Modernity and Re-enchantment: Religion in Post-revolutionary Vietnam 9789812304568

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Modernity and Re-enchantment

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). ISEAS Publishing, an established academic press, has issued almost 2,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publishing works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world. The Vietnam Update is a series of annual conferences that focus on recent economic, political and social conditions in Vietnam and provide in-depth analysis on a theme of particular relevance to Vietnam’s socioeconomic development. The first Vietnam Update was held at the Australian National University in 1990. In recent years, the series has been organized in conjunction with ISEAS. The Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS) is Australia’s pre-eminent centre for research and postgraduate training on the Asia-Pacific region. Priority areas of the School are Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific. There are nine major disciplines represented in the School: Anthropology, Archaeology, Economics, History, Human Geography, International Relations, Linguistics, Political Science and Strategic & Defence Studies. One of the four original research schools that formed The Australian National University when it was established in 1946, RSPAS has maintained a strong record of research excellence.

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Vietnam Update Series

Modernity and Re-enchantment

Religion in Post-revolutionary Vietnam

edited by

Philip Taylor

Institute of Southest Asian Studies Singapore

First published in Singapore in 2007 by ISEAS Publishing Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Pasir Panjang Singapore 119614 Internet e-mail: [email protected] World Wide Web: http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. © 2007 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the editor and contributors and their interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the Insititute or its supporters. ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Vietnam Update Conference (2005: Canberra, Australia). Modernity and re-enchantment: religion in post-revolutionary Vietnam / edited by Philip Taylor. 1. Vietnam—Religion—Congresses. 2. Vietnam—Religious life and customs—Congresses. I. Taylor, Philip, 1962II. Title III. Title: Religion in post-revolutionary Vietnam DS559.912 V66 2005 2007 ISBN 978-981-230-438-4 (soft cover) ISBN 978-981-230-440-7 (hard cover) ISBN 978-981-230-456-8 (PDF) Cover photograph by Philip Taylor: Khmer Buddhist monk in Tra Vinh blessing a new minibus. Typeset by International Typesetters Pte Ltd Printed in Singapore by Utopia Press Pte Ltd

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Contents

List of Figures

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Preface

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1. Modernity and Re-enchantment in Post-revolutionary Vietnam Philip Taylor

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2. Returning Home: Ancestor Veneration and the Nationalism of Đổi Mới Vietnam Kate Jellema

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3. Ritual Revitalization and Nativist Ideology in Hanoi Horim Choi

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4. Feasting with the Living and the Dead: Food and Eating in Ancestor Worship Rituals in Hội An Nir Avieli

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5. Unjust-Death Deification and Burnt Offering: Towards an Integrative View of Popular Religion in Contemporary Southern Vietnam Ðỗ Thiện

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6. Spirited Modernities: Mediumship and Ritual Performativity in Late Socialist Vietnam Kirsten W. Endres

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Contents

7. Empowerment and Innovation among Saint Trần’s Female Mediums Phạm Quỳnh Phương

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8. “Buddhism for This World”: The Buddhist Revival in Vietnam, 1920 to 1951, and Its Legacy Elise Anne DeVido

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9. The 2005 Pilgrimage and Return to Vietnam of Exiled Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh John Chapman

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10. Nationalism, Globalism and the Re-establishment of the Trúc Lâm Thiền Buddhist Sect in Northern Vietnam Alexander Soucy

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11. Miracles and Myths: Vietnam Seen through Its Catholic History Jacob Ramsay

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12. Strangers on the Road: Foreign Religious Organizations and Development in Vietnam Andrew Wells-Dang

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Bibliography

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Index

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About the Contributors

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Publications in the Vietnam Update Series

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List of Figures

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

An Elder Calls the Royal Spirits Back to Ðô Temple Many Centuries after their Reign, the Lý Kings use Natural Phenomena to Signal their Return to the Red River Delta, as shown in this photo available for sale at Ðô Temple. In 2001, Phạm Thế Duyệt, Chairman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, Lights Incense to “Solemnly Remember” the Lý Kings Korean-born Lý Xương Căn “Returned” to Vietnam after Centuries of Separation.

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3.1 3.2 3.3

Local Elites in Front of Đình Đại Yên. Communal Ritual for the Tutelary Goddess, Đại Yên. Inter-village Pilgrimage Undertaken by Representatives of the Thirteen Villages (Thập Tam Trại), Hanoi.

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4.1 4.2

Setting the Food in front of the Ancestral Altar, Hội An Coldcuts, Steamed Chicken, Lotus Stem Salad and Pork Roasted in Sesame. Older Women at an Ancestral Commemoration Feast, Hội An.

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Mediums Presenting Offerings at Phủ Giày Festival, March 2006. A Male Master Embodies the Sixth Lady (Chầu Lục). The Little Princess Throws Money. Offerings Received During a Lên Ðồng Ritual.

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4.3 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

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List of Figures

6.5

Cartoon by Nhất Lang in Phong Hoa, 25 August 1933, entitled “A Good Idea for the Tennis Courts Not to be Left Deserted”.

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7.1 7.2

A Young Medium in the Role of Saint Trần, Hanoi. Female Medium in Possession Ritual, Hưng Yên Province.

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8.1

Thiện Chiếu (1898–1974), Buddhist Reformer and Political Revolutionary. Trí Hải (1906–1979), Leader of the Buddhist Revival in the North. Dr Lê Đình Thám (1897–1969), Buddhist Revival Leader in the Centre. Former Prime Minister Võ Văn Kiệt at Bodhi Tree-planting Ceremony for the New Vietnam Buddhist University, July 2006.

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8.2 8.3 8.4

9.1

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Thích Nhất Hạnh Leading the Alms Round in Huế.

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10.1 Zen Meditation at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự Pagoda. 10.2 Zen Meditation Enforcer at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự Pagoda.

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11.1 Photograph Sold by Street Vendors of the Tear-stained Face of the Statute of Mary. 11.2 Prayers at the Plinth of the Đức Mẹ Statue, Ho Chi Minh City. 11.3 Cartoon in Tuổi Trẻ (30 October 2005) on the Perils of Rumours and Blind Belief.

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Preface

Religion in Vietnam came under intense scrutiny in 2005. That year, the U.S. State Department included Vietnam for the second successive year on a list of countries allegedly in grave violation of the right to freely observe religion. Human rights organizations, dissident clergy, exiled groups and international media outlets reported a serious deterioration in the freedom to worship and the harassment and imprisonment of religious believers — reports strenuously rejected in Vietnam’s state-controlled media. In the same year, the famed peace activist and Buddhist meditation master Thích Nhất Hạnh also made headlines as he returned home from a period of exile that had lasted nearly four decades for an extended pilgrimage and programme of Dharma talks and meditation sessions. Making the news too were the ordinations of fifty-seven new Catholic priests overseen by the Vatican’s envoy. Yet away from the media spotlight, although well known to the millions of Vietnamese people who were making it happen, a nationwide upsurge in religious activities of great intensity and variety was also taking place. For several years, indeed, this phenomenon had been documented by foreign and domestic scholars interested in why it was happening, its political ramifications and, more generally, its implications for understanding the place of religion in the modern world. In August 2005 two international workshops on religion in Vietnam were held at the Australian National University. The first was “Religion in Contemporary Vietnam”, on 10 August, which was followed on 11–12 August by the 2005 Vietnam Update, “Not by Rice Alone: Making Sense of Spirituality in Reform-era Vietnam”. These workshops brought together seventeen researchers from eleven countries to present the results of their

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ethnographic, historical and cultural research on religion in Vietnam. Testament to the high level of international interest in their topic, the workshops were attended by representatives from the U.S. diplomatic mission and European Union in Vietnam as well as development agency and NGO workers, academics, religious practitioners, Australian and Vietnamese government officials, journalists and members of the overseas Vietnamese community. However, audience members were to hear little to confirm the then dominant international discourse on religion in Vietnam as a story of egregious human rights violations and of resistance to a repressive state. Instead, the presentations attested to the extraordinary diversity and vitality of religious activities in Vietnam, with papers on mediumship, pilgrimages, spirit cults, ancestor worship, sacrifices, transnational Buddhism and Christianity, ethnic minority religions, meditation, sorcery, faith healing and ghost movies. Evidence of the creative and distinctive features of Vietnamese religion was interwoven with analysis into the wellsprings of this practice as a search for meaning, empowerment, prosperity, justice, identity and enlightenment. One theme threading though the papers was that we cannot look to the Vietnamese state as the principal protagonist in the story of religion in contemporary Vietnam, even though official approaches to religion were critically assessed as both influential and evolving. Another theme in the presentations was the intrinsic relationship between the religious upsurge underway in Vietnam and the dramatic social and cultural changes that are transforming this country. It is a tribute to the sponsors of the two workshops that they agreed to support the public dissemination and scrutiny of research findings on a topic as politically sensitive and seemingly esoteric as Vietnamese religion. The Vietnam Update series is devoted each year to a different theme of contemporary relevance to Vietnam’s development. The sponsors allowed the conference organizers the leeway to propose topics guided by their research experience and knowledge of the country. The Vietnam Update in 2005 was, as in past years, generously supported by AusAID, Australia’s official development agency; the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University; and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore. The “Religion in Contemporary Vietnam” workshop was financially supported by a cross-sectoral linkage grant from the International Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies (ICEAPS), based at the Australian National University.

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Assisting me in organizing the 2005 Vietnam Update was a team of academics with impressive experience in researching Vietnam: David Koh and Russell Heng of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore and David Marr and Ben Kerkvliet of the Australian National University. They were involved in financial arrangements, selecting papers, chairing sessions and acting as discussants on the papers. The organizing committee also included experienced veterans from many an Update: Beverly Fraser, Oanh Collins, Phạm Thu Thủy and Lynne Payne. Thái Duy Bảo, Stan Tan and Yoon-Ji Kim provided invaluable logistical assistance. Lê Hồng Lý, Đào Thê Đức and Ngộ Thị Thanh Tâm made important contributions to the Update as presenters and discussants. Ben Kerkvliet contributed to the funding proposal to ICEAPS for the Religion in Contemporary Vietnam workshop and Fay Castles, Fritha Jones, Anne Buller and Ben Cauchi of RSPAS helped with the logistical arrangements for this workshop. As editor I am particularly grateful to the specialist readers who each offered searching comments on one or more of the papers from the two workshop that were selected for inclusion as chapters in this edited volume. They were Craig Reynolds, Nola Cooke, Đỗ Thiện, Benjamin Penny, David Marr, Alec Soucy, David Koh and Ben Kerkvliet. I also thank Đỗ Thiện, Ben Kerkvliet and David Marr for the moral support they lent me during the hard times in the editing process. Phạm Thu Thủy, Nguyễn Thị Thanh Bình and Oanh Collins assisted with the manuscript production. I am indebted to AusAID for a publication subvention for this book and, for its production, to Triena Ong and her highly competent team at ISEAS publications. The preparation of this volume and of my own chapter was possible thanks to support from the Department of Anthropology, RSPAS, and, since January 2006, my QEII Fellowship from the Australian Research Council and an ARC Discovery grant held co-jointly with John Gillespie of Monash University. My deepest gratitude goes to my mother, in whose steps I am treading as I learn about new lands and cultures and whose love and guidance made this book possible. Philip Taylor

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1 Modernity and Re-enchantment in Post-revolutionary Vietnam Philip Taylor

Religion in Vietnam has been thriving in recent years.1 Churches, pagodas and pilgrimage sites are crowded with devotees, offering signs of fervent faith and unmistakable religious vitality. Religion commands a large share of the material resources of this increasingly prosperous society. Temples are everywhere being renovated, altars are piled with magnificent sacrifices to the gods and the fees paid by individuals for a commissioned religious ceremony may exceed several times the average per capita annual income. Even as a new generation embraces a globalized cosmopolitan lifestyle, the route to the past passes through the otherworld. National leaders make incense offerings to acquit their debts to the nation’s founding ancestors, soul callers establish contact with the war dead and mediums possessed by famed historical personages are patronized by the nouveau riche. Doors opened wide to encourage foreign investment and trade also facilitate the passage of foreign missionaries and the dissemination of new currents in Islam, Buddhism and Christianity to the remotest regions of the country. In early 2005, the renowned Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh made his first return to his homeland in thirty-nine years, speaking to huge audiences in

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many locations and holding dharma talks attended by Communist Party officials. Later that year, the Vatican’s envoy met with state leaders, ordained a new generation of clerics and opened a new diocese. While overseas critics dispute the trend of increasing religious liberalism, religion also attracts its share of domestic critics and controversies erupt around excessive ritual expenditures, the proliferation of faith healers and conversions to evangelical Christianity among ethnic minority peoples. Vietnam’s burgeoning religious sphere challenges a number of predictions that have been made about the relevance of religion in the modern world. The religious efflorescence — occurring as it does in the context of the country’s two decade-old experiment with market economics and re-integration within the global capitalist system — is at odds with predictions that religion will lose vitality with the ascendency of modern forms of capitalist rationality. The immense diversity in religious idioms throughout the country belies the fear that such locally distinct identities will be swept away by a global monoculture. The endorsement of religious activities by Vietnam’s leaders contravenes the notion that communist states are opposed to religion on ideological or institutional grounds. The seemingly autonomous development of some religious activities also calls into question the capacities attributed to such states to co-opt or contain religion or suppress non-sanctioned practices. There is no denying that religion in Vietnam is a topic of heated contestation. Yet it seems open to doubt whether one can attribute such controversies uniquely to the country’s political environment or legacies of political and military conflict. They may indeed reflect tensions between competing worldviews and societal interests similar in kind to those evident in societies with vastly different political histories. Vietnam is not unique in witnessing a strong resurgence of religion. This phenomenon is also evident in much of the rest of Asia, Africa, the Americas and the Middle East. In Australia where the number of churchgoers attending traditional Christian denominations is in decline, evangelical Christian movements are ascendant, as are Buddhism and Islam, in part a consequence of immigration. The pronounced religiosity of the contemporary world presents a major challenge to dominant paradigms in the social sciences that foretell the disenchantment of the world with the growth of modernity. Evolutionary theorists in the late nineteenth century were of the view that people would move away from reliance on magic and spiritual forces as science and technology were adopted as superior modes for comprehending and controlling the world (Tylor 1871; Spenser 1876; Frazer

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1890). Later sociologists, whose theories remain highly influential, predicted that the life world would become progressively secularized with the rise of increasingly differentiated, atomized social relationships (Durkheim 1915) and of modern bureaucratic rationalities (Weber 1976, p. 245). Scholars in the Marxist tradition would see the bases for religion falling away as material conditions improved or humans developed a more just social order. These premonitions of disenchantment are bluntly contradicted by the facts in Vietnam and many other countries. Comparatively secular Europe, also home to the most prominent secularization theorists, seems to be an exceptional case, although even here one sees the rise of personalistic New Age spiritualities, the growing stature of Islam and the revitalization and transformation of religious identities in former Eastern Bloc countries. The failure of historical sociologists to account for the continuing relevance of religion in the modern world leaves the way open for an alternative approach, that might abandon historical explanations altogether for a view of religion as a timeless property of certain places or cultures. As Edward Said has noted, a tradition of Western scholarship has portrayed “the Orient” as impervious to change or as quintessentially religious (Said 1978). Depictions of the mystical East continue to serve as a staple for the tourist industry, Hollywood, and the New Age religious movement. Fundamentalist movements and radicalized faiths in South and Southeast Asia have been portrayed as the modern manifestation of deep-seated civilizational differences (Huntington 1996). Up to the 1970s, anthropologists tended to view religion as playing a role in maintaining social equilibrium or symbolizing important cultural values in societies that were often viewed as bounded and in stasis. Ironically, just as many anthropologists began to abandon a static view of religion for political economy and post-colonial approaches that treated religion in historical perspective, some political leaders in Asia began to promote the idea that their societies were organized according to unique cultural attributes such as hierarchy and consensus and were not to be judged by supposedly universalist criteria such as human rights (Jacobsen and Bruun 2000). At the same time, many national elites in Asia, wedded to an idea of a unilinear national progression to modernity, still see many popular religious expressions as vestiges that survive among sections of the population that are untouched by progress and shielded from the light of reason (Keyes et al. 1994). Some scholars explain these heterogeneous sub-national folk forms as archaic survivals set in opposition to centralizing state reforms (Yang 2000) or pre-modern

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formats utilized by new entrants to the urban economy to make sense of the complexity of urban life (Jackson 1999b). Recently many anthropologists have been at pains to demonstrate the modernity of religious expressions around the world. These scholars have been concerned to rectify the notion that would see much of the nonEuropean world as “out of time” (Fabian 1983; Thomas 1989; for Vietnam see Taylor 2001b). As critics of modernist exceptionalism, they are also inspired to question the dichotomy between a supposedly rationalist secular modernity and supposedly irrational “pre-modern” religious traditions. Some radical intellectualists invert the schema of nineteenth century evolutionist thinkers by exposing the magic that is inherent to colonial and post-colonial states, and to various icons of modernity, from science and medicine to the print media (Taussig 1997; Latour 1993; Meyers and Pels 2003). Others have reconceptualized forms of religiosity that were once deemed pre-modern as alternative modernities (Eisenstadt 2000; Geschiere 1997; Hefner 1998). Folk religions have been reinterpreted as a critique of alienating market relations by those who have been dislocated by them (Nash 1979; Taussig 1980, Ong 1987), a way of capturing or taming modernity’s essence (Holston 1999; Werbner 1998; Morris 2000), or as an idiom for imagining global capitalism and obtaining prosperity within it (Comaroff and Comaroff 2000; Roberts 1994). As many contributors to the Fundamentalisms research project have observed, the aspiration to return to the roots that is evident in reformist religious movements around the world is to be comprehended as a response to contemporary experiences of injustice, instability or anxiety (Marty and Appleby 1991, 1995). Not to be seen as a residual survival, a reflection of the past, religion is part of the fabric of modern existence. Although this new anthropological approach repudiates the disenchantment theses of earlier sociologists, the challenge for anthropologists inclined to emphasize the modernity of religious practice or to see modernity as religious is to also explain the diversity of religious forms. While searching for commonalities in contemporary human experience, one ought not neglect the local histories and the particular social and cultural preoccupations that may help account for the great variety in religious expressions in the modern world. Such variety in religious experience, in turn, is likely to inform the diverse ways that people continuously attempt to remake the world. With the aim of contributing to the comparative analysis of contemporary religious experience, this book provides a set of

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case studies on religion in one country where the modernity of religious practice has seldom been appreciated. By examining the diverse forms of religious expression in Vietnam in the context of particular histories and socio-cultural concerns, it aims to enrich the comparative understanding of religion in the modern world. Vietnam might seem an unlikely place for such a comparative project. Until well after the end of the U.S.-Vietnam war, most foreign scholars saw Vietnam through the lens of the country’s divisive wars of decolonization, devoting their attention to struggles between colonial and post-colonial political alternatives and the rise to power of the Communist Party (Smith 1968; Mus and McAlister 1971; Marr 1971, 1981, Woodside 1976; Duiker 1995; Ho Tai 1992; Zinoman 2000; Kim Ninh 2002). To the extent that religion rated a mention, it commonly was thought to lack the organizational capacity, strategic vision or pragmatic bent to pose a viable alternative to the communist movement, and was depicted as in competition for political influence with an eventually victorious party. The few studies that focused squarely on religion did little to challenge this perception. Even new religious movements were seen as a transitory phenomena (Werner 1981), plagued by factionalism (Oliver 1976), or as localist (Ho Tai 1983) and in conflict with the state (Topmiller 2000). Vietnamese scholars have had a different, although no less constraining, perspective. From early in the twentieth century, many modernist intellectuals saw religion as obsolete, parochial, or a tool of oppressive elites (Phan Kế Bính 1915; Trần Huy Liệu 1927; Nguyễn An Ninh 1938; Trần Văn Giàu 1975). An alternative approach, which recently has become dominant among Vietnamese scholars, has been to appreciate religion as a form of traditional folk culture and an integral expression of the nation’s identity. While undeniably positive, this approach continues to offer a restrictive view of religion as ancient, localized or imbued with national values. This leaves little room for an appreciation of elements in religion that are dynamic, innovatory or tied up with changing social relations and global re-engagements. A new wave of scholarship on Vietnam challenges these views. One important thing about this scholarship is its new methodology. Unlike most previous studies foreign or local, this work is based in long-term fieldwork among religious communities and is characterized by sympathy to submerged local voices and experiences. Crucially, the conclusions also differ from earlier studies, finding religion in most cases to be bound up in the momentous recent transformations in Vietnamese society. Ethnographic

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studies of the communist state’s efforts to restructure rituals reveal that the religious and the political are inter-dependent domains (Luong 1994; Malarney 1996b, 2002; Endres 1999, 2001; Kleinen 1999; P. Taylor 2001a, 2004a). Anthropologists have illuminated aspects of religious practice that address existential dilemmas which have become more acute as a consequence of national policies (Malarney 2001; Gammeltoft 2003; Nguyen Thi Hien 2002; Endres 2006). For ethnic minority peoples who have been marginalized by state policies, religion is a way to obtain re-integration, autonomy and empowerment (Salemink 1997, 2003; Nakamura 1999; Lewis 2002; Taylor 2004c, 2007). The active involvement in religion by society’s most powerful actors — state agents, rural elites, successful entrepreneurs and the urban nouveau riche — challenges the idea that religion is a residue persisting only in remote areas or among only the downtrodden and the desperate (Luong 1993; Ly 2001; Soucy 1999; P. Taylor 2004d ). Not to be considered insular or timeless, folk supernaturalism has been a terrain of cultural innovation, shaped by new ideas and cultural influences (Do 2003; Malarney 1996a; Norton 2002; Pham Quynh Phuong 2005). For those engaged in new social relations in the market economy, it is a way of re-imagining and drawing lessons from the past (Kleinen 1999; P. Taylor 2002), and of reconciling the seemingly contradictory moral demands of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary eras (Jellema 2005; Leshkowich 2006). These studies signal that religion in Vietnam is far more robust and important than earlier scholars have credited. Yet we have only begun to understand the many facets of contemporary existence in which it is intimately involved. Important questions and paradoxes remain to be solved, which this chapter seeks to illuminate, setting the research agenda for the contributions that follow. How can we explain the persistence of placebased religious practices such as ancestor worship or local communal rituals in the face of recent dramatic spatial realignments in social and cultural relations? As societal leaders lend their approval to religious expressions that embody an authocthonous identity, what scope exists for religions such as Buddhism and Christianity, which have made claims to embody modernity by eliminating such particularist identities? How important today are the transnational dimensions of these religions and how have these been reconciled with a renewed concern to safeguard the nation’s distinct culture? Although religion is given increased prominence in Vietnam’s public life, much remains controversial, such as the material expenditures associated with religious practice, the contested role of mediumship and the place of

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“foreign” religions, notably Christianity, in national life. What are the roots of this ongoing contestation? What can the vitality of these practices and the disputes they engender tell us about notions of community, diversity and the place of the foreign in contemporary Vietnamese society?

Religion and Politics: Beyond Repression Before dealing with these research themes, it seems essential to address first the topic that most dominates the study of religion in Vietnam: the relationship between religion and politics. Public debates and political advocacy in the international arena revolve around the question of whether or not the people of Vietnam enjoy religious freedom. Sketching out the most prominent of these positions, this section then discusses a number of different approaches adopted by scholars to the relationship between religion and politics in Vietnam. The charge that the Vietnamese Government is repressing religion comes from a variety of groups including overseas Vietnamese religious and political advocacy organizations, evangelical Christian churches, international human rights organizations, multinational bodies such as the UN and European Union and individual states — most insistently the U.S. Government — which in 2004 and again in 2005 listed Vietnam as a “country of particular concern” for its alleged serious violations of the right to religious freedom.2 A common feature in the criticisms made by these groups is that the Vietnamese Government adopts a systematically repressive approach towards religion. One target of criticism is the heavy government regulation of religious activities including the rights to associate, build new places of worship, found new religious organizations, disseminate the faith and ordain and train new clergy. Another is that formal representation of the interests of religious groups, clergy and believers is restricted to government-appointed and controlled bodies. Critics charge that despite formal legal guarantees, sustained and unwarranted official interference in religion is enabled by numerous, vague and all-encompassing security regulations which are open to abuse. Severe penalties for violations of these regulations include the prolonged detention of religious dissidents. In addition, reports of forced recantations, church burnings and physical harm to worshippers by state agents are seen, at best, as examples of poor implementation of official policy and, at worst, as an indication of the fundamental antipathy of the regime to religion.

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While many of the criticisms raised by these groups are persuasive and well-documented, the case that the government is inherently opposed to religion is questionable on a number of counts. One is simply evidential: as demonstrated by the case studies in this volume, there is no denying that religion in many forms is flourishing in Vietnam, or that the scope for religious expression has widened significantly over the last twenty-year period. Another problem is arguments that simplify the issues. Many of the alleged violations of religious freedom relate not so much to religious beliefs and practices per se as to organizational arrangements. For instance, the Vietnamese state’s non-recognition of the Hội Phật Giáo Thống Nhất Việt Nam [Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam] as a peak body for Buddhists has not prevented the powerful efflorescence of Buddhism in Vietnam in recent years. The tendency of foreign-based critics to view the recent serious conflicts involving ethnic minority Christians as primarily religious in nature, simplifies the complex set of economic, social, cultural, political and historical grievances that animate these conflicts. The insistence, by foreign governments and human rights organizations on the one hand, and diasporic and transnational religious and ethnic groups on the other, that disputes over a spectrum of issues are essentially struggles for religious freedom has predictably caused Vietnam’s state leaders to see advocacy for religious freedom as politics in disguise. Some overseas Protestant and Catholic groups pose a special dilemma, seeing conflict with the state to be itself a sign of a flourishing church (Hansen 2005, p. 311). Countering the charge that the state is repressing religion, Vietnamese government representatives frequently declare that both in law and practice, religion is freely observed in Vietnam, a claim that was also made in the 1950s–1980s, when by recent official admission (Trần Bạch Đằng 2001, p. 39), religious activities were far more circumscribed. Religious affairs officials point to the signs of renewal in religious life as proof of the state’s support for religion, neglecting to mention that many of these activities have been only achieved through determined efforts by religious groups to roll back restrictive regulations.3 By law, all religious activities must be registered with state authorities, although informal practices are widespread. Several religious practices such as spirit possession, divination and faith healing remain illegal, although subject to uneven policing. An ordinance on belief and religious organizations passed in mid-2004, prohibits the misuse of belief and religion for “superstitious practices”, and activities that contravene the law, incite “divisions among people and ethnic groups”, and

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“infringe national security”.4 Yet the vagueness in definitions of acts deemed to be a threat to law, unity and security make it inevitable that religious activities are subject to curtailment on these grounds and prey to uneven local interpretations of the law. State officials continue to regard religion as a domain ripe for exploitation by “bad elements” or hostile foreign organizations, a view that casts a pall of suspicion over many legitimate religious activities and demands for expanded religious expression. Like many of its foreign critics, the government can be faulted for a lack of sophistication in identifying the underlying problems to which local people seek answers in religion, and recognizing the complex experiences which find voice in this way. Is the Vietnamese state’s ideology fundamentally antithetical to religion? As historical materialists, who viewed religion as a response to material deprivation or social domination, Vietnam’s communist theorists for many decades regarded religion in light of the incomplete nature of the Vietnamese revolution (for example, see Trần Hữu Tiến 1977). Today one still hears the view expressed by state officials that science, technology and social relations have not yet developed to the level that would dispel the main grounds for adherence to religious beliefs. This evolutionary view can accommodate religion although it is far from sympathetic, for religion is expected to disappear one day (Marr 1986). An alternative explanation for the points of tension is that, like the Chinese leadership, the Vietnamese communists embody a Confucian worldview, a human-centric philosophy that is indifferent or hostile to ecstatic, magical or ostentatious expression and to alternative philosophies such as Buddhism, Taoism and Christianity (Durand 1952; Smith 1968, pp. 21–22; McLeod and Nguyen 2001, pp. 44–56). Against this perspective, some have argued that Confucian ideology was flexibly adapted in Vietnam to fit local circumstances and values (Woodside 1971; Wolters 1988). Others have noted that Confucianism was but one of several influences on the organization and ideology of the pre-colonial state (Cooke 1997; Li 1998). A more proximate explanation situates the present-day government as heirs to the nationalist movement of the early twentieth century. Vietnam’s sometimes iconoclastic modernists, influenced by Social Darwinism, were uncompromising in their criticism of “backward” traditions, including Confucianism, that were held to account for Vietnam’s failure to stem European expansionism (Marr 1971, 1981; Jamieson 1993; Ho Tai 1992; P. Taylor 2001b; McHale 2004). Many nationalists were also hostile to Catholicism, which they saw as a pretext

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that was used by the French to occupy and colonize the country and in the 1950s and 1960s was lent official favour under the southern-based Republic of Vietnam (Cao Huy Thuan 1968; Thích Nhất Hạnh 1967). After the unification of the country in 1975, Vietnam’s leaders considered many religious organizations in the south as politically and militarily dangerous, viewing religion through a cultural lens shaped by their long years of fighting foreign occupying armies, as a domain infiltrated by hostile enemy forces (P. Taylor 2004a, pp. 39–42). For many years the socialist state considered the religious beliefs and practices of ethnic minorities to be impediments to modernization (Evans 1985; McElwee 2004, pp. 195–97), a view that today finds support among foreign aid donors as well (P. Taylor 2004b, p. 244; 2007, pp. 184–86). Although official thinking towards religion has complex influences and is far from static, official ambivalence towards religion remains. This would imply that much of Vietnam’s contemporary religious scene is an expression of resistance to state power. Scholars in Vietnam frequently take this approach to explain “folk beliefs” [tín ngưỡng dân gian], indigenous cultural traditions that were never fully colonized by elite or official culture. Vietnamese folklorists have made the case that goddess worship, communal house rites, mediumship and festivals, for instance, reflect an indigenous Vietnamese cultural substrate that has persisted in the face of elite court perspectives, Chinese patriarchal and Confucian overlays and Western ideology (Huỳnh Ngọc Trảng 1999; Ngô Đức Thịnh 2002, Nguyễn Chí Bền 2000).5 While this approach seems to reflect the state’s own social revolution and anti-foreign resistance ideologies, in some cases folklorists have helped rehabilitate practices regarded officially with suspicion as “superstition” [mê tín dị đoan], by describing them as national folk traditions, making a case that effectively draws on official nationalist ideology. A non-nationalistic reading would see these religious forms as an unofficial counterculture that reflects the priorities of groups who have been excluded from state power: women, rural people, urban traders, regional groupings and ethnic minorities. For instance, goddess worship in southern Vietnam can be seen as giving voice to the submerged experiences of urban traders, women and rural ethnic Chinese people (P. Taylor 2002, 2004a). The appeal of “world religions” such as Christianity and Islam among ethnic minority groups has been portrayed as a form of resistance to the state by marginalized groups with different social bases and histories (Nakamura 1999; Salemink 2003; P. Taylor 2007). Regional religions such as the Hòa Hảo Buddhists

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in the Mekong delta have been characterized as belonging to a localized grassroots tradition, with their own history of resistance to the centralizing state (Ho Tai 1983). A related way to understand the proliferation of religion in presentday Vietnam is to see it as a response to the decline in state power or the plausibility of official grand narratives in an era of post-socialist economic policies (Fahey 1998, p. 233). According to some political scientists, religion has revived strongly in the former Soviet Union because it fills a void left by the political and ideological collapse of communism (Huntington 1996, p. 96). This approach was used to explain the emergence of the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo religions in the 1920s and 1930s Cochinchina. They were described as “substitute religions” filling the void left when colonialism undermined traditional pre-colonial modes of authority (Mus and McAlister 1971, pp. 78–92). A similar explanation was put forward by secular modernists in Vietnam during the same era, who depicted the emergence of these new religions as a form of solace for people struck economically by the Depression and politically by setbacks to the nationalist movement. This compensatory perspective has currency today among many Vietnamese intellectuals, who see the contemporary revival of religion as a response to a variety of crises [khủng hoảng] engendered by the process of market integration. Some scholars have described the turn to new religious forms as a way for people to cope with the many unforseen problems encountered in the officially-endorsed transition from a planned to a market-based society (Le Hong Ly 2001). A very different view is that state authority is entirely compatible with religious expression and indeed, the state relies upon religion to secure its popular legitimacy. Neil Jamieson maintained that the entire social system of Vietnam traditionally embodied unitary principles. The traditional family was modelled on the state and the state modelled itself on the family. Religion was the cement that kept the entire order together. The cult to the spirits, associated with Confucianism, was a means to inculcate right relationships within families and between subjects and rulers. The state ruled through verification of right practice not coercion. The most important arm of government, he argued, was not the army but the Ministry of Rites (Jamieson 1993, pp. 37–40).6 On similar grounds, earlier writers argued that the communists were able to win widespread popular support because they were deemed by traditionally-minded peasants to have secured the Mandate of Heaven (Mus 1965; Fitzgerald 1972). The cult to heroes or

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great men — historical figures imbued with supernatural powers who watch over the affairs of the society — was seen by an early French ethnographer as a natural extension to the wider society of the premises of the familial ancestral cult (Giran 1912, pp. 427–33). Historians have depicted this cult as the “state ideology” of the early Vietnamese polity (O’Harrow 1986, p. 251). Keith Taylor characterized the religion of the Lý Dynasty (1010–1225) as a mode of religious governance in which the diverse spirits of Vietnam were utilised by the ruling elite to sanction royal authority and symbolise their preoccupations with territorial defence and orderly dynastic succession (K. Taylor 1986, p. 45). The official cult to heroes is alive and well today and even modern revolutionary leaders have been added to the official pantheon (Malarney 1996; Giebel 2004; Pham Quynh Phuong 2005). The contemporary cult to Hồ Chí Minh may be seen alternatively as an example of shamanistic practice, whose prescribed mediums are the party theorists who consult Hồ’s writings and regularly find evidence that the long-defunct president had anticipated various subsequent policy shifts. This tradition of governance has been taken to explain why the worship of ancestors and the spirits supposedly today gains greater official acceptance than religions like Christianity or Buddhism. The journalist Robert Templer put this view succinctly: “Indeed these [former] faiths, with their emphasis on cultural identity, history and locality, usefully reinforce many of the Party’s ideas about nationalism without throwing up challenges from an organised hierarchy” (Templer 1998, p. 262). However, several scholars have argued that these faiths do not selfevidently contain meanings consistent with state interests. They have been subject to a long history of regulation and restructuring so that they convey messages that are consistent with the official agenda. Former dynasties invested titles [sắc phong] in spirits that were deemed to have demonstrated their loyal service to the court. Through this means, the pre-colonial state actively intervened in local cultic practice as a way to establish the adherence of localities to imperial authority and culture (Wolters 1988, pp. xix, xxviii; Langlet 1990; Giebel 2004, p. 175). Others have seen the cult of spirits as an arena of protracted negotiation, where tensions between local and central interests were played out (Do 2003, pp. 40–49). This model sees the state as a gardener constantly intervening in the religious realm to nurture acceptable identifications and weed out negative expressions. Such concerns show the state as anything but hostile to religion, which in turn is not an autonomous realm. This interpretation has been applied to

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the ritual reforms implemented in the 1950s to 1980s by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Shaun Malarney describes as “state functionalism” the use of ritual by northern Vietnam’s socialist authorities to advance official objectives and ideology (Malarney 1996b, 2002). Ritualism and popular belief in the spirits were not subject to blanket suppression. Instead, state authorities focused their attacks on aspects of ritual practice that were considered irrational and harmful, that reinforced status distinctions, or that diverted scarce resources from more effective use by individuals and the authorities. People continued to practise ancestral rituals, take part in life-cycle ceremonies and attend pagodas during the socialist period. Yet their rites and celebrations took on a modified form and content that bore the imprint of the state’s socialist reform agenda (for other examples, see Luong 1994; Kleinen 1999; Endres 2001, P. Taylor 2004a, Choi, this volume). Although this approach treats religion in Vietnam as historically subject to co-option by the state, Malarney also recognizes the limits of state functionalism. He argues that the socialist state in turn, has had to accommodate the values and interests that individuals and localities bring into rituals. The state entered into a “transformative dialogue” with its antecedents, thereby leading to new rituals that reflect the interests of parties in both sides of the transaction (Malarney 1996b, p. 540). This picture of negotiated change in the ritual realm builds on Hy Van Luong’s insights into the “dialogic restructuring of rituals”, which show changes in the ritual sphere to have been shaped in an ongoing dialogue between state and societal interests (Luong 1994). This perspective recognizes the state as being quite accommodating towards the religious sphere, insofar as its interests are maintained. It moves beyond alternative approaches to the religious efflorescence in present-day Vietnam as simply the resurgence of tradition, societal resistance, or state co-optation, for a view of the state and society as mutual protagonists in the revival. We can thus find elements of both state and non-state agendas in the religious realm. Potentially, this approach also helps explain the many tensions and disputes still surrounding religion in Vietnam, which might be seen as areas in which different parties have yet to find consensus or a common language. This dialogic approach is nevertheless somewhat statist, implying that no religion might exist in Vietnam that does not to a substantial degree advance the agenda of the state. In my own work on popular religion and goddess cults in southern Vietnam, I found that while the state is

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an interested party, we can only understand much of what we find in this arena of religious practice as the end result of a process of rigorous scrutiny in the court of popular opinion (P. Taylor 2002, 2004a). In evaluating meaningful symbols people are interested in what works and what makes sense. Religion is “people’s history” in that the most widely accepted religious symbols encode popularly accepted histories of efficacy. This approach is dialogic but it views dialogues among different groups with shared interests or problems as more important than dialogues with the state. People engage with state-approved symbols and meanings, yet they assess these symbols in comparison with those that have little or no state endorsement. The results of this critical popular scrutiny are often unexpected: state symbols are frequently rejected as lacking in credibility. According to the juridical metaphor that inspires this model, the state can plead its case as an advocate before a people who, as the ultimate arbiters, are not always persuaded. The state seems to retain one advantage, in that it also keeps the “court transcript”, overseeing the volumes of published commentaries and media reports that interpret what popular religion is supposedly about. Yet it is clear that many ordinary people do not read this transcript. State agents and elite commentators routinely omit from the transcript altogether inconvenient popular activities and interpretations that do not conform to their perspective. From time to time the official record is tactfully re-edited to find aspects of formerly censured or unnoticed popular practice to be in conformity with state policy. This interpretation was developed to account for religious practice in southern Vietnam, a region where the central state historically has had a weak presence and mixed fortunes. It is also a region where religious vehicles are pre-eminent and enduring features of the cultural landscape. Yet power has other guises, as revealed by Thien Do’s survey of the dynamic world of southern Vietnamese supernaturalism (2003), which offers a post-structuralist perspective on the religious history of this region. Setting to rest the views of political historians, colonial officials and secularist intellectuals that treat religion as substitute for politics, a deficit of social agency or a retreat from the world, Do uncovers in đình sacrifices, mediumship and Buddhist and Daoist self-cultivation quests, a common logic of spiritual efficacy that has been elaborated in strikingly diverse forms. Since first settling in the southern plain, Việt people have interacted with its environment and with their new neighbours, shaping their history by drawing from a pool of shared symbolic resources, which

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have been modified in these interactions. Assimilating also the great variety of cultural influences in this culturally pluralist region, they have drawn upon newly available cultural models of power to reshape their identity. Through trance possession, they entered dialogues with neighbouring groups of people and through self-cultivation, achieved personal empowerment and social change. A particularly interesting aspect of this argument is Do’s analysis of state power as one of the metaphors that have been deployed in this ongoing popular project of cultural transformation. He makes the compelling argument that the prevalence of traditional imperial symbolism and modern technological imagery in popular religion is driven not from the top down but by people at the grassroots in the process of identifying and assimilating diverse sources of power to aid their everyday survival. These studies show that religion and politics are not incompatible with each other. Indeed, as Thien Do’s exploration of southern Vietnamese supernaturalism suggests, they are shaped around similar quests for power, efficacy, identity and meaning. This insight applies to religious life in present-day Vietnam as well as to the world of the southern frontier of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The coexistence today in Vietnam of a strong centralized bureaucratic state and a vibrant religious scene would also indicate, however, that the realms of religion and politics are not reducible to each other, just as they are not necessarily in competition with each other. With these provisional conclusions in mind we may therefore venture beyond politics to consider religion in its transformative encounters with other social and cultural processes.

A New Religious Geography Among the most pervasive beliefs in Vietnam is the view that spirits [thần thánh] co-inhabit alongside the living. Wilful, sometimes retributive beings, they have the power to influence the course of life. The wealth and security of the living depend on maintaining with them relations of mutual care and assistance. Each day in homes throughout Vietnam, millions of invitations are whispered to ancestors [tổ tiên] to partake of family meals. Every đình or communal house in Vietnam resonates annually with the invocation for prosperity and peace [cầu bình an] read out by a local notable to the village’s tutelary spirit [thành hoàng]. Twice a month, householders and shopkeepers strew food offerings and burn votive paper by the side of the road to appease the restless souls of those who have died unjustly

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or away from home. Sacrifices are made to the nature spirits that inhabit trees, mountains, caves and coastlines. Altars bear offerings to the sky [trời], the earth [đất], the five elements [ngũ hành] and to the animals that guard the forest and the seas. Pilgrims undertake journeys to acquit debts to the spirits that patrol the nation’s frontiers and the legendary heroes who watch over the community of the living. The cult of the spirits, so wrote the missionary ethnographer Leopold Cadière, extends back to the origins of the race, preceding imported philosophies such as Buddhism, which he regarded as a weakly-realized veneer (Cadière 1944). Often described as animism, spirit worship has been described by many writers as a Southeast Asian cultural substrate, an “endemic religion” tied to place and enduring through time. The introduction of Hindu motifs into the spirit cults of Champa was, Paul Mus considered, anything but undiscriminating. Rather, such foreign influences were selectively incorporated into the indigenous belief systems of the people of Southeast Asia in a manner consistent with local ecological conditions and cultural conventions. He saw the indigenous cult of the soil as the oldest form of religious community in Monsoon Asia. He described this as a “cadastral religion”, a spiritualized pact between people and place (Mus 1933). Like the phii cults of the Tai peoples and the wall and moat spirits of China, this spiritual practice marked the boundaries of community and spatially ordered relations of political authority (Davis 1984, pp. 273–75; Feuchtwang 1992, p. 24). In colonial Vietnam, the cult to the spirits was thought to mediate social relations of proximity and co-presence. The collective fortune of a village required offerings made by its representatives to its tutelary spirit. The well-being of a family rested on diligently maintaining sacrifices to the ancestors. Sentimental attachments to the ancestors were thought to act as a spiritual hedge against mobility, the Vietnamese peasant was loathe to venture beyond the perimeter of village within which the graves to the ancestors were located (Robequain 1944, p. 62). How could such a complex survive the radically new relationships to place forged in the colonial and post-colonial eras, engendered by new communications technologies, export commodity production, urbanization, mass mobilization for war and bureaucratic proliferation? In recent years, rural settlements have been connected by road-based transport networks, cities are expanding rapidly as migrants leave economically depressed rural areas and growing numbers of Vietnamese study and work abroad. Some scholars have argued that the loosening of social relationships implied by

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changes of this kind will lead to the dissolution of place-based religion. The increasing fluidity and atomisation of relationships in modern society, Durkheim postulated, has led to a corresponding weakening in ritual life (Durkheim 1915). As ritual has eroded as the premise for ordering social relations, it has been replaced by doctrine, a more abstract rationalistic orientation, detached from any particular social, political or ethnic group (Jaspers 1949; Eisenstadt 1982). Robin Horton argued that as people are drawn out of the local microcosms of their tribe or village into increasingly extensive social networks, they will turn away from localized place-based spirituality and be more inclined to monotheism as a more portable and universally intelligible creed (Horton 1971, 1975). Keyes observed that the transformation of peripheral regions of Southeast Asia by state development projects and capitalist relations has induced among many formerly animist peoples a sense of profound cultural crisis which has led many to convert to Protestantism (Keyes 1996, p. 284). In the fast-changing development frontier of the Vietnamese highlands, many ethnic minority peoples, their lands overrun by migrants and commercial plantations, are converting to Protestantism (Lewis 2002; Salemink 2003). Facing similar pressures in the Mekong Delta, the Muslim Cham are turning to reformist interpretations of Islam that proscribe the veneration of the dead (Taylor 2007, pp. 123–26). Gellner identified Marxism as a this-worldly variant of the transcendental faiths that have, in a world marked by scepticism towards absolutist dogma, usurped the former hold of socially-embedded rituals (Gellner 1995). In Vietnam, migrants returning from regional and colonial metropoles were the first to promote this new worldview and its critical attitudes towards the local cult of the spirits as a feudal, patriarchal and illusory pursuit that was inconsistent with the building of a modern society. “World religions” such as Christianity and Islam and socially radical philosophies such as Marxism have found fertile ground in Asia, however, they are not the only ways in which people in the region have made sense of profound and destabilising social changes. Anthropologists of a hermeneutic bent have interpreted the persistence of spirit-based religion as a way of making sense of the unsettling effects of the penetration and transformation of local worlds by new political and economic relations of imperialism and capitalism. Aiwa Ong interpreted the possession by spirits of female Malaysian factory workers as a form of resistance to capitalist discipline (1987). Mary-Beth Mills saw fears about the attack of

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widow ghosts as tied to an unease among people in Northeast Thailand about new gender relationships as a result of labour migration (1999). Robert Weller interpreted the explosion of the cult of ghosts and the rise of “fee-for service” approaches to the spirits in 1990s Taiwan as reflecting the individualized and amoral social relations of globalization (2000). The female spirits venerated in Southern Vietnam can be understood as a lens through which traders and rural-urban migrants make sense of economic fortunes in the petty commodity sphere, conceptualize ethical norms and model changing economic relationships between rural and urban areas (P. Taylor 2004a). The highly developed pantheon of the Cao Đài religion during the colonial era, which included spirits drawn from many different cultural traditions, is another example of the way spirit beliefs might survive and indeed thrive in periods of expanding cultural exchanges. As an idiom for conceptualizing social and cultural change, spirit beliefs are not necessarily threatened by major spatial realignments. However, as these cases show, these beliefs are quite likely to change emphasis in line with such new relationships to place. A different approach to spirit worship has been adopted by cultural nationalists. As Robert Hefner (1994, p. 94), speaking of Islam in Indonesia observes, Benedict Anderson was far from correct in associating the spread of nationalism with the “dusk of religious modes of thought” (Anderson 1983, p. 19). Vietnam offers several fascinating illustrations of cultural nationalists who have imbued place-based spirituality with the power to symbolically represent and perpetuate the nation’s identity. Đào Duy Anh departed from earlier modernist critics of spirit worship by attempting, in his 1938 survey of Vietnamese culture, to order the different categories of spirit beliefs — from domestic ancestor worship to state rituals — traditionally practised by the Vietnamese (Đào Duy Anh 1938). A similar schema was adopted by the ethnographer Nguyễn Văn Huyên who later became Minister of Culture in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in his La Civilization Annamite (1944). These initiatives corresponded with the concerns of nationalist intellectuals of the late colonial era to identify aspects of religious culture that affirmed Vietnam’s longevity and coherence as an enduring national society (Bayly 2000). Amidst the social dislocation and cultural disorder of the American occupation of the South, the Saigon-based author Toan Ánh, a migrant from North Vietnam, mounted an impressive attempt to systematically catalogue the cultic practices of the Vietnamese in a series of studies entitled Nếp Cũ [the Old Ways].

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In the 1990s, when Vietnam stepped up efforts to integrate the national economy with international markets, these books were reprinted along with many others on Vietnamese identity and cultural foundations, folk beliefs and cultural traditions. At this time, popular religious activities from communal house sacrifices to goddess cults were being revived and their meanings reworked, giving expression to the new social relations of the market economy (Luong 2003; P. Taylor 2004a, 2004d; Truong 2004; Jellema 2005). Ethnologists and folklorists’ views of these rites as ancient and nationally typical, or as encoding stable relations to place were often explicitly at odds with popular usages (P. Taylor 2003). Yet their attempts to recover these practices as tradition and to purify them of contaminating urbanist and consumerist elements may be seen as no less creative than popular practices. If attempts to construct kin or place-based spirituality as ancient or unchanging can be regarded as an innovatory response to changing social relations, what can be said of the spiritual practices themselves? Might not we expect them also, necessarily, to change form in such conditions? This question is explored by two essays in this volume that address ancestral and village communal house rituals. Given the apparent implication of these rites in social relations marked by boundedness and co-presence, might not we expect significant changes in these forms as a consequence of the major population movements that have occurred during the liberal reform era and the stream of cultural influences coming through the country’s newly opened doors? Recent surveys show that the cult to the ancestors is not fading away. Ancestral altars can be found in most houses of the Việt ethnic majority (Đặng Nghiêm Vạn 2001). National leaders make high profile visits to the tombs of the Hùng kings, the ancestors of the Vietnamese nation. This may appear paradoxical, occurring in a context of ever-rising foreign industrial investment, migration abroad and the growing popularity of global youth culture. Yet Jellema’s investigation of this paradox uncovers a previously unnoticed dimension of this practice. She argues in her essay in this volume that ancestor worship is a “ritual of reconvening”, a way to symbolically draw together people pulled apart by the mundane and extraordinary demands of the world beyond the home. The injunction to “return to the source” [về nguồn] that lies at the heart of this ritual implies a departure. As a rite of return, ancestor veneration draws on a sentiment that connects people with their homeland, one which may indeed

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increase the further they travel and the longer they stay away. The rituals that summon the ancestors and the living to return [về] celebrate moments of togetherness premised on a normative separation. It is a faith that is consistent with mobility, migration and the widening of cultural horizons, for it endorses the movement away [đi] at the very time it encourages regrouping and the meditation on shared origins. This novel reading of ancestor veneration overturns an idea of these rites as necessarily based in co-presence and stasis, but, indeed, as a complex that has thrived in the context of present-day conditions of separation and movement. Jellema links this cultural practice with a contemporary notion of “đi-về nationalism” that does not seek to confine people to place but endorses their comings and goings as consistent with the strength of the nation and the wealth of its people. Ancestor worship has been enthusiastically embraced by state leaders who comment on it and solemnly endorse rituals of shared origins. Vietnam’s leaders can accommodate the focus on lineages and the rituals that underpin them as sites for reintegrating Vietnam’s dispersed population and repatriating their resources. The discourse of shared origins is also central to the communal rituals that are held each year by the residents of the urban quarter of Đại Yên in Hanoi. As Horim Choi outlines in his chapter, Đại Yên is famous for its traditional medicinal herbs. The sale of these herbs and knowledge of how to use them is still an important way that residents identify themselves as people who are “native” [người gốc] to the village. Each year the village stages a communal sacrifice to its tutelary deity who is, according to legend, a patron goddess of the medicinal herb industry. On the face of it, this rite gives symbolic expression to this community’s longstanding tenure in place. Yet on closer examination, it is clear that no one is really indigenous to Đại Yên. Everyone is a migrant, although some have been here longer than others. Older, more established residents, who belong to the small number of lineages considered “native” to the village, are better represented than more recent migrants in the local power structure. In recent years, they have also become the village’s wealthiest people by selling or renting their land to the newcomers. The legends told about village history and collective traditions tend to reflect the perspective of its wealthier and more powerful “native” elites. Members of this group were more active than the “migrants” [người di cư] in the restoration of the local communal house and they continue to make larger contributions to communal house rituals. These rites of commemorating collective origins and celebrating

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“village spirit” are an opportunity for the local elite to display status and to secure a degree of official endorsement for their view of local traditions. Contestation of this status by the migrants comes in the form of complaints made about the cost of obligatory ritual expenditures. The Vietnamese state employs the discourse of “returning to the origins” [về nguồn] to endorse local rituals as symbols of a common national identity [bản sắc dân tộc]. However, when mobilized by local elites to promote their own partial view of village origins this discourse may exclude many locals, ironically by claiming to unite them. These case studies show that ancestral rites and local communal house rituals exist in a social landscape that is highly migratory. Neither will they necessarily erode in such conditions, and nor does the existence of these ritual practices imply a static relationship to place. Indeed claims made about the stability of such forms themselves rest upon dynamic and fluid foundations. The implications of these case studies may reach back well before the present moment. As Andrew Hardy has demonstrated, French colonial scholars tended to overlook the highly mobile nature of Vietnamese society (Hardy 2003). In light of our knowledge of contemporary ancestral and communal house rituals, we may need to reconsider also their view of such rites as premised on immobility, bounded social forms and co-presence. Far from such ritual forms being threatened by separation and movement, it may be that these processes have been, for a long time, vital to them.

The Quest for Modernity In the early decades of the twentieth century, a variety of popular movements emerged in Vietnam that aimed to reform society and tradition in order to deal effectively with the colonization of the country by the French and, more generally, with the challenges posed by modernity. The best known of these, the communist movement, emerged initially among the urban educated elite and only later was transformed into a mass movement. Several new religious movements also became prominent around this time. The Cao Đài appeared in the 1920s and was announced by its founders as a new religious amnesty, whose creative combination of Vietnamese spirit beliefs and elements from all the major world religions was professed to be a timely answer to the problems of the modern world. Hòa Hảo Buddhism, a syncretic southern movement like the Cao Đài, was founded by the Buddha Master Huỳnh Phú Sổ in the

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late 1930s. His followers were taught to abandon superstitious practices, simplify rites and devote their attention to this-worldly concerns from the liberation of the country to the improvement of moral life. The Buddhist Revival [Chấn Hưng Phật Giáo] emerged in the early 1920s as a nationwide movement that aimed to stem the perceived decline in Buddhism by returning to the scriptural tenets of the faith. Its distinctive features included the dissemination of key Buddhist texts and commentaries about them in the national language, the attempt to institutionally unify Buddhism and the effort to involve the laity in Buddhist associations and compassionate social action. The programmatic and socially-engaged aspects of these new religious movements defied characterizations of religion (in particular Buddhism) that were widespread in the colonial era as a quietist and otherworldly pursuit. For example, the Marxist intellectual Hải Triều argued that, by seeking to annihilate desire, Buddhism mistakenly set itself against life itself and promoted passivity in the face of exploitation (Nguyen Tai Thu et al. 1992, p. 425). Trần Huy Liệu observed that the Buddhist proscription against killing meant that Buddhists would do nothing even if bandits were stealing from their house (Trần Huy Liệu 1927). The large following these movements quickly gained among ordinary people countered the view advanced by some contemporaneous observers that world religions or foreign doctrines such as Buddhism were superficial accretions lacking deep purchase among the common people (Trần Trọng Kim 1935, p. 14; Cadière 1944, p. 10). The critique of tradition and explicit reform programmes advanced by these movements also conflict with depictions of some of them as “substitutes” for the loss of structures of traditional pre-colonial authority caused by colonialism (cf. McAlister and Mus, 1970, p. 86). Later scholars approached the religious reform movements of the twentieth century differently, as self-conscious attempts to draw strength from traditions, search for new organizational forms and achieve equivalence with the West. Yet the terms of the debate in the 1970s and 1980s remained imprisoned within Ralph Smith’s view of these movements as alternative rivals for national power (Smith 1968). With success defined in terms of their ability to provide a political alternative to Confucian orthodoxy, colonialism and communism, these new religious movements were sometimes adjudged deficient. Woodside saw the Hòa Hảo and Cao Đài as backward-looking, and for that reason, only partially successful in attaining power. The former advanced its cause among peasants through classical

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clichés and by enveloping paradise “in an intoxicating mysticism”. The latter was characterized by an “atmosphere of almost voluptuous nostalgia and strict liturgical discipline” (Woodside 1976, pp. 190, 187). Influenced by the communist leader-cum-historian Trần Văn Giàu, Jayne Werner saw the Cao Đài as a modernist movement yet a transitory one, an ideological expression of the semi-developed status of the backblocks region of Tây Ninh where their Holy See was based (Werner 1981). Hue Tam Ho Tai saw the Hòa Hảo Buddhists as a largely localized tradition steeped in an ecology of oppositional millenarianism inherited from the nineteenth century Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương (Ho Tai 1983). What was acknowledged as the strong suit of these faiths, their ability to speak to ordinary people even better than the communists, was also seen as their weak point, their confinement to traditionalist or localized idioms and hence inaccessibility to a national audience.7 While the Buddhist revival was seen as a more substantial contender for power, being a nationwide movement, its failure to enunciate a concrete political programme was attributed by Smith to Buddhism’s essentially personal focus and inner-worldly nature (Smith 1968, p. 83). Woodside argued that the Buddhist reformists successfully engaged Vietnamese people’s imagination through traditional symbols, yet their lack of a concrete analysis of contemporary conditions and their reputed lack of activism made them not much of an organizational alternative to the communists (Woodside 1976, pp. 192–200). David Marr assessed the Buddhist revival as lagging behind other contemporary groups in concrete achievements. This assessment reflects the perspective of the small number of Marxist-inspired intellectuals whose rejection of Buddhist holism for a selective reading of tradition as struggle exemplified, for Marr, the intellectual zeitgeist of the late colonial period (Marr 1981, pp. 304–08). Shawn McHale countered, by demonstrating that the circulation of texts relating to Buddhism may have been even more voluminous than those produced and consumed by secular intellectuals of this era (McHale 2004, p. xi). The immense proliferation of texts arose out of concerns of the Buddhist revivalists to promote orthodoxy by making available accessible vernacular translations. Yet he argues that the textual basis of the revival movement and that of the even greater numbers of people adhering to heterogeneous Buddhist groups formed part of a broader transition from oral to written modes of transmitting diverse traditions (McHale 2004, pp. 170–71). As with earlier scholars, McHale situates Vietnam’s Buddhist revival in the context of early

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twentieth century transnational Buddhist reform efforts. Nevertheless, like earlier scholars he also emphasizes the mainly urbanized, elite and hence culturally limited nature of the Buddhist reform movement.8 These views of the limitations of Vietnam’s religious reform movements seem to be borne out by subsequent historical events as these religions were embroiled in conflict with the colonial and two post-colonial states. Reform-minded Buddhists made some notable gains with the establishment of a unified national Buddhist association in 1951. The mass mobilization of Buddhists against the Diem regime in the early 1960s forced a major reassessment of the legitimacy of the U.S-backed Republican project in south Vietnam. Yet subsequently, the Buddhist political movement in south Vietnam was plagued by factionalism. Thích Nhất Hạnh, the most influential foreign spokesman for the Engaged Buddhist Movement, was banned from returning to the country. When in 1975 the communists triumphed, leaders of the Buddhist Hòa Hảo and Cao Đài religious organizations were removed from office, texts were withdrawn from circulation and buildings were closed down. In 1981, the government organized its own association to represent Buddhists. Some dissenting monks of the Unified Buddhist Sangha were imprisoned and to this day their movements remain restricted. Buddhism in post-war Vietnam seemed to have been entirely co-opted by the state and the organizational vestiges of a once potent vehicle of autonomous social mobilization denied any legal status. While its overseas representatives continue to rail at religious repression in Vietnam, the local institutionalized form of this movement seemed frustrated and outplayed (Vo Van Ai 2000). In Vietnam, the Buddhist revival does not seem to have succeeded as it did elsewhere, even in states like Japan and Taiwan where Buddhism was not the state-sponsored religion. If this view is correct, how can we account for the strength and pervasiveness of Buddhist institutions in Vietnam today? Scholars and activists who have focused on the limited impact of the Buddhist revival or on the co-option of religion by the state are unable to explain the contemporary vitality of Buddhist educational and social work activities and associational links that include many exchanges with Buddhists abroad. These activities belie the thesis that Vietnamese Buddhism is unsuited to modern realities or somehow incompatible with the communist variant of modernity. Elise DeVido’s chapter in this volume takes up this question. She argues that if we look not to the sometimes dramatic and conflictual political history of Buddhism in modern Vietnam,

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but to its social history, a very different narrative emerges. Similarly, to restrict analysis of the Buddhist public sphere to texts is to miss other dimensions of public life among those in Vietnam who responded to the call of the early reformers to remake Buddhism into a “Buddhism for this world”. These activities included the translation of works by Buddhist reformers in other countries, the publication of new magazines that featured interactive question and answer sections, the formation of new associations, changes in the training of monks and laity, the re-organization of monastic communities, the advocacy of compassionate social change among the laity and the development of a Buddhist youth movement. In the context of societal debates about the position of women, reformed Buddhism also saw an increase in the number of ordained women. Not to be confined to the biography of any individual monk, this movement had quite a varied history in different regions of the country. Key to the success of Buddhism for this world, DeVido argues, was the involvement of the ethnic Chinese and of the new urban bourgeoisie. Other important groups who acted to disseminate this new approach to Buddhism were the overseas “Việt Kiều” living elsewhere in Indochina. A prime explanation for the ferment in Buddhist circles in Vietnam was the set of exchanges with Buddhist reformers in China and elsewhere. These exchanges continued to build until the end of the colonial period and continued in the South after 1954, with momentous consequences for understanding the nature of the Buddhist scene in contemporary Vietnam. DeVido’s chapter suggests that the current renaissance in Buddhism in Vietnam is not unprecedented. Indeed, it can only be understood in relation to its long social history of often quiet engagements and non-conflictual institutional transformations, a little-known story to which her chapter provides an important new introduction. If we are to assess the modernity of a practice, one measure would be to see not only how successful it has been within a given country but to ask whether it has been influential as a model beyond it. Few other countries were able to successfully apply the guerrilla tactics that brought to power in Vietnam one of the world’s few communist regimes. According to a former foreign supporter, after the war the current leadership betrayed the spirit of that approach, which relied on mobilizing broad-based resistance to a local political elite allied with foreign capitalist powers (Kolko 1997). On the other hand, “Engaged Buddhism”, popularized in the dark days of the Vietnam War by Thích Nhất Hạnh, has been enormously successful as

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an international export. Already internationally famous as a peace activist while still residing in Vietnam, Nhất Hạnh has become, since his departure from Vietnam in the late 1960s, one of the most prolific and widely-read authors on Buddhism. Versions of his books have been translated into many languages and millions of copies have been sold internationally. His Order of Interbeing [Tiếp Hiện] is a major transnational movement and his meditation retreats have been opened up in many countries. Lay Buddhists and monastics in many of the world’s wealthiest and powerful nations have found his teachings of mindfulness to be an effective method to cope with the stresses and dilemmas of life in a consumerist, materialist world. A further measure of the success and adaptability of his ideas is, that for many years, these texts have filtered back informally to Vietnam, proving immensely popular among Buddhists there. Significantly, this has been at a time when Vietnam has been entering into the kinds of economic and cultural relations that have proved fertile ground in places beyond his homeland for Thích Nhất Hạnh’s teachings. So the circle had been completed save, that is, for the return to Vietnam, in person, of the Zen Buddhist master himself. Obstacles to this would seem substantial, including the dilemmas faced by the government in allowing such a prominent religious figure free movement and speech within the country, potentially even stirring up calls to re-institute the Unified Buddhist Church. Thích Nhất Hạnh also had to be mindful of the sensitivities of overseas Vietnamese anti-communists to any gesture that smacked of collaborating with the government. Yet as John Chapman’s chapter relates, in 2005 Nhất Hạnh made the three-month trip back to his homeland. The return visit, his first in thirty-nine years, allowed the elderly monk to visit the places and people associated with his early intellectual and activist career. He gave many public lectures on Buddhist practice and philosophy in pagodas and public venues in the four main localities he visited. Several of his talks were held especially for government officials. He also led meditation sessions and practised walking meditation in public, accompanied by his large retinue of international followers and local participants. His dharma talks concentrated on themes developed in his international teaching and writings: effective communication, reconciliation, dialogue, listening, dealing with negative emotions and habits, and being in the moment. He also spoke about Vietnamese cultural identity and on the similarities between Buddhism and Marxism. As Chapman notes, one of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s concerns was how to ensure wider reception and

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more long-lasting influence for the ideas promoted in his visit. To that end, many of his publications were made available by local publishing houses. He also set up training initiatives for a new generation of Buddhist monastics, supported by the resources of his international order. The flow of Buddhist practitioners, texts and ideas throughout Vietnam and across national boundaries sets the context for another recent development in Buddhism in Vietnam, the increasing prominence given in northern Vietnam to Zen [Thiền] Buddhism as the quintessential Vietnamese Buddhist tradition. Based on his observations of the northern Buddhist scene from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, Alec Soucy notes that lay Buddhists have only recently begun to make meditation a central focus of their Buddhist practice and to speak of the Zen school of Buddhism as being foundational for Vietnamese Buddhism. Soucy notes that the new vogue for mediation halls, the rise of meditation retreats and the appeal among lay persons of teachers who espouse a form of Buddhism stripped of many former devotional practices, represents in some measure the extension to the north of the country of Zen practices and styles from the south, and the influence of authoritative southern-based Zen teachers. Southern Vietnam’s intense transnational connections have enabled the repatriation and the circulation to elsewhere in Vietnam of the markedly meditative form of Buddhism developed by Vietnamese emigré monks based in the United States and France. While meditation appeals to many in the north as a health-related practice, it also seems to serve as a way for some of its followers to distinguish themselves from the majority of people who still practise Pure Land [Tịnh Độ] or devotional Buddhism. Ironically, this recently imported purified form of Buddhism has come to be taken as a national tradition, a view which receives endorsement from the state, motivated, as are many lay Buddhists, to attach itself to an authentic national tradition that is not sullied by the taint of superstition. Soucy notes that the nationalistic discourse that infuses this newly created tradition may well impede its re-export, making it less appealing to international Buddhists than the engaged Buddhism of Thích Nhất Hạnh, on which it in large part models itself. Today, the various initiatives to strengthen Buddhism in Vietnam enjoy a stature unimagined by those who saw the Buddhist revival and its associated projects as a quest overshadowed by the quest for political modernity embodied by the communist movement. Enjoying great popularity and prestige among people from diverse occupations, the movement’s

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protagonists have positioned Buddhism as a national tradition, one that at the same time is open to global linkages and resources, from which it continues to feed and grow. As in the past, most developments in Vietnam’s fast-changing and remarkably diffuse Buddhist public sphere are occurring irrespective of the particularistic and opportunistic struggle for survival of the political regime of the day. These developments include the training of monastics, the development of new interpretations and followings, the circulation of texts and recorded sermons, lay involvement in meditation retreats, social work, charity and pagoda refurbishments, and the continued deepening of associational life. Vietnam’s Buddhists are intensifying their exchanges with Buddhists in a greater variety of countries than in the past, including also those Buddhists who originate from Vietnam and now greatly influence developments that take place in their homeland. From the repatriation of “Buddhism for this world” and the return visits of Buddhist teachers, to the remittances used to support the training of monastics, Buddhism in Vietnam is blossoming in a sea of transnational flows, re-emerging from obscurity like a resplendent lotus. The prospects for Buddhism increasing in influence as a spiritual, social and cultural charter for Vietnamese people as they meet the challenges of the modern world today appear more certain than ever before. It is noteworthy that today, the Communist Party seeks to boost its legitimacy by endorsing Zen, a version of Buddhism promoted by a transnational movement, as an authentic national tradition. Advocacy by overseas critics focus on the decline in morals and keep pressure on the government to uphold a rationalized notion of the religion. Distinctions between the foreign and the national are effaced as monks within and beyond Vietnam exchange ideas in the attempt to redefine and reposition Buddhism in a society ruled by the Communist Party. Symbiosis seems the more fitting term to describe contemporary state-sangha relations than notions of competition or co-option. Important tenets of the reform Buddhist movement have taken on board by the current generation of party leaders. These include the need to attack superstitions and develop a coherent vision of a national tradition, to build a strong society that is open to exchanges with other nations and cultures and foster a citizenry that is enlightened and conscious of its ethical obligations. In a similar way, the current leadership has come to recognise the Hòa Hảo Buddhists and the Cao Đài religion as having made a vital contribution to the wellbeing of their followers and to society at large. As with the Buddhists, both of these southern Vietnamese

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faiths are presently experiencing a vigorous renaissance. Not all of the enmities that emerged during the bitter struggles for decolonization have been healed. Yet it is clear that those who uphold the legacy of these alternative twentieth century vehicles of modernization have the ability to find common ground. One can expect continuing collaborations between them in the future.

The Problem of Religious Expenditures Religious reformists in the twentieth century found common cause in criticizing expenditures on religion on grounds that they were pointless, wasteful and socially harmful. Phan Kế Bính’s Việt Nam Phong Tục, in addition to being the first comprehensive compilation of traditional customs in Vietnam, also offered a systematic critique of them. Making unflattering comparisons with what he saw as superior European cultural models, he argued that his country had been weakened by his people’s attachment to ineffective and materially ruinous religious practices. The targets of his criticism included expensive sacrifices to the gods and ancestors, lengthy festivals that exhausted people financially and emotionally and impotent magical cures to epidemics. These practices had undermined his people’s physical and mental well-being and impeded their material advancement (Phan Kế Bính 1915). These views were taken up as self-criticisms by proponents of the Buddhist revival, who wanted to purge from Buddhism ideas regarded as superstitious and irrational. One of these was the notion that one could influence one’s fortunes by making offerings to the Buddha. Thiện Chiếu, for instance, argued that Buddhism was atheistic, and stressed that people’s fortunes flowed from their own actions and social circumstances rather than being pre-ordained (Nguyen Tai Thu 1992). A prominent theme from the 1930s on in contributions to Đuốc Tuệ, the magazine that carried many ideas of the Buddhist reform movement, was that one could do more to influence one’s lot materially by practising frugality [tiết kiệm] and by educating oneself in scientific advances than by making offerings to the spirits.9 Buddhist reformers reinterpreted the doctrine of karma [nghiệp] to mean that individuals could influence their own destiny by doing good deeds [điều lành] and avoiding evil [điều ác]. In a recent, widely-circulated pamphlet, the influential monk Thích Thanh Từ keeps up the attack on superstition which, he contends, makes people lazy and

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fatalistic, and argues that people should follow Buddhism, a religion that encourages people to take responsibility for their own actions (Thích Thanh Từ 2001). This critique was implemented in 1939 in the western Mekong Delta by the founder of Hòa Hảo Buddhism, Huỳnh Phú Sổ, who counselled his followers to discard futile rites of making offerings to the Buddha and superstitions such as sorcery, magic and fortune telling. Instead of building pagodas and casting statues, he advised the well-off to use their money to aid the poor and needy. He criticized the burning of votive paper, conducting expensive funerals and the practice of demanding large gifts at wedding ceremonies, all thought to lead to impoverishment. In place of these futile and wasteful rites and practices he advocated ritual simplicity, heartfelt belief and works for one’s fellow men (Huỳnh Giáo Chủ 1965, pp. 177–79). As a revitalization movement that aimed to adapt religious practices to the realities facing the majority of poor tenant farmers in the Mekong delta, this advocacy of ritual frugality, it has been argued, “attracted poor peasants by allowing them to turn thrift from practical necessity into religious virtue”. The ritual reforms advanced by Huỳnh Phú Sổ were successful also because they helped to “lift the burden of unnecessary financial cost to already impoverished peasant households” (Nguyễn Long Thành Nam, 2003, pp. 48–49). The reforms had an ideologically revolutionary dimension, by fostering new “communities of interest” among those who were most affected by the growing social inequalities and the breakdown of paternalistic patron-client relationships in rural areas during the colonial period (Brocheux 1995, p. 129). In many respects, the expectations that people invested in their gods — expectations criticized as false by Huỳnh Phú Sổ — modelled the hierarchical and increasingly impersonal relationships that existed between large landlords and landless agricultural workers in the Mekong Delta’s rice frontier. One of the consequences of eliminating people’s dependence on their gods was to consolidate spiritual authority in the person of the prophet, who became the charismatic centre of the Hòa Hảo Buddhist movement (Ho Tai 1983, p. 159). On the face of it, leaders of the post-colonial socialist state held a different view: that religion arose out of people’s limited technological capacities and their material and ideological oppression by dominant social classes. By employing technology to boost production and making the distribution of resources fairer and more rational, the conditions of deprivation that gave rise to religious belief would be ameliorated (Trần Hữu Tiến 1977).

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Yet far from waiting for improvements in material conditions to render religion redundant, the socialist state also intervened actively to restructure the ritual economy. Expenditures on rites and festivities were to be limited on various grounds. Expenditures on “unscientific” practices such as fortune telling and faith cures were not only pointless and potentially harmful, they were seen as a major cause of poverty. Policies targetting competitive feasting at life cycle ceremonies and ritual occasions in which the elite competed to outdo each other in the extravagance of their offerings, aimed at eliminating the mechanism by which social hierarchy was reproduced. Policies to reduce expenditures in weddings and funerals also aimed to conserve material resources for state-sponsored development. Temples and pagodas were requisitioned to be used more productively as warehouses or schools, and land belonging to temples was redistributed to those in need (Luong 1994; Kleinen 1999; Malarney 2002). At the same time, a new sacrificial ethic was promoted by which individuals were exhorted to subordinate their own personal interests to those of the collective good. By sacrificing one’s life to the defence of the country and accepting many deprivations that arose in wartime, people earned merit [công] with the fatherland (Malarney 2001; Jellema 2005). The commemoration of those who gave their lives to defend their country continues to be a major focus of the civic rituals sponsored by the state. Although influenced by humanistic philosophies that placed people not gods or spirits as the creators of their own destiny, this critique of the material excesses of popular religiosity has an older history in Vietnam. A significant precedent was set by Gia Long (1754–1820), the first king of the Nguyễn dynasty, decrying in a 1804 decree the elaborate ritualism of northern Vietnam: Lately, there are many who ingratiate themselves with the spirits, building fancy doors and tiled roofs, carving beams and columns, decorating cult objects with gold and silver, ornately embroidering their curtains, umbrellas, fans, flags and pennants, celebrating Springs and Autumns, singing and performing at the main ceremony, the longest of which lasts dozens of nights and days, the shorter nine or eight. They perform Cheo and Tuong, Thuong and Leo and hold extravagant feasts, sparing no expense. Moreover they race boats, show water puppets, all sorts of games, also they pick young men and women to play chess and cards. In name they worship the spirits, in truth they want to satisfy their lust. They also make people contribute dearly with money.10

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Gia Long’s condemnation of popular religious excess might be understood in the context of his project to consolidate his power over the newly incorporated region of northern Vietnam. This exercise was, according to Do, threatened by the region’s economy of ritual ostentation that comprised an autonomous source of local prestige and authority (Do 2003, p. 59). The countermeasures proposed by Gia Long to limit expenditures, categorise the spirits, register sacrifices with the appropriate authorities, delimit the scope of renovations and reduce the length of festivities, can be seen as an attempt to regulate the sacrificial realm and make it conform to the interests of central power. As with the reform of rituals implemented by the Chinese neo-Confucian state, the aim was to standardize the meanings of local rituals so that they affirmed the subordination of localities to the court (Watson 1985; Yang 1998). Although these different approaches to ritual reform were articulated in very different circumstances they share the same concern to modify, not eliminate the ritual realm, reshaping it in keeping with a vision of an ideal society. Ritual was of immense importance to Gia Long, Huỳnh Phú Sổ and the communists alike, who each sought to redirect sacrificial activities towards the consolidation of their authority. A significant sea change in official policy towards religion has occurred in tandem with recent major changes in economic policy and social relations. The party now sees in religion a source of inner strength [nội lực] that might aid development of a prosperous, orderly and wholesome society. The legacy of Durkheim and other thinkers of the symbolist tradition, prominent among French colonial scholars, but neglected for more than half a century, is re-ascendant in the thinking of domestic intellectuals. By returning to the roots of tradition, reattaching people to symbolic focal points and bolstering collective consciousness of a shared identity, religion can generate a united, cohesive nation in a globalized world. One also sees a Weberian focus in positive assessments of religious traditions that are associated with economically successful countries. “World religions” and moral creeds such as Buddhism, Catholicism and Confucianism are being reappraised in this light for their potential to contribute to building a prosperous, progressive and wholesome society (Mai Thành Hải 2002; Lê Hữu Nghĩa and Nguyễn Đức Lữ 2003; Nguyẽn Hòng Dương 2004). Religious traditions are also mobilized to achieve the objective of material accumulation. We see this perspective clearly in the praise state authorities lavish on religious associations for generating and spending material

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resources for emergency relief, community development and charitable activities to assist the poor. This functionalist view of religion as a resource that contributes to public welfare goes along with renewed criticisms of types of spiritual belief that are believed to be inconsistent with development and modernization. Ethnic minorities have continued to attract criticism in this regard. For example, the emphasis on karma in Theravada Buddhism is said to have had a negative effect on the economic advancement of the ethnic Khmer in Vietnam, reducing their will to struggle and accumulate savings for the future (Nguyễn Xuân Nghĩa 2003, p. 37). It is claimed that the insular nature of Khmer Sroc, settlements grouped tightly around a Buddhist monastery, makes them unreceptive to new ideas that would aid their modernization (Phan Xuân Biên 2004, p. 3). This view of religion as an inner strength selectively endorses the revival of religion as a fund of symbolic and moral resources that might be drawn upon for societal development. Yet much in the contemporary religious scene does not conform to this accumulative logic. In particular, the hectic construction and refurbishing of temples, sumptuous offerings made to the gods and the return of competitive feasting at communal and life-cycle ceremonies entail enormous material flows whose societal value has again become a subject of considerable questioning and criticism. Among the most poignant of these concerns are fears that exuberant expenditure in the religious sphere will undermine the laboriously accumulated spiritual and material capital of past and present generations. The gaudy renovation of ancient temples and pagodas by pilgrims who seek to make merit conflicts with the desire to conserve them as items of cultural heritage. Competition by the nouveau riche in the refurbishment of temples calls forth anxious comments about the loss of identity and disordering of tradition. The opportunistic development of traditional places of pilgrimage into tourist destinations has provoked concerns about the degrading of their spiritual sanctity.11 The proliferation of fee-for-service activities across the religious spectrum and of the “trade in spirits” [buôn thần bán thánh] has been criticized for undermining religion’s sacred aura (Ðặng Nghiêm Vạn 2001). Renewed expenditures on offerings and festivals has reanimated criticisms about the non-productive use of time and material resources and fears that they will lead to impoverishment. Every year, newspaper cartoons lampoon the custom among officials of offering gifts to their superiors at Tết and state leaders counsel frugality in observing New Year celebrations. Cadres who take time off work or utilize official vehicles to

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make visits to shrines are chided in the press for neglecting their duties and misappropriating public resources (Le Hong Ly 2005). Ironically, the concerns of Marxist critics have been turned on their heads. Once seen as a response to material deprivation and social oppression, religion today is seen as an expression of material plenitude and excessive freedom. Leaders fret about the untoward amount of the wealth of the day making its way into the ritual realm, degrading not only the material but also spiritual resources that they aspire to harness for development. These debates revolve around a common question: are material expenditures on religion compatible with the attainment of a rational and viable society? Two contributors to this book go to the core of this set of concerns. Focusing on ritual sacrifices they detect in them a social logic that has been overlooked by societal modernizers, drawing on insights from Mauss and Battaille that see sacrifice at the heart of the construction of social identities. In place of those critics who regard such practices as symptomatic of destruction and disorder, the contributors find paradoxically that in them lie the key to the constitution and re-ordering of community. Nir Avieli’s chapter deals with the most important family rituals in Hội An, and indeed many places elsewhere in Vietnam, the rites commemorating the ancestors [đám giỗ]. Avieli argues that the food that is consumed in such ritual events, although receiving critical scrutiny by social reformers, has received insufficient attention by anthropologists. The special meals consumed at these occasions are particularly luxurious. They contribute significantly to the way people of Hội An nourish themselves, yet they are also cultural events that take place according to a shared schema, one that is open to endless improvisation according to circumstances. The feasts at the heart of ancestral rites underline the important relationship that the living have with the dead. Yet they also affirm common values held by the living. They are key to maintaining significant social relationships and transmitting messages about how one is to behave towards those who are important. The consumption of food at ancestral feasts plays a part in the assertion and contestation of social identities. An arena for displaying social distinctions the meals are one of the ways in which social status is reproduced. They also serve as a forum for ventilating social tensions and, through subtle personal interactions, to which people are finely attuned, a means by which disputes can be aired and anomalous relationships accommodated. Culturally rich, socially nuanced, and hitherto unnoticed, these feasts are no mere response to material deprivation and nor do they

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represent a disordering of traditions by base material interests. Indeed, these feasts which have their own elaborate grammar are essential to the ancestral rites and, through people’s skilful deployment of this grammar, to the reproduction and transformation of social structure. Starting with two of the most conspicuous customs, the deification of those who died unjustly, and the burning of offerings, Ðỗ Thiện’s chapter in this volume highlights some features of popular religion in contemporary southern Vietnam. It attempts to show that the ideas behind these two practices share a common sacrificial logic, and suggests how an alternative perspective on the gift economy and sacrifice motifs also holds the key to gaining a better understanding of the coherence of major southern religious features. The attribution of greater spiritual efficacy to the consequence of unjust death reveals an aspect of violence overlooked in sacrifice. As dramatic transcending of limitations, untimely death signifies “a grand return to the source that gives life its sustenance”. We find this aspect again in the burning of offerings, which purports to reciprocate and pay tribute to spirits by symbolically transforming the gifts. Ðỗ’s analysis of the exchange economy of sacrifice provides fresh insights into the dynamics by which community is constituted in the southern Vietnamese plain. He argues that the potlatch-like destruction of resources, criticized by elite commentators for being supposedly irrational and wasteful, creates the very outcomes that contemporary rationalist planners seek. These rituals are not the superstructural reflection of received community or social identities but key to the reproduction and formation of communities. They are not insular or autarchic, because they are linked to the short-term market economy. They are not ancient traditions or outmoded survivals but are ritual projects that fashion order and delineate value by consuming contemporary resources. Self-immolation combines both of the features highlighted by Ðỗ — unjust death and the burning of offerings — in a uniquely intense and psychologically unsettling act of sacrifice. Although Ðỗ’s analysis applies equally well to Thích Quảng Đức’s dramatic self-immolation in 1963, he offers a lesser-known case study of a matriarchal figure in the Tịnh Độ Cư Sĩ Association, a popular Buddhist group, as a paragon in self-cultivation and welfare activism. Ðỗ argues that her death arguably belongs to the “unjust” category, suggesting that an integrative view of community-building, asceticism, deification and sacrifice is applicable. It is far from certain that sacrifices of this kind will reproduce the kind of community imagined by state planners. The capacity of these processes

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to generate quite different social allegiances, associations and identities is undoubtedly one reason for the negative reaction to them. Yet this analysis also leads us to question the inclusiveness of communities of identification that are constructed by elites through a logic of ritual sacrifice. The official cult to the war martyrs is a commemorative project that excludes those who died in the South defending their country against communism (Ho Tai 2001, p. 182). Official commemorations in 1998 marking the 300th anniversary of the founding of Saigon-Ho Chi Minh City conflicted with the narrative told by ethnic Khmer people, who see the city, which they call Prei Nokor, as having a far older history. Expenditures by Khmer people to renovate their Theravada Buddhist monasteries, which they see as symbols of their precedence in the region, are criticized by state planners as one reason for this group’s poverty. As the logic of sacrifice is behind all contemporary projects of community formation, the question is not whether this practice is compatible with the achievement of a modern, rationally-ordered society. Rather the question is: whose sacrificially-constituted community is to receive endorsement as rational or modern? The answer to that question is yet unresolved but its answer goes to the democratic and multicultural character of Vietnamese society.

Mediums and their Critics An important group in Vietnam’s contemporary religious scene are specialists whose occupation is to intercede with the spirit world on behalf of the living. Mediums possessed by the female spirits of the Four Palaces execute elegant dances to the Chầu Văn melody and distribute spirit favours [lộc] to those who have commissioned their performances. Exorcists [thầy cúng] possessed by the spirits of famed national heroes such as Trần Hưng Ðạo are called upon to drive away spirits who harm health, property and business. Famed soul-callers able to communicate with the departed locate for relatives the remains of those lost on the fields of battle. People seek amulets [bùa] from the ethnic Cham and Khmer, which are believed to have the ability to banish the evil ghosts [tà ma] that bring mental affliction or infest land, market stalls or vehicles. Diviners [thầy bói] operate around the precincts of famed temples offering pilgrims a direct line of access to the powerful spirit enshrined therein. Although newly flourishing, such practices continue to be labelled pejoratively as “superstition” [mê tín dị đoan] and are criminalized by the state. The resurgence of this activity

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and the stigma that surrounds it are intriguingly inter-related, a relationship that is worthy of investigation. These diverse acts of spiritual intercession share with previouslydiscussed ancestral and communal house sacrifices the assumption that life in this world is governed by the spirits that inhabit a parallel world [cõi âm] — spirits that must be carefully propitiated to guarantee success in this-worldly ventures. We have seen how the state has recently admitted ancestor and communal spirit worship under the heading of “folk beliefs”. Why then, are other forms of spiritual intercession still under a cloud? One answer is that ancestor worship and communal house sacrifices are legible to the state. They are practised in people’s homes and in public locations that are known to local authorities and have been certified by the Department of Culture as recognized “cultural and historical vestiges” [di tích lịch sử văn hóa]. The rites follow standardized formats and stable ritual calendars, both at home and in public sites. By contrast, mediumship, soul calling and other acts of spiritual intercession do not necessarily take place in fixed locations or at set times. The followings that cluster around a particular ritual specialist are fluid and amorphous and consequently are difficult to regulate. The format and style of the rites may vary according to the individual experience of each specialist. This amorphousness is precisely what has allowed mediumship and related disciplines to thrive, despite being formally illegal, although it is likely also why they continue to attract official suspicion. Another reason mediumship attracts censure is its ideologically autonomous nature. Unlike the customary invocations read out to the spirits, the messages that are transmitted from the spirit world via mediums are frequently improvised and unpredictable. Mediums do not always rehearse a set speech or recite from an approved text. The ideological autonomy of mediumship is an explicit concern to the authorities, who sometimes describe this quality as “spontaneity” [tự phát]. Police in the southern Vietnamese city of Long Xuyên told me in 2000 that mediumship and other acts of getting in touch with the spirits were forbidden, because the medium might pass on messages telling people to oppose the state. They might spread false and harmful rumours or make prophesies that cause people to panic, expect disaster or act against their own interests out of fear. Or they may exploit people’s attachment to their deceased family members to claim some kind of reward for contacting them. This explanation places little faith in the intelligence of those who would place their faith in mediums.

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It also casts doubt on the honesty and good intentions of the mediums. The construction of mediumship and divination as an exploitative pact between the duplicitous and credulous has a long history in Vietnam.12 Once seen almost exclusively through a security lens, these forms continue to be suspected as means used by enemies to infiltrate, confuse and bewitch the masses, to sabotage national unity and disrupt public order (Bùi Thị Kim Quy 2002, pp. 176–81). Seen through an economic lens, these practices are regarded as a form of profiteering by lazy and dishonest people, with the capacity to harm productivity and cause damage to health and property. At a deeper level, this approach speaks to the persistent incapacity of the Vietnamese authorities and secular intellectuals to accommodate creativity in religious practice. It also illustrates an unwillingness to concede voice to religious practitioners and believers. To be legitimate, the line to the other-world must be audible to the state, with its own set place, time and liturgy, and stable cast of spirits and intercessors. In recent years a concerted attempt has been made by Vietnamese folklorists to describe lên đồng spirit mediumship more positively, as an example of a venerable folk tradition or indigenous belief system. Phạm Quỳnh Phương relates that researchers affiliated with the Institute of Cultural Studies in Hanoi have been at the forefront of this move. Sponsoring conferences, festivals and publishing books on mediumship, they have been partially successful in removing the Four Palaces [Tứ Phủ] cult in northern Vietnam from the negative category of superstition and rehabilitating it as the traditional Vietnamese Mother Goddess Religion [Đạo Mẫu] (Pham Quynh Phuong 2005, pp. 275–80).13 Vasavakul considers the “revival” of the goddess cult in northern Vietnam between 1987 and 2000 as an example in the exercise of a new kind of power that she describes as “networking power”. She argues that it was associations between central and local organizations, intellectuals, musicians and practitioners that created space for experimentation and, eventually, public recognition of this practice (Vasavakul 2003, pp. 39–43). The representations made by these advocates systematically neutralized the most potent criticisms made of mediumship. Often they did so by inverting the schema of the critics. Mediumship was depicted as a genre of folk culture rather than a form of ignorance; an aesthetic form rather than a false science; a rulegoverned practice rather than an unstable or opportunistic phenomenon; a belief with ancient roots rather than a spontaneous aberration; and a local indigenous tradition not a terrain for foreign subversion. Mediumistic

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songs and costumes have been exhibited in the Museum of Ethnology; the form has been extensively researched and documented and it has even been interpreted artistically in performances at the Hanoi Opera House for the edification of foreign visitors. Mediumship has been successfully rehabilitated, although the question arises: at what cost? Master mediums in the bustling spiritual marketplace of Hanoi today emphasize traditional aesthetics and cultivated style instead of divination and possession as the central aspect of their practice (Norton 2002; Endres, this volume). It is arguable that mediumship’s newfound respectability has come at the expense of what many still see as the essence of this practice.14 A closely related approach to mediumship, indeed it is the flipside of describing it as “traditional”, has been to identify its following among certain groups — women, rural people, uneducated traders, and the ethnic minorities — who are deemed backward and unrepresentative of modernity. Lacking access to modern scientific knowledge by virtue of their low levels of formal schooling or residence in remote regions, these peoples’ support for mediumship is, so the criticism goes, due to their non-scientific outlook, uncritical acceptance of nonsensical messages and susceptibility to the ruses of charlatans and other “bad elements”. Exposed to the vagaries of nature and lacking a modern scientific outlook, the ignorant and impotent seek in mediumship an illusory panacea for their troubles.15 These criticisms serve to purify the sphere of modernity, stripping it of association with the practice of mediumship by providing a sociological explanation for this continuing phenomenon that divides contemporary Vietnamese society into rational and non-rational strata. Yet this exercise in burnishing the prestige of normative modernity is flawed in several respects. Many mediums who secure large followings began their career as highly-trained former educators and members of the administrative apparatus. Some continue in such professions, fronting as mediums and moonlighting as teachers. The clients of such mediums speak with reverence about their master’s high educational credentials and administrative experience. As Phạm Quỳnh Phương argues in this volume, it is likely that these mediums’ charisma and perceived efficacy among followers is due in measure to their perceived mastery of the principles of the scientific and bureaucratic realm as much as those of the otherworld. Paradoxically, one reason that the illicit practice of mediumship is so highly developed in the national capital is that many of Hanoi’s mediums have strong social ties to the authorities — some even are former party members and war veterans — and their followers are very

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often even better connected than they. Also prominent among those who patronize mediums are Vietnam’s most successful business entrepreneurs. In his classic 1959 study of the mediums of northern Vietnam, Maurice Durand noted that many of the women who patronized spirit mediums were “intelligent” and “well-cultivated” and were drawn from the wellestablished urban middle class, including the wives of officials and European foreigners (Durand 1959, p. 15). Despite its patronage by many powerful followers and those with high social status, the cultural legitimacy of mediumship remains open to question. Kirsten Endres’ chapter in this volume reveals that in the early twentieth century Westernized intellectuals found fault with its transgressive incorporation of elements which, according to modernist categories, belonged to the separate domains of the traditional and the modern. While contemporary mediumship has its own identifiable logics of assimilating and assigning value to cultural phenomena, its leading practitioners continue to debate about what kind of borrowing is acceptable and how best to regulate often unruly interpretations. Endres links the contestations that surround spirit mediumship in present-day Hanoi to contending visions and experiences of modernity in late-socialist urban Vietnam. She considers lên đồng spirit mediumship to be an important example of the “many local sets of religious palimpsests through which people contemplate, negotiate, and performatively enact the dynamisms and vicissitudes of market relations”. Her chapter shows how lên đồng spirit mediums performatively confront and embody modernity’s multiple challenges. Following an ethnographic account of the aesthetics and significance of mastering lên đồng ritual performance, she analyses the interrelationships between modern consumerism, status competition, ritual aesthetics and performativity, and argues that mediumship is a format for women especially to give voice to their experiences of modernity. The chapter then focuses on the role of master mediums in lên đồng mediumship. Their critical assessment of the burgeoning sphere of mediumship has led some of them to call for state regulation of their profession. This bottom-up appeal for regulation in the face of intense competition is intriguingly similar to processes found in other sectors of the capital city’s market economy. Yet it is also a testament to the creativity that characterizes this performative genre, one whose susceptibility to regulation, one might think, is far from assured. Spirit mediums also find a large following among members of society who lack influence and high status, those who have been marginalized,

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or who occupy an anomalous cultural position (Nguyen Thi Hien 2002; Norton 2006). Understanding the concerns that motivate these followers leads us to Iaon Lewis’ view of possession cults as “protest cults” that enable such individuals “to advance their interests and improve their lot, even if only temporarily, from the confining bonds of their allotted stations in society” (Lewis 1971, p. 127). This conception of spirit possession as resistance provides clues as to why spirit possession cults in Vietnam find such strong support among women. Yet while some see in women’s religiosity a response to obstinately persisting “feudal” attitudes towards women, arguing thus for increased government intervention to root out such unenlightened values, we may indeed find more proximate causes in a set of recent government policies and societal attitudes which, ironically, in the name of modernity, have re-domesticated women. Central to the state’s move away from socialist command and collectivization policies in the last twenty years has been the attempt to restructure social relations to facilitate the operation of a market economy. This effort has included policies that situate the family, in place of the collective, as the fundamental unit of economic management. It has also featured new state discourses that set forth women’s responsibilities for familial well-being and emphasize that their opportunities for self-realization lie in marriage, motherhood and virtuous domesticity (Fahey 1998; Werner 2002; Nguyen Vo 2002; Rydstrom 2004). These approaches aim to improve productivity and the efficiency of social management by harnessing supposedly innate or traditional structures of motivation and responsibility. Arguably, the roles for women that feature in these discourses are anything but traditional. They have been identified by some critics as neo-traditional or resynthesized feminine subjectivities that are consistent with neo-liberal practices of governmentality (Nguyen Vo 2002; Phinney 2005). Added to this is the intrusion of globalized media and advertising images that propose to a new generation of women that nothing short of ecstatic fulfilment lies in consuming products that enhance their desirability in the eyes of men or their efficacy as mothers (Drummond 2004; Nghiem 2004). In this process, women who formerly found social recognition in gender non-specific public roles such as resistance fighters, administrators and cooperative managers now find themselves domesticated as housewives, eroticized as monogamous partners and championed as nurturing mothers. The recent flourishing of mediumship among women in Hanoi can be seen as an attempt by women who have been affected by this transformation

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to fashion new hierarchies of spiritualized authority that enable them to regain a measure of their former prestige and to counter their domestication by obtaining extra-familial recognition. Phạm Quỳnh Phương’s chapter in this volume notes that although spirit possession has a long history in Vietnam, it has become a freshly significant phenomenon in the postrevolutionary period. After decades of suppression and restriction, spirit possession has — with economic development and the revival of religious activities — returned to social life in a dynamic way that is frequently highly innovative. A notable feature of this has been the role played by one of Vietnam’s most revered military heroes, Trần Hưng Đạo, who manifests himself in spirit possession rituals as “Saint Trần”, engaging in dialogue with his devotees, and delivering (through his mediums) messages that relate not only to individuals but also address national issues. Phạm Quỳnh Phương’s chapter focuses on female mediums who have been witnesses to both the pre-renovation past and the post-renovation transition. Using four life-histories of female mediums, followed by a brief discussion of the relationship between male and female mediums, she argues that becoming a spirit medium is one of the ways individual mediums have been able to assert and empower themselves. In this regard, the narrative of power embedded in Saint Trần’s image has played a significant role. Claiming to be the incarnation of spirits might be attributed by some to innate female spiritual proclivities. However, the power of tradition and cultural values manifested in such spirits enhances the visibility and standing of women who are possessed by Saint Trần — not only among their large number of followers but also in the public domain, where their innovations have contributed to a growing official recognition of mediumship as one of the nation’s venerable cultural traditions.

Vietnamese Christians as Strangers in the Realm With up to eight per cent of its population affiliated with Catholicism, Vietnam is the second largest Catholic country in Southeast Asia after the Philippines. Catholic communities have had a continuous presence in Vietnam for over 400 years. Recent rapid conversions to Protestantism in the highlands and cities make this latter faith one of the fastest growing religions in Vietnam. Nevertheless, more than any other religion, Christianity seems to focalize the impression — both among foreign advocates for religious freedom and within the Vietnamese Government itself — that

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religion in Vietnam is under threat and subject to unconscionable political intervention.16 Among the community of scholars within Vietnam and abroad who specialize on this country, Christianity continues to provoke debates about the difficult accommodations forged by “foreign” religions in Vietnam. This theme is evident in debates about Christianity’s association with foreign challenges to Vietnamese sovereignty, its compatibility with Vietnamese cultural values, the disputed grounds for its appeal among ordinary people, and its representation by transnational organizations. Is there something about this religion, its history, sources of support, values or institutional arrangements that make it somehow incompatible with Vietnamese political or cultural conditions? Perhaps the most recurrent theme in discussions about Christianity in Vietnam is its perceived association, in the past or the present, with imperialistic designs on the country. The suspicion that is entertained by Vietnam’s state authorities that Protestants in Vietnam are being manipulated by powerful foreigners echoes the suspicions by some of Vietnam’s pre-colonial rulers that the foreign cult of Jesus was a threat to their sovereignty. Nationalist intellectuals in the colonial period depicted Catholic missionaries as in the vanguard of imperialism — on the grounds that they appealed to the French admiralty to intervene and occupy the country in the mid-nineteenth century, or assisted the French to consolidate their colonial rule. This perspective has found much support among foreign scholars (Cady 1954; Lê 1975; Marr 1986; Michaud 2004). However, to view the Catholics in Vietnam as proxies of imperialism is questionable on several counts. The longevity and stability of some Catholic congregations, present in Vietnam since the 1500s, owes as much to the successful accommodations forged by missionaries with local authorities as to the appeal to sections of the population of the message that they preached. Late in the eighteenth century, Bishop Pigneau De Behaine negotiated support from the French that proved vital in restoring the Nguyễn family to power. The consequentially favourable relations between Catholic missionaries and the Gia Long emperor (r. 1802–120) deteriorated quickly under his successor Minh Mạng (r. 1820–141). As Ramsay demonstrates, the latter’s attempt to centralize state rule in the 1830s shattered the many localized accommodations established between locals and missionaries, and the missionaries were subject to increasingly violent attacks by court agents (Ramsay 2004a). The centralisation campaign was greeted by concerted resistance not only

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from Catholics but from many other localized traditions as well (Brocheux 1995; Choi 2004). If we see the Vietnamese tradition as localized and diverse, we may indeed assess the Minh Mạng reforms as an instance of state colonialism, rather than the defence of an authentic tradition from illegitimate outside interference.17 French colonialism ultimately brought to an end the violent recriminations against Catholics that flared in the wake of the French conquest, providing a safe haven in which Catholicism could again flourish. This has given rise to the perception that Catholicism in Vietnam has illegitimately benefited from state patronage. Several scholars have pointed out that under colonialism the Catholics featured disproportionately among those who rapidly rose in social status under the French (Osbourne 1969, pp. 131–55; Woodside 1976, pp. 8–12; Marr 1986, p. 124), one implying that, at least initially, Catholicism itself benefited from the French dismantling of the traditional order (Woodside 1976, p. 12). Yet although by some estimates by the end of the colonial period Catholics reached perhaps ten per cent of the population, others contend that this growth was not linked to state patronage (Gheddo 1970, p. 13; Keyes 1977, p. 216). Catholic observers noted that the French administration, “comprised for the most part of Freemasons and anticlericals”, were more supportive of Buddhism and traditional religions than the Catholic faith (Gheddo 1970, p. 17). Indeed, some colonial authorities argued that Catholicism should be discouraged because it offered nothing of value to the local population, unlike Buddhism, which was “perfectly adapted to ‘the native mentality and tradition” and should hence be cultivated in preference to Catholicism (ibid). The restrictions later imposed on Buddhism by Ngô Ðình Diệm, the Catholic President of the Republic of Vietnam led Buddhist critics and many foreign observers to accuse the Republican state of illegitimately giving support to Catholicism (Thích Nhất Hạnh 1967; Topmiller 2002, pp. 1–3). Critics aligned with the socialist state highlighted the counterrevolutionary role of the Catholic Church and the philosophy of Personalism in the Republican state’s repressive apparatus (Nguyễn Khắc Viện 1978). However, the dominant official post-war line has been more positive: that on the whole, Catholics embody the quintessential Vietnamese tradition of patriotic anti-foreign resistance. As a formula to bring Vietnam’s large Catholic population into the national fold, this interpretation of history is quite pragmatic, in light of the fraught historical relationship between the Catholics and the current government.

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Explanations for the appeal of Catholicism among ordinary people are quite varied. Some maintain that Vietnamese converted to this faith for purely materialistic reasons. Visiting Tonkin in 1688, William Dampier observed that Catholicism gained converts chiefly among the very poor and only in times of scarcity due to the “Alms of Rice” that they could obtain from missionaries (1705, p. 96). A related reason is the charisma attaching to the faith of those possessing superior technology and knowledge, a factor which, according to Reid, was behind the widespread conversions to Islam and Christianity throughout Southeast Asia during the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries (Reid 1993). During the colonial era, Catholic missionaries offered the very different view that their religion provided one of the few available refuges for those people in rural Vietnam who were socially marginalized, indebted and outcaste (Tuck 1987, p. 320). Keyes interprets the appeal of Catholicism in pre-colonial Vietnam as consistent with that of many other millenarian faiths of the time, which offered a radical spiritual alternative to unbearable societal conditions or crisis in the dominant cultural order (Keyes 1977, p. 201). Emphasizing continuities with pre-existing beliefs, Nola Cooke argues that the God of the Catholic missionaries was readily incorporated into the Vietnamese spirit pantheon, as a particularly potent deity. The new religion was accepted for it was seen as efficacious, able to explain misfortune and heal the diseased (Cooke 2004a). The cult of the Virgin Mary is another aspect of Catholic belief that has found ready acceptance among ordinary Vietnamese. The popular view among Catholics that Mary (Đức Mẹ) offers compassionate protection, healing and reliable assistance to people of all backgrounds is indistinguishable from the expectations invested in the host of other feminine spirits worshipped in Vietnam.18 That these efficacious female deities belong to different religious or cultural traditions is a matter of less concern to the people who seek their assistance than to the members of formal religious hierarchies whose function is to ensure the boundaries between religious traditions remain distinct (P. Taylor 2004a, pp. 228–41). One often encounters the view in Vietnam today that Protestantism has gained such a strong following among ethnic minorities because of the material support they are said to receive from wealthy foreign coreligionists. As with elsewhere in Southeast Asia, conversions may indeed be influenced by perceptions of the superior resources that missionaries and foreign centres of evangelical Christianity are believed to have at their disposal (Duncan 2003, pp. 311–13). Yet also in line with regional

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patterns of conversion to Protestantism, a more pertinent set of perceptions may be those held by many ethnic minority peoples in Vietnam of a sense of crisis in their way of life (Keyes 1986). The liberal reform era has seen an explosion of migration into the uplands, an increase in the transfer of land holdings and the development of plantations for the production of high income, high risk export commodities. These changes have displaced many indigenous locals, who have found it impossible to maintain older patterns of land use, while finding it difficult to make a living in the new conditions. Long-standing state cultural policies to modernize “backward” indigenous people (McElwee 2004) and a more recent influx of new institutions and cultural standards have undermined cultural and ritual relations and weakened former structures of authority (Rambo and Jamieson 2003). The continuous official pressure to adopt a new way of life, formerly socialism and now capitalism, has created among some locals the feeling that they need to abandon the old ways and remake themselves. Christianity provides peoples such as the Ede, Jarai and the Hmong a new framework of associations and a new way to articulate a common identity, one sometimes defined in contrast with mainstream or state identities (Salemink 1997, 2003). Official policies of multi-ethnic solidarity and inclusive development are belied by the often corrupt or self-interested actions of the local authorities, who fail to live up to the principles that they claim to represent. In this context, the Good News [Tin Lành] of Christianity, offering birth into a new life, comes as a promise of salvation, an appealing alternative both to weakened traditions and the compromised culture of new local authorities. For some highlanders, such as the Hmong, this dramatic transformation feeds into a pre-existing millenarian tradition, their belief in a messiah who will reunite the dispersed people and reconstitute their lost homeland (Tapp 1989). As a faith often born out of a sense of the inadequacy of the old, Christianity has, not surprisingly, attracted criticism for being incompatible with cultural traditions. Some nationalists in the colonial and early postcolonial eras claimed that only a small proportion of Vietnamese followed Catholicism, as it was hostile to the national tradition of ancestor worship (for example, see Đào Duy Anh 1938, p. 252).19 One contemporary scholar even offers praise for the Catholics in Hanoi who, he asserts, have the most developed religious consciousness of all the people in the capital city. Yet he also takes the view that Catholicism lies “outside the Vietnamese tradition”. The evidence he gives is their supposed rejection of ancestor

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worship, which for him, is the iconic Vietnamese belief (Ðặng Nghiêm Vạn 2001). Today some intellectuals rehearse the same criticism of Protestantism, which despite winning many converts in Vietnam, is declared incompatible with Vietnamese traditions as it forbids ancestor worship. In these terms, one scholar compares it unfavourably with Catholicism which, supposedly post-Vatican II, became more tolerant of this practice (Nguyễn Xuân Hưng 2001, p. 41).20 In light of the great age and prevalence of Christianity in Vietnam, such commentary raises questions about who has authority to determine what is authentically indigenous. The dismissal shown by these educated elites towards many aspects of what they see as indigenous tradition hardly supports their credentials to speak for tradition. It is ironic that such criticisms have been expressed in Quốc Ngữ, the latinized orthography that Catholic missionaries created and popularized. More recently, some Vietnamese scholars have noted the many debts that Vietnamese culture owes to Catholicism, for example in the arenas of language, architecture, the arts and sciences (for example, see Trần Ngọc Thêm 1999, pp. 291–95). For its own part, as others have argued, Catholicism underwent “religious Vietnamization” [Việt hóa đạo] by assimilating indigenous cultural traits (Nguyẽn Hòng Dương 2004, p. 438). One scholar found much to admire in Catholicism’s adoption of local cultural traditions from Tết to ancestor worship (Hà Huy Tú 2002). Although appreciative of the mutual interactions between religion and culture, this approach continues to set assimilation with “indigenous” culture as a criterion for recognizing Christianity as Vietnamese, potentially disqualifying, for instance, local attempts to purify it of local cultural accretions. Jacob Ramsay’s chapter in this volume analyses the myths that prevail in the telling of Vietnam’s Catholic history. Against the dominant view that the relationship between Church and State has been one of enduring irreconcilable antagonism, he offers a new appreciation of this 400-year history as one of negotiation and accommodation. Episodes of violent persecution and paranoid mistrust are counterposed against the instances of common ground being found between missionaries, state leaders and local bishops. Ramsay then turns to the way the Church’s association with imperialism has been represented by Vietnamese historians in the post-war era. Incidents such as the 1988 canonization by the Vatican of Vietnamese martyrs, including those suspected of being French imperialist spies, brought new stories of past antagonistic relations to the fore, yet the overall response among Vietnam’s official historians has been, if anything,

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to overemphasize the political commitment of Vietnamese Catholics as patriotic contributors to the Vietnamese nation. This has been intriguingly paralleled by a gradual softening of a line once prominent among nationalists that Catholicism was culturally incompatible with Vietnamese traditions. From depictions of early nineteenth century Catholic missionaries as proponents of a “perverse cult” [tả đạo] to the view expressed during the 1960–75 war that Catholics stood outside of Vietnamese traditions (Thích Nhất Hạnh 1967), one now hears the platitude that Catholicism was successful in Vietnam because it was able to integrate culturally with the Vietnamese worldview. As one of the most telling illustrations of this process, Ramsay cites the way that even the most conflictual episodes in church-state history have today receded into the local landscape of memory. His example is the tomb of a missionary executed by the Huế court that sits innocuously in the middle of a Buddhist cemetery. One of the most interesting aspects of the contemporary church-state rapprochement is the role taken on by the church itself in minimalizing and attempting to suppress potentially destabilizing expressions of popular faith such as the rumours of miraculously weeping statues of Mary in 2005. Managing the tensions between popular piety and the project of institutional accommodation is not, for the Catholic Church, unique to Vietnam and, within Vietnam, it is a problem that is not at all unique to the Catholic Church. Catholicism’s long history in Vietnam and the many Vietnamese adherents gained by Protestantism make it difficult to regard these faiths as “foreign” religions. Yet is the acceptance of properly foreign religious organizations or individuals in Vietnam less assured? Andrew WellsDang’s chapter in this volume goes to the heart of this question. He demonstrates that although traditional missionary work or proselytizing remain prohibited, non-Vietnamese and overseas Vietnamese religious believers can and do engage in development assistance, direct service, charitable donations, and some religious activities. The engagement of foreign religious organizations in social work, humanitarian assistance and religious observances forces us to rethink the notion that the Vietnamese institutional environment is inhospitable to the involvement of foreigners in the religious realm. Wells-Dang examines some of the roles that foreign Buddhist, Catholic and Protestant organizations and individuals have played in Vietnam since 1990. Recent legal and policy shifts demonstrate that role boundaries are shifting, with a widening range of

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foreign religious actors present in Vietnam, contributing often in quiet or implicit ways to the steady expansion of religiously-oriented civil society. Case studies illustrate the great variety of organizations, religious agendas and activities that make up the foreign religious scene in Vietnam and also the various approaches foreign organisations take in response to state regulations: in some cases stretching the limits of these regulations and sometimes unobtrusively working around them. The (re-) involvement of foreign actors in religiously-motivated service blurs distinctions that some would maintain between “Vietnameseness” and “foreignness” in religious practice, just as the participation of foreign religious groups in development activities recasts the relationship of religion to the state. Linkages between foreign religious humanitarian aid and development work push at the limits of definitions of development as technical assistance and service provision, opening doors to new forms of civil society and potential transnational religious practices and social organizations.

Conclusion The ebullience of religious life in contemporary Vietnam stands in stark contrast with the situation in the pre-reform era when public religious expressions were muted, rituals and ceremonies were small and often furtive and a great many practices were regarded with suspicion by the authorities as so much superstition and subversion. Can we characterize these significant changes as the re-enchantment of the Vietnamese world? Much of this activity has been interpreted as the resurgence of once suppressed traditional practices in response to the decline in the prestige and coherence of modernist ideologies and bureaucratic rationality. Some observers have identified more synthetic and creative process of religious revitalization underway as people develop new communities of purpose or re-establish forms of consensus that were shattered by the incursions of capitalism, state colonization and frontier development. Religion has been seen as a way to cope with the social and cultural upheavals brought about by Vietnam’s re-integration with the capitalist world, a way to explain, and also to sanction, new social inequalities. As such, Vietnam’s experiences are not so different from those elsewhere in the modern world where religion has emerged as a dominant idiom to make sense of unfair and capricious markets and to impose order and

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meaning on fortuitous and disconsolate experiences of social inequality and dislocation. Characterized thus, the reflorescence of religion in Vietnam might appear to conclusively repudiate the revolutionary project that was instituted by the Communist Party as an approach to securing progress, justice and welfare for the Vietnamese people. This re-enchantment narrative positions the Communist Party as the emblematic agent of modernity and the state as a secular enterprise. However, the Vietnamese socialist state might be seen, alternatively, as thoroughly enchanted from its very inception. We can see this in the endorsement given in official history texts to the legendary journeys undertaken by anti-colonial activists to Japan, France and the Soviet Union — the perceived charismatic centres of modernity — as heroic quests for potent knowledge that freed the people of Vietnam from servitude and backwardness. It is evident too in an official conception of history as governed by deterministic laws, known to an exclusive political elite who, for many decades, have been deemed alone able to interpret and safeguard their logic. At critical junctures, the leadership has explicated major shifts in its political orientation as a response to a moment of revelation or enlightenment, a religiously inspired narrative strategy that has legitimized the repudiation of previously sacrosanct state policies. The body of Hồ Chí Minh is enshrined in the nation’s capital where it remains to this day the object of an officially promoted pilgrimage cult that deifies the founding president of the socialist state as a self-sacrificing and prescient ancestor. The state also sponsors a cult to the war martyrs whose ultimate sacrifices are deemed to have made possible the peace and prosperity of the current generation. Viewed in these terms, the reflorescence of religion in present-day Vietnam might be seen not so much as the re-enchantment of a formerly secularist society as the decentering of religious expression. Religion now proliferates vigorously throughout the society in a variety of forms and contexts, conveying messages that are no longer orchestrated by the state. This religious decentering has occurred in tandem with the state’s own policies of economic and social decentralization and its loss of its monopoly over the means of symbolic reproduction. Today prosperity cults, pilgrimages and spirit worship flourish within new social networks and lines of communication opened up by the market, migration, frontier expansion and transnational linkages. Sorcerers, religious healers and messianic prophets

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inspire hope, provide care, and offer compelling explanations for people’s present-day ills in the face of the privatization of social services and a perception that authorized service providers are aloof, self-interested and inaccessible. In the country’s geographical margins and in its largest cities transnational religions such as Christianity, Buddhism and Islam earn many local adherents who find in them a more charismatic embodiment of the very principles of inclusion, cosmopolitanism and reason championed by the state. Spirit possession, sacrifices and local communal rituals impose order and direction on dramatic changes in the social landscape, as they have long done, even as they continue to be represented by societal elites alternatively as archaic or dysfunctional. The challenge facing the contemporary state is how to respond to this prolific outpouring of religious activity. Although religion in Vietnam is a topic that readily conjures forth images of state repression, the case studies in this book illustrate that state authorities find many and varied grounds for its acceptance. It is interpreted as a form of tradition, symbolizing what is unique about the nation’s identity. It is seen to provide a stable moral compass for a society in transition and a set of values and resources that support official development objectives. It is recognized as an innate spiritual need, a set of values that have been tested over time and across a spectrum of human societies. Indeed, many state agents themselves adhere to one or more of Vietnam’s many different religious doctrines. Highly publicized visits by state and party leaders to ancestral shrines and pagodas manifest a belief in the efficacy of religion as a means to secure social cohesion and the party’s own legitimacy. An official cult of antiquity positions even new and recently revived religious expressions as examples of the ancient cultural roots of the nation that have been preserved under the party’s tutelage. These positive appraisals suggest limits to seeing the religious efflorescence in post-revolutionary Vietnam as a form of resistance to the state. Nevertheless, while state agents energetically endeavour to co-opt religion to serve their own interests, they also have to contend with the agency of a host of social actors who maintain their own interpretations and practice their faith for reasons and in ways that are not officially sanctioned. As such, religion can best be seen as a domain of constant negotiation between state and society. The religious realm has been reshaped in accordance with changing state agendas, just as post-hoc recognition is often extended by the authorities towards practices that have been worked out in the unofficial realm.

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Yet state circumscription of the religious realm still occurs frequently, on the pretext that “non-religious” agendas (among which subversion, crime and commerce feature prominently) are involved. The principles that are allegedly threatened by these ulterior agendas are, most commonly, “security” [an ninh], “order” [trật tự] and, most recently, “identity” [bản sắc]. These principles can themselves be seen as properly religious, being transcendent, self-evident values, with the improvised quality of myth and the capacity of symbols to be endlessly reinterpreted by self-serving human agents. Ironically, both the state and its critics, who complain about the vague, all-encompassing security regulations that govern religion in Vietnam, share an aspiration to give religion a clearer legal footing by developing more precise laws and standardizing implementation of them. This legalistic convergence between the government and its critics, if ever realized, could be quite detrimental to religion in Vietnam, overlooking the vast areas of religious practice — from temple restorations to the charitable activities of foreign religious groups — that thrive in the interstices, precisely due to ambiguities in the law and thanks to localized dispensations. The controversies that embroil religion in Vietnam are scarcely unique to this country. Yet certain weaknesses in the approach adopted by the authorities who manage or comment upon religion make controversies that do occur — for instance, in relation to mediumship, ritual expenditures or conversions — hardly surprising. One of the biggest weaknesses in official approaches to religion in Vietnam is an inability to deal with religious innovation. Conceptions of religion as traditional or rule-bound are continuously flaunted by new interpretations or practices that respond to people’s specific and changing circumstances. Although advocacy by Vietnam’s religious researchers on behalf of certain religious expressions — as nationally authentic, socially functional, or culturally compatible phenomena — provides legitimacy and space for religious experience, these attempts can also be faulted for fixing the meanings of these religious expressions and denying voice and agency to religious practitioners themselves. In a culturally heterogeneous, socially stratified society, the questions that will always arise are: whose tradition, whose purpose and whose experience will be validated as culturally and socially acceptable? “Spontaneous” religious interpretations, autonomous practices and religious-based associations that follow no set text, predetermined schedule or approved site are also anathema to state officials.

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Yet the expectation that the religious order can be regularized and predicted can only be frustrated in a society that is as complex and changing as Vietnam’s. Aspirations to codify, make legible and regulate the religious sphere also conflict with the nature of religion as a quest for meaning, an attempt to authenticate personal experience and a way to imagine a different world. The restless search for meaning, efficacy and authority that informs a diversity of religious experiences in Vietnam issue from the same wellsprings of suffering and hope as visionary state schemes to improve the lot of the people and strengthen the nation. Marx’s view of religion as “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world” might spur some on to create heaven on earth, yet as Vietnam’s recent history also suggests, religion will inevitably be part of the society they conjure forth. NOTES 1

2

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I wish to thank Craig Reynolds, Benjamin Penny and Ðỗ Thiện of the Australian National University, who provided useful comments on a draft of this chapter. Overseas Vietnamese groups who have lobbied for religious freedoms in Vietnam, include the International Buddhist Information Bureau based in France, Hòa Hảo Buddhist groups (the most active are in the United States) and the Montagnard Foundation in North Carolina that advocates for the rights of the indigenous people of the Central Highlands to practice their Christian faith. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reports regularly address official constraints on freedom of religious expression in Vietnam. An influential intervention into the debate was the critical report by the UN Rapporteur for Religious Freedom in 1999. In 2003, the European Parliament issued a resolution on freedom of religion in Vietnam voicing concern about the repression of the Unified Buddhist Church, Catholics, Montagnard Christian groups and Hòa Hảo Buddhists. The U.S. State Department listed Vietnam as a country of particular concern in its International Religious Freedom Report of 2004 and 2005. In late 2006 Vietnam was removed from this list. Press conference by Ngô Yên Thi, head of the government’s Committee for Religious Affairs, reported in Việt Nam News (25-04-2006), “Government Assures Right to Freedom of Religion”. Article 8, Ordinance of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly No. 21/2004/PL-UBTVQH11 of 18 June 2004. For a discussion of nationalist readings of religion as “folk belief”, see Endres (1999, 2002), P. Taylor (2003).

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Philip Taylor In another ambitious attempt to define the cosmological assumptions that permeate the Vietnamese social and political order, Nguyễn Ngọc Huy suggests that the belief in fate is a predominant cultural value that is presupposed in all social projects from the personal to the national (Nguyễn Ngọc Huy 1982). Such an interpretation has recently been challenged by Do and Taylor, who argue that religious groups in rural southern Vietnam in the colonial era were influenced by the ideas of religious reform and societal modernization circulating contemporaneously in the cities (Do 1999, 2001, 2003; Taylor 2001a). Thien Do’s study of the Buddhist revival is an exception to this portrayal. Describing a wider range of activities taking place in a sphere of influence that extended well beyond the cities, he argues that the revival embodied societal aspirations for enlightenment and cultural identity that were pervasive in the colonial era (Do 1999). I thank Phạm Thu Thủy for this last observation, which is based on her reading of Đuốc Tuệ (see also Ðỗ Thiện’s and Elise DeVido’s chapters this volume). Ðại Nam Thực Lục Chinh Biên Vol. 2 p. 166. This translation is provided by Thien Do (2003, p. 58). One of the clearest expressions of this view was put by the historian Trần Quốc Vượng, who in 1998 protested the destruction of the spiritual sanctity of Yên Tử mountain by the proposed opening of a coal mine (Bach Tan Sinh 2004, p. 274). Acting under similar motives, to preserve for posterity this icon of national Buddhist culture, he later published a letter criticizing the construction of a cable car up the mountain by tourist entrepreneurs (personal communication Đào Thế Đức 2005). In the French colonial period, mediums and fortune tellers, along with sorcerers, faith healers and monks peddling amulets and cures were depicted as charlatans motivated by base material interests opportunistically preying on the credulous and the needy. Modernist intellectuals directed such criticisms against Buddhist monks who peddled ritual services, and the credulous people who believed, against reason, that their lives could be improved by paying for such services (see for example, Nguyễn An Ninh 1938). Policies to prohibit or restrict these professions were in place under both Vietnamese states in the 1954–75 period and, since 1975, they have continued to attract penalties (Malarney 2002, Taylor 2004a). While cartoons mocking the greedy, glibtongued and sometimes lecherous blind fortune tellers who preyed on naïve people were a staple in Vietnamese newspapers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, some localities even went to elaborate lengths to educate the public in the “tricks” they used. For instance, in August 1981 the city of Hải Phong

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featured a display by an elderly man reputed to have once been a sorcerer who demonstrated to the public the tricks he had used “to take advantage of the naïve belief and superstition of others to get rich” (Kim Khuc 1981, p. 2). Folklorists in the south have also recast “mediumship” [đồng bóng] as the traditional folk aesthetic practice of “trance dancing” [múa bóng] (Huỳnh Ngọc Trảng 1998). In 2005 I showed a copy of a video that I had taken of a master medium in a possession ritual in a temple in Hanoi to numerous people in southern Vietnam — including people who regularly went on pilgrimages to spirit shrines. I asked the viewers if they recognized what it was. The unanimous response was that it was “dancing” [múa]. I then told them that it had been described to me as mediumship [lên đồng, đồng bóng]. Each time I was corrected by my interlocutor, who told me that it was not in fact mediumship, but simply dancing. These are among the explanations given in a 1983 report in the People’s Army Newspaper for the recent revival of mediumship, fortune telling, séances and other “superstitious” activities in the newly liberated areas of the South, in border regions and ports and among ethnic minority peoples (Quân Đội Nhân Dân 30 January 1983 p. 3). Lên đồng mediumship continues to be described as a “superstitious” practice that has strong appeal among uneducated people (Lê Trung Vũ 2001). Allegations of persecutions of Protestants in the highlands and Christian dissidents in the lowland cities feature prominently in the charge laid by the U.S. State Department and several human rights organizations that the Vietnamese Government is repressing religion. See for instance the U.S. State Department’s Report on International Religious Freedom 2005, 2006; Amnesty International; Human Rights Watch 2006. Demonstrations by ethnic minorities in the highlands, petitions circulated by clerics in the cities are taken by critics as proof that religion is repressed, and by the Vietnamese Government that ill-intentioned foreigners are intervening in the county’s internal affairs. Researchers and activists affiliated to evangelical Christian churches and diasporic groups are rarely short of examples for their case that Christians are persecuted and constrained from proselytizing freely in Vietnam (Lewis 2002). Media reports highlight the difficulties faced by the Catholic Church in persuading the Vietnamese Government of the Vatican’s prerogatives in the ordination of bishops and training of seminarians (Schwartz 1996, p. 21; Hiebert 2000, pp. 35–36; Nakashima 2005, p. A16). When, in the mid-nineteenth century, the French admiralty invaded Vietnam on the pretext of protecting Catholics from persecution by the Vietnamese court, it had catastrophic results for the Catholics: hardening the perception

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Philip Taylor among literati and mandarins that Catholics were in league with the imperialists and leading, after the French occupation, to an escalation of violence against Catholics (Ramsay 2004a). A legend about the Virgin Mary associated with her pilgrimage site in La Vang in Central Vietnam tells that in the early 1800s, after a long a traumatic period of civil war between rival political factions, she appeared to a group of Catholic refugees and provided them shelter and healing. Nguyễn Văn Huyên did not even mention Catholicism in his discussion of religion in La Civilisation Annamite (1944). In the Republican era, Buddhist activist Thích Nhất Hạnh argued that Catholicism was less tolerant of customary practices than the “Vietnamese traditions” of Buddhism and Confucianism (Thích Nhất Hạnh 1967, pp. 17–21). Despite all the print devoted to Catholicism’s supposed antipathy to ancestor worship, Gerald Hickey noted that, in Catholic households in (pre-Vatican II) Khánh Hầu in the late 1950s, the position of the Catholic shrine was similar to that of the shrine to the ancestors in non-Catholic houses, and that Catholics also observed death anniversary rites and feasts for their departed family members (Hickey 1964, pp. 120, 128–29).

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2 Returning Home: Ancestor Veneration and the Nationalism of Đổi Mới Vietnam Kate Jellema

A few minutes before noon on 18 May 1994, a middle-aged foreigner in a business suit mounted the stairs of Đô Temple in the northern Vietnamese community of Đình Bảng. Villagers had just rebuilt the ancient temple, devoted to the worship of the eight kings of Vietnam’s Lý dynasty (1010–1225), and a freshly lacquered altar shined bright red and gold in flickering candlelight. The stranger lit incense in front of the altar, got down on his knees, and bowed his head to the ground, overcome with the joy of a much-anticipated but long-delayed homecoming. After more than 700 years, Korean businessman Lee Chang Can, known as Lý Xương Căn in Vietnam, had at last been reunited with his Vietnamese ancestors. Căn descends from a branch of the Lý royal family that fled to Korea when the dynasty fell, and in 1994 he became the first person in his family to set foot on native soil since the thirteenth century. “Today, with a heart full of feeling, full of sentiment impossible to express, I have been able to return home,” Căn inscribed in Korean script in the Đô Temple guest book. “As a result of this pilgrimage, I am basking in feelings of great warmth, honor and glory” (Lý Hiếu Nghĩa 1994, p. 21).

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This chapter seeks to understand why, even as Vietnam rushes into a brighter, more cosmopolitan and prosperous future, its people ardently pursue homecomings and reunions. Why, in the midst of the forwardlooking “Renovation” age, does the entire nation and its leaders seem transfixed by a quest to “return to origins” [về nguồn] and “remember the source” [nhớ nguồn]? Why do ancestors, royal or otherwise, exert such a strong pull on modern Vietnamese, and even more puzzling, why has the avowedly secular Đổi Mới state so enthusiastically promoted a revival of ancestor worship? I argue that ancestor worship in particular, and the về nguồn movement in general, models a flexible “coming and going” engagement with the nation. As I hope to demonstrate with reference to the Đô Temple case, the revitalized practice of ancestor worship in Đổi Mới Vietnam is above all, a rite of return. Not only the dead but also the living are urged to come home, to về quê (return to the homeland). To về quê for the rituals is the ultimate act of filial devotion, at once expected and demanded, forced and desired. However, the unmarked corollary to the coming back must certainly be the going away, and thus buried within the trope of return and all its nationalistic implications, we discover, unexpectedly, hidden sanction for mobility. In other words, the emphasis on return accidentally configures ancestral rituals, and by extension the familial and national communities they generate, as occasional gatherings or temporary reunions. The disciplining về (to come back home) contains within it the liberating đi (to go out), and therein the possibility of a Vietnamese nationalism compatible with individual ambition and a global outlook. This chapter draws on two years of dissertation fieldwork in northern Vietnam, including six months in 2001 living at the home of a local party leader, his wife and their three children in Đình Bảng village. My fieldwork, centred on the Đô Temple, took place at a time of mounting national interest in the Lý dynasty, as the country geared up for the 1000th birthday of Hanoi, founded in 1010 as the City of the Soaring Dragon by the first Lý king, Đình Bảng native Lý Thái Tổ. The discovery in 2001 of a grave site on the edge of Đình Bảng believed to date to the Lý era, the phenomenal find of the ruins of the old royal citadel in Hanoi, and a series of supernatural visitations by the dead kings themselves further incited public curiosity about the Lý dynasty. In this climate of enthusiasm for all things Lý, the leaders of Đình Bảng have been particularly ardent of late about their claim to live in the sacred land where the great dynasty

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began. After decades of neglect, villagers recently rebuilt the Đô Temple, devoted to the worship and remembrance of the eight Lý kings and their mothers, and are eagerly transforming it into the spiritual, emotional and civic centre of the village, as well as a primary node linking the village to the nation. Đình Bảng is situated on Highway One just north of Hanoi in Bắc Ninh province. Most villagers are ethnic Việt and at least nominally Buddhist. Đình Bảng is an exceptional place, and not just because it is the birthplace of the Lý dynasty; other reasons include its proximity to Hanoi, its glowing revolutionary record, and its above-average wealth. I look to it as a case study not because it is a typical or representative village, but rather because it is in many ways an exemplary village, often singled out for its laudable “return to origins” work. By studying Đô Temple in Đình Bảng, we are able to examine a community that places itself, and is at times placed by the state, at the vanguard of the về nguồn movement.

Religious Revival in the Post-modern World The re-invention of ancestor worship across Đổi Mới Vietnam has to be situated within a larger pattern of religious revival sweeping across the country. The booming interest in spirituality in late socialist Vietnam reflects two global trends: the first towards religious revival in the developing world, often occurring in tandem with rapid integration into world markets, and the second towards spiritual rebirth in societies transitioning out of socialism. Most scholarly explanations for the re-enchantment of the global South fall into two camps. First, many have argued that religion offers people an appealing way of dealing with the integration of local worlds into global capitalism, whether by helping them make sense of capitalism’s own magic (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999); offering a framework for resisting the capitalist machine (Ong 1998); providing guidelines for the invention of a new moral order (Hefner 1998); or as Philip Taylor (2004a) argues in the case of South Vietnam’s goddess cults, offering an empathetic ear to marginalized yet successful businesswomen. Rather than interpreting religious activity as a traditionalist hold-over, these post-Weberian scholars argue that religious revival in developing countries grows directly out of capitalism and is as intimately linked to economic changes as the creation of stock markets or the emergence of new patterns of consumption.

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It is impossible to understand the contemporary practice of ancestor worship in Vietnam apart from a consideration of market reforms and the rapid development of capitalism within the country. Although it has deep historical roots, ancestor worship in Vietnam continues to be shaped by changing socio-economic and political exigencies. The upswing in the economy is reflected on a most basic level in the increasingly lavish consumer needs of the dead, as evidenced by the brand-name mopeds and home entertainment centres now available in votive form. The burgeoning middle class and the consumer culture it supports has also given rise to conspicuous investment in graves and altars, the state of which can serve as a quick index of both financial success and moral turpitude. Meanwhile, improved transportation and more disposable income, combined with the relaxation of central control in Vietnam, has meant both more mobility away from native places as well as greater ease in return journeys, with some family members now able to fly home from far-flung destinations for Tết or a special death-day anniversary. These family gatherings in turn can serve to open up new trade relationships or solidify business partnerships. The proper care of the dead is said to improve a family’s commercial prospects, while particularly meritorious ancestors provide a partial explanation for the otherwise inexplicable or even unjust prosperity of a village like Đình Bảng compared to the relative poverty of a neighbouring hamlet. Interesting work remains to be done to systematically outline the complex and substantive ways ancestor worship has changed in tandem with macro-economic shifts from feudalism through the colonial then socialist economies and into the market era. Nonetheless, a narrow focus on the explanatory power of capitalism threatens to overlook other equally important dimensions of Renovation-era ancestor worship, most especially the role of commemorative practices in the reimagining of local and national communities in Vietnam. A second and related approach to post-modern religious revival comes out of the study of transitional societies such as the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and late socialist Vietnam and China. Here religion often operates as a vehicle for alternative subjectivities and counter-narratives, creating a space relatively autonomous from the state in which people long forced to suppress their inner experiences and personal beliefs can finally express themselves. Looking specifically at the Vietnamese case, Hue-Tam Ho Tai (2001) has argued that the passion for commemoration must be understood in light of heavy-handed state efforts to control history,

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particularly in the high socialist era of the 1950s to 1980s. As the state backs off, society gives voice to long-suppressed alternative histories and personal memories. The new freedom the Renovation-era state accords society facilitates not only the expression of historical counter-narratives once deemed heretical but also the re-invention of a host of religious practices long condemned by the secularist state. Due to pressure from Western trading partners, a diminished capacity for social control, and a campaign to promote “traditional culture”, the Vietnamese Government has relaxed formal and informal prohibitions against religious expression, and finally in 2004 passed a national ordinance pledging freedom of religious practice and belief.1 Often, such as the case of the reconstruction of Đô Temple which began in the late 1980s, local groups take the lead on religious revival and exert pressure from below for the state to follow along; in other cases, such as the practice of goddess worship in the Mekong Delta, individuals have found a realm of autonomy outside the range of the state’s peripheral vision (Taylor 2004a). Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to read the revival of ancestor worship strictly in terms of an antagonistic state-society dynamic or to see religion in modern Vietnam as a domain of civil society insulated from the reach of the party and the state (Ho Tai 1987). As the next section will show, the Renovation-era state does not merely tolerate ancestor worship; in fact, it is one of ancestor worship’s most committed advocates, and invests significant public resources to promote the “return to origins” movement. Rather than imagining it a realm apart from party and state, it might make more sense to consider ancestor worship as a site of constructive dialogue between state and society, Hanoi and the periphery, a site where a common set of practices and a shared language create the conditions for civil discussion of major issues facing Đổi Mới Vietnam, not least amongst which are questions about the shape of nationalism in the twenty-first century. Without discounting the importance of market forces nor dismissing the potential for religion to provide a measure of autonomy from the state, here I will focus on the way the state harnesses the potential of ancestor worship to advance a sense of national belonging in the post-war, late socialist moment. After demonstrating the strong government support for return to origins activities, I will argue that through the re-invention of ancestor worship as a rite of return, the party-state models a new form of nationalism well-suited to Đổi Mới Vietnam: a “coming and going”

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nationalism that can traverse global terrain while retaining a strong sense of home; a nationalism that allows for individual mobility without sacrificing communal belonging.

“Remember to Return” In a fluid age marked by separation, migration, urbanization and the centrifugal pressures of modernity, the Vietnamese construct ancestor worship as a rite of return. In rhetoric and practice, death-day anniversaries, Tết ceremonies and village festivals re-convene scattered communities, bringing them back in sentimental expressions of home, unity and togetheness. For example, in Đình Bảng, the three-day Đô Temple Festival held each year on the fifteenth day of the third lunar month acts as a great convener, gathering villagers and pilgrims, commoners and royalty, the living and the dead together in the same place at the same time for a brief but magnificent reunion staged at the point of personal, village and national “origins” [nguồn gốc]. When the festival ends, everyone disperses again to distant locales, repeating to themselves a poetic reminder to come back the following year: The sonorous prayer bells from Ứng Tâm pagoda on the fourteenth of the month, The resounding drums of Đô Temple on the fifteenth, The green fields and ripe red rice plants All tell those far away to remember to return!

Ironically, the reunions of the festival reveal a normative state of apartness. Cheerful reminders directing “those far away to remember to return” on special occasions give folkloric endorsement to time away even as they put pressure on far-flung kin to come home for holy days. As suggested by the emphasis on extraordinary togetherness a few times a year, the model community member produced through the practice of ancestor worship may actually spend most of his or her time elsewhere, following individual pursuits in distant lands, only returning rarely, at key moments, to demonstrate virtuous filiality.

Where the Souls of Lạc Việt Gather As I discovered while living in Đình Bảng village in 2001, even before the main event begins, the Đô Temple Festival creates the occasion for an array of smaller events all geared towards reconstituting scattered communities.

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For about a fortnight before the actual festival, I accompanied my host, chairman of the commune People’s Committee, to more than a dozen reunions, including those of his elementary school classmates, everyone inducted into the army from that locality on the same day, an anti-colonial youth guerrilla brigade, the wrestling club, the opera club, the amateur poetry club, the “daughters and brides” of a village lineage, and, the next day, the lineage at large. All of these gatherings involved the delighted reacquaintance of old friends and relations who had not seen each other for months, years or in some cases even decades; all entailed the congregation of people normally apart. The reunions usually centred around the act of feasting together at a banquet funded by collection and hosted in the home of one of the local members, the shared meal symbolically underlining the momentary coevality. Culminating the season of reunions each year in Đình Bảng is the Đô Temple Festival itself, reinstituted after decades of dormancy in the early days of Đổi Mới. The festival now attracts thousands of pilgrims each year, not least amongst them a large contingent of Đình Bảng natives living elsewhere. The big house of my host bustled with visitors during the festival, including old friends, business associates, impoverished kin from deeper in the countryside and well-to-do relatives from Hanoi. For three days, the courtyard roared with moped engines as clusters of visitors arrived, stayed for tea or a meal, and then left, only to be replaced by new groups, everyone in high spirits, laughing, drinking and bearing gifts: special fruits from the provinces, the best french bread available only in Hanoi, home brewed liquor and golden bottles of French cognac. According to festival organizers, Đô Temple belongs to all of Vietnam, as the birthplace not only of one of her most illustrious dynasties but also of her national capital. As temple guardian Nguyễn Đức Thìn explained in an article for the provincial newspaper Bắc Ninh, “The Đô Temple Festival is not only of the village; from long ago it has been a festival for the whole nation.”2 Using an ancient name for the country, Thìn entitled his article “The Đô Temple Festival: Where the Souls of Lạc Việt Gather”, making the point again that the festival convenes not just the village but also the entire “Lạc Việt” nation. “The Đô Temple Festival is a festival of return, an enthusiastic appeal to origins, a gathering of the souls of the children of Lạc and the grandchildren of the Hùng kings in order to uống nước nhớ nguồn,” he elaborates later in the article, citing a proverb popular in Renovation-era Vietnam which means: “When you drink from the stream,

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remember the source.” Coming together at the temple generates a spirit of nationalism and camaraderie: “The festival is a warm meeting of brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins, all participating together in the sacred rites, the traditional rituals, the folk culture and the entertainment, thereby increasing the love they share for one another, their appreciation for national characteristics, and their aspirations for peace and happiness.”

Calling the Dead The reunions that occur around festival time involve not only the living but also the dead, who carry on busy lives in the underworld and have to be called home for special events. In David Haines’ study of southern Vietnamese households relocated to the United States, immigrant informants said they appreciated the way lunar new year rituals brought together the whole family, including both living and dead relatives: “Both live somewhere else; both return for visits.” What is unique about the holiday is not the interaction amongst family members per se, but rather that that interaction is “so extended and so dense”, amounting to a “broad convocation of the living and the dead” (Haines 2006, pp. 130, 131). Altars and graves in Vietnam are not permanent homes for the dead, but only meeting points from which the ancestors “come and go” [đi về]. To facilitate the return trips of the dead to these meeting points, the living take care to provide them with transportation: markets in Hanoi now sell not only votive mopeds, but also votive cars and airplanes. Sometimes the living, aware of the busy schedule of the dead, will host a notification rite to give ancestors advance warning of an upcoming ritual event and invite them to return. As one villager explained during a notification rite for a lineage apical ancestor, “This is the day to report to the ancestor that tomorrow is his death-day anniversary, so whatever he was planning on doing, he needs to drop everything and come here instead!”

Emperors of the Sky Just like the ordinary dead, the royal dead have to be summoned back to participate in rites. On festival days and death-day anniversaries for the Lý kings at Đô Temple, the village elders dress in elegant ceremonial robes and spend the morning ritually invoking the monarchs. As fragrant smoke from smoldering incense drifts to the heavens, an elder cries out the names

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of the royal dead, moving in slow succession through the dynasty. Leaning into a microphone, his voice travels through an amplification system set on the “reverberate” function. It fills the temple grounds with its eerie majesty, then rises into the heavens on a cloud of smoke. The list of names is punctuated by thunder claps from the barrel-chested temple drum, meted out with great flourish one at a time by man dressed in an embroidered headdress fringed with red pom-poms. “Lý Thái Tổ … BOOM! … Lý Thái Tông … BOOM! … Lý Thánh Tông … BOOM!” After every resounding strike, the drummer holds the mallet still in the air and closes his eyes in perfect repose. Only a faint quivering of his pom-poms reveals the source of the other-worldly sound. In recent years, following the post-war reconstruction of Đô Temple and the rediscovery of the Korean descendants of the royal family, the eight kings of the Lý dynasty have announced their own rare returns to their temple with semaphoric meteorology, making their temporary presence evident in fleeting cloud formations. Many such miraculous cloud formations occurred in the late 1990s. To give just one example, at noon on the main day of the Đô Temple Festival in 1997, the sky was a deep endless blue. Suddenly, just as a festival procession was returning to the temple courtyard, eight long thin white clouds, each in the shape of a sinuous dragon, appeared out of nowhere in the clear sky and drifted together over the roof of the temple. “The clouds only appeared for a moment, then they vanished like a dream,” one witness told me. The elusive moment was captured on film in a single photograph by a man named Hoàng Tuấn Đại. This first and only photo of the eight clouds became nationally known. Observers see in the eight clouds “the souls of the eight Lý kings, gathering a moment to return, together with their descendants, on the ancestral death day”.3

Party-state Endorsement of Ancestor Worship In early 2005, the official website of the Communist Party of Vietnam featured a special video showing Secretary General Nông Đức Mạnh bowing before a small red-curtained altar. “Following the annual ritual”, the accompanying text on the website reads, “during the traditional days of Tết, the comrade-leaders of the party and the government all go to the memorial for Hồ Chí Minh in the Presidential Palace to offer incense and solemnly remember Uncle, loved and respected leader of the nation.” In a variety of highly public acts, ranging from this webpage display of

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filial duty towards the avuncular Hồ, to the multi-day festival marking the death day anniversary of legendary national ancestors the Hùng kings; from schoolchildren bussed to Đô Temple in Đình Bảng to the language of National Assembly resolutions; in its laws, its policies, and its funding priorities, the Đổi Mới state indicates its endorsement of the practice of ancestor worship and related rites of return.

Bowing to the Lý Kings The Đổi Mới state’s commitment to “return to origins” reaches down into local communities, as evidenced by the participation of the Ministry of Finance, the state treasury, national leaders and myriad schoolchildren in everyday acts of ancestor worship at the Đô Temple. The Đô Temple complex, in its heyday comprising more than a dozen wooden structures harmoniously placed in a verdant landscape of ponds, fruit trees and stone statues, dates back to the days of Lý Thái Tổ, the dynastic founder, who was born in Đình Bảng in the tenth century.4 After he was crowned emperor, he returned to his native village and built a shrine as a tribute to his ancestors. Over the centuries the temple expanded to serve as the official worship site for the Lý dynasty. However, neither historical nor religious significance could save the temple from the incendiary pressures of the First Indochinese War, and in 1952, French forces torched the ancient temple, convinced that it harboured anti-colonial guerrillas. Only a stone stele listing the accomplishments of the Lý survived. For decades, the temple grounds sat charred and empty, sometimes used by grazing buffalo and once, during the war with America, as a firing range. Not until 1989, three years after the tentative inauguration of Đổi Mới reforms, did Đình Bảng residents, backed by the local branch of the Fatherland Front, launch a grassroots effort to reconstruct the temple. Over the next decadeand-a-half, motivated by what temple guardian Nguyễn Đức Thìn calls a “profound sentiment of ‘when you drink from the stream, remember the source’”, villagers raised enough money to systematically rebuild every structure in the complex. Over the past ten years, Đô Temple has enjoyed increasing attention from national-level leaders as the country catches the “return to origins” spirit and the state prepares to celebrate the 1000th birthday of Lý Thái Tổ’s capital city. The government has taken a special interest in the temple’s open-sided water pavilion, a small but elegant structure which

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in 1930 graced the five-franc note issued by the colonial Banque de l’Indochine (Hội Tem Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh 1994, p. 59). The Ministry of Finance agreed to directly fund its reconstruction, and in 2001 the state treasury in Hanoi issued a commemorative 1,000-dong coin impressed with an image of the pavilion. The coin completes the return of the Đô Temple, and by extension the country, from imperial occupation to local stewardship. State approval of the temple and its elaborate ritual cycle is also evidenced by the tens of thousands of public schoolchildren taken to Đô Temple on official field trips each year, their buses festooned with banners reading “when you drink from stream, remember the source”. Perhaps three days out of seven, schoolchildren carrying bright backpacks and sack lunches pack the brick courtyard and learn how to worship the eight Lý kings. The school visits, designed to acquaint a new generation with its national origins, include a lively history lecture by caretaker Thìn which interweaves stories about the Hùng kings, the Lý kings and Hồ Chí Minh; a worship service at the temple educating children in the proper veneration of royalty; “traditional games”; and a performance of regional folk songs called quan họ. Ever since the temple’s reconstruction, party and state leaders have visited Đình Bảng to burn incense for the Lý kings. The list of famous pilgrims in the past decade includes Secretary General of the Communist Party Đỗ Mười; President Lê Đức Anh; military hero General Võ Nguyên Giáp; Prime Minister Võ Văn Kiệt; and president of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Lê Quang Đạo, a Đình Bảng native instrumental in jump-starting the temple renovation back in the late 1980s. Mindful of the party’s antisuperstition campaign and its policy of secularism, these leaders usually avoid talking about “worship” [thờ cúng] at the temple, preferring instead to describe their bows before the altar as acts of “solemn remembrance” [tưởng niệm] wherein they “remember the debt” [nhớ ơn] all subsequent generations of Vietnamese owe to the pioneering Lý kings. Party leaders share with the general public a commitment to “return to origins” and a basic posture of respect and gratitude with regards to the ancestors. “When you drink from the stream, remember the source” interjects Secretary General Đỗ Mười like the amen of a prayer in his contribution to the Đô Temple guest book, praising the people of Đình Bảng for rebuilding the temple and remembering the debt owed to the Lý kings (Lý Hiếu Nghĩa 1999, p. 1).

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Hùng Kings’ Holy Land Forever The Đổi Mới state’s commitment to preserving and promoting the values of ancestor worship are demonstrated with great pomp and circumstance at the annual death-day festival for the Hùng kings. According to legend, all Vietnamese people can trace their ancestry back to the marriage of the dragon father Lạc Long Quân and the fairy mother Âu Cơ. This magical union produced an egg sac from which hatched one hundred human children, including the first Hùng king. State commemoration of the collective death-day anniversary of the Hùng kings, celebrated on the tenth day of the third lunar month, has a long history, but in recent years has grown increasingly elaborate, each festival more fantastic than the last.5 According to official estimates, more than a million-and-a-half people attended the five-day festival in 2005, which opened with “a lavish night-time performance of Hùng Kings’ Holy Land Forever”, featuring over 2,500 amateur actors.6 Staged at Mount Nghĩa Linh in Phú Thọ province, on the very site where fairy-mother Âu Cơ is said to have given birth to the Vietnamese race, the festival is known as the giỗ tổ, short for ngày giỗ tổ tiên: the death-day anniversary of the ancestor(s). The Vietnamese Government favours this terminology, historian Patricia Pelley points out, because its familial overtones evoke feelings of warmth and gratitude (Pelley 1993, p. 194); in addition, by calling the national festival a giỗ tổ, the state insists that all Vietnamese people share the same ancestry. “Every giỗ tổ for the Hùng king ancestors is an opportunity for children of the whole nation to remember their origins,” cultural commentator Nguyễn Đăng Duy reminds his Vietnamese readers. “Those who can should make a pilgrimage to the native place of their father, the land of their ancestors, to light incense and solemnly remember the Hùng kings” (Nguyễn Đăng Duy 2001, p. 207). In nationalist rhetoric, Mount Nghĩa Linh represents the simultaneous birthing of the Vietnamese people and the Vietnamese nation state. The most famous saying about the earliest denizens of this sacred space comes from Hồ Chí Minh, speaking in 1954 shortly after the end of the First Indochinese War: “The Hùng kings have merit for founding this nation. Together, we must preserve it.” Giỗ tổ activities planned and funded by the party-state demonstrate official endorsement of the ritual commemoration of the Hùng kings as nation-builders and national ancestors. As Nguyễn Hữu Điền, Secretary of

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the Phú Thọ provincial committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, explained in a recent issue of the Communist Review, the Hùng kings’ festival offers an education in Vietnam’s “tradition of patriotism” by encouraging participants to biết ơn sâu sắc, to recognize their profound moral debt, not only to the Hùng kings but to all predecessors who have contributed to the growth and protection of the nation. “Worshipping the Hùng kings carries the highest sacred significance”, Điền explains, “returning to national origins in order to solemnly remember those people who have merit in the work of creating and building our country” (Nguyễn Hữu Điền 2005).

Ancestor Worship and the Law In 1994, Đặng Nghiêm Vạn, then director of the state’s Institute for Religious Studies, argued that ancestor worship should be considered the “national religion of Vietnam”. Vạn’s suggestion found validation ten years later, when the special status of ancestor worship was written into a new law on religion.7 Article 1 of the Ordinance Regarding Religious Belief and Religious Organizations guarantees freedom of religious belief and declares all religions equal before the law. However, in a set of definitions found in Article 3, the rather limited list of approved “activities which arise from religious beliefs” singles out both ancestor worship and acts of commemoration for specific mention, relegating all other types of practices to a third catch-all category.8 Article 5 makes even more explicit the elevated status enjoyed by the worship of ancestors and the veneration of heroes: The State guarantees the right of religious belief and religious practice according to the provisions of the law; respects religious cultural and ethical values; [and] preserves and promotes the positive values of the tradition of worshipping the ancestors, solemnly remembering and respecting those people who have made meritorious contributions to the nation or the community, with the goal of contributing to the consolidation of the great national unity bloc, [and] meeting the spiritual needs of the people.9

Article 5 groups ancestor worship with the commemoration of national and community heroes and recognizes the “positive values” of both về nguồn activities, noting that they not only serve spiritual needs but also strengthen national unity. In short, in its new ordinance on religion, the Đổi Mới state promises to tolerate all beliefs (within the limits of the law), but pledges to actively “preserve and promote” ancestor worship,

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thereby confirming in the law a measure of support also made evident in the actions, slogans and public displays of the party-state leadership. Faced by myriad challenges to the legitimacy of the party-state in the post-war, post-collectivization, post-Soviet, late-socialist moment, the Vietnamese Government warmly embraces ancestor worship, not as one acceptable religious practice amongst many but rather as a category apart, a privileged practice with special state sanction.

Kinetic Nationalism As suggested by the recent rhetorical focus in state publications on the need to “consolidate the great national unity bloc and activate patriotism” nurturing nationalist attachments is a matter of no small concern to the Renovation-era party-state.10 Throughout the revolutionary era from 1945 to 1986, the state consciously organized popular support around a defensive martial ideology which invoked a tradition of resistance to foreign invaders (Pelley 1995, 2002). However, in the peaceful, globalizing, market-hungry Renovation age, bellicose models which locate national unity in militant resistance are irrelevant at best, and actually risk being counter-productive, particularly in the international arena. As one Vietnamese historian reported to American academic Hue-Tam Ho Tai, the theme of heroic resistance served well during the war, “but we are now at peace and we need a new theme around which to organize history” (Ho Tai 1998, p. 198). Meanwhile, the thirst for foreign investment dollars has spurred a drive to shepherd overseas refugees back into the national fold, just as a broadening array of international opportunities lure a new generation of Vietnamese to leave the country for study and work. The collapse of the Soviet Bloc, the deflation of Vietnam’s centrally-planned economy, “ethnic unrest” in the highlands, and democracy movements elsewhere in the post-socialist world call into question the legitimacy of a continued Communist Party monopoly on political power in Vietnam, and lend additional urgency to the party-state’s quest for a useable nationalism able to coalesce disparate people at home and abroad around the goal of national development. In these unsettling times, the party-state has turned to ancestor worship to help consolidate what I call a “kinetic nationalism” relevant to the Renovation era.11 Reversing an earlier position of disparagement towards “superstitious” folk beliefs, in the 1990s cadres and state researchers began exploring the

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potential for ancestor worship to facilitate what Đặng Nghiêm Vạn called “community consciousness”.12 In 1996, Professor Vạn argued that because the cult of the dead in Vietnam pays homage not only to deceased relatives but also to individuals who make meritorious contributions to the village and the nation, it has the potential to nurture national loyalty. Communities of different sizes, from the intimate to the imagined, can become helpfully conflated with one another in ancestral practices, to such an extent that “In the mind of the Vietnamese, it is difficult to separate the family from the village and the fatherland” (Đặng Nghiêm Vạn 1996, p. 38). With a little encouragement, filial piety in a family context might be translated into loyalty to the modern nation, in an updated version of Confucian patterns of governance. Ancestor worship’s appeal as a foundation for nationalism rests in part on the well-rehearsed if exaggerated claim that it is practised universally by all Vietnamese, at home and abroad.13 In his World War II era study of daily life in Vietnam, francophone ethnologist Nguyễn Văn Huyên noted that the cult of ancestors “is observed by all Vietnamese, without any constraint whatsoever, no matter what level of the social hierarchy they belong to” (1995, p. 51). Ethnographic and anecdotal evidence suggest that the practice continued, albeit in a simplified and impoverished form, throughout the war era, even when discouraged during the Communist Party’s campaigns against superstition (Nguyen Thanh Huyen 1994, pp. 27–28; Kleinen 1999, pp. 161–89; Endres 1999, p. 207). Today, the imagined community of ancestor worshippers has expanded to include Catholics, Communist Party members, ethnic minorities and members of the diaspora (Unger and Unger 1997; Bảo Tàng Dân Tộc Học Việt Nam 2002; Nguyễn Đăng Duy 2001; Huyền Giang 2000). A small study conducted by a Vietnamese research team in Hanoi in the mid-1990s found ancestor worship practiced in every one of the thirtyfive ethnic Việt households they surveyed, including the houses of party cadres (Nguyen Khac Vien and Nguyen Thanh Huyen 1994). Catholics in the survey also reported regular ritual activity in honor of the ancestors, their open acknowledgement of this practice indicative of more tolerant policies towards folk practices in the post-Vatican II church.14 In their compendium Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam, Đặng Nghiêm Vạn and his colleagues Chu Thái Sơn and Lưu Hùng (1993) take a broad view of the practice, placing “the cult of ancestor worship” at the head of a list of spiritual characteristics shared by all cultures within a great Austro-Asian

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civilization stretching from the Yangtze River to the islands of Southeast Asia; they go on to explicitly mention ancestor worship as a component of spiritual life for no less than thirty-four of the fifty-three official ethnic minorities in Vietnam. The Vietnamese Government is aware that the practice has been carried overseas as well, in part because return visits during the Tết holidays, focused on rituals for the ancestors, account for half of all trips by Việt Kiều back to Vietnam.15 Glossing over the diversity of ways different households and different communities express veneration to their forefathers, the Đổi Mới state has effectively parlayed the practice into a unifying characteristic able to integrate the disparate sectors of the nation. In a February 2005 statement meant to defuse ethnic and religious tensions in the highlands, the Vietnamese Government reported: “In Việt Nam, the worship of ancestors — the most popular form of belief — is practised virtually by the entire population.”16 If convinced of the claim that all Vietnamese worship their ancestors, it is perhaps not far-fetched to argue that to worship the ancestors is to be Vietnamese; that is, when someone burns incense at the altar, they actively and inconvertibly perform their Vietnameseness. This position allows the state to impute a cultural nationalism not only to the Kinh majority but also to ethnic minorities, Catholics and overseas Vietnamese. At the same time, ancestor worship as an ancient, shared folk belief can act as a bulwark against the impending tide of globalization. Professor Vạn hopes that in the face of a cultural invasion by all things Western, ancestor worship in Vietnam can serve as “one of the antidotes of ethnocide” (Đặng Nghiêm Vạn 1996, p. 50; see also Nguyen Thanh Huyen 1994, pp. 29–30). The Đổi Mới state hopes to capitalize on the potential for ancestor worship and associated “return to origins” activities to counteract the fragmentation of the increasingly global and globalized Vietnamese populace by pulling wayward Vietnamese back home. However, to serve effectively as a foundation for national belonging, ancestor worship has to seem both appropriately old and appropriately new: at once a timehonoured, naturalized tradition and at the same time a flexible concept relevant to contemporary realities. The first task, making the Renovation-era re-invention of ancestor worship seem old, comes easily. Working in the employ of state research institutes, Vietnamese historians have presented evidence supporting the claim that a form of ancestor worship has been practised in the country at least since the early days of sinification in the first millennium if not since the Hùng kings era (Huyền Giang 2000,

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pp. 432–44; Trần Bá Chí 2000; Nguyễn Đăng Duy 2001, pp. 188–95). Reinforced by these scientific studies, in the popular imagination both ancestors themselves and the practice of ancestor worship evoke a sense of origins, deep history, and tradition. Playing on these associations, the 2004 law discussed below describes ancestor worship not as a “religion” [tôn giáo] like Buddhism or Catholicism, but rather as a “tradition” [truyền thống]. In order to carry out the second task, making the old new by modernizing “tradition” so that it answers to Renovation-era realities, the state highlights the kinetic features of the practice. In the renovated form of ancestor worship approved by the party-state, practitioners ritually acknowledge the heightened mobility of contemporary life, demanding returns but simultaneously permitting departures.

Cycle of Movement The return of the living and the dead celebrated in Renovation-era ancestor worship completes a three-stage cycle of movement, from the point of origin, out into the world, and back again. Festivals and deathday anniversaries are not a convening but rather, a re-convening. To be ritually satisfying, these reunions cannot occur just anywhere but must take place at the site of ultimate origins, in what the Vietnamese call the quê hương. Quê hương, an evocative and sentimental phrase usually translated as “native place”, is closely associated with birth, childhood, mother love, ancestral lands, family history, village community and a simple rural life; in short, quê hương represents a feeling of being fundamentally at home. The quê hương is understood to shape its inhabitants, molding their identity, their livelihood and their character, such that it might be understood as a second womb, the womb of the community, from which young people must be born a second time when they reach maturity and venture out into the world. The soil of the quê hương holds the umbilical cords and placentas of all its children, and eventually must also hold their bones. When away from the quê hương, many Vietnamese express an almost compulsive need to return, an idea eloquently expressed by the characters in Lan Cao’s novel Monkey Bridge (1997), about a Vietnamese family forced to flee to the United States in the aftermath of the American War. The father figure, Baba Quan, links his ancestors to the soil of the

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homeland. To live far from this soil “drains the heart” and leaves him feeling empty: The farther we wander from the earth and water of the burial ground, the weaker our ties to our ancestors become, and the separation is not good for the soul. It drains the heart of blood and leaves a profound hollowness in the center of our veins. (Lan Cao 1997, pp. 59–60)

Later in the book, we hear the story of a woman named Thanh who risked her life during the war to bury her mother in her quê hương. I knew I would have to find a way back there, back to the graves of my ancestors, back to the sacred land where my mother’s placenta and umbilical cord had been buried and where her body would have to be buried as well. She would have to die where she was born, and I would have to construct this circle for her, a beginning and an end that converged toward and occupied one single, concentrated space. (p. 248)

The quê hương compels a return, completing the circle of a life, from origins out into the world and back again. There is a special verb in Vietnamese to describe this return movement: về, which means not just “to come back” but specifically “to come back home”. The Vietnamese save this word to express a return to the homeland [về quê] or a return to origins [về nguồn]. No matter how many times I went back my field site, as an American I could only trở lại Việt Nam [“come back” to Vietnam] never về, whereas to America I could only về, never trở lại. In between the origins and the return, the quê and the về, there is the đi: an outward movement from the safe womb of childhood into the world at large. While the về is the celebrated movement of Renovationera ancestral rituals, it relies on the đi for its pathos and power. Without the foray into the world, return for ancestral rituals would be merely symbolic wordplay, not at the very heart of the ceremony. The going away enables the return, and as we will see later, the more distant the journey out, the more joyful the homecoming; the longer the separation, the sweeter the reunion. To celebrate the về is to give approval on some level to the đi, and thus government encouragement for the “return to origins” movement in Renovation-era Vietnam paradoxically normalizes the role of mobility, circulation and global exploration in the contemporary experience of the nation.

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Policing the Ði: “Do Whatever You Can to Become Deserving” The đi-về model for national belonging allows people to move freely through the world so long as they remember to return. However, ideally an ethic of responsibility to family, quê hương and nation governs even the time apart. Contemporary discourse about ancestors in Vietnam emphasizes the obligation for individuals to “be deserving” of their legacy, or in the words of former Secretary General Đỗ Mười, “to be worthy of being the descendants” of such great, meritorious figures as the Lý kings. Reiterations of traditional beliefs about filial obedience, strengthened by Đổi Mới government rhetoric, encourage contemporary Vietnamese to live at all times, wherever they might go, under a deep shadow of gratitude towards their ancestors. The story of Nguyễn Thìn Xuân is a case in point. Xuân, a retired civil servant now living in Hanoi, spent forty years “in search of origins” [tìm về cội nguồn], hoping to find material evidence to prove family legends connecting his lineage with the royal Lý of Đình Bảng. When at last, after decades of dogged research, Xuân finally confirmed his family’s illustrious pedigree, he felt both pride and anxiety. Immediately, he turned his full attention to his children and grandchildren, urging them “to bring to life the tradition of their forefathers”. His mother’s dying wish, Xuân told me, was that her descendants might live up to the standards set by their famous ancestors. Xuân passed her words along to his family. I was resolved to research the lineage, in order to tell my children that … your ancestors are like this, you must strive upwards, do whatever you can to become deserving [làm thế nào cho xứng đáng]. Like my mother said, do whatever you can to be worthy of the Lý dynasty lineage.

Obligation to be worthy of their heritage inspires Xuân’s family members to be good descendants, good people, and good citizens. Everyone [in my family] has strived to make their way, and up until now … I can say no one has violated [the law]. Everyone has made meritorious contributions to the nation. … I have to know my roots … in order to educate the next generation to obey the laws of the nation, to contribute their own meritorious labour and to become useful citizens.

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Family history is a burden as well as an inspiration, and can never be put aside, even during the “away” phase of the đi-về cycle: “Everyone [in my family], even when they travel far away, wherever they are, everyone always remembers ‘I am a person of the Lý lineage’,” Xuân told me.

The Contested Returns of the Việt Kiều “A lot of people said ‘Don’t go, don’t go,’ but I said this is my home” Overseas Vietnamese, known in Vietnam as Việt Kiều, along with globetrotting young professional Vietnamese, are amongst the most coveted targets of the government’s về nguồn initiative. An estimated 2.7 million Vietnamese live overseas, and in 2004 they contributed $3.2 billion in remittances to the Vietnamese economy; the Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development alone handled an average of US$1–2 million a day in remittances.17 According to the World Bank, in 2003 remittance receipts equalled 7.4 per cent of the GDP and 160 per cent of FDI; another study shows that remittances contributed more to the domestic economy than oil, garment or seafood exports.18 Việt Kiều have invested US$540 million in Vietnam under the Law on Promotion of Domestic Investment and another US$157.5 million under the Law on Foreign Investment.19 The Vietnamese Government has been aggressively courting overseas Vietnamese, and pragmatic recruitment policies complement its promotion of rites of return. In 2004, the same year the National Assembly passed the law vowing to “preserve and promote” ancestor worship, the politburo issued Resolution 36, stating that overseas Vietnamese are an integral part of the nation, entitled to state care and privileges.20 According to Phạm Thế Duyệt, chair of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, Resolution 36 responds to “the trend of Việt Kiều returning to their homeland” by creating a supportive environment in which Việt Kiều can “reaffirm a strong attachment to their homeland … and fulfill their hopes to contribute to the country.”21 Resolution 36 expresses great optimism about the warmth of Việt Kiều feelings towards their erstwhile nation, mediated in part by ancestors left behind: “Though living far away from their fatherland, overseas Vietnamese have always nurtured patriotism and national esteem, preserved cultural traditions, turned towards their ancestors and origins,

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and kept close relationship with their families and homeland.” The law vows to create favourable conditions for overseas Vietnamese to return to Vietnam in order to pursue business opportunities, visit relatives and “pay their respects to ancestors.”22 Overturning the unspoken policy of suspicion which has long governed party relations with Việt Kiều, a sheaf of programmes now warmly welcomes overseas Vietnamese home, with the state going out of its way to demonstrate a new willingness to take anyone back, regardless of their history, as long as they show evidence of a desire to make positive contributions in the future. At a Tết gathering in early 2005 that included former leader of the Saigon regime Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, the chairman of the Overseas Vietnamese Committee for Hồ Chí Minh City said the recent visits by Kỳ and exiled monk Thích Nhất Hạnh prove “Vietnamese people would never forget their origins no matter how far they are from home.” At the same party, Prime Minister Phan Văn Khải declared Vietnam in need of more contributions, especially of brain power, from overseas Vietnamese, regardless of their political background or their personal past, calling them “Vietnam’s flesh and blood”.23 A couple days later, Nông Đức Mạnh, the Secretary General of the Vietnamese Communist Party, praised a group of fifty-nine representatives from the overseas Vietnamese community for their “warm sentiments toward the homeland” as well as their practical contributions to nation-building, but in words reminiscent of proud Lý ancestor Nguyễn Thìn Xuân, called on them all to “try their best to fulfill their duty” to the motherland.24 A survey conducted by Đặng Nguyên Anh, head of the Population Institute of Sociology in Hanoi, of skilled Vietnamese who came home after relatively short stints working or studying abroad found these well-educated returnees harboured a deep desire to contribute to their homeland. “The greatest passion once they returned was to utilise their acquired knowledge and experience to serve their country,” Anh reports (2003, p. 167).25 In contrast, Việt Kiều who have relocated to another country often couch their desire to return to Vietnam in more personal terms, whether to bury old ghosts or to revisit the quê hương. The journalist Nguyễn Quí Đức, for example, describes in his memoir the need of many in exile “to come back for the things we had left behind: our childhood home — the place, as the Vietnamese say, where our umbilical cords were cut” (1994, p. 299). Poignantly, his own deep desire to raise his children in Vietnam is thwarted by his parents, happily

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relocated to California, who cannot imagine a return “until communism is destroyed” (pp. 263–64). It is often through ancestral rituals that relatives long separated by politics, wars, embargos and oceans find a way to come to a new understanding; in her study of returning Việt Kiều, anthropologist Lynellyn Long found that renewing kinship and ancestral ties through specific rituals at altars and graves helped estranged relatives rebuild trust with one another and was especially valued by those who had never left: While the [returnees] did not necessarily attach the same importance to performing these rituals in Vietnam, the Vietnamese invariably saw the reintegration of their Việt Kiều kin in these terms. Vietnamese who entertained overseas kin during Tết often remarked how important it was for the Việt Kiều to worship at the ancestral altars again. (Long 2004, p. 83)

As observed by Long, many Vietnamese returnees describe a sense of post-facto inevitability about their homecoming, as if called back by the compelling logic of the quê hương cycle, despite the fact that most report they did not even consider a journey back to Vietnam before the Đổi Mới reforms (Ibid. p. 72). Other Việt Kiều feel equally sure they can never return, or at least not while the current regime remains in power, and feel bitterly betrayed by those who do go back. As demonstrated by the case of General Kỳ, former premier of the Saigon regime, politics infuse discussions within the American Việt Kiều community about whether or not to return. In June of 2002, Kỳ made a speech at De Anza College in Cupertino, California, calling on the young generation to rebuild bridges between America and Vietnam and “help develop the land of their fathers”. He also expressed a personal desire to go back to Vietnam: I am 72 years old now, an old soldier, and as Douglas MacArthur, one of your most celebrated generals, has said, “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” In his fading years, this old soldier still yearns for Vietnam, the land of his ancestors. I offer the remaining years of my life to the service of my motherland and to my people without any ambition and without asking for anything in return.26

After rejecting several earlier visa applications from Kỳ, in 2003 the proreturn Vietnamese Government finally relented, and in January 2004, the exiled leader arrived in Hồ Chí Minh City. “A lot of people said ‘Don’t go, don’t go,’ but I said this is my home, my country,” he told a reporter

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shortly after he touched down. “We Asians, we believe in destiny, so it’s the right time, the right moment to come.”27 In an official statement, the Vietnamese government said it welcomed his decision “to come back to the homeland … after many years apart.”28 However, back in America, Kỳ’s visit caused an uproar. “My husband stayed to fight while Kỳ fled and now he wants to make peace with the communists? It hurts and it’s a shame,” said one fellow Việt Kiều. “Why is he changing his mind and turning his back on the community?”29 Many Việt Kiều organizations, including the Mặt Trận Quân Dân Chống Cộng Bắc Cali [Military and Civilian Anti-Communist Front of Northern California] and the Tập Thể Chiến Sĩ Việt Nam Cộng Hòa Hải Ngoại [Association of Overseas Veterans of the Republic of Việt Nam] issued angry declarations condemning Kỳ’s return, accusing him of rejecting the overseas community and the nation and people of South Vietnam. A special webpage entitled Nguyễn Cao Kỳ — Kẻ Phản Bội [“Nguyễn Cao Kỳ — Traitor”] provides links to eleven such declarations, illustrated by photos of a “Down with Traitor Kỳ!” protest rally.30 Even Kỳ’s daughter Duyên, the well-known hostess of a popular Việt Kiều variety show called “Paris by Night”, came under attack from her fan base because she did not object to her father’s decision to return home.31 Official policies of welcome notwithstanding, those who do return to Vietnam from overseas inevitably find their homecomings fraught with misunderstandings and disappointments, ranging from distress at how much the physical landscape has changed to disgust with relatives eager to trade kinship ties for American dollars, from anger at corrupt customs officials to frustration with inefficient office environments.32 Some Việt Kiều note that they never feel as fully American as when they are back visiting Vietnam, and even those who decide to relocate permanently take pains to maintain their international ties. As one returnee now living in Saigon’s “Việt Kiều Village” explained, “Here, we remember America; there we remember Vietnam. We have two countries.”33 More and more people each year demonstrate a willingness to endure the inconveniences and heartaches of a life split between two homelands; the numbers alone make clear that the call to “return to origins” resonates with Vietnamese living around the world. An estimated 400,000 Việt Kiều will visit Vietnam this year, up more than 20 per cent from last year.34 In other words, in 2005 alone, some 15 per cent of the total world population of overseas Vietnamese will return to Vietnam.

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Return of the Royal Entrepreneur The most treasured return visitor to the Đô Temple has been away more than 750 years, ever since a bloody dynastic transition in the thirteenth century, and demonstrates the ability of a well-timed return to make up for centuries of separation and neglect. When the Trần dynasty ousted the Lý, Prince Lý Long Tường,35 fearing a bloodbath, took his chances on exile and escaped by sea with a retinue of followers. The prince won favour with the Korean court by warding off a Mongol attack and was awarded a fiefdom. To this day, the Lý Long Tường branch of the Vietnamese royal family is concentrated in the Hoa Son district outside of Seoul in what is now South Korea (Phạm Côn Sơn 1998). In the 1980s, one descendant of this wayward prince began researching the history of his family. When Lý Xương Căn discovered his Vietnamese roots, he vowed to make a return trip to the Lý native village of Đình Bảng. The historic return took place in May, 1994, shortly after Vietnam and South Korea normalized diplomatic relations. Căn, then 36 years old, did not give advanced warning about his trip. As Nguyễn Đức Thìn of the Đô Temple tells the story, during rites marking the celebration of the 1,020th birthday of dynastic founder Lý Thái Tổ, an unfamiliar Asian man simply appeared and kowtowed reverently before the altar. Afterwards, the temple elders learned that the visitor was a thirty-first-generation heir of Lý Thái Tổ. Lý Xương Căn showed temple elders genealogical records dating back to Prince Lý Long Tường’s relocation to Korea. The revelation electrified the Đình Bảng community, which had been anticipating the return of the Lý family for centuries.36 Lý Xương Căn’s first visit was followed by dozens more; one newspaper put the count at forty trips to Vietnam by late 2000.37 Eventually Căn, along with his wife and young son Việt Quốc [Việt nation], sold their assets in Korea and relocated to Vietnam. Căn and his family became a celebrated feature of Đô Temple rituals, their remarkable homecoming a subject of widespread praise. To honour and celebrate the Korean branch of the royal Lý, Vietnam’s Central Opera Company produced a musical epic in the style of the classical tuồng opera called “Peaceful Mountain” Mandarin Lý Long Tường recounting the prince’s hair-raising adventures in the thirteenth century. Even if

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they miss the opera, all visitors to the Đô Temple learn the story of Prince Tường, his descendants, and the eventual return of Lý Xương Căn, and can see extensive photographic documentation of the tale in a side hall. Amidst the dozens of pictures of the newly-discovered Korean relations, one of a sombre Căn praying in front of an incense urn stands out. “Lý Xương Căn, honorary leader of the commemorative festival for Lý Long Tường, stands quietly performing the rites of remembrance for the eight Lý kings,” the caption reads, “deep in his heart expressing words of sincere veneration while remembering his origins in the Lý dynasty.” According to a Saigon Times article entitled “The Royal Entrepreneur”, after re-establishing connections with Vietnam, Lý Xương Căn transformed the old Prince Lý Long Tường Memorial Society, established in 1967 by his uncle Lee Hyun, into the Korea-Vietnam National and Cultural Interchange Association “with the goal of calling for South Korean investment in Vietnam and introducing South Korean enterprises to do business here”.38 Right from the beginning, Căn’s trips to Vietnam to search for ancestral origins have doubled as scouting trips for business opportunities. He now runs a joint venture in the recently-established Đình Bảng Industrial Zone. Sited on the national highway, Việt Lý Peasco, manufacturers of irrigation pipes made from recycled waste materials, greets pilgrims on their way to the Đô Temple. “I built my factory not solely out of respect for my ancestors, but also because there is a large amount of waste polluting the local environment,” Căn told a Vietnamese reporter.39 “Việt Lý does not belong to me only. When it begins to give profit I will set aside a certain amount to be used as scholarships for students and contributions to the building of Đình Bảng village. I really hope my ancestral land will be increasingly prosperous and beautiful.”40 Căn balances his double role as filial son and foreign investor with skill. His connections to Đình Bảng have fostered overseas business opportunities for many in this village well-known for its entrepreneurial talents. One successful local businesswoman named Dung parlayed contact with Căn into trading relationships with five Korean companies. A photo in the temple hall shows Dung standing next to Căn’s mother. “We are sisters from the same origins!” the caption imagines the women saying to one another, before going on to note Dung’s many Korean business contacts. For Lý Xương Căn, investing in his native land makes filial

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and financial sense. The denizens of Đình Bảng are equally happy with these arrangements, fully aware that as a living descendant of a Vietnamese royal family, Căn revitalizes Lý dynasty history and brings Đình Bảng onto the national stage, while as a businessman from Korea he provides valuable personal connections to one of Vietnam’s largest sources of foreign direct investment. Đình Bảng community leaders praise Căn as an exemplary native son who has gone out into the world and made good, but never forgets to return and lend a helping hand to those back home. On a national scale, a government eager to attract overseas Vietnamese and their investment dollars back to Vietnam has discovered in Lý Xương Căn a model refugee. What matters is not where you’ve gone, or when, or even why, but simply that eventually, you return. You never forget your origins. In a guidebook written to help Vietnamese families re-establish lineage organizations, author Phạm Côn Sơn (1998) devotes a chapter to the Korean Lý. It opens with a comment on the ways lineage organizations might nurture links between overseas Vietnamese and their sending communities. From here, the narrative shifts to the story of Prince Lý Long Tường and his descendants. The author argues that the Korean Lý who “made a pilgrimage back to the country of their ancestors” should serve as an inspiration to all wayward Vietnamese. The fact that the descendants of Prince Lý Long Tường, now citizens of Korea, sought their family records and returned to their ancestral land in order to visit the place of their roots expresses the family spirit of all people who carry the blood of Vietnam in their veins. This is a lesson deserving of serious consideration by all Vietnamese people whether they live inside or outside their beloved country.

The Đô Temple caretaker Nguyễn Đức Thìn calls Lý Xương Căn and his family “extremely filial children of our people, who followed their genealogical records to find the way home”. Căn exemplifies a new kind of nationalism rehearsed in ancestral rites of return. This is not the “tradition of resistance” model from the war era which demanded tireless, constant sacrifice to the cause of liberation, but rather a mobile đi-về nationalism better suited to the fluidity of Đổi Mới Vietnam. Unlike its martial predecessor, đi-về nationalism accepts the independent enterprises of its citizens both

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living and dead, the overseas journeys and the capitalist business ventures, so long as they are carried out with a grateful heart, an earnest effort “to be worthy” of ancestral gifts, and a promise to some day return. Ancestor worship not only disciplines citizens in an entrepreneurial effort to be worthy of civilization’s gifts, but also, by constituting community through occasional moments of togetherness set against the norm of separation, serves as an available model for a new kind of national belonging predicated not on steady presence but rather on momentous returns. Local poetess Bồ Thị An waited half a century before she was finally able to get back to Đình Bảng, timing her arrival to coincide with the poetry club meeting held in conjunction with the Đô Temple Festival. In the meantime, while she waited, she held the village in her heart and anticipated her return: It’s been fifty years I return again to participate in a festival of sentimental poetry. A time of memories quickly gone by The place of Đình Bảng has been constantly in my heart. Parting ways, our lives went on, but [I] still remember the careful instructions for the day of return. Listening again to an afternoon flute playing in my native place I take loving care of the memory, never allowing it to fade. Nearly my whole life has passed, but The place I love is still written within me. (Bồ Thị An 2001)

The loyalty of the poet An to her village is expressed not by her presence, but rather by her absence. Absence, the đi which precedes the về, allows for the nostalgia of distance and the promise of an eventual return to finally consummate her love of native place: “Parting ways, our lives went on, but/ [I] still remember the careful instructions for the day of return.” In this era of kinetic nationalism, to be far away and carry the spirit of home “written within” is at least as laudable as never leaving in the first place, as suggested in a speech in 2001 by a local official honouring one Võ Vĩnh Bảo, a Đình Bảng native who moved to Hanoi but continued to contribute to the development of his village: “Although he left his native place, every second of every minute he constantly thinks back to his homeland Đình Bảng.”

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Kate Jellema FIGURE 2.1 An Elder Calls the Royal Spirits Back to Ðô Temple

FIGURE 2.2 Many Centuries after their Reign, the Lý Kings use Natural Phenomena to Signal their Return to the Red River Delta, as shown in this photo available for sale at Ðô Temple.

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FIGURE 2.3 In 2001, Phạm Thế Duyệt, Chairman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, Lights Incense to “Solemnly Remember” the Lý Kings

FIGURE 2.4 Korean-born Lý Xương Căn “Returned” to Vietnam after Centuries of Separation. Photo displayed in Ðô Temple

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NOTES 1

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Pháp Lệnh của Ủy Ban Thường Vụ Quốc Hội số 21/2004/PL-UBTVQH11 ngày 18 tháng 6 năm 2004 về Tín ngưỡng, Tôn giáo [Ordinance of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly No. 21/2004/PL-UBTVQH11 of 18 June 18 2004 Regarding Religious Belief and Religious Organizations]. Hereafter cited as Ordinance No. 21/2004. Ordinance 21/2004 elaborates on Decree no. 26/1999/ND-CP of 19 April 1999 on Religious Activities, which ensured freedom of belief and encouraged “religious activities in the interests of the Motherland”. Nguyễn Đức Thìn, “Lễ Hội Đền Đô: Hội Tụ Tâm Hồn Lạc Việt,” Bắc Ninh, no. 460 (16 February 2001). L.X.S., “Bát Đế Vân Du”, Tiền Phong Chủ Nhật, 30 November 1997. Lý Thái Tổ was born Lý Công Uẩn. Following Vietnamese imperial conventions, the dynastic founder takes the name Thái Tổ, or Supreme Ancestor. Patricia Pelley has explored the significance of the Hùng kings to the revolutionary government of the 1950s. According to her research, it was during the giỗ tổ of 1956 that the Hùng kings “were first presented as the truly historical rather than mythical ancestors of the Vietnamese: they became the nguồn gốc của dân tộc or ‘‘roots of the nation’” (1993, p. 186). On much earlier applications of the Hùng king legends to Vietnamese statecraft, see Unger (1986). Estimate from “Việt Nam Celebrates its Hùng Founders”, Việt Nam News, 17 April 2005 (accessed 3 June 2005); quote from “Thousands Flock to Hùng Kings’ Festival”, Vietnam News Service, 15 April 2005. Ordinance No. 21/2004. English translation provided by Human Rights Watch (accessed on 13 March 2005). “Activities which arise from religious beliefs express themselves as: ancestor worship; memorializing and honouring those who have rendered great services to the country and the community; the worship of divinities and traditional symbols as well as other folk beliefs and activities that represent fine, valuable historical, cultural, moral and social values.” From Article 3, Ordinance No. 21/2004. Article 5, Ordinance No. 21/2004; emphasis mine. This is my translation of the “preserves and promotes” phrase; the Human Rights Watch version reads: “…preserves and promotes the positive values of the tradition of ancestor worship and of honoring those people who have rendered great service to the country and community — which all contribute to further consolidate the great national unity bloc and meet the common spiritual needs of the people”.

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This phrase now peppers party-state documents. To give just one example, the long title of Party Secretary Nông Đức Mạnh’s address on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party begins: “Consolidate the great national unity bloc and bring into play the spirit of patriotism…” Đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam, 2 February 2005 (accessed 13 March 2005). While agreeing that the state is seeking to renew “domestic bases of cohesion and external markers of identity,” Philip Taylor (2003) argues that not only state goals but also the more personal concerns of Đổi Mới intellectuals give shape to this urgent quest for new forms of national culture. Ethnologists and folklorists accustomed to serving as the protectors of Vietnamese culture suffer fears of obsolescence and eagerly seek out vibrant folk practices around which to base their work. Đặng Nghiêm Vạn served as the director of the Institute for Religious Studies from 1991 to 1999. On changing state attitudes towards folk beliefs, see Koh (2004), Malarney (1996), Endres (1999) and Taylor (2004a). In reality, the unmarked content of the phrase “all Vietnamese” is often Kinh or Việt (the majority ethnic group), at times assisted by the ambiguous Vietnamese phrase dân tộc Việt, meaning both the Vietnamese people and the Việt ethnicity. On state efforts to clarify the meaning of dân tộc, see Koh (2004) and Pelley (2002, pp. 78–95). For a history of the official Catholic position on ancestor worship in Vietnam, see Phan (2006); Nguyen-Cong-Minh (2006). Ancestor worship was banned by the church across Asia until 1939, a decision Barthelemy Nguyen Son Lam, bishop of Thanh Hoa, has called “regrettable” given its effect in estranging Vietnamese Catholics from “their Vietnamese roots.” See Lam’s contribution to the Ninth General Congregation of the Special Assembly of the Synods of Bishops for Asia (1998) at . In the wake of Vatican II, the Vietnamese church has not only encouraged ancestor worship at home, but also has incorporated the ancestors into the official liturgy. “Tourism: 200,000 Overseas Vietnamese Return Home for Tết”, Vietnam News Briefs, 17 February 2005, accessed through Lexis-Nexis on 11 September 2005. David Haines’ (2006) work with refugees from South Vietnam found ancestral rites alive and well in America in the 1990s. “Feb 2005 Update on Religious Issues and Central Highland”, Embassy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in the United States of America, 4 February 2005 (accessed 28 July 2005). In contrast, the same document states that a total of only twenty million people, or about a quarter of the overall population, follow the six next most popular religions, including Buddhism, Catholicism, Cao Ðài, Hòa Hảo, Protestantism and Islam.

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Kate Jellema “Overseas Remittances Pitch in”, Saigon Times Magazine, 7 January 2005. World Bank study cited in Bill Brainbridge, “Once Cursed, Vietnamese Welcomed Home”, The International Herald Tribune, 18 March 2005; Tran Dai Duong, “Boon for Former Homeland”, The Saigon Times Magazine, 12 January 2004. “Overseas Remittances Pitch in”. Nghị quyết số 36-NQ/TƯ ngày 26 tháng 3 năm 2004 của Bộ Chính trị về công tác đối với người Việt Nam ở nước ngoài [Resolution No 36 — NQ/TW, March 26, 2004, by the Politburo on the Overseas Vietnamese Affairs]. Hereafter “Resolution 36”. “Groundwork Completed to Realise Policies toward Việt Kiều”, VietNamNet, 17 September 2005 (accessed 25 October 2005). Resolution 36. English translation provided by the Communist Party of Vietnam, available at: (accessed 25 October 2005). “Prime Minister Hosts Tet Gathering for Viet Kieus”, 30 January 2005, Embassy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in the United States of America (accessed 28 July 2005); “PM Asks for Việt Kiều Contribution”, 31 January 2005, Vietnam News (accessed 28 July 2005). “Party Leader Welcomes Overseas Vietnamese on Homeland Visit”, 2 February 2005, Vietnam News Briefs, accessed through Lexis-Nexis on 11 September 2005. Anh’s survey was part of a multi-country study of return migration in the Asia-Pacific region. Compared to respondents from Bangladesh, Taiwan and mainland China, Vietnamese migrants were notable for their sense of nationalism, their strong emotional ties to Vietnam and their ongoing commitment to the homeland (Iredale, Guo and Rozario 2003, pp. 23–24). Speech by Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, De Anza College, Cupertino, CA, 13 June 2002, available at Vietnam Research by Veterans, (accessed 25 October 2005). “Return to Saigon”, CBS News, 14 January 2004 (accessed 25 October 2005). Ibid. Mai Tran, “Entertainer Ky Duyen Nguyen Catches Flak over the Journey Home by her Dad, the Former South Vietnamese Premier”, Los Angeles Times, 15 February 2004. Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, Kẻ Phản Bội (accessed 10 October 2005).

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Mai Tran, “Entertainer Ky Duyen Nguyen”. In defence of her father, Duyên said he is just an old man who wants to visit his mother’s grave. Long (2004); “Việt Kiều Still Discriminated Against”, Vietnam News Briefs, accessed through Lexis-Nexis on 11 September 2005; Brainbridge, “Once cursed”. A wealth of first-person accounts document the bittersweet return experience; see for example Nguyễn Quí Đức (1994, pp. 222–60); Pham (1999); Vu Thuy Hoang, “Stranger in a Strange Homeland: After 19 Years in America, My Wrenching Reunion with Vietnam”, The Washington Post, 31 July 1994; Pham Thi Hoai, “What Remains: Vietnam in My Heart”, 29 April 2005, translated by Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Peter Zinoman, available online at: ; Dai Huynh, “Return to Vietnam, the Things I Left Behind,” The Houston Chronicle, 24 April 2005. Tracing the return journey of an “Operation Babylift” adoptee who grew up in America with no memories of Vietnam, Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco (2002) have made a disturbing documentary about the misconceptions that can plague even the most well-intentioned homecoming. Phuong Ly, “In Vietnam, Finding the Comforts of Home: Former Refugees are Lured Back from US by New Laws and a Lower Cost of Living”, The Washington Post, 12 October 2003; on returnees who maintain dual identities, see also Long (2004, pp. 83–86). “Tourism: 200,000 Overseas Vietnamese Return Home for Tết”, Vietnam News Briefs. Second son of King Lý Cao Tông, r. 1176-1210. One traditional proverb, taking a millenarian tone, promises “When the Báng forest is gone and the Tào Khê stream dries up, the Lý will return again.” “The Royal Entrepreneur”, Saigon Times Magazine, 5 October 2000. Ibid. Huong Lan, “Why the Fatherland Proves its Full Pulling Power for one Exile,” Vietnam News, 5 February 2001. Ibid.

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3 Ritual Revitalization and Nativist Ideology in Hanoi Horim Choi

Introduction Rituals are flourishing in socialist Vietnam.1 From small village-level communal festivals to regional or national-level events, participation in rituals and pilgrimages is burgeoning. In Hanoi alone, 113 communal rituals for tutelary deities’ worship were held in 2000.2 If one stays in Hanoi as a friend of Hanoians, not as a passing tourist, one can observe a traditional ritual almost every day. Several famous temples and Buddhist pagodas receive more than a million visitors annually with a variety of attractive religious events and special programmes. It is not rare to see community rituals and pilgrimages which thousands of people attend. Like other religious events in Vietnam, communal house [đình] ceremonies are not only sober religious rituals but also festivals featuring many performances and activities. In many village festivals, people enjoy games like cockfighting and human chess. Local folk music is performed and special performance groups comprised of “excellent artists” [nghệ sĩ ưu tú] organized by the national artists’ association, perform the country’s folk songs and classical operas. In some regions, events that have nothing

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to do with supernaturalism and spirituality, like song or dance contests, beauty pageants and magic shows are also held in association with communal festivals. Since merchants are bound to flock to places with large crowds, these events also serve as a marketplace. An enormous amount of money is spent to build and repair the places where the ritual and festive events are staged. Statues, altars and decorations are refurbished using financial contributions collected from villagers, along with costumes, banners, offerings, musical accompaniments and refreshments that add to the solemnity, efficacy and convivial atmosphere of the ritual occasions. The elaboration and diversification of ways that the public celebrate their communal rites have generated significant new costs. Research on traditional rituals and communal festivals is also increasing. The majority of recent foreign studies regarding the upsurge in ritual activities in Vietnam relate it to the political and economic transformations since the Renovation [Đổi Mới] policies of the mid-1980s. Even during the revolutionary period, many religious practices contradictory to the official ideology and policies of the state took place due to the initiative of local people (Malarney 1996b, pp. 543–44). Yet the richness in people’s religious activities has resulted from the easing of state regulations and increase in incomes after the economic reforms (Endres 2002; Luong 1993, 1994). Nevertheless, it is necessary to take note of the fact that the socialist state continues to play a key role in the religious sphere. It has actively intervened in religious activities for to advance the normative agendas of the government and the Communist Party (Abuza 2001, pp. 183–90, see also, Endres 2001; Ho Tai 1995; Malarney 1996a). Recently, several studies have investigated communal rituals and pilgrimages based on ethnographic research. Some of them have examined religious revivals in the context of local history and culture (Malarney 2002; Taylor 2004a), and others have explored the revival of rituals against the backdrop of the socio-cultural dynamics of local communities (Kleinen 1999; Trương Huyền Chi 2001). This chapter aims to explain the promotion of religious rituals focused on cultural identity within a local community, and on state-society relations regarding the revival of “tradition”. The remaking of communal rituals needs to be investigated within the context of the emergence and reproduction of social differentiation in Vietnam and the interactions between local people and the state. I will especially focus on the notion of “nativist [gốc] identity” as expressed in local communal rituals. To “return to the roots” [về nguồn

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gốc] has recently become an esteemed project and dominant discourse in Vietnamese public life. In particular reference to communal rituals, this discourse has become one of the most important ways the authorities such as the state, intellectuals and locals speak about and practically deal with the revival of rituals in present-day Vietnam. My investigation of the utilization of this discourse in community rituals in one urban Hanoi neighbourhood aims to shed light on its meanings and main local proponents. It also examines the social bases for participation in and support for the revival of communal rituals in a local area that is characterized by considerable social heterogeneity. The objective is to provide a sociologically nuanced account of the revival of rituals in Vietnam and of the nativist ideology that underpins it.

The Village and Migration This chapter is based on ethnographic research in Ngọc Hà ward of Ba Đình district, Hanoi.3 Until 1954, residential settlements in this area had names that indicated their original rural character, such as làng (village), trại (camp/farm) and thôn (hamlet).4 When the Land Reform began in 1955, the villages belonging to Trại Hàng Hoa (Flower Farm) were reorganized into xã (rural communes), such as Xã Ngọc Hà, Xã Đại Yên and Xã Vĩnh Phúc. After the administrative reform of 1975, the term ‘xã’ began to disappear from the names of administrative units within the inner city [nội thành] of Hanoi. In 1979, Ngọc Hà was re-designated as a sub-area [tiểu khu] incorporating the other adjacent communes. And, in 1981, it finally became an urban ward [ phường] (Ban Chấp Hành Phường Ngọc Hà 1996, p. 11). This area is still famous for the cultivation of various flowers and traditional Vietnamese herbal medicine [thuốc nam]. However, over the last two decades Ngọc Hà experienced a rapid increase in population and much of its cultivation land has been given over to residential housing. In 2000, Ngọc Hà ward had a population of 19,000, consisting of ten residential clusters [cụm] and sixty-five neighbourhood groups [tổ]. And it was made up of five “traditional villages” [làng truyền thống], including Làng Đại Yên, the major field research area for this study, as well as some “collective residential areas” [khu tập thể] for state cadres and labourers, a legacy of the collective economy era. Officially, the villages of Ngọc Hà ward are termed “residential clusters” [cụm]. Most of Đại Yên village, for instance, belongs to Residential Cluster 7 [Cụm 7]. However, the old gate

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to the village still stands, and locals still call their area Làng Đại Yên. Due to urbanization and the introduction of the market economy, the boundaries between pre-existing settlements and relationships based on intimate ties between families and neighbours have become blurred. Yet many locals stressed that the “village” was not just nominal and that traditional village social solidarity still exists in Đại Yên. In particular, elderly people who have lived in the area for generations or migrated decades ago repeatedly said that their “village community” [cộng đồng làng] is still bound together by traditional emotional ties [tình cảm]. As of 2000, Residential Cluster Seven was divided into nine tổ and had a population of 3,000 (about 700 families). Residents described its settlement as having occurred in several successive waves of migration. With the appearance in the early twentieth century of households that engaged exclusively in flower cultivation, the necessity to employ temporary labour grew, and some of the households with a large amount of land would employ labourers throughout the year. Many people from other rural areas came to Đại Yên at this time to find jobs in commerce, manual labour and seasonal farming. On first moving to the area, new migrants usually earned their living by relying on existing networks of relatives and friends from their home villages. Some of the migrants who settled in Ngọc Hà either purchased or leased land and engaged in farming or medicinal herb cultivation, while the majority engaged in trade or manual labour. Many remained as members of their home villages, providing monetary support to relatives there and returning to participate in life-cycle celebrations such as weddings and funerals. The socio-economic structure of Hanoi became more complex after 1954. The variety and abundance of work found in the capital city lured more people from adjacent rural areas. Officially, migration to Hanoi in the socialist period (1954–80) was permitted only to cadres or workers in the state sector. The household registration and rationing systems acted as an effective brake on the flow of rural migrants to the city (Hardy 2003, p. 109). Nevertheless, not a few illegal migrants still came to Ngọc Hà during this time, most of whom were seasonal labor migrants, peddlers or small traders. Although the bombing and evacuation of Hanoi during the war led to a decline in the city’s overall population (Thrift and Forbes 1986, p. 26) documents kept by tổ in Ngọc Hà show that the number of households and overall population in this area increased in the early 1970s.

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After collectivization was abandoned in the 1980s, the rate of migration to the national capital further increased. In some of the provinces close to Hanoi, such as Hà Tây and Hưng Yên, more than two thirds of households had members who had moved to Hanoi during the past fifteen years, or engaged in seasonal migrant labour there (Trương Huyền Chi 2001). Many female migrants opened retail stalls or worked as mobile vendors, selling rice, eggs, noodles, vegetables and fruit from shoulder poles or bicycles. The men primarily worked as construction laborers, motorcycle taxi [xe ôm] and pedicab [xích lô] drivers, or found daily employment in odd jobs. They formed the poor class in Hanoi and their earnings supplemented the household income of their family and relatives back home. Many of these people were not registered as residents of the city or were deemed officially to reside elsewhere. According to censuses by the People’s Committee of Ngọc Hà ward, 33 out of 640 families were registered at a different place of residence in 1998 and no accurate data was available for about 52 families in 1992. After the switch from a planned to a market economy, the occupational composition and source of income of Đại Yên’s residents became more diversified. As the area of land devoted to growing herbs has shrunk, the cultivation of medicine and flowering plants gradually decreased. Many villagers abandoned the cultivation of herbs and engaged solely in sales of the produce or switched entirely to other occupations. It is now common for villagers to sell herbs that have been grown elsewhere, which they purchase and resell in the local market. Even though in 1999 approximately 25 per cent of the households had at least one person still cultivating or selling herbal medicine, the number has continued to trend downwards. The reduction in herb cultivation owes much to the increased demand for residential space coming from the growing influx of migrants. With regard to this transformation, several villagers expressed the view that their “medicine and flower village” had changed into a “residential village”. This expression conveys not only nostalgia for the fading rural landscape but also emphasizes the economic reality that “planting houses” [trồng nhà] and selling them are more profitable than planting flowers or medicine [trồng hoa, trồng cây thuốc]. The enactment of the Land Law in 1993 (SRV 1993) permitted the resale of long-term land-use rights in urban areas, inducing an “overheated real estate” [cơn sốt nhà đất] market and skyrocketing land prices. Many people used their land to conduct businesses from their home and the number of self-employed workers involved in

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medium or small commerce increased. More and more households opened a family business such as a beauty parlour, liquor store, café, small retail shop, parking lot or house-rental agency. Even family members who held salaried jobs were deeply involved in their family businesses as a sideline. There are not many factory workers or professionals such as civil servants, teachers or lawyers amongst the residents of Đại Yên as of present, but employees in the formal sector are on the increase. Since the introduction of the market economy, the gap between rich and poor in Đại Yên has widened. Field observations from the late 1990s on show that civil servants and employees of state-operated institutes were, in general, leading relatively affluent lives based on a stable salary, officially-allocated houses and other entitlements. Among those working in the private sector, the income of those who operated fixed stores and home-based services was naturally higher than that of peddlers and temporary hired workers. Many residents worked in sideline jobs in addition to their officially-categorized primary employment, and it was not rare to see the income from this sideline work exceeding their fixed salary. As this additional income grew larger and more stable, it had the tendency to play a key role in accumulating wealth and stabilizing the household. However, in Đại Yên village, the most influential factor in determining the wealth of a household was the possession and sale of land-use rights. In this regard, registered residents who had the right to use and transfer land were in a position of economic strength [có kinh tế ] compared with the increasing numbers of migrants with residential registration elsewhere, thanks to their stable side jobs and income related to the sale and lease of land and houses. Low-income households in which a four-member family earns less than one million đồng a month account for approximately thirty per cent of Đại Yên. The majority of these are people who migrated after 1986. With the increase in unregistered migrants, competition in the labour market is overheating and the number of people with unstable living conditions is also on the rise. Many young and middle-aged migrants in Ngọc Hà visit the “human market” [chợ người] to look for odd jobs. Half of the economically active population are under-employed or are employed in the so-called “free occupations” [nghề nghiệp tự do] or informal sector, and the majority of these people are recent migrants. They work as hired day workers, construction labourers, pedlars or small traders who set up stands in front of the house, and brokers who link suitable jobs to new migrants

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and receive a commission. Some of the new migrants occasionally start a herbal medicine business as a side job based on relationships developed with their more established neighbours. Their incomes are either unreliable or just enough to get by on “day by day” making their living conditions most unstable, although neither do they pay tax as the majority are not registered as residents. One of the complaints expressed by people in Đại Yên about the present conditions is that their lives are becoming busier and work is becoming more labourious. Women and the aged, in particular, frequently complain about the busy pace of daily life. The peddling handled mainly by migrant women is extremely labourious and the income insecure. This business is “busy and tough” as a kind of “work that cannot be stopped for even a moment”. Thus it is hard for the migrants amidst such busy and demanding conditions to take an interest in or devote affection to communal events in the village.

Resources for “Native” Identity Đại Yên villagers today commonly make a distinction among themselves between “natives” [người gốc] or “indigenous people” [người bản xứ], and “migrants” [người di cư]. This distinction is striking, given that many of Đại Yên’s self-described natives are themselves migrants. In local thinking, those considered “natives” are the descendants of migrants who settled in the local area before 1954. “Migrants” are those who moved to the village after 1954. The division is based on an official residential registration programme that occurred shortly after the French withdrew from Vietnam. The registration system was established with the 1955 land reform and all people who resided in the village before 1954 were registered as residents. Notwithstanding the subsequent reorganization of residential registration in 1961, 1975, 1982, and 1989 and despite their own backgrounds as migrants, those families who arrived in the village before 1954 continue to be regarded as “natives”. As of 2001, more than seventy-five per cent of families in Đại Yên were “migrants”, registered after 1954. Among Đại Yên natives, there is some disagreement about the concept of origins [gốc] but one thing is generally acknowledged: four major native lineage groups [dòng họ] are regarded as “genuine natives” [người chính gốc]. They are “Hoàng Hữư originating from Lê Mật” (47 households in Đại Yên),“Trường Văn from Lê Mật” (42 households), “Hoàng Văn from

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Thành Hoa” (31 households), and “Nguyễn from Hải Hưng” (30 households). Genealogical records [gia phả] and other related evidence show that these genuine natives came to Đại Yên village around the seventeenth to nineteenth century. It is not clear to locals whether any “indigenous people” [người bản xứ] lived here before that time. The natives include lineage groups from other regions that came to the village in the eighteenth to nineteenth century, such as “Nguyễn from Nghệ An”, “Lê”, and “Đỗ”, although they are not classified as “genuine” natives. Each of the four major lineages or dòng họ has its own shrine in the village and hosts rituals to commemorate their common ancestor’s services. The lineage shrines are small structures. Some are just altars [bàn thờ] located in a central room of the house of the lineage leader [trưởng dòng họ]. For example, the Hoàng Văn lineage shrine is a small edifice located in front of the house of the residential cluster president, who was also the leader of this lineage. The Trường Văn lineage shrine is an altar in a room of the lineage leader’s house. Each lineage maintains its own records [gia phả]. Most of the shrines have their own monuments or tablets that describe the history of the lineage (Chu Xuân Giao 1996, pp. 28–38). Several of Đại Yên’s main lineage leaders stated that the entire lineage observed the death anniversary [ngày giỗ] of their common ancestors, yet most lineage rituals are organized by the lineage leader’s household only, and are attended by a few other members of the lineage. Members of the major lineages I spoke with thought that they should really participate much more than they actually did. Nevertheless, even though not all these lineage members attend the commemorative rituals, the rites staged in honour of their common ancestors reaffirm their identity as genuine natives of Đại Yên. If a dòng họ has a shrine in another village, its members are regarded as genuine natives of that village. This is true of people who migrated to Đại Yên after 1954 and who maintain their identities as members of their hometowns by taking part in lineage commemorations there. It is also true of Đại Yên natives whose ancestors arrived to find jobs in migrant labour and commerce before 1954. These regarded themselves both as members of Đại Yên and as members of their hometowns. Finances permitting, some return home to take part in lineage celebrations. For example, almost every year the “Nguyễn from Nghệ An” organize a delegation to attend some lineage rituals and celebrations in their home town. Some lineage groups belong to a “solidarity organization” of their home village [hội đồng

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hương) comprised of the lineage members who are living in Hanoi and hold meetings to commemorate the anniversary of their lineage ancestor. The Nguyễn from Nghệ An also belong to such a solidarity organization. Some described themselves as natives attached to more than one place. For example, a leader of a residential group, who moved from Nam Hà in the early 1950s, was variously considered as a “native”, a “native from Nam Hà”, a “Nam Hà man”, or “as good as native to Đại Yên”. He continued to participate in rituals in Nam Hà, although this did not detract from his standing as a native of Đại Yên.

Thuốc Nam Đại Yên is famous among people in Hanoi for thuốc nam. In the past, villagers grew, manufactured and sold medicinal herbs such as mimosa, marjoram, wormwood and yerba. From 1959–83, the Ngọc Hà Cooperative with sixty workers specialized in growing medicinal herbs to supply traditional medicine centres and to sell at the Ngọc Hà, Hôm, Mơ, and other markets. During the socialist era, the state widely promoted the use of traditional medicine, partly in response to the scarcity of Western medicines during a time of war, and the practice was lent a degree of nationalistic significance as an example of Vietnam’s traditional indigenous knowledge (Marr 1987). Several families in Đại Yên still specialize in offering remedies for specific ailments such as skin-related diseases or gallstones and people come even from overseas to seek cures. Today income from this trade is not overly remunerative. However, some villagers see the prescription of the medicine as a meritorious act that helps the needy and some believe that to do so brings them good fortune (Vietnam Economic Times 2005). Stories about Đại Yên’s traditional medicinal industry have featured in exhibitions in the Museum of Ethnology, and the village has also been the subject of news reports about the survival of traditional medicine in Vietnam. Myths circulate among villagers that attest to the ancient nature of this practice. Some villagers in Đại Yên say that the trade in medicinal herbs began back in the time of the Lý dynasty to provide royal dignitaries with medicinal plants and leaves.5 Like many villages in northern Vietnam that are renowned for a particular traditional industry [nghề truyền thống], the origins of the trade in medicinal herbs in Đại Yên is also associated with a myth about the village’s tutelary deity (Dương Bá Phượng 2001). In Đại Yên, the sponsor of this trade is Princess Ngọc Hoa. It is said that Princess Ngọc Hoa’s real name was Trần Ngọc Tương. She came from

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a family in Yên Đinh district of Thành Hoa Province, the province from which one of Đại Yên’s four “genuine native” lineages originate. According to this myth, after she died, Đại Yên villagers elevated her to the status of the village’s tutelary goddess and built a temple to worship her near her tomb (Vietnam Economic Times 2005). Experience and knowledge related to medicinal herbs is one of the major criteria among locals for identifying a native. There are two kinds of folk medicine known to villagers; one is related to herbal medicine, and the other to a traditional martial art [dưỡng sinh]. Core elements of local indigenous folk medicine, or “y học bản địa,” include knowledge about herbs, the concoction of remedies, diagnosis, treatment and prescription.6 Most people in Đại Yên, regardless of age, gender or background, had some knowledge about how to grow and use thuốc nam. However, the natives, in general, knew more about the subject than the migrants, and the older they were, the more abundant was their knowledge. Seniors aged sixty and over had extensive information about species of thuốc nam, sites and methods of cultivation and how to make, prescribe and administer the medicine. As the business still depends greatly on female labour, women in their thirties to fifties had markedly more knowledge about herbs and cures. Today the sale and prescription of the medicine is associated with the female heads of the households that still engage in this trade.7 This expertise in folk medicine is a major factor forming the identity of the natives. Locals said that this industry represents the village’s traditional identity [bản sắc truyền thống]. This implied that to be a Đại Yên villager is to know about thuốc nam. Given their superior knowledge of this industry, the emphasis on thuốc nam ties natives more closely than migrants to the village’s traditional identity. Traditional association with this industry also has entailed a real economic demarcation between the two groups, người gốc and di cư. As the allocation to households of rights to use and transfer land, which began in the 1980s, was proportionate to the number of farmers per household, no special benefit was bestowed to the natives. Nevertheless, since natives and long-time migrants comprised a relatively high proportion of the registered residents and of households with large cultivation areas, they became prime beneficiaries of the new opportunities to profit from the new land rights regime. The simultaneous increase in the demand for housing due to rapid migration and new chances to rent their land to tenants, or to sell it, opened a new avenue for amassing a fortune. Their favourable

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access to land once used for the cultivation of herbs, which was now subdivided, sold, rented and built upon, gave the natives of the village a clear advantage over migrants. Most of the transactions involving selling land or building houses were illegal, but the land-users, most of whom were “người gốc”, could manage them by making use of their good relationships with local cadres of the party-state apparatus. These transactions were usually legitimated and twisted as an expression of “village spirit” [tình làng], “friendly communal emotion and relations” [tình cảm], or “sympathy” [thông cảm].

Native Leadership Positions of local political power in Đại Yên, such as leadership of local party chapters, cụm and tổ were predominantly occupied by natives. In 2000, the president of Residential Cluster Seven [cụm trưởng] was a member of “Hoàng Văn family from Thành Hoa”, one of the four major native lineages. Twelve out of eighteen neighbourhood group presidents [tổ trưởng] and vice presidents [tổ phố] were pre-1954 natives, including six members of the four major dòng họ. As agents representing the state, these native village leaders also maintained close relations with their intimate neighbours in the village. The natives also dominated local leadership of mass organizations. Each cụm has a chapter of the Fatherland Front [Mặt trận tổ quốc], the Women’s Union [Hội phụ nữ] and the Veterans’ Association [Hội cựu chiến binh]. After 1986, some non-party members emerged as leaders of these mass organizations and of non-party organizations, such as the Elders’ Association [Hội người cao tuổi], the Women’s Buddhist Association [Hội phật giáo] and the Committee for Management of Historic Sites [Ban quản lý di tích, BQLDT]. These new leaders were almost all pre-1954 natives. The organization with the biggest influence on local decision-making in cultural matters is the Elders’ Association. This association plays a key role in the collective activities of the village, including celebrations, funerals and religious services for the tutelary deity. All village people in their fifties and over would be naturally affiliated to the association. However, most of the activities are implemented by the Executive Committee [Ban chấp hành]. In 2000, ten out of twelve members of the committee were elderly “natives” or “người chính gốc”, which included the cụm trưởng, two tổ trưởng, the director of the BQLDT, and a party cell secretary [bí thư]. Although there is no formal requirement that members of the committee

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hold or once held office, many of them are former state cadres [cán bộ]. Most of them participated in the revolution and wars in the past, and still actively participate in official activities of the state. Regular meetings of the Elders’ Association form an important social network for decision-making at a village level, which overlaps with but is also somewhat autonomous from the interests of the party, the state and private individuals. The roles and the scope of influence of the association’s members depend in part on their age, their individual contributions to the village and their range of social networks. Though leaders of the local administration or the representatives of the mass organizations need not necessarily be members of the party or hold high socio-economic status, they are recognized by locals for their morality and are considered as role models. The state’s management at the ward and sub-ward level, executed through the medium of cụm or tổ, relies on the cultural and moral authority held by these native leaders as much as it does on formal administrative rules. When speaking about how they managed decentralized decision-making, ward officials in Ngọc Hà stressed the autonomy and the unity of the village and expressed respect for the influential roles played by Đại Yên’s native leaders. Ward administrators and sub-ward leaders alike were of the view that rather than demanding complete obedience to formal regulations, adequate compromise with the villagers is necessary in maintaining good feelings among villagers as well as to ensuring good relations between themselves and their own neighbours. For example, during the process of reconstructing houses, which has become more frequent in recent times, it is a common practice to use personal channels and to receive approval from the corresponding governing body based on acquaintance rather than through regular procedures with official administration documents. People usually call this “getting round obstacles” [xoay xở] or “any which way” [lung tung], expressions that are routinely used even by the ward management. Of the six sales transactions of building or lease contracts occurred in Tổ H during 1998–99, five were concluded through unofficial procedures. After decollectivization, more and more instances could be observed in Đại Yên of the selective adoption of official requirements through compromises between the local level management and villagers. Local conceptions of social relatedness act as an important resource in this kind of “discretionary handling” process. One aspect of this phenomenon is that terms that expressed the social structure of the pre-revolutionary era, such

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as “neighbour” [hàng xóm], “co-villager” [dân làng], “relative” [bà con, họ hàng] and “lineage” [dòng họ] member are frequently used in negotiations with local authorities. The relationships expressed in these terms open a “mediation space” (Koh 2006, p. 5) between state and society that allows different parties significant room for compromise. For the “natives”, they bestow leeway to exert and augment their authority. In practice, the roles of local state and mass organizations are not exclusively limited to advancing formal state objectives and their native leaders play an influential mediating role in the community. This respect, “native” identity is an important cultural resource that aids resolution of the sometimes conflicting concerns of the state and local people. This situation, where influence at the local level is expressed through neo-traditional idioms and long-standing relationships between neighbours, imposes significant limitations on the newly migrated residents taking part in the politics of the village or assuming leadership roles.

The State and Origins The notions of precedence, origins and tradition that inform local authority relations in Đại Yên do not occur in a vacuum. They flourish in the context of a broad based interest among present-day state leaders and intellectual authorities in the identification and revival of Vietnam’s traditional culture. The preoccupation with origins [nguồn gốc] and cultural identity [bản sắc văn hoá] is strikingly evident in the contemporary Vietnamese public sphere. In the context of forward-looking renovation and liberalization policies, political elites and intellectuals regard religious activities as a valued part of Vietnam’s indigenous culture. Since the 1990s, Vietnamese scholars have produced abundant publications on popular folk beliefs and communal rituals and festivals. Academics within government research institutes seem to be dominated by the perspective that these religious activities are a timeless dimension of Vietnam’s culture (for example, Đặng Nghiêm Vạn et al. 1998; Ngô Đức Thịnh 2001; Nguyễn Duy Hinh 1996; Vũ Ngọc Khánh 1994). This kind of account, which puts a stress on religion as tradition, is a dominant public discourse (Bùi Thiết 2000, Bùi Đình Phong 2001, Đinh Xuân Lâm and Bùi Đình Phong 2001). The state endorses this approach, emphasizing the need to preserve folk beliefs and practices that express the nation’s traditional values. Based on Hồ Chí Minh’s nationalism, the state and the party have lent weight

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to the attempt to preserve [bảo tồn] and promote [phát huy] the nation’s traditional identity [bản sắc truyền thống]. State leaders enjoin citizens to remember the roots [nhớ nguồn gốc] and, in the face of globalization [toàn cầu hoá], not to lose connection with their cultural roots [không mất gốc] (see Endres 2002; Taylor 2003). In addition, the state has attempted to harness traditional cultural resources for development, by defining culture as “a great national power for industrialization and modernization” (Bùi Đình Phong 2001, pp. 23–35). This emphasis on preserving and drawing upon tradition appears to conflict with the approach to culture once adopted by the socialist state. When the communists came to power in northern Vietnam, they implemented a modernist critique of the traditional and neo-traditional bases of authority in Vietnam which were deemed by nationalists and social radicals as feudal, oppressive and harmful for national unity (Kim Ninh 2002; Marr 1981; Ho Tai 1992). Like modernist nationalists in the colonial period, leaders of the socialist revolution had a tendency to regard popular religion as a trivial and backward activity, arguing that it should be abandoned, controlled, or modernized (Abuza 2001, pp. 183–90; Malarney 2002). Socialist critics of religion also tended to regard it functionally as a form of mystification or weapon of oppressive feudal elites or dominant states (Taylor 2004a, p. 9). Among the revolutionary social reforms implemented by the Vietnamese state in the north was the attempt to reform the religious realm in keeping with the goals of a socialist society. After the success of the revolution, the state pushed ahead with the reform of traditional rituals as part of its socialist modernization. This took place within the “New life [Đời sống mới] movement”, a kind of Vietnamese Cultural Revolution (Bộ Văn Hoá 1975, p. 1). The Communist Party identified for reform cultural practices that were seen as inconsistent with its modernizing agenda. Elaborate sacrifices at communal houses, the worship of tutelary deities and competitive feasting among village elites were to be eliminated as examples of “feudalism” [ phong kiến], “superstition” [mê tín dị đoan], “wastefulness” [lãng phí], “backwardness” [lạc hậu] and anti-scientific traditions (Kleinen 1999; Malarney 2002). During the socialist period in Đại Yên, the local communal house [đình] was utilized as a branch school of the Ngọc Hà elementary school, although some villagers, including members of the present day BQLDT, said that they never ceased making offerings there during this time. The people’s committee and party branch prohibited some well-known fortune tellers

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(thầy bói) from neighbouring villages from practising their “superstitious” profession in the commune. Yet in its cultural campaigns the state did not eliminate traditional rituals altogether, but rather, tried to re-create folk rituals in accordance with the new values and ideal social relations (Malarney 1996b, pp. 540–43). Party leaders in Đại Yên said, for instance, that during the socialist era ancestor feasts were not treated as illegal superstitions. However, when the head of the Ngọc Hà party cell died in 1982, village leaders who were organizing the funeral stressed that the rites should be conducted frugally, in accordance with official policy, with a minimum of unnecessary waste. As we shall see, the legacies of these policies are still evident in contemporary critiques by some people in Đại Yên of extravagance and wasteful spending on rituals. Since Đổi Mới, state cultural policies have devoted noticeably less attention to the modernization and secularization of rituals. A new emphasis on traditions and folk beliefs and values is clearly evident. Yet there are continuities in the way that the state has intervened in rituals to advance its agenda. We see this approach in the national project for preservation and maintenance of “relics”. The party started the project for the management of local communal shrines in 1962, by officially recognizing them as historic sites [di tích lịch sử] (Đặng Kim Sơn 2000). There were a total of 1,659 historic sites in December 1994 (Cục Bảo tồn Bảo tàng 2000). The number grew to about 2,500 in 2002 (interview at the Department of Cultural Relics, BVHTT, 26 January 2003). In Hanoi by 2001, 457 sites of folk ritual practice and revolutionary and war memorials were recognized officially as historic-cultural relics [di tích lịch sử văn hoá] (Sở Văn hoá Thông tin Hà Nội 2002). Each of the five traditional villages in Ngọc Hà ward had its own communal house [đình] or shrine [đền] for tutelary deities, and Buddhist temples [chùa]. By 2000, six of these sites were recognized officially as national historic relics. Đại Yên’s communal house, venerating the tutelary deity Princess Ngọc Hoa, was officially recognized as a historical relic in 1990. This site’s significance was determined using evidence such as records, legends, architectural vestiges and, importantly, sắc phong: titles invested in the tutelary deity by the former court for meritorious service to the realm. As elsewhere in Vietnam, where the official procedure of public certification includes an evaluation by experts of the historic value of the site, evidence of sắc phong, representing the royal authority of the feudal dynasty, was one of the major criteria used by the authorities in determining the đình’s

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value (Ho Tai 1987, p. 132). Evidence was found in the Đại Yên communal house of five sắc phong granted by past dynasties. The oldest was granted in the sixth year of the reign of Emperor Tự Đức (1852). Recognition as a public historic and cultural site can be said to be the sixth sắc phong.8 The official certificate of recognition is a title invested in the đình by the socialist party-state as a meritorious example of traditional culture. As feudal dynasties attempted to sanctify royal authority by intervening in folk rituals, the socialist state has made use of “backward and feudal” traditions to help consolidate its power. State support for the rites and festivities held at such sites as expressions of Vietnam’s traditional culture reveal that the state is still involved in the management and re-creation of local culture. The basic law that provides grounds for state management and aid for local rituals to tutelary deities is “Quy Chế Lễ Hội” (Bộ Văn Hoá Thông Tin 1994).9 Its preface defines “rituals and festivals [lễ hội], as a form of traditional culture, attracting people and required for promoting the national spirit”. The regulations make clear that the law was proclaimed “to organize, manage, and guide rituals according to customs, the economy, and social demands”. Although the intent is to promote the nation’s cultural identity for the benefit of all, the case of Đại Yên suggests that the state’s promotion of the revival of traditional festivals also lends status and legitimacy to local elites, who claim authority according to their own ideology of origins.

History, Ritual and Native Identity Recent state efforts to promote traditional rituals in Vietnam as key elements in the socio-cultural identity of the nation might be described as the “re-invention of tradition” (cf. Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). This preoccupation with authenticating the present in terms of the past may seem far removed from the concerns of local people, who approach the sacrifice to tutelary deities as a way to access supernatural power. However, discussions among the people of Đại Yên about the deities they enshrine are closely related to historical perceptions. The recently revived rituals to worship the village tutelary deity also show that many locals are determined preserve their roots, and adhere faithfully to tradition. This preoccupation is most clearly evident among the professed “natives” or người gốc of the village.

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Sacrifices to Đại Yên’s tutelary deity, if conducted properly, are thought to unite “this world” [thế giới này] with the “other, supernatural world” [thế giới khác]. Rituals are observed according to strict procedures and formalities: selecting the right offerings, preparing them with care, keeping clean during the preparation, and praying sincerely. The comments and actions of ritual participants and viewers indicate a concern to maximize sympathy with the deity as a supernatural source of power. Advice about the proper conduct of sacrifices was readily forthcoming: offerings should be placed on a large server [mâm], instead of a common plate. People must worship behind the server and must not go before it. After the process, the sacrifices on the server should be shared out not only with the ritual participants or the living people [chúng sinh dương], but also with the ghosts and spirits, or the dead [chúng sinh âm] dwelling in different rooms, wells, kitchens, or elsewhere. The rite of sharing the sacrifice [thụ lộc], which is the final stage of every communal ritual, is a kind of communion between the living and the dead. Village elders believe that the sacrifice must be conducted with care, “according to tradition”. While following tradition is essential to ensuring effective ritual communication with the tutelary deity, this concern also reflects village elders’ concept of the traditional ritual sacrifice as a symbol of their village’s unique cultural identity. Here we see once-trivialized “superstitions” that have been symbolically recovered as representations of a shared tradition. Collective sacrifices to the tutelary deity in Đại Yên and other villages are also a way of making statements about village history. The myths about these deities usually relate to the origin of the villages and often feature local figures that raised the status of their village by helping to save the country from crisis and stabilize the authority of the throne. Villagers tend to perceive the stories of their tutelary deity’s historic achievements and merits as the genuine history of the village. The legend about Ngọc Hoa the tutelary goddess of Đại Yên serves as an example: Trần Ngọc Tương was born on 14 March 1095. When foreign enemy troops invaded the Lý Dynasty in 1104, she asked the General Lý Thường Kiệt to go with him to fight. She disguised herself as a pedlar and helped to defeat the enemy troops by spying on them. The king granted Ngọc Tương, aged just over 9, the title of Princess Ngọc Hoa. She died on the night of 15 December, after it suddenly turned dark and stormy. Next morning white ants covered her dead body, forming a small mound. The King ordered that

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a shrine should be built to worship her. The villagers set up an epitaph and worshipped her as their tutelary goddess [thành hoàng làng].

An interesting aspect to this legend is that the local heroine makes her contribution to the defence of the realm by disguising herself as a pedlar. She is subsequently recognized as the local tutelary goddess. The legend thus writes into the national narrative of resistance a profession that is widespread in Đại Yên today, particularly among recent migrants. The identity assumed by Princess Ngọc Hoa also reflects the occupation followed today by many female members of native families who buy and sell herbs for a living. It is noteworthy that the wealth and status of the native elite of the village are linked to their past involvement in the trade in medicinal plants and, more recently, the sale of their land. Each year on the birth date given in this legend, the people of Đại Yên, guided by their native leaders, organize a communal sacrifice to commemorate Princess Ngọc Hoa’s contributions and achievements. Myths about Đại Yên’s tutelary deity also inform reciprocal ritual exchanges entertained with other villages that are based on a notion of their shared origins and history. One of the places with which Đại Yên conducts joint inter-village rituals is Giáp Tư, described by people in Đại Yên as a “sister village” [làng chị em]. Giáp Tư is a village in Nam Hà prefecture [huyện], Nam Đình province. This village also venerates Princess Ngọc Hoa as their tutelary deity, which forms the basis for the claimed symbolic sibling relationship between the two villages. The legend about Giáp Tư is as follows: Once in the Lý Dynasty, the Giáp Tư people faced a crisis when their ship was almost stranded on their way home from paying food taxes to the royal palace. After they performed a religious service, a carp suddenly appeared and saved them by lifting the ship’s bow. When they were safe, the bow of their ship turned into a white crane and flew ahead of the ship to guide it. Villagers performed a sacrificial ritual to commemorate this event, burning incense on a long stand as a reminder of the white crane’s long legs. Since then, people have often seen carps, coming to the riverside to serve the cranes flying over the village, then suddenly disappearing. It was 8 February when the ritual of Giáp Tư was held, and the sacrifice has been observed on that date until now. Scholars and seniors in later generations realized that the white crane was an incarnation of the princess and the carp was her minister and tutelary deity.

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Elderly people in Đại Yên said that in 1990, a magazine featured stories about the two villages that venerated Princess Ngọc Hoa. Following this, elders from the villages visited each other to confirm the stories. They found the same câu đối (parallel verses) in the shrine of each village. They were overjoyed, as if they had found a lost sister, and some of them cried saying, “we finally found the mother of our village”. But it was not until 1994 when the village of Giáp Tư sought to have their village shrine [đền] to Ngọc Hoa recognized as a historical site that the villages regularized ritual exchanges and organized reciprocal communal rituals. This has helped to strengthen relations between the villages and has also increased unofficial exchanges between residents. Đại Yên’s native leaders and ritual organizers have been the most devoted to promoting such unofficial friendships. The existence of a shared inter-village tradition is clearly revealed in the historical interpretation of the relationship between Lê Mật village in Gia Lâm district and the “thirteen farming villages” [thập tam trại] which are considered to be the original settlements of Hanoi (Chu Xuân Giao 1987, pp. 12–14). A festival called “Hội Làng Lê Mật”, aimed at promoting friendship between the thirteen villages, is held each year on the twenty-third day of the third lunar month. The festival begins with a procession of people marching and singing a song with lyrics: On the 23rd of the third, people come to the village across the Nhị Hà (Hong River). A kính quán (contemporary capital city) and a cựu quán (original capital city, or Lê Mật village) hold each other’s hands. Fishes in Hồ Tây (West Lake) are jumping out of the water as if dancing on the clouds (Lê Trung Vũ et al. 2001, p. 539).

There is an old legend about the tutelary deity of the villages: A daughter of King Lý Thái Tổng (1072–1127) went on a picnic by boat to the Nguyệt Đức River with her maids. But fierce waves overtook the boat, killing the princess and many maids. A farmer in Lê Mật with the family name of Hoàng heard a scream while plowing his fields and ran to the scene. He dived into the water and picked up the princess’ body. The king wanted to reward him with treasures and grant him a government position, but he declined the king’s offer and instead asked for some wasteland to cultivate in the suburbs of the royal capital city. The king awarded him some lands in the west of Thăng Long. Then, the farmer called his poor relatives and neighbours together to move there, where they cultivated marshes and swamps overgrown with wild plants to transform

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the place into thirteen well populated and wealthy farming villages called “thirteen trại ”.

Based on this historical legend, Lê Mật and the thirteen trại joined together to perform a ritual for the tutelary deity. Lê Mật is seen as the place of origin and home [“quê gốc”] to the thirteen trại, which are recognized as comprising the first agricultural district that was the predecessor of the capital city. The story about the thirteen trại is well known and quite a few books on the history of Hanoi deal with it (Bùi Thiết 2000, pp. 284–85; Lê Trung Vũ et al. 2001, pp. 539–41; Mai Thành Hải 2004. pp. 431–35). Although there is some difference in the way residents and historians see and interpret the story, surprisingly they all agree on the core of the legend and its historical significance. This history of the region has been symbolically re-enacted through revived rituals and knowledge of the historical account has been disseminated and accumulated in the process of preparing and organizing them. Meanwhile, the historical legend is supplemented by an aureole of reality, which is reflected in scholarly research. The formation and history of the thirteen trại are major research themes in the history and folklore of Vietnam, with much debate having taken place in the field of Hanoi studies [Hà Nội học] (Lưu Minh Tri and Hoàng Tùng 1999; Phan Huy Lê 1999, pp. 65–141). There are two disparate theories about the time the villages were formed and their location. One is that they were formed between the Lý-Trần dynasties in Thăng Long, the then capital. The other is that they were formed between the Lê-Nguyễn dynasties during the eighteenth to nineteenth century in a place that has nothing to do with the old Thăng Long region (Chu Xuân Giao 1996, pp. 13–19; see also, Nguyễn Văn Thâm and Phan Đại Đoãn 1986; Nguyễn Quang Ngọc 1986; Nguyễn Văn Chính 1985). The latter has gained more ground than the former. But to the people of the region, both theories are nothing but academic arguments that hardly affect their perception of history. To these people who actually perform the rituals or take part in official events, the legend itself, established as “historical fact”, is about the communal solidarity of the villages [cộng đồng làng] and the village spirit [tình làng]. Joint rituals and pilgrimages have been possible as local history and legends have been reinterpreted in the context of continuous efforts to preserve historic and cultural sites. As local and regional history was recognized along with historic sites, relations among villages were defined as historic fact. This is a process of forming a public discourse about the

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uniformity of historic origins and of building an “imagined community” (Anderson 1983) through shared myths about the traditional connection of villages. The mythic connection of villages unites the people of Đại Yên with those of different villages in a shared history of origins that transcends the boundaries of local administrative districts. The inter-village links that are recalled as history and commemorated in ritual correspond clearly with the origin accounts professed by two of Đại Yên’s four “genuine native” lineages, who say they come from Lê Mật. Yet this inter-village history is used by all the natives of Đại Yên as a resource of privilege. The amount of knowledge that a villager has about legends is an important criterion for determining their identity as a villager. Most natives in Đại Yên knew a great deal about the legends of Lê Mật, their historic hometown, and the thirteen trại. According to native seniors, “the legend is very unique and singular; it is an invaluable legacy of sacred community spirit [tình làng linh thiêng] and an historic truth.” However, migrants had differing degrees of knowledge about the legend and its meaning. Members of the BQLDT said that migrants ought to participate in village rituals and learn this history to “become villagers” [thành người làng] literally, and to get familiar with “tình làng”. Meanwhile, there are several village rituals that have no direct relation to the identity of the natives. Apart from the officially revived đình sacrifice, various kinds of unofficially revived seasonal rituals take place in Đại Yên village. Although they are communal rituals in that they are widely practiced in the village, not all the rituals are carried out in the communal house, and many are performed individually by each household. Of the major rituals followed by people in Đại Yên before the revolutionary period, rituals for Tết nguyên tiêu (15 January), Thanh minh (5 March), Vào hè (15 April), Đoan ngọ (5 May), Xá tội vong nhân (15 July), Ngày Ông Táo lên trời (23 December) are again being followed according to the lunar calendar. There are no definite official ceremonies for these rituals; instead they are performed individually by natives and migrants alike at home, in the đình, or in other local shrines. The village đình bustles with crowds performing Buddhist rituals on the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month, rites in which migrants take part as much as village natives. Some seasonal rituals are officially publicized to induce the participation of the villagers and are supported by the BQLDT, such as “Tết nguyên đán” (1 January) and “Tất niên” (15 or 29 December). As with the case of the birthday of the princess and the thirteen trại ritual, the executive

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members of the local party chapter and of the people’s committee participate annually. Leading members of higher levels of government administration, research institutes and leaders of other villages are also invited to these occasions. Officials also support events that combine elements from traditional cyclical festivals with new civic meanings. Typical examples are “meeting to welcome the beginning of spring” [Họp mặt đầu xuân] and “celebration of the aged” [Mừng thọ] held every year on the fourth of the first month of the lunar calendar. These latter events became part of the official ritual calendar after the đình was re-authorized. The status of the native elders as representatives of the village increases in importance the more the rituals are bestowed with formalities involving party and people’s committee officials. Similarly, the authority of local officials is enhanced by taking part in rituals in which so many villagers voluntarily gather. The involvement of these local elites in rituals that augment their authority is taken as a respect for traditions, and a natural manifestation of “village spirit”, of belonging to the village community. These practices are interpreted by those who take part in them as an expression of the nation’s cultural identity [bản sắc văn hoá dân tộc], an identity ostensibly purged of “superstition and feudalism”.

Heterogeneous Community and Native Identity Convergence among local elites around a notion of returning to the roots [về nguồn] can be seen most clearly in the project to certify the đình as a historical relic. As scholars have noted elsewhere in the Red River Delta, the process of obtaining official recognition of such a site as a “certified relic” [di tích công nhận] depends not only on the assessment of state agencies such as professional intellectuals and government offices of culture [cơ quan văn hoá], but also on the initiative of local people (Kleinen 1999, pp. 162–64; Trương Huyền Chi 2001, pp. 246–47). In 1989, the Elders’ Association and the BQLDT decided to apply for official recognition of Đại Yên’s communal house as a historical site to mark the occasion of the 895th anniversary of the birth of the princess in 1990. A group of historians, archeologists, ethnologists, folklorists, and Culture and Information Ministry officials were asked to conduct a field survey on the historical value of the shrine. The survey found evidence of câu đối (parallel verses), bài vị (memorial tablets), and hoành phi (horizontal lacquered boards) preserved in the shrine (see, Hà Văn Tán and Nguyễn

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Văn Kự 1998; Nguyễn Thế Long 1998). In recalling their own case for the certification of the đình, members of the Elders’ Association and the BQLDT spoke endlessly about the beauty of the đình’s architecture and the historic value of its relics. Even officials of the village’s Communist Party chapter and local government boasted about the significance of its relics and claimed that all the residents wanted the shrine to be designated as a national historical site. Although every stratum of the village from top to bottom might want the same thing, recognition of the shrine as an historic site did not mean the same thing to everyone. For those with superior social and political status in the village, like its natives, elders and officials, the recognition campaign provided a vehicle to compete with each other in displaying their knowledge and status. All the residents I spoke with acknowledged that the certification was worthwhile and essential, but they did not all think it would guarantee the same level of welfare to themselves. As village members they were called upon to support the recognition of the shrine as a historical site, but in reality, the process divided the village into two groups — those who participated and those who did not. It was the Elders’ Association that first brought up the plan and led the effort along with the Women’s Buddhist Association. The first step was to meet officials of the ward to sound them out. In the process, it was natural that elders who were known to have close relationships with ward officials assumed an important role and it was equally inevitable that migrants were excluded. The elders also said that few migrants showed interest in the effort, that they themselves naturally had more interest since it was a matter of their own home village. In reality, some migrants — those who are richer than the more recently arrived migrant labourers — have tried to contribute to ritual events in their own home villages. Some natives even argued that this involvement in rituals elsewhere showed that migrants were not real members of the village. This did not mean that migrants were not allowed to provide donations, but it was taken as a sign that migrants lacked interest in village matters. These reactions illustrate that communal rituals can paradoxically contribute to classifying social classes, which any socialist country detests. Promoting rituals has become a revised pathway of social differentiation in Đại Yên. The old social class system has been abolished, but contribution to rituals according to one’s wealth has become another way of showing one’s status, privilege, and power. One’s status in the village is now

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estimated and determined by the amount of one’s donation, or công đức, for rituals. This is why party and government officials and local leaders scramble to make a contribution for restoring and maintaining historical sites in their region. The special donation of funds for restoring and maintaining historical sites is also called công đức. The official certification of the Đại Yên communal house not only gave a decisive momentum to legitimate the movement of ritual revivals, it also led to critical changes in the process of attracting material resources from villagers. Over a ten-year period from 1991, the total amount of donations reached 150 million đồng. In 1991 when the village first initiated the project for the restoration of the đình, the village’s native elders rolled up their sleeves to raise the funds. Since then, an increasing number of residents have made donations, with the most significant increase being between 1993 and 1995, when the new land law was implemented. In 2000, the year of the 905th anniversary of the princess, the village decided to focus on drawing richer potential donors, collecting more from each of them and erecting a monument engraved with the names of all those who contributed donations [Ghi nhận công đức]. As a result, the amount collected in 2000 alone was equivalent to the amount collected over the previous nine years. A total of 250 residents and groups participated in the fundraising in 2000, but only 62 of them, who donated more than 300,000 đồng, could have their names recorded on the monument. The donations of the 62 accounted for 72 per cent or 43 million đồng of the total amount of 59.3 million đồng (statistics for “Ghi nhận công đức, Trung tu Đình Đại Yên”, 20 February 2000). The people’s committee of the ward, on behalf of the state, along with local state-run companies, the thirteen native villages and Đại Yên’s sister village also made contributions. Forty-nine individuals donated more than 300,000 đồng. A native who had married into the Hoàng Văn family was the biggest donor, with a contribution of two million đồng. Nine of the eleven households who donated over one million đồng were families who had lived in the village for four generations, and the remaining two were also natives who had moved there before 1954. It is clear that the fund-raising could not have continued without economic prosperity, but it involved another factor, besides the questions of who willingly made donations and how much, that is the social relationship between those making donations and those receiving them. This flow of offerings occurred predominantly between established families who claimed

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tenure in the village since well before the revolutionary era and was promoted most actively by a network of senior villagers and local elites. Although the Committee for the Management of Historical Sites was in charge of all formalities for the fund-raising, it was the Elders’ Association that persuaded the donors and set the proper amount for donations. This suggests that the basic principles on which the class system of the village was based have hardly changed since the revolution. There were nearly no residents who opposed the re-activation of đình rituals or the official recognition of relics, but not all residents were in agreement with the approach followed by the native elders. Not all villagers were of the opinion that the communal ritual events should be held elaborately and lavishly. The poor migrants and younger class made comments that reflected their discontent with the decision, saying, for instance: “the aged have lately experienced many complicated issues. Holding elaborate rituals requires a lot of money and is laborious;” … “The aged do not feel how hard and busily the younger people work in order to maintain their living;” … “To fully perform the events, we have to take at minimum two or three days off work. If business has to be interrupted at the market even for a moment, this will generate immense damage in our livelihoods. Taking a few days off means the loss of tens of thousands of đồng;” … “It is difficult to leave one’s work. Nevertheless, if the aged decide on a communal ritual, their sons and grandsons have no choice but to follow their decision”. The migrants, who were interested in these village activities, expressed more positive interest in the opportunities for recreation during the festival rather than in the strict process of rites. Younger migrants agreed that “this is a joyful and meaningful kind of event”, but they worried about the amount of expense and effort that was expected of them. This kind of difference in attitude and critical discourse could also be found in the issue of the cost of the rituals. The portion of household expenditures devoted to rituals varied significantly with the circumstance of each household and difference in stratum. In general, the expenditure on rituals was higher for “native” households and households with aged members, and also for migrant households where at least one of the parents maintains ritual membership of their home village. Households with more economic leeway, especially the native households in which both elderly spouses were alive incurred the greatest ritual expenses. Lowincome households, due to the reason that they were not yet economically established [chưa có kinh tế], were confined only to “forced” expenditures

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on rituals essential to maintaining kin relations, such as contribution money for marriages and funerals, and basic donations for communal house rituals and village festivals in Đại Yên and/or in their home villages. Nevertheless, participating in rituals and paying the donation was considered the “requisite obligation for all persons, regardless of affluence”. In the case of some households, it was found that approximately five to ten per cent of their annual expenditure was devoted to these obligatory payments. The actual expense was greater, if taking into consideration costs incurred for everyday ancestor worship at home and for undertaking pilgrimages to the famous temples far from Hanoi, as many villagers did once every two or three years. In the case of the đình ritual, additional voluntary donations aside from the minimum obligatory donation were expected, according to the status of each household within the village. Some younger villagers thought that their aged parents were making large expenditures on various ritual events that were irrelevant to practical necessity and ruled them as an “extravagance” [lãng phí]. They expressed the opinion that it was more reasonable for their parents to save the money to take care of their health or enjoy their declining years. These sentiments suggest that the message of former ritual reform policies, which advocated frugality in the name of a modern and scientific nation, still exert influence even in the Đổi Mới era. On the other hand, this perspective also reflects the practical desires of members of the younger generation who are more familiar with the market economy. Younger people in the village and migrants, in general, preferred saving or spending their money on more concrete economic activities, such as the improving the material welfare of their family, or purchasing better household appliances, rather than using it for rituals. The promotion of communal rituals is no mere act of maintaining a common tradition, as the organizers insist. As a project advanced most energetically by members of the village’s native elite, it gives expression to the historical experiences, social networks and high social status of a small section of the village’s population. Comments made by Đại Yên’s native elite about the disinterest in village matters shown by migrants are answered in criticisms made by the latter about the high cost of đình restoration contributions and recurrent ritual expenditures. The contestations that surround the revival of traditional communal rituals reveal Đại Yên to be a socially heterogeneous village, an image that conflicts with representations of these rituals as expressions of a common village spirit.

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Conclusion This chapter is about how a nativist discourse of origins [gốc] in Vietnam plays out at the local level. While the discourse of collective cultural origins is an arena for considerable overlap between state and society and between central and local levels of the state apparatus, it is also an arena for competition, contestation and exclusion. These divisive dynamics are clearly evident in communal house rituals, often depicted as symbols of a shared village tradition. The current revivification of village communal house activities in Vietnam is not simply a result of the increased economic capacity of the population after Đổi Mới, or of the reduction in the state’s control over people’s cultural activities. On the contrary, this study reveals that the restoration of material vestiges and revitalization of traditional rituals originates in the cultural and status preoccupations of local actors. The ritual events sponsored by villagers as symbols of a collective tradition need to be investigated within the context of complex social histories and contemporary processes of social reproduction within specific villages. The quest by villagers to revive and promote their cultural identity based in a concept of a unique village tradition, is also entangled with quests for status in a socially differentiated village. This case study demonstrates that to understand the concept of cultural origins promoted in a given locality there is a need to explain the nature of social differentiation inherent to that locality. The discourse of origins in Đại Yên village is an idiom that not only demarcates socially distinct groups; it is also used by socially dominant villagers to make claims about a shared village history and collective identity that privileges the experience of those villagers. In a village constituted in many successive waves of migration and experiencing considerable social differentiation, the mythic origin narratives that are dominant in the village disguise this historical and social complexity. The communal rituals that are sponsored by its elite offer a view of a homogenous community that is at odds with the true heterogeneity of the village. As Hanoi has been restructured according to new administrative hierarchies, the boundaries of its original villages [làng] have been officially demolished. Nevertheless, the notion of traditional village identity has been sustained. This identity has been reinforced by locals in Đại Yên deploying resources such as native lineage groups, the traditional industry of herbal medicine, and local political incumbency, which have also emerged as powerful social bases to support the maintenance by a small village elite

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of claims to embody the village’s indigenous identity. The restoration of communal rituals for the tutelary deity of the village, ritual exchange networks maintained with the elite of other villages and invitations to representatives of the party-state to celebrate with locals in a “return to the source” [về nguồn] are arenas where the claims made by Đại Yên’s “native” elite about their village’s history, traditions and common spirit are put on display. As shown in criticisms made by less-privileged villagers pertaining to the official recognition of the communal shrine and the cost of contributions to communal rituals, the collective effort to revitalize village traditions does not go entirely uncontested, and is an arena where the heterogeneity of the village is also put on display. The Vietnamese state emphasizes a return to the nation’s “cultural origins”, but it does not assign authority for managing this cultural identity exclusively to those who, in any given locality, claim themselves as its original people. Nevertheless, local reactions to state policies are invariably constructed within a context of complex local histories, social relations and cultural identities. Most state cadres outside of a given locality might not understand the core dynamics of local social differentiation, and nor often do they feel the need to do so. And, as Đại Yên’s case shows, “native” identity and the dominant status of the village’s native elite have not yet become such an intractable source of conflict as to seriously undermine the state’s cultural revitalization agenda. I would imagine that the central state and its local agents should like to make terms such as “origins”, “community” and “tradition” have as wide a meaning and scope as possible. Yet the methods for doing this and background of making such choices are likely to vary significantly according to the locality in question. In the case of Đại Yên, state authorities argue that the nation’s origins are maintained and enhanced by village people’s own endeavours to sustain and recover their own traditions. As we have seen, most endeavors of this kind are monopolized by native villagers, an exercise that tends to make some villagers, namely the young, poor or recently-arrived migrants into relatively unrepresented cultural outsiders. Undoubtedly, this dynamic challenges important state ideals such as unity and inclusion, although, to the extent that it occurs in Đại Yên can be seen as an unintended result of the state’s delegation to localities of the promotion of their own traditional origins. Whether this becomes a more significant source of social grievance in Đại Yên, in any of Hanoi’s other “traditional villages”, or indeed in other localities beyond Hanoi, is a question to be taken up in future research.

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Horim Choi FIGURE 3.1 Local Elites in Front of Đình Đại Yên.

FIGURE 3.2 Communal Ritual for the Tutelary Goddess, Đại Yên.

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FIGURE 3.3 Inter-village Pilgrimage Undertaken by Representatives of the Thirteen Villages (Thập Tam Trại), Hanoi.

NOTES 1

2 3

4

5 6

This chapter was first presented at the “Religion in Contemporary Vietnam Workshop” at the Australian National University, 10 August 2005. It was prepared in the Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS). I thank Professors Philip Taylor, Mark Mosko, Andrew Kipnis, and James Fox, the Director of RSPAS, for hosting me as a visiting fellow in July–August 2005. I am grateful to Philip Taylor for his extensive comments on the drafts of this chapter. To be calculated up to the index in Lê Trung Vũ et al. (2001). This paper is an outcome of my ethnographic fieldwork in Hanoi, in the period of July 1996 to October 1997, September 1999 to August 2001 and January to February 2003. Regarding the old names of the villages and the streets in Hanoi, see Bùi Thiết (1993) and Giang Quân (1999). Vietnam Economic Times 2005. Local knowledge of medicinal substances and science in Đại Yên consists of not only thuốc nam, but also, “thuốc bắc”, or the so-called oriental medicine [đông y] from China, “medicine of minorities” [ y học dân tộc thiểu số], and

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7

8

9

Horim Choi Western-modern medicine [tây y], as well (see, Chu Xuân Giao 1996: Craig 1996). Some well-known thuốc nam cultivating families preserve their own pharmacopoeia [dược diễn] with detailed explanations and classifications on at least 220 kinds of substances, which can prove their abundant experience and knowledge. For example, there were thirty persons who were engaged in the thuốc nam industry in Tổ H, as of June 2000. They occupied only 12 per cent of 243 persons aged eighteen and above, and 16 per cent of 188 persons who had jobs. Seven persons, who were engaged in both growing and selling, were all người gốc, and most of the twenty-three sellers were also natives or long-time immigrants. Four out of seven cultivators and six out of twenty-one women sellers were aged sixty or above and two of them were aged over eighty. Đình Đại Yên has the documents of enthronements, including the honourable records of 6th (1852) and 35th year (1879) of Tự Đức, 2nd year (1883) of Đồng Khánh, 3rd year (1908) of Duy Tân, and 8th year (1923) of Khải Định. These items of evidence are officially announced repeatedly at the opening rite of “Reading the History of the Goddess [độc thân phả]” of the annual rituals for the tutelary goddess (“Sụ Tích Thành Hoàng Ngọc Hoa Công Chúa và Đình Làng Đại Yên”). The documents for the application of the Relic’s certification also contained these records (Sở Văn hoá Thông tin Hà Nội 1990a, 1990b). The “Quy Chế Lễ Hội” is a revised regulation of the “Quy Chế mở hội truyền thống” (54/VHQC, issued on 4 October 1989), which is the first law for the control of civil rituals. The government has issued several regulations and decisions relating the implementation of “Quy Chế Lễ Hội”, such as “Quy Chế tổ chức lễ hội thống truyền thống” (179/VHXH, issued by People’s Committee of Hanoi, January 1991), “Quy Chế tổ chức lễ hội” (Quyết định số 39/2001/QD-BVHTT, issued by BVHTT, 23 August 2001. See also Abuza (2001, pp. 183–90).

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4 Feasting with the Living and the Dead: Food and Eating in Ancestor Worship Rituals in Hội An Nir Avieli

Ancestor worship ceremonies [đám giỗ]1 are the most commonly celebrated rituals in the central Vietnamese town of Hội An. As every person has two parents and four grandparents (in some cases even more as, prior to 1975, polygamy was legal and I have met several such polygamous families in town), most Hoianese conduct several such rituals annually. Obviously, many Hoianese have living parents and grandparents, but then they would participate in their elders’ ceremonies. 2 And since extended-family members, friends and neighbours are routinely invited to join ancestor worship rituals, most people participate in well over a dozen such events yearly. Moreover, as most other Hoianese rituals and festivals include some measure of ancestor worship, it would be safe to claim that worship of ancestors is the most commonly practised ritual in Hội An. Thus, one of my informants clearly stated: “…they say that we are Buddhists or Taoists but for me, I think that we are ancestor worshippers. This is what we mostly do….”

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Hoianese ancestor worship rituals are usually large and expensive affairs, with the number of participants ranging from a few dozen to over 200 and their expenses reaching no less than 15,000 đồng (about US$1) per guest in year 2000, and often thrice as much.3 Multiplied by several such rituals per year, one realizes the huge efforts invested in ancestor worship in terms of work, time and money. At this point, however, it is extremely important to stress that most of the money and efforts are invested in preparing the food, while most of the time is spent cooking and consuming it, facts that indicate the huge importance of the food in these gatherings. Indeed, the guests are invited to ăn đám giỗ (“eat [the] ancestor worship ceremony”), emphasizing the overwhelming importance of eating in these events. Yet despite the obvious centrality and importance of food and eating in these rituals, researchers of Vietnamese culture have, by and large, neglected the culinary facets of ancestor worship or, at best, treated them as anecdotal and trivial. Writers such as Hickey (1964, pp. 127–29), Popkin (1979, pp. 93–94), Kleinen (1999, pp. 175–76, 182–83) or Malarney (2002, pp. 92, 150–51; 2001, pp. 68–70), who stress the centrality of ancestor worship, repeatedly overlook the importance of the feast and pay very little attention to its social and cultural meanings. Malarney, for example, in his detailed description and insightful analysis of war-dead commemorations and their transformations during and after the war (2001, p. 68), merely writes: “…and then [the mourners] share a communal meal…”, a line which seems all too common in such contexts. This lacuna, however, is hardly surprising, nor is it limited to scholars of Vietnam: though anthropologists, sociologists and researchers of religion have always focused on ceremonies and rituals, the special food, elaborate preparations and unique eating practices characteristic of such events have been routinely ignored in academic writing up until recently (Mennell et al. 1992, p. 1, Mintz 2002, p. 100); and though the last decade has seen a surge in academic writing on culinary topics, the study of festive food and eating is far from exhausted and calls for further attention. Indeed, one of the main goals of this chapter is to show that the culinary facets of ceremonies and other festive events are at least as meaningful and important as the formal ritual, and that the analysis of foodways in such events sheds light on issues that would have otherwise remained overlooked. This chapter discusses the feasts at several ancestor-worship ceremonies, beginning with a detailed description of a đám giỗ held by a

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peasant family. The analysis of this event exposes the basic ideas embedded in ancestor worship and serves as a baseline for comparative analysis of similar rituals conducted within other social contexts. It continues with an ancestor worship event that took place in the house of an urban, lowermiddle class family, stressing aspects of continuity and change. Other issues, such as competition for prestige, class distinctions and processes of social change are also discussed with reference to other ancestor worship events in which I have participated. The main argument in this chapter is that though ancestor worship rituals are explicitly concerned with afterlife and the dead, the analysis of the dishes and culinary practices suggests that đám giỗ are just as much about the living and the social interaction amongst them. Thus, while the special dishes and eating practices shed light on Vietnamese cosmology and its notions of life and death, I show how the feast and special dishes celebrate proper social and kin relations and aspire for the well-being and success of the living family members. At the same time, the culinary sphere is also shown in this chapter as the site of fierce competition for prestige and as an arena of dynamic socio-cultural negotiation, where new and, at times, contradicting and even subversive ideas and ideals compete for public expression and hegemony. The ethnographic data presented in this chapter was collected while conducting extensive anthropological fieldwork in Hội An in 1999–2000, and on shorter stays in 2001, 2004 and 2005.4 I have mainly opted for anthropological participant-observation centred on a lengthy period of stay in town and the establishing of close personal relations with many locals. I participated in hundreds of “food events” (Ashkenazi and Jacob, 2000, p. 7) in different contexts, and conducted thousands of informal conversations and unstructured interviews with informants from a wide range of social classes and cultural backgrounds. Most of the ethnographic data concerning the specific rituals discussed in this chapter was collected in Hội An in 2000 and 2005. I would arrive at the houses in which the rituals were to be held early in the morning and spend the whole day observing the events, talking to people, taking notes and pictures and videotaping. Whenever my hosts felt comfortable about it, I would participate in the processes of cooking and serving. During July and August of 2005, in anticipation of the conference in Canberra, I participated in five such events. As I already had an earlier version of this chapter by then, my interviews and questions were focused on three

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main issues: death and afterlife, the interaction between the living and the dead, and the relations amongst the living, as they materialize in the food and the eating practices.

Ancestor-Worship as a “Family-cycle” Event Before turning to the ethnographic data, a few words are due concerning ancestor worship rituals as “life-cycle” or, rather, “family-cycle” events. This discussion aims to provide an analytical framework for ancestor worship events as “rituals”, and also contextualizes them culturally, introducing the cosmological theory of the “parallel worlds” and emphasizing the centrality of the Vietnamese family and the notion of “continuum of descent”. Life-cycle events are rituals that mark specific and non-reversible changes in one’s social status5 (Turner 1967, pp. 93–111). The different life-cycle rituals stand for the shifts between various stages in one’s life course: from birth into puberty, adulthood, marriage, parenthood, seniority or retirement, and death. It could be argued however, that ancestor worship can hardly qualify as a “life-cycle event”, as the person to whom the ritual is dedicated is actually dead. However, the Western (or, rather, contemporary-Western) notion of a set of personal, individual-oriented “life-cycle events” which is discontinued after the said individual’s death, is incongruent both with Vietnamese family-oriented perceptions of social life and with Vietnamese understandings of afterlife. In fact, what the Vietnamese celebrate should be probably termed “family-cycle” events: rituals that are oriented toward the family and not toward specific individuals. In order to clarify this point, a short discussion of the centrality of the Vietnamese extended family as a synchronic entity and of the cosmological theory of the “parallel worlds” is essential. The extended family was the basic social unit in the pre-modern (that is, pre-French) Vietnamese society (Jamieson 1995, pp. 22–25). Though the supremacy of the Vietnamese family was challenged during the last 150 years by Western individualistic notions and by the communist ideology (ibid., p. 1), Phạm Văn Bích (1999) concludes that though some kinship arrangements have changed under the pressures of modernity and communism, the traditional family patterns and notions have resisted these pressures and is still prevalent. In fact, Phạm points out that the improved standard of living and the economic independence stemming from Đổi Mới (the economic renovation policy) led to the re-strengthening of the

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Vietnamese family and “the restoration of many traditional features since 1987” (ibid., p. 252). My informants often stressed the fact that their families are the most important thing in their lives, especially their parents and children. “I don’t need anyone”, said an informant, “I could even live without my husband, but never without my children.” Another informant, living a relatively modern Western-inclined lifestyle, pointed out that her mother is her best friend and only confidant, and that she in fact has no friends beyond her immediate family members: parents and siblings. The Vietnamese perceive the family as a synchronic entity. This is a Chinese-Confucian notion (Taylor 1983, p. 36, Huard and Durand 1998, p. 125), whose impact should not be under-estimated: “There is an underlying assumption in the Chinese [and Vietnamese] thinking on the family that there is a “Continuum of Descent’… [that is] a unity, a rope, which began somewhere back in the remote past and which stretches on into the infinite future…” (Baker 1979, pp. 26–27). Thus, for the Vietnamese, …the communitarian character of the family found expression not only in the relationships between the living members, but also in those between the dead, the living and the unborn…. The family was understood as a human community stemming from the ancestors, often going back four or five generations or as long as the family could remember….” (Phạm 1999, p. 19).

The second element crucial for understanding Vietnamese ancestor worship is that of the cosmological theory of the “parallel worlds”. In a nutshell, this Sino-Vietnamese theory maintains that the afterworld is a mirror image of the world of the living, and therefore, the living and the dead have similar material and emotional needs. However, these worlds differ in one essential aspect: while material production is only possible in the world of the living, the dead have control over good luck. Thus, while the dead depend on the living for their material needs, the living depend on the protection and goodwill of the dead ancestors for their own happiness, success and prosperity. The living and the dead are thus interlocked in a circle of everlasting mutual obligations. Returning to the issue of death anniversaries as life-cycle events, in many senses ancestor worship is most reminiscent of a Western style birthday celebration: the deceased is seated at the head of the table, adorned with flowers and gifts, surrounded by relatives and friends that join him for a feast (as we shall see, often composed of his favourite dishes) that marks

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his own very special day. While birthday celebrations were uncommon in pre-modern Vietnam6 (as they still are in Hội An nowadays), ancestor worship rituals have much in common with these commensal rites. All in all, we realize that for the Hoianese, the dead continue to exist in one form or another. Moreover, they hold a powerful position in regard to the fortune and well-being of the living and are therefore extremely important. Indeed, for most of my informants, the existence of their ancestors was obvious and their ability to influence their present well-being unquestioned. Therefore, if the dead continue to exist and to take an active part in the family affairs, the rituals that mark their death anniversaries are stages in their life-cycle or, to be more accurate, in the family cycle.

Feasting with the Dead Chị Xuân invited us to participate in the ancestor ceremony in honor of her husband’s late grandmother. Her son waited for us in her house at 11 a.m. and led us along the maze of narrow sandy alleys that twist among the houses and shaded yards sprawling between the main road and the river, to his grandparents’ house. This was a typical Central-Vietnamese rural house: a rectangular, brick house with a sturdy, low-lying tile roof, whitewashed in pale yellow with green and blue contours, built on an elevated ramp to avoid seasonal floods. The packed-sand yard was surrounded by a wire fence and shaded by a couple of large sapodilla and jackfruit trees. A yellow-flowered peach tree was planted right in front of the main door, young buds sprouting on the bare branches, ready to bloom in time for the coming New Year Festival [Tết]. Six round tables were set in the yard, each surrounded by ten plastic stools. Food was already set on the tables, in anticipation of the feast. Electric fans were placed by the tables, ready to relieve the stifling heat. The large front doors of the house were wide open and from the yard I could see the preparations taking place inside. The curtains of the ancestors’ altar (bàn thờ or “table [for] worship”), a robust wooden cupboard located just in front of the central door, were drawn open. A chain of small flashing bulbs illuminated the altar. On a shelf above the altar was an icon of Buddha. On top of the altar itself were several blackand-white photographs of men and women. One of these was of a young man in military uniform. Flowers in a vase, fruits in a bowl, a bunch of smoking incense sticks and a couple of lit red candles stuck in a can full

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of uncooked rice were arranged in front of the pictures. There were also a bottle of rice spirit [rượu gạo] and a plate of trầu cau (betel quid: a mild narcotic mix of betel leaves, areca nuts and lime). Two elderly men had just finished setting a paper strip with Chinese characters on the altar and turned to beat a shiny bronze gong. To the left of the main altar was a smaller one, with the photograph of an old lady surrounded by white funeral flags embroidered with black Chinese characters. A similar array of offerings was set on this altar, though on a smaller scale. I asked Xuân why there were two altars and she explained that the central one was for the ancestors, whose photographs, she pointed out, were displayed. Then she led me to the smaller altar and said: “This is my grandmother, she died two years ago when she was eighty-six.” I asked why she was not being worshipped at the central altar and Xuân explained that only after the third anniversary of her death would the mourning period be over and “grandmother will move to the main altar”. Rectangular wooden tables and chairs were erected in front of both altars, heaped with dishes. The bowls were full of rice and everything was ready for the meal. The head of a boiled pig, covered with a white membrane that looked like an embroidered veil (the membrane that holds the pig’s guts) was laid on the table in front of the main altar. Near the head was a ceramic utensil holding a couple of burning candles and some smoking incense sticks. One of the elderly men picked up a bundle of coloured paper from the table, lit them with the flame of the candles and took the burning pile to the gate, where he laid it on the ground and watched the colourful sheets of paper turn black and swirl up in the hot air.7 I went to the back of the house where women were cooking the food and arranging them in serving plates. There was a lively and cheerful atmosphere in the cooking area, where squatting women were roasting meat, filling bowls with rice and arranging slices of meat over plates decorated with lettuce leaves and carrot flowers. Although I recognized some of them as neighbours, on that occasion most of them were introduced as relatives. More guests arrived and filled the yard. The older men, wearing old-fashioned European suits and ties, formed a line by the front porch, each kowtowing on a straw mat in front of the main altar and lighting an incense stick. Some of them beat the gong. The elderly women, most of them wearing áo dài,8 turned to sit by the wooden tea-table that had been moved from its permanent position in front of the ancestor altar into the yard. The younger guests, especially the women, went to help in the kitchen. The atmosphere was solemn and tense.

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Nir Avieli By 11:30 a.m., as soon as the ceremonial stage was over, the mood of the event had changed abruptly, turning cheerful and laid-back. Xuân’s father-in-law invited the older men to sit by the table that was set in the yard just in front of the main door of the house and the ancestral altar. The elderly women took their places at the next table. As soon as a table would fill up, the guests would begin eating. The younger guests, still pouring into the yard, took their seats around the other tables, men and women at separate tables. The men were calling their friends to join them and each table had guests of roughly the same sex and age. The preschool children received large bowls of rice, topped with morsels of the other dishes, and went to a corner of the yard, where they ate with spoons. The tables were heaped with about a dozen dishes and were a mosaic of colours and textures: spring rolls stuffed with pork, mushrooms and rice vermicelli [chả giò], boiled pork [thịt heo luộc], rice vermicelli sautéed with green beans [bún xào đậu tây], sticky rice soup with curdled pork blood [canh nếp với huyết heo], pork and potato curry [canh cà ri khoai tây giò heo], mixed fresh aromatic greens [rau sống], beef steak [thịt bò bít tết], roasted pork [thịt heo nướng], mixed fried green beans [đậu tây xào thập cẩm] and boiled pork innards [lòng bao tử gan heo luộc]. Each guest had a bowl of steamed rice [cơm] that had been filled in advance. There was a saucer of fish-sauce dip [nước mắm chấm] on each table, but no drinks except for rice spirit. The atmosphere in the yard was gay and friendly. Everyone was eating, many of the men drinking alcohol, and lively conversations flared up as the younger guests were talking loudly across the tables. As more guests were coming, two more tables were brought and set in the yard. Plates of food were removed from the two rectangular tables set in front of the altars inside the house, and served to the late arrivals. “Why don’t they sit inside, by the set tables?” I asked Vân, Xuân’s sister-in-law. “Those are the tables for the ancestors”, she replied, “now they have finished eating [“ăn rồi’] and the food that was left is for the others.” Some of the women walked between the tables, adding rice to the bowls and offering more of the other dishes. By that time, some of the guests were leaving, drinking a small cup of tea from a large kettle that was set on the fence just by the yard’s gate. Vân, who is a teacher, excused herself and left for the school afternoon shift, along with some of the school pupils. Soon, most of the guests had left, motorbikes roaring away. The tables were still heaped with halfconsumed dishes. It seemed to me that most of the food was left uneaten.

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At that stage, one of the elderly men reached for a notebook that was kept inside the ancestor altar and handed it to a younger woman. Those guests that had not left, mostly older men, formed a line in front of the altar. Each approached the altar and after a short discussion with the man in charge, handed some money, stating aloud their full name and the sum they had given. The young woman carefully noted the name and the sum in the notebook.

Ancestor worship is explicitly dedicated to the dead and, in some respects, to their relations with the living. From the perspective of the dead, the ritual is clearly intended to supply their various needs in the afterworld: they are provided with material as well as aesthetic goods (money, clothing, flowers and incense; see note 7), their well-being is ensured (as the paper figures will take over their punishments), the entire extended family is gathered to pay them respects and an elaborate feast is served to them. From the perspective of the living, they worship their ancestors in order to win their favour so as to ensure their own good luck and material success. When I asked what exactly is said when worshipping the ancestors, I was told that the worshipper states his name (and, sometimes, his address9) and asks the deceased for help in personal matters such as health, success at school or in business, safe journey, matters of the heart or child-bearing. From a cosmological perspective, the fact that the dead require a constant supply of material goods, and that they can control some aspects of the world of the living entails that death is not the complete cessation of being but rather, some kind of different existence, which has unmistakable material (as opposed to transcendental) features. The feast clearly supports this notion, as the food is served first and foremost to the dead, and only when they have eaten (“ăn rồi”, technically, when half the incense sticks lit on the altar burn out), are the living invited to join the meal and consume the “leftovers”. When talking about this issue, one of my informants claimed that the ancestors would eat some part of the food and because of this, “the dishes from the altar, when served later to the guests, taste differently from the rest of the food”. While she herself suggested that the long exposure to incense smoke, heat and dust on the altar might have something to do with the change in taste, she insisted that the transformation was mainly due to the dead consuming some part of it. What is unique about the feast, however, is that while the ritual is composed of a set of abstract and symbolic acts and artifacts — the prayer,

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the sound of gongs, the aroma of incense and the light of candles, as well as a set of paper offerings, the food is by no means abstract or symbolic; it is real. Thus, the food is the only element that concretizes the existence of the dead, thereby linking the world of the living and the after-world and hence overcoming the conceptual gap between the diachronic existence of the living family members and the synchronic notion of “continuum of descent”. Indeed, if not fed, the dead spirits might become “hungry ghosts” who roam the world in search of food. These ghosts are extremely dangerous and are therefore fed in almost all rituals.10 The important point emphasized by my informants is that spirits might become hungry ghosts when not fed, while the other offerings were never mentioned, stressing again the role of food in concretizing otherwise abstract and symbolic beings and relations. The offering of food and, more so, ceasing to feed those who have died long ago, seems to have another very important role in the cosmological order: if feeding the dead ensures their continued existence, ceasing to feed them leads to their final evanescence. This is extremely important, as otherwise the world would be chock-full with an ever-increasing number of souls. Such a world would be completely immobile and stagnant and therefore, dead. As Baker (1979, p. 88), in his discussion of Chinese ancestor worship, points out: “The soul, if not worshipped, might eventually just melt away and cease to exist….” Thus, while feeding is the act that materializes the dead and ensures their continued existence, it is the cessation of feeding that would lead to their final departure.

Feasting with the Living: Stability and Social Order While ancestor worship rituals such as the one held by Xuân’s family are explicitly dedicated to the dead, these gatherings serve as arenas of social interaction that goes well beyond the dead and are concerned mainly with the living family members and the interactions amongst them. First and foremost, ancestor worship rituals are the most frequent occasions in which the boundaries of inclusion of the extended family are manifested and where belonging to a specific social group is expressed, maintained and intensified. Thus, participating in these rituals should be perceived as a kind of “membership card” in the extended family. The shared meal clearly enhances these feelings of belonging: as a shared pot of rice represents the communal character of the Hoianese family, and as

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the division of food among the family members is the utmost expression of mutual dependency and responsibility, ancestor worship feasts are instances in which these principles are expanded to include entire extended families. Thus, those who share such meals make the following culinary statement: “We are one family; we are responsible for one another; we share our food and our fate”. Indeed, as mutual responsibility amongst kin is a key issue in such occasions, the meal at Xuân’s in-laws’ house concluded with a bill: the clear expectation from the family members to share the expenses. Here we meet a traditional custom in a modern guise, that of “incense and fire land” [đất hương lửa]: a special category of land, owned by the extended family, whose crops were devoted to subsidize ancestor worship (Jamieson 1995, p. 24). In the contemporary setting, when the recently allocated land is in fact private again in all but the name, but where communal family or village fields, such as that of “incense and fire”, do not exist as such, extended family members have to contribute money to share the expenses.11 Beyond family integration, the eating arrangements in these feasts reflect some of the basic organizing principles of the Vietnamese society, the most prominent of which is age hierarchy and the precedence of the elderly over the young. The older guests take the most important seats: “above and beyond”, as close as possible to the ancestral altar, and are served first, often concluding the meal before the younger guests have even started. This pattern includes the dead ancestors: as they are the eldest members of the (synchronic) family, they have the most venerated seat (right on the altar), eating first and foremost and concluding their meal before the living begin to eat. The second organizing principle concerns gender hierarchy and the priority of male over female family members: women are charged with cooking the food and serving it to the other family members, while men, and specifically elderly men, are being served and hosted. Cooking is carried out in the kitchen, located in a separate structure behind the house, just by the toilet and the pigsty. All cooking activities are done on the floor, in a squatting position, in a space which is often the darkest, dirtiest, physically lowest and ideologically lowliest part of the house. Thus, the inferior position of women or rather, their ambivalent position as charged with transforming nature into culture (Ortner 1974, pp. 80–83), is enacted and reinforced during these public events.

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The Food Festive Food and Nutrition In line with Sahlins’ (1976) insistence that anthropologists should distinguish between culture and practical reason, yet acknowledge the importance of both, I would like to begin the discussion of Hoianese ancestor worship feasts with a short nutritional analysis. While festive foodways and dishes are elaborate socio-cultural products, I think that all culinary practices have firm nutritional logic, which does not essentialize but rather, supports further levels of analysis. The most salient nutritional feature of the feast at Xuân’s was the huge amount of food being offered. While the quantity of food in daily homeeaten meals is limited (if not frugal) and while meals eaten out on a daily basis are often small (at least, by Israeli and Western standards), ancestor worship feasts feature large amounts of food. Though the guests eat much more than they would normally eat at home, constantly encouraged by their hosts and co-diners to continue eating, the amount of food is so much that approximately 40–50 per cent remains on the tables.12 The huge amount of food consumed in such events serves nutritionally as a “calorie filling-station”: in a society that had spent most of its existence on the brink of hunger, feasts were always events that combated chronic nutritional deficiencies. Though nowadays the local markets abound with food and most Hoianese are not hungry, it would still be quite difficult to find an overweight adult in Hội An.13 Furthermore, bearing in mind that most Hoianese still make their living out of hard physical labour, extra calories are almost always in demand. Thus, this seemingly excessive amount of food still serves as an important source of calories for many contemporary Hoianese. The same holds true for both the great variety of dishes and the emphasis on animal protein. The meagre daily diet of rice, fish and greens is substituted in feasts by a large variety of much needed nutrients such as animal and vegetal proteins, A, B and D vitamins (from animal flesh, internal organs and eggs, as well as vegetables such as carrots and beans (Guggenheim 1985, pp. 150, 158)), and lipids (from animal and vegetal fats). Again, bearing in mind that most Hoianese do not have access to a properly balanced diet, and are therefore slim and short,14 the festive meal allows for a partial replenishing of such deficiencies and ensures a more wholesome diet. Nutritionally speaking, it could be concluded that a feast

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is an event where unusually large amounts of calories and nutrients are consumed to compensate for chronic deficiencies. However, nutrition can hardly explain why and how people share their food and why specific ingredients are cooked into certain dishes, that is: why certain ingredients are transformed culturally in specific directions and consumed in particular modes. These are socio-cultural arrangements and can only be explained as such.

The Culinary Scenario for Hoianese Ancestor Worship Feasts Before going into the analysis of the dishes and eating practices in Xuân’s feast as meaningful artifacts and symbolic interactions, a word is due concerning the validity of my underlying assumption that the meal at this specific feast was representative of other ancestor worship feasts in Hội An. Relying on data collected in dozens of such food events, I found that ancestor worship feasts in Hội An are remarkably uniform and are executed along the lines of a clearly defined “culinary scenario” that features a rather uniform set of dishes which are consumed in universal modes. The meal would usually begin with several starters, which are often set on the table before the diners take their seats: pork cold-cuts [chả], spring rolls [ram] and a salad (trộn, literally “mix”/“toss”) composed of fresh and pickled vegetables (for example, pickled lotus stems), aromatic herbs and shrimp or pork, seasoned with peanuts, sesame, fish sauce, lime, sugar and chilli; this salad is usually served with crispy shrimp crackers [bánh tôm]. Starters were usually followed by a dish that featured a whole chicken or duck, along with the head, crown and claws. The bird might have been chopped into morsels but, in such cases, it would be rearranged and served as if it were whole. The bird would often be served with eggs, usually tiny quail eggs. Onion steamed chicken [gà hấp hành] was probably the most ubiquitous dish, but there were often birds cooked in broth or soup and, at times, roasted. The next servings probably deserve to be called “main courses”, usually several meat dishes such as boiled and/or roasted pork or beef roasted in sesame or vine leaves [bò nướng lá lốt], along with fresh aromatics [rau sống]. A very common dish would be fried noodles, often cooked with internal organs and/or string beans [đậu dây]. Stir fried string beans were also common. Occasionally mushroom dishes would also be served.

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The fourth stage would feature ra gu [or la gu], a thick stew made of beef cooked with carrots, potatoes and onion. The seasoning includes cinnamon, star-anise and Chinese “five-spice” mix. In some cases, the very same dish, with the very same seasoning, would be called cà ri bò (beef curry). This dish was always served with sliced fresh baguette that was used to wipe the gravy. Finally, sweet dishes were often, though not always, served as dessert. These could be fresh fruit, various kinds of cakes (the Vietnamese versions of French pastries such as sponge cakes, cream cakes or jelly). Sometimes, local sweetmeats such as bánh ít lá gai (sweet cakes made of sticky rice stuffed with beans and coconut shreds, wrapped in leaves and steamed) would be served too. Rice, the essential, basic ingredient of the Hoianese home-eaten meal might be served, as in the feast offered by Xuân, but its absolute and relative quantity were sharply diminished, and its importance clearly reduced. In more sophisticated social contexts plain rice was not offered at all, at times replaced by elaborate sticky rice [xoi] dishes, which were treated as side dishes and not as a staple. The festive menu at Xuân’s feast therefore very much adhered to the “culinary scenario”. Thus, her feast is an adequate representative, whose analysis can be generalized. However, it is important to note that this festive culinary scenario is not a rigid cultural matrix but rather, a Weberian “ideal type”. Ashkenazi and Jacob (2000) suggest that such culinary scenarios should be understood as “Geertzian model[s] for… which individuals may or may not follow, but which most will recognize and acknowledge as a representation of the ways things should be” (ibid., p. 67; original emphasis). This reservation is important: though Hoianese ancestor worship feasts routinely adhere to the scenario outlined above, there are innumerable possibilities and combinations that are practically applied when preparing these meals and dishes.

The Social Meanings of the Feast: Generosity and Prestige Excessive Amounts of Food The most salient gastro-social phenomenon that took place at Xuân’s ancestor worship feast was the public redistribution of accumulated wealth among extended family members. Those who were better off contributed to a meal in which the poorer members of the family and those of lower

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social status had rare access to nutritious and expensive food. The festive meal is thus a clear act of solidarity and generosity among extended family members (and occasionally, friends): every now and again, the rich share some of the capital they have accumulated, converted into nutritional currency, with their poorer relatives. However, there seem to be more than pure sentiment and generosity to this redistribution of wealth. There are several elements that cannot be explained merely by generosity: the excessive amounts of food, the insistent urging by the hosts that the guests would continue eating, the systematic refusal of the guests, especially the older ones, to eat more than just a few bites, and the public contribution to the expenses. These suggest that other social considerations also take part in defining the magnitude of the feast. The excess of food and, crucially, the excess of expensive food (especially animal protein) is a manifestation of wealth and power by those who offer the feast. There is a clear culinary statement here: “We can offer so much good food because we are rich!” This also explains why the hosts insist that their guests should eat more, often placing choice morsels in the guests’ bowls: not only hospitality is expressed but a clear demand to physically incorporate this generosity. The guests, however, are generally reluctant to consume all the food offered, and gradually turn from verbal refusal to body language in order to express their unwillingness to eat more, under the growing pressure of their hosts. Kalka (1991), studying the Israeli culinary event of “coffee and cake”, also noted this tension between the hosts’ insistence that the guests should eat and the guests’ refusal. Kalka shows how the (Israeli upper-middle class) hosts offer expensive, nutritionally rich, often “homemade” (that is, labour-intensive) cakes to their guests, many of whom are overweight and follow health-oriented diets. The hosts clearly expect their guests to give up their health and aesthetic considerations so as to accept and incorporate their tokens of hospitality. Refusal is a breach of etiquette and is taken as an offence. There is, of course, a clear difference between these cases: Kalka’s upper-middle class Israelis have practically unlimited access to food and over-eating is detrimental to their health, while many Hoianese are under-nourished to some extent, so that the expensive food probably could contribute to their health. Yet the transaction in both cases is social and not nutritional: the Israelis eat the cakes so as not to offend their hosts, while

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the Vietnamese restrain themselves in order to save their own face. When a guest only nibbles on the festive dishes, he is making a public culinary statement about himself: he is well fed, satiated, and hence, well-to-do. However, just like the Israelis, rejecting the food altogether is an offence and should also be avoided. Interestingly, the Israelis, just like the Vietnamese, make a point that eating in excess is a vulgar practice of the less affluent echelons of society (ibid., p. 120) and therefore shun such behaviour. A similar point is made by Rasmussen (1996, p. 79), who shows how, among the Tuareg, restraint in eating and the resulting slim figure is an esteemed value among men of the upper strata. All these cases seem to be local modifications of the general principle of restraint as characteristic of the higher social strata, outlined by Bourdieu in his discussion of the “habitus” (1984). In sum, we can see that, in Hội An as elsewhere, the negotiation over the festive table is, to a certain extent, one of prestige and social status. The public process of sharing the expenses further supports this claim: if offering a festive meal were a pure act of generosity by the better-off members of each family, there would not be such public calculations. The fact that the amount paid by each contributor is stated out loud derives from the fact that this is not merely a generous act, but a token in the social economy of “face” and honour (alternatively, this could be a mechanism that ensures generosity, as the demand to publicly state the amount of money donated obliges larger sums; most probably, this mechanism works both ways: allowing public demonstration of one’s generosity while demanding it). Jamieson (1995, p. 30) claims that festive culinary interactions were key elements in what he terms the “prestige economy” of the traditional Vietnamese village, one that used to determine the status hierarchy in the pre-modern rural society. Thus, the better-off periodically shared their wealth with the poor, expressing solidarity and demanding social status in return, while the poor enjoyed, every now and again, spells of better nutrition and tastier food. However, they had to pay with their own prestige: the more they ate, the lower they descended in the status hierarchy. Jamieson (ibid., p. 33) neatly summarizes the basic principal of “food and prestige” as such: “from each according to his desire for face, to each according to his willingness to lose face”. A point of reservation is, however, warranted: though many Hoianese still find it hard to make a living and are to some extent under-nourished,

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the increasing prosperity of the last few decades has resulted in improved nutrition and even in overeating among certain sectors of society. Generally speaking, people of the younger generations are taller and heavier than those of previous ones: schoolchildren and young people in Hội An are physically bigger than their parents, younger siblings are bigger than their elders, children from rich families are bigger than those from poor ones and urban children are bigger than rural children. Beyond quantitative data supplied by Tu and Le (2002) in this regard, a glance at any family album featuring pictures taken at such festive events along the years will suffice to prove this point. One outcome of this prosperity and better nutrition is the appearance of fat people (mập),15 mainly urban dwellers who live a sedentary life but maintain the cultural eating logic and practice of subsistence rice farmers (which is: “always eat as much as you can because you never know what tomorrow will bring”) and therefore tend to overeat.16 While most could hardly be described as “fat” by Western standards, and definitely not as “obese”, small bellies and plump figures can be seen nowadays in Hội An, especially amongst the businessmen and public servants of a burgeoning newly-emerging middle class. These are mostly educated men and women who are well aware of the dangers of being overweight. They are also aware of the contemporary definitions and demands of beauty (as in “slim is beautiful”), as well as of the traditional expectation to prove strength of character through restraint (physically expressed in slim figures). Therefore, they often express worries about their weight and try to limit their food intake especially during festive events in which the dishes are exceptionally rich and in excess, explaining their avoidance with health and beauty concerns. Thus, modern restrictions on food consumption, stemming from excess, are infiltrating the traditional arrangements, which are the outcome of food scarcity. However, as the custom is for the host to push and for the guest to refuse, there is no change in the actual praxis, only in the motivations.

Extraordinary Ingredients, Wasteful Cooking and French-style Dining Prosperity, wealth, power, social prestige and cultural capital were expressed not only in the amount of food, but also in the composition of the ingredients, the cooking techniques, the structure of the meal and the

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style and origins of the dishes. Here we touch directly upon the meanings of food: not only on the “how” of eating, but also the “what”. As pointed out earlier, the centrality of steamed rice is diminished in festive meals. Fish, the other key ingredient in daily Hoianese meals, is not served at festive meals (with the exception of fish sauce), which is true for every Hoianese feast in which I have participated. When I asked why there were no fish dishes in the festive meals, I was told that fish is cheap. I insisted that there were expensive kinds of fish that cost roughly the same as pork or chicken (in year 2000, about 30,000 to 60,000 dong, or US$2–3 per kg) and definitely more than duck. At that point the explanation became: “we don’t eat fish in feasts because we eat fish every day.” Indeed, at a certain feast I was told that a fish dish “would not be beautiful” [không đẹp] if served in a feast. Hence, it seems that not only the quality and price determine the prestige of a specific food item, but also the entire category to which it belongs and the frequency and contexts in which ingredients from this category are consumed. Here we encounter Durkheim’s notion that food classifications express distinctions between the sacred and the profane (Mennell et al., 1992, p. 2), as normal, daily, “not beautiful”, profane food is deemed inappropriate for special, festive, sacred meals, where only extraordinary and “beautiful” food should be served. However, if fish and rice lose their importance and even disappear entirely from festive meals because of their ordinary, profane nature, it is necessary to explain the continuous presence of fish sauce [nước mắm], both as a condiment (when marinating and cooking) and as a side dish (the fish-sauce dip). Here we realize the centrality of nước mắm as a taste agent or, more precisely, as the essential taste marker of Vietnamese food. Nước mắm remains on the festive table because without it the dishes simply would not taste right. Fish sauce is, therefore, not only a nutrient and definitely not merely a fish dish or a fish extract, it is the taste agent that defines Vietnamese cuisine and as such, must accompany a festive meal just as it defines almost all other Vietnamese meals. The flesh that substitutes fish in Hoianese festive events is that of domesticated animals: mainly pork and chicken and occasionally beef and duck. These kinds of meat replace fish in festive meals for two reasons. First, these animals belong to the sphere of “culture“ and their flesh is therefore deemed more appropriate for the celebration of events which are relegated to the “culture” apex on the nature-culture axis.17 Secondly,

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the flesh of domestic animals stands for the context of farming. The countryside is symbolically and materially celebrated and consumed in rural festive meals, as the consumers make a point about their relations with their environment.18 Festive cooking techniques are also meaningful. The Vietnamese homeeaten meal is mostly boiled or steamed. The rice is essentially steamed and the fish is often boiled with vegetables into canh, which can best be translated as “soup”.19 Protein ingredients are sometimes cooked in a pan, but water and condiments are usually added so as to make a sauce that is often served in a separate bowl as a side dish, to be poured over the rice. Home cooking seldom involves stir-frying, while deep-frying, which is very rare, is usually followed by an additional cooking in some kind of sauce (for example, cá xốt cà chua or “fish in tomato sauce”: the fish is first fried and then boiled in tomato sauce). Roasting and grilling are hardly ever used in Hoianese home cooking. Returning to Xuân’s ancestor worship, we realize that the cooking techniques were remarkably different: grilling, deep-frying and stir-frying were the prominent techniques. Rice was obviously steamed, though as noted earlier, its centrality was very much diminished. Pork was boiled, but the boiling water was not used for secondary cooking (for soup or gravy). Though two kinds of canh were served — “sticky rice with curdled pig’s blood soup” and “pork and potato curry” — both dishes were actually thick stews that did not resemble the ordinary watery canh. All in all, Xuân’s festive meal was much less diluted than a normal meal would be, and the dishes tended to be drier [khô] and thicker. Levi-Strauss (1966, p. 938) noted that “boiling [as opposed to roasting] takes place without loss of substance”. This makes boiling the most economical cooking mode: the raw ingredients are transformed by cooking without any loss while the cooking water is “charged” with nutritional value and becomes edible as soup or gravy. It is therefore easy to understand why the Vietnamese home-eaten meal is mostly boiled or steamed: this cooking method preserves the nutrients to the optimal degree and expands the volume of the meal with an easily accessible and virtually free ingredient: water. However, as the festive meal is intentionally wasteful and conspicuous, the cooking modes also serve this end. Roasting, grilling and frying, the dry cooking techniques, are chosen precisely because they are wasteful. They denote filial piety and devotion to the ancestors, as well as generosity and

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prosperity: not only are the ancestors and guests offered large amounts of expensive food, but these are cooked in a wasteful fashion that requires further expenses. The last important difference between daily and festive meals concerns the origins of the dishes and the mode of serving. Examining the menu at Xuân’s ceremony reveals that two dishes had foreign names: ca ri or “curry’”and bít tết, from French/English “beefsteak” (Krowolski and Nguyen 1997, p. 180). Furthermore, two of the other dishes featured string beans (đậu tây or “Western legumes”) and another featured potatoes (khoai tây or “Western tuber”), onion (hành tây or “Western onion”) and carrots (ca rot from French). The suffix tây, meaning “West”, denotes an ingredient that was imported from the West, usually from France. Therefore, almost half of the dishes at the feast were of declared foreign origins, denoted either by their names or by the use of ingredients marked as Western by the suffix tây. Why are foreign dishes and ingredients served and stressed in ancestor worship feasts? After all, it seems reasonable to expect that traditional or “authentic” dishes would be perceived as more appropriate for ritual events such as ancestor worship than dishes that are clearly marked as foreign. When I raised this question, many of my informants said that these dishes were not foreign and rejected my assumptions about foreign names or origins, claiming that these dishes were Vietnamese and that the suffix tây “is just a name”. Among these informants there was agreement that these are traditional dishes that have “always been served in such events”. Other informants acknowledged the foreign connection implied by the names of the dishes and ingredients, but most of them could not explain why these dishes are regularly served in festive meals. Here, I will further develop my argument concerning the meaning of dishes and eating manners as public manifestations of social and cultural capital and suggest that serving foreign food, and especially French food, stands for modernity and sophistication. Foreign dishes are served precisely in order to add a French “ambience” and style to the event. Consuming foreign food as a token of refinement and sophistication is common in different parts of the world. Thus, not only the great rulers of Rome (Strong 2002, pp. 36–39) and China (Chang 1977) indulged in expensive foreign delicacies. New York Jews, for example, used Chinese food to construct a modern, cosmopolitan identity in the post-war era, as demonstrated by Tuchman and Levine (1993). Hence, the stress on

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foreign dishes in Hoianese feasts is yet another way to elevate the status of the meal in order to gain more social prestige. In similar lines, the Hoianese ancestor worship feast is composed of stages: from “starters” to “soup”, to “main courses”, to “stew” and to “dessert”. In this, it differs remarkably form the daily meal, which is “synchronic”: all the dishes are served to the table at once, before the meal begins, and the diners sample from all of them simultaneously. Here again, I think that French eating etiquette is the inspiration for this style of feasting (though, as in the case of the “French” dishes themselves, the eating style was manipulated, changed and Vietnamized to such an extent that most French would hardly recognize such feasts as French-style meals). Indeed, when talking about the prominence of foreign dishes in Hoianese feasts and about their diachronic (that is, sequenced) nature, one of my most valuable and knowledgeable informants, a prominent chef and restaurant owner, pointed out: “Of course we eat French food in French style in such events. In fact, everything we do in public is influenced by the French….”

Symbolic Meanings: Happiness, Prosperity and Longevity While I have suggested earlier that pork and chicken dishes stand for the prominence of culture over nature and stress the fact that Vietnam is essentially a nation of farmers, pigs and chicken were attributed other qualities by my informants, which add further meanings and significance to these dishes and to the feast as a whole. When I asked Trang (the 17-year-old manageress of a neighbouring family restaurant, a friend and one of my keenest and most enthusiastic informants) why would pork and poultry be served at ancestor worship feasts and other festive meals, she went to ask her grandmother and returned with the following answers: “Pigs bring money into the house. The pig only eats leftovers but we can eat every part of the pig.20 Rich people roast entire pigs, just like in Hội An Hotel, because the pig helps them get the money”. As for chickens, Trang said that “chickens eat mostly rice. Rice in Vietnam is like money and so, when chickens eat the rice, they keep your money, like a bank….” Chickens and pigs then, in the guise of pork and chicken dishes, symbolize thrift and efficiency, along with the wish for economic success. As pointed out earlier, ancestor worship rituals are all

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about ensuring that the dead ancestors bestow good luck and good fortune on the living, notions which are expressed by these dishes. However, pigs and chickens stand for more then thrift and wealth. While helping in the preparations for another feast, Xuân (who was often hired to help in such events) instructed me to place each of the stuffed ducks she was preparing in a serving tray and carefully set quail eggs around it. When I inquired about this mode of presentation, she suggested that it was beautiful [đẹp] that way. However, I looked into my notes and found a point made by another informant regarding a festive poultry dish called “perched phoenix” [ phượng hoàng sào]: steamed chicken served whole over a bed of deep-fried, crispy yellow noodles and surrounded by tiny quail eggs. The informant pointed out that this dish “reminds us of a brooding bird” and stands for proper motherhood, “because the chicken is a good mother that takes care of her chicks and provides for their safety”. He also pointed out that chicken and ducks are usually served at feasts along with eggs or lotus seeds, “which look like eggs” (indeed, chicken is at times substituted by duck while the eggs are replaced by egg-drops, lotus seeds and, in a certain case, by litchi). However, in any guise, “bird and eggs” dishes stand for proper kinship and parenthood. Interestingly, pigs are also related in Vietnam to parenthood and, specifically, to fertility. Thus, one of the classic woodblock prints traditionally used to decorate the house for Tết (Vietnamese New Year) depicts a plump female pig nursing a litter of piglets (Huu and Cohen 1997, p. 27). It was often pointed to me that pigs multiply easily and quickly, and that female pigs are dedicated mothers. Thus, pork and poultry dishes express the value of thriftiness along with the potentially resulting prosperity, as well as the ideals of family, kinship and proper parenting or, to be precise, mothering. As such, pork and chicken dishes stand for two of the “three old men”: Phúc Lộc Thọ, which translate into “happiness”, “prosperity” and “longevity” respectively, and whose statue decorates many of the house and businesses in Hội An. These Chinese deities (San Lao in Chinese), which denote blessing, materialize as three old men, each distinguished by the specific object he holds: Phúc (happiness) is holding a young boy (or boys), as “children, and especially boys, are essential for the happiness of the family”; Lộc (wealth, prosperity or manna) holds a jade, horn, or golden wand, the symbol of authority, high rank, power and income; Thọ (longevity), looks much older

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then his companions, has a long white beard and holds a peach (đào in Vietnamese and tao in Chinese, which sounds like thọ). However, if pork and chicken dishes represent two out of the three elements of this popular and powerful triad: happiness and prosperity (Phúc and Lộc), there should also be a culinary representation of longevity [Thọ]. One of Xuân’s relatives explained that the noodle dish [bún xào đậu tây] stands for longevity, “as noodles are long”. When I asked about the inclusion of this apparently humble dish of noodles at another feast, I was given a similar explanation. Furthermore, if đào or tao could represent Thọ, their đậu (string beans) should be able to do a similar job. Thus, a noodle dish, a dish of string beans or both, stand for thọ (longevity). Specific dishes then, which are essential elements of the culinary scenario for ancestor worship feasts, stand for the very popular deities Phúc Lộc Thọ, the blessings they confer and the general propensity towards children, wealth and health, the essential building blocks of the ideal Vietnamese family.

The Urban Feast So far, I have discussed the ancestor worship event celebrated by a rural family. I now turn to describe the ceremony and feast celebrated in a different context. The family in this case was urban though not very well-to-do, as were most of the guests. The intention here is to point to similarities as well as differences between the culinary practices and dishes in these events. Furthermore, the following case offers an insight into elements of conflict and change, which were hardly visible in the previous case. Cu asked Ti to invite me to the worshipping ceremony of his late father. I wanted to get there early so as to see the preparations, and Tánh, Ti’s boyfriend, dropped me off at Cu’s house and returned to work. By then (10 a.m.), only some of the close relatives, mainly women, were busy preparing the food. Cu’s mother was squatting by a kerosene stove outside the newly-built house, frying pieces of chicken. “The food will be very tasty” she told me, “we cooked everything that he liked to eat.” Cu’s 20-year-old sister and her boyfriend were setting an altar in the front yard: “This is for the spirits that are outside, that have no family to take care of them. We must give them food so they won’t be hungry and disturb us,” she explained. On the altar they placed two bowls of uncooked rice and coarse salt with a candle stuck in each, five glasses of water, fruits, flowers, incense sticks and a set of paper goods for the dead.

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Nir Avieli Inside the house, just in front of the main doors of the house, the family’s ancestral altar was ready for the ceremony: the late father’s photograph was displayed in the centre; fresh flowers, a large bowl of fruits and candles, were added to the daily offerings of incense, tea and cigarettes. A small table was erected in front of the altar. The wooden tea-table and armchairs that are set in most Hoianese houses right in front of the ancestral altar were removed to make room for the approximately thirty guests invited for the ceremony and the feast. Dishes started coming out from the back of the house. A plate of each type of food was carefully placed on the small table set in front of the ancestral altar and on the altar erected in the front yard. By 11:15 a.m., all the dishes were ready, completely covering the surface of the altars. During the next hour, guests kept arriving, the female and the younger men turning immediately to help with the preparations. The older men arrived some thirty to twenty minutes before the appointed hour (12:00 noon) and were promptly invited to light incense. Then they took their places on the floor, in front of the altar. Cu, the deceased’s only son, started worshipping at the altar set outside: he lit the candles and three incense sticks, which he lifted toward his forehead, and bowed three times. Then he planted the incense sticks in the incense burner, cast the uncooked rice and salt in five directions (north, south, east, west and centre) and burned the paper offerings. Things done, there was a pause, as Cu watched the incense sticks attentively. As soon as they were half burned (after some twelve to fifteen minutes), he emptied the water from the cups and filled them with tea. Later he told me: “the ancestors eat for the duration of half an incense stick.” Therefore, he substituted tea for the water, as tea should be served at the end of the meal. Ti whispered in my ear: “We are waiting for Cu’s uncle. Cu’s mother’s relations with him are not so good and now everyone is upset because he is late and the food is ready.” At last the uncle came, wearing shorts and slippers, and the guests were invited to take their places on the floor. There was a careful but discreet arrangement of the seating, with the older and more senior sitting closer to the altar. Women took their places to the right of the altar (facing the door), while men sat to the left, according to the directions of âm and dương. There was a moment of hesitation when my place was to be determined; I was Cu’s guest, but ten years older than him. Moreover, I was a foreign guest. Cu suggested that I sit among the senior men but I insisted, using my camera as a pretext, upon sitting among my friends, who took their places by the “lower” end of the room, ready to help and serve the food.

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The starters were set on the floor before the guests were invited to eat, along with personal bowls, spoons, chopsticks, paper napkins, saucers of fish-sauce dip and bottles of beer and soft drinks. There was a plate with two kinds of sliced meat loafs (chả and nem) and deep-fried spring rolls [chả giò], arranged over lettuce leaves, along with a saucer of nước mắm chấm (fish-sauce dip). Then a dish of steamed chicken [gà hấp chanh] was served, chopped into finger-size morsels and accompanied by lemonsalt-pepper sauce. The morsels were carefully reassembled, head, wings and claws in their proper positions. The third dish was lotus-stem salad [gỏi sen], made of shredded, lightly-pickled lotus stems mixed with boiled shrimp, pork, peanuts, fried shallots, coriander, rau răm (polygonum herb) and onion, seasoned with lime, sugar and fish sauce, served with a large roasted rice cracker [bánh tráng nướng]. As the day was extremely hot and humid, ice-tea was served in large individual beer glasses. Bottles of the local La Rue beer, Coke and Sprite were opened and everyone was encouraged to eat and drink. I was struggling with a gummy piece of chicken, not entirely cooked according to my standards, when Cu’s mother placed another morsel in my bowl saying: “eat some chicken leg, it is better than the breast that you are eating…”. A few minutes later, large bowls of súp gà sả (lemongrass chicken soup), cooked with snow mushrooms, carrots and cabbage were brought in by Cu’s mother and sister, with the aid of some of the younger female guests. The soup was poured into the same bowls that had been used for the starters. Sliced fresh baguette [bánh mì] was served with the soup and some of the diners dipped it in their soup. The next set of dishes was coming up: roasted chicken [gà rô-ti], chopped into finger-size morsels and served over lettuce leaves, fried noodles [mì xào] topped with shredded internal organs of the chicken and large plates of fresh aromatic greens [rau sống]. The guests dipped the chicken into a spicy fish-sauce dip and gnawed the gummy meat off the bones. Finally, sponge cakes and bánh ít lá gai (sticky rice cakes stuffed with sweetened green bean paste) were served. By now, no more than twenty or twenty-five minutes since the meal had begun, Cu’s uncle, who had hardly touched the food, left, followed by some of the older guests. The floor was littered with dirty dishes, used napkins, gnawed bones and half-empty bottles. The atmosphere turned gay and tipsy at the younger end of the table, when the now more relaxed guests were eating and drinking. I whispered in Ti’s ear: “Isn’t it supposed to be a sad event?”, and Ti answered: “Why should they be sad? He died six years ago. Then, they were very sad. But now, they have already forgotten.”

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Comparing this feast to the one offered at Xuân’s house, we see many similarities: the celebration of kinship relations, the prominence of age and sex hierarchies, the great amount of food, the emphasis on domestic animal flesh, the diminished position of rice, the absence of fish and the luxurious cooking modes. However, there are some fundamental differences that might further contribute to our understanding of the agency of foodways in such instances. Some of the differences, such as the amount and kind of flesh, are only expansions of ideas discussed previously in relation to prestige and class. Others, such as the different structure of the meal and the addition of certain dishes, suggest new culinary ideas. Yet other differences, such as the composition of the guest list or the relations between those invited, point to changes taking place in contemporary Hoianese society. Firstly, attention is due to the socio-psychological component of ancestor worship feasts. An important aspect of ancestor worship seems to be the psychological support offered to the deceased’s immediate relatives by their guests, which is clearly augmented by the festive setting. On the day on which the memory of the dead is conjured up, relatives and friends gather to share the grief (chia buồn or “divide [the] sadness”). The culinary context, however, turns the event into a merry feast. Where I expected solemn and nostalgic sadness, I encountered a cheerful party that, as mentioned earlier, reminded me of a Western birthday celebration. Thus, the feelings of sorrow and loss which I have expected were substituted by the light-hearted sense of a friendly gathering, supported and enhanced by the good food and alcohol. Serving the “favourite dishes” of the dead ancestor, a very common practice in such events, is clearly intended to make use of the comforting qualities of food. When eating these dishes, the diners would remember the deceased in the comforting context of home cooking, thus re-establishing close and warm emotional bonds with the dead, as well as amongst the living. Here we see how food invokes psychological and emotional feelings that influence and define social situations. Furthermore, serving the favourite dishes of the deceased implies that he is still accessible, as his preferences are those that define the content of the meal. Indeed, đám giỗ is celebrated a day prior to the actual death anniversary, “when he [the deceased] was still alive and could still eat”. Another psychological element has to do with the seating arrangements. As described above, the older a guest is, the closer to the altar would he/she be seated. When I realized for the first time that this was the rule,

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I was deeply touched: I thought that it must be very hard to sit at the end of the table knowing that, soon enough, one would “move” to the altar. However, I gradually came to realize how comforting and, indeed, reassuring this setting is: yes, one might be dead soon, but one will still be around, at home, surrounded by friends and relatives, feasting over one’s favourite dishes. Ancestor worship feasts, thus, reassure the diners that death does not entail the secession of social life.

The Culinary Refinements of Social Competition Chicken flesh was the stressed ingredient in most of the dishes served at Cu’s ancestor worship feast, while Xuân’s family mainly used pork. Indeed, Xuân’s family slaughtered a large pig for the feast, whereas Cu’s mother slaughtered a dozen chickens. While Cu’s mother said that chicken was her late husband’s favourite, which explains the emphasis on poultry in this event, social prestige is also a factor here, as poultry is much more expensive than pork (US$1 for a kilogram of pork, compared to over US$2 per kilogram of chicken in year 2000). Pigs are larger than chickens, multiply quickly and are fed on leftovers and organic garbage, while chickens are smaller, more vulnerable and require a portion of grain beyond leftovers. Moreover, pork denotes the “countryside”: pigs call for a large sty and large amounts of food, mainly leftovers mixed with farming residues, such as rice bran [cám], chopped banana trunks or corn cobs. Pigs also produce large amounts of smelly excrements, thus requiring proper ventilation and drainage. Pigs can be found in almost every rural house around Hội An, but rarely within the city limits or in urban houses, where conditions do not permit their rearing.21 Chickens, on the other hand, are smaller, require less space and less food, are less polluting and, therefore, are routinely raised in cages in the kitchens and small yards of Hoianese town houses. Pork, then, stands for the countryside while chicken implies an urban setting. Thus, when serving chicken, it is urban dwelling and sophistication, as well as generosity and wealth that are implied, while pork hints at the countryside and is suggestive of fewer material and cultural resources. In fact, Cu’s family did offer pork, in the form of chả and nem cold cuts. However, serving such pork dishes is, yet again, an expression of affluence: these two versions of a cold meat loaf or sausage are made of

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pounded marinated pork that is boiled, steamed or left to ferment. Though basically a technique of meat preservation, serving plates laden with chả denotes, yet again, prosperity, as these meat loaves are composed almost solely of meat and fat and, therefore, highly nutritious and expensive. The chicken served at Cu’s house was chopped according to the Vietnamese custom: finger-size morsels cut perpendicular to the bones. Thus, the piles of chubby and plump morsels of chicken beautifully roasted and coloured with spices, were actually composed of much bone and only a little meat. Here, appearance is the key factor in denoting prosperity. Hence, in the social game of expenses and prestige, the prestigious but expensive meat is served in small amounts that are “augmented” through manipulative presentation. The cooking techniques as well as the names of the dishes encompass, yet again, foreign influence: gà rô-ti is “roasted chicken” (actually, fried in fat, as there are no roasting ovens in Vietnam). The soup was termed “súp” (though lemongrass, which defined its taste, is clearly local). Here again, foreign dishes and cooking methods suggest sophistication and cultural capital. The display of “foreign-ness” and prestige continues with the soft drinks: when eating at home or when eating out under normal circumstances, the only drink on offer is a cup of tea at the end of the meal. In rural feasts, such as Xuân’s, rice wine or rice alcohol [rượu gạo] would usually be offered, served in tea cups. However, at Cu’s house, ice-tea, bottled soft drinks and bottled beer accompanied the meal. The diners had individual glasses, and chunks of ice were constantly provided. Soft drinks and beer are certainly more expensive than tea and rice wine, thus further increasing the expenses. Moreover, drinking during the meal is a Western custom and the drinks were clearly of foreign origin: Coca-Cola is probably the foremost American icon, and beer [bia] was introduced to Vietnam by the French (Krowolski and Nguyen 1997, p. 177). In this case, the beer also had a French brand-name [La Rue]. In other cases, canned soft drinks and canned beer were served instead of bottled drinks. As cans are two or three times more expensive than bottles, offering canned drinks serves yet again as a token in the culinary economy of prestige (for canned drinks and prestige, see also Friedman 1990, p. 315). As we have touched on alcohol, it should be noted that in Xuân’s rural feast, a plate of betel leaves and areca nuts [trầu cau] was offered on the altar, while Cu’s family offered cigarettes. Indeed, the habit of chewing

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the intoxicating mixture of areca nuts, betel leaves and lime (sometimes mistakenly referred to as “betel nuts”) is on the decline in Vietnam, considered nowadays appropriate only for old women. Smoking cigarettes, however, is very popular, mainly among men, who are often obliged to smoke at social events even if they do not do so regularly and even if they disapprove of smoking. Here again, a foreign practice (though very popular) that is linked to the culinary realm (a substance taken orally and influencing the body and mind) gradually substitutes traditional practices and ritual arrangements. Indeed, imported cigarettes denote further refinement, generosity and wealth. It is important to note that the incorporation of Western arrangements is not complete. A good example is the fact that all the food was eaten with chopsticks from rice bowls, and that these eating utensils were not changed during the meal. Thus, the cold starters, soups, main dishes, rice and even the desserts were consumed in the same single bowl and managed with the same pair of chopsticks. Though metal forks and spoons are widely available, they are rarely offered at festive events. Concluding the comparison of an urban feast to a countryside one, we observe two main differences: urban dwellers use more expensive ingredients, thus expressing their wealth, and tend to rely more heavily than their rural counterparts on foreign culinary dishes and arrangements in order to demonstrate their cultural capital. These differences suggest for the refinement and higher status and prestige of urbanites. Refinement and status, of course, come at a price: more expenses, more savvy and harder work.

Conflict and Change Around the Table It should be clear by now that social competition is a central aspect of festive meals in Hội An and is at least as important as the functional aspects of re-activation and re-affirmation of the existing social order or the integration of the extended family. Therefore, it is only reasonable to expect that conflicts might be exposed or erupt under such circumstances. Furthermore, as foreign and modern practices (and the ideas they embed) seem to be valuable tokens in this prestige oriented social economy, modern and controversial ideas might be expressed in the culinary arena. However, as rituals tend to be conservative, the introduction of new practices might raise objection and lead to conflict.

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Yet, in the harmony-seeking Vietnamese society, where one’s “face” is one’s most important asset, competition, conflict and struggle are much subtler than what might be expected by an outsider. The public expression of emotions, especially negative ones, embarrasses all those present and might cause great loss of face to the person who expresses them; I, for one, have very rarely witnessed such instances. Stress, anger and conflict exist, of course, but such emotions are manifested in very subtle ways. Yet, subtle as they might be, they can (and do) incur great insults that are, yet again, expressed and rewarded in subtle ways.22 Cu’s uncle publicly announced that there are tensions between Cu’s nuclear family (nhà Cu or “Cu’s house”) and himself. He expressed his feelings in several ways, none of them verbal. For one, he arrived late, thus forcing a delay that embarrassed everyone and especially the hosts. This presumably intentional delay created an unwanted gap between the conclusion of cooking and the serving of the food, which might have resulted in over-cooking, cooling down or prolonged exposure of the food to heat, dust and flies. Furthermore, Cu’s uncle arrived in shorts and slippers, demonstrating scorn and contempt towards his hosts and disrespect towards his dead younger brother, as no male over fourteen would wear shorts in formal circumstances, while shoes are the proper footwear in such events (though taken off at the doorstep). The tension was further exposed by the fact that his wife did not come with him, again a clear breach of etiquette. Finally, he was the first to leave the house, hardly touching the food or talking to anyone. Though this is generally acceptable for the elderly, neither his age, nor his relation to the deceased permitted such behaviour. Moreover, I did not see him contributing to the expenses, further stressing his disengagement, which is unusual and improper for an older brother in such circumstances. Though the uncle was clearly out of line, everyone kept a poker face, pretending that nothing unusual had happened. I had to let go of this subject as my curious questions were abruptly hushed by Ti; therefore I am unable to provide detailed information as to the nature of the problem. However, it is a good example of the ways by which the Hoianese express anger publicly, using the context of a festive meal and their knowledge about proper and improper conduct so as to make a point. It is important to note that the tension was contained and managed so that emotions were expressed without losing too much face or causing too much embarrassment.

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Two of the guests who took part in the preparations would probably not have been invited to this ceremony were it conducted some ten or fifteen years ago: Ti and Cu’s sister’s boyfriend. Both belong to the modern categories of boyfriend/girlfriend. It is not that such a status did not exist ten years ago. Both sociological writings and literary works on the Vietnamese family and society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries suggest the opposite: self-induced love relations between young men and women did exist and the concept of arranged marriage, though hailed as the proper way, was rarely the only option. However, the public declaration that two young people are bonded by romantic love, as well as the public recognition and legitimization of such relations, are new. Here, 19-year-old Ti and Cu’s 20-year-old sister were allowed to publicly express their relations with their boyfriends in the very event that stresses family relations. Indeed, when the sister’s boyfriend helped to set up the worshipping altar, he behaved as if he were a son-in-law, even though he was not yet a son-in-law and might never be one. However, both guests were very much aware of their problematic position and this was demonstrated in their eagerness to help. Neither were close family members and the boyfriend is, in fact, an adult male. If they were normal guests, the boyfriend would either sit amongst the young men and be served or, if he married Cu’s sister, would take part in the ceremony as the son-in-law. Ti would probably offer to help, but her help would be minimal, as she is not a relative. However, their help was accepted and their position somehow camouflaged: they assumed the role of young relatives, ignored their relations with their partners (who held a “legitimate” position in the event), and thus avoided attention and criticism. This was further manifested by their allocated seats. The age and sex hierarchies that are prevalent at the “higher” end of the festive table tend to disintegrate at the “lower”, younger end, away from the altar, where young men and women mix into a dynamic mass that is constantly in flux. Young children add to the confusion at this end of the table, where the unmarried couples could sit together under the more flexible arrangements. In fact, there is a carnivalesque tone to the lower end of the table: excessive consumption of food, especially meat and alcohol, both associated with carnal lust, loosening of social control and possibly illegitimate sexual undertones. The legitimizing of romantic relations among young people in the context of a family-oriented feast sheds light on yet another tension

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characteristic of contemporary Hoianese society: the tension between the individual and the family. Allowing young people to choose their partners and to experience some kind of pre-marital relations, or merely accepting such behaviour by ignoring it, is new and controversial in contemporary Vietnam. In this case, we see again how individualism slowly expands into an ever-increasing number of contexts, gaining legitimacy in practice, if not in word. The context of the extended family feast seems to be very convenient for such encroachment, as the social statement is easily camouflaged by the fervent atmosphere. Here, amongst neighbours, friends and kin, the public consequences are not so threatening, both because the matter can be still considered an “internal family affair” and because the gay atmosphere induced by the lavish food and drinks blunts the sharp edges of the situation. Summing up the subject of conflict and change in ancestor worship feasts, two points are important. The first is that conflicts and processes of change are usually subtle and delicate matters. The tendency to maintain harmony and avoid disagreement and blatant struggle seems to cool down and restrain anger. However, this does not make for a conflict-free society but for the repression of such feelings and for the containment of emotions. The steam is released through narrow “cracks” in the social situation: subtle breaches of the proper conduct, such as arriving late or under-dressing, which people seem to be very competent at detecting. The second point is that precisely because of the delicate nature of such stressful situations, the arena of festive eating seems to be especially suitable for the controlled release of such tensions. The mere presence of the extended family members calls for proper and restrained conduct even when problems arise. When Cu’s uncle insulted his hosts, he did it subtly and the reaction was a poker face and the containment of the insult. Tones were maintained at normal level and everyone made believe that “everything is alright”. However, Cu’s uncle publicly made a statement that could not be ignored. All the members of the extended family, as well as neighbours and friends, could not but witness his behaviour and so the point was clearly made. The same goes for the presence of the young unwed couples. They were kept in the background and behaved accordingly, yet their presence was noticed and their relationship acknowledged and, in fact, approved in the absence of any criticism or rejection of their behaviour.

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Conclusion Ancestor worship events, despite their ceremonial, “traditional” and conservative image, have been shown in this chapter to be dynamic social instances that express a variety of ideas, tensions and contradictions. Thus, while the ritual is explicitly focused on the dead, a closer inspection discloses that ancestor worship events are no less about the living; and though social order, stability and cohesion are celebrated, endorsed and reinforced in these events, conflict and change also find expression and enactment. Specifically, ancestor worship events were shown to celebrate generosity, mutual responsibility, family cohesion and social integration but at the very same time permit and enhance fierce competition for prestige and social status. As such, ancestor worship events encompass some of the most important Vietnamese norms, values, ideals and rules of conduct, as well as several of the most pressing and salient contradictions and tensions that characterize contemporary Vietnamese society. However, different stages of these events encompass differing levels of flexibility and complexity. Thus, the formal ceremonial stage is clearly prescribed and, therefore, quite rigid and less prone to complicated, multi-faceted or contrasting ideas. The feast, however, is where such complex ideas and ideals find much of their expression. It was pointed out at the onset of the chapter that most of the efforts, time and expenses are invested in the feast and not in the formal ceremony, and now it becomes clear why: while the ritual is rigidly structured and, hence, unable to accommodate dynamic and/or contradicting ideas, the culinary sphere is flexible and dynamic and, hence, much better at encompassing and expressing the actual complexities of social life. Thus, the feast is clearly as important as the ritual. Finally, I would like to return to my preliminary remarks concerning the neglect of the culinary sphere by anthropologists and other scholars. When thinking about the reasons for such disregard, a couple of explanations come to mind. For one, food is mundane, unassuming, and clearly associated with the domestic and feminine domains. As such, it is easy to understand why most academics, who are predisposed to study “serious” and “important” issues such as religion, ritual, language or kinship, and who, up until recently, were mostly male, routinely ignored this realm, either because they thought that it was not important and/or because they had no access to it.

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Secondly, as opposed to most other material artifacts, food is a matter in constant, fast-paced change (Levi-Strauss 1966, see also Clark 2004). “Raw” is transformed into “cooked” and/or to “rotten”, and the cooked is eaten (digested and defecated) or discarded (before/after rotting) within a few hours. Food is also less prescribed and canonized than most other cultural artifacts, always featuring great personal and regional variation. Indeed, “season according to taste” is an instruction that follows even the most meticulous recipe, hinting at the elastic nature of cooking. Thus, it is the elasticity of the means that allows for the elasticity of meanings. However, these very same qualities: flexible essence, constant change and vast variation, make food an elusive artifact, quite difficult to encompass in words and texts. It therefore seems that the very qualities that led most academics to ignore the culinary sphere are precisely those that explain the relative license and ability of food to express ideas that could have hardly been expressed in any other socio-cultural arena: the mundane and feminine nature of cooking and the perishable nature of food are the qualities that define the culinary realm as non-important and non-threatening and, therefore, in less need of control. Paradoxically, it is precisely this taken-for-granted and transient nature of cooking and eating that facilitates the expression and negotiation of sensitive, complex, contradicting and even forbidden issues within the culinary sphere. Hence, the analysis of festive food does not merely widen our understanding of the rituals concerned, but is actually imperative for a comprehensive discussion of the varied, multi-faceted and, at times, conflicting meanings of rituals. This is especially the case in post-socialist countries such as Vietnam, where public practices in general and rituals specifically are carefully scrutinized and monitored, both by the neo-traditional participants and the authorities. Under such circumstances, it appears that the culinary sphere, due to its elasticity, dynamism and presumed unimportance, is most probably the least controlled public sphere and, hence, the most revealing when it comes to the social realities of such societies.

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FIGURE 4.1 Setting the Food in front of the Ancestral Altar, Hội An.

FIGURE 4.2 Coldcuts, Steamed Chicken, Lotus Stem Salad and Pork Roasted in Sesame.

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Nir Avieli FIGURE 4.3 Older Women at an Ancestral Commemoration Feast, Hội An.

NOTES 1

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Ðám giỗ literally means “gathering [for] death anniversary”. These rituals are sometimes referred to as cúng ông bà: “worship [of] grandfather [and] grandmother”. Some families worship ancestors from more than two generations back (see also Jamieson 1995, p. 22), though this is quite rare in Hội An nowadays. In fact, most Hoianese would worship only those ancestors they personally knew, while the long deceased ancestors are usually worshipped only in more general events, such as Tết (New Year Festival), if at all. In his mid-1990s ethnography of a northern Vietnamese village, Kleinen (1999, pp. 182–83) points out that the costs of death anniversary banquets would amount to US$200–400. Indeed, inflation and the rise in living standards and affluence have resulted in increasing expenses: in July and August of 2005, I participated in five ancestor worship rituals and feasts in Hội An, which were estimated by my hosts to cost some 50,000 đồng (over US$3) per guest.

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This chapter was first presented at the First Conference of the Israeli Society for the Research of East Asia in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2002, and later at the International Workshop on Religion in Contemporary Vietnam in 2005, at the Australian National University in Canberra. I am grateful to Erik Cohen, David Shulman and the participants in these conferences for their comments and suggestions. Research in Vietnam was sponsored by the Scheine Institute and the Truman Institute in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The article was written while on a post-doctoral fellowship in the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. A salient example of the change that takes place in such rites is that of religious circumcision, in which the person undergoing the ceremony is physically changed forever. This physical change is a marker of the social change (for example, belonging to the Jewish/Moslem faith) that is the raison d’être of the event. Only the fifty-ninth/sixtieth birthday was celebrated, marking the completion of an entire calendar cycle, entitling exemption from tax and corvee labour and membership in the village council and, as one of my informants pointed out, would be “the time from when you get lots of respect but no one would listen to you anymore”. This set of paper goods is intended for the use of the dead in heaven and usually includes money (U.S. dollars, Vietnamese imperial bills and traditional coins printed on paper, but never contemporary money with the icon of Hồ Chí Minh), as well as gold and silver, clothes and fabrics, and green, yellow and red sheets printed with figures or faces that are supposed to substitute for the dead in the event that they should serve a punishment in hell. More elaborate sets include full traditional outfits, including boots and umbrellas, and even models of houses, cars and other objects of consumption. An informant pointed out that paper motorbikes are offered only to those who could drive when they were alive, though bicycles are never offered because “it is too hard to cycle in the sky”. All of these paper objects are intended for the daily needs of the dead and are burned during the ceremony so that “they will go up to heaven”. Interestingly, the only stalls in the market that leave some of their merchandize unlocked are those selling such paper goods, as “the ancestors will be very angry if you sent them stolen goods”. Áo dài or “long dress” is the Vietnamese traditional costume. It consists of a long, tight-fitting tunic with a high Chinese collar and long sleeves, slits at the sides up to the hip, and loose trousers. The contemporary versions of Áo dài are of considerable sociological interest as they represent regional variations, as well as age and gender arrangements (men rarely wear them nowadays and usually dress in Western-style suits). It should be noted that contemporary áo dài are often very transparent, to the point where the underwear is clearly visible.

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Nir Avieli Thus, a seemingly modest outfit is in fact very daring and sexy, reflecting some of the tensions with which contemporary Vietnamese women live. Once, when I asked an informant who just finished worshipping: “what exactly did you say right now?”, an argument evolved, as one of those present claimed that ancestors and gods know exactly who you are and do not need information such as a full name or address, while the other informant insisted that either full name or address is necessary. The Jewish contribution to the debate lies in the fact that the name of the subject of the ritual and his mother are minimal requirements for “divine coordinates”. Near our guest house there was a little pond where South Vietnamese Army soldiers executed three Việt Cộng (VC) fighters during the war. The family of an ex-southern officer, who lives by the pond, was instructed by the local authorities to take care of the altar and worship the spirits of the dead VC. The ex-officer told me that if he did not worship these spirits, they might haunt his family and, thus, he willingly complied. What I found most striking was the explicit and open manner in which the money was collected. Being used to “taking care of the bill” in more discreet ways back home, I felt embarrassed at first upon witnessing these blunt declarations and their careful documentation. I return to this issue later in the chapter. As is generally the case, excessive food is never thrown away. Uneaten food is kept for later use while partly eaten leftovers are fed to pigs and other household animals. In fact, I was told that the president of Hội An’s People’s Committee (the mayor) is so honest and incorrupt that he and his children are “very thin, because they don’t have enough money to buy food”. In another case, a teenage girl from a very poor family, who reported to me daily about her family eating patterns, was extremely slim. Upon inquiry, I was told that her family is too poor to buy enough food, a fact that was confirmed by reports concerning the eating patterns of her family. The median caloric consumption in Vietnam in 2000 was 1931 kcal/person/day, about 93.2 per cent of the amount recommended by the Vietnamese Institute of Nutrition and roughly 85 per cent of the international standard, with urbanites consuming 1,859 kcal and rural dwellers 1,954 kcal (Le, et al. 2002, p. 70). While the median caloric consumption have not changed much since the late eighties, the nutritional value of the diet has clearly improved with the protein ratio reaching recommended levels and the fat ratio increasing substantially (Tu and Le 2002). However, while malnutrition among children has substantially diminished during the last two decades, over 30 per cent of Vietnamese children below the age of five were underweight (ibid.). Though the term “mập” is used today to denote an overweight person, it also means “corpulent”, “portly” and even “strongly built” (for example, a

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friend looked at Arnold Schwarzenegger’s photograph and said that he was “mập”). The double meaning stems from the fact that up until a few decades ago, there were no “fat” (as in “overweight”) people in Vietnam. Those who were able to put on extra weight could eat more because of their superior position as “strong men” or “big men” in Sahlins’ (1982) terms. Indeed, the Vietnamese word for “slim” or “thin”: ốm, also means “sick”, undoubtedly not by coincidence. In a certain occasion, a friend who has not seen me for a while pointed to my belly and said “I see that your health has improved.” Thus, in a society that lives on the brink of hunger, an overweight person is “strong” and/or “healthy”, while a thin one is “sick”. According to Tu and Le (2002), some 17 per cent of the Vietnamese consumed in year 1990 more than 2,400 kcal per day, an amount which might lead to overweight, and their numbers must have risen substantially within the last prosperous fifteen years. This is probably the reason why the flesh of wild “jungle animals” [thịt rừng] such as snakes, lizards and boars, or semi-human animals (ambivalent or intercategorial in Mary Douglas’ terms), such as dogs or cats, is never served at Hoianese feasts despite its high price and esteem. In an ancestor worship feast that took place in Ðien Ban (a neighbouring rural district) the menu was almost identical, except for an extra dish of silkworms steamed with pineapple [tằm hấp trái thơm]. The host encouraged me to have some and proudly explained that Ðien Ban is famous for the production of silk. Here, the silkworms are central for the local farming context and, therefore, are added to the festive menu. Obviously, eating silkworms can be explained in terms of poverty and protein deficiency, but if this were the case, why would my host make a point about silk production? In a certain meal, my host boiled a bunch of “water morning glory” leaves [rau muống] for a couple of minutes, drained them and placed them in a plate. Then she poured the boiling greenish water into a bowl, squeezed some lemon juice into it and told me: “Take the soup [canh] and the vegetables on the table.” Indeed, when a pig is slaughtered, there is no residue at all, as every single organ is useful: the flesh, fat, bones and internal organs are eaten, including the face, ears and reproductive organs. The skin is either cooked or used for leather. Even the bristles are shaven off the skin and used for making brushes. In fact, the only matter that is discarded is the semi-digested food and excrement washed out of the pig’s entrails. This is probably the reason for the popularity of “piggy banks”, in Vietnam as elsewhere. A friend from Hanoi told me that when she was a child, in the early seventies, her parents reared pigs in the small porch of their third-floor city apartment. It seems that in extreme situations, pigs might be reared within urban contexts.

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Nir Avieli I have rarely witnessed violent instances in Hội An. This does not mean that there is no violence, but it is usually restrained, restricted and well hidden from the public eye. Thus I was often told about incidents of domestic violence, especially concerning the beating of wives, but this could hardly be seen or heard. Neighbours usually turn a deaf ear, and the police refuse to interfere in such matters. In the rare cases in which violence does break out in public, it is extreme in nature. It seems that when the inhibiting mechanisms collapse, hell breaks loose and people really try to kill each other. There is, however, a third option for the expression of violence, modified by cultural arrangements and embedded in the culinary setting of alcohol consumption. When men get drunk, they seem to have a license for public expression of emotions and especially of violence. However, as this always involves high levels of intoxication, the ability to cause real harm is limited and the social criticism involved is restricted as “they were drunk”. In the West, alcohol is used similarly to “license” sexual promiscuity and to a lesser extent, emotional exposure or violence.

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5 Unjust-Death Deification and Burnt Offering: Towards an Integrative View of Popular Religion in Contemporary Southern Vietnam Ðỗ Thiện

There has been no shortage of attempts to overview religions in southern Vietnam.1 Obtaining a coherent picture however, is another story. In what follows, taking a path deviating somewhat from the usual classifying routes,2 I will examine instead two apparently unconnected features in “folk religion” [tín ngưỡng dân gian] as points of departure. They are among the more conspicuous if not striking ones by their non-rational nature, namely, the deification of those who met with untimely, violent, or unjust death [chết oan], and the burning of votive objects as offerings in commemorative rituals [đốt vàng mã]. As practices, they appear as illogical as can be, perhaps a reason why they readily fall into the category of “superstition”. However, they are not totally irrational, for the probable logic running through each also brings together several inter-related themes besides the collective attention given to mortality and metempsychosis. In focussing on these practices as nodal points in

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a web of connections, my exploration of an integrative view of southern popular religion has by no means led to a final conclusion, but I hope it is cogent enough at this stage to stimulate further discussion.

Unjust Death It would not be saying much to state that the family is the foundation of Vietnamese society, with the cult of ancestors being the prevalent ritual model. It is not accurate, however, to assert that ancestral worship is the overarching form of Vietnamese religious practice. As Cadière points out, the ancestors are but one part of a vast army of spirits, and their cult is only one varied aspect of Vietnamese religion. The great heroes, or those who have in their life gained merit from eminent service to the kingdom, or to the local community, are honoured among the supernatural protectors by the king’s decree or simply by the decision of village notables. These spirits enjoy regular offerings, and festive celebrations are organized around their significant dates (Cadière 1958, pp. 6–23). There are, however, a host of others whom Cadière terms the “deserted or forsaken souls”. They include spirits of the beggars found dead by the road side; of young women who died unmarried; of the old auntie spinster who passed away childless; of stillborn infants; of accident or crime victims; of fallen soldiers; even of those who perished in a riot. Sometimes these forsaken souls join forces, forming an army of demonic spirits to devastate a whole countryside, and people can hear them fly in hordes through the air, calling out to each other, designating their victims.3 On top of this, in the South, however, there seems to be a greater number of spirits and deities with a biography marked by unjust death, and installed as tutelary spirits in village communal halls đình, or as goddesses in many well-attended temples. The cases of Thiên Hộ Dương and Đốc Binh Kiều of Đồng Tháp province, and Nguyễn Trung Trực of Rạch Giá are examples of deification by popular investiture [dân phong], not by royal decrees. Such investitures are mainly based on the spirits’ supernatural power issued from their violent deaths. Nguyễn Trung Trực, who was executed in 1868 for fighting the French, is a prominent example. Since recent time, his portrait graces the front altars of many đình in the Mekong Delta.4 As for goddesses’ temples in the South, many also spawn hagiographies that claim a violent death suffered by these personages (Taylor 2004a, p. 201).

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The North, in fact, sets a precedent with many tutelary spirits installed without royal certificate and marked by an untimely or unjust death. Nguyễn Văn Huyên mentions briefly:5 He [the tutelary spirit] is sometimes a divinity of popular belief, a beheaded genie [thần cụt đầu], a child prodigy [thần trẻ con], a thief [thần ăn cắp], etc. who revealed themselves by miracle after their death which was violent and which happened at a sacred hour.

Toan Ánh lists more specific examples:6 Lộng Khê village, Phụ Dực district, Thái Bình province, worships the spirit of a thief. Đông Thôn village, Hoàn Long district, Hà Đông (Hà Sơn Bình) province, worships a beggar spirit. Both Cổ Nhuế village in Hà Đông (Hanoi), and Đông Vệ village of Vĩnh Tường prefecture, Vĩnh Yên (Vĩnh Phú) province, worship the spirit who handles excrement. Khắc Niệm Thượng village, Võ Giàng district, Bắc Ninh (Hà Bắc) province worships a decapitated spirit. Phúc Vạn village in Hưng Yên has a shrine at the foot of a banyan tree at the village edge venerating a black mare.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the villagers in charge of their investiture must have an appetite for black humour. At any rate, their focus on grim morbidity is not necessarily morbid, especially when viewed as an emphasis on reverence. Stories associating violent death with powerful female deities such as the Trưng sisters and Lady Liễu Hạnh are also known to exist though not well circulated, and perhaps only retold in whispers. A description of the altar display at the Two Trưng Sisters’ northern temple prompted Tạ Chí Đại Trường to suggest that the locals believe the Trưng sisters, rather than by self-drowning, died a bloody death in battle (Tạ Chí Đại Trường 1989, p. 73). A startling note in Father di St. Thecla’s seventeenth-century account mentioning the legend of the goddess Liễu Hạnh identifies her as a murdered courtesan in a hitherto unknown narrative, at variance with all others (Dror 2002). Unjust death evinces greater respect from practitioners through their imputation of greater efficacy [linh] to it. The Nguyễn dynasty’s historical record Đại Nam Nhất Thống Chí has a story of Phi Vận Nguyên Phục, a general under Lê Thánh Tông (1460–97) in a campaign against Champa. He was executed for delaying supplies from the Tư Dung estuary (near Huế). Local villagers around Tư Dung area believed he died an unjust death [chết oan]. They later erected a temple to honour

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his spirit. Emigrés from here must have brought with them the sacrificeoffering rituals to the South, and were observed by Trịnh Hoài Đức in the nineteenth century:7 In Tân Long region, Tân Long prefecture [now Biên Hòa], originally built south of the provincial office, [the General Phi Vận temple] devoted to the Count Tòng Giang Văn Trung,8 is supernaturally responsive. Each year there are two ceremonies… using pigs and goats for offerings, and on the day cult objects are solemnly set up, such as bottles, bowls and food trays, while the pig is left alive. Early at dawn near the start of rituals, someone is ordered to carry the pig on his back running after the offering tray[?], making the pig squeal as if begging for its life. As the tutelary spirit is known to have died under a sharp blade, killing the pig may upset Him, therefore people could not bring themselves to slaughter it [for sacrifice].

Similarly sacrificed pigs at the đình festival honouring Võ Tánh are not to be offered roasted, so as to show respect for the circumstance of the general’s actual death in a burning fort (Huỳnh Ngọc Trảng and Trương Ngọc Tường 1999, p. 174). Failure to show respect may have dire consequences. Not many years ago, the passers-by who forgot to doff their hats in front of the temple of the Khmer-born General Nguyễn Văn Tồn in Trà Ôn, Cần Thơ province, would be found falling down dead on the spot. Many others showing disrespect to the Lady of the Realm in Châu Đốc would also meet with a violent end as her punishment. Thus violence prefigures in popular tales and hagiographies ostensibly as an aid for authenticating supernatural potency, although it is often glossed over as a hidden ingredient of deification. There are inter-connecting themes in popular religion worth exploring here.

Deification, Identity and Continuity Religion is also, in Georges Bataille’s definition, what people do to regain lost intimacy — that oceanic experience of being at one with the world.9 If this is the case, then violence in death marks a tacit recognition of extremely negated intimacy, triggering the most acute anxiety of alienation. And it begs the question as to what precisely accounts for the magnified power and efficacy. A common feature gives us the clue: it is the nature of the location where the untimely death occurs. It covers the spatial margin of outlaying roads, the frontier or the war front, and temporal borderline of premarital age, infancy, pubescence — on the whole, that desolate liminal

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area which demarcates “purity and danger” in Mary Douglas’ symbology (Douglas 1969). Such liminality, being a critical quality, is associated with powerful forces because, as I have discussed elsewhere, a liminal entity is capable of mediating distinct realms, hence the attribution of superior linh or responsiveness as a way of articulating the dynamics of social relations (Do 2003; Sangren 1987). With liminality playing a major role in popular discourse, honouring those who suffered a violent death thus raises the issue of relating violence to identity. In effect, the deification of unjust deaths plays an intensifying part in the construction of identity for individuals and communities.10 The meaning of identity assembled from the ruins of death needs to be propped up by alterity, or otherness — perhaps this explains partly why the utter strangeness of death is naturalized by adopting Chinese representations of the other-world, Hell with Ten Palaces in the Yin realm, and the Buddhist paradisiacal Pure Land. In these visions, a full cooperation or approval of the nether world is conditional to our happy existence in this Yang world of the living.11 Violent death, as dramatic transgressing of mundane limitations, represents an excessive impulse that signifies a grand return to the source that gives life its sustenance. The gift of life given by the spirits and ancestors, however, cannot be fully repaid. Is this not the reason why the idiom of “perpetual fire and incense” — to show eternal gratitude — is used repeatedly, right from the oldest of extant texts such as fourteenth-century Việt Điện U Linh Tập? That depth of gratitude must play a major role in creating a notion of “natural justice” premised on the guilty recognition that one is born into an unfair world, already owing favours to the spirits and other predecessors (Godelier 1999, pp. 192–98). Separating donors from receivers, this recognition is also a means to accelerate the vertical ordering of groups. This aspect of social hierarchy is re-amplified in rituals of commemoration such as feasting and sacrificial offering. It manifests through spatial division such as the levels of sitting mats in most northern village communal houses. And while the dead are recruited in translating identity, status or kinship order, the survivor’s inability to fully repay ancestral gifts appeals to continuity and perpetuity. Thus, mortgaged with supernatural efficacy, identity and continuity draw dividends as moral validation, trust and natural justice for all. Together they bring on the notions of traditional law, a sense of duty and a morality of obligation at one fell swoop.

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From here, it would not be difficult to imagine that the above sense of indebtedness, set against the backdrop of recognition that one is born already owing favours to spirits and other living personages alike, triggers off cycles of prestation and counter-prestation. As gift circulation objectifies daily relations, it activates social bonding as well as differentiation among the living. Religious prestation belongs, then, to the foundational cluster of practices that defines society, with the logic of exchange itself spinning the web of long- and short-term social relations in all human activities.12 We shall revisit this theme in later discussion. But why should violence weigh more heavily on southern Vietnamese minds compared to elsewhere? Could it be that such preoccupation hints at the sense of insecurity migrants experienced when coming into contact with numerous other ethnic groups in the South, and not least from the instability caused by frequent armed conflicts?

Migration, Community-building, and Modes of Exchange Due to migration, the responsible members of the lineage being out of contact, as Philip Taylor observes, the dead and the living alike are disembedded from lineage relations of mutual care, and hence “vertical” lineage communities of the living and dead are less widespread in the south (Taylor 2004a, p. 31). Recognizing kinship connection, when it was at all possible, required some ingenuity from early settlers. As Sơn Nam notes, for Vietnamese migrants in Rạch Giá, with genealogical records deliberately destroyed if not hidden for fear of persecution by warring sides, their means of reconnection was the special dishes prepared for the altar and feast at each death anniversary [đám giỗ]. Brought south from their Central Vietnam origins, these family-specific dishes helped relatives to recognize each other on such open-house occasions (Sơn Nam 1970, p. 179). While the souls of those who have had an untimely, or violent, unjust death [oan hồn] are classed together with the lonely or homeless ghosts [cô hồn], the elevation of such souls to the position of tutelary spirits [thần] has different implications. It should be remembered that chết oan is about death in strange places (marginal areas, the frontier), away from family and home — both common realities in this migratory region. The propitiation of homeless souls is therefore mainly about the cultural hunger for and availability of their souls to the living for ritual relations of mutual care.13 With the communal veneration of the sufferers of violent death, however, deification brings to rituals the extra-lineage mobilization for solidarity.

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Unjust death deification differs in that it evokes southern marginality as a rally point. The above mentioned case of honouring Nguyễn Trung Trực highlights a collective yearning, or nostalgia for an idealized dynastic or imperial order: when loyal peasant-background heroes sacrificed their lives in a defiant struggle to resist the French invaders, a task where the central court was expected to lead, but failed. The affirmation of a heroic marginal South thus refers to an initiative in default of benediction or support from another vertical lineage, one of which the head of state was in charge, and what has been called the heavenly mandate. Moreover, it signals an alternative vision based on a degree of economic self-sufficiency of the remote South, with a preference for minimal, if not absence, of court interference. Local networking and distance from the capital also fostered competition between orthodox state culture and popular upper-central coastal values, with the elite values and taste in dominance but yielding markedly to popular and historical pressures. In addition, the response from Vietnamese settlers may have sprung from a strong desire to localize peacefully by niftily adopting and absorbing the profuse and diverse traits of other ethnic cultures. The Chinese émigrés in particular had been prominent in the settlement together and on equal basis with Vietnamese since the late seventeenth century, besides the Malays, Cambodians and Cham (Tạ Chí Đại Trường 1996, p. 63). Nevertheless, Vietnamese had reasons to feel isolated in the midst of other ethnic groups. From the seventeenth century, the southern region had not known long intervals of peace. The Trịnh and Nguyễn clans — both related to the Lê royalty by marriage — became power groups akin to the Japanese shogunates, and fought each other. Ensuing civil wars in addition to attacks from Cambodia and Thailand, and local armed uprisings caused widespread trauma that continued to scar the region. The Nguyễn court policy of placing Vietnamese settlements in the middle of the densely populated Khmer areas, followed by forced assimilation in the early nineteenth century, did not help (Brocheux 1995; Choi 2004). Further, as new comers, the Vietnamese migrants were far from a homogeneous group. Their demographic covered a plurality of backgrounds, ranging from soldiers, convicts to landless farmers, and enterprising gentry, mostly poor, under a plethora of difficult circumstances. Driven by landlessness, crop failure, heavy tax, or as pardoned but destitute convicts, they went in search of a better life.14 As Huỳnh Ngọc Trảng notes:15

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Đỗ Thiện Comprised of the lower social echelons in areas around Huế and Quảng Nam, the new southern settlers showed preference for substance over form, with their love for dancing and singing occasioned all year round, and for a scholarly discourse that runs close to the vernacular, hence able to reach a wide audience since the early 20th century.

This could account, on the one hand, for the proliferation of styles and forms of religious buildings and edifices, especially temples that are other than the đình, or village communal houses. It appears that the uniformityoriented đình is less capable of catering for the diversity of migrants’ background. I shall return to this point later. On the other hand, due to socio-ethnic diversity, the concern about identity also fostered a new form of solidarity for settlers. In brief, unjust death deification traces the logic of gift exchange in its abiding structure, highlights geo-political distance from the centre, and reflects the southern multi-ethnic ambience in its turbulent history. To recapitulate, the collective debt born towards the spirits brings on a sense of traditional law, duty and a morality of obligation. Thus, local identity and continuity constructed with the help of the spirits also serve as alternative means for “writing” history and constructing reality.16 However, as already mentioned, unjust and untimely death signals a transgressing of the normally acceptable, liable to evoke powerful pathos. Without going into a complex of psychological and phenomenological implications, we can draw further observation for social relations: if unjust death engenders respect and gratitude, setting off a sense of reciprocation and of continuity, then, the way gifts are returned becomes a matter of interest. As well known, the return gift tends to exceed the received gift in value, triggering potlatch competition among donors, as Mauss observes. The excessive nature of potlatch is found in the “extravagant” practice of burning offerings, which I shall consider next.

Burnt Offerings With Vietnamese, Cadière observes, the religious act “is almost always an offering”. He finds that khấn [to pray] means to engage oneself by a vow with the deities and spirits, to offer something as token of gratitude for fulfilling one’s wish. In this case, he suggests the word khấn seems identical ceremonially to cúng, or making offering to the dead (Cadière 1958, p. 10). In his early twentieth-century book Việt Nam Phong Tục

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[Vietnamese Customs], Phan Kế Bính (1992, p. 49) maintains that the custom of burning effigies and paper money is mostly related to funerary practices. This practice could actually go to the extent of fanciful makebelieve, as Toan Ánh decribes:17 When the gold [paper] is about to burn up, a bowl of alcohol is poured over each heap. It is believed that only then the ancestors can receive the money, as the votive money can convert into useable currency in the other world. Then two lengths of sugar cane bought during the year to offer during the Tết days are warmed over the dying flame. These two canes are, according to the belief, for the old departed. They will use them as a pole to carry the [baskets of] gold and to defend themselves from Hell’s robbers.

Southern burning practice at the turn of the last century does not seem to differ much from that of the North. Writing in the early twentieth century, Lê Văn Phát mentions similar uses of paper votive money in the South.18 By the 1930s, such pattern of practice came up against stiff condemnation by those who were intent on reforming traditions and modernizing culture. Among these were the Buddhist reformists.

Modernity, Reform and Potlatch In editorial essays against superstition in the Buddhist magazine Đuốc Tuệ (Wisdom Torch) in 1937, Venerable Thích Trí Hải, one of the leading reformers in the North, argues that the use of paper votive objects is an insult to intelligence. He cites reasons such as: a) haphazard sizes of paper hats, varying from that of a bowl for the poor to a large drum for the rich, do not fit the normal human head, putatively belonging to the spirit; b) offerings made to the Bodhisattvas, who are known to have renounced worldly attachment, are like alms from the poor given to the rich. Apart from being anti-rational, it is a form of bribing, offensive to the virtuous character the spirits represent. Furthermore, no Buddhist scripture condones the use of votive objects and, he asserts, several condemn it.19 A producer of paper objects wrote in to counter-argue that a) the tradition of burning votive objects is a well established ancient one; b) all monks and nuns have been using them, and since the Lý and Trần dynasties, they have never been prohibited; and c) it helps keep the poor artisans in employment, spreading the wealth in selling the products to the rich. To these claims, Thái Hòa, a responder, repeats the scriptural

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sanctions and reassures the craft people there are other ways of earning a good income from paper, such as manufacturing paper itself. With seventy per cent of materials required for votive objects being imported, and the demand for paper high, there should be no fear of economic loss (Thái Hòa 1938, pp. 7–8). Chief among the superstitious targets, besides the nonsensical belief and attitude towards the spirit world, was the wastage of resources such as paper, and money that could be used for many other modern-day practical needs (Thái Hòa 1938; Vũ Tư Tiệp 1938). The Buddhist reformers’ critique of burnt offerings with a utilitarian thrust is remarkable in its exhortation to rigorous demystification. No less remarkable is our critics’ silence on the symbolic significance behind the wastage they harshly condemn. Perhaps carried away with scientific enthusiasm, they seem to overlook the fact that all burning is done in public, indicating that any perceived extravagance would signal a no-expense-spared attitude. Such bold ostentation must be motivated by a serious concern for status that the sacrificer wishes to impress on others in this collective contest, a contest which otherwise remains unspoken and relentless. What can better express such a status contest than a potlatch-type competition? But then, how does status contestation link religion to social relations outside the ritual context?

Status, Kin-ordered Exchange and Familial Piety Sacrifice made by the dead for the community and offerings made to the dead in the form of sacrificial rituals articulate the circulation of gifts between the living and the dead. Gift exchange means reciprocation. Particularly in the negotiation with spirits, the expected supernatural counter-gift is multilayered, responding to a range of needs in an ordered world favourable to one’s desire. This is fairly obvious. What often escapes our notice is that the obligation to reciprocate, by activating day-by-day exchanges, objectifies social bonding as well as differentiation among the living. If it caters for the urge to create bonding and bolster status, it also gives us cause to look closer at the vagaries of obligatory reciprocation. From this vantage, it pays to plumb some depth in our perspective by examining one characteristic outcome. It concerns the mode of obligatory reciprocation at the level of the immediate family. Practically, filial piety in Vietnam enforces repayment of parental favour, often as soon as the child is capable of any assistance to parents.20 A seven-year-old can therefore be expected to baby-sit a younger sibling, and older children to contribute

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to the family’s income, or to be the main earners if possible. One can never do enough to look after one’s parents. Out of this obligated norm, however, women fare the worst. Hélène Cixous may be right in saying that the law of return operates under the terms of a gendered unconscious (Cixous and Clement 1986). Hardly ever integrated into their husband’s family, under-rewarded for their service, and rarely receiving a fair share of inheritance, only through the bond with their sons could Vietnamese women expect to be cared for in their old age. This gender structure has its religious consequence. Towards mid-life, when relatively freed from the burden of domestic work, women seek to establish their own emotional and social base with other women, outside the home domain.21 This feminist aspect helps explain the proliferation of edifices and monastics in the south, while the local nature of the women’s realm must have ensured diversification of architectural form and style. No less importantly, generic Buddhist temples (đền chùa) house other sorts of luxury, such as the concern surrounding ecstatic trance noted in elite writings.22 Here the southern cult of the goddesses brings to women a sense of continuity that extends beyond the confines of male lineages. Trance practices conform to a gender structure where possession by spirits on the whole is regarded as women’s convivial business. No wonder it attracts scorn from male elites who align with rationalist Confucian order. And perhaps this is where we could appreciate the thrust of Cixous’ arguments for a feminine economy with its emphasis not on profit, but on continued circulation of giving to promote the establishing of relationships. It probably tends to defer profit indefinitely, as Alan Schrift points out, in exchange for the continued circulation of giving (Shrift 1997, p. 12).

Gender, Temples and Surplus It is worth noting that while villagers set up the communal house (đình) as a major framework on which to stamp their collective identity, this institution struggled to foster comprehensive solidarity. There are at least two inherent causes: Firstly, the southern đình edifice was adopted from the North-Central model which was still in its formative stage, not as established as those in the Red River Delta (Tạ Chí Đại Trường 1996, p. 62). Its transient status as such did not underwrite all-inclusive stability for a population with diverse orientations, despite its secular multi-functionality. Secondly, through land ownership policy, the Nguyễn court kept a Big-Brother surveillance on new settlement villages. It meant that things to do with communal houses

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must go “by the book”, and not by local adaptation. That is why the altars for local deities such as mountain spirit [Sơn Vương] or goddesses [Chúa Ngọc, Chúa Tiên, Chúa Xứ…] at the đình are often relegated to outer shrines [miếu] as a grudging concession by the orthodoxy, rather than a genuine devolution (Huỳnh Ngọc Trảng and Trương Ngọc Tường 1999, p. 117). The state rewarded the collaborating elite by turning them into big landlords, especially in the establishment of soldier settlements since the 1850s (Sơn Nam 1973, pp. 105–08).23 However, because of their assorted and not so highly educated backgrounds, that elite was not bound to centrist Confucian formulas and, like the rest of migrants, would have felt free to innovate and hybridize. With the village đình not managing to be the sole rallying point for communities, Buddhist and other temples became a site of mainstream southern culture and of inventive experimentation. Perhaps only outside the space of the đình, in contrast to the centrist uniformity it offered, could southern society exercise truly pluralist adaptations. The southern situation highlights a distinctive character of edifices not sponsored by the court, in that it exhibits both the modes emphasized by the two types of economy. If the male-dominated đình is primarily about production: agricultural cycle, male prowess… then the chùa sets store in the reproduction of dependent connections. And both these systems feature in consumption of surplus, extravagantly and even wastefully. However, away from the symbol of patrifocal values and monarchic centricity at the village communal houses, generic chùa temples are where the southern economy reveals its deep structure, by sheer number, by quantity of support and by gendered poetics of space. This is a model that has not been sufficiently recognized by conventional wisdom, where the driving motivation is not rational parsimonious production, but the “glorious” non-productive consumption of surplus. A commonly held notion, as echoed by Trần Hồng Liên in a recent official compilation, is that in the nineteenth century, gifts to the two major Buddhist temples, Giác Lâm and Giác Viên, to the west-northwest of Saigon, accounted for the peasants having secured their material base, such that they could then turn to their spiritual needs catered for by the temples. The result was an evident lot of riches being accumulated by temples, even though this official view cannot explain why high contributions continued when annual crops often suffered low yield (Trần Hồng Liên 1998, pp. 317–76). The author cites an example of popular southern alternate

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courting chant between young males and females which attests to the differential wealth: Má ôi con muốn lấy ông thầy chùa Chuối xôi, bông bánh bốn mùa ấm thân.24 [O Mama I want to marry a monk, All-year-round bananas, sticky rice, flowers, and cakes will stand me in good stead.]

Voluntary work contributed by lay members also featured prominently in temple life right from the start of construction as most temple histories show. More than that, it can inject some competitiveness in the amount of time and labour given, besides material offerings to the temples. In other words, it has the mark of potlatch, a sign of “status economy”. It continues to be true today.25 However, there must be extra incentive to donate towards building more temples, apart from zealous devotion. Considering the irregularity of crop yields early in the 1900s which Trần Hồng Liên notes,26 and if the above maidenly envy for temple riches is any indication, the explanation of devotion is flawed without the dynamics of potlatch or competitive gifting factored into the equation.27

Ritual Expenditure, Ostentation and General Economy To explore this urge to donate excessively and to spend in general a large proportion of household income on life-cycle ceremonies and feasts, is to prod the silence of rational economic theorists. A recent three-year study of several northern and southern Vietnamese villages shows that an extremely high portion of household expenditure, from thirty to sixty per cent, goes to banqueting and other expenses related to life-cycle rituals (births, weddings, funerals, and death anniversaries). Remarkably, but not surprising, this truly extravagant consumption level is also found to increase in direct proportion to the extent of the family’s network.28 Whether sanctioned by the state or not, these practices occupy a great part of the ritual sector, intrinsic to the cult of spirits. Here, with no enlightening explanation by economists forthcoming, we must also take leave of Mauss’ ideas, which do not seem to offer the widest implication possible of the destruction of surplus. We must cast our view beyond reciprocation and tightly balanced accounts. And we can benefit from the thoughts of Georges Bataille, who maintains that the non-productive consumption of surplus holds the clue to the most general working of societies. Surplus

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is squandered either gloriously in potlatch, or catastrophically in warfare (Bataille 1991). In ritual context, this “squandering”, which drives status competition, is what energizes social structure and stimulates reproduction. With such a theoretical orientation, Mayfair Yang has argued that ritual consumption is the cultural manifestation of resistance to and hybridization of global capitalism, which has been incorrectly thought to penetrate and irreversibly transform local cultures in the format of Western economic development (Yang 2000).29 If the ritual economy grows in full force with the market economy in southern China, as Yang has found, it does so no less strongly in Vietnam. Thus a gigantic 2002 New Year cake weighing 1,800 kilogram to offer the national patriarchs, the Hùng kings, engaged grassroots and official participation.30 Other villages have similar displays such as giant firecrackers that were each consecrated to respective tutelary deities in a huge explosion.31 It is fairly likely that many elaborate celebrations are motivated by local interest in attracting tourists. Yet it is easy to lose sight of the crucial space occupied by the ritual life, now that the pressure of war has been removed. It behoves us to modify, if not abandon, functionalist schema in perceiving the economy as a rationally restricted production-consumption nexus, subordinating religious life, and reducing it to a “sector”.

Return Gift, Gods’ Blessings and Morality of Exchange What about non-combustible objects? Foods and other kinds of tribute are things to commune with the spirits. When not destroyed, sacrificed remains of offerings from the practitioners are shared in a return movement as they are transmuted into blessings from the spirit world. Leavings are blessings of the gods [lộc] that ensure continued fertility and prosperity for the living (Soucy 1999). At the same time, such desired outcome translates into moral safeguards for commercial or commodity exchange.32 Here, my integrative view hinges on the connection ritually established between gift exchange and market transactions. In a variation to the theme of sacrificial offering encountered in many Southeast Asian societies (Bloch 1992; Hoskins 1993; Howell 1998), Bolivian tin miners believe that the mystical dangers of mining result not from the ultimate commodification of the product, but from transgressing the cultural logic in which mining, like farming, is embedded.33 According to this logic, the cosmological significance of precious metals, as supreme commodities, or “luxuries” in Bataille’s terminology, lies in their flow

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upwards as tribute to the state, reproducing an ordered relationship between the state/polity and the local communities that ensures the latter’s fertility and prosperity (Parry and Bloch 1989, p. 20). In another variation, Malay fishermen in Langkawi hand over their money earned from commercial exchanges to their wives who, not being in contact with the polluted short-term transactions, can then “de-contaminate” it, transforming the money into a morally-acceptable resource to maintain household and community. Other instances include the Hindu idea that wealth gained by any means is acceptable so long as a portion of it is offered to Brahmans for purification, and money in Sri Lankan fishing villages ceases to be dirty when it is used in men’s consumption for maintaining solidarity and class identity, and for reproducing the household. The parallel between these beliefs and the Vietnamese ideas of offerings to and gift blessings [lộc] from the gods is hard to deny. Accordingly, a conversion of short-term gain into moral long-term resource, whether or not through the mediation of a supernatural being, takes place to ensure social order and well-being. The reason, as Parry and Bloch observe, is as follows: If the long-term cycle is not to be reduced to the transient world of the individual, they [the two exchange cycles] must be kept separate… But if the long-term is to be sustained by the creativity and vitality of the short-term cycle, they must also be related… The possibility of conversion between the two orders also has much to do with their moral evaluation. While the long-term cycle is always associated with the central precepts of morality, the short-term order tends to be morally undetermined since it concerns individual purposes, which are largely irrelevant to the long-term order. If, however, that which is obtained in the short-term individualistic cycle is converted to serve the reproduction of the long-term cycle, then it becomes morally positive.34

If such logic applies to the lộc doled out by deities through the mediums in the North, it underpins as well the loan of luck-charm money from the goddesses in the widespread practice by ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese in the South (Taylor 2004a, pp. 89, 94; Phan An 1990, p. 28). Here, the saliency of goddesses and the practice of money-lending by goddesses resonate with southern trans-border migration and commodity traffic with women’s central involvement, and multi-ethnic contact, at variance with the older northern model of village and gender structure.35 The frontier-border locus, in which the role of goddesses prefigures as pluralistic counterpoise

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to the male-centred representations of state power, serves to highlight no less than the impact of historical forces on the seemingly unchanging symbolic frameworks that Vietnamese migrants brought with them to the South. Until we can grasp how the same linkage transforms under extrinsic conditions such as colonial contact in pre-capitalist and capitalist societies alike, Vietnam’s response to global capital expansion will continue to be narrowly perceived as constrained by disparate intrinsic causes such as habitual short-term market-driven thinking, with a jaundiced view on a wasteful so-called “ritual sector”. On this account, we cannot leave out the construction of war memorials, the idolization of leaders and past heroes that serve to shore up the power elite’s ideological stand. This has been explored elsewhere (Ho-Tai 2001; de Tréglodé 2001) and is merely reiterated here. It is not hard to understand how ostentatious competition for social status and power breaches the confines of a rational but “restricted economy”, and is curbed by parsimonious regulations from a disenchanted secular state. The critique can be carried to a micro-economic level, such as with the neo-Confucian Ngô Tất Tố on early twentieth-century northern villages, where status/face (the need to be “somebody”) can be a matter of life and death for those with meagre resources.36 It is not much more difficult to realize how corruption is justified by interested parties, in terms of the above imperative separation and linkage of the two cultureembedded cycles.37 Potlatch and sacrifices at a deeper level, for Bataille, also constitute a symbolic withdrawal of objects from their utility or servitude of the “thingness” that characterizes humdrum daily life. It aims to restore a radical sovereignty to existence on earth.38 In that sense, the burning of votive paper amounts to a substitution of the self in a symbolic crowning of the personal with cosmic “sovereignty” (Bataille 1991, 1992). This issue deserves to be further explored in future studies. At any rate, my current view on popular religion hints at the nature of exchange as one of the keys to our understanding. Namely, in ordering exchanges, social order is constructed and maintained; in consuming surplus beyond its utility, cosmic order is intimated. In summary, we have so far come from the sense of “owe” and “ought”, community identity and bonding dramatized by violent death, through excessive expectation of sacrifice and reciprocated obligation between parents and children, between male and female, to the implicit “will to sovereignty” that sees surplus wealth go up in flames. From this

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standpoint, the Buddhist act of self-immolation by fire glows intriguingly as a horrendous and paradoxical synthesis.

Auto-cremation As a controversial topic in contemporary southern Vietnam, nothing portrays like auto-cremation the mix of religion and politics in their tumultuous moments. While its liminal history may inform us something about the power of agency and image, its religious implication opens out to an extremely wide field of meanings. The official historical text Đại Việt Sử Ký records an eleventh-century Buddhist master’s demonstration of burning his right arm and his claim of its healing a week later. The compiler of the text, a neo-Confucian historian, also comments disdainfully on the self-cremation of another monk and the cult of relics during the fifteenth century Trần dynasty.39 More recently, notorious but disparate cases of self-immolation in southern Vietnam included two monks in the nineteenth century, Thiết Thanh - Liễu Đạt (Reverend Master Liên Hoa) in 1823, and Master Huệ Lưu in 1897, with popular legends linking each to the issue of female admirer. A 92-year-old master auto-cremated in 1902 in Sa Đéc, leaving a finger and reliquary (Nguyễn Hiền Đức 1995, p. 359), while in 1920, another did so after rebuilding Hiệp Long pagoda in Tây Ninh township (Huỳnh Ngọc Trảng 2001, p. 276). A monk named Nguyễn Văn Thân burned himself in 1940 to avoid arrest and torture by the colonial police (Giáo Hội Phật Giáo 2001, p. 105).40 Although they bore the mark of self-harm or suicide, this was not necessarily how they were perceived. The sacred texts in China between the fifth and tenth centuries, Jacques Gernet observes, were “creators of rites”, and total or partial auto-cremation became a cult and homage to the Buddha or his relics. Among these, the Lotus Sutra indicates a close relation between self-immolation and the cult of relics. Recitation of the sutra was made during the burning of finger(s) or arm.41 Aimed to commemorate and realize the myth of Buddha’s birth or death, auto-cremation was to make the body a lamp for offering to the stupa, or “cosmic” tower, hence it was always done at night to stress the image of the lamp.42 This form of homage is called puja, or cúng dường in Vietnamese [Ch. kong yang, literally “to provide nourishment”]. Whereas Pure Land practice led to a form of suicide,43 in general this sacrificial ritual, related as vong thân [forgetting the body] or di thân [leaving the body behind], was no

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ordinary egoistic suicide, for it aimed at radiating from the site the merit of the offering to benefit all beings. Those attending the auto-cremation collaborated by their lamentations and prayers, offering of gifts, carrying banners and flowers ahead of the procession, as they wanted to share the merit of the sacrifice. Self-immolation seems to trigger collective emotional outpouring not unlike the inspiring types of unjust death. Filliozat, however, dismisses Gernet’s reference to martyrdom, and asserts that the latter imputes his own Christian notion to the act. It is not sacrifice, he adds, less again taking on the others’ sin. Turning to another text besides the Lotus, the Samadhivajra, Filliozat cites the burning of the right arm by a former life of Buddha at the extinction of Tathagata Ghosdatta, after wrapping it in his oil-soaked robe. The glow from it “eclipsed the myriads of offering lamps”.44 Stressing that burning is the fruit of total mastery over the self, body and spirit, Filliozat maintains that its purpose is to show detachment from all that is of no concern to the real order of things (law — dharma), and to propagate knowledge. Pointing out the parallel in Vedic ritual for killing animals in bloody sacrifice, Filliozat refers to the Hindu rite of sati, where the widow is placed inside the funeral pyre with the husband’s corpse. Both Buddhist self-immolation and Hindu sati, he further says, have an echo in fire-walking, although the practice of resisting the sensation of burning and fear of fire has only a distant rapport with Buddhist self-cremation. Most importantly, he maintains, the abandonment of the body involves no pain in principle, as it is motivated a) by charity and generosity, and b) by homage adoration of the Truth/Dharma. The final act is the result of training, a test. The self-immolator becomes a hero because of having enabled him/herself to commit the act, but not at the moment of the act itself.45 Self-immolation as the fruit of Buddhist training is, as Filliozat puts it, “voluntary death without the will to death”.46 In a study of Theravadin practice, Damien Keown traces the original background of suicide in the Buddha’s visiting the sick. If the selfenlightened Arhats did not commit suicide, the reasoning goes, they could only be enlightened at the last minute. Further, Buddha saw death as suffering, a problem to be overcome, not a solution (Keown 1996).47 Calling self-immolation an apocryphal practice, James Benn asserts that auto-cremation is definitely on shaky ground doctrinally, yet the practice and texts, he suggests, have ways of locking themselves in a cycle of production.48 Benn points out that auto-cremation is not a rhetorical stance,

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and the act is therefore not so much a leap of faith but a great leap of action, using texts as a means to plant Buddhism firmly in Chinese soil. To sum up, Buddhist self-immolation is not a simple combination of unjust death and burnt offering. In effect, it reveals a vast religious vista that taunts reason and conventional notions of agency. While we may presume that the tenor of this act can be identified as rhetoric of selfperfection, its emancipative logic tends to place it outside both the realms of deification and of sacrificial offerings. In so doing, it returns religion to the sphere of personal charisma in a poetic play on the meanings of existence as true gift.49 It is a revolutionary poetics attending the turning about of consciousness, marking the unfolding of the subtle awareness of an individual who no longer has a centre, hence no boundary. With its prospective of great leap and virtuosity in mind, we can now look at an example in southern Vietnamese popular Buddhism, to consider the worship of a matriarchal figure in the Tịnh Độ Cư Sĩ (Pure Land Householders) Association as an exemplar in self-cultivation and welfare activism, and whose death arguably evokes both the “unjust” category and auto-cremation pattern.

Great Aunt Fifth Though less known outside the Tịnh Độ circles, the legend of “Her Holiness Great Aunt Fifth” [đức Bà Cô Năm], as she is referred to by Tịnh Độ members, occupies a prominent place in the movement’s history.50 During my fieldwork, I was made aware of her matriarchal legacy, both directly and indirectly by the devotion shown by adherents to her memory, especially the women. Her death anniversaries attract a thousand-strong Tịnh Độ crowd each year, coming from near and far to the remote temple ground where her grave also lays. And each time, the ceremonies and feasts go on for two days (19th and 20th of the 11th lunar month).51 While consecration of female ancestral spirits is hardly common in Vietnamese villages, the fact that she did not personally participate in the national struggle against foreign domination renders her case more rare still. With nearly half of the written pages of biographies and eulogies occupied by the dramatic details surrounding her last day, I have been intrigued by the likelihood of her posthumous prestige being amplified by her tragic death, whose mystical meanings continue to haunt adherents’ discussions.

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Born Hồ Thị Mỹ in 1880, she was the youngest of four daughters of a sizeable landowner in Rạch Dông, Sa Đéc province. All her three sisters were married; Great Aunt Fifth “remained at home to take care of her parents”, and to the end of her life, stayed celibate. She was known for taking great interest in self-cultivation since her younger days.52 One biographer maintains it was 1920 when she converted to Tịnh Độ Cư Sĩ, having been already a vegetarian and initiated into the school of Guan Yin in 1905 (Sơn Ngọc Diêu n.d.). Another report adds that it was not until 1925, three years after her father had passed away, that she met Nguyễn Minh Trí, the founder of Tịnh Độ group.53 By then, she must have assumed active control of her parental property as she offered the use of her house to Master Minh Trí as his base for healing and religious work. Not long after, she obtained his reluctant consent to initiate her as disciple.54 In the dual role of senior hostess and disciple of the Founding Master, she was regarded as his right-hand person at Rạch Dông, usually seen in his company to receive visitors. In 1933, the worldwide economic depression saw many farming families leaving their homes to seek livelihood elsewhere. Many followers from other provinces began to converge at Rạch Dông. Great Aunt Fifth rented nearby land for some of them to cultivate rice, but the crops failed. Sơn Ngọc Diêu, a senior member, records that she portioned off some of her land for the poorest families.55 The following year, under Master Minh Trí’s leadership, she and a group of about one hundred families moved to Mỹ Phước, an area in Cao Lãnh district of the Đồng Tháp province, where new canals had not long been dug. They planned to open up land and settle permanently as a farming village.56 The first canals were dug in the Đồng Tháp Mười (Plain of Reeds) area in 1894, but by 1937, it was still considered by the government as experimental land development, following continuous crop failure due to high acidity.57 This was one of the most remarkable initiatives taken by Master Minh Trí in inspiring members towards the collective cultivation of a 14,000 công (about 5,000 hectares) allotment for rice growing at Mỹ Thọ hamlet, now Mỹ Phước, in 1934. Divided equally among landless Tịnh Độ members, on whose behalf Master Minh Trí applied in 1927 for a group granting of the colonial government’s allotments at Mỹ Phước,58 the individual lots measured each “one hundred [metres] across and one thousand lengthwise” [trăm ngang ngàn dọc].59 With a community of over 200 people, and in regular absence of the Founding Master, Great Aunt Fifth was to take charge of the building

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up and practical running of Mỹ Phước.60 A Tịnh Độ temple began to be built in 1943 around the area of the 5,000-kilometre marker. Not until its completion in 1945 did the Great Aunt move there to take up residence. She supervised and possibly underwrote much of the outlay for purchasing working cattle from Cambodia, the planting of some 10,000 fruit trees, the setting up of eleven weaving looms, of plots for growing cotton, arrangement for local women to go to Mỹ Tho City (about 120 kilometres away) to learn cloth weaving, and for establishing a school for village children.61 Thus the settlement survived the economic crisis of the 1930s, and by 1945, it produced 30,000 kilograms of rice a year,62 having distributed nearly 40,000 metres of cotton cloth to the poor in 1944 alone.63 Soon after the completion of the Tịnh Độ temple of Mỹ Phước, Great Aunt Fifth and nearly twenty disciples took tonsure at the same time.64

Mysterious Martyrdom? Meanwhile, the settlement grew to a stable village, with a temple-anddispensary complex, and a large community hall and a school at the centre of the allotment. In 1948, the war widened with the renewed attack on Việt Minh-controlled areas. The Founding Master repeatedly urged her to leave for the city, as Đồng Tháp was one of the targets of French campaigns. She stayed on, and towards the end of 1951, was found incinerated in the temple’s main hall after a bombing by French airplanes.65 The temple was not really a place to hide from their search-and-destroy operation, of which the bombing appeared to be carried out in methodical razing of the rural landscape. From the main hall, amidst explosions of napalm bombs, her co-villagers heard the sound of the ceremonial bell and realized too late that she did not join them in any of the shelters, after hurrying them to go there and hide.66 On discovering her body, a male disciple jumped into the burning ruins to die with her, while a female disciple who ventured in earlier to look for her suffered severe burns also and died within days. It should be noted that her moral prestige as a devout Buddhist preceded her affiliation with Tịnh Độ movement and discipleship with Master Minh Trí. She was known as a person gifted with intuitive and extra-sensory knowledge, apart from her virtuosity as a Buddhist.67 How did the community attach significance to such an enigmatic demise? Sơn Ngọc Diêu believes that from sheer ability to foresee, she knew one year ahead when she was going to die, but did not divulge to her disciples till three months before that fateful day.68 What cryptic things she said to

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them, then, began to make sense as they re-considered their meanings.69 Finally, post-mortem discovery by the adherents has been hailed as a sign of her supreme knowledge, comparable to that of enlightened Zen masters according to traditional Buddhist recognition. For instance, when the conflagration died down, villagers found that her charred body was beyond recognition, except for a portion of the right cheek, which was shielded by her right palm and remained unburnt. To suggest parallelism, Hỷ Pháp cites anecdotes of Chinese Zen masters who left miraculously unburnt parts of their bodies as holy relics from their cremations.70 On the whole, Great Aunt Fifth’s gaining in prestige was readily identifiable, as it is consistent with similar patterns of acquiring “potency” in “level societies” observed of Southeast Asian islands.71 It is no surprise that the Mỹ Phước community honour her memory in rather sumptuous enshrinement. Popular practice shows that, while a communal house đình is established in each village, it is different with Buddhist pagodas, Buddha’s worship not being the public concern of the village.72 However, there are variations to this norm in the South, and Mỹ Phước case conforms to neither of these. In the first place, this Tịnh Độ temple is a pagoda without appointed resident monastics. Secondly, it doubles as communal house or đình, with the tutelary spirit being a matriarchal figure “installed” there posthumously. In this sense, the deification of Great Aunt Fifth contributes to the innovative character of popular movements represented by the Tịnh Độ in southern Vietnam.

An Engaged Buddhism Francis Hill (1971) suggests that for religious movements in southern Vietnam, secular pursuits such as the Tịnh Độ’s welfare service practically merge with spiritual ones. If this was the case, religion and society were not so separated in the minds of the participants that the movements’ formation was also congruous with the organizational pattern for settlement or resettlement of Vietnamese migrants in the region. The “rice camps” and “timber milling camps” established by millenarian Buddhist groups in the mountainous west were better known examples.73 Tịnh Độ’s continued development, however, relatively free from militancy and political persecution, deserves more attention than has been so far studied. Like the Bữu Sơn Kỳ Hương, this popular Buddhism resulted from the historical imperatives of migration and adaptation before the mid-nineteenth century.74 It is at variance not only with Scott’s model of moral economy for

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its egalitarian structure, but also with Bataille’s grand concept of religiosity intrinsic to the General Economy driven by surplus, as mentioned above. Given the initial condition of poverty, a rational (and therefore “limited”) economy could only have been more appropriate, as subsistence was the order of the day. However, even before surplus was accrued, Tịnh Độ pattern did not run counter to the “archaic” mode of gift exchange in fostering kin-based order. Consistently, Tịnh Độ activism comes closer to what Cixous conceives of a feminine economy, which “seeks not to secure profit but to establish relations” (Schrift 1997). This mode of practice, which eschews the formation of clergy, caused Georges Coulet to think there was a third-order Buddhism in the 1920s South (Coulet 1927, pp. 120–32).75 However, such a perception only reflects the magnitude of a householder form of religiosity,76 which is more intense, closer to Weber’s “virtuosity” than what has been termed “laity”. A posthumous reference to Great Aunt Fifth’s dharma name raises this notable aspect of her self-cultivation. According to a biographer, not only did she gain “insight into the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara’s contemplation of transcendental wisdom” in her mid-twenties,77 her sobriquet was chosen to be Diệu Thiện (Miao Shan) — the name of the legendary folk incarnation of Guan Yin or Avalokitesvara in southeast China.78 The strong presence of Chinese migrants since the seventeenth century must have boosted the spread of this goddess’ worship in Vietnam. And it was the myth of Miao Shan, not of the Vietnamese counterpart named Quan Âm Thị Kính which predominated in Buddhist lore in the South up to the 1950s at least. Thus emerges an ideal image constellating a lifetime devotion to ethical conduct, self-cultivation in a hinted reference to an elite background, and the perfection of giving [dana paramita], with the popular emblem of mercy or compassion overshadowing the central teaching presented in the Heart Sutra.79 This ideal image may be conceivably given full posthumous import by her hagiographers. Nevertheless, it highlights popular pattern of understanding religious self-immolations. The popular Guan Yin represents mother’s love and mercy, but for those open to deeper meanings, Guan Yin embodies sunyata, or emptiness.80 This is where the ambivalence lies. Simply put, the popular discourse maintains that an understanding of sunyata allows one to see through the illusoriness or insubstantial and impermanent basis of all things, yet it always moves one to act in full compassion towards sentient beings.

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Against the terror and violence of war and politics, fearless acts of defiance, nevertheless, continue to shake down the structures of meaning, to “hold up mirrors” [nêu gương] — raising examples for others to emulate. Together with the series of Buddhist self-immolations that followed Master Thích Quảng Đức’s in 1963, Great Aunt Fifth’s death can be said at least to have joined a spectrum of unspoken stances, and of the above-mentioned trenchant dilemma on the part of public awareness. As a sacrificial offering to the Buddhist Way or the culmination of religious training, the meaning of self-cremation remains complex indeed.

Conclusion The temple dedicated to Great Aunt Fifth at Mỹ Phước is now among the more ornate pilgrimage points for Tịnh Độ adherents.81 If the sociocultural function of religion is about community-building, then, as we have seen with the case of the Tịnh Độ movement, the historical context of the South consists in spawning multiple processes supported by identity construction, spiritual development and interlocking cycles of exchange with welfare activism. Under conditions of economic scarcity, political pressure of colonialism and resistance, armed conflict, dislocation of the landless, and contested leadership by neo-Confucian elite, southern popular religion shows how communities can innovate and diversify in response to historical challenges. This continual diversification allows for a fluid formation of new economic alliances, gender structure, and for local mobilization. All these activities are framed in a feminine economy that traverses and blurs the boundary between market and religion. No less importantly, they bring home the perennial challenge that order, justice, respect and care for all are to be pursued in a world which, as a given, is beset by deceptive inequality and made unfree by obligations — between giver and taker, seller and buyer, ancestor and offspring. They eventually partake in a general economy where we can ill afford to disregard the massive disposal of surplus, or dismiss it as peri-phenomenon. As the limited model of rational production no longer holds sway, especially at the first sign of surplus, quite often a surplus touted by bravado or deceit, the consequence to the choice of disposal varies. Most of the time, that choice does not even guarantee trust, nor eliminate armed violence and exploitation.

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Thus, for viewing popular religion as interlocking clusters of contributing dynamisms, I have proposed a triadic perspective:

Status Economy Sacrifice / Potlach surplus

blessings

Kin-based Order Ritual Sector

moral values

Limited Economy Market Sector

At the grassroots level, community founding, hence maintenance of local identity, mediates the “ritual sector” and market relations in a moral checkand-balance. No timeless structure, however, this framework generates a one-way flow of matter and values. Pressed by historical vicissitude, it privileges at times the ritual sector, at others, market culture. In the end, the linking and separating of the two exchange cycles subsume the Bataillean General Economy, which ultimately describes the global flow and distribution of energy.82 Thus, in my proposed integrative view of contemporary southern popular religion, the following features are brought into relief: •

It exhibits a strong motivation for community-building under a pluralist social environment, regularly threatened by destabilizing forces of war and colonial economics. The pervasive presence of Buddhist and goddesses’ temples bespeaks of an urgency in forging new social ties, adaptive identity, kin-ordered continuity — in stark contrast to the perception of a rationalist trend towards atomized individualism such as highlighted by Samuel Popkin’s model of the southern Vietnamese peasant. So long as practices such as honouring traumatic deaths and the excesses of burning offerings continue, the tendencies of popular religion to resort to localized hybridity need to be taken into account in any consideration of the role of culture in southern political economy, or globalization contexts.

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•

•

•

With identity wrought from the violence of separating self from others, kin from strangers, and in this case, Kinh/Việt from other ethnic groups, communal bonding necessitates the setting up of different boundaries, the writing of different histories. This logic may be underscored by the religious horror of unjust death, indicating a heightened sensitivity towards the heroism and hardship of marginality in the settling process of Vietnamese as newcomers to the South. By the same token, marginality is celebrated, signalling a regional identity less dependent on state sanction. Initial dependence on state support and spiritual autonomy would give rise to tension due to such ambivalence in southern identity. Religion mediates or moderates tension and contention in social relations by ritually subordinating short-term commodity exchanges to the long-term kin-ordered gift cycles through embedded moral values. Southern supernaturalism thus plays an active role in breathing religious life onto “secular” practices. Meta-rational factors instanced by non-productive consumption of surplus such as feasting and burning of offerings, and in mediumship in goddess cults, help reinforce the social bonding and differentiation processes through a “rhetoric of generosity”. At the same time, they open up issues of subjectivity, in so far as what it means to be a religious (connected) being, free, in the most general or cosmological sense, from utility and servitude. For Buddhist virtuosos, however, the social function of supernatural exchange through sacrifices, trance possessions and carnivals, etc. is not robust enough to withstand refutation/ immolation initiated by a radical questioning implicit in truly compassionate acts. Such refutation evokes fundamental premises as expressed in the practice of “transcendental giving” [dana paramita], whose rich semiotic field is further engendered by offering-in-adoration that goes beyond common exchange ethics.83 So perceived, in various Buddhist forms of burning of the body, apocryphal or circumstantial as the practice may be, the critique implied by self-immolation would make overture to an infinitelylayered meaning of voluntary death, to its signification of a true gift — life itself, as well as to the mystery-filled silence of meditative contemplation.

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This vision of infinite meanings in Buddhist liberation discourse suggests that the symbolism of a “Vairochana Tower hologram” is perhaps shared by my integrative view of southern popular religion, where the whole network of inter-relations can be grasped by “tugging” at one or two nodal points.84 Here, however, the commonality ends as the proposed view of southern practices does not, and perhaps cannot, address directly all aspects of Buddhist self-immolation. In a similar manner it alludes to other modes of mytho-poetic but personal experience, such as what is today termed “multiple personality syndrome” of trance possession in the mediums’ practice. At this interface between the personal and the social, more needs to be explored and studied. For now at least, the proposed view may have added a glimpse, through a small gap in its perspective framework, on the subtle working of devotional intent throughout the individual’s journey to self-knowledge and power, with cultural implications extending well beyond the southern Vietnamese context. NOTES 1

2

3 4

The word “religions” is to include that sphere of “popular relgion” [Tín ngưỡng dân gian — literally “folk belief” in the dominant discourse], which I refer mainly to new formations in the South. For instances of recent scholarly surveys, see Huỳnh Ngọc Trảng, ed., 2002, Sổ Tay Hành Hương Đất Phương Nam [Pilgrimage Manual for Southern Country] and Trần Văn Giàu and Trần Bạch Đằng, ed., 1998, Địa Chí Văn Hóa Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh, Tập 4, Tư Tưởng and Tín Ngưỡng, “Tín Ngưỡng Dân Gian Gia Định — Sài Gòn trong Tiến Trình Lịch Sử” [Popular Religion in Gia Dinh — Saigon Area through Historical Changes], pp. 57–107 with new background details of popular movements, schools and change agents, while in Đỗ Quang Hưng, ed., 2001, Tôn Giáo và mấy Vấn Đề Tôn Giáo Nam Bộ [Religion and a Few Issues of Religion in Southern Vietnam], and in Viện Khoa Học Xã Hội Việt Nam, Về Tôn Giáo và Tôn Giáo ở Việt Nam [On Religion and Religions in Vietnam], 2004, the attempts are marked by a global or rather, more religious-studies framed, albeit Marx-Engel accented, perspective. Cadière 1958, ibid. He was not consecrated at these places as principal protector. According to Tạ Chí Đại Trường, a Hòa Hảo Buddhist army division bearing the name Nguyễn Trung Trực was known to install him as tutelary spirit at the Rạch Giá shrine in 1952, where the initial cult was of the whale spirit, to become

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Đỗ Thiện later the đình of Vĩnh Thanh Văn village. Tạ Chí Đại Trường, 1996, Những Bài Dã Sử Việt, pp. 61–62. Nguyễn Văn Huyên, The Ancient Civilisation of Vietnam, 1995, p. 103. These cults were probably pre-1954. Toan Ánh, Nếp Cũ, Tín Ngưỡng Việt Nam, Vol. 1, 1991, p. 133. Trịnh Hoài Đức, Gia Định Thành Thông Chí, Vol. 2, pp. 87–88. The title of Nguyên Phục himself. He was reportedly prepared to trade his life for of his men if accused of insubordination, maintaining that due to the stormy condition, any earlier undertaking would be too risky. Intimacy for Bataille is easier to define for what it is not, and the closest he could get to is “intimacy, in the strong sense, is what has the passion of an absence of individuality.” Bataille, G., Theory of Religion, p. 50. Given that identity serves to manifest self-determination, it is well known that the determination of the Same often reveals itself to be a determination of the Other. While unjust and violent deaths are acknowledged with unspeakable horror — a sentiment that turns into a shared religious horror — the associated violence evokes the intimate proximity of that inviolate self. As de Vries and Weber point out: “Values based on the ontological or deontological priority of identity over difference, or sameness over alterity — and such priorities are perhaps inseparable from the notion of value itself — are demonstrating in practice what thinkers from Nietzsche through Adorno to Levinas and Derrida have long suspected: that violence is not necessarily the exclusive characteristics of the other but rather, and perhaps even above all, a means through which the self, whether individual or collective, is constituted and maintained.” de Vries, H. and S. Weber, Violence, Identity and Self-Determination, pp. 1, 2. By the same token, the Tịnh Độ Buddhist adherents maintain, when I asked for their assessment of the group’s future, that the survival of their group is conditional upon the approval of the spirits’ (Yin) world for all Tịnh Ðộ action. That is why gift circulation constitutes what Marcel Mauss famously refers to as a “total social fact”. Marcel Mauss, The Gift… Philip Taylor, Goddess…, ibid. See for instance, Huỳnh Lứa, Lịch Sử Khai Phá…, Chapter 2. Huỳnh Ngọc Trảng, “The South as a Cultural Melting Pot”, unpublished notes c.1997; see also Huỳnh Ngọc Trảng. “Tổng Quan về Văn Hóa Nam Bộ…”. The emphasis here is in understanding the mechanism with which people actively construct such solidarity, and make their own histories through rituals. See for instance, Feuchtwang, S., The Imperial Metaphor. Toan Ánh, Nếp Cũ — Tín Ngưỡng…, p. 338.

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Le Van Phat, “La Vie Intime…”, 1907. Trí Hải, “Bàn về sự Đốt Mã” [On the Burning of Votive Objects], Đuốc Tuệ no. 75 (15 December 1937), pp. 31–34. He was first among the many voices in this anti-burning campaign published on Đuốc Tuệ. See further discussion by Philip Taylor, Goddess on the Rise, pp. 264–70. Once they join the pagodas’ counterpart of the Christian Ladies Auxiliaries’ Club, their major role in preparing and organizing ceremonies, festivals, pilgrimage trips etc, bespeaks the vitality of this gendered domain. Trịnh Hoài Đức, Gia Định Thành Thông Chí. Sơn Nam points out how the village notables manipulated communal land to their benefit, leaving unchanged the situation of landless farmers, while Nguyễn Đình Đầu notes that the Nguyễn’s effort up to mid-nineteenth century to create a nation of smallholders through their public/communal land policy was undermined by the growth of the commodity-market economy in the South since the early eighteenth century. Nguyễn Đình Đầu, Chế Độ Công Điền… Trần Hồng Liên, “Phật Giáo ở Nam Bộ và Thành Phố”, p.325. A schoolteacher I met at a Khất Sĩ (Mendicants) Theravadin temple in Hà Tiên in 2004 told me that, having found in Buddhist teachings the answers to his philosophical puzzle with life, he retired from the profession and now devotes his time to look after his toddler son and work at the temple. While we were talking, other lay volunteers came and went with gardening chores. Trần Hồng Liên, ibid. Similarly, Jacques Gernet notes that it was sheer waste of resources involved in the competitive potlatch form of donations and offerings to temples in fifth to tenth century China, which he describes as collective delirium, and which provoked elite Confucian crackdown on excesses at Buddhist temples. Gernet, J., Les Aspects Economiques…, 1956, pp. 225–40. Lương Hồng Quang et al. 2001, p. 198. A study was carried out between 1997 and 1999. The villages are in the areas of Hanoi, Bắc Ninh, Nam Định, Đồng Nai and Tiền Giang. Adam Fforde cites the figure of 40 per cent household expenditure for banquets such as death anniversaries, quoting Nguyễn Mạnh Quan, Experimental Research on Structure of Prices in Rural Vietnam, Basing on the Results of the Survey Conducted in 8 Communes and Rural Markets in the Red River Delta in North Vietnam and in the Mekong Delta in Southern Vietnam, report for the Danish Embassy, 1999, p. 74. Adam Fforde, personal communication. Yang’s data for villages and urban Wenchou similarly highlight the anomalous nature of ritual consumption such as the inordinately high level of household expenditure (minimum 20 per cent) for cultural occasions (weddings, funerals, death anniversaries, festivals).

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Đỗ Thiện The cake at Quan Gánh village temple in Hà Tây province was subsequently divided into 100 portions to be received by the organizations and groups who “booked ahead” for them, Tuoi Tre newspaper, 19 April 2002. The reporter omits to mention that number eighteen represents the mythical 18 successive reigns of the Hung dynasty. This was before the 1995 firework ban. The village ceremonial firecrackers are now ornate wooden models, in gigantic scale. Parry, J. and Bloch, M. “Introduction”, in Money and the Morality of Exchange, edited by John Parry and Maurice Bloch, 1989. Parry, J. and Bloch, M., ibid. Parry and Bloch, Money and the Morality of Exchange, p. 26. Philip Taylor, “The Ethnicity of Efficacy”. For a discussion of George Boudarel’s essay on village culture, taking departure from Ngô Tất Tố’s writing, see Do, T., Vietnamese Supernaturalism…, pp. 50–53. In this context, corruption can be regarded as a result of confusing or misrecognising such separation and linkage, whether unconsciously or deliberately driven by self-interest. For a discussion of the term “sovereignty”, see Bataille, Visions of Excess…, pp. 137–60. My thanks to Elise DeVido for drawing my attention to this Đại Việt Sử Ký record raised in a paper (in Chinese) by Cao Shibang, “The Origin of Vietnamese Monastics’ Auto-cremation”, Bei Ye Journal, Vol. 7, pp. 28–29. Giáo Hội Phật Giáo, Biên Niên Sử…, p. 105. Gernet, “Les Suicides…”, p. 543. Ibid., p. 545. It is committed while incessantly reciting homage to Amida Buddha in order to be reborn in His Pure Land. From its Chapter 33. Filliozat, “La Mort Volontaire par le Feu…”. Ibid. It is related to Amidism, as the Buddhist Pure Land is mentioned in the Samadivajra, while Amitabha Buddha is mentioned in the Lotus Sutra. Filliozat, ibid. In this context, it is a rejection of mortification represented by the Jainist fasting practice. Benn traces back from the recently banned Chinese ordination ritual of burning the initiates’ heads with incense or moxibustion, to the praying for rain in the Later Han era (Benn 1998). The head burning in ordination must have spread to Vietnam and still practised in the 1950s South at least, as observed by Révertégat, 1974, p. 79. For want of a more precise definition for this Weberian term “charisma”, I suggest the contrast between the collective social and the personal to be its

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context, and its non-ordinary quality attributed to the virtuoso figure by others to be emphasized. “Fifth” marks the order of the sibling, where the eldest is called Second (-born). There is no First to avoid confusing with the southern deferent Cả (eldest) reserved for the head of the village. In my December 1999 visit, I did notice the makeshift structure to allow tables and benches to be set up under tarpaulin cover in the temple yard for seating at least 200 people. Ban Quản Trị, Tiểu Sử…, p. 2. According to one of her grandnieces, Grand Aunt’s father died in 1922, and her mother ten years later. The latter was reluctant at first on account of her seniority. He relented when she became possessed by spirits of goddesses called Chư Vị Nương Nương (assembly of goddesses) who pleaded with Master Minh Trí to be her teacher. Sơn Ngọc Diêu, Vía Đức Bà Cô Năm, undated mimeograph of memorial speech. Ban Quản Trị, Tiểu Sử…. The allotments must have been released for public purchase by tendering. Huỳnh Lứa, 1987, pp. 188–89. The area must have been still available then for public distribution of allotments. Applicants were required to present “body tax” card certifying landless status. Ngộ Nhựt, Truyen Tich…, pp. 209–10. The figure quoted above differs from the Central Executive Commitee’s quote which is 10,000 công (Hoi Dong Quan Tri, Luoc Su…, p. 4). Based on this lot size, the settlers’ land would stretch about 4 km along both sides of the canal as described. Hỷ Pháp, Thiên Nhựt Ký…, p. 9. Actually, a group of less than twenty families led by Precept Master Nhu Tuyen set up the first hamlet — called Xóm Một (Hamlet One), which stretched between kilometre markers 4000 and 5000. They were followed by up to eighty families led by Great Aunt Fifth, among whom were also her non-Tịnh Ðộ nephews who came to grow rice. (My field notes of verbal account by Hỷ Pháp, Dec. 2004). This delegation of leadership was implied by the official history of the Tịnh Ðộ Association as it notes: “In 1934, thanks to the dedication of her Holiness Great Aunt Fifth, a number of adherents, his Holiness the Founding Master was credited with opening up 10,000 cong in [what is now known as Mỹ Phước]” (Hội Đồng Quản Trị 1998, p. 6). Hỷ Pháp, Thiên Nhựt Ký…, p. 13. Ho Tai, Millenarianism…, 1983, p. 92, citing colonial state security police source of 1927?. Ban Quản Trị, 1997, p. 5.

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Đỗ Thiện Hỷ Pháp, op. cit., p. 16. As Hỷ Pháp’s commemorative notes indicate: “On the 14th day of the 11th lunar month in 1951, a convoy of amphibious armored cars from Phong Mỹ… stopped for a rest at My Phuoc from about 1 p.m. till 5 p.m., then proceeded towards Gò Tháp. Relieved, … the evacuees returned gradually to their routine life… [Six days later], about 6 am, a spotter plane appeared…. A moment after, two fighter planes followed…. When they first flew over the temple, Great Aunt Fifth said: “This has never happened before. Airplanes flying over the temple is a bad omen!” Then she told the uncles and aunties to go quickly to the dug-out shelters.” (Hỷ Pháp 1996, pp. 18–20). Sơn Ngọc Diêu, Thiên Nhựt Ký…, pp. 19–20. Ngộ Nhựt, Truyện Tích…, pp. 35–36. As he recalls: “During those [three] months, at full and new moon rituals, Great Aunt had many times advised the members gathered at the temple: ‘All you brothers and sisters stay on’, she said, ‘and try to follow the steps of our Founding Master, be diligent in your dual cultivation of merit and wisdom as your basis of liberation. I cannot be around forever to remind you. One day, if I leave this body, I will leave it by cremation.’ If the members were utterly surprised at her precious words they thought ‘it was her wish’, not realizing that they were prophetic…. One month before she passed away, Great Aunt returned all the jewelleries entrusted to her by her disciples for safekeeping.” Sơn Ngọc Diêu, Vía Đức Bà…, pp. 2, 3. One of her disciples recounted to Hỷ Pháp that “…[One] day in discussing temple affairs, Great Aunt said to me: ‘While I am here, this temple stands; when I die, it will be gone.’” Hỷ Pháp 1996, Thiên Nhựt Ký…, p. 26. Hỷ Pháp 1996, Thiên Nhựt Ký…, p. 24. Errington, S., ed., 1993, Gender and Power in Southeast Asian Islands. Being the youngest sibling to inherit the family property, then, as mentioned above, accepted into the “inner circle” of a newly emerging charismatic healer, would have enhanced considerably to both her own prestige as well as the Founding Master’s charisma. “Buddhist temples are sometimes built by villagers on a quiet spot, away from residential area, with a monk put in charge of caretaking. Sometimes they are privately built, erected by a wealthy person, a mandarin, a self-cultivator who would establish one of these temples on his or her own behalf before engaging monks or nuns to be residents-in-charge.” Đào Duy Anh, Việt Nam Văn Hóa Sử Cương, pp. 209–10. Ho Tai, Millenarianism…, 1983. Taking virtuosity away from reclusive asceticism, the melding of self-cultivation with the production and free dispensation of traditional medicine represents a rational practice amidst conditions of scarcity. However, as Tambiah (1984,

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pp. 321–25) remarks on the limitation of Weber’s dualities when considering the case for Budddhism, this rationalist tendency in the Tịnh Ðộ’s religious teaching does not mesh well with the Weberian rationalization process. The first two orders refer to the monastic and the suporting lay communities. Tu tại gia, tu nhà — self-cultivation at home. Ban Quản Trị, Tiểu Sử…, p. 2. The resulting insight refers to the study and practice of the Heart Sutra (Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra), a central text for Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Interbeing group as well. A dharma name or religious sobriquet is normally chosen as encapsulation of the initiate’s personality or ideals. Guan Yin of the Southern Sea has long been the protector of Chinese sea-farers. Miao Shan is said to be a Yuan princess, whose story is not to be confused with the earliest recorded presence of Guan Yin in northern Vietnam in the ninth century. See Tạ Chí Đại Trường, Thần, Người…, pp. 95–97. 1920’s examples of publications include Nam Hải Quan Âm (Guan Yin of Southern Sea), Hanoi: Kim Khuê Ân Quán (translation and printing), 1926; Nam Hải Quan Thế Âm, N.H.T. transl. from Nôm text, Hanoi; Cao Vương Chơn Kinh — Quan Thế Âm (True Record of Lord Cao’s Teachings — Guan Yin), translator Trần Thị Truyện, Sadec: Imprimerie Hovan, 1927. As suggested by this text [Prajna paramita hridaya], insight into emptiness [sunyata] can be evoked by Avalokitesvara, one of whose “emanations” is none other than Guan Yin herself. For a discussion of emptiness and compassion, see for instance Streng, Emptiness — A Study in Religious Meaning. Two years after my first visit in 1999, new structures have been added, including a shrine and graves of her major disciples. Bataille, The Accursed Share, Vol. 1. Dana: free giving. Paramita: literally “reaching the other shore”, figurative of immediate enlightenment. “Transcendental giving” is one of the six Buddhist paramitas as supreme means to attain enlightenment/liberation from sorrow. According to the Gandavyuha Sutra, Sudhana the pilgrim beheld the tower — metaphor for infinite meaning network — as follows: “Within this tower, spacious and exquisitely ornamented, there are also innumerable towers, each one of which is as exqusitely ornamented as the main tower itself and as spacious as the sky. And all these towers beyond calculation in number stand not at all in one another’s way; each preserves its individual existence in perfect harmony with all the rest…; there is a state of perfect intermingling and yet of perfect orderliness. Sudhana the young pilgrim sees himself in all the towers as well as in each single tower, where all is contained in one and each contains all.” (Suzuki 1970, p. 133).

