UNESCO-recognized Saint Giong festival kicks off.
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The festival is meant to honour the mythical hero Saint Giong, one of the Four Immortals in Vietnam. The Saint Giong Festival includes several symbolic activities, such as Saint Statue bathing, a procession, an incense offering, and elephant and horse transformation.
The procession is the most important activity. According to tradition, people offer bamboo flowers, paper elephants and horses, and other objects related to Saint Giong. The Saint Giong Festival is held in several places in Hanoi. Among these, Soc Temple, where the Saint flew to heaven, and Phu Dong Temple, where the Saint was born, are the two most significant places.
The festival is meant to honour the mythical hero Saint Giong, one of the Four Immortals in Vietnam.
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The Saint Giong Festival has been evaluated by domestic and foreign researchers as the most unique among the 7,000 traditional folk festivals of Vietnam with special cultural and religious values. For this reason, the festival has been recognized by UNESCO as a world intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
Over the years, the festival has had a great influence on the cultural and religious consciousness of the Vietnamese people in general and the people in the Red River delta in particular. Therefore, many relics as well as cultural and religious imprints related to Saint Giong are now seen in some rural areas. For example, there are many ancient architectural works with great value, such as communal houses, temples and shrines in the two communes of Phu Dong and Phu Linh.
For many years the villagers in these two communes have annually organized the festival on January 6 and April 9 according to the lunar calendar to honour their national hero. The French researcher, G. Dumoutier, was so impressed by the value and jubilant atmosphere of the Saint Giong festival that he wrote in his book, “Revue de l’histoire des religions, Paris 1893”: “The Saint Giong festival, the most moving scene that we have ever seen in the north of Vietnam will live forever in the mind of each viewer. In ancient Europe people will feel proud of celebrating a historical event taking place two or three hundred years ago.”
The festival will take place over the course of three days, until the 8th day of the Lunar New Year.
