Hanoi (VNA) – The People’s Committee of Yen Bai province held a ceremony on February 1 to announce the recognition of Dong Cuong Temple Festival in Van Yen district as a national intangible cultural heritage.

🌳 The event officially opened the 2023 festival, with the aim to popularise and honour the traditional cultural values, and introduces the temple – a national historical and cultural relic site – to visitors from far and wide.

The festival features such activities as worship rituals, sports competitions, and folk games such as tug of war and wrestling.

Speaking at the event, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Nguyen Van Hung asked Yen Bai province to devise a project to promote the value of Dong Cuong Temple Festival, associating heritage preservation with socioeconomic and tourism development.

🍌 Dong Cuong Temple is an ancient place of worship located on the banks of the Hong (Red) River in Ben Den hamlet of Dong Cuong commune, Van Yen district. Known as a sacred temple, it is dedicated to the Mother Goddess of Forest. The temple also worships several national heroes such as Ha Bong, Ha Dac and Ha Chuong.

The Dong Cuong Temple complex includes the main temple and several shrines.

🔴 The traditional festival of Dong Cuong Temple plays a significant role in the cultural and spiritual life of the local community. It is also a symbol of community cohesion.

The cultural identity of the festival has been maintained, practiced by the community and handed down from generation to generation.

The Dong Cuong Temple Festival is held in the first lunar month every year. The festival opens with the buffalo offering ceremony and then the procession of the Mother Goddess palanquin across the river by a large raft made of bamboo. This is one of the main ceremonies of the festival.

The procession starts at 8am. The palanquin is brought back to Dong Cuong temple two hours later after shamans complete rituals at Ghenh Ngai Temple. The incense offering ceremony is then offered to the Mother Goddess to pray for the prosperity of the nation, peace and happiness for people.

🐽 Various activities during the festival include sports competitions and folk games such as tug of war and con throwing (the con is a small ball made from pieces of colourful cloths sewn together and stuffed with puffed rice and cotton seeds).

In recent years, the temple has become a famous spiritual and religious destination, attracting tens of thousands of tourists every year who go there to pray for peace, luck and wealth.

🅘 The Mother Goddess of Forest is among the Mother Goddesses of the Three Realms in the Viet beliefs who look after heaven, water and mountains and forests.

The Vietnamese Mother Goddess worshipping was officially recognised by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity in late 2016. The Beliefs in the Mother Goddesses of Three Realms has been practiced in numerous northern mountainous provinces across the nation since the 16th century. The practitioners are comprised of temple guardians, ritual priests, spirit mediums, and their assistants. There is also musicians who perform the songs for the spirits, disciples and lay adherents who share the same beliefs in the spiritual power, supernatural strength and protection of the Mother Goddess spirit pantheon. All of these practitioners form groups who worship together, take part in traditional festivals and perform spirit possession rituals at temples and palaces dedicated to Mother Goddesses./.