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6 Spirited Modernities: Mediumship and Ritual Performativity in Late Socialist Vietnam Kirsten W. Endres

Introduction In recent years, lên đồng spirit mediumship has been drawing an evergrowing number of devoted believers and initiates. Temples dedicated to the pantheon of the Four Palaces [Tứ Phủ] receive a constant stream of visitors seeking to transact with the spirit world for existential needs and economic benefits, and prominent master mediums attract large and diverse clienteles of mediumship initiates who believe they cannot succeed in this life unless they repay their debt with the Four Palaces from a previous incarnation by entering into the spirits’ service and becoming a medium (see Fjelstad and Nguyen 2006). From the bubbly liveliness of Hanoi’s overflowing markets (Schütte 2005), a veritable “spirit industry” has emerged: shops that specialize in wholesale and retail of ritual robes and frills, family enterprises producing intricate votive paper objects, musicians and assistants organizing their busy schedules over their cellphones in the midst of an ongoing ritual, and — last but not

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least — master mediums [đồng thầy] who cater to the needs of their followers and followers-to-be, prepare and perform initiations and other rituals, organize pilgrimages to remote temples, and keep the incense in their private temples burning. The upsurge of religious and ritual activity that has become apparent in Vietnam since the onset of the economic reforms known as Ðổi Mới is by no means unique in the region, nor is it peripheral. The resilience of Max Weber’s paradigm of an inexorable Entzauberung (disenchantment, de-mystification) of the world in the towline of “modernity” has in fact been undermined by a thriving religious fervour that has accompanied the (re)emergence of capitalist market relations in different parts of the world, including Asia (see Keyes; Hardacre, and Kendall 1994; Comaroff 1994; Taylor 2004a). Observers note that the dynamic interrelation between religion and economic development even brings forth “the growth of new forms of religiosity in the context of economic activity and wealth creation itself” (Roberts 1995, p. 2). The rise of “prosperity religions” (Roberts 1995; Jackson 1999), “amoral cults” (Weller 1994) and “occult economies” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2000) also indicates that salvation is often enough sought in wealth acquisition and the pursuit of worldly goods rather than in fostering ethical values. Moreover, the multi-faceted and divergent responses to the unleashing of the spirits of capitalism have significantly contributed to a critical reflection on the notion of a singular modernity. Instead, it has been suggested to speak of multiple, vernacular, alternative, or “other” modernities (Eisenstadt 2000; Pels 2003; Knauft 2002). Vietnam’s rapid integration into the global economy has likewise produced its own local sets of religious palimpsests through which people contemplate, negotiate, and performatively enact the dynamisms and vicissitudes of market relations. The rise of goddesses like the Lady of the Realm (Bà Chúa Xứ) or the Lady of the Storehouse (Bà Chúa Kho) as pop idols of the Vietnamese religious world (Taylor 2004a, Le Hong Ly 2001) and “spiritual agents” with whom people transact for economic and other this-worldly benefits (Taylor 2004a, p. 85) nicely exemplifies how such religious icons are continuously re-inscribed with meanings that, in turn, reshape human reality. The same may be said of the spirits1 who inhabit the Four Palaces. But the study of lên đồng mediumship also opens up a further perspective on how the vibrant developments which have been taking place on a multitude of levels in contemporary late-socialist Vietnam are played out through actual ritual practice. Influenced by Turner’s treatment of ritual

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as a genre of social action that “confront[s] problems and contradictions of the social process” (Turner 1987, p. 94), recent approaches to ritual enactments have called attention to the role of performativity in the social construction and transformation of human reality (Schieffelin 1998; Köpping and Rao 2000). Rather than being concerned with how ritual reflects the social order and molds people’s social identities, a performative perspective on ritual emphasizes the creative and contingent processes involved in ritual activities and looks at how “people fashion rituals that mold their world” (Bell 1997, p. 73). However, different (cultural, social and political) actors may hold divergent views about how popular ritual “traditions” are to be fashioned and integrated into the modernization process. The aim of this chapter is therefore to examine lên đồng ritual practice as an arena for performative contests between differentially experienced modernities in contemporary Vietnam. The chapter begins by giving an ethnographic account of the aesthetics and significance of mastering lên đồng ritual performance. In the next section I analyse the inter-relatedness of ritual aesthetics and modern consumerism, and illustrate how mediums compete for status through conspicuous displays of wealth in ritual spending. The last part focuses on the role of master mediums in lên đồng mediumship and their critical assessment of the creative processes that signify the transformative power of ritual performance.

Mastering Performance The dances of the bà đồng in Vietnam are hardly ever beautiful […]. Concerning the steps they perform, they are always swift and accomplished within a few strides and some leaps on the spot, accompanied by repetitive movements of the upper part of the body or the head and some monotonous gestures of the arms […] A sparkle of beauty appears, however, in the clothes: the bà đồng possess a sumptuous wardrobe and jewellery of high value; during a séance they change many times their tunics and turbans that are often enriched with precious stones. (Cuisinier 1951, pp. 122–24; my translation)

In March 2003, I witnessed the initiation ritual of Nguyệt, a chubby middle-aged trader in Vietnamese herbal medicine.2 Her richly embroidered brocade silk tunics and ornate adornments clearly stand out against the comparatively modest spirit robes of Master Cảnh’s average followers.

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Before her own initiation, Nguyệt had frequently participated in lên đồng rituals performed at her master’s shrine and she had become thus basically acquainted with the succession of ritual actions, movements and gestures prescribed for each spirit’s manifestation [ gíá]. This, however, is the first time she has “served” [hầu] the spirits through ritual enactment, and although her sumptuous robes endow her performance with certain splendour, her ungainly movements are painful to watch not only for the anthropologist. During the Lady spirits’ manifestations, Nguyệt’s husband suggests flowing arm and hand movements and gracefully flexes his fingers in tune with the rhythm of the chầu văn music that accompanies the ritual, while the other ritual participants ardently clap their hands in order to enhance her confidence. But Nguyệt seems too self-conscious to even take notice, let alone to modify her performative style. Over the past four years, I have attended numerous lên đồng rituals performed by master mediums, experienced lên đồng practitioners as well as by newly initiated mediums like Nguyệt. Some I found gripping and stimulating to the extent that I felt completely absorbed, whereas others struck me as rather awkward and sometimes even disharmonious despite the often stunning sumptuousness of robes and offerings. When I started talking to various performers about aesthetic principles of lên đồng, I quickly realized that my personal notion of a “beautiful” or an “awkward” performance did not necessarily correspond to that of other ritual participants. According to Master Cảnh, it needs a trained eye to distinguish properly between the two: “Whether a performance is considered as beautiful or not depends on personal awareness, or we can say that people who watch a lot of performances can judge whether a medium has reached a high level of sophistication in performing lên đồng.” What, then, is a “beautiful” performance? How does a performer reach a “high level of sophistication?” And is “beauty” constitutive for a lên đồng to be credited with authenticity and efficacy? As one would expect, spirit mediums do not apply the Vietnamese term biểu diễn [performance] when talking about their ritual practice. Interestingly enough, though, the notion of performance is somewhat implicit in reflexive discourse on lên đồng. When I asked Master Cảnh about the significance of beauty in lên đồng, his answer was not at all what I had expected from a religious master: In fact, serving [the spirits] beautifully [hầu đẹp] is important, because lên đồng is also a genre of folk culture. The medium [người lên đồng] is

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Kirsten W. Endres like a kind of actor/actress. So it means that it should not be too artificial. Many mediums move in a very affected way. For example the Lady spirits’ movements should be light and simple [dân gian, đơn gìản], but nowadays many mediums wriggle and swing their arms and legs like that; they think it is beautiful but in fact it is not.

Considering that a lên đồng session may take up to five hours, aesthetic principles also apply to the entertaining aspect of the ritual performance. Master Thuần, an 80-year-old lady with more than forty years of experience as a medium, puts it bluntly: “First of all, lên đồng has to be beautiful and convivial [vui], so that the participants don’t get bored.” These musings are reminiscent of the recent Vietnamese academic discourse in which lên đồng ritual is treated as a folk drama that employs “theatrical and dramatical [sic] techniques to construct and reconstruct Viet culture and beliefs” (Nguyen Thi Hien 2002, p. 19; see also Ngo Duc Thinh 1999). Whereas this association of lên đồng with folk drama can be read as an effort to re-assess a popular religious practice that still bears the stigma of having been labelled a “wasteful superstition” (a point I shall elaborate below), performative knowledge, skills and techniques are indeed crucial to the dynamic aesthetic process of the lên đồng ritual (Kapferer 2005, p. 156, see also Köpping 2004, Kendall 1996a). Mediums generally distinguish between “well-behaved and skilful” performances on the one hand [đồng khôn bóng ngoan], and “crazy and foolish” performances on the other [đồng điên đồng dại]. According to Master Cảnh, only a controlled medium is possessed by the spirits [đồng tỉnh là đồng thánh], whereas an “uncontrolled” or “obsessed” medium may be possessed by ghosts [đồng mê là đồng vong] (Endres 2006).3 During their embodiment of the spirits, most mediums appear composed and aware of their surroundings. Although the medium’s state of awareness may vary during a performance and the presence of the spirits may become bodily perceptible,4 being in control is in fact an essential prerequisite for correctly assuming the role of a spirit. Many mediums whom I talked to emphasized that a transformation of consciousness or an altered state of mind that could be described as “trance”, “ecstasy”, “possession” or “obsession” (Myerhoff 1990, p. 245) is not desired in lên đồng ritual performance. Newly initiated mediums sometimes get carried away into (mimicking) such a state of obsession, described in Vietnamese as say mê or say đồng. A particularly vulnerable moment is when the medium’s head is covered with the red veil to mark the transition between two spirit’s sequences. As a performative indication of

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the new spirit’s descent, mediums slightly gyrate their upper body and head while sitting under the veil. During her initiation ritual, however, Nguyệt exaggeratedly gyrated her body whenever the ritual sequence required a seated posture in front of the altar. Master Cảnh comments, [Nguyệt] performs in a way as if she cannot control herself. The spirits only [make the medium] gyrate for a moment before the veil is thrown off and [the medium] may sway a little while sitting, but they don’t [let the medium] rotate around like marionette. […] I said [to Nguyệt] if she wants to perform [ngồi đồng] in a polite and noble way she should never sit swaying [like this].

According to Master Cảnh, the adage “children of the spirits, but followers of a master” [con nhà thánh nhưng cơ cánh nhà đồng] emphasizes the importance of the master not only in providing spiritual guidance, but also in teaching his/her followers the proper rules of performance (Larsson and Endres 2006). As it would harm the master’s reputation if one of his or her followers is seen performing improperly in a public temple, newly initiates are required to perform at the temple of their initiation — usually their master’s shrine — for a period of three years. During this time, the master monitors the initiates’ progress and offers suggestions for the improvement of their performative skills. A “heavy fate” [nặng căn] for mediumship alone thus does not account for ritual mastery. Correct movements and facial expressions are constitutive of proper performance, and a medium would be criticized for not following the “spirits’ regulations” [phép thánh] if s/he were to assume the wrong facial expression or bodily posture. The basic rules of proper ritual enactment depend on the category of spirits as well as on the spirit’s history and distinguishing characteristics. A Mandarin spirit, for example, has to move with dignified tread and express an air of uncompromising severity and nobility, whereas the Princess spirits associated with the mountainous regions may smile and dance vivaciously with room for improvisations. Recent ethnographic studies of spirit possession underline the importance of knowledge and performative skill in ritual enactment, the lack of which may even lead to ritual failure (for example, see Kendall 1996a). For Schieffelin (1998, p. 198), any performance is inherently risky, as “there is always something aesthetically and/or practically at stake, and something can always go wrong.” In lên đồng, this risk is diminished by the ritual setting: the chầu văn songs “invite the spirits” and “create a sense of ritual time” (Norton 2002, p. 81), and the ritual assistants [hầu dâng] who change

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the medium into the spirits’ ritual robes and hand the ritual accessories are generally experienced mediums themselves and know how to guide a new medium towards performing the right movements at the right time. In addition to their masters’ instructions, new initiates also learn from other mediums by either attending their lên đồng rituals or by watching live or taped performances of famous masters. Within the boundaries of “the spirits’ regulations” [ phép thánh], however, a medium may also develop his or her individual style. Cường, a 29-year-old employee in a fellow-medium’s flower shop, is eager to perfect his technique by learning from the more experienced. He says, “I also watch many performances of other mediums in order to find out what is interesting and beautiful in their performance. I perform according to my own style, but I also apply some particularly interesting techniques from other mediums to enhance my performance.” A performance that is technically skilful, however, is not necessarily considered as beautiful. According to Master Cảnh, it is the “true heart” that constitutes the beauty of ritually enacting this relationship: Some people perform beautifully, in a fresh and pleasant way; their faces completely differ from their everyday appearance. But a performance can also be very dull, you watch a while and you feel depressed, the person performing may even suddenly look like a ghost, boring and ugly. It is difficult (to explain), but all of these issues evolve around the person’s heart [tâm]. It is not a matter of putting on a luxurious performance with lots of offerings for distribution; some people may be very poor and have a very difficult life but their performances are nevertheless beautiful, this is because they are very true-hearted [thật tâm] and genuine mediums [thật đồng].

Cường relates his corresponding conception by using the words “soul” [hồn] or “heart-soul” [tâm hồn], and adds that the bodily movements need the ritual setting to become truly meaningful: “A beautiful performance is when all the participants enjoy it, because the medium performs very soulfully [có hồn]. When I put my whole soul [tâm hồn] into performing, then it looks gentle, composed and beautiful. The movements of the legs and arms are flowing, and the face looks much different.” In his discussion of whether Kaluli spirit séances in Papua New Guinea can be called performances in a Western sense, Schieffelin (1998, p. 203) comes to the conclusion that “the issue is not performative illusion but the exact opposite: it is the presence of spirits.” Accordingly, a lên đồng ritual is deemed

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as authentic and beautiful when the spirits are felt to truly “mount the medium” — which is the literal meaning of lên đồng. An important indication of the spirits’ presence is when the medium’s face changes during the spirit enactment. Cường enthusiastically comments on the photos I took during one of his performances: “If my face changes [like that] when I serve the spirits it means [my performance] is efficacious [linh], wholehearted [có tâm], it means the spirit’s presence makes it beautiful [ngài chứng cho đẹp].” The successful invocation of the spirits’ presence, evidenced in a total submission to a role in a state of “flow” — a term that Turner (1987, p. 54) summarizes as “the merging of action and awareness, the holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement” — can only be achieved by the true devotion of a skilled and whole-hearted performer and is a sign of ritual mastery. On the other hand, a “failure in performance” indicated by a lack of control, awkwardness or ostentatious comportment, does not necessarily invalidate the effectuality of the ritual as a whole (Hüsken 2005) — after all, Nguyệt’s initiation was successful despite her ritual mistakes. As I will show in the next section, the “risks” involved for a lên đồng ritual performer in terms of what is deemed as performatively appropriate and correct are rather closely connected with the dynamics of ritual change and contested claims to ritual authority, aesthetics and authenticity in different historical, political, and economic contexts.

Propitiating the Spirits of Modernity The enormous economic growth and intensification of market relations that Vietnam has experienced since the onset of market reforms in 1986 has (again) facilitated a considerable increase in ritual expenditure (Endres 2001; Malarney 2003). Lên đồng spirit mediumship is clearly no exception. Serving the spirits [hầu thánh] of the Tứ Phủ pantheon is a costly affair, even more so in the capital. The essential set of embroidered satin robes, scarves and accessories may significantly differ in price according to personal requirements as to style and quality. A modest initiation ritual costs five to seven million VND (US$330–450), but wealthy mediums spend up to thirty million VND (US$2,000). According to Master Cảnh, the costs for a regular lên đồng performance, of which a minimum of two are required each year, should not exceed three million VND (US$200) — which approximates about half of the annual income of an average

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Hanoian.5 This amount includes the fees for the temple, the musicians, the ritual assistants and the spirit priest [thầy cúng]; it contains the expenditures on elaborate votive paper objects [vàng mã] and on veritable mountains of skilfully arranged consumer items as offerings in sufficient quantity according to the number of invitees. These offerings are transformed into “divine gifts” [lộc] in the course of the ritual and redistributed as a token of the spirits’ benevolence extending to the participants. In lên đồng mediumship, generosity in ritual spending may be understood in a number of ways: as a visible expression of a person’s sincere heart and religious devotion, as a material investment that earns spiritual benefits, and finally as an indication of the spirits’ efficacy in fostering economic success. It seems only natural that such a “spiritual embodiment of market relations” (Pham Quynh Phuong 2005, p. 210) would also invoke the spirit of competition. Master Dương, a well-known and highly esteemed master medium operating in Hanoi’s old quarter, asserts that competition has become a widespread motivation for devotees to put on lavish displays of ritual generosity: [The issue of competing in the display of prosperity] has become something really important, it even occurs among those people who have a truly sincere heart. Many people [put on big displays] because they are very much in awe of the spirits or even fear them, they want to pour out their heart with all their strength to be close to the spirits, but there is also a large number of people who just want to compete.

Evidently, the very emphasis on aesthetic skills and performative techniques also enables lên đồng ritual practice to accommodate practitioners that are said to be “show-off mediums” [đồng đua] (Endres 2006). This appellation designates performers — some of which are said to not even have a medium’s fate [căn] — whose agenda is dominated (in some cases may be even replaced) by a powerful urge to compete with other mediums in putting on grand displays of their wealth. This, however, is nothing new in lên đồng ritual practice. Elderly mediums who underscore the simplicity and pureness of religious devotion in the olden days [ngày xưa] tend to overlook the fact that most of them received their calling into mediumship during times of severe restrictions imposed on ritual practices by both legal prohibitions as well as by economic hardship (Larsson and Endres 2006). But printed sources dating back to the late colonial period reveal a different reality (Thien Do 2003, p. 98). From the entrepreneurial boom era of the early twentieth century up to

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the end of the Franco-Vietnam War, lên đồng ritual practice apparently flourished into a veritable “spirit possession movement” [ phong trào đồng bóng] among the female members of the new urban bourgeoisie (Nhất Lang 1952, p. 3). The anthropologist Nguyễn Văn Huyên (1995 [1945], p. 256) states that “in Hanoi [temples dedicated to the cult] are so much frequented that the price of a consecration becomes unaffordable for people living in simple conditions.” In his novel Hầu Thánh (1942, reprinted in 1990) the author Lộng Chương vividly portrays the world of mediums in late colonial Hanoi as one that was dominated by wealthy women vying for status and reputation among the “children of the spirits” [con nhà thánh] in a passionate competition to outdo each other in fulfilling their religious duties with generous splendour. The fact that more than one writer felt inspired to reflect satirically or moralistically on the effervescence of lên đồng mediumship6 echoes the condescending attitude among the educated urban Vietnamese intelligentsia towards popular religious practices and excessive ritual spending (Endres 2001). To illustrate my point, let me quote a particularly spiteful passage from Phan Kế Bính’s influential study Vietnamese Customs [Việt Nam Phong Tục] that was first published in 1915: The mediums wear green and red robes and colourful scarves, they hop and bop in front of the altar, wriggling and swinging their hips. […] It is said that mediums imitate the fanciful European dancing style that provides women with an opportunity to exhibit their attractive feminine figures. As our tradition lacks this opportunity, they borrow the form of đồng bóng to dance — it is characteristic for women that they want to show their beauty in front of everybody. (Phan Kế Bính 1992, pp. 239, 240; my translation)

Early twentieth century intellectuals and writers like Phan Kế Bính subscribed to a concept of cultural modernization that strongly advocated the Vietnamese adoption of Western values, lifestyles and technologies. Their critical comments about practices such as mediumship hitherto have been characterized as a process of putting “tradition on trial”, negatively assessing traditions that were considered obsolete or unequal to the demands of the modern world (Marr 1981). Yet the above quote suggests their criticisms were at times also directed at the impropriety of such practices as awkwardly modern: blatantly ostentatious and ridiculously influenced by contemporary fashions. Their critique can therefore be read as an attempt to rescue the spirit of modernity from its

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derailment by the disorderly innovation of a marginalized ritual practice performed by women and the prestige pursuits of the female nouveau riche. The cartoon below nicely illustrates this point. In the 1930s, tennis came to be a fashionable sport among the middle-class urban Vietnamese of both sexes (Nguyen Van Ky 1995, p. 226). Here, the tennis court is transformed into an altar that is replete with tennis paraphernalia, and the dancing medium’s spirit insignia are replaced by a tennis racket and a ball. The humour in this cartoon lies in the unlikely parallels it suggests between these two fashionable pursuits of the female middle-class of the day, with the implication that these “traditional” and “modern’” feminine activities are not necessarily distinct. According to Nguyen Van Ky (1995, p. 226), the caricature suggests that in spite of their modern aspirations, the majority of women subsequently deserted the tennis courts and returned back to their “ancient cultic practices”. In contrast to this interpretation of lên đồng mediumship as a means of articulating a resistance to or retreat from the disorienting confrontation with the onset of modernity, I argue that — then as now — lên đồng mediumship instead provides its practitioners with a symbolic framework that allows them to eagerly assimilate modern influences and to impose meaningfulness upon the disruptive and dynamic developments that have been taking place since the beginning of the twentieth century (Jackson 1999a, p. 50; Pham Quynh Phuong 2005, p. 193; Knauft 1988, p. 13). Spirit mediums thus embody a subaltern modernity that creatively combines tradition and modernity as well as the worldly and the divine in ways that seem to disorient and bewilder authoritative cultural mediators, causing them to re-assert their authority by alleging disorder and making snide comments at the expense of the practices they interpret. In Vietnam, the relationship between spirituality and materialism has long been perceived as antagonistic (Pham Quynh Phuong 2005, p. 202) despite the fact that transactions with the spirit world for material wellbeing and other this-worldly benefits have always been a central element of popular religious practice (Taylor 2004a, p. 84). Disapproving concern not only deals with material gains that religious masters, spirit priests and fortune-tellers may extract from their clients’ spiritual devotion (a point I will elaborate below), but also with extravagant ritual expenditure. As pointed out above, lên đồng mediumship seems to be particularly susceptible to modernity and its sensory and sensuous pleasures. Conspicuous displays

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of splendour and wealth in lên đồng mediumship alone, however, do not necessarily boost a medium’s status and social prestige within the groupnetwork of followers, fellow mediums and invitees (cf. Malarney 1997). It is, allegedly, more appropriate to always spend the same amount on ritual performances than to sumptuously serve the spirits in times of moneymaking and to hold plain rituals when profits are poor, as this is said to bring forth “the head of an elephant and the tail of a rat” [đầu voi đuôi chuột]. Furthermore, choosing proper offerings and expertly distributing blessed gifts [ phát lộc] among the ritual participants requires social and performative skills that go far beyond an extravagant display of wealth and generosity. The ritual redistribution of offerings as lộc deserves particular attention, as it points to the creative adaptability of lên đồng ritual practice to the changing tastes of Vietnam’s modern consumer culture.

The Spirits’ Changing Tastes The heavy plastic bag dangling from the handlebar of my motorbike is about to burst open. Another bump and its contents would scatter all over the pavement: cans of Hanoi Beer, Pepsi, Mirinda and Red Bull Energy Drink, a green mango, two cucumbers, some ginger, limes and red chillies, a round glutinous rice cake, a bag of white sugar, a small serving of Ajino Moto (MSG), cream filled wafers, chicken-flavoured instant noodle soup, a bag of Highland coffee candy, potato and taro snack, a small red towel, and crisp bills in small denominations worth 36,000 VND. As I fiddle around with the front gate padlock, my friendly old neighbour remarks curiously: “Been to the market?” It may look as if I have stocked up on necessities for the weekend, but in fact I have obtained these items in a Hanoi temple during a lên đồng ritual performance to which I had been invited by Ms Hương, a 68-year-old spirit medium. In many contemporary religious movements as well as in social commentaries on spiritual wholesomeness, commodification is rejected as an embodiment of evil that contaminates religious purity (Miller 1995, p. 146). In this vein, the doyen of Vietnamese anthropological studies of religion Đặng Nghiêm Vạn presumes that “the cold stench of money muddies the pureness of religion” [hơi lạnh của đồng tiền làm vẩn đục sự trong sáng của tôn giáo] (Đặng Nghiêm Vạn 2001, p. 155). His critique is not only directed against alleged religious profiteers who abuse people’s credulity, but also against religious practices that he thinks have degenerated into a mere

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“bribery” [hối lộ] of spirits and deities. Recent anthropological discourse has started to rethink “spirituality and the market as interpenetrating domains rather than categorically distinct and incompatible aspects of human life” (Jackson 1999b, p. 255; Hefner 1998). Moreover, the study of consumption as a cultural practice has given valuable insights into how people use goods from both the local and the global market to create social and cultural identities (Meyer 1998, p. 771; see also Miller 1995). Taking a closer look at the trays of offerings presented to the spirits of the four palaces reveals changing patterns of consumption in ritual spending that may even contribute to an increase of sales and production of ritually significant modern consumer items (see Yang 2000, p. 492, Kendall 1996b). For each spirit sequence, specific sets of offerings [đồ lễ ] need to be prepared in sufficient quantity according to the number of kin and friends the medium has invited to his or her ritual performance. Some of the novel consumer goods that have arrived with the market economy over the past few years have found their way into the temples and onto the altars dedicated to the spirit pantheon of the Four Palaces. What these products have in common is their attractive packaging, such as glistening cans and gaudy plastic boxes that feature a variety of eye-catching imprints and colours. Whereas most of the offerings are digestible, some spirits also seem to fancy household or fashion items like bright-coloured terry towels, plastic baskets or hairslides. Whether or not new consumer goods are considered as appropriate offerings seems to be first and foremost a question of palatability and aesthetics: On the whole, the offerings change according to the living standard of society. For example a can of tinned [sardines] with a red label can be offered to Cô Chín [who wears a pink robe], right? There’s nothing wrong with that — because as offerings to the spirits, I simply choose the most delicious. Fruit, confectionery, meat or any other items [used as offerings] have to be considered as tasty, as unusual, and as suitable in colour. [The offerings] have to match the colour [of the spirits’ robes] — for example, if the item has a white packaging it can be offered to Cô Bơ but not to Cô Chín. (Master Cảnh, Transcript March 2005)

According to this ritual sense of aesthetics, silvery cans of Diet Coke or Halida Beer match the white robes of the Third Mandarin [Quan Đệ Tam] and the Third Prince [Ông Hoàng Bơ], blue cans of Pepsi or Tiger Beer may be used as offerings for the Fifth Mandarin [Quan Tuần] or the Seventh Prince [Ông Hoàng Bảy], and cans of Fanta go well with the

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yellow robe of the Tenth Prince [Ông Hoàng Mười]. Some of the female spirits are offered packets of instant noodle soup or biscuit boxes [for example, Chầu Lục, Chầu Bát], and small containers of milk or drinking water are presented to the Third Princess [Cô Bơ]. In contrast, the female spirits associated with ethnic minorities of the mountainous areas are offered non-processed produce such as areca nuts, perfectly shaped fruit (mangos, apples, oranges, starfruit), or an assortment of lime, red chillies, ginger and starfruit [Chầu Bé and Cô Bé]. Besides modern commodities that have been incorporated into lên đồng ritual consumption, however, certain traditional offerings still remain obligatory: The offerings change of course, but there are also essential offerings, like for example areca nuts; even if nobody [in the group] cherishes betel quids anymore you still have to offer areca nuts. Or to the Seventh Prince, you have no choice than to offer green tea, nowadays there are many kinds of canned drinks that match in colour and look very beautiful, but you still have to offer green tea. These are essential offerings, they are obligatory. (Master Cảnh, Transcript March 2005)

The spirits’ appetite for modern consumer items strongly reflects the responsiveness of lên đồng mediumship to the market economy and the new patterns of consumption created in Hanoi’s rapidly changing urban culture. However, it also highlights the pragmatic side of religious devotion: transformed into lộc, these tokens of divine benevolence are distributed among the ritual participants and taken home for consumption: First of all, the offerings are presented to the spirits, and then to family, friends, and fellow-mediums that attend each others’ rituals. That’s why [mediums] choose tasty things, things that can be taken home for consumption instead of being given away to outsiders. (Master Cảnh, Transcript March 2005)

Master Hảo, who is in charge of a renowned private temple in the old quarter, underlines the economic impact of lên đồng mediumship and claims that the local confectionary [bánh kẹo] industry has even started to design their packages according to the ritual aesthetics of spirit embodiment. In stark contrast to the centrally-planned period of “sensory depression” (Thomas 2004), when foodstuffs were strictly rationed, colourful fabrics simply unavailable, and ritual practices severely restricted or even prohibited, the explosion of shops specializing in resplendent ritual props and ritually significant consumer items nicely links the return of sensory pleasures in

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the post-Renovation era with a newly revitalized and creatively enhanced ritual aesthetic that fervently defies “[…] the solemn state (stage)-managed spectacles in which bodies of high-ranking cadres are offered up as senseless signifiers of ‘nothing but’ the people, the nation, and the party” (Thomas 2004). Besides modern consumer products, money has become an equally — if not more — important currency in ritual transactions between humans and spirits.7 In preparation for their ritual performance, mediums change an average of about 1–2 million VND into crisp bills of small denominations. This money is meant for distribution as lộc, and usually kept in a lockable vanity case that is placed in front of the medium’s “dressing table” during the ritual. The bills are primarily meant for distribution as blessed gifts in appreciation of the musicians’ virtuosity and as a “payment” for the dexterous services of the ritual assistants in dressing the medium into the spirits’ robes and tying ethnic minority scarves into elaborate turbans for the Lady and Princess spirits. Besides, they are handed out as added extras to or substitutes for offerings (for example, in case there are not enough offerings for all participants) or as special treats for individual participants. The Little Lady and the Little Princess spirits are particularly open-handed with money. During their vivacious dances, the performing medium may throw fanned-out bundles of 500 đồng (approximately three cents) towards the huddled assembly of ritual participants, sometimes causing them to riotously jostle for as many of the spiritually charged bills as they can catch. I do not agree with Yang’s suspicion that such displays of ritual excess perhaps express a repressed disdain for earthly possessions (Yang 2000, p. 479). Rather, this recently introduced ludic element of tossing money emerges as a joyous celebration of material wealth that is generously shared with the ritual community. During certain sequences, participants also may come forward with a particular request for which they ask the spirit’s special blessings [xin lộc]. For this purpose, money bills are spread out on a small plastic plate and politely presented to the spirit with the words “please witness my heart” [ngài chứng tâm cho con], followed by the request of the petitioner. The medium then takes a few bills from the plate and puts back some “change” and maybe some additional lộc like a flower or a cigarette. Sometimes the petitioner receives back more than she or he offered, sometimes less. Regarding their “social life” (Appadurai 1986), the blessed gifts distributed in the course of a lên đồng ritual are certainly not only indicative of a

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medium’s prosperity and reputation, but also an important mechanism of building and consolidating relationships between the medium and his/her invitees, between fellow-mediums, and between masters and their followers. Among the various performative skills that are required of an adept medium, the “art of distributing blessed gifts” [nghệ thuật phát lộc] is crucial to ritual mastery.

What Distinguishes a Good Master? The lộc consuming meal [thu lộc] after a lên đồng performance at Master Cảnh’s shrine is usually set up on the floor of his sparsely furnished private bedroom. In August 2004, I noticed that the fading wedding pictures on the wall had been replaced by two framed recent portraits of Master Cảnh taken by a professional photographer. One shows the master dressed in smart black breeches and a black shirt with a stylish tie. He nonchalantly slings his jacket over his right shoulder while his left hand is casually placed akimbo, a large wristwatch poking out from under his cuffs. He wears dark sunglasses and the air of a modern businessman. In contrast, in his role of a master medium he typically wears loose brown slacks and a short brown tunic. When I comment on his good looks of a worldly gentleman, he laughs and says: “Sometimes I just want to be a normal person! Being a master is such a difficult task!” A master medium [ông/bà đồng or đồng thầy] is a medium who has, over a period of many years, acquired enough knowledge and expertise to initiate followers into mediumship by conducting the initiation rite of “opening the palaces” [mở phủ] for them.8 As a general rule, a person qualifies as a medium not because of his or her free will to enter mediumship, but because that person has căn đồng, a “destined aptitude” (Norton 2000) or “root of mediumship” (Nguyen Thi Hien 2002). Whether or not a medium can advance into the rank of a master is thus first of all a matter of knowledge and fate: “First of all I need to be cognizant [nhận thức], and secondly I have to be destined to become a master” [có căn mạng làm đồng thầy]. (Master Cảnh, Transcript November 2003). A proficient master not only needs to be well-grounded [ phải có gốc] in the history and legends of the spirits, but he or she must also be able to embody this knowledge “according to the spirits’ rules” during a ritual performance. A master has to pay particular attention to the proper succession of spirits, the correct bodily movements and facial expressions,

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as well as the appropriate offerings for each spirit sequence. Knowledge and performative skills are thus inseparable, and many years of dedication, practice and experience are required in order to attain the ritual mastery that distinguishes a reputed master medium: A [medium] who serves [the spirits] in an ugly way can never become a master, because it means the spirits do not “bestow reputation and face” [bán danh bán diện]. Students must have a proficient teacher in order to become proficient; how can the students be skilled if the teacher is dimwitted or insipid? Some don’t know how to “open the palace” [mở phủ] even after fifty years of experience as a medium, they don’t know [which palace] to open first and which one next, or which offerings have to be presented. But a destined person just has to watch [other masters] and to learn from experience. For example the leg and hand movements, the work with the Mandarins [cái làm việc với các quan], up to the handling of the water dipper during the mở phủ ritual — the most difficult of all. (Master Cảnh, Transcripts November 2002 and 2003)

Equally important, however, is the efficacy of the initiation ritual performed by a master. If, for example, a master diagnoses a “yin illness” [bệnh âm] and advises the client to enter mediumship as a cure, it would seriously harm the master’s reputation if no betterment is achieved in the aftermath of the palace-opening ritual. A master also has to display significant social and empathic skills in guiding his or her followers’ hearts. The bond between masters and their followers is perceived as a destined affinity [nhân duyên], and the adage “children of the spirits, but followers of a master” [con nhà thánh nhưng cơ cánh nhà đồng] indicates that the master is perceived as the respected head of an enlarged family. And just like in a family, followers sometimes disobey the rules, resent each other for trifles, or vie for their master’s attention and appreciation. A Vietnamese proverb states that “the jealousy of husband and wife cannot compare with the jealousy of mediums” [ghen vợ ghen chồng không bằng ghen đồng ghen bóng]. Mediums in fact easily feel jealous, for example, if they think another medium’s robes or performances are more beautiful, or if they get the impression that their master pays more attention to other disciples. Master Cảnh explains why he pampers the new initiates more than his more experienced followers when he distributes spirit favours [ phát lộc] during his performances: If someone asks me “why did you give me [spirit favours] in the past but not now?”, I tell them, “this is not correct, but as a new medium the

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spirits just took special care of you; now you have grown up and you have younger sisters or brothers like in a family — the younger ones are always offered special treats like a banana or an orange but not the older ones, right?” (Master Cảnh, Transcript 2002).

Attracting a large clientele of faithful followers further enhances a master medium’s prestige and status. With a growing number of disciples, masters may also gain significant wealth — even though it may not be overtly displayed. Fees and voluntary contributions from followers are spent to a great extent on adding to the temple’s splendour. In the past four years, Master Cảnh’s modest shrine has undergone significant renovation such as redecorations of the altar (additional statues, vases, and a blinking neon halo for one of the mother goddesses) as well as an enlargement of the outer terrace in order to accommodate more ritual participants during performances, the latest improvement for his followers’ convenience being a bathroom on the second floor. In most cases, however, this income also has to sustain the master and his or her family’s livelihood. This reality relates to the intensifying discourse on the commercialization [thương mại hoá] of lên đồng mediumship in general, and on master mediums who allegedly “trade in spirits” [buôn thần bán thánh] for their personal profit by disguising their own worldly demands as spirits’ requests [miệng trần bóng thánh] or by showing favouritism towards affluent followers who donate large sums. Master mediums therefore tend to put precautionary stress on their moral integrity by expressing their own contempt for mercenary materialism (see also Pham Quynh Phuong 2005, pp. 224–25) and underline their efforts to carefully balance out economic inequalities among their followers. Master Cảnh’s followers predominantly come from a modest social background, and it is one of his major concerns to lecture them about keeping the costs of their ritual performances affordable and reasonable. His own background might provide a clue for his values of thriftiness and social equality that share common features with socialist ideals: as a new initiate, Cảnh was drafted into the army and performed his military service in Cambodia for several years (1977–82). After that, he worked in a factory for several years before establishing himself as a cloth vendor in 1987, a trade he later abandoned in order to devote himself fully to his role as a religious master. His thriftiness, however, apparently earns him criticisms from other masters for undercharging and wanting to attract more followers by issuing dumping prices. Yet in spite of his ideals, Master Cảnh also underlines that a person who cannot afford to

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enter mediumship has to accept this as fate, too. To a certain extent and if his financial means allow him to, he tries to help poor destined mediums to cover their costs, but he admits that neither a master medium nor the spirit priest, ritual assistants and liturgical singers can provide their services for nothing but charity [làm phúc].

Challenging Hybridity: The Call for Official Recognition and “Streamlining” Anthropology’s unbroken fascination with spirit possession cults is not least due to their tremendous creative potential and ability to hybridize by embodying and making sense of modernity’s vibrant dynamics. This flexibility “enables adherents to explore multiple refractions of order and morality; to distil the lessons of history, to sift, evaluate, and situate external influences; and to respond” (Boddy 1994, p. 414). On the other hand, however, hybridization is often perceived as a threat to authenticity, “tradition” and moral values by the actors. Werbner (1997, p. 12) rightfully states that “hybridity, much like contemporary religious syncretism, is a collective condition perceived by actors themselves to be potentially threatening to their sense of moral integrity, and hence subject to argument, reflection and contestation: a highly politicised form.” Moreover, the emerging divergent claims to interpretative authority and ritual authenticity in lên đồng mediumship advanced in the reflexive discourse on whether certain ritual practices — be they innovative or long-established — are deemed as adequate or as illegitimate raises the question of whose hybridity acquires authority and under what conditions. As a participant observer in numerous lên đồng ritual performances, I frequently noticed ritual elements that were new to me or seemed out of the ordinary. Discussing my observations with master mediums, I became aware that regional variations and creative interpretations of “the spirits’ rules” were subject to heavy contestation. Of particular concern was the order in which spirits are embodied during a performance — for example, whether the Second Lady Cam Đường, a more recent addition to the pantheon of embodied spirits who is associated with trade, should be served [hầu] before the Third Lady or after the Little Lady — and the elevation of local spirits such as the Lady of Coffee [Bà Chúa Cà Phê] into the ranks of spirits embodied in lên đồng mediumship. Other issues were related to correct bodily movements, gestures and facial expressions,

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suitable sets of offerings for each spirit sequence, and the use of new special effects like setting off confetti bombs that spew gaudy paper scraps into every nook and cranny of the temple. We also discussed the problematic of extravagant ritual spending and the new conceptualization of certain spirits as efficacious in maximizing the chances of notorious gamblers; or of ascribing pathological dispositions such as drug addiction to the spirit root [căn] of the Seventh Prince [Ông Hoàng Bảy]. Such an overtly projection of this-worldly concerns [việc trần, việc đời] onto the spirit world, so declares Master Cảnh, is not right [không đúng]. A master’s task thus is to educate his or her followers about proper ritual conduct: “You have to teach the right way and follow the spirits’ rules; you can’t muddle up things according to your own ideas’ (Master Cảnh, Transcript, November 2002). Whereas Master Cảnh caters to the needs of a still manageable group of followers, Master Dương’s long-standing repute has earned him such a huge clientele that his fame in the world of spirit practitioners comes close to that of an illustrious celebrity in the entertainment industry. When I decided to pay him a casual visit during the high season of lên đồng performances in March 2005, I expected him — like on many occasions in the past — to either not be at home or too busy with receiving visitors to let himself be drawn into a substantial discussion with a German anthropologist. But I was lucky to meet him on his only day off in weeks, ready to deliver an eloquent and passionate lecture on his personal perception of modern-day lên đồng mediumship as being in a state of utter chaos and confusion [lộn xộn]: “This religion [đạo] is drifting [thả nổi] towards boundless chaos [hỗn loạn vô biên]. Now what we need to do is to distinguish between right and wrong so that it becomes purified and respected by everybody.’’ As most harmful to the reputation of lên đồng mediumship Master Dương identifies the “bunch of fortune-telling mediums” [lũ đồng bói] who, by luring desperate believers into paying fortunes for ritual purposes, ruin whole families for their own short-sighted profit. In a wider perspective, so says Master Dương, their irresponsible brazenness even has “an impact on government policies.” By suggesting that, for the sake of preventing an enforcement of the still persisting ban on “superstitions”, lên đồng ritual practice should be stripped of its divinatory functions which once represented the most crucial element of mediumship (see Durand 1959, p. 12), Master Dương seems to advocate a ritual hybrid that incorporates the party’s scientistic

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critique and its strongly enforced monopoly on telling the past and the future into lên đồng mediumship. With the waning of the “cult of frugality” (Ho Tai 1995, p. 284), a ravenous desire to accrue wealth has become prevalent in Vietnamese society and seems to have given rise to an “occult economy” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2000) that increasingly conjures material well-being and economic success by appealing to the supernatural efficacy of spirits. Whereas some scrupulous fortune-tellers may indeed disguise their own greed for profit as spirits’ requests, many adherents of the Four Palaces have come to believe in lên đồng ritual practice as an efficacious path to prosperity. Master Dương, however, although recognizing the close inter-relation between market and morality, strongly disagrees with this perception by pointing to a non-materialistic, morally pure dimension of religion that corresponds to Vietnamese conceptions of Buddhism rather than to ideas associated with the propitiation of spirits (Pham Quynh Phuong 2005, p. 206; Soucy 1999): We say that without money, religion cannot exist; […] the two things are interrelated. But if you put money and religion on a scale it should become clear that religion has to be considered as a lot more important than money, as it purifies the human spirit and soul. However, nowadays people think the opposite, many believe they just have to lên đồng and they will have a lot of money, right? Money is [the result of] my labour; so how can this [idea] be considered as religiously proper [đúng đạo], this cannot be right.

As equally harmful for the reputation of lên đồng mediumship among the general public, Master Dương perceives the issue of competing in ritual spending. He criticizes the widespread practice of mediums borrowing money in order to vie with each other in organizing sumptuous ritual performances, and claims that ritual competition may have serious consequences for the medium’s family economy: “They get drawn deeper and deeper into this vicious cycle of competition until they are bankrupt, crushed. Then they have to ask themselves: do we still believe in the spirits? […] [Competition] harms the [Four Palaces] religion; it does not make it prosper at all.” Master mediums therefore bear great responsibility for their followers: A master medium and temple owner with some five or seven hundred, or even some thousand followers at hand is like a strong motive force, if he goes the wrong way then the whole group will go the wrong way; like in

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a train derailment — an irresponsible train guard can cause immeasurable disaster. (Master Dương, Transcript 2005)

Yet he adds that master mediums in fact only have sufficient authority to teach their followers about the customs and traditions [việc phong tục] of lên đồng mediumship, whereas they have no authority — in the form of a legal entity [ pháp nhân] — to enforce the “spirits’ rules” among their followers. In order to put an end to the “jumbled condition” of lên đồng spirit mediumship, he calls for official state recognition of the hitherto non-institutionalized belief as a national religion and demands the establishment of an umbrella organization that safeguards guiding principles (yet to be formulated) and educational standards for master mediums: I very much want this religion to be granted the status of a national religion, to be granted state recognition, to have general guiding principles, dogmas, an organization, [religious] leaders and learning, examinations. Like Buddhism. Why can’t we [be organized] like Buddhism, considering that this autochthonous religion of ours has been existing for several thousands of years? And why do we allow this religion to float like this, why do we tolerate that so many immoral individuals exploit this religion to make believers waver and non-believers sneer at it? They trample on this religion! That’s why we have to work single-mindedly on [the task of establishing] an organization, only then can we distinguish what is wrong and harmful, and what is right and fruitful. (Master Dương, Transcript 2005)

Master Dương’s strong plea echoes the chorus of party ideologists, cultural officials and scholars who — with changing emphasis — have argued since the end of the French colonial period that the positive sides of “traditional culture” needed to be enhanced, whereas the negative aspects must be eliminated (Endres 2002). A “prosperity cult” perceived as fraught with superstitions and wasteful practices has certainly no chance of being included in the canon of “beautiful customs and worthy traditions” [thuần phong mỹ tục] that are now being fostered with the aim of protecting Vietnam’s hegemonic cultural identity against the evil spirits of modernity. Master Dương’s appeal may therefore express a persistent fear of a new state-led crackdown on superstitious practices as these are still officially outlawed.9 Furthermore, this willingness to submit to state control — that is also shared by Master Cảnh — denotes the painful experience of marginality in the midst of an ongoing re-assessment of autochthonous cultural traditions and values in search of Vietnam’s unique national

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cultural identity. It is for this reason, too, that spirit mediums so often emphasize the meritorious deeds of particular spirits in defence of the nation. Yet I agree with Werbner that “[i]n reality, there are no fixed cultures in modern nation-states; only political imaginaries of pure or impure cultural horizons” (Werbner 1997, p. 23). Ritual hybrids like lên đồng spirit performances will ultimately continue to challenge the hegemonic vision of cultural identity by embodying, negotiating, and contesting the representations of Vietnam’s multiple modernities. The compliant attempts of Master Cảnh and Master Dương to tame the explosion of ritual sumptuousness, for example, are persistently undermined by their own disciples who push the limits of the acceptable (or affordable) further by insisting on holding lavish rituals — even at the cost of incurring debts — and strongly believing in the spirits’ efficacy in bestowing business agency and material wealth.

Concluding Remarks When I first attended a lên đồng ritual performance in a village shrine back in 1998, my fascination was first and foremost sparked by the ritual aesthetics: the sumptuousness of the medium’s robes, the careful arrangement of offerings, the entrancing rhythms of the chầu văn music, and the subtle gracefulness that distinguished the medium’s movements. Yet seven years and countless lên đồng performances later, I can see the point of Cuisinier’s conclusion that the mediums’ dances are hardly ever beautiful (Cuisinier 1951, p. 122) — particularly if performed by inexperienced new initiates, and with regard to more sophisticated dance traditions in Asia. Yet as I have shown, performativity in fact plays a crucial role in lên đồng mediumship, and beauty is a key attribute of a successful performance. Market relations and a burgeoning economy have even enhanced its significance: whereas during times of war, food scarcity and state persecution mediums did with one single robe, very few modest offerings, and no music for fear of revealing noise, material comfort and modern consumerism has set new standards for ritual aesthetics and infused certain spirits and performative practices with new symbolic meanings. The flourishing of lên đồng mediumship in times of economic prosperity and social transformation, however, is not just a recent phenomenon, nor can it be viewed simply as a retreat to an archaic past that arises from the upsetting experience of modernity’s dynamics. Rather, lên đồng

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mediumship and ritual practice has creatively taken shape in and reflected on the historical and political context of the times, thus challenging both colonial and socialist-nationalist hegemonic narratives of modernity. At the same time the “essential contestability” (Lambek 1996, p. 238) of symbolic meanings and practices is mapped out in contentious claims to ritual authenticity, proper ritual and moral conduct, and interpretative authority. These claims can be read as an effort to regulate the vital role of lên đồng mediumship as a creative strategy of performative construction through which participants initiate and incorporate new symbolic worlds of meaning within a late-socialist urban context in which clashes between party ideology, the rules of a capricious market and changing value orientations create continual challenges. Moreover, the discursive oscillation between cultural essentialism and hybridized aestheticism asserts that Vietnam’s modernities are not only multiple — in the sense that different social actors pursue different political and cultural programmes of modernity which continuously expand the range of views on what it means to be “modern” (Eisenstadt 2000) — but are also subject to negotiation and contestation. FIGURE 6.1 Mediums Presenting Offerings at Phủ Giày Festival, March 2006.

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Kirsten W. Endres FIGURE 6.2 A Male Master Embodies the Sixth Lady (Chầu Lục)

FIGURE 6.3 The Little Princess Throws Money.

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FIGURE 6.4 Offerings Received During a Lên Ðồng Ritual.

FIGURE 6.5 Cartoon by Nhất Lang in Phong Hoa, 25 August 1933, entitled “A Good Idea for the Tennis Courts Not to be Left Deserted”.

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NOTES This chapter is based on fieldwork carried out between September 2001 and June 2004 besides my work at Hanoi University of Technology, and again in March 2005. Since October 2006, further in-depth research has been made possible by a generous grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG). I would like to thank Susan Bayly, Heike Drotbohm and Philip Taylor for commenting on earlier drafts of this chapter and offering valuable suggestions. Special thanks go to Nguyễn Thị Thanh Bình for assisting me in conducting interviews. My deepest thanks and respect are owed to the many spirit mediums in Hanoi whose willingness to share their insights and experiences have made this work possible. 1

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In Vietnamese conceptualizations of divine beings, the distinction between spirits (thần), saints (thánh) and gods (chúa) is not very sharply drawn. The spirits of the Four Palaces are often referred to as thánh or ngài, the latter being a honorific also for addressing human excellencies. However, I have opted to use the term “spirits” so that long-established terms like spirit mediumship etc. do not get muddled. For all informants cited in the text I have used pseudonyms in order to protect their privacy. See Barley Norton, Music and Possession in Vietnam (2000, p. 55), for a discussion of the terms “possession” and “obsession”. Male spirits can cause a feeling of heaviness in the head and/or shoulders and hotness in the heart/guts (nóng ruột), whereas many of the female spirits rather cause feelings of lightness (Norton 2000, 50f). According to official surveys, the average monthly income per capita in Hanoi in 2002 was 620.000 VND (approx. US$40). See General Statistical Office (2004, p. 86). E.g. Nhất Lang’s “fictional reportages” (phóng sự tiểu thuyết) on mediumship (Đồng Bóng 1952), the series of reports by Trọng Lang published in 1935 in the weekly magazine Phong Hóa (Customs) discussed in Thien Do (2003, 99), and the novel Hầu Thánh by Lộng Chương that was first published in 1942 (Lộng Chương 1990). In contrast, among the Shona in Zimbabwe modern consumer products are perceived as extremely dangerous for spirit mediums and therefore avoided. See David Lan, “Resistance to the Present by the Past: Mediums and Money in Zimbabwe”, in Parry and Bloch (1989). A range of terms is used to designate a “regular” medium. S/he is referred to as a follower or disciple (con nhang, đệ từ) of a master; a novice medium (thanh đồng), a chair (for the spirits) of the Four Palaces (ghế của bốn phủ), a person having the fate of a medium (người có đồng) or simply a servant (người hầu). See Article 8/2 of the Ordinance on Religious Belief and Religious Organizations issued in June 2004; for a translated version, see (accessed 25 August 2005).

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7 Empowerment and Innovation among Saint Trần’s Female Mediums Phạm Quỳnh Phương

It is the beginning of a big thunderstorm in mid-summer 2003. The wind whistles through the window and the wooden shutters beat the frame of the casement window of Lan’s newly built four-storey house. We sit talking on the tiled floor on the top floor, in front of an altar where there are two incense bowls, one for her ancestors, the other for spirits. Lan turns to me, “You said you want to ask the spirits something, right?” “Can you invite Saint Trần?” “Okay, but it can’t be long today. I have to pick up my son from kindergarten. And it’s going to rain soon.” Closing her eyes, with her fists on knees, Lan sits still and seems to concentrate intensely for a few minutes. Perspiring slightly, she burps and hiccups. “I am Saint Trần here, what do you want to ask?” I do not know how to start. Lan urges me, “Just ask him any question, he is here.” “Pray to you, Lord [lạy ngài]” I say. “I have a bank note printed in the 1950s in Saigon with your picture on it. Nobody knows your image, since you lived so long ago, in the thirteenth century. Could you please look at this note and tell me if they drew you correctly?”

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“Yes, Lord”, says Lan, looking at the banknote, talking to “Saint Trần”, “You possess magical power. You are supernaturally efficacious. Is this image right?” “This picture approximates my image, but my chin is squarer, my eyes brighter and my eyebrows are sharper,” Saint Trần replies. “Loosely speaking”, Saint Trần concludes, “this photo is ninety percent right. I am very busy, though, and can only appear for a minute.” “Yes, I pray to you, Lord. Can anyone be incarnated by you?” I ask. Lan stares at a point on the wall and says in the role of Saint Trần, “In my realm, there is no frequency like in Tứ Phủ (the Four Palaces). Only when there is a spiritual task [việc nhà thánh], and only people who have “duyên” (compatibility) and “căn” (destined aptitude) with nhà Trần (Trần family) can be incarnated as me.” “Many important officials pray to you in temples. Is this because they have a true heart [thật tâm] for you or some other reason?” I ask. “Yes, Lord”, Lan says, her voice catching a little. “He said that he turned out to be awe-inspiringly powerful; that they have no choice but to have confidence in him.” “The luck of this nation is that people have begun to be more enlightened. If they don’t believe in the world that you ordinary people call ‘the sacred and mysterious world’, which helps and supports this country, I don’t know what will happen to our nation,” Saint Trần proclaims. “Why do people cut their tongues, pierce their cheeks and strangle themselves when they are manifested by you, Lord?” I continue. “Yes, my Lord…” Lan keeps quiet for a minute, then says, “He said something very long that I can’t remember and can’t interpret. And his spirit also said that there are some secrets that can’t be revealed to ordinary people.” “Do you think confusion exists in the way people worship you now?” I ask. After a silence, Lan says, “Yes … yes, I pray to you, Mother [dạ, dạ, con lạy Mẫu]. Mother says that there is no rule for worship. It is difficult to determine what is standard as long as people believe in it.” Surprised that Lan has suddenly invoked the Mother Goddess, I say, ‘Pray to you, Mother. I did not know that you are also here. Mother, what is the essence of the cult of Saint Trần?’ This is followed by another, longer silence. “Yes, yes … They don’t answer. They laughed and asked why you, a knowledgeable Ph.D. student,

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would ask such a question. They said that they are very busy and they left.” Lan then criticizes me for asking questions that are too difficult for spirits to answer. Economic changes occurring since Đổi Mới (renovation) policies were introduced in the mid-1980s have been accompanied by pronounced shifts in gender roles. The negative effects of the economic reforms on women have been discussed in several recent studies (Goodkind 1995; Fahey 1998; Werner 2002; Lương 2003; Nghiem Lien Huong 2004; Drummond and Rydstrom 2004). As Werner and Bélanger (2002, p. 20) suggest, “most authors see the reform era as detrimental to women.” The relatively small percentage of women in state employment, and the much lower salary which women receive in comparison to men highlights women’s lower social status. Globalization has produced images of women seduced and trapped by consumerism, and the commodification of women’s bodies through the significant growth of the sex industry has led to the resurgence of prostitution throughout the country. At the same time, neo-traditionalist discourses place domestic pressure on women to nurture and be responsible for “family happiness”, as well as manage the household economy. While the social and economic status of women in modern Vietnamese society is seen as precarious, scholars generally agree that women play a dominant role in the religious sphere. Prevailing views about gender in Vietnam see religion as a “natural” domain for women, because of their tendencies towards weakness and dependence. Foreign scholars have noted that religion may serve as a resolution for women experiencing a “life crisis” or an acute dilemma, such as the decision to have an abortion (Gammeltoft 2003). The continuities in women’s religious practice during the socialist era have been explained in terms of the politically nonthreatening nature of their activity (Luong 1994, p. 99). The increased role for women in certain religious domains is understood as a result of socialist gender re-definitions (Malarney 2002). Taylor (2004a) argues that the surge in women’s religious activities in recent years is tied to recent economic changes, and Vietnam’s new relationship with capitalism. Rather than consider religion as a “separate” sphere, or as a practice that indexes “tradition” or domination, these studies show that women’s religious life is firmly embedded in the everyday world and thus affected by the social changes brought during the socialist and post-socialist era. Considering this close relationship between religion and world in which it exists, this chapter seeks to examine one genre of religious practice in

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the reform era in which women have played a leading and innovatory role. Although spirit possession [lên đồng or hầu bóng]1 has long existed in Vietnamese society, it has experienced a phenomenal revival since Ðổi Mới. In 1986 (the year of Ðổi Mới’s inception) Vietnamese religious scholars considered there to be only one medium to every 4,000 Hanoi inhabitants (Đặng Nghiêm Vạn 1998, p. 252). This figure is unlikely to be true, mainly because prior to Ðổi Mới most mediums performed their activities secretly, behind closed doors. Whatever the actual figure, even during the period of religious restriction, mediums appealed to a significant portion of the population.2 The number of spirit mediums increased significantly throughout the 1990s. What is more, women make up the majority of the spirit medium community. In my one year of fieldwork, I regularly received telephone calls from spirit mediums informing me of upcoming spirit possession rites to be held at noon that day, or even at midnight. I was also repeatedly struck by the news that yet another acquaintance of mine had become a medium. After a long period of suppression, spirit possession has returned to Vietnamese social life in dynamic, and often highly innovative ways. “Saint Trần” — the spirit of Trần Hưng Đạo, the military hero who defeated the Mongol-Chinese army in the thirteenth century — has taken an increasingly prominent position in the lên đồng rituals associated with the Four Palaces (or Mother Goddesses) cult.3 More importantly, there are a large number of female mediums and ritual priestesses who claim to be able to be possessed by Saint Trần, which was apparently not the case in the early-twentieth century.4 This phenomena raises a number of interesting questions, two of which I would like to explore here — firstly, who are the women who are involved in religious activities in relation to Saint Trần, and, secondly, what does his manifestation mean to female mediums who incarnate him? Although female mediums come from a variety of backgrounds, urban, middle-class, educated women were the main focus of my research. I use the word “educated” to specifically refer to mediums who had a university [đại học] or college [trung cấp] degree. These women interested me for three reasons. Firstly, this group has not received adequate attention from scholars. Their educated status seems to have excluded them from research into popular religious activity, which is usually associated with “ignorant” people or those engaged in occupations not reliant on a formal education. Illiteracy is often understood as a reason for women’s marginal

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status and also why they are drawn to the religious sphere. Secondly, the involvement of educated women (and men) in religious activities has become more salient in the last decade and this requires special attention. Lastly, but most importantly, my fieldwork reveals that the active involvement of women in the Saint Trần cult marks a significant development in the history of a cult which has hitherto been the domain of male mediums. As interlocutors, these highly educated women were not only a valuable source of information and knowledge but also important intermediaries who made it easier for me to enter into and understand the world of their disciples. In this chapter, “empowerment” is taken as a key term to understand the role of Saint Trần in the realm of female mediums’ religious practices. The connections between spirit possession and empowerment and spirit possession and gender have long been established and have been studied widely in Asia, Africa and the Americas (Lewis 1971; Obeyesekere 1981; Kendall 1985; Brown 1991; Sharp 1993; Boddy 1994; Mayaram 2001; Smith 2001). Among the most influential, Lewis (1971) argues that possession is associated with marginality. Possession, he claims, is employed by subjugated women as a “weapon”, a compensatory strategy aimed at thwarting male oppression (Bargen 1997). Other anthropologists argue that this is not always the case. Kendall (1985) points out that possession is not marginal or peripheral to Korean society, whereas Sharp (1993) states that in Madagascar, female spirit mediums hold significant power in directing national economic projects. “Empowerment”, as used here, however, neither implies the exercise of autonomous, coercive or authoritative power. Nor is it understood as something sought out only by socially marginalized groups. The genres of power are diverse and include the enhancement of personhood, the discovery and cognizable restructuring of one’s self, or one’s inner world, in order to better deal with the outer world (Fjelstad and Maiffret 2004). This typically entails trying to make life better. Spirit possession may be seen as a means of self-empowerment for all mediums, regardless of gender. Nonetheless, it seems particularly apt to treat female mediums’ recent innovative channelling of Saint Trần as a mode of empowerment. This is especially so given social stereotypes and the historically and culturally constructed disdain shown toward female spirit mediums in the once-distinct Four Palaces tradition. In addition, women who were formerly involved in the Trần Hưng Đạo cult were considered as victims afflicted

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by evil spirits, thus needing help from the exclusively male mediums of the cult.5 Women’s new status as mediums of Saint Trần contrasts with their lack of active access to his power in the past. This chapter aims to show how a “spirit” employed by ordinary people can inform us about the power of tradition and perceived values associated with national heroes in Vietnamese society. By doing this, it aims to demonstrate how innovations in female mediumistic practice relate to recent social and cultural transitions in northern Vietnam, both as a creative response by women to these transitions and as a way for women to cope with them. The chapter begins with the life-histories of four urban-based and well-educated female mediums. I will then go on to discuss the way in which spirit mediums manage and restructure “self ” through the idiom of “spirit root” [căn]. I will then examine, more specifically, the role of Saint Trần’s manifestations in the world of mediums. Through a brief discussion of the relationship between male and female mediums, I argue that empowerment comes in many diverse and subtle forms.

Mediums’ Lives Mrs An: “Women were Born to Suffer” It is 10 a.m. on the third day of the lunar New Year [Tết] 2003. On the outskirts of Hanoi, where most of the agricultural land has recently been sold to speculating, middle-strata Hanoians, about seventy men and women are squeezed into two small rooms, waiting for their master’s ritual. They all look happy and fresh, greeting each other in a friendly way. “Happy New Year!” “Happy New Year!” “How was your Tết ?” “Pretty quiet. After this ritual I’m going to visit some more relatives.” “It exhausted me. I’m happy it’s over.” Similar conversations are taking place in every corner of the house. After adorning herself in her bedroom, Mrs An, their master, appears in a traditional long, black velvet dress [áo dài]. She smiles and welcomes everyone. Every year, on the third day of Tết her close followers gather here to participate in her possession ritual, and to listen to her prediction for the coming year. The shrine is colourfully decorated with flowers and fruit offerings brought by her disciples. Kneeling, facing the altar on which

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there is only one small statue of Kwan Yin [Quan Âm], a popular Buddhist statue, Mrs An prays and invites spirits to descend into her body. After the incarnation of the legendary hero, Saint Dóng, who, Mrs An claimed, had been her spiritual teacher for the past twenty years, Saint Trần Hưng Ðạo appears. Standing up on the wooden platform, Mrs An closes her eyes, lays one hand on her chest and professes Saint Trần’s message in an expressive voice: I am the supreme Saint Hưng Đạo Đại Vương Trần Quốc Tuấn. I am descending to recognize your offerings. Although people have committed themselves to be enlightened, it is difficult to see the Providence, difficult to discern Heaven’s will. I announce to you that today ancestors and spirits and sages appear here in this world in large numbers. They are delighted. They are attesting to your true hearts … This world and the other world, yin and yang, are separated [âm dương cách biệt]. Out of sight, but close in mind. Today I give you a riddle. This is spring time for every family. This year, beginning in spring, what “lộc” will I give you? Answer me, answer me, to see how much disciples understand the master? [Silence follows. Then someone says, “Pens,” and someone else suggests, “Water.”] That’s right, “water gift” [lộc nước]. I grant “nước cam lồ” (water favours) in order for you all to wipe away all your evil will and to light up your honest heart. This water is for the benefit of the country, the enlightenment of the people…

Mrs An is a religious master, spirit medium, physiognomist, diviner and spiritual consultant. She has, for some time now, been popular with Hanoians and people in surrounding provinces. Born in 1948, Mrs An joined the army in 1968 and was demobilized in 1972. After finishing her studies at a trade college, she remained to work as the college Youth Union’s secretary. At that time she became a member of the Communist Party. Sent to study at the Party school (Nguyễn Ái Quốc Party school), she returned to the college as a lecturer in Marxist-Leninist philosophy. All her life, she had been involved in “political activities”. She was first incarnated by her father in 1982 (who had died seven years earlier) who appeared to prevent her from going to a hospital to check her sore eye because, she said, it was due to a Yin illness rather than a physical cause. She then experienced incarnations by other spirits and began to offer divination on behalf of her neighbours. She recalled: The year 1982 was a big one in my life that I will never be able to forget. It was 14 December. It was so cold and chilly. My husband

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Phạm Quỳnh Phương went away on a business because he was a serviceman. My seven-yearold son and four-year-old daughter were in school and kindergarten. I came back home at 3 p.m. from the college.… Afterwards, spirits told me they had not initially chosen a saint, a goddess or a king to descend into me, but rather my father, whom I always respected and loved. He was chosen to initiate me into the Way [khai đạo]. Now my father is also an emissary of spirits. Other spirits like Saint Dóng, Saint Trần Hưng Đạo, Buddha, Mother Goddess Liễu Hạnh appeared later to guide me.

Accused of practising “superstitious” activities, in order to avoid discipline, she claimed to have a mental illness and underwent treatment at a psychiatric hospital for a year. She finally stopped working at the college and withdrew from the Communist Party in 1989. Since then she has spent all her time in self-cultivation and in educating her followers and clients. She told me: I was born to do Yin work [việc âm], like you were born to do Yang work [việc dương], like your research. I told my old colleagues that I am not ambitious, and I don’t need fame or status. I am doing this just to make my life meaningful.

Her followers praised her as a “moral model” because of her tolerance. Although she is powerful in the world of her followers and clients and when she delivers spirit messages, she is very patient in her family life. Her husband, as her followers have said, is very patriarchal [ gia trưởng], while her mother-in-law is a difficult woman and, in her followers’ words, is a heartless person. Growing up with the Confucian belief that women have to tolerate such things, Mrs An is resigned to her role as a caring wife and respectful daughter-in-law. She always explains to her followers and clients that the suffering that humans encounter in their family life is a consequence of their previous lives, and women are supposed to suffer more than men. She encourages her female followers to tolerate their partners and to forgive them if they do something wrong. For her and her female disciples, religious engagement seems to provide a way of tolerating domestic suffering. In one of the ceremonies that I saw her perform in February 2003, more than 350 families accompanied her to a temple in order for her to pray to spirits on their behalf.6 As this indicates, Mrs An is now one of the most well-known religious masters in Hanoi.

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Mrs Lan: “Spirits Trained Me” Mrs Lan, the woman whose possession I described earlier, was born in 1973 in a Red River Delta province. As the eldest in a poor family of four girls, she was determined from a young age to educate herself out of poverty and help her parents, who had an inferiority complex because they had no son, to take care of her three younger sisters. She failed her first attempt at a university entrance examination but succeeded the second time. However, throughout her university years she felt ashamed of her rural background, as all her classmates were urban people. “They were richer, but not very smart. But I couldn’t understand why their studies went more smoothly than mine. I was always unlucky,” Mrs Lan recalled. After two years, she failed the transition period examination [thi chuyển giai đoạn] and was therefore forced to leave university. She began working in the evenings as a private tutor in English language. At that time she decided to get married as soon as possible. She quickly settled in to city life and returned to university and also gave birth to a son. After graduating in 1999, Mrs Lan became stressed because she could not find a job. She suffered from insomnia and illness and felt increasingly insecure. She began to behave abnormally. She recalled: One time, an acquaintance introduced me to a principal of a school in Gia Lâm (suburban Hanoi). I was supposed to be interviewed by him at 1 p.m. I was very nervous. But then at about 10 a.m., I suddenly felt strange and dizzy. I just cried and cried and couldn’t control myself. I told my husband to take me to a temple. I missed the interview. My husband was grumpy and cursed me for missing the opportunity to get a job.

Giving up hope of finding a job near home, Mrs Lan was forced to leave her son to take up an English teaching position in a province one hundred kilometres away. She began to experience incarnations by spirits whenever she went home to visit her family at weekends or during the summer holidays. The year 2000 when we first met was a dreadful period for her, as she said, the spirits would not leave her alone. Everyday at noon they entered her through the top of her head and travelled down through her body. When interviewing her in 2003, I asked her, “In 2000 you told me that you had been possessed by Saint Trần. How do you know if it was Saint Trần and not some other spirit?” She said, “The first time I had this incarnation phenomenon was on the twentieth of lunar August, the anniversary of Saint Trần’s death.” She believes that spirits chose her and

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trained her [các cụ luyện cho] to receive information from the universe. “They talk to me directly, sometimes very clearly, like talking on the telephone, sometimes very low, so I can hardly hear them.” Mrs Lan was, in fact, initially possessed by the Ninth Young Lady [Cô Chín], a spirit of Tứ Phủ, who often descends unexpectedly. She had not known of Saint Trần until she met a religious master who told her that she was compatible with Saint Trần and that she did not need to serve spirits like other, lesser mediums. She then performed a farewell ritual for the Ninth Young Lady and became a disciple of Saint Trần committing herself to a temple dedicated to him. She began reading about Trần Hưng Đạo, then claimed to be possessed by Saint Trần. Her life has changed remarkably since we met in 2000. Spirits now descend into her body at her invitation. “When I met you, I was like a primary school pupil. I knew nothing. Now I am like a high school student. I understand my experience. I can now explain to others experiencing a similar phenomenon,” Lan said, smiling. A devotee, a lecturer in history at a university, had helped to get her a job as an English teacher in a university in Hanoi. She began to be known by other mediums and was asked to help others with their issues. Her husband also got a better job and gradually became more respectful of her activities. Her family’s financial situation has improved remarkably, as shown by the large and comfortable house that they recently built.

Mrs Thu: “I am Proud to be Chosen” Mrs Thu was born in 1959, in Thái Bình, a province in the Red River Delta. She joined the army aged eighteen and, after her service, studied at the University of Law. She married at twenty-three and worked as a secretary in a district court in Hanoi. She believes that everything went wrong after she married. It was then that she entered a life of miserable poverty. She describes the period between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-five (when she became a medium) as a time of maltreatment and punishment. Her husband and mother-in-law often disparaged her. She was disciplined after she broke the family planning policy by having two children too close in age. She recalled: It was a very hard time. I became pregnant unintentionally. But I dreamt of having a boy, so I didn’t want to have an abortion. I came to see the presiding judge where I worked. I cried and told him a lie that the doctor

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had said I would die if I had an abortion. He was worried and sympathized with me. He decided to let me keep the foetus. I gave birth to a son, but then the judge lost his honorific title [danh hiệu thi đua] and was criticized. I was disciplined. I was shamed.

She confessed to having often contemplated committing suicide during this time. With the little money she made from her job at the district court, she had to care for two unhealthy children. On top of that, she had to suffer her husband’s abuse. She first developed a psychiatric illness, then was diagnosed with cancer. She experienced a period of great hardship and pain. “Watching my children crawling on the floor, I just cried and cried. Hopeless! Who can take care of them if I die?” One day she was visited by one of her colleagues, who was accompanied by a spirit medium. The medium told Mrs Thu that she was not physically, but spiritually ill [bệnh âm] and encouraged her to undertake the initiation ceremony to become a spirit medium. This was a momentous day in her life. After that, magical things started happening for Mrs Thu. Three days before the ceremony, she won the first prize in a lottery which helped her pay for the ritual. Three weeks later, thanks to a person whom Mrs Thu had helped in a lawsuit when she worked in the court, she had money enough to buy a motorbike.7 Setting up her own shrine a few years later, she resigned from her job at the district court and became a master medium and a soothsayer. Many of her old colleagues and acquaintances are now her followers. For Mrs Thu, these things prove that it was her fate to be a medium. She strongly believes that she should have embarked on this path earlier, since she was predestined to become a medium; she was chosen by the spirits. Formerly suffering great anguish, Mrs Thu is now a powerful woman in her family and among her followers. She has drawn all her family into the hectic, daily activity of spirit possessions, which take place on the third floor of their house. Her husband, who once regarded spirit possession as a superstition and often abused and ridiculed her for her religious activities, now fully supports them. Experiencing the “supernatural responsiveness” of spirits to himself and his family, he resigned his job as an accountant in a state company and became a medium. As such, he accords his wife the respect she deserves as a “master”. Mrs Thu smiled as she recalled how the spirits had punished her husband for his past disrespect. He did not believe. I tried to convert him. He ridiculed me and my followers, “I don’t have căn, so you crazy women don’t even try.” For

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Phạm Quỳnh Phương more than three years he had constant stomach aches and he suspected he had cancer. Still, he did not believe. One day, half-naked, he went up to the shrine. That night, spirits punished him with a high fever for three days and nights… Now he even believes more enthusiastically and more “superstitiously” than me.

As well as her husband, her two children are also now spirit mediums. The eldest, Vân, her daughter, is a university student and a medium of both the spirits of Saint Trần’s family and those of the Four Palaces. By way of an old Vietnamese saying, Vân proudly told me that her family are all mediums because of their noble family tradition: “A dragon’s egg”, she said, “hatches a dragon”.8 Even Mrs Thu’s “cold-hearted” mother-in-law, who used to curse her and say she was crazy, has become a medium.

Ms Bích: “I Love to Serve Spirits” Ms Bích is 55-year-old and is one of the few followers of Mrs Thu who performs rituals to Saint Trần that involve obtaining blood for amulets. Born in Hà Tây, a neighbouring province of Hanoi, the eldest in a family of daughters, she joined the army in 1974 to fulfil her family’s military service obligation. She worked in the communication transport regiment [trung đoàn vận tải giao liên], which was responsible for taking troops to battlefronts, and transporting soldiers from Cambodia and Laos back home. She studied at the Political College [học viện chính trị] and was then sent to study at the army’s College of Finance. She married a soldier from her unit. After she married, she often felt weary and lost a lot of weight. She was said to be seized by spirits [bị bắt đồng]. Ms Bích recalled that it was a harsh time, when religious activities were restricted. Hence, she performed her initiation ceremony secretly in her birth-village. Her life, though, did not improve, and actually became worse. This culminated in her divorce. She recalled: Even though I had been initiated as a medium, my life was still very miserable. My căn [spirit root] was still heavy [nặng căn]. When I performed possession rituals, I always cried. When my husband began studying at the police college, I gave birth to my second child. My son was born in the Year of the Mouse; my husband was born in the Year of the Horse. These animal years are incompatible, so the birth of my son was not good for our marriage. My husband and I clashed too much so we divorced.

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Endeavouring to improve her life, she sought help from other master mediums in Hanoi and performed another initiation ceremony [tái khóa]. Her life, she claims, has been better ever since. After her new initiation, her ex-husband, who to that point had been very irresponsible, bought her a wardrobe and a bicycle and financially contributed to the raising of their children. Although busy with her work at the Ministry of Finance, she managed to participate in the activities of the community of mediums that met at Mrs Thu’s house. In this way, she became a disciple of Mrs Thu. After her retirement in 2002, she accepted Mrs Thu’s invitation to work full-time at the shrine as an assistant to Mrs Thu and other mediums in their spirit possession rituals. Ms Bích called herself one of the “four highest royal court officers” [tứ trụ triều đình], because she was always chosen to be one of the four ritual assistants. She believes she is special compared to other “ordinary mediums” because she has the căn of Nhà Trần and was given power by Saint Trần to save people. When in a trance, I am still in possession of a sound mind. I do not lose consciousness at all, but I still I cannot anticipate what is going to happen, because spirits borrow my body to work … When Saint Trần comes in, I feel stronger, more powerful. He gives me the right and the power to get blood [làm dấu mặn]. I just get blood when we need it for exorcism or protection. Other times I just serve for joy [hầu vui].

Ms Bích said that although her fellow mediums at Mrs Thu’s shrine served Saint Trần’s family [Nhà Trần], she was the only one that had the power to get blood. “This is my destiny and my blessing,” she said with pride. She admitted that she loved to perform possession rituals because after every ritual she felt a sense of relief, and became lucky and received money. She has recently become involved in a relationship with a man who is caring for her. “My children are still living with me, but they feel okay that I have a man. I’m happy. Things are very good.”

