarin’s house is on fire. Everyone must go in and help fight it!” Those voices did not belong to people in our village, my mother noticed, and she realized that bandits had set fire to a nearby cottage and raised the alarm that our home was burning. They hoped to move in along with other villagers, under the pretext of fighting the fire. Once in, they could lay hands on our valuables. But what they were after in the first place, my mother believed, was the gold and jewelry belonging to our guests. The bandits pushed and smashed against the iron doors of the gate house which, fortunately, held firm. “Bring the ladder here!” a voice was heard. They were trying to scale the walls.
From inside the compound, our people shouted: “There is no fire here! Those climbing in would be cut down! Villagers of Kim Bai, don’t fall in with the bandits’ ploy!” The women and children gathered in the altar house. Trembling with fear, they all prayed to Lord Buddha and to our ancestors for protection. Men in our household had put tables against the walls and jumped on top of them. Holding big torches to light the area and brandishing their swords and knives, they kept warning the crowd outside: “Don’t climb in or you will be cut down! There is no fire here!” For a while there was a stalemate; then a bullhorn was heard sounding the alarm, followed by other bullhorns. Village guards were coming! People would wake up in fear of impending dangers at the staccato calls of bullhorns in the night, my mother said, but these were now music to her ears. They announced that, at last, rescue was on the way. In no time, the bandits vanished, the villagers dispersed and calm was restored. But the ladies could not go back to sleep. Spending the rest of the night drinking tea and chewing betel, they told each other horror stories of bandits.
After that incident, my grandfather also bought some guns and hired an ex-soldier to guard our ancestral home. But, as Vietnam was a French protectorate, no Vietnamese was allowed to own rifles which could be turned against colonial troops. Our family could only get shotguns. As it turned out, the guns were never used against bandits, only to shoot doves, wild ducks and geese.
The third service of the anniversary day was held before the evening meal. The next day, the last ceremony took place, after which the votive papers were taken from the altar to the big urns in the front yard and burned. The papers came in two colors, gold and silver. Once burned, so our peopl
e believed, they would become gold and silver in the realm of the spirits, ready for our ancestor to spend. A quick meal was served, then the visitors left. As my peers said goodbye and merrily jumped on their bicycles to return to the city, I felt miserably left out. Once again, I was seized with the depressing thought of being stuck in the country while exciting events passed me by. School would not resume for another two months. Until then, I would have to stay in the village. The compound looked deserted.
A Vietnamese Family Chronicle Page 12