Unique flower Tet of Cong ethnic minority

Tuesday, 09/02/2016 11:12
According to the elders of Cong ethnic minority, if a flower festival for the New Year (Tet) hasn’t been organized, no one is allowed to cut trees to create a farm, make clothing, play or sing.

Cong ethnic minority picking up cockscomb flowers (Photo: dantocviet.vn) 

The Cong ethnic minority now has about 1,000 people, living in four villages scattered in the districts of Dien Bien, Muong Nhe and Nam Po of Dien Bien province. According to the conception of the Cong ethnic minority, in lunar September, after the harvest ends, each family will enjoy Tet under their conditions and they don’t have a specific day in the year. Previously, Tet usually takes place over from three to four days but it is now shortened.

From early morning, people in the hamlet eagerly prepare for their own Tet. Each family appoints a person to go to the rice fields to pick cockscomb flowers to make offerings, wreaths for women and children. This is a vital ritual in these days because they think that women and children are vulnerable people, who should use the sacred flowers to keep them from getting sick and bad luck. 

At a shaman’s home, one solemn ceremony takes place in the last afternoon of the year with the ritual of raising spirits of grandparents and ancestors to invite them to enjoy Tet. Offerings include one neohouzeaua tree, which symbolizes a bridge connecting the two worlds of yin and yang. The tree is decorated with red and gold cockscomb flowers, which is considered the way for ancestral spirits to find the place of worship. Some other offerings such as a bamboo section, stones to make a tripod, a bowl of rice, a silver ring, chicken eggs and candles. A chicken and a 70kg-pig are slaughtered near the altar to worship the ancestors. This is called uncooked worship. 

Following is cooked worship with taro, all boiled parts of the pig, fish soup cooked in a bamboo tube, “Can” wine, onion, garlic and a tuft of straw. The offerings are contributed by families in the hamlet. The shaman worships for the whole hamlet to ask the God to allow the organization of flower Tet, dancing and praying for descendants to be healthy; for the fields to be full of rice; for the forests to be full of cattle, pigs and chickens; and for ghosts in the forest to vanish and not fly into houses to harm the local people.

While the shaman organizes the worship ceremony at the end of the year, families in the hamlet boisterously kill pigs and chickens, cooking steamed glutinous rice and making cakes. In the place of worship of families, owners of families also organize worship ceremonies; reporting the results of the previous year, praying for luck in the New Year and inviting the ancestors to enjoy Tet. That evening, the whole hamlet brings food to the shaman to eat with an atmosphere of solidarity. 

In the first day of the New Year, the whole hamlet gathers on a large yard among the hamlet to dance and play folk games.

In the most solemn place, the shaman and the elders in the hamlet sit beside a tray of offerings, representing the ancestors, drink alcohol and dance with people in the village. Then all the families contribute food to enjoy throughout the day. 

The flower Tet is a unique traditional festival of the Cong ethnic minority. For a long time, it has been considered an indispensable spiritual demand on the occasion of Tet for this ethnic minority./.

BTA

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