Destiny, Self Empowerment, and the Turn to Spirits Although the four women described above access the spirits by different means — Ms Bích and Mrs Thu engage in the performative lên đồng rituals of the Four Palaces [Tứ Phủ], whereas Mrs An and Mrs Lan engage in dialogue with spirits without music or costume — they all claim to be attached to spirits by their “căn”. Căn, which can be translated as “spirit root” (Nguyen Thi Hien 2002), “destined aptitude” (Norton

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2006) or fate, contribute to our understanding of the social role of spirit possession. Căn ties a person to spirits, whether it be the spirits of the Four Palaces, Saint Trần, or even Buddha. Căn is often associated with some form of suffering experienced by the medium prior to her or his initiation into the service of the spirits. Kleinman and Kleinman (1996, p. 174) identify a variety of forms of suffering — “contingent misfortune”, “routinized forms” or that resulting from “extreme conditions”. They argue that suffering manifests in certain burdens, troubles or wounds to the body or spirit. Put another way, each person experiences suffering differently, either physically, emotionally or mentally. Physical illness of any sort, that is, feeling tired, minor illnesses, headaches, matted hair, weight loss, cancer and so on, are interpreted as the call of spirits. Căn is often perceived as precipitating events (Fjelstad and Maiffret 2004). Mrs Lan, the English teacher, became possessed by spirits in 1999 while looking in vain for a job. The first time Mrs An was possessed, she had a sore eye and her husband was doing his army service and she was left to take care of their two children and her parents-in-law. Mrs Thu found her căn after a series of misfortunes, culminating in a diagnosis of cancer. Mrs Bích experienced her căn when feeling weary and losing weight after her marriage. These mediums claimed that, for a certain time, they had been seen by others as being “crazy” [điên]. Mrs Thu used to climb trees and sing nonsensically, which resulted in her husband and mother-in-law cursing her as a “crazy woman”, while Mrs An underwent one year of observation in a psychiatric hospital. Intolerable tension within family lives or difficulty experienced within relationships is also sometime interpreted as a sign of căn. A 40-year-old primary teacher I interviewed was told by a master medium that she had căn due to her miserable relationship with her husband, who had been having an affair with a woman ten years older than him. She was told that this was her destiny and she could not divorce him; serving spirits was the only way she could make her life better. My friend, a young woman in her late twenties, one day laughed and jokingly said, “Why does nobody love me, no boyfriends? I told my mother it’s because I am ugly and ungainly. But every day she kept telling me that I must have căn and should perform the incense-carrying ritual [đội bát hương] or be initiated [mở phủ]. You’ve been studying spirit mediums, so tell me, should I?” Although my friend was not serious, her mother really believed that her “boy-like” character must have something to do with her căn.

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Each of the four women whose cases are discussed here experienced conflicts with their affines. Two of them had a troubled relationship after marriage with a domineering mother-in-law. The resolutions they found in becoming mediums suggests the relevance to northern Vietnam of Kendall’s findings about shamanism in Korea, a female-dominated pursuit in which, she argues, Korean women constructed an alternative autonomous sphere beyond the oppressive expectations of Confucian familial ideology (Kendall 1985). In some respects, comparisons with Confucian Korea have to take account of the fact that, under the Democratic Republic of Vietnam there had been concerted efforts to disable “feudal” [ phong kiến] Confucian hierarchies, substitute the collective for the family as the primary social unit, and promote women’s involvement in public life. Indeed, each of these women apparently had benefited from the socialist revolution, obtaining a university education, becoming Party members, joining the army or working in public service. Yet the difficult family lives they each encountered suggests that the revolution had been far from successful in transforming the gender hierarchies of the domestic sphere or rooting out the fatalistic notion, as expressed by Mrs An, that “women are born to suffer”. Their personal experiences of liberation in the public realm may in fact have amplified the shock of their exposure to traditional familial expectations after their marriages, causing them to experience first-hand a dissonance between public and domestic ideals and expectations that had no precedent in pre-revolutionary times. The life histories of these four women reflect the social transition made by women in northern Vietnam over the last two decades from service in the public sphere, to the domesticity of married life. Their narratives reveal the struggle to overcome frustration, as well as the problems created by social policies, i.e. the anti-superstition campaign (see Malarney 2002), educational reforms and the government’s reproductive policy. For many women, the social transition following the war was not a happy time. Since Ðổi Mới new emphasis has been given to “an idealized notion of the family” which, as Werner suggests, “has come to serve as both a metaphor and a goal of the renovation agenda” (Werner 2002, p. 40). Whereas previous attention was given to being a good national citizen, women’s role in society has been narrowed down to duty within the family. In many cases, however, marriage and domesticity have proven to be unrewarding for women who once held esteemed jobs in the public service. The pressure to create a “happy family” and manage a household economy, have been perceived by

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many female veterans as tougher than what they had experienced during war time. My female informants all became spirit mediums after experiencing in person this officially-sanctioned process of post-revolutionary feminine “redomestication”. In many ways, their turn to mediumship can be seen a strategy which reconnects them to a socially engaged world which spans beyond the confines of domestic life. It perhaps should not surprise us that the act of becoming a medium is a means of self-empowerment. When incarnated by the spirits, mediums can dance, wear ornate, royal-type clothes, give money generously and patronizingly to observers, be treated like kings and queens and become the centre of attention where everyone must pay them respect. The pantheon of the Four Palaces religion is also itself a symbolic framework for empowerment, which uses the royal court model — a long-standing Vietnamese image of power. In ritual contexts, spirit mediums call each other “Lord”, “Great Mandarin”, “Prince”, ‘Lady”, while ritual assistants call themselves “Highest Royal Officer” [Tứ trụ triều đình]. The court terms (Mandarin, Lady, Prince), as well as the kin terms (Mother, Little Aunties, Uncle) used in this context suggest supportive family values, combined with a feudal understanding of supreme power. Yet the empowerment comes through the shift in the spirit mediums’ view of themselves, of who they are, who they want to be and who they might be, not only in the religious context but also in their everyday lives (Norton 2006). Mediums often claim that their lives greatly improved once they became involved in mediumship. It not only provides a heathcare system, but also social networks that enable people to get practical support from fellow mediums. Thus by becoming mediums, they increased in self confidence, their health improved, and they became more successful in business and in relationships. Nevertheless, empowerment is compromised in the sense that mediums are subservient to the spirits (Norton 2006). Moreover, given that the dominant social stereotype of a female spirit medium in Vietnam is that of a ridiculous, ignorant and frivolous person, mediumship cannot always be considered “empowering”. Indeed, the negative reactions that initially greeted these four female mediums’ encounters with the spirits suggests that becoming a medium may even lead to greater vulnerability and social disempowerment. Their experiences draw us towards the hypothesis that empowerment through the spirit world is crucially dependent both on the perceived qualities of the specific spirits to whom mediums become affiliated and on public perceptions of mediumship.

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Saint Trần and the Narrative of Empowerment Anthropological studies of spirit possession often point out that shamans, adepts or mediums cannot choose spirits but rather, are chosen by them. Rouget (1985, p. 34) states that “to be initiated into the worship of a divinity when you know, thanks to the intervention of a soothsayer, that the divinity has chosen you, constitutes a submission to that choice, not an act of choice on your part.” In general, spirit mediums of Saint Trần and the Mother Goddesses cult say they have been “chosen” [được chọn], “seized” [bị bắt sát] or “recruited” by spirits to be their “soldiers” [lính các Ngài]. They claim to be passive in their relationship with spirits. But on what grounds do mediums link their căn with a specific spirit? Here I wish to discuss the role of Saint Trần in the process of empowerment, the process of enhancing the fate of spirit mediums, especially female mediums, who claim to be a “chair” [ghế] or a “servant” [tôi tớ] of Saint Trần. In what way does Saint Trần contribute to the empowerment of female mediums, in particular educated female mediums who cannot be seen as illiterate or ignorant? Saint Trần, an important sacred figure in the religious domain, should not be seen as separable from his historical and military identity — Trần Hưng Đạo. In Vietnam, the processes of “mythicizing” historical personalities, as well as historicizing mythical figures is a widespread phenomenon. This process is embedded in a “history of resistance” to foreign threat, and the need to enshrine a national pantheon of charismatic, heavenly-ordained warriors who have fought in the nation’s defence. As a prince of the Trần dynasty in the thirteenth century and the great general of the resistance against the strong army of Mongolians, Trần Hưng Đạo is one of the most well-known national heroes in Vietnamese history. His biography, as recorded in the earliest extant historical text, Completed Historical Records of Great Viet [Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư] (Ngô Sĩ Liên 1971), shows that he is a man of honour, magnanimity and great loyalty to his country. Indeed, the virtuous nature of Trần Hưng Đạo, as described in such historical texts, is one among important reasons why his cult has risen to such prominence. He has been venerated by successive pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial rulers, as well by the people. A large number of sacred spaces are dedicated to Trần Hưng Đạo. Temples in which he is worshipped can be found throughout Vietnam, from the North to the South, the lowlands to the uplands.

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Like several other national heroes, Trần Hưng Đạo’s historical contribution to national independence paved the way for his entry into the pantheon. Yet, while hero worship has long been a prominent feature in the Vietnamese religious landscape, not many historical heroes and heroines have become the focus of a popular posthumous cult that extends beyond their regional homeland. In this sense, Trần Hưng Đạo is unique. Vietnamese people tend to define their national history in terms of the various Chinese dynasties that attempted to invade the country (that is, the Han, T’ang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dinastes). The stronger the invading force, the higher the status of the heroes who led the resistance against them. Trần Hưng Đạo’s personality and historical achievements are, as Marr (1971, p. 11) comments, “…well enough for him to be remembered by subsequent generations as much more than a mere repository of generalized symbolism and disembodied ideals”. Trần Hưng Đạo’s popularity and stable standing among people, at the grassroots level, however, is less an issue of his military prowess as it is the immense spiritual power he is believed to possess. His reported healing power (Ngô Sĩ Liên 1971) and story of his conquest over evil spirit and foe — Phạm Nhan, believed to afflict women and children, make him a particularly potent spirit to be used in exorcism rituals (Giran 1912, Phan Kế Bính 1992 [1915], Boudarel 2001 [1942], Nguyễn Văn Huyên 1995 [1944]). He is commonly perceived to be the supreme power in the nether world and capable of expelling malignant ghosts and evil spirits. With the dual identity of great national hero and supreme spirit of exorcism, Trần Hưng Đạo has become a public, prestigious and recognizable symbol, a symbol of power in both secular and spiritual realms, and at the national, regional, as well as local levels. The narrative of power in the image of Saint Trần can also be analysed from an individual level. Obeyesekere (1981) has observed how personal symbols can have an impact on wider social and cultural meaning. This process is apparent in the way in which people with severe psychological affliction can achieve social integration through service to the publicly revered gods of the religious pantheon. Trần Hưng Đạo’s military power and great achievements are not only empowering on a national level, but also on an individual level through instilling in spirit mediums a sense of “specialness”, confidence, and social recognition. Many comments from spirit mediums whom I interviewed revealed a sense of personal empowerment through their service to Saint Trần. The

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female mediums I talked with share common experiences of feeling “hot”, “mighty” and full of powerful “energy” when possessed by Saint Trần. The mediums chosen by Saint Trần distinguish themselves from other spirit mediums by this increased energy and sense of authority they receive through doing his work. A female master medium of both Saint Trần and Mother Goddesses, as well as the owner of a Saint Trần shrine told me: If you follow Saint Trần, he will give you authority [uy quyền]. For example, you are a teacher — although you are exhausted from speaking, students still don’t understand you. But if you are one of Saint Trần’s children [con cái cửa Thánh], you can speak quietly or gently and students will still understand and respect you. Your voice has power, you know!

Saint Trần can also enable his adherents to achieve a higher rank among other mediums as well as ensure the auspiciousness of their fates. One master medium strongly believed that a medium of Saint Trần serves as a model for others. She compared a medium of Saint Trần to a high Communist Party member, “A medium of Saint Trần must be exemplary, public-spirited and selfless [chí công vô tư], like a high-ranking communist [như là đảng viên ở cấp lãnh đạo].” While male mediums who serve Saint Trần also claim to feel “hot” and “powerful” when possessed by his spirit, I suggest that this is more significant for female mediums.

Innovation and Transformed Power In order to examine the question of female mediums’ empowerment within the Saint Trần cult, it is necessary to examine the cult’s historical transformation. As I have earlier suggested (Pham Quynh Phuong 2006), according to studies of Vietnamese and French scholars at least until the 1950s, the cult of Saint Trần was entirely the domain of male mediums, with women playing the passive role of afflicted victim possessed by an evil spirit (Giran 1912; Nguyễn Văn Huyên 1995 [1944]; Durand 1959). Female mediums, on the other hand, were dominant in the cult of the Four Palaces [or Chư Vị]. Whereas previously, Saint Trần only came to women through a male medium to rescue or save her, today women actively incarnate Saint Trần and exercise leadership through possession by him. Women have thus encroached upon a previously male-dominated spiritual domain. Parallels can be drawn here with women’s recent admission into village communal houses [đình] which was historically the ritual domain of men only (Malarney 2002).

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One distinctive aspect of this innovatory ritual practice is that female mediums who are possessed by Saint Trần tend to be much more flamboyant in their gestures and movements than their male counterparts. Local explanations for this difference sometimes account for it as an instance of the disorderly or erroneous transmission of the ritual tradition. When asked why female mediums were more flamboyant than men, some male mediums and devotees suggested to me that it was because women were more “ignorant” and “did not understand the ritual rules”. One male informant lamented, a “great hero” like Saint Trần would “never appear to dance like others” or waste time “delivering nonsensical messages”. Yet this innovative style of possession could be understood differently, as an example of hybridization, the incorporation of St Trần into another mediumistic tradition, the female cult of the Four Palaces. In stark contrast to the more “frightening” exorcist rituals of the past, today Saint Trần often appears in a much calmer way, within the context of possession by other Tứ Phủ goddesses. Mediums call this kind of possession ritual, one in which Saint Trần appears calmly, “convivial/ joyful possession” [hầu vui] or “performative/beautiful possession” [hầu làm cảnh], in contrast to “exorcism/working possession” [hầu làm việc]. Hầu làm việc is named for the ritual that involves thrilling and often violent acts such as cheek piercing, neck strangling and tongue cutting, whereas hầu vui or hầu làm cảnh refers specifically to the performative character of these rituals (Pham Quynh Phuong 2006). Many female mediums expressed their preference for hầu vui, mainly because they could not stand the blood and the frightening acts involved in hầu làm việc. Employing Saint Trần in the Tứ Phủ system and thereby embodying him in a gentle way provided many spirit mediums with a less threatening means of accessing his power. The new role played by women as mediums of St Trần may also be understood in the context of changes in gender roles that occurred during the “War of National Defence Against American Imperialism” (the Vietnam War). During this period, many women entered national service as soldiers, nurses, journalists and cooperative managers. Many undertook higher education, entered the party or obtained jobs in the state apparatus. This had the effect of breaking down former gender compartmentalizations in official culture, diminishing, if not entirely effacing traditional and neotraditional role demarcations between male and female social responsibilities. Added to this was the identification, promoted in party discourse, between

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the present generation of soldiers and cadres who were engaged in the heroic anti-imperialist struggle and legendary ancestors of national defence such as Trần Hưng Đạo, who was upheld as a shining example for the present generation to emulate. The participation of women in occupations formerly dominated by men and the expectation that was pressed upon them, acting in these new roles, to emulate mythic figures such as Trần Hưng Đạo precipitated a cultural and spiritual identification among women such as An, Lan, Thu and Bích with the male general Trần Hưng Đạo that had not existed in former times. These two shifts, in the meanings of femininity and in the cultural models available to women working in the military and state spheres, help us to understand why, in the post-war years, the deified general Saint Trần was to be found increasingly incarnated by female mediums. It needs to be pointed out that not every female medium active today serves as the incarnation of Saint Trần’s spirit. Rather, the four educated women whose cases are discussed in this chapter, as well as other women that I interviewed within this same social group, were familiar with the significance attached to Trần Hưng Đạo and the social power and prestige of his symbol. This is in part due to their key role during the past as teachers, social leaders, or public servants and their exposure to nationalist discourses and emulation campaigns. As with other female mediums, these women experienced affliction by spirits and mental torment when they had to face personal crises or domestic stress. However — and distinct from women in the past and many other women in the present — they sought a solution (sometimes deciding for themselves and sometimes only when their wishes had been approved by their masters) through being possessed by a male spirit formerly exclusively incarnated by men. Arguably, this innovation would not have been possible had women of their class and generation not become caught up in the historic transition in official gender roles and cultural identifications during the war years. The fact that many of St Trần’s female mediums today have developed strong followings who accept them in their roles as spiritual leaders and ritual masters can also be seen as a consequence of the leadership skills, cultural literacy, high status and wide social networks that they developed in their earlier working lives. However, becoming a spirit medium is not always empowering. Spirit possession has been socially condemned as “superstitious” and its practitioners deemed ignorant. A suggested earlier, many women were

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initiated into mediumship as a means of coping with tensions experienced between themselves and their affines. In order to challenge their husbands’ male authority, they placed themselves in the subservience of the spirits (Norton 2006). Nonetheless, a number of women became mediums in secret, for fear of being called “superstitious” by their husbands. A woman who worked in the People’s Procuracy reminded me, “Don’t tell my name, okay? My husband doesn’t know that I am a medium. He is a lecturer. He hates đồng bóng (mediumship). I always have to take off time from my work during the day to come here. He doesn’t know. He was always jealous because he thought I was going out.” Such women felt the need to lie to their husbands in order to pursue their religious activities. A 42-year-old woman said, “Nothing is better than when you are supported by your husband. Things would be much easier (for me) if that were the case.” As these women’s experiences demonstrate, initiation into mediumship is not a “quick-fix” to suffering or life problems. Rather, initiation into mediumship comes with its own challenges and struggles. Another problem which these women face is that they are still mixing in educated party circles, where mediumship is devalued as a “superstitious”, “nonsensical” and “ignorant” practice (Pham Quynh Phuong 2005). Many female mediums face a battle for status and recognition as mediums within the wider community. Thus, to a certain extent, they can be seen as the culturally dominated section of the culturally dominant class. Recently, some space has been opened up for the practice of mediumship by the determined advocacy of certain Vietnamese folklorists, who have argued that mediumship is to be understood not as a superstition, but as one of Vietnam’s authentic indigenous traditions that is in need of preservation and consolidation (Pham Quynh Phuong 2005; Endres, this volume). In some respects, this can be seen as the transformation of the official ideal of Vietnam’s “tradition of resistance” into a notion of the “resistance of tradition”, a notion advocated by state leaders and cultural intellectuals in relation to their anxieties, in the context of Vietnam’s “open door” policy, about their country’s inundation by global culture (Taylor 2003). Vietnam’s mediums have played their own part in utilising their social connections to push ever wider the sphere of what is to be regarded as acceptable cultural practice. As suggested in the introductory essay to this volume, the remarkable concentration and high public profile of notionally illicit spirit mediums in the heart of the national capital may

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be not so coincidentally related to the fact that the clientele of such mediums include many who are well-situated in the nation’s political apparatus. Many female mediums face a dual battle for status and recognition not only as mediums within the wider society, but also as women within the community of mediums. In northern Vietnam’s medium communities, mediums who incarnate Tứ Phủ spirits are predominately female. Within this circle of Tứ Phủ female mediums, male mediums are often regarded as more advantaged and more powerful. One woman told me that male master mediums are more capable [cao tay] and therefore that the destiny of mediums would be more secure if they were initiated by male mediums. The richest and most well-known mediums in Hanoi and certain Red River Delta provinces are male. Status within the community of mediums is constructed in close relationship to the role of particular spirits. To be possessed by Saint Trần — a prestigious national figure — is often a direct means to approval and legitimacy within the medium world. Because of the strong Vietnamese tradition, which promotes national heroes and the values associated with these heroes, Saint Trần invokes cultural legitimacy and acceptance. Those female mediums who are possessed by Saint Trần thereby challenge conventional ideas of female mediums as inferior to male ones. Regardless of their conscious or unconscious motivations, claiming to be incarnated by Saint Trần — a great male hero — is a means of female empowerment. In making such a claim, female mediums assert their potency, their ability to “become” men, even the greatest man of the nation. The power that female mediums achieve through incarnating Saint Trần’s spirit might take the form of social power, status or social capital, but also a kind of personal power. It bestows on them a sense of selfconfidence and worth in their relationships with men. As the life-histories of my informants reveal, this sense of empowerment greatly impacts upon their partners. A husband’s attitude to his wife can change quite dramatically once she has established herself as a prominent female medium with her own community of believers. I often witnessed Mrs Thu’s husband kneeling behind his wife praying to “the great spirit, the national hero Saint Trần”. Collective social perceptions about what is valuable and worthy of respect — in this case the national value accorded Saint Trần — influences the way in which men respond to their wives’ activities. In this way, possession by Saint Trần can be seen as a means

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by which women assert themselves “in the face of male constraint” (Lewis 1971, p. 79). Mediums’ heightened power and status is also manifested in the relationships they have with their followers, who regard them as guides or masters, and mimic their gestures during the ceremonies. As mentioned earlier, many of Mrs Thu’s old work colleagues have become her followers. On a pilgrimage, I witnessed fifty people in a bus vying to receive pieces of betel leaf torn by Mrs Thu to stick on their navels to avoid car-sickness. They believed that the leaves touched by Mrs Thu were witnessed by spirits and would help them during the trip. Mrs An is similarly revered by her disciples, many of whom are high ranking public servants and highly educated intellectuals. Because there is an implicit obligation for disciples to help each other, becoming a disciple of Mrs An [đệ tử Bác An] is now considered a strategy for improving one’s social relationships and solving one’s own business problems. The male director of a government printing company and close follower of Mrs An, confided, “It is very difficult to refuse a request to print something by somebody who is Mrs An’s disciple.” For her disciples, she is the “helmsman of the boat” [người chở thuyền đạo], piloting them to enlightenment. In this sense, empowerment has been achieved both individually and collectively. In may indeed be that the innovation of these women can be considered as a stimulus, among many others, for renewed enthusiasm for Trần Hưng Đạo on a national level. Although Trần Hưng Đạo had been worshipped for centuries, educated professional people did not generally call him “Saint” until the 1990s. This coincided with the revival of religious activities, which accompanied more tolerant attitudes towards religious beliefs, and with the growth in the followings and increasing prominence of St Trần’s female spirit mediums among professional and educated sectors of the urban population. This coincided also with an increased interest in Trần Hưng Đạo as a national symbol. The level of interest in Trần Hưng Đạo since 2000 is unprecedented. In September 2000, to celebrate the 700th anniversary of his death, the front page of Nhân dân, the official newspaper of the Vietnamese Communist Party, declared Trần Hưng Đạo “the Saint of the People” [vị Thánh trong lòng dân]. The state invested billions of đồng in the erection of Trần Hưng Đạo statues in several provinces and government leaders paid visits to his main temples. In some temples (for example

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Đức Vua temple in Phủ Giầy, the homeland of Mother Goddess Liễu Hạnh] statues of spirits have been removed from the most important parts of the temple to make room for Saint Trần statues. That Saint Trần has been invoked by women during possession rituals is, in this context, understandable. Yet I would also suggest that the transformation in the public recognition of Trần Hưng Đạo from a national hero to a “Saint of the People” is a process that has itself become possible due to the innovatory activities of his female spirit mediums. In calling him forth as a potent spiritual accomplice and solution to their personal travails, they have furnished him with new public meanings and have made him newly accessible as a spiritual answer to the dilemmas of Vietnam’s post-revolutionary society.

Conclusion I have attempted to show that a picture of the transformation of women’s status during the reform era cannot be considered complete without examining their participation in religion. Women have played a significant role in the revival of religious activities throughout the country. Yet, the resurgence of religious activity in post-revolution Vietnam has involved dramatic and innovative processes, more than it did a return to the pre-revolutionary status quo ante (Malarney 2002). In this chapter, I have demonstrated that a particular aspect of religious activity in Vietnam — spirit possession — has undergone significant changes in terms of a re-ordering of the spirit hierarchy, as well as the gender of religious practitioners. Female mediums are the main social actors in this chapter, both as witnesses to the pre-Renovation past and the post-Renovation transition. The majority of them are aged between thirty to sixty, the period of life when women have the heaviest family responsibilities (giving birth, raising children, caring for elderly parents and parents-in-law and managing the household economy). They take up the path of mediumship not only for themselves but also on behalf of their family. The popular spiritual concept of căn (destiny/spirit root) is not necessarily fatalistic, but a therapeutic idiom that provides them access not only to a world of spirits but to a world of hectic religious activity, which is also a world of social support and networks. Discovering one’s căn not only heals one’s illness and depression, it also enables people to reconstruct themselves

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(Rasmussen 1995). Mediumship thus provides a format for healing and a therapeutic realm in which those who suffer and those who do not conform to conventional familial and societal standards, can attempt to resolve some of their problems. Beyond that, mediumship endows women with agency and power which they may lack in the social world. Many of the women discussed in this chapter were war veterans who suffered from mental illness, either as a direct consequence of the war or due to post-war marginalization. As many scholars point out, after Renovation, further problems relating to the development of a fair and inclusive society emerged (Kerkvliet 1995; Luong 2003; Taylor 2004b). Rather than being a synonym for social equality, economic development often stimulates social inequality, including gender inequality. Vietnamese women have been caught up in a net of rapid changes which has caused them to feel insecure and as though they have lost power. The transference from the public sphere of labour and responsibility into the private realm of domesticity is a process which has affected women not only within Vietnam but also in many post-war societies. Becoming a spirit medium is one way in which these women they can re-assert and empower themselves. Fate and mediumship, in the name of “căn”, is an effective means by which women can overcome their frustration and resist the imposition of state images and ideals — such as wife and mother — upon them. Through demonstrating their căn, or aptitude for possession by potent public figure Sain Trần, women can break out of the domestic mould and reconnect to public life. In this regard, the narrative of power embedded in Saint Trần’s image has played a significant role. By adopting the appellation thanh đồng — a term originally owned by male mediums of Saint Trần’s cult — the predominantly female spirit mediums of Tứ Phủ have attempted to overcome disdain and social stereotypes. Rather than being passive victims, nowadays female mediums actively embody Saint Trần and solve their own problems, either through frightening rituals or more “performative” and “convivial” rituals. The power of tradition and the cultural values manifested in such spirits enhances the visibility and standing of these female mediums in a symbolic and spiritual domain and significantly increases their social standing.

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FIGURE 7.1 A Young Medium in the Role of Saint Trần, Hanoi.

FIGURE 7.2 Female Medium in Possession Ritual, Hưng Yên Province.

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NOTES I am grateful to the female mediums I interviewed for this chapter. I would like to thank Philip Taylor for his comments on the draft of this chapter. Harvard-Yenching Institute and La Trobe University provided funds for this research. 1

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5

Lên đồng literally means, rise + mediumship (Nguyễn Khắc Kham 1983), while hầu bóng means, serve + shadows (of spirits). Lên đồng or hầu bóng indicates a multiple possession ritual in which many spirits consecutively manifest in a medium’s body. Medium here is understood as distinguishable from “shaman”: a “medium” has spirits descend upon him, whereas a “shaman” makes his soul journey to visit the world of spirits (see Rouget 1985). Excluding mediums of the dead (soul-callers), who are not especially involved with spirits, spirit mediums in Hanoi are divided into four categories depending on the range of spirits with which they deal. The first group is devoted exclusively to spirits of the Four Palaces. The second group comprises mediums of Saint Trần, his generals and family members. The third group is dedicated to spirits of both Saint Trần and the Four Palaces. And members of the fourth group do not commit to any particular cult, but deal with all kinds of divinities. Mediums in this fourth group often do not need music and ritual costumes to be engaged with spirits. According to literature from the first half of the twentieth century, Lên đồng was a religious activity reserved for female mediums of the Mother Goddesses cult (the Four Palaces cult), and the Saint Trần cult was quite separate and was the cult of witchcraft and exorcism, for male mediums (Giran 1912, Phan Kế Bính 1992 [1915], Boudarel 2001 [1942], Nguyễn Văn Huyên 1995 [1944], Durand 1959). The gender difference of spirit mediums — the male mediums of Saint Trần, dubbed thanh đồng, and the female mediums of the Four Palaces dubbed đồng cốt — is emphasized in almost every study of spirit possession in the first half of the twentieth century. The appellation đồng cốt, in contrast to thanh đồng, revealed social disdain towards female mediums of the Four Palaces cult. According to Giran (1912), the superiority of the Saint Trần cult over Tam Phủ manifested itself in several ways. With the main activity of the Saint Trần cult being exorcism, its members were seen to display “unimpeachable moral behaviour,” which increased the cult’s esteem. Giran claimed that the Saint Trần cult belonged to a higher ranked social group, that is, men, whereas Tam Phủ belonged to a lower social group — women. In Nguyễn Khắc Kham’s (1983) words, female mediums [đồng cốt] are looked down upon in “good society,” whereas Saint Trần’s mediums “always enjoy respect from everybody,” excluding devotees of the Four Palaces.

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This ritual aims to relieve people of bad luck caused by astrological constellations [dâng sao giải hạn]. Because the woman wanted to thank her, she offered to sell a piece of land to Mrs Thu cheaply without asking for payment immediately. Also the woman helped her to sell the land when its price went up. The profit was enough to buy her family an old motorbike. A popular Vietnamese phrase indicating that those who have noble origins will become noble, and those who have common origins will remain common. Trứng rồng lại nở ra rồng (A dragon’s egg hatches a dragon), Liu điu lại nở ra dòng liu điu (a little snake’s egg hatches a little snake).

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8 “Buddhism for This World”: The Buddhist Revival in Vietnam, 1920 to 1951, and Its Legacy Elise Anne DeVido

Anyone who is a Vietnamese…when it’s sunset, approaching a temple in a daze, upon hearing the compassionate sound of the temple bell, cannot fail to be startled awake from mundane dreams. (Nguyễn Mục Tiên, Sài Gòn, 1927) As for the term “chấn hưng” [revive], “chấn” means to move or shake, and “hưng” means to raise up, to wake up, a deeply-sleeping person. To revive Buddhism is a great act of merit, especially for our nation’s citizens. (Phạm Tài Luyện, Hà Nội, 1936)

Introduction On the morning of 11 June 1963, 67-year-old monk Thích Quảng Ðức sat down in a meditative position at a busy intersection in Sài Gòn and burned himself to death, shocking Vietnam and the world. His motivation

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was to “startle awake” sentient beings, to enlighten all to the repression of Buddhism and Buddhists under the Diệm regime.1 This dramatic act, the historiography agrees, propelled the “Buddhist Struggle Movement” of the 1960s forward and into international attention. At least fifty-seven monks, nuns, and lay people subsequently committed self-immolation;2 this movement was also characterized by countless protests and demonstrations against war and repression, the monks of Sài Gòn’s Ấn Quang Pagoda at the forefront, as well as war relief and rescue work and grassroots development projects. Scholars conventionally trace the term “engaged Buddhism” to Thích Nhất Hạnh and his many activities during this period, such as the School of Youth for Social Service and his efforts in peace negotiations abroad.3 However, that “pure” and “beautiful” struggle was shortlived and was transformed in nature, according to Thích Nhất Hạnh, as religious factionalism and years of war took their toll; Thích Nhất Hạnh himself was exiled overseas from 1967. After communist reunification in 1975, Buddhists suffered decades of persecution and tribulations, still ongoing with the grievances of Buddhist dissidents. These are the agonistes aspects of contemporary Vietnamese Buddhism that have preoccupied Western scholarship and global concern. Yet the Buddhist Struggle Movement did not arise in a vacuum, or, only from the particular circumstances of late-1950s Vietnam. Rather, its institutional and conceptual roots are found in the Buddhist revival of 1920–51, known as Chấn Hưng Phật Giáo, which established the foundations for mainstream Buddhism’s institutional growth and influence from the 1940s to the present. It can be argued that the Buddhist revival did not really “end” in any of the years 1945, 1951, 1954, 1963, or 1975 that marked key turning points for Vietnam and Vietnamese Buddhism, but has continued to the present, despite the trials of wars and political repression, in the areas of institution-building (schools, institutes, pagodas, lay associations), publishing, networks of teachers and students, education and promotion of nuns, regional variations of Buddhist belief and practice, social welfarism, study of global religious and intellectual trends, and Mahayana-Theravada interactions and network-building. In this chapter, “the Buddhist revival”, [Chấn Hưng Phật Giáo], specifically refers to reform and developments in institutional Buddhism. The same period also saw the rise of popular lay groups in the south such as Cao Đài, Hòa Hảo, and the Tịnh Ðộ Cư Sĩ, which other authors have discussed at length.4 The Vietnamese Buddhist revival took place

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in a transnational context when many Asian countries, from the nineteenth century on, faced similar crises brought by modernization and imperialism; one response was the growth of Buddhist revival movements in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, India, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Japan, and in Tibetan Buddhism. From the 1920s, Vietnamese Buddhist reformers revitalized their religion, inspired in part by the Chinese monk Taixu’s (1890–1947) blueprint to modernize and systematize sangha education and temple administration, and by his idea of renjian fojiao [Nhân Gian Phật Giáo ], “Buddhism for this world”, emphasizing the centrality of education, modern publishing, social work, and Buddhist lay groups to Buddhism’s future in the modern world. As yet there is no full-length study in any language on the Vietnamese Buddhist revival. The closest is Nguyễn Lang [Thích Nhất Hạnh] (1994, Volume III) which is full of valuable information but weak in organization and critical interpretation. From his vantage point in Huế, Thích Mật Thể (1944) was pessimistic about the results of the Buddhist revival, seeing no systemic change in the monasteries; but he missed the various accomplishments of lay associations and other trans-local interactions. Subsequent scholars often quote Thích Mật Thể and also from Trần Văn Giàu’s (1975) Marxist magnum opus on the history of modern thought in Vietnam, which, despite its useful overall description of the revival, devotes most of its attention to the intellectual debates of the 1920s–1940s and finally judges the revival, in its philosophical and organizational aspects, inferior to the communist revolutionary path. As for English works, Alexander Woodside discusses the Buddhist Revival as one movement among many at the time, including lay sects, the Boy Scouts, labour unions, and revolutionaries, that searched for “contemporary patterns of organized community … worthy of Vietnamese civilization’s brilliant past”. In the section entitled “The Buddhist Revival and the Communist Party”, Woodside characterizes the revival as being comprised of urban learned monks and intelligentsia who competed with lay sects and communism for ideological supremacy and popular support. Woodside argues that in terms of popular support, the Buddhist revivalists lost to the popular sects; in organizational power, they lost to the communists. But the Buddhist revivalists, says he, won over many intellectuals due to their intriguing arguments on the compatibility of Buddhism and science; on Buddhist egalitarianism; and atheism.5

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David Marr (1981, pp. 304–06) briefly describes the goals and activities of the Buddhist revivalists, inspired by Taixu’s reforms. But like Trần and Woodside, he deems the revival’s organizational efforts of limited national significance, except for their participation in the intellectual debates of the day. In contrast, the present essay looks at the revivalists’ accomplishments in areas besides the elite intellectual sphere; furthermore, supporters included merchants and civil servants and their families, not only “the intelligentsia”. And in addition to a search for an “organized community”, believing Buddhism to be the “spiritual capital” for a strong and peaceful nation, Buddhists were also interested in individual cultivation and practice, and international issues as well. Finally, Shawn McHale devotes a substantial chapter in his 2004 book on print cultures and the making of the Vietnamese public sphere to the Buddhist revival; McHale concludes that the revival, in its “push for textual orthodoxy” was of limited impact during 1920–45, while “popular Buddhist devotionalism” grew and prospered. He reaches his “limited impact” conclusion because first, he employs evidence from southern Vietnam to draw conclusions about the entire revival, and second, because he defines “the public sphere very narrowly as debates and texts” and readership.6 This chapter’s reappraisal of the Buddhist revival finds more variation in content and more lay support at the time, and more lasting structural legacies than previously noted. The chapter probes the problem of “origins” of the revival and stresses the importance of old and new transnational networks in stimulating the revival, especially networks involving the Chinese within and without Vietnam. Moreover, Vietnam’s Chấn Hưng Phật Giáo developed within a transnational Buddhist revival and was influenced in part by the Chinese Buddhist revival led by Taixu. The chapter then discusses variation in the Vietnamese Buddhist revival including how Buddhist groups in different regions promoted “Buddhism for this world”, and the different styles and content of Buddhist revival materials. The Buddhist revival attracted followers on three levels: spiritual life (devotion, self-cultivation, and merit-making); the fate of the nation; and transnational concerns, because these Buddhists’ identity and direction were shaped by regional and world trends in politics, economy, and thought. The final section considers groups of Buddhist revival supporters not discussed in previous scholarship: petty bourgeois and landowners;

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assimilated Chinese and Sino-Việt within Vietnam, newer overseas Chinese communities in Vietnam, women, and the Việt Kiều in Southeast Asia. If engaged Buddhism is defined only in political terms, as confrontation with the state, as struggle against war and oppression, then the era of the 1960s marked the high point for this type of engagement in modern Vietnamese institutional Buddhism. But what if we broadened the definition of the public sphere beyond political activism, texts and intellectual debates to include Buddhist practices, public sermons and lectures, translation projects, pagoda (re)construction, education and publishing initiatives, welfare, associations, trans-local and transnational journeys and the building of social networks? We would see a more diverse view of engagement, a multi-national, multi-regional, multi-ethnic (Việt, Chinese, Westerner) view, with both male and female actors. This chapter is that story, the story of an alternative history of engagement, called “Buddhism for this world”, Nhân Gian Phật Giáo, and in the world, Nhập Thế, that began in the early twentieth century, was multi-vocal, broader and more complex than previously understood, and is ongoing in Vietnam today.

The Buddhist Revival in Vietnam: The Problem of “Origins” We can ask, why “revive Buddhism” at this time? The Buddhist revival literature (written by Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike) abounds with dire images of famous historical pagodas crumbling to dust; the sangha filled with ignorant, superstitious, and money-grubbing monastics; monks forgetting their vows with lifestyles no different from lay people. Larger realities were that Buddhism was not perceived as responding to the crises of “Westernization” and colonial rule, especially if compared with the nationalist /revolutionary platform. And, Buddhist temples were also losing supporters and resources to new popular sects or Catholicism. But in fact, contradictory evidence makes it very difficult to reach an absolute verdict of “decline” in Vietnamese Buddhism at the time of the revival. As Thien Do (1999) discusses, perception of “decline” in Buddhism is subjective and ideological, depending on one’s point of view. Tropes of various “golden ages” and periods of “decline” had a long history in Vietnamese Buddhist discourse. From the Neo-Confucian official

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perspective, Buddhism as state-supported institution and state ideology had been “declining” for over four centuries, while Chan monastics had long decried influences from “foreign tantric” influences and local cults alike. These perspectives ignore or denigrate Buddhism as a popular religion and its many variations and growth on the local level. And Li Tana writes that not only did Buddhism flourish under Nguyễn patronage in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but also “at times both Lê kings and Trịnh chúa patronized Buddhism, some enthusiastically.”7 Some historical temples popular as pilgrimage sites continued to receive imperial or other elite support to at least 1900.8 Furthermore, Thích Nhất Hạnh notes that even before 1920 and the subsequent Revival period, “…there were high-ranking monks maintaining the pulse of Buddhism”, holding well-attended dharma talks for monastics and lay in the south (Chợ Lớn, Bến Tre, Châu Đốc, Bạc Liêu, Trà Vinh, Gia Định, Gò Công), centre (Thiên Hưng, Từ Hiếu, Thập Tháp and other temples) and north (Vĩnh Nghiêm Temple and Linh Quang Monastery) as well as reprinting Chinese sutras and translating some into quốc ngữ.9 During the nineteenth century Buddhist temples in the north, centre, and south had published Buddhist works which “…probably formed a significant proportion of all texts published” at that time (McHale 2004, p. 13). A common tendency in the historiography is to make the history of the modern nation, anti-colonial struggle, and “the revolution” drive the narrative of the Buddhist revival. This approach runs the risk of a positivist understanding of historical processes, swayed by hindsight, to reduce a multi-stranded, knotty history into a pure and narrow line. For example, some works begin with the anti-French risings by rural-based lay Buddhist millenarian groups in the 1860s and lay and monastic revolutionary risings during 1885–98, especially the 1898 “Monks’ War” in central Vietnam.10 But it is as yet unclear what precise relationship there is between these actors and events and those of the subsequent Chấn Hưng Phật Giáo movement. (See Nhất Hạnh 1967; Trần 1975; Nguyễn Tài Thư et al. 1992) and most participants in the Buddhist Revival did not take an anti-colonial stance, militant or otherwise. The History of Buddhism in Vietnam, written by Marxist historians, is critical of religion and Buddhism and takes an over-simplified view of class struggle as the driving force in history, but does make several sensible points about the context in which the Buddhist Revival took place.11 New professional and business groups arose in the cities, influenced

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by imported French, Japanese, and Chinese cultures, and a modern press conveyed news and socio-political developments from around the world. Some Vietnamese received a “Western education” or a “Chinese education” and others had opportunities to travel around Vietnam and abroad for travel or study.12 Notably, the nationalists Phan Bội Châu (1867–1940) and Phan Chu Trinh (1872–1926) urged Vietnamese to learn from Japan’s Meiji Restoration that led to Japan’s modernization and standing as a world power on par with the West.13 Calls for enlightenment, restoration, revival, and awakening resounded across Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when individual awakening was considered a prerequisite to national awakening (McHale 2004, pp. 5–6). I argue however, that such “enlightenment” discourse was not limited to secular modernizers: when Buddhist Revivalists in both China and Vietnam used the term enlightenment, juewu or giác ngộ, they purposively tapped into this transnational current. Many scholars have discussed the alliance of Buddhism and national liberation movements from the nineteenth century on, throughout Southeast and East Asia. It is remarkable to see how in each case the revival of Buddhism was linked to the assertion of each nation’s “authentic” identity; towards the goal of unifying and strengthening the nation to face the challenges of colonialism, modernization and Christian evangelicalism. The same period saw the phenomenon of “reverse Orientalism”, as works by Western scholars in Hindu and Buddhist studies were translated in the languages of South, Southeast and East Asia, and were one influence upon domestic revivals in these countries, particularly Sri Lanka and Cambodia.14 The magnificent discoveries at Dunhuang in 1900 also propelled Buddhist studies in Europe and China. In China, the revival began in the second half of the nineteenth century with laymen who reprinted sutras and rebuilt monasteries destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion. Then, aggressive Christian missionary efforts and the Japanese Buddhist Revival stimulated Chinese Buddhist scholarship, teaching, and proselytization.15 Holmes Welch writes: Up to this point only laymen were involved…16 But in the last years of the Ch’ing dynasty [late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries], when moves were made to confiscate their property for use in secular education, the monks began to organize schools and social-welfare enterprises as a means of self-defense.17

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Furthermore, the 1893 World Parliament of Religions and Sri Lankan Buddhist reformer Dharmapala’s visit to Shanghai in 1895 had significant repercussions. In the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, a number of Chinese monks travelled to Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, and India to learn more about their Buddhist revivals and to propagate Chinese Buddhism overseas.18 A major figure in the Chinese Buddhist Revival was the monk Taixu (1890–1947): his ideas about “Buddhism for Human Life”, [rensheng fojiao] and “Buddhism for this world” [renjian fojiao], were forged in the turn-of-the-century intellectual environment of debates about religion and the relevance of Buddhism to the modern world engaged in by “Chinese Enlightenment” figures and revolutionaries.19 The revival in the modern period in China, as in other countries, included new elements like growth of lay organizations and lay teachers of the dharma; clinics, orphanages, and schools; a radio station; proselytizing in prisons; and the effort to start an ecumenical movement with Buddhists abroad. Also, the modern revival saw Buddhist publishing houses, reorganized seminaries for Buddhist monastics, and national Buddhist associations.20 Taixu first spoke directly on “renjian fojiao” in 1933. Here is his definition: Renjian fojiao is not a Buddhism in which you leave the human realm and become a god or ghost, or for everyone to take monastic vows, go to a temple, or become an eremite in the forest. It’s a Buddhism which, in accordance with Buddhist teachings, reforms society, helps humankind to progress, and improves the whole world.21

In July 1926 in “Jianshe renjian jingtu lun” (On building the Pure Land in This World) and then in November 1930 in his “Chuangzao renjian jingtu lun” (Creating the Pure Land in This World), Taixu discussed the construction of a Pure Land in the human realm, stressing that people create the Pure Land starting with their hearts and minds, not relying on spirits, ghosts, or gods; creating Buddhism for this world with support of government and society; and, reforming the sangha system and establishing lay Buddhist associations.22 Thích Nhất Hạnh indirectly references these ideas in writing about the origins of Buddhist engagement in Vietnam: “In the 1930s, the Buddhist scholars had already discussed the engagement of Buddhism in the modern society and called it Nhân Gian Phật Giáo or engaged

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Buddhism.”23 An article by Đỗ Nam Tử in the 15 February 1937 issue of the Tonkin Buddhist Association’s Ðuốc Tuệ (Torch of Wisdom) introduced the ideas of renjian fojiao and Buddhist revival discussed in Hai Chao Yin, in which Đỗ liberally quotes from Taixu’s essay, “How to establish a Buddhism for this world”. Đỗ stresses that the original message of the Buddha was to relieve human suffering of the world… egalitarianism and compassion are the dominant teachings of Buddhism; and this is renjian fojiao. It means to make this world into the Pure Land, not wait until the Western Paradise after death. Buddhism is not secret, mystical, or ghostly but is entered into humanity and society. Đỗ concludes by saying that though the Tonkin Buddhist Association heretofore had not talked specifically about Nhân Gian Phật Giáo, they had already been practising it. “Our Buddhist Revival is not different from that in China and we agree with what the Chinese revivalists are doing…we agree with renjian fojiao….”24 Another element in the story of origins is the patronage of the Buddhist revival by colonial elites. Like their counterparts in China, the Vietnamese Buddhist reformers founded modern associations: the Buddhist Associations of the south (Cochinchina 1931), centre (Annam 1932) and north (Tonkin 1934). All three Buddhist Associations had active or nominal French officials in their leadership structure (Nguyễn Tài Thư et al. 1992, p. 393), and should be compared with efforts of the French and indigenous elites in Cambodia “to study and preserve Buddhism” as an important plank of the colonialist project (Edwards 2004). The Annam Buddhist Association, for example, had contacts with the Emperor Bảo Ðại, and EFEO director George Coedès worked closely with the Tonkin Buddhist Association. Parallels between Vietnam and other contexts in which Buddhism was being reformed are instructive and point to the need to understand the particular local concerns to which these initiatives were responding. More research is required but we may say provisionally that the revival in Vietnam drew from many sources. Elites decried Buddhism’s “decline” into superstition and corruption, yet some temples flourished at the turn of the century and produced outstanding masters who made important contributions to the movement. Anti-colonial and revolutionary ideals inspired some Buddhist revivalists, yet associational and scholarly activities were often indebted to the patronage of colonial elites. The revival issued out of the cultural ferment of the 1920s and 1930s, whose many cross-

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currents included processes of religious diversification and syncretism and countervailing purification movements, a search for cultural equivalence with more powerful nations and an aspiration to reinstate traditions informed by a perception of cultural crisis. Yet it is also clear that as soon as we examine Vietnam’s Buddhist Revival, we enter the larger transnational context. To address this dimension of the revival, we turn our attention to the movement of reformist ideas and texts and of people across the borders contrived by colonial administrators and by nationalists and historians working within the framework of national histories.

Transnational Networks and Chinese Nodes In the first decades of the twentieth century, Chinese works circulated in Vietnam, many via local Chinese communities, regarding Meiji reformers, “Chinese Enlightenment” thinkers, and the Chinese revolution of 1911.25 Since the late nineteenth century, Sài Gòn especially had produced French and quốc ngữ publications on world events and social-intellectual trends.26 Both the government and private sector had published newspapers in quốc ngữ since the late nineteenth century. The Chinese in Vietnam were especially keen to read of dramatic developments in China, and could do so in a number of newspapers published by private Chinese companies in Sài Gòn, Hải Phòng, and Hà Nội, beginning in 1918. The most influential newspapers were the All-People’s Daily (the organ of an association uniting overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, with support from the Kuomintang (KMT), the Vietnam Daily, and the Far East Daily.27 As Shawn McHale (2004) mentions, included among this flow of ideas were seminal texts and journals by Chinese Buddhist reformers. Chinese Buddhist sutras, books and journals were brought to Vietnam by Chinese monks and overseas Chinese.28 The Shanghai Buddhist Press, publisher of Hai Chao Yin and many other works, exported books and journals to Vietnam and imported “Annam aloeswood incense”.29 In 1931, monk Thiện Chiếu of Linh Sơn Temple in Sài Gòn asked “laypeople in Chợ Lớn” to purchase several sets of “the Chinese canon” that had been just published in Shanghai.30 Chợ Lớn was the link to Shanghai, and Shanghai “…was the center of the modern Chinese Buddhist revival…”, a multi-cultural haven attracting monastics and lay people alike, the centre of the modern Buddhist press and distribution system; a meeting ground for all schools of Buddhism.31

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Modern publishing and international information flows fed the Buddhist revival, but at the same time the revival evolved out of a long history of translocal Buddhist and trade networks; these networks stimulated and facilitated the revival. Furthermore, one crucial point that Buddhist revival histories do not mention is that nodes and networks of Buddhism often were areas with numerous Chinese or mixed population. Ashiwa and Wank (2005) have made a good start in this direction in their article about twoway transnational networks of Buddhist clergy, devotees, and resources in China, North America, and Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines in the modern era. Unfortunately, they did not mention the age-old history of Buddhist exchanges between China and Vietnam. As is well known, China and Vietnam have a long record of both trade, Chinese immigration to Vietnam, and Buddhist interactions. Buddhism entered Vietnam with Chinese and Indian merchants, and second-century records note the presence of “foreign monks” (presumably Indian and/or Chinese) in North Vietnam (Nhất Hạnh 1967, p. 4). A pattern of Chinese merchants and settlers into present-day northern Vietnam dates from the end of the third century BC.32 In history, most of the scriptural and cultic materials (monks’ robes, incense sticks, candles, and medicines, reached Vietnam from China.33 An Amida Temple in Hội An dated from the Tang dynasty (tenth century), was built by Chinese monks who sailed to the Hội An area with merchants; from this time Chinese maritime commerce grew to surpass overland routes. From the Song dynasty (twelfth century) Chinese doctors, medicine traders, and monks flowed to Vietnam after the Chinese monk, Mingkong, gained fame by curing a Lý emperor of dire illness. The city of Hội An was built by the Chinese in the mid-sixteenth century and became the commercial centre of Indochina by the eighteenth century (Purcell 1951, p. 222). Traders and refugees from China built temples in Tonkin and Annam to their popular deities and to Confucius, while in the seventeenth century a steady influx of monks came with Chinese merchant ships to the Huế and Hội An areas and built Buddhist temples, and held national ordination ceremonies for monks, gave statecraft and state-building advice to the Nguyễn leaders, and convinced royal house members and officials to take Bodhisattva vows.34 Li Tana writes that the next “wave” of Chinese settlers flowed in, with Nguyễn government encouragement, to the Biên Hòa and Mỹ Tho areas in the late seventeenth century, and Chinese from Biên Hòa founded the city of Chợ Lớn in 1778.35 Chinese founded

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Hà Tiên for maritime commerce in 1681, drawing many settlers and many Chinese into southwest Lower Cochinchina (Li Tana 1998, p. 34). The Chinese monopolized the rice trade (and milling and transport) in Cochinchina even before the French. Waterways from each local and provincial market led to Chợ Lớn and to China. Under the French, particularly with their “ecological and economic transformation” of Western Cochinchina (via a vast canal network and conversion of wetlands to agriculture), the “Nam Bo” economy became further integrated, for better or worse, into the world economy.36 Cochinchina overall was connected by canals, roads, and railways. As of 1928, 400,000 overseas Chinese resided in South Vietnam,37 100,000 of whom lived in Sài Gòn, mostly businessmen involved in the rice trade centred in Chợ Lớn.38 Other important concentrations of settlement were Hải Phòng, Hà Nội, and Nam Ðịnh. In 1889, besides Chợ Lớn and Sài Gòn, Chinese immigrants were noticeable in Sóc Trăng, Trà Vinh, Gia Định, Cần Thơ, Bạc Liêu, Mỹ Tho, Sa Đéc, and Châu Đốc. In the decade 1921–31, the greatest numbers of Minh-hương (Sino-Việt) were found in Cochinchina especially in the provinces of Sóc Trang, Bạc Liêu, Trà Vinh, Cần Thơ, Rạch Giá, and Hà Tiên (Purcell 1951, pp. 215, 217). These place-names and Buddhist temples located there are mentioned again and again in Buddhist Revival publications.39 Thus there was a network of merchant contacts among Chợ Lớn, Sài Gòn, and its satellite areas, as well as connections to Shanghai, where the majority of Chinese Buddhist publications were published and distributed. Thiện Chiếu’s acquisition of Chinese Buddhist texts from Shanghai had precursors, for Chợ Lớn had been a major importer of books from South China since the nineteenth century (McHale 2004, p. 13). Moreover, following a long historical tradition, Chinese monks during the revival period continued to come to Vietnam either for pilgrimages, to work in temples located in Chinese communities, and to build new temples.40 The development of a “patriotic” Buddhism, noted also for its charity projects, called “Hoa Tông”, continued through the 1950s-1970s among the overseas Chinese, with the help of monks from Taiwan.41 Through this provisional sketch we can see the outlines of a transnational network linking various groups within Vietnam with China. The Vietnamese Buddhist Revival was one node in this network, albeit with its own issues, emphases, trajectories, and outcomes. Turning to the Vietnamese context, now, we can see how the circulation of ideas and texts was driven by local

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concerns. Examination of these concerns in turn allows us to trace more clearly the contours of this transnational network, at the points where it intersected regions and individual biographies.

Variations in the Revival Movement We now consider commonalities and variations in Vietnam’s revival movement: the careers of pioneer monks; how Buddhist groups in different regions promoted “Buddhism for this world” and the different styles and content of Buddhist revival materials that spoke to Buddhists’ concerns with individual cultivation, the fate of the nation, and transnational issues. Each region’s Buddhist circle has its own history, founders, and publications, though there was interaction of personnel and journals among all three regions throughout the 1920s–1940s. Taixu’s Vietnamese monastic disciples such as Trí Hải (1906–79) and others influenced by Taixu’s writings, built temples, wrote articles, published journals, wrote a variety of pedagogical tools, translated Chinese writings into quốc ngữ, and developed networks of lay supporters. The reformists also founded schools for monks and nuns, attempted to reform property and economic administration of monasteries, called for stricter standards for recruitment and evaluation of monastics, offered lectures and classes (on Buddhism and others topics like family life) for lay people, and promoted “Buddhism for this world”, thus building the organizational and conceptual foundation for Vietnamese national Buddhism. This chapter cannot discuss in depth the complex interactions in and among the three regions, only notes that they displayed examples of mutual inspiration and cooperation, as well as petty personal and factional struggles, played out for all to read and despair of, in the Buddhist press. Lamented the nun Diệu Tu: “We are monastics, we should not fight.” 42 We can say though, that the “revival of Buddhism and how to achieve it” meant different things to different people, starting with the pioneers themselves.

The Southern Crucible According to Vietnamese Marxist historians, “(t)he origins of this movement are to be found in and around Sài Gòn, the earliest and most profoundly exploited area of French Indo-China” (Nguyễn Tài Thư et al. 1992, p. 388). Leaving aside for the moment the issue of exploitation, there were other more immediate reasons that the revival could begin in the south. These include,

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as mentioned above, its connections to centres of Buddhist reformism in China, its special features as a globalized, multi-cultural and urbanized region, and the plethora of information and publications available in quốc ngữ, Chinese, and French.43 And, according to Thích Nhất Hạnh, even before this, temples in the Bến Tre–Trà Vinh–Trà Ôn area west and south of Sài Gòn produced outstanding monks, held popular dharma talks, and printed and translated sutras, possibly influenced by Buddhist revivals in Cambodia or Thailand. Several of these temples and monks became centrally involved in Vietnam’s Buddhist revival. Historians credit “the south” as the fount of the revival because Khánh Hòa (1877–1947) founded the first revival association, the Lục Hòa Alliance, in 1923 at the renowned Long Hòa Pagoda in Trà Vinh, to promote the Buddhist revival and establish links with Chinese Buddhist circles.44 Khánh Hòa, born in Phú Lễ in Bến Tre Province, became a monk at age nineteen. Serving as abbot of several leading temples in the area he became renowned as a public lecturer, well-read in both Buddhism and contemporary learning. Khánh Hòa traveled to temples throughout Cochinchina, speaking on the need to reform sangha education and organization and for Buddhism to take a more active social role, while his younger colleague Thiện Chiếu lectured at temples in Annam and Tonkin, attempting to link with supporters. The two monks published the first Buddhist journals written in quốc ngữ in the 1920s, transmitted Taixu’s and other Chinese Buddhist reform writings throughout Vietnam, and published many works on the Buddhist revival (Nguyễn Lang 1994, pp. 51–54). In 1931 top monks such as Khánh Hòa, Huệ Quang, and Trí Triền founded the Cochinchina Buddhist Study Society (with their journal Từ Bi Âm) at Linh Sơn Temple, offered by Thiện Chiếu. For the rest of his life Khánh Hòa continued his reform efforts, but was stymied by factional struggles dealing with the leadership of the Cochinchina Buddhist Study Society. He died in 1947 at Tuyên Linh Temple in Bến Tre (Nguyễn Lang 1994, pp. 53–55, 63). Thiện Chiếu (1898–1974) grew up in a Buddhist family and learned Chinese and the Chinese classics. At age thirteen, he became a novice under his grandfather Venerable Huệ Tịnh from Gò Công, Thiện Chiếu’s birthplace.45 He taught himself to read French books and newspapers and the “new learning” of China and Japan greatly affected him. In 1920–23 he participated with Khánh Hòa and others in the founding of the Lục Hòa

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Alliance. Thiện Chiếu became abbot of Linh Sơn Pagoda in Sài Gòn; when the 1926 funeral for patriot Phan Chu Trinh led to mass demonstrations, Thiện Chiếu was among the monks arrested. His motivation for political activism, he said, was Buddhist compassion. Crucially, Thiện Chiếu propagated Taixu’s Zhengli sengqie zhidu lun (The Reorganization of the Sangha System, 1915) among monks in northern Vietnam.46 This bold “…plan called for Chinese Buddhism to be reshaped institutionally with new model monasteries, benevolent organizations, and educational ventures”.47 These were key documents, with Taixu’s periodical Hai Chao Yin (Thiện Chiếu went to Hà Nội and introduced Taixu’s Hai Chao Yin and other works to the Linh Quang Temple and the Long Khánh school for monks in Hà Nội in May 1927) and other Shanghai Buddhist publications that inspired the Buddhist revival taking place in Vietnam.48 Thiện Chiếu’s 1929 work, Phật học tổng yếu (A General Summary of Buddhism) which included translations of Chinese sutras, important articles from Taixu’s Hai Chao Yin, and his own essays, was widely circulated and debated in Buddhist circles of the time.49 In the historiography of modern Buddhism in Vietnam, Thiện Chiếu is the archetype of the “engaged” Buddhist monk because he, a learned and also prolific writer, consistently participated in political movements such as the Revolutionary Youth Comrade Association in 1928; the “Study and Welfare Action Buddhist Association” in the 1930s that promoted Buddhist socialism; the Nam Kỳ uprising of 1940; and got temples involved in Việt Minh mobilization in Sài Gòn. But in the late 1930s, like the revolutionary Nguyễn An Ninh, he became disenchanted with Buddhism, realizing that Buddhism could not truly relieve human suffering; he could not believe that “spirit can conquer matter”. He left the sangha and turned full-time to revolutionary and anticolonial activities.50 The “Thiện Chiếu Saga”, especially with his dramatic exit from the sangha and recanting of Buddhism, as explained in his Tại Sao Tôi Ðã Cám Ơn Ðạo Phật? (Bến Tre 1936) takes central stage in histories of Buddhism in modern Vietnam, as in Trần (1975), with credit given also to central Vietnam’s Buddhist revival (this is more obvious in histories written by native sons Mật Thể and Nhất Hạnh).51 The Tonkin Buddhist Association (due to lack of proper anti-colonial, revolutionary credentials) is given only passing notice, even though its membership was the highest of the three regional associations. However while Thiện Chiếu is a major and exemplary actor in the Buddhist revival, Thiện Chiếu

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(or any one person) cannot stand as its metonym. Nor are Thiện Chiếu’s beliefs and experiences typical of the Cochinchina Buddhist Society, with whom he struggled and whose Từ Bi Âm attacked him. Furthermore, besides the Cochinchina Buddhist Association, there were rival Buddhist Revival groups in the south, not to mention the competition with rapidly growing new syncretic groups like Cao Đài, Hòa Hảo, and the Tịnh Ðộ Cư Sĩ.52 The Association of Chan Sects was founded by Huệ Đăng in 1934 at the Thiên Thai Pagoda in Bà Rịa. This association was very active in Châu Đốc and Cần Thơ, as well as in the Sài Gòn area: Hóc Môn, Gò Vấp, and Chợ Lớn. Its goals were to propagate the dharma, establish a school and library, translate sutras, publish Bát Nhã Âm, (which featured articles about Buddhist revival) and help the poor.53 And, monks from Trà Vinh, Trà Ôn, and Bến Tre founded Lưỡng Xuyên Buddhist Association in 1934, with its head office at Long Phước Temple. This group promoted Buddhism through its journal Duy Tâm, translated sutras, and established elementary and college-preparatory Buddhist schools in Trà Vinh with both Vietnamese and Chinese students. Upon graduation, students attended a four-year Buddhist college in Central Vietnam and were sent all around to propagate Buddhism. This school was “richly financed with money and lands donated by laypeople”.54 In sum, the south was an important centre of Vietnam’s Buddhist revival although the movement in this region had distinctive characteristics. The emphasis on unifying Vietnamese Buddhism in the writings of pioneering reformist monks of this region suggests that their preoccupations were not narrowly regionalist, yet such an emphasis is also understandable in light of acute local problems of religious sectarianism and schisms. A nuanced history of the Buddhist revival in the south remains to be written. Such an undertaking would need to take account of the region’s ethnic and religious pluralism, its unique political conditions and its particular social and intellectual linkages with the rest of Vietnam and with the world beyond.

The Northern Restoration Despite the south’s reputation as the avant-garde centre of the movement, in the 1920s some lay people and monks in northern Vietnam were already promoting revival. Hence, we turn to the north and the Buddhist monk Trí Hải, heretofore skimmed over in the historiography. Trí Hải, born in 1906 in Lý Nhân district in Hà Nam province, became a monk in 1922.

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He realized that “Buddhism is very useful for human life…” One of his morning prayers as a young monk was: “When you meet people who are sick, you make medicine for them. If you meet very poor people, you hope to make rice for them…” and he read in the Chinese sutras “we can never become a Buddha if people around us are poor and suffering”. Trí Hải knew Chinese but realized many Buddhists, including the monastics, did not; some were illiterate and did not even understand what they were chanting, let alone the content of Buddhist doctrines. Trí Hải was concerned that Buddhists would only carry out “superstitious practices” (burning of paper ritual objects, spirit media activities, and worship of local animal cults) and Buddhism would decline and die. Therefore there must be a revival and it needed a strategy and organization. From 1924–29 Trí Hải attempted to promote these ideas in local Buddhist circles but was ignored by the conservative monk leaders. At age twentyfive he founded a Buddhist study association based on the principle of mutual aid; however members were young and the older monks dismissed them as a “children’s group”. But the group gained both monastic and lay members and spread from Hà Nam to Hưng Yên, Thái Bình, and Nam Ðịnh. In 1931 they heard that the Cochinchina Buddhist Association had been founded, with Từ Bi Âm as their journal, and read in Hà Nội journals about the formation of the Annam Buddhist Association and their journal Viên Âm. The group thought that at last they could organize the Tonkin Buddhist Association but again the Hà Nội monastic establishment turned them away, saying there is nothing wrong, temples are being refurbished, statues repainted, bells recast, visitors flocking to temples, so why rebuild Buddhism? So Trí Hải and his supporters turned to the provinces and to lay people in Hà Nội and searched for a headquarters in Hà Nội. They found Quán Sứ, close to the train station, the former imperial guest house converted into a temple that had become dilapidated during the nineteenth century. Trí Hải, with the support of his fellow Buddhist Lê Dư, a local official interested in preserving historic sites, and other lay members, eventually procured a five-year lease on the property from the nuns living there. Trí Hải’s group moved into Quán Sứ and drew up plans for its renovation. Trí Hải was never shy about the need to secure powerful and reliable patrons among French colonial officialdom, in part to circumvent his opponents in the Buddhist hierarchy, for what would become the Tonkin Buddhist Association (TBA), founded in November 1934. A school for monks followed in 1935 and then a school for nuns in

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1941; the TBA published the journal Ðuốc Tuệ (Torch of Wisdom) from 1935–45. The Tonkin Buddhist Association claimed 10,000 members as of 1944. If each branch had 100 members as Trí Hải originally stipulated, then there were 100 sub-associations in northern Vietnam.55 In early 1937 the Tonkin Buddhist Association sent Trí Hải and Mật Thể and three others to Hong Kong where they stayed for two weeks and then to Shanghai to find Taixu at the Jing’an Temple who arranged for their study at Jiaoshan, Jiangsu. They stayed for five months studying Buddhism, Chinese, and Chinese medicine, but the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War forced the group to return to Hà Nội, sutras in hand. On the way back, the group also visited Taixu’s headquarters in Wuhan, as well as temples in Henan and Guangdong. Trí Hải commented how impressed he was by the size and scope of Chinese temples. Some Vietnamese temples were 1,000 years old, but they looked nothing like China’s and he always harboured a dream to build a big temple-complex in Vietnam.56 So Trí Hải began a plan (not realized) in 1940 to renovate and expand Yên Tử Pagoda (to add a summer school and a rest-home) because, he said, it is a famous historical site of “national Buddhism” with 10,000 visitors yearly, but structures in the area had partly collapsed. His plans called for the use of cement, not wood, in the renovation work. At once Trí Hải’s plan looked back to the Trúc Lâm Chan golden years in the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries and to the future of modern Buddhist charity, education, and tourism ventures.57 Nostalgia for the Lý and Trần eras, when supposedly “a pure Chan Buddhism, the nation, and society all flourished together”, is a recurrent theme in the northern Buddhist revival, as will be seen below. The subsequent chaos wrought by the 1945 famine in the North, the August Revolution, end of World War II, and the Franco-Việt Minh war disrupted the plans and activities of the Tonkin Buddhist Association; Trí Hải and his colleagues concentrated their efforts on relieving famine victims, raising orphans, and working for Quán Sứ’s daily survival.58 From the 1950s on, Quán Sứ became the centre of institutional Buddhism in Hà Nội, and is now the headquarters of the Vietnamese National Buddhist Congregation.

The Legacy of Central Vietnam Studies of the Buddhist revival in central Vietnam focus on Huế; with good reason, as it was the capital of the last dynasty, the Nguyễn, thus an

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administrative, educational, and cultural centre, and the imperial institution built and/or sponsored a number of Buddhist temples including Thiên Mụ (1601), Quốc Ân (1680s), Từ Ðàm (established by a Chinese monk in 1695), and Báo Quốc Temple (established by a Chinese monk in 1670), Thuyền Tôn (founded in 1708) by Linji Chan master Liễu Quan, and others. At the turn of the century, Buddhism in central Vietnam was apparently not in decline but flourishing, (in the sense that temples were economically sound, new temples were being built, masters attracted followers to their dharma lectures, etc.) especially at Thiên Hưng, Từ Hiếu, Thập Tháp, Thuyền Tôn, and other Buddhist temples.59 Historians credit the monks Giác Tiên and Phước Huệ with launching new organizational and educational initiatives in central Vietnam, in part inspired by Taixu,60 together with lay members such as Dr Lê Ðình Thám, a medical doctor and Sinologist, and Nguyễn Khoa Tân. These reformers established a Buddhist Institute at Báo Quốc Temple directed by monk Mật Khế for monks’ training, and one at Diệu Ðức Temple, run by lay people, for nuns. Both schools were sponsored by the Annam Buddhist Association, established in 1932 at the Trúc Lâm Pagoda in Huế; their journal was Viên Âm.61 The Annam Buddhist Association developed close relations with the Lưỡng Xuyên Buddhist Association in Trà Vinh, and monks and nuns from the south studied in Huế. As of 1937, the Annam Buddhist Association had 3000 members, from every province in central Vietnam, including ethnic minority areas. The Annam Buddhist Association’s unique contributions to modern Vietnamese Buddhism include their Buddhist elementary, middle, and high school programmes62 as well as their Buddhist Youth Family Movement (today called Gia Ðình Phật Tử), founded in 1940 by Dr Lê Ðình Thám, who also authored numerous works on Buddhism and translated into Vietnamese the Śūrangama sūtra (a guide to meditation teaching methods to overcome delusion and attain enlightenment; explications of this sutra figured prominently as well in the pages of Từ Bi Âm). By the early 1960s, the Buddhist Youth Family Movement became one of the best-organized youth associations in the entire country, with 1,000 units comprising 70,000 young people and 3,000 leaders. And central Vietnam produced a number of leaders of the 1960s Buddhist movement: Trí Quang, Thiên Minh, Minh Châu, and Nhất Hạnh.63 But because of the distinguished achievements of the Annam Buddhist Association, the fact that the All-Vietnam Buddhist Association was

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established in Huế, and the prominent role of Huế in the Buddhist Struggle Movement, Huế has come to embody “the Centre”, but should be better viewed as a major node connecting other Buddhist nodes in Đà Nẵng and Hội An, and the coastal provinces of Quảng Nam, Quảng Ngãi, Bình Ðịnh, Phú Yên (origin of the 1898 Monks’ War), and Khánh Hòa, and beyond. The life of Dr Lê Ðình Thám (1897–1969), lauded as “…the spirit of the Buddhist restoration in central Vietnam…” was the story of many cross-currents: he was born into a mandarin family near Đà Nẵng, not Huế, was trained in Chinese and classical literature, and obtained a medical degree in Hà Nội. The French secret police suspected him of anti-colonial sympathies, yet he headed the Pasteur Institute in Huế. He was a scientist and educator and also a Buddhist. He cooperated with the French in the Annam Buddhist Association, but in the late 1940s joined the revolution and headed the resistance committee for south-central Vietnam, and thereafter worked in Hà Nội, teaching and publishing at Quán Sứ temple. The last twenty years of his life were spent in the communist north, not Huế.64 Thích Quảng Ðức, perhaps the most potent and everlasting symbol of the Buddhist Struggle Movement, is often assumed to be a son of Huế, but he was born in rural Vạn Ninh county in Khánh Hòa province, notable for its own colourful Buddhist lineages and legends, a Buddhist landscape not in the least “in decline”. Thích Quảng Ðức was taught geomancy and healing practices by local Linji masters alleged to have “mystical powers”, spent years in meditative seclusion, and spent most of his life giving dharma talks, teaching meditation, and (re)building temples in Khánh Hòa, Sài Gòn, and the Mekong Delta. Thích Quảng Ðức was linked to Huế via the local branch of the Annam Buddhist Association, served in several administrative positions for the sangha, and interacted with urban reformist monks, but only near the end of his life became directly involved in Huế’s Buddhist circles. Why and how is another story.65 In sum, much research is still needed to fully illustrate the dynamics in and among each region, north, centre, and south, among major urban centres and the surrounding nodes of Buddhism during the revival years, and would merit comparison with the regional differences, loyalties, and competition, despite decades of unification, among Buddhist monastic and lay circles in Vietnam today.

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Philosophical Debates Vs. Pedagogy and Practice As History of Buddhism in Vietnam (pp. 396–417) narrates, monastics, laypeople, and non-Buddhists carried out public debates in Buddhist periodicals about such problems as the perennial tension between nhập thế/xuất thế in Buddhism, in particular, to what extent should Buddhists serve society, get involved in politics and even take up arms for the nation? 66 Also, in light of science and materialistic philosophies, is Buddhism theistic or atheistic? What is the relation of body to soul? What is the nature of Heaven and the Pure Land? And, debates on “the self ” versus “non-self ”. Yet besides these abstruse debates, one can also find simpler pedagogical articles in Buddhist periodicals, the authors earnestly trying to “popularize” Buddhism, to make Buddhist doctrines and practices understandable to lay people, (like “Phép Tu Tịnh Độ,” in Ðuốc Tuệ, Vol. 129, 1 April 1940, p. 3) or Ðuốc Tuệ’s serial story in 1940 about a set of sisters who became nuns. Ðuốc Tuệ, like other Buddhist periodicals, encouraged reader contributions and feedback as well (readers hailed from all areas of Vietnam). Furthermore, rituals like paying respects to the Buddha, praying to various Bodhisattvas including Quan Âm, celebrating Buddhist holidays, and Pure Land Buddhism, were not rejected. Some Buddhists like Thiện Chiếu (who translated and circulated Taixu’s 1913 essay “On Atheism”) insisted on an “atheist” interpretation of Buddhism, but revival leaders like Bích Liên Trí Hải wrote Tịnh Độ Huyền-cảnh that explains the history of the Amida Buddha and the Pure Land, which has a question-and-answer section on the Pure Land, as well as offers catchy translations of Chinese poems on Buddhism. The book teaches how to chant mantras, how to pay respects to the Buddha (how to offer incense, how to chant, etc.), how to pray for all sentient beings. The author suggests that practitioners chant mantras while washing one’s face, brushing teeth, and changing clothes, so that you will get cleaner (p. 38) The author notes (p. 26) that the Zhunti mantra is very powerful, can repel ghosts, and lead us to the Pure Land. As was true for Taixu (he accepted and advocated all “schools” of Buddhism but preferred Chan and Weishi (Consciousness-Only); he did not reject Pure Land Buddhism outright but stressed the need to create the “Pure Land” in this world), the “orthodox Buddhism” of many revivalist monks was informed by both Chan and Pure Land traditions. But this is no surprise since a mixed Chan/Pure Land practice was the norm in

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monasteries and temples in China and Vietnam for centuries. (Thich Nhất Hạnh 1967, p. 6; Pittman 2001. pp. 32–33). Shawn McHale (pp. 157–70) may have drawn an overly sharp and contradictory division between the push for “textual orthodoxy” versus “popular devotionalism” in Buddhist revival trends. Neither Taixu nor Trí Hái, for example, rejected rituals and devotionalism as long as practitioners knew the textual and historical background, and most importantly, understood and practised Buddhism’s message, to enlighten the self and others, practise compassion, and relieve suffering.67 In other examples of popularization of Buddhism, Thiện Chiếu wrote educational texts like “Questions and Answers in Buddhism” (1932) and sold sutras to raise money for temples (GHPGVN, p. 86). The Tonkin Buddhist Association made money from selling newspapers and two popular books, one called Simple Daily Prayers and the other Family Education.68 From 1935 Quán Sứ Temple held dharma talks by Trí Hải and a layman on the first and fifteenth day of the month; Trí Hải claims that 500 people attended each time. All were printed and the audience got a copy to bring home and discuss with their family, later collected into a book, Chan Theory in Buddhism (Trí Hải, HRT, p. 35). In addition, the layman Ðoàn Trung Còn published a series of popular books on Buddhism such as Story of the Buddha, Buddhist Philosophy, and Buddhism in Modern Life, and Different Types of Buddhists in the Far East (GHPGVN, pp. 87 and 93). Trí Hải also wrote books about the Story of the Buddha, Elementary Buddhism, and Fables of the Buddha (Trí Hải, HRT, p. 71).69 In 1941, layman Thiều Chửu translated a Chinese dictionary of Buddhism into Vietnamese, still in print and used today. However, it is undeniable that popular practices like fortune-telling, burning paper money, sorcery, and astrology, were viewed by many monastics as “superstition” and detrimental to true Buddhists whether monastic or lay. A common concern in the Buddhist revival in Vietnam (and Thailand, China, etc.) was to “purify Buddhism of superstitions”, for example, to insist that Buddhism is more than the performance of rituals (petitions, paper ritual objects, funeral rites) and, “purify” Buddhism of spirit media and local forms of worship (snake, dog, tiger, etc. cults).70 Interestingly, the Cochinchina Buddhist Study considered “consecration of amulets” to be legitimate and continued this practice in “various localities” (Nguyễn Tài Thư et al. 1992, p. 391).

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And, ghosts were an object lesson in “Buddhist rationality”: “Ghosts” refer to all that is negative and evil; some ghosts are within us, some are outside of us. The ones outside of us are easy to control while the ones within us are difficult. There are four methods to expel these ghosts: the first is to know the true face of ghosts; these include love, desire, fear, hate…know them well in order to keep from being deluded by them. The second is to have no fear, even to give up one’s life. The third is to neither love or hate ghosts, neither believe nor disbelieve in them, to understand what is meant by “non-duality” (ghosts are the Buddha, the Buddha is a ghost); to realize that in fact ghosts are our kin and are everywhere, so why fear them; and also, to understand that ghosts are a type of sentient being, we should urge them to learn Buddhism, it also helps our practice; ghosts thus become our friends. Let them come and go, they will not hurt us, either inwardly or outwardly. The fourth method is to rely upon a mantra, the words themselves have power, they are the Guardians of the Buddha, so chant daily, know the words by heart, like the “Great Compassion” or the “Heart” mantra, cultivate your heart in preparedness. If your heart is already upright and honest, then the “ghosts” will not dare to enter.71

The World, the Nation, and the Spirit Seemingly contradictory or exclusive categories, “the world”, “the nation”, and “the spirit”, not only co-existed during this period but thrived in each other’s company, mutually energizing, because each reflected a deep need within peoples worldwide from the end of the nineteenth century. For example, the Tonkin Buddhist Association based at Quán Sứ Temple in Hà Nội published a book in 1938 called Hoàn-Cầu PhậtHọc [Buddhist Studies Around the World] that shows a high degree of familiarity with various developments in Buddhism studies in countries with Mahayana or Theravada traditions, as well as in Europe and the United States, and, the contemporary “new movement” within Buddhism globally. After brief overviews of the development of Buddhist studies in India, China, and Japan, the editors discuss Taixu’s call for a world Buddhist movement: he believed that Buddhism was the one international force, of all religions, “isms”, and socio-political systems that could lead to true one-world-ism, a broad and tolerant worldview, and true world peace.72

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The book next turns to recent developments in Thai Buddhism as well as the founding of the Cambodian Buddhist Association. Other sections discuss Buddhist studies in England and the United States, while “the French connection” has a number of aspects in this book: an account of a Paris meeting of the International Buddhist Association; a lecture on the psychological aspects of Buddhism by Justin Godart (1861–1956) (a socialist who served as Minister of Labour and of Public Health who visited Vietnam in early 1937 as part of a mission of the Popular Front); and another lecture on Buddhism (to the Tonkin Buddhist Association) by Yves Châtel, Resident-superior in Laos, 1931; in Annam, 1931–34, and in Tonkin, 1937–40. The book also introduces the state of the field with regard to the Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese, and Dunhuang sutras. As for Vietnamese Buddhism, the book ends by discussing the founding of the Tonkin Buddhist Association and its journal, Ðuốc Tuệ. The book’s overall tone is ecumenical and stresses the global nature of Buddhism, having universal relevance for all peoples above and beyond the nation. In Vietnam, many revivalists argued that the individual, society, and the nation all need Buddhism. Dương Bá Trạc wrote that humans need food and clothes to survive [but] need religion for a complete life…religion is necessary to overcome spiritual suffering…to realize mutual love and aid for all in society, to carry out benevolence, righteousness, proper rites, and trust, and to save the nation. Laws can only do so much to regulate human behaviour, religion [as a moral force] is also necessary. Education trains technique and ability, but one’s ideas, morality, and conduct are harder to mold. Science is an important part of the modern world but is not enough to bring people happiness and develop knowledge and morals; Buddhism is necessary to fill in the gaps of science. He continued that if the people’s wisdom does not develop, neither will the people’s morality; only by relying on religion can these be developed, and there be a peaceful and stable nation. This author, as many did during this period, mythologized Buddhism as the ancient national religion of Vietnam that had flourished among kings, officials, monastics, and lay people for centuries, especially during the Lý and Trần years. According to this myth of a golden age, when Buddhism flourished [that is, when Vietnam was rid of Chinese and Mongol invaders, when Buddhists directly influenced national politics and statecraft], so did Vietnam and its people; civil and military leaders ruled well, temples were prominent and bustling

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with believers, like Trúc Lâm Temple. Peasants knew and practised basic Buddhist doctrines, even thieves and criminals realized their wrongdoings and repented. But the decline of Buddhism nationwide (so the story goes) began with the Lê dynasty and its Confucian examination system, which drew talent and elite support away from Buddhism. Gradually, monastics and lay people who truly understood and practised Buddhism grew fewer and fewer, and eventually society and nation grew weak and fell into chaos. Therefore, argued Dương Bá Trạc, the first step is to understand the wisdom contained in the sutras, through translation and explication, and this is the purpose of founding Ðuốc Tuệ, the Torch of Wisdom, to enlighten oneself and others.73 In a similar vein, Phạm Tài Luyện claims that Buddhism is Vietnam’s oldest religion and, despite its ups and downs, has been popular for centuries. When Buddhism flourishes, the nation flourishes…All over Vietnam there are many historical and well-built, well-appointed temples…our ancestors built these for us, we should maintain and refurbish them…[but] these are only the physical forms of Buddhism…We [readily] reconstruct temples, we repair Buddhist images, we recast temple bells…but we must also revive the spirit of Buddhism: to be a Bodhisattva with a compassionate and joyfully-giving heart who saves other sentient beings. Buddhism will liberate us from the sea of bitterness and troubles, from the sea of delusions, but we need to understand and carry out both the spirit and forms of Buddhism.74 In a fascinating piece, layman Nguyễn Mục Tiên from Sài Gòn wrote about his concern regarding the quick development of Cao Đài in the south, which he criticized as heretical and an East-West “half-breed” (influenced by Spiritism) that if left unchecked will lead to the loss of the Vietnamese national character, history, and culture, which he believes at heart was formed by Buddhism and Confucianism, the traditions of centuries of Vietnamese ancestors evolving out of Vietnamese soil…the foundation for our ethics and morals: “our spiritual capital”, tư bổn tinh thần. He recalls as child going to the local temple with his parents to pay respects to the Amida Buddha, and now, seeing the Vietnamese ancestors in the cemeteries of Buddhist temples makes him well aware of individual responsibility and duty towards the next generation and the nation. He writes as if there is one primordial, timeless “Buddhism” and “Buddhist experience” in Vietnam, imprinted upon the soul of a unified generic

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Vietnamese “race” for centuries. Whoever is Vietnamese, says he, cannot fail to be awakened from worldly dreams by the compassionate sound of the temple bell….To revive Buddhism is to revive the Vietnamese “race’s” national soul. In this regard the author praises Maurice Barrès’ racialist ideas about national energy or national spirit as argued in his book L’appel au soldat (1900). And the author says that since World War I nations have promoted chủ nghĩa quốc tế (internationalism) and ideas of “Great Unity” (from the Chinese tradition); the Europeans hope to create a World Republic, but first we must cultivate ourselves with our ancestors’ traditional spirit, to be qualified for a place among other nations. Following this layman’s article is a response by Tỉ Khiêu Tự Lai, abbot of Tiên Lữ temple in An Thái Village, Thái Nguyên province in the north. He said his temple had been a famous historical site but had been abandoned, and with the assistance of unspecified “authorities” as well as money from male and female lay believers in Hải Phòng he reconstructed the temple. He knew of a popular Buddhist sect in Hải Phòng, that meets in lay people’s homes; with so many new religions, he felt Buddhism is getting weaker, thus the monk was very excited to read about the Buddhist revival in the Sài Gòn paper Ðông Pháp Thời Báo (French Indochina Times).75 Taixu’s disciple Trí Hải spoke of enlightenment and the nation’s destiny: The Buddha is an educator who enlightens the people. The Vietnamese people today are weak…conquered…rootless…suffering both in body and spirit and the latter is even worse. The government is trying to educate the people but it’s not enough, so Trí Hải declares we must revive Buddhism to enlighten the people, especially for the destitute children in the villages, who without education become foolish and stupid so that others ride on their necks, and become the slaves of others forever…if this situation is found in the village, in a district, in a county, in a province, in a region, the whole country, how can the nation ever progress? So the Tonkin Buddhist Association translated Buddhist teachings, taught the popular Śūrangama sūtra, held lectures and classes for “the masses” [including children’s classes] as well as for monks and nuns who needed to be educated in order to propagate Buddhism. In addition, the Tonkin Buddhist Association undertook charity, disaster relief, and repaired temples. Trí Hải recommended that each temple establish an affiliated school. He hoped that each temple would be a public place, with a park or garden, a ritual place, a teaching place, for the villages, to educate and reform the people, to bring happiness and peace (by understanding Buddhist principles

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of wisdom, and compassion, and clearly understand the law of karmic cause and effect and reincarnation, etc).76 These conceptions by Trí Hải and others of Buddhism in and for this world, of benefit to both individual and nation, attracted more supporters than did Thiện Chiếu’s radical interpretation, but both versions are integral aspects of the Chấn Hưng Phật Giáo movement.

Supporters Marx’s assertion that “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature” does not hold, in a literal sense, when we examine the social backgrounds of Buddhist revival supporters in Vietnam: petty bourgeoisie and landowners. In studies of modern Vietnam and China structured and propelled by the trajectory of their communist revolutions, the degree of “peasant mobilization” is the touchstone of success of an ideology or movement. These studies’ benchmark is the degree of involvement in political and anticolonial movements, or numbers of “peasants and workers” in popular sects like Cao Đài. “The bourgeoisie” have been ignored, deemed as negligible, or damned as collaborationist. Yet, according to David Marr, the petty bourgeoisie accounted for about half of the urban Vietnamese population in 1937, not a negligible number (Marr 1981: p. 31). Here it is helpful to recall his discussion of Vietnamese social strata in the 1920s and 1930s: World War I had stimulated Vietnamese entrepreneurial activity and nationalists called for Vietnamese merchants (and their business associations) to compete with the French and [resident] Chinese competition. The bourgeoisie included absentee landlords, entrepreneurs, high officials and magistrates. (Marr states that Jean Chesneaux lists Chinese working with Western firms as “bourgeoisie” (Marr 1971, p. 202). The petty bourgeoisie (some of ethnic Chinese or mixed heritage) in the south, central, and north comprised “shopkeepers, small traders, artisans, clerks, managers, interpreters, primary school teachers, journalists, and technicians”; some held plots of land in their native villages. It was the petty bourgeoisie, according to Marr, who tended to join organizations and study groups, subscribe to quốc ngữ publications, and, I would add, kept abreast of current national and international intellectual developments. The new intelligentsia, of various class backgrounds including mostly petty bourgeoisie, debated, wrote, and published on the present and future of Vietnam (Marr 1981, pp. 31–32; 122–23).

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When Taixu’s call for reforms met with a cool reception among the sangha, he stepped up his efforts with lay supporters, especially among the bourgeoisie in China and abroad. Taixu’s “new Buddhism”, renjian fojiao is said to have attracted so many merchants and professionals due to its nationalist flavour without rejecting Western modern civilization.77 “New Buddhism’s” Bodhisattva path that embraced the world and the nation touched sympathetic chords in Vietnam’s petty bourgeoisie and landowners,78 while at the same time satisfying traditional concerns with self-cultivation and merit-making. The lists of donors to the Tonkin Buddhist Association included Vietnamese serving in various levels of the French colonial administration both in Hà Nội and in other northern provinces, down to the local level. These contributors worked as functionaries in the postal administration, the forestry and geographical services, as rail station inspectors, draftsmen and as specialists in the photo section of the French air force in Hà Nội. Many merchants participated (including sellers of materials for Chinese medicine, traders of alcohol, and a retailer of opium, possibly Chinese) writers/editors, contractors, doctors, a pharmacist, teachers, professors, a lieutenant, students, and many housewives. Ðuốc Tuệ is written primarily in quốc ngữ, sprinkled with Chinese and French. From time to time it carried commercial advertisements, not only for new Buddhist publications but also one for a cloth goods-and-Chinese medicine store run by a father and son duo. Ðuốc Tuệ even announced the details about the public lottery. Subscribers and donors to Ðuốc Tuệ hailed from Hà Nội and northern provinces but also from Sài Gòn and its environs. Some of these supporters listed were Chinese or Sino-Viet.79 Lê Toại, a Hà Nội businessman wrote articles on the Buddhist revival and a book called Elementary Buddhism. Mr. Trần Văn Giác, who worked in a Hà Nội finance bureau, and his wife were devout Buddhists from the south (Trà Vinh). Trí Hải also mentions “doctors and professors” as members in the Tonkin Buddhist Association. Laypeople like these greatly assisted the Tonkin Buddhist Association from its beginning (Trí Hải, HKT, pp. 13 and 57). Laypeople donated land or the proceeds from sold land to help the Tonkin Buddhist Association in their many activities (Ibid., pp. 50–51). The examples just cited are quoted from the northern journal Ðuốc Tuệ, but my perusal of Viên Âm, Từ Bi Âm, Bát Nhã Âm, and Duy Tâm also found civil bureaucrats, landowners, merchants, teachers, and other professionals (doctors, an engineer) listed as committee members and/or donors/subscribers. In contrast with the Tonkin Buddhist Association

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however, the majority of members of the Lưỡng Xuyên Buddhist Association (based in Trà Vinh) were landowners (both male and female) and merchants, though the association also included teachers, civil servants, seamstresses, a carpenter, a militiaman, and a chauffeur. Subscribers to their journal Duy Tâm included names from the Mekong Delta, Annam and Cambodia. Besides the assimilated Chinese among the petty bourgeoisie and civil servants, the overseas Chinese communities also played a part in the revival. Taixu had long realized the great possibilities of mobilizing Chinese overseas: those with economic means gave donations to Buddhist temples and organizations, published and disseminated sutras and other Buddhist literature, reported on Buddhist news in their media, built and repaired pagodas, and collected Buddhist art and artifacts. Bound for Europe, the United States, and Japan to promote world Buddhism, Taixu and his entourage stopped in Sài Gòn from 17–19 August 1928 and met with leaders of the Chinese business community.80 The next time Taixu’s contingent visited Vietnam was in 1940 on their way back to Kunming, as they completed their tour of Burma, Sri Lanka, India, and Malaysia, from November 1939 to May 1940. This tour, funded by the Chinese nationalist government, had two goals: to build world Buddhism and also to gain support in Southeast Asia for the Chinese war of resistance against Japan.81 Taixu’s group visited Sài Gòn and Hà Nội from 28 April to 4 May 1940, and met with both the Chinese community and members of the Tonkin Buddhist Association, including Trí Hải.82 Some Chinese in Vietnam were formal disciples of Taixu and his renjian fojiao, but others supported Taixu more for reasons of nationalist pride. In sum, previous studies of the Vietnamese Buddhist Revival focus on its leaders, particularly the revolutionary vanguard, rather than how and why the middle classes throughout Vietnam supported the Buddhist revival, a question with direct resonance today.

Women Another aspect of the Buddhist revival is that the role of nuns and laywomen was greater than previously noted.83 First, there were new schools and temples for nuns: in July 1927, a school for 100 nuns opened at Giác Hoa Pagoda in Bạc Liêu; classes for 80–100 monks and nuns began in January 1933 at Viên Giác Pagoda in Bến Tre; Trí Hải established the Bồ Ðề school in Hà Nội in 1941, with nuns as teachers. The northern nun Huệ Tâm was

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a prolific writer and was active in promoting the Buddhist revival before her untimely death in 1936; Diệu Không, of a prominent Huế family, was a renowned poet and abbess of Từ Ðàm Pagoda when it was a nunnery. Also, the nun Diệu Tịnh founded the Hải Ấn Pagoda, first pagoda for nuns in the south, in Tân Sơn Nhì, on 30 August 1936. The nun Diệu Tịnh (an editor of Từ Bi Âm) of Phước Long Pagoda in Mỹ Tho was promoted to a high rank and made a tour to other temples in North and Central Vietnam. In March 1939, the nuns Diệu Tánh and Diệu Tấn established the second pagoda for nuns, the Kim Sơn Pagoda in Phú Nhuận district of Sài Gòn. In 1943 Khánh Hòa founded a school for nuns at Vĩnh Bửu Temple in Bến Tre (Nguyễn Lang 1994, p. 63).84 Laywomen also made important contributions, for example, Nguyễn Thị Nghi who in 1928 donated land around Linh Sơn Temple in Sài Gòn to Thiện Chiếu. And in 1942, Nguyễn Thị Uyển bought forty mẫu of land and built a pagoda called Cao Phong then donated this property to the Tonkin Buddhist Association. And in December 1935, Nguyễn Thị Hai represented the Thông Thiên Học Việt Nam Buddhist Association at a meeting in India. Other laywomen invited monastics to give dharma talks in their homes, open to the public.85 There were also speeches on “the woman question” and “Buddhism and women” such as the public lecture on “Buddhist Studies for Women”, 8 April 1935, organized by the Annam Buddhist Association, and journal articles such as the 1936 series on women’s issues in Từ Bi Âm by nun Diệu Ngôn and other nuns.86 Vietnam had a long tradition of Buddhist nuns since the twelfth century, along with laywomen as believers and donors, but new trends from the West such as education of women and women’s rights entered Vietnam in the early twentieth century, closely intertwined with the “making of the modern nation” discourse. “By the 1920s, ‘women and society’ had become something of a focal point around which other issues often revolved.”87 As nuns obtained education and training, the numbers of nuns as teachers and leaders grew, rare before the twentieth century but today the normal situation throughout Vietnam. One source says that the number of nuns today is ten times that of monks.88 Nuns also figure prominently in the Vietnamese Mendicant Sangha founded in 1946 by Minh Dãng Quang; this new Buddhist sect combines Mahayana and Theravada traditions and has grown to 1,000 nuns and 120 pagodas, active in teaching Buddhism and social welfare.89

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Việt Kiều and Travelling Monks in Southeast Asia Another phenomenon that previous works did not mention was that Buddhist revivalists took advantage of another trans-local network: the world of “French Indochina” that created new links among Vietnamese civil servants in the colonial administration and business circles in Indochina and Thailand. Woodside (1971, p. 258) notes that Vietnamese had immigrated to Siam for political reasons since the 1700s and there were Vietnamese merchants there in the early nineteenth century. He also writes that by the 1930s thousands of “peasants” worked as miners or petty merchants in Laos (Woodside 1976, p. 118). Phan Bội Châu sought support from the King and Việt Kiều alike in Siam from 1910 and Vietnamese revolutionary groups mobilized there in the 1920s–1930s (Ibid., p. 238). The number of Việt Kiều in the region increased in the twentieth century due to improved transportation and transfer of Vietnamese civil servants throughout Indochina.90 In fact, traffic flowed in both directions: in the late colonial period officials and monks from Cambodia travelled to Cochinchina to teach and to study.91 Việt Kiều formed mutual aid associations, Civil Servant Friendship Associations, and Buddhist Associations in Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand.92 Some of these Buddhist associations were local branches of the Tonkin Buddhist Association and remitted donations back to Quán Sứ Temple.93 These links assisted reformist Vietnamese monks as they travelled to other parts of Southeast Asia for study or organization-building. For example, In February 1929, the southern reformist monk Khánh Hòa campaigned for “Buddhist Revival” at pagodas near Phnom Penh (GHPGVN, pp. 83, 94, 105). And, the Tonkin Buddhist Association sent issues of Ðuốc Tuệ and other Buddhist materials to Phnom Penh via a Vietnamese colonial official from Annam so that the Cambodian Buddhist Association (a group for Việt Kiều founded, with the assistance of the French, in 1936 at Thanh Quang temple in Phnom Penh) could propagate Mahayana Buddhism in Cambodia, specifically the Bodhisattva path and the Amida Buddha, as well as Buddhist Revivalist ideas of “giving thanks to parents, teachers, society, and country”.94 It is claimed that Thích Quảng Ðức also spent time in the late 1940s in Phnom Penh lecturing to the overseas Vietnamese, as well as studying Pali and the Theravada tradition (Đồng Bổn 1995, p. 336). As of 1961, pagodas and Buddhist associations for the overseas Vietnamese in Cambodia were still flourishing (Lê Mạnh Thát 2006, p. 312); until 1970, 500,000 Vietnamese lived in Cambodia.95

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Back in Sài Gòn, in 1940 Hộ Tông (born in An Giang) founded the first Theravada temple for Vietnamese (distinct from temples for the Khmer in Vietnam). This monk, who had worked as a veterinarian, studied Theravada meditation as a lay person in Phnom Penh and became ordained there.96 Monks from Cambodia and Sri Lanka thenceforth helped develop the Theravada order in Vietnam.97 The regionwide networks of the colonial period flowed along trading and migratory routes of far older standing and drew upon pre-existing commercial, familial, cultural and religious links between localities in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia.98 Further research is needed into the relationships between Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist reformists and Buddhist reform movements in Theravada countries and to establish whether such interactions occurred in the pre-colonial period.

Conclusion In 1951 Buddhist representatives from the north, centre and south of Vietnam gathered at Từ Ðàm pagoda in Huế to form the All-Vietnam Buddhist Association. There they proclaimed Buddhism as “the nationalcultural” religion of Vietnam.99 They could also review several decades of accomplishments behind them: links with lay organizations and bourgeois social capital, advancing the roles of nuns and laywomen, a record of social welfare provision: temple-based distribution of traditional medicine; orphanages, cemeteries, aid to the poor, and valiant relief efforts during the 1945 famine, education initiatives for both monastics and youth.100 The Buddhist revival also produced examples of politically-engaged Buddhist monks in anti-French activism such as Thiện Chiếu in the Phật Học Kiêm Tế and the Save our Fatherland Buddhist Committee; some advocated “Buddhist Socialism”; some joined the Việt Minh. Phạm Văn Minh writes that hundreds of monks were imprisoned, tortured, and killed by the French.101 One monk, Nguyễn Văn Thân, immolated himself to avoid capture by the French after the failed Nam Kỳ rising in November 1940.102 The revival of the 1920s–1940s also organized the talents and resources of lay believers and engendered several generations of monastics who played important roles in the making of modern Vietnam in the 1950–1960s, such as Trí Hải, Trí Quang, Thiện Hoa, Minh Châu, Huyền Quang, and Nhất Hạnh.103 And, we should add, Thích Quảng Ðức, teacher, rebuilder of temples, and Head of Rituals. In 1949 Thích Nhất Hạnh (b. 1926) received

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full ordination at the Báo Quốc school in Huế, one of the modern Buddhist institutes involved in the Vietnamese Buddhist revival. Trí Quang, one the most active leaders in the 1960s Buddhist movement, graduated from the Annam Buddhist Institute, founded in 1933. “Vietnamese” Theravada Buddhism, Mahayana-Theravada exchanges, and the new syncretic Mendicant Sangha are also part of the revival. The different regions continued to publish Buddhist journals, build new temples, and send monks and nuns abroad for study through the 1960s, and further developed the Buddhist Family Association. This chapter’s reappraisal of Vietnam’s Buddhist revival also finds that new Buddhist centres developed not by chance in areas with Chinese and bourgeois populations. Revivalists took advantage of links with Buddhist centres in China as well as with overseas Vietnamese in other Southeast Asian countries. China and Vietnam already had a long history of both trade and Buddhist interactions, but including those which took place in the context of inter-court relations and tributary trade.104 In the first half of the twentienth century these interactions took place among incorporated temples, lay associations, and business and professional circles. The Chấn Hưng Phật Giáo movement evolved out of pre-existing networks and thrived in the new world of the late nineteenth century to around 1954. Colonialism and its political, economic and cultural networks, revolution, nationalism, internationalism, the modernization “imperative”, access to modern media, and a love-hate relationship with Western science and Christianity, were the mega-trends that informed the Buddhist revivals in Sri Lanka, India, China, Japan, and Vietnam. Thus McHale’s statement is untenable: “Buddhism came, along with other religions, to constitute an autonomous realm of discourse outside the public sphere, one in which secular Western ideas had almost no impact” (McHale 2004, p. 9). A multitude of evidence proves the opposite. Furthermore, though the Vietnamese Buddhist revivalists disagreed on many points, surely they all worked to make Buddhism relevant and vibrant in the world, nhập thế, and hoped that Buddhism could participate meaningfully in the public sphere. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to chronicle and analyse the effects of the profound political and social changes after 1954 that took place in Vietnam and the world and that have shaped the contemporary Buddhist landscape. But we do see the legacy of the Buddhist revival taken for granted today: senior monks and nuns trained in the earlier period’s

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Buddhist Institutes now lead the Buddhist establishment; nuns, not only monks, receive education and training and now outnumber monks; global Buddhist information circulate in many media. The Buddhist Youth Family is a nationwide organization and has branches in the United States, Canada, and Australia, while a monk named Veneral Ðức Thiện (to take one example) holds youth retreats at his Phật Tích Pagoda in Bắc Ninh province. Pagodas in Vietnam, many founded in the years of or after the revival, are socially engaged. At the least, pagodas undertake charity works for the local community or donate money to other groups and/or the national Buddhist association for this purpose. To take but two examples, Quán Sứ Pagoda in Hà Nội aids orphans, the poor and homeless, and sponsors a hospice and support group for HIV patients; Diệu Pháp Pagoda in Hồ Chí Minh City runs a home for abandoned and/or incapacitated elderly people. Of course, the world of French Indochina, its trade and information links, and its Việt Kiều civil servants is gone; the nation is unified and independent, large Chinese communities in Vietnam have dispersed; and the Buddhist establishment no longer engages in dramatic political struggle. But today Vietnam’s Buddhist and business ties with China and Taiwan as well as with Việt Kiều worldwide are growing, and official representatives of the Vietnam Buddhist Association are (re)building ties in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, with regional political and economic implications.105 In another development, Thích Nhất Hạnh finally was allowed back to Viêtnam in early 2005 for a three-month tour, and through lectures, retreats, and books, introduced the Vietnamese to his Chan practice with its focus on meditation, healing, and communication.106 Buddhist studies in Vietnam are taking off: there have been a number of conferences on key participants in modern Buddhist history like Thiều Chửu, Thích Quảng Ðức and Dr Lê Ðình Thám, and the Vietnam Buddhist Studies Institute held its first international Buddhist Studies Conference in July 2006. Scholars and monastics from all over Vietnam are coming together to locate and preserve Buddhist materials such as monastic records, writings of monks and nuns, and modern Buddhist journals and newspapers, as well as publish new works on the history of Buddhism in Vietnam, all of which will transform the field and provide sorely-needed insider views. And Dr Lê Mạnh Thát of the Vietnam Buddhist Studies Institute and his colleagues, with land granted by the state, are planning to re-open and expand Vạn Hạnh University (to be renamed Quảng Ðức University), founded by Thích Nhất Hạnh and others in 1964.107 Another intriguing development to

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note is the open discussion of “Buddhist miracles” such as the unburned heart-relic of “the Bodhisattva Quảng Ðức”, and the seventeenth century mummified monks of Ðậu Pagoda in Hà Tây province. “Buddhism for this world” today in Vietnam and its institution-building (schools, institutes, pagodas, lay associations), research, publishing, networks of teachers and students, education and promotion of nuns, regional variations of Buddhist belief and practice, social welfarism, study of global religious and intellectual trends, and Mahayana-Theravada interactions and network-building, is not new, and does not only reflect the influence of Đổi Mới policies and globalization, but continues a history whose roots are deep and diverse, assailed but unbroken. FIGURE 8.1 Thiện Chiếu (1898–1974), Buddhist Reformer and Political Revolutionary.

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FIGURE 8.2 Trí Hải (1906–1979), Leader of the Buddhist Revival in the North.

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FIGURE 8.3 Dr Lê Đình Thám (1897–1969), Buddhist Revival Leader in the Centre.

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FIGURE 8.4 Former Prime Minister Võ Văn Kiệt at Bodhi Tree-planting Ceremony for the New Vietnam Buddhist University, July 2006.

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NOTES I thank the National Science Council (Taiwan) for awarding me Grants #94-2411H-003-018 and # 5-2411-H-003-006 to undertake research for this study. I would also like to express my heartfelt thanks to Ho Shih-k’un and Nguyễn Việt and Phan Phương Anh for their countless hours of expert assistance with the Vietnamese materials, to Thiện Đỗ for his support and invaluable suggestions, and to Philip Taylor for his infinite patience, insights into and guidance through details of Vietnamese society and history. I also thank Nguyễn Quốc Tuấn and Đỗ Quang Hưng of the Institute of Religious Studies, Academy of Social Sciences in Hà Nội, for their sponsorship and expertise, and to Lê Mạnh Thát, Thích Đồng Bổn, Thích Tịnh Quang and Nguyễn Ðại Ðồng for sharing their precious materials, knowledge, and wisdom. All mistakes are my own and I welcome suggestions for improvement. I dedicate this essay to the memory of Deepak H. Prasad, 1988–2006. “…So Eden sank to grief/So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.” 1

2

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Thích Quảng Ðức, born 1897 in Khánh Hòa province, had taught as a Buddhist instructor in central and southern Vietnam, built/reconstructed many temples, and served in a number of administrative positions in the Buddhist establishment. At his death he was Vice Director and Ritual Section Head of the South Vietnam Buddhist Sangha Association. In the English historiography it seems as if his real history begins in the hour and aftermath of his death. Enshrined as a martyr, he has become an “over-saturated sign”, he can represent many things to many people. According to Nhất Hạnh (1967), Chân Không (1993), Queen and King (1996) and others, the purpose of his self-immolation was any or all of these: to make the world aware of the sufferings of the Vietnamese people; an act done in the name of human rights; a call for religious freedom; a protest against the repressive Diệm regime; a call to attention, to awaken and educate the people; the ultimate expression of the Bodhisattva vow; or an act done by the Head of Rituals to protect the Dharma. I am currently studying Venerable Quảng Ðức’s letters and poetry and his record of monastic teaching and service to arrive at a fuller understanding of his life and death; see the two volumes edited by Lê Mạnh Thát of the Buddhist Studies Institute, Tp. HCM: Một Số Tư Liệu Mới Về: Bồ Tát Quảng Ðức (2005) and Bồ Tát Quảng Ðức: Ngọn Lửa Và Trái Tim (2006), and the entry on Thích Quảng Ðức in Thích Đồng Bổn, ed. Tiểu Sử Danh Tăng Việt Nam Thế Kỷ XX [Biographies of Prominent Monks of the Twentieth Century, Vol. 1]. Thành Hội Phật Giáo TP. Hồ Chí Minh, 1995, pp. 334–42. This is the number quoted in Thích Thiện Hoa, 50 Nam Chấn Hưng Phật Giáo Việt Nam (Fifty Years of Buddhism in Vietnam). Sài Gòn: Sen Vàng, 1970, p. 122. For example, see Chris Queen, “Introduction,” p. 22, and Thomas F. Yarnall, “Engaged Buddhism: New and Improved?” p. 286, both in Action Dharma:

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5 6

7

8

9

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11

12 13 14

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New Studies in Engaged Buddhism, edited by Queen, Prebish, and Keown. London: Routledge/Curzon, 2003. Also Sallie B. King, “Thích Nhất Hạnh and the Unified Buddhist Church”, in Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia, edited by Queen and King. Albany: SUNY Press, 1986, pp. 321–63; and Nhất Hạnh (1967) and Chân Không (1993). See Werner (1981) and Oliver (1997); Ho Tai (1983), Taylor (2001a), and Nguyễn (2004); and Do (1998). Woodside (1976, pp. 6–7; 192–200). McHale (2004, pp. 7–9), on “public sphere”. I thank Philip Taylor for this astute observation. Li Tana, Nguyễn Cochinchina: Southern Vietnam in the 17th–18th Centuries. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1998, pp. 101–9. Quotation is from p. 107. Thien Do, “The Quest for Enlightenment and Cultural Identity”, pp. 255–59. For example, Thích Quảng Ðức wrote to the Bảo Ðại emperor about the (imperially-chartered) Thiên Ân Temple (Khánh Hoà province) in the 1930s, see Lê Mạnh Thát (2005), pp. 15–21. The relationship between the imperial institution and the Buddhist revival needs serious scholarly attention. Nguyễn Lang, Việt Nam Phật Giáo Sử Luận (Essays on the History of Vietnamese Buddhism, Vol. III). Hà Nội: Văn Học, 1994, pp. 17–19. Thien Do, “The Quest for Enlightenment and Cultural Identity: Buddhism in Contemporary Việtnam,” pp. 259–60; Thích Nhất Hạnh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967, pp. 21–24. Nguyễn Tài Thư et al., eds., History of Buddhism in Vietnam. Hà Nội: Social Sciences Publishing House, 1992. Part Five, “Buddhism under French Colonial Time,” seems to be an unattributed patchwork translation taken from Trần Văn Giàu (1975). Ibid., pp. 384–86. P. Taylor (2001b: 13, 204, n. 17). Thien Do (1999, p. 260). On the Buddhist Revival in Cambodia as a type of managed state-building, see the efforts by King Sisowath, the French Protectorate, and EFEO in Edwards (2004, pp. 63–90). It would also be instructive to examine the reforms of the content and structure of Buddhism undertaken by King Mongkut of Siam in the mid-nineteenth century, as he attempted to modernize Siam to meet the challenges of science and Western colonialism; see Harris (1999). Xiao Ping stresses the role of Japan in the Chinese Buddhist revival of the late Qing and early republican periods. Interchange between the two Buddhist worlds included: the reprinting of sutras in nineteenth century: China influenced the same in Japan, and then again in China in the 1920s–1940s; a revival of Buddhist studies in both countries; Japanese Buddhist priests proselytizing in

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Elise Anne DeVido China, a revival of interest in Tibetan Buddhism in both China and Japan, Chinese Buddhist monks and nuns to Japan for study and touring, and Japanese Buddhist monastics and laypeople to China for study and touring. Xiao Ping, “Zhong’guo jindai fojiao fuxing yu Riben” (China’s Modern Buddhist Revival and Japan), Zhong’guo fojiao xueshu lundian, no. 42. Kaohsiung: Foguangshan wenjiao jijinhui, 2001, pp. 1–4. A pivotal figure in this early phase of Buddhist revival was Yang Wenhui (1837–1911) of Nanjing whose pioneering projects included reprinting the Chinese sutras at his Jinling Scriptural Press; a Buddhist Research Association that sponsored weekly lectures on Buddhism; and the founding of the Jetavana Hermitage, a school for monks offering both Buddhist studies and modern academic subjects. The school, whose teachers included both monks and lay people, made a deep impression on Taixu who studied there in 1909. Don Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu’s Reforms. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001, pp. 40–45. Holmes Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968, p. 259. Deng (1994, pp. 89–91). Ma Tianxiang, “Wanqing foxue yu jindai shehui sichao” (Late Qing Buddhist Studies and Modern Social Thought), Zhong’guo fojiao xueshu lundian, no. 41. Kaohsiung: Foguangshan wenjiao jijinhui, 2001, pp. 2–3. Holmes Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China, pp. 262–64; Chen Yong’ge, Ren jian chao yin: Taixu dashi zhuan (Sound of the Tide of the Human Realm: Biography of Master Taixu). Hangzhou: Zhejiang People’s Press, 2003, pp. 256, 259–60, 266–68, 271. Around the same time, other revival Chinese monks “stressed personal cultivation, textual study, and retreat from the world” (Ashiwa and Wank 2005, p. 222), but I have not found evidence yet that this trend influenced Vietnam. “Zenyang lai jianshe renjian fojiao”, Complete Works, Vol. 47, p. 431. This was a speech Taixu gave at the Hankou Chamber of Commerce in October 1933; Taixu was invited by the Hankou Lawyers Union, the Buddhist Zhengxin Association, and the Hankou Red Cross. Li Mingyou, Taixu ji qi renjian fojiao (Taixu and his Renjian Fojiao). Hangzhou: Zhejiang People’s Press, 2000, pp. 96–104. Thích Nhất Hạnh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire (1967, p. 42). But isn’t he being anachronistic, because Buddhist reformers in the 1920s–1940s did not use the term “engaged”, [dấn thân], which would be formulated later in the 1950s–1960s to translate Sartre’s term engagé. A glance through the 1964–66 issues of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s journal Thiện Mỹ did not find dấn thân, but rather many references to the ideas and activities of Gandhi and Gandhi’s successor Vinoba Bhave and his Sarvodaya movement, as well as Thích Nhất Hạnh’s

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phrase Tiếp [to be in touch with, to continue] Hiện [to realize; to make here and now], not dấn thân. “Tiếp Hiện” is also the name of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Buddhist order, The Order of Inter-Being. Đỗ Nam Tử, “Nhân Gian Phật Giáo”, Ðuốc Tuệ 55, 15 February 1937, pp. 3–9. Marr (1971, pp. 98–100, 124–25); Woodside (1976, pp. 43–59). See Ho Tai (1992); Taylor (2001b); and McHale (2004). During WWII, the Chinese papers in Sài Gòn published 15,000 copies daily; but some papers closed during the war and others were forced to if the French deemed them anti-colonial or pro-Communist. Li Baiyin, Yuenan huaqiao yu huaren (The Overseas Chinese in Vietnam and the Chinese). Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 1990, pp. 29–33. Hicks, Chinese Organisations in Southeast Asia in the 1930s, pp. 30–31. Meng (2003, pp. 57, 97, 136). Nguyễn Lang, Việt Nam Phật Giáo Sử Luận, pp. 54, 87–88. This is no casual purchase: the edition of “the Chinese Canon” most likely referred to had 750 volumes and cost 5,000 Chinese yuan. “Yuenan fojiao yu xuexiao” (Vietnamese Buddhism and Schools), Hai Chao Yin 21, no. 7, 1 July (1940): 23. Meng (2003, pp. 14–18); quotation is from p. 14. Victor Purcell (1951, p. 13). Hue-Tam Ho Tai (1983, p. 22). Zhang Wenhe, Yuenan huaqiao shihua (History of Overseas Chinese in Vietnam). Taipei: Liming wenhua, 1975, pp. 18–31. Purcell (1951, p. 223). A Chinese source says Vietnamese and Chinese were settling the area around Sài Gòn/Chợ Lớn in the mid-fifteenth century, and Chinese from Mỹ Tho founded “Chợ Lớn” in 1698. Su Zi, Xigong yu Ti’an: Difang xiaozhi (Sàigòn and Chợ Lớn: Mini-Gazeteer no. 8). Taipei: Overseas Chinese Library Publication Service, 1959, p. 2. Pierre Brocheux (1995, pp. xvii, 11, 66–70). “You Shanghai zhi Xigong yipie” (From Shanghai to Sài Gòn, A Glimpse), Hai Chao Yin 9, no. 8. But other sources say Cochinchina had 205,000 Chinese as of 1931. Purcell (1951, p. 175). Cantonese and Fukienese were also involved in import-export, metal goods, banking, water junk, transport, shipbuilding, ocean shipping, hotels and restaurants, and rubber manufacturing, and as middlemen everywhere. Hicks, Chinese Organisations in Southeast Asia in the 1930s, pp. 30–31. Chân Không (1993, pp. 37–38) wrote of establishing connections with Buddhist merchants in Chợ Lớn, Sài Gòn, and Gia Định during the Buddhist Struggle Movement. Ðuốc Tuệ 12–14 June 1937; Giáo Hội Phật Giáo Việt Nam, Biên Niên Sử Phật Giáo: Gia Định, Sàigòn-TP. Hồ Chí Minh, 1660–1992 (Chronology of

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Elise Anne DeVido Buddhist History, 1660–1992). TPHCM: 1993, 2001, p. 113. Hereafter referred to as GHPGVN. Also see Trần Ðình Việt (2002, pp. 18–20). Trần Ðình Việt (2002),”Đặc điểm cưa Phật giáo Hoa tông ở Nam Bộ,” pp. 83–87. Từ Bi Âm, Vol. 110, 15 July 1936. Clashing and changing political stances towards the French rulers and the revolutionary movement fueled a great part of these struggles, as well as the ego. See GHPGVN, pp. 87–90, 93–97. For example, the feud between the Cochinchina Buddhist Association and the Lưỡng Xuyên Buddhist Association, see Từ Bi Âm, June 1935, pp. 29–42. For such characteristics, see Ho Tai (1992); Brocheux (1995); Taylor (2001b, 2007). Both Nguyễn Lang (1994) and the GHPGVN give 1923 as the founding date of the Lục Hòa Alliance but Đồng Bổn (1995) says 1920. Nhất Hạnh lists Huệ Tịnh as one of the well-known monks gathering followers even before the 1920s. Việt Nam Phật Giáo Sử Luận, p. 18. David Marr (1981, p. 304, n.57). Don Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu’s Reforms, p. 95. GHPGVN, p. 80; Shawn McHale (2004, p. 158); Thien Do (1999, p. 279, n.19); Nguyen The Anh (1990, p. 112). Nguyễn Lang, Việt Nam Phật Giáo Sử Luận, pp. 21–22; Nguyễn Tài Thư, et al., eds., History of Buddhism in Việtnam, pp. 390–91. Thiện Chiếu was arrested, sent to Pulao Condor, and severely tortured. After the August Revolution he was released; he went to Hà Nội in 1954 and in 1956 he headed the Translation Section with the Beijing Foreign Language Publications. He returned to Hà Nội in 1961 to work at the Institute of Philosophy at the Social Sciences Institute until his death in 1974. GHPGVN, pp. 71, 75, 80–81, 84, 86, 107. Nguyễn Lang, Việt Nam Phật Giáo Sử Luận, pp. 52, 75–76. Thích Nhất Hạnh in Việtnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire, p. 42, calls Thiện Chiếu one of the promoters of engaged Buddhism in the 1930s. Despite his recanting, Thiện Chiếu is still revered by Buddhists in Vietnam, see Đồng Bổn (1995, pp. 482–91). McHale’s discussion (2004) also concentrates on Buddhism in southern Vietnam. See Werner (1981) and Oliver (1997); Ho Tai (1983), Taylor (2001a), and Nguyễn (2004); and Do (1998). GHPGVN, pp. 90–91, 101. “Yuenan fojiao yu xuexiao” (Vietnamese Buddhism and Schools), Hai Chao Yin 21, no. 7 1 July (1940): 23. Trí Hải, Hội Ký Thành Lập Hội Phật Giáo Việt Nam (History of the Development of the Tonkin Buddhist Association). Hà Nội: Tôn Giáo, 1965, 2004, pp. 3–38, 65. Hereafter referred to as Trí Hải, HKT.

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Ibid., pp. 39–46, 55. Ibid., pp. 51–53. Alexander Soucy (this volume) and Ðào Thế Ðức (Ph.D. research in progress) discuss the recent efforts by both the Vietnamese Government and Buddhist groups to tap into the symbolic capital of Trúc Lâm and Yên Tử. The Tonkin Buddhist Association, which all the while had sought and enjoyed French official support, at the end of WWII quickly proclaimed solidarity with the Vietnamese “People’s Government” and Liberation Army in Ðuốc Tuệ’s final issues on August 1945. Do (1999, p. 269). Nguyễn Lang, Việt Nam Phật Giáo Sử Luận (Essays on the History of Vietnamese Buddhism, Vol. III), 1994, pp. 17–19. Đồng Bổn (1995, p. 953). This is from Việt Nam Phật Giáo Sử Luận, said to be the first history of Vietnamese Buddhism in Vietnamese, by Mật Thể, of the Trúc Lâm Temple in Huế. Sàigòn: Tân Việt, 1944, pp. 225–27. Trần Văn Giàu, Sự phát triển của tư tưởng ở Việt Nam từ thế kỷ XIX đến Cách mạng tháng Tám (The evolution of thought in Việtnam from the Nineteenth Century to the 1945 August Revolution, Vol, II). Hà Nội: Social Sciences Publishing House, 1975, pp. 237–39. Hereafter referred to as Trần, SPT. Phạm Văn Minh, “Socio-political philosophy of Vietnamese Buddhism: A Casestudy of the Buddhist movement of 1963 and 1966”, M.S. thesis, University of Western Sydney, 2001, pp. 144–45. See Đồng Bổn (1995, pp. 951–58). See Lê Mạnh Thát (2005) and Minh Thiền Kim Chánh, Nơi Bồ Tát Ẩn Tu (The places where the Bodhisattva Practised). Unpublished manuscript, 2006. The nhập thế/xuất thế problematic, in the sense of “to what degree should Buddhists be involved in politics?” had been debated for centuries, particularly by the government. Ho Tai, Millenarianism and Peasant Politics in Vietnam, pp. 21–22. Thích Nhất Hạnh as well has a book on the Pure Land, Thiết lập tịnh độ (Establishing the Pure Land) (1998; 2005), sold in Vietnam. Traditionally, Buddhist temples were not supposed to “sell” Buddhist materials, but to distribute them freely to propagate the dharma. However, the twentieth century saw Buddhist publications become a vital source of income for Buddhist organizations. Dr Nguyễn Quốc Tuấn told me that Buddhist use of a “Question and Answer” format was borrowed from Christian catechism books. Interview, Academy of Social Sciences, Hà Nội, 18 November 2004. It sounds like Sunday School storybooks also influenced Buddhist educators. Bích Liên Trí Hải, Tịnh Độ Huyền-cảnh (On the Pure Land). Sàigòn: TínÐức, 1932; Trí Hải, “Vì sao mà phải chấn hưng phật giáo” (Why Revive

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Elise Anne DeVido Buddhism), Ðuốc Tuệ, 20 February 1938, p. 2; Trí Hải, HKT, p. 5; Phạm Tài Luyện, “Chấn hưng phật giáo là sự rất cần thiết” (To Revive Buddhism is a Very Important Matter) Part II, Ðuốc Tuệ 15, 24 March 1936): 17–18. Thích Bất Không, “Phương Phép Trừ Ma Của Nhà Tu Hành” (Methods for Buddhist Practitioners to Expel Ghosts), Ðuốc Tuệ 132, 15 May 1940): 3–5. This is a summary of points made by Taixu in a number of articles in his Complete Works. Dương Bá Trạc, “Vì sao mà hội Phật Giáo Bắc Kỳ sáng lập? Vì sao mà báo Ðuốc Tuệ ra đời?” (Why Establish the Tonkin Buddhist Association and Why Publish Ðuốc Tuệ?) Hoàn-Cầu Phật-Học, pp. 94–98. “Chấn Hưng Phật Giáo là sự rất cần thiết” (To Revive Buddhism is a Very Important Matter] Ðuốc Tuệ 14: 11–16; Part II, Ðuốc Tuệ 15: 17–21. Nguyễn Mục Tiên, “Nên Chấn Hưng Phật Giáo ở Nước Nhà” (The Nation should revive Buddhism) in Chấn Hưng Phật Giáo (Revitalizing Buddhism) edited by Tiên Lữ Ðông Tư. (1927, pp. 2–11). Trí Hải, “Vì sao mà phải chấn hưng phật giáo” (Why Revive Buddhism), Ðuốc Tuệ (20 February 1938): 1–4. Deng Zimei, Chuantong fojiao yu zhong’guo jindaihua — bainian wenhua chongzhuang yu jiaoliu (Traditional Buddhism and China’s Modernization: A Century of Cultural Clash and Exchange) (1994, pp. 152–53). In comparison, the followers of Cao Đài were more numerous and diverse: landowners and other “rural notables”, traders, high-ranking officials in the colonial bureaucracy, teachers, lower-level colonial government employees, workers in factories and docks, and “peasants”. Werner (1981, pp. 17–22). Early Hòa Hảo devotees included poor peasants, small landowners, workers in transport, light industry, and trade; leaders included teachers, drivers, and conductors. Taylor (2001a: p. 350). A “farmer” from Yên Lập was on one list, an exception to the majority of donors from government, business, and professional circles. See Ðuốc Tuệ, Vol. 48 : 29; Vol. 129 : 31–32; Vol. 130 : 31–32; Vol. 131 : 31–32; Vol. 132 : 30–32; Vol. 141 : 2; Vol. 142 : 45–46; Vol. 148 : 26–28; Vol. 147 : 26–27; Vol. 150 : 2. “You Shanghai zhi Xigong yipie” (From Shanghai to Sàigòn, A Glimpse), Hai Chao Yin 9, no. 8. See Pittman (2001, pp. 139–43), though he does not mention this or the 1928 Vietnam trip. Weifang, Fojiao fangwentuan riji, (Diary of the Buddhist Mission) 28 April– 4 May 1940, pp. 363–65, in Complete Works of Master Taixu; “Thái Hư Pháp Sư đèn Việt Nam: lần thứ nhì”, Duy Tâm Phật Học, Sàigòn, no. 40, June (1940): 161–65. This topic was not addressed by Woodside (1976), Marr (1982), Phạm (2001), or McHale (2004). In the 1960s Thích Nhất Hạnh rather condescendingly wrote

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that “…nuns, who used to remain inactive in the monasteries, have been assigned to such institutions as hospitals, nurseries, and schools.” (Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire, p. 43.) Yet he does mention the names and contributions of a few nuns, during the pre-1945 period, in Việt Nam Phật Giáo Sử Luận, Vol. III, and he has expressed praise of and gratitude to his close comrade Sister Chân Không and the many other nuns who have worked with him over the decades. See Thích Ðông Anh, “A Survey of Bhikkhunis Sangha in Việtnam”, in Bridging Worlds: Buddhist Women’s Voices Across Generations, edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo. Taipei: Yuan Chuan Press, 2004, p. 52, for a list of the “Revival Generation” nun pioneers from the south, centre, and north. Also see Vân Thanh (1975, pp. 535–39) and Trương and Võ, eds., Những Ngôi Chùa Nổi Tiếng ở Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh (Famous Buddhist Temples in HCM City) (2006, pp. 123–24, 148, 157, 159, 169 and 273). Vân Thanh (1975, p. 537). References to nuns and lay women can be found in Trí Hải HKT, and GHPGVN. Lê Tâm Ðắc of the Institute for Religious Studies, Academy of Social Sciences, told me that the topic of “women and Buddhism” originated from Taixu. 14 February 2006, Hà Nội. See the excellent “The Question of Women” in Marr (1981); however women in Buddhism are not mentioned. Ðiên Văn Huệ, “Buddhist Nuns of Vietnam”, in Bridging Worlds: Buddhist Women’s Voices Across Generations, edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo. Taipei: Yuan Chuan Press, 2004, p. 48. Thích Trí Liên, “Nuns of the Mendicant Tradition in Vietnam”, in Bridging Worlds: Buddhist Women’s Voices Across Generations, edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo. Taipei: Yuan Chuan Press, 2004, pp. 55–57. An estimated 200,000 Vietnamese lived in Cambodia from 1920–42. Ohashi Hisatoshi, “Diffusion of Vietnamese Theravada and Its Re-import into Cambodia”. Paper presented at the International Conference on Buddhism in the New Era: Chances and Challenges. Vietnam Buddhist Research Institute, TP. Hồ Chí Minh, 16 July 2006, p. 20, n. 15. Penny Edwards (2004); Philip Taylor, personal correspondence. Ðuốc Tuệ, Vol. 102, 2 January 1939, and Vol. 128, 15 March 1940, p. 2; Trí Hải, HKT, p. 15. HKT, p. 51; Ðuốc Tuệ, Vol. 94, 1 October 1938, p. 2. Hội Quán Hội Phật Giáo Bắc Ký, Hoàn Cầu Phật Học, pp. 47–49. Ohashi (2006, p. 20, n. 15). Hộ Tông’s first disciple in Vietnam was a railways bureaucrat. Vân Thanh (1975, p. 508). See also Ohashi (2006, pp. 6–7). Liêu Pháp, “Forging Friendships: Three Traditions of Vietnamese Buddhism”, in Bridging Worlds: Buddhist Women’s Voices Across Generations, edited by

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Elise Anne DeVido Karma Lekshe Tsomo. Taipei: Yuan Chuan Press, 2004, p. 166; Vân Thanh (1975), p. 509. In a highly-ironic turn of history, when the Vietnamese Government occupied Cambodia in 1979, they sent Vietnamese Theravada monks to Phnom Penh to begin restoration of the Cambodian sangha which was virtually eliminated during the Pol Pot era. Ohashi (2006). Nola Cooke and Tana Li (2003); Philip Taylor (2007). Thích Nhất Hạnh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire, p. 44; Trí Quang, Tăng-già Việt Nam, pp. 16–19; Trần, SPT, p. 236. Phạm, “Socio-political Philosophy of Vietnamese Buddhism”, p. 144; Trí Hải, HKT, pp. 60–70; GHPGVN, pp. 99–100. Phạm, “Socio-political Philosophy of Vietnamese Buddhism”, pp. 144–46. GHPGVN, pp. 105–6. Phạm, “Socio-political Philosophy of Vietnamese Buddhism”, pp. 144–46. Alexander Woodside, “Vietnamese Buddhism, the Vietnamese Court, and China in the 1800s”, in Historical Interaction of China and Vietnam: Institutional and Cultural Themes, compiled by Edgar Wickberg. Wichita: Center for East Asian Studies, University of Kansas, 1969, p. 20. See Ohashi (2006, pp. 10–19). A second lecture-tour took place from February to May 2007. Lê Mạnh Thát is the secular name of the monk and renowned Buddhist scholar Thích Trí Siêu who was sentenced to death in 1988 and spent fifteen years in jail; he is a prolific author and editor of books on Vietnamese Buddhism and is the Acting Rector of the Vietnam Buddhist Research Institute in Hồ Chí Minh City.

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9 The 2005 Pilgrimage and Return to Vietnam of Exiled Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh John Chapman

Introduction This chapter discusses the Spring 2005 pilgrimage and return to Vietnam of 79-year-old exiled Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh.1 It examines the background, intentions, main highlights and outcomes of this trip and then analyses its significance as regards spirituality in contemporary Vietnam. Thích Nhất Hạnh had been exiled from Vietnam since mid-1966 because of his peace activities at that time, which were perceived by successive Vietnamese governments either as traitorous or at least as a threatening form of political dissidence. The invitation he received in 2004 from the Vietnamese Government for him to return to Vietnam on a three-month teaching tour was therefore a very significant development in that country’s contemporary spirituality. It indicated a change in the Vietnamese Government’s attitude towards religion that heralded increased freedom of religious belief.

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In accepting the government’s invitation, Thích Nhất Hạnh requested that he be allowed to teach to large audiences, that several of his books be published to be used as textbooks, that he be accompanied by a representative group of monastics and lay members from his international sangha, and that he could meet the leaders of the banned Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam. A basic reason for his undertaking the tour was his long-stated desire to return to his roots, but he also wanted to see at first hand the religious situation in Vietnam, to change perceptions, dispel fears and effect reconciliations. Besides this, another of his long-standing aims has been to renew Vietnamese Buddhism, particularly by encouraging people to adopt Zen meditational practices in order to gain insight and to solve everyday personal problems, especially as regards communications within the family. In this way he hoped to attract to Buddhism a wider cross-section of the population, particularly more educated younger people, male as well as female. The Vietnamese Government’s main reason for inviting Thích Nhất Hạnh was probably to display to the international community the existence of freedom of religious belief in Vietnam, hoping thereby to facilitate its integration into the world economic system, and thus increase economic growth and strengthen its legitimacy. Another of its basic aims is to create a Vietnamese culture “imbued with national identity” [đậm đà bản sắc dân tộc] which has increasingly involved official endorsement of once-criticized religious identifications. Thích Nhất Hạnh’s visits to China in 1999 and 2001 probably also helped to pave the way for his return to Vietnam. There have, however, been conflicting interpretations of the reasons for this development: some commentators regarded it cynically as being only a short-term political manipulation; others saw it as being a positive indication that the Vietnamese Government now accepts that allowing more freedom for religion could be helpful in encouraging economic development, inculcating more ethical behaviour and achieving political stability. In analysing the contemporary significance of this pilgrimage, one needs to consider the many background factors in which it has taken place. These factors include the political and social conflicts that arose from the thirty years of war that preceded unification of the country in 1975; the ongoing conflict in Vietnam between the officially recognized Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha [Gíáo Hội Phật Gíáo Việt Nam] and the unrecognized Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam [Gíáo Hội Phật Gíáo Thống Nhất Việt Nam]; the pressure coming from within and beyond Vietnam for the state to permit

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increased leeway in religious expression; and the evident thirst among all sectors of Vietnamese society for spiritual answers to their contemporary predicaments. Three issues will be highlighted in my concluding analysis: the viability of transnational Buddhism in Vietnam, the likelihood that Thích Nhất Hạnh’s intervention will contribute to national reconciliation and the scope for the form of engaged Buddhism with which he is associated to find political and social acceptance in present-day Vietnam.

Thích Nhất Hạnh — Background to Exile Thích Nhất Hạnh (lay name Nguyễn Xuân Bảo) was born on 11 October 1926 in Trung Xá village in the province of Quảng Trị in Central Vietnam, the son of a petty government official.2 Vietnam at that time was under French colonial rule. During World War II the French occupation of Vietnam gave way to invasion by the Japanese. When, after the war Vietnamese nationalists declared independence, the French, with U.S. support, initiated a war to re-impose their colonial rule, but in 1954 the French forces were defeated at Điện Biên Phủ. The Geneva Peace Accords reached in 1954 provided for the temporary demarcation of Vietnam at the Seventeenth Parallel into two territories, yet led to the consolidation to the north and south of this dividing line of two separate and antagonistic Vietnamese regimes. In South Vietnam President Ngô Đình Diệm, a Catholic, regarded the Buddhist leadership as a threat to his government and instituted a series of discriminatory and repressive measures against them. After nearly twenty years of war between South Vietnam, supported by the Americans, and communist North Vietnam, supported by the USSR and China, the Americans finally withdrew their troops in March 1973, following which South Vietnam was defeated by the North in April 1975, and the country became reunified under communist rule. The teachings and practices of Thích Nhất Hạnh have largely emerged from this formative crucible.3 At the age of sixteen, Thích Nhất Hạnh entered the Từ Hiếu Monastery in Huế as a novice. His teacher there was Zen master Thích Chân Thật of the forty-third generation of the Lâm Tế Zen school and of the ninth generation of the Liễu Quán school, an indigenous Vietnamese branch of Lâm Tế. His studies included both Theravada and Mahayana (especially Pure Land and Zen) traditions.4 After a three years novitiate, Thích Nhất Hạnh attended the Báo Quốc Buddhist Institute in Huế and received full ordination as a Buddhist monk there in 1949. However, probably inspired by the Chinese

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Buddhist reformer Tai Xu (1890–1947), he wanted to follow a curriculum with more emphasis on philosophy, literature, and foreign languages, and as the authorities at the Báo Quốc Institute were not responsive to this, in 1950 he and several other students left and took up residence in the small Ấn Quang Temple on the outskirts of Saigon5 (This temple later became the Ấn Quang Buddhist Institute, the foremost centre of Buddhist studies in South Vietnam). While studying at Saigon University, Thích Nhất Hạnh supported himself by writing novels and poetry. After this, the elders in Huế wrote asking him to come back, and when he returned there in 1955 he was invited to become the editor of the magazine Phật Giáo Việt Nam (Vietnamese Buddhism),6 the official voice of the General Association of Vietnamese Buddhists [Tổng Hội Phật Giáo Việt Nam]. But within two years the journal’s publication was suspended because the Buddhist hierarchy disapproved of his articles. Thích Nhất Hạnh thought that this was because his proposal for Buddhist unification was unacceptable to the leadership of the different congregations.7 While Thích Nhất Hạnh was teaching in Đà Lạt in 1956, someone at Ấn Quang Pagoda erased his name from the records of the temple, which in effect expelled him from the temple “family”.8 Faced with these setbacks, in the autumn of 1957, Thích Nhất Hạnh sought a quiet space for healing and reflection. This led him to found a new monastic “community of resistance”, Phương Bôi, in Đại Lao Forest near Đà Lạt, about 160 kilometres from Saigon.9 At this time he taught in a local high school, and wrote articles, published books, and edited magazines, to promote the idea of a humanistic, unified Buddhism.10 In December 1959 Thích Nhất Hạnh taught a three-month course in Buddhism at the Xá Lợi Temple in Saigon. In February 1961 he participated in a three-month course on the basic teachings of Buddhism at Ấn Quang Temple. In April 1961 he began another course on Buddhism for twenty university students at the Xá Lợi Temple, but within two weeks the authorities at the Temple — traditionally-minded lay Buddhists — cancelled the course. Subsequently the authorities of Xá Lợi Temple also expelled him. So Thích Nhất Hạnh moved again, to Trúc Lâm Temple, a one-hour motorbike ride from Saigon, and taught the course there.11 Increasing disapproval of his writings, both by Buddhist leaders and by the dictatorial Diệm regime, led Thích Nhất Hạnh in September 1961 to accept an offer of a fellowship to study comparative religion at Princeton University. After one year at Princeton, in the autumn of 1962,

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he was invited to teach contemporary Buddhism at Columbia University. While Thích Nhất Hạnh was in the United States at Columbia, a defining moment in the Vietnamese Buddhists’ struggle against the repressive Diệm regime took place in Saigon on 11 June 1963, with the self-immolation of the 73-year-old Venerable Thích Quảng Đức. Following this, a military coup d’état in South Vietnam on 1 November 1963 brought down the Diệm government. Thích Trí Quang, the leader of the Buddhists in Huế, sent an urgent appeal to Thích Nhất Hạnh for him to return to help them rebuild the Buddhist congregation. Accordingly, on 16 December 1963, Thích Nhất Hạnh left the United States for Vietnam.12 A Vietnamese Buddhist Reunification Congress was held at the Xá Lợi Temple in Saigon from 21 December 1963, until 3 January 1964.13 This resulted in the creation of the Unified Buddhist Sangha of Vietnam [Giáo-hội Phật-giáo Thống-nhất Việt-Nam or UBCV] on 13 January 1964. Shortly afterwards, Thích Nhất Hạnh submitted a Three-Point Proposal to its Executive Council, requesting that, firstly, the UBCV should publicly call for the cessation of hostilities in Vietnam; secondly, that it should help to build an institute for the study and practice of Buddhism to train future leaders; and thirdly, that a centre should be created for training social workers who could help bring about non-violent social change based on the Buddha’s teachings. The initial response of the Executive Council was to offer support only for the Institute of Higher Buddhist Studies [Học Viện Phật Giáo Việt Nam], which was set up on 13 March 1964. Subsequently, the School of Youth for Social Service (SYSS) was inaugurated in September 1965.14 Although the UBCV did not then openly appeal for a cessation of hostilities, the ultimate goals of the subsequent Buddhist struggle movement in Spring 1966, led by the Thích Trí Quang faction of the UBCV, were clearly freedom from American domination, peace for South Vietnam and an end to the killing.15 The Institute of Higher Buddhist Studies (subsequently Vạn Hạnh University) was set up by monks at the Ấn Quang pagoda on Thích Nhất Hạnh’s assurance that he would handle the financing, which he did by raising money from a network of friends and acquaintances. Friends, professors, writers, and others agreed to teach without pay since they were all employed elsewhere. Thích Minh Châu, a monk who had returned home after obtaining a Ph.D. at Nalanda University in India, became Vice-Chancellor of the Institute.16

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During this period, Thích Nhất Hạnh and others also established a publishing house, Lá Bối Press, which grew to be quite large and influential. Besides this, he edited the weekly journal Hải Triều Âm (Sound of the Rising Tide), the official publication of the UBCV. He kept up a steady stream of writings calling for peace and reconciliation, which presented Buddhism in a different light and influenced the younger generation. In September 1964, as the United States was preparing to send troops to Vietnam, Thích Nhất Hạnh, as chief editor of Hải Triều Âm, not only called on the North and the South to negotiate a settlement to end the war, but also referred in his article to the NLF cadres as brothers. The Saigon government promptly reacted to this by shutting the journal down.17 On 5 February 1966, Thích Nhất Hạnh brought institutional expression to his conception of engaged Buddhism by founding the Order of Interbeing [Tiếp Hiện], as a new branch of the Lâm Tế school, with the intention of providing a bridge between the lay and monastic communities. The order would seek to end war and work for social justice without taking sides. It was seen as an inclusive community of Buddhist practitioners — men and women, clergy and lay — committed to a common life of service. Six leaders of the SYSS, including Cao Ngọc Phượng (later Sister Chân Không) were ordained as members of the new order.18 Thích Nhất Hạnh was initially deeply involved in the training of teams of students from the SYSS to be sent into the villages to establish schools and health clinics, and later to rebuild villages that had been bombed. He and his associates were given a free rein to run the school, which initially was legally a part of Vạn Hạnh University. But, in response to the issue in April 1966 of a “Call for Peace” statement by the Vạn Hạnh Students’ Union, of which Cao Ngọc Phượng was president, Vice-Chancellor Minh Châu issued an order to dissolve the students’ union and sever Vạn Hạnh University’s link with the SYSS.19 In June 1966, masked men tossed hand grenades into the SYSS campus temple, seriously injuring three young male students. Again, in February 1967, a dozen grenades were thrown into a group of SYSS youth, killing two members and injuring sixteen others. Four months after that, on 5 July 1967, armed men took five members of the SYSS to the river and shot them (four were killed but one survived).20 However, the SYSS continued to function without official status, until by the fall of Saigon there were more than 10,000 monks, nuns, and young social workers involved in the work. Just before that, in 1973, the UBCV

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had agreed to establish the Buddhist Committee for Reconstruction and Social Development with the SYSS as its nucleus.21 In March 1966 Thích Nhất Hạnh was invited by a group at Cornell University in New York to lecture there on “The Revival of Vietnamese Buddhism”. This non-controversial public appearance, however, was to be followed by an extended speaking tour, arranged by the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, in which he would be given the opportunity to present to the American people the viewpoint of those in his country who were neither communist nor anticommunist, but simply wanted an end to the war, as well as to explain the meaning of the Buddhist-led demonstrations. He had concluded that only the American government could stop the war, and that they would not do this as long as the American people were so blinded by ideology that they could not see the reality of what was going on. During this tour when an angry young American stood up at a meeting and told him that he should be at home where the war was, he responded that he was speaking in the U.S. because the roots of the war were there, and it was these roots that needed attention.22 Thích Nhất Hạnh left for the United States on 11 May 1966. Just before leaving he received the Dharma Transmission from his teacher, Zen Master Chân Thật, on 1 May 1966 at Từ Hiếu Temple in Huế. In the event, what started as a three-week lecture trip eventually extended to almost three months. Not only did he travel across the United States, he also went to almost every country in Western Europe. Also in the Spring of 1966, Thích Nhất Hạnh received an invitation from Cornell University to participate in a forum on the policy of the United States Government towards Vietnam. Professor George Kahin, head of Cornell’s Department of International Politics, who was a member of the Advisory Committee to the United States Government, invited Thích Nhất Hạnh to be on a committee representing the voice of peace.23 In a press release on 1 June 1966, Thích Nhất Hạnh presented a fivepoint peace proposal addressed to the Johnson government, recommending that: (1) the United States make a clear statement of its desire to help the Vietnamese people to have a government truly responsive to Vietnamese aspirations; (2) there be a cessation of the bombing, North and South; (3) all military operations by United States and South Vietnamese forces be limited to defensive actions; (4) the United States make a convincing demonstration of its intention to withdraw its forces from Vietnam over a specified period of months; (5) a generous effort be made to help repair

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the destruction which has been wreaked upon Vietnam.24 At the end of his peace tour, Thích Nhất Hạnh wrote “Vietnam — The Lotus in the Sea of Fire”, 1967, to sum up his proposals and the Buddhists’ political stand. Immediately following Thích Nhất Hạnh’s proposals, he was denounced by the generals constituting the South Vietnamese Government as a traitor and a communist, while the North Vietnamese Government attacked him repeatedly for being pro-American. Thus, it soon became evident that it would be unsafe for him to return to his homeland, which proved to be the beginning of an exile that continued until January 2005.25 In 1968 formal peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam began in Paris and continued for five years. At the instigation of the Overseas Vietnamese Buddhist Association, based in Paris, a Vietnamese Buddhist peace delegation was formed. At the request of the UBCV, Thích Nhất Hạnh chaired this delegation and in 1969 he established an office in Paris. The delegation worked to publicize the Buddhist position and to influence the Paris Peace Talks, though it was not one of the four official delegations to the peace conference.26 After the Paris Peace Accords were signed on 27 January 1973, the Buddhist peace delegation could not return to Vietnam, as the Saigon government would not respond to their request for visas. The Paris office was closed and Thích Nhất Hạnh then began a retreat period of several years duration in rural France. When the communist government of North Vietnam seized control of South Vietnam, it made clear that there would be no further role for the Buddhists in the rebuilding of their country.27 They also banned Thích Nhất Hạnh’s books and tapes (though they were widely circulated underground). Consequently, in 1975, Thích Nhất Hạnh, together with eleven of his colleagues, founded a refuge in a dilapidated farmhouse at Fontvannes, in the Foret d’Othe, near the town of Troyes in Aube province, a 160 kilometres southeast of Paris. They named their little community Les Patates Douces (Sweet Potatoes).28 From 1975 to 1982, Thích Nhất Hạnh concentrated on writing. His book The Miracle of Mindfulness, (subtitled in its original form, as “A Manual On Meditation for the Use of Young Activists”), was published at this time, as well as The Moon Bamboo, and The Sun My Heart. His concept of practising mindfulness emphasized the need to dwell deeply in the present moment, so that we can become aware of what is going on within and around us, in order to cultivate understanding, love, compassion and joy, and thus enabling us to take care of and transform

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suffering in our lives and in our society. In the hermitage he was also able to complete a three-volume history of Vietnamese Buddhism.29 As the number of people asking to learn the practice of mindfulness kept increasing, Thích Nhất Hạnh decided to teach four weeks per year, mid-July to mid-August, at Sweet Potatoes. But they could accommodate only twenty guests each week, and by 1982 it was clear that the hermitage was much too small. Thích Nhất Hạnh and his group therefore purchased two properties near Bordeaux, a former farm with approximately nine wooded hectares (known as the Upper Hamlet) in the village of Thenac in Dordogne Province, and twenty hectares of hilly farmland (known as the Lower Hamlet) in the village of Loubes-Bernac, in Lot and Garonne provinces. In 1996 an order to close Lower Hamlet for reconstruction led to the purchase of the New Hamlet, situated in the town of Dieulivol, in the province of Gironde. Since then the community has continued to expand, and now includes another four separate hamlets: Middle Hamlet, West Hamlet, Gatehouse New Hamlet, and Hillside New Hamlet. The entire community was given the name Plum Village [Làng Mai]. Since 1983, Thích Nhất Hạnh has travelled to North America to lead retreats and give lectures on mindful living and social responsibility. He has offered retreats for Vietnam veterans, mental health and social workers, prison inmates, ecologists, businessmen, police officers and members of Congress. In 1997, he founded the Green Mountain Dharma Centre and Maple Forest Monastery at Woodstock in Vermont. In 2000 he founded Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, San Diego County, California. The Community of the Order of Interbeing [Tiếp Hiện] in the West received its first monastic members in 1988. Since then the monastic community has continued to grow, and by 2001 had reached more than one hundred members from fifteen different countries. By 1998, Plum Village had become a monastic training centre of five hamlets. By 2005, Thích Nhất Hạnh had ordained over 200 monks and nuns from different parts of the world. During the years 1990–98, more than 5,000 lay people worldwide received the five mindfulness trainings in a formal ceremony. By 1998 the Order of Interbeing had grown to approximately 500 monastic and lay core members, and approximately seventy-five monastic and lay dharma teachers had been ordained. Also about 300 local lay practice centres (sanghas) had been developed worldwide.30 Thích Nhất Hạnh has been a prolific writer, having published over eighty-five titles, more than forty of these in English. He emphasizes

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that a sangha is essential for socially engaged practice. It functions as a “community of resistance”, or base community of spiritual friends, who live in a way that nourishes a culture of mindfulness, compassion, and understanding. He also emphasizes the importance of non-violent communication within families and in relationships, as a key element in the cultural and political transformation of the roots of violence, loneliness, materialism, and sorrow in Western society. To explain what he means by “engaged Buddhism”, Thích Nhất Hạnh says that when he was in Vietnam and so many villages were being bombed, it was necessary to decide whether to continue to practise in monasteries, or to leave the meditation halls in order to help the people who were suffering. They decided to do both — to go out and help people and to do so in mindfulness. He says that we must be aware of the real problems of the world, then, with mindfulness, we will know what to do and what not to do to be of help.31

Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV) One of the aims of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s return to Vietnam was to try to reconcile the internecine conflict between the state-recognized Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha [VBS, Giáo Hội Phật Giáo Việt Nam] and the nonrecognized Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam [UBCV, Giáo-hội Phậtgiáo Thống-nhất Việt-Nam]. The UBCV was established in 1964 to project a united voice in opposing the war, and to propagate a new political Buddhism in South Vietnam. It combined elements of eleven different sects, including both the Theravada and Mahayana streams of Buddhism. However, there still remained a number of Buddhist groups in South Vietnam outside the UBCV, including the Chinese Buddhists, Khmer Theravada Buddhists, and Hoà Hảo Buddhists. According to Topmiller32 the UBCV constituted only about one million of the estimated sixteen million Buddhists in South Vietnam, but nevertheless it was acknowledged as being the foremost interest group in the country. The primary action arm of the new UBCV was the Institute for Religious Affairs [Viện Tăng Thống]. Its secretary-general, Thích Trí Quang, based in Huế, dispensed policy direction and guidance, and supervised the monastic orders. Then came the Institute for the Propagation of the Dharma [Viện Hoá Ðạo], of which Thích Tâm Châu, who had fled from the North in 1954, and was based in Saigon, was elected chairman. The task of regrouping

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and training Buddhist youth and laymen was given to Thích Thiện Minh based in Saigon. The grouping of grassroots Buddhists into administrative units had the effect of distributing power among the regional leaders, but tended to enhance the authority of those in Central Vietnam.33 However, the UBCV became involved in a serious political crisis in the period March-May 1966, when virtual civil war broke out between the military junta in Saigon and the Buddhist Struggle Movement led by Thích Trí Quang in the central provinces. This crisis was initiated on 10 March 1966 when the prime minister, Air Vice-Marshall Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, to enforce his power over the central provinces, dismissed General Nguyễn Chánh Thi, the First Corps commander in Đà Nẵng, Huế and Hội An. The next day the UBCV demanded that elections be held for a civil government. Severe insurrections supporting this demand then occurred in the central provinces. In response to this on 14 May, 1,000 Vietnamese marines, supported by Kỳ’s wing of fighter-bombers, landed in Đà Nẵng, and with reinforcements from the tank corps, engaged in a series of gun battles in which some hundred civilians were killed and several hundreds wounded, and the insurrection was finally suppressed at the end of May. Thích Tâm Châu had left the country on 2 May to attend an International Buddhist conference in Ceylon, staying there for several weeks and after that going to Bangkok. Thích Nhất Hạnh also went away to the United States on 11 May.34 As regards Thích Nhất Hạnh’s relationship with the UBVC at that time, Sallie B. King35 reports that this was somewhat complex. Internal socio-political dissensions within the UBCV gave rise to a number of conflicting groups. The most visible, politically active group were the Ấn Quang temple monks, including Thích Trí Quang, Thích Tâm Châu, and Thích Thiện Minh. This group was not aligned with either the Saigon government or the National Liberation Front (NLF), but as the war went on they became progressively more dissident, pressing for democratic elections, conscientious objection to military service, and a negotiated peace settlement (except for Thích Tâm Châu, who having fled from the North in 1954 and being fiercely anti-communist, after May 1966 proceeded to set up a pro-government/U.S. group based at the newly founded Quốc Tự Temple in Saigon). Another group comprising Nhất Hạnh (until his departure to the United States), the SYSS, and some Vạn Hạnh University people, were close in outlook to the Ấn Quang group, but were strongly pacifist. Lastly, there was a pro-NLF group. In addition to these, there were

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of course also monks and nuns who wanted nothing to do with politics or activism of any kind. Much of the conflict within the UBCV before May 1966 arose over the issue of neutralism-non-alignment. There had been an ongoing ideological disagreement between Thích Tâm Châu and Thích Trí Quang which developed along regional lines. While Thích Tâm Châu advocated a pro-government, anti-neutral stance, Thích Trí Quang and his followers had wanted the government of South Vietnam and the guerrilla National Liberation Front [“Việt Cộng”] to work out their problems and implement a Vietnamese solution, such as a coalition government (for South Vietnam), to end the war. Increasing levels of American interference in South Vietnamese affairs and growing violence in the country had strengthened the faction calling for neutralism-non-alignment. Disagreement raged between those who saw work for social justice and peace as proper for Buddhist clergy, and those who emphasized religious values and removal from the world. Thích Tâm Châu opposed the political and social activism of the younger monks.36 At a Saigon press conference on 13 March 1966, much of the leadership of the Institute for the Propagation of the Dharma, including Thích Minh Châu, head of the Vạn Hạnh Institute, Thích Quang Liên, Thích Thiện Minh, Thích Tâm Châu, and Thích Pháp Trí, leader of the Vietnamese Theravada Buddhists, had called for democratic elections. However, after May 1966, the political activists in UBCV led by Thích Trí Quang suffered a steady erosion in their popular support. The moderates, led by Thích Tâm Châu, finally gained ascendancy in the UBCV and persuaded most followers to re-orient to the pagoda rather than risk total destruction. Most of the active dissident monks were imprisoned. This ideological split fatally weakened the UBCV. Many monks, nuns, and lay people supported Thích Tâm Châu, regarding the radicalism of monks like Thích Trí Quang as dangerous because it had brought the government down on all Buddhists.37 In the five-year period immediately following the end of the war and the unification of Vietnam in 1975 (after which Saigon was renamed Hồ Chí Minh City), the new communist government in Hanoi took steps to control the UBCV and other religious organizations. Security forces raided pagodas, closed down orphanages, disbanded some religious groups, and placed several prominent Buddhist leaders under house arrest or imprisonment in remote locations. The UBCV held its last Congress (VIIth) in Vietnam on 23 January 1977, at the Ấn Quang Pagoda. Immediately

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following this, the authorities clamped down on it, and arrested virtually all its leadership.38 The Ấn Quang Pagoda was closed by the state security services in July 1982. On 4 November 1981, in the furtherance of its policy of institutional control of all communal and mass activities, the government convened a congress in Hanoi of 165 delegates representing nine different Buddhist organizations and branches, to create the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha [Giáo Hội Phật Giáo Việt Nam], defined in the foundation charter as the only recognized Buddhist organization representing all the religious and lay Buddhists in Vietnam. A widespread, but unsuccessful, operation was then launched to urge and coerce UBCV Buddhists to join the VBS. Since then the UBCV has been effectively banned, so there now exists two Buddhist representative bodies in Vietnam: one authorized, sponsored and controlled by the government, and representing Buddhism in official assemblies; the other, the UBCV, more difficult to define since it no longer has an official base and its leaders are no longer recognized by the authorities as legitimate.39 However, a turning point came in April 1992, following the death of the then UBCV patriarch, Thích Đôn Hậu, the superior monk of the Linh Mụ Temple in Huế, an active centre of Buddhist dissent. Thích Đôn Hậu had named as his successor Thích Huyền Quang, an outspoken dissident who had been under house arrest in Quảng Ngãi since 1982.40 Previously, in March 1977, as the second highest leader in the UBCV, Thích Huyền Quang had written a letter to the prime minister, Phạm Văn Đồng, detailing eighty-five instances of government repression of the UBCV. For this he was arrested on 9 June 1977, and charged with opposition to government policy. Brought to trial on 8 December 1978, he was given a two-year suspended sentence for “agitating against the military service law and other social duties”. Because of his continued opposition to the planned incorporation of the UBCV into the recognized VBS, he was sent into exile at Hội Phước Temple in Quảng Ngãi province and put under constant surveillance.41 Thích Huyền Quang’s taking over from the Venerable Thích Đôn Hậu, marked the beginning of renewed activism to rejuvenate the UBCV. Whereas its claims had previously been limited to religious freedom and the restoration of the UBCV, Huyền Quang began calling for free elections, a multi-party system and democracy in Vietnam.42 On 29 December 1994, he was arrested at Ấn Quang Temple, Hồ Chí Minh City, for publishing

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an open letter criticizing government policy on freedom of speech and religious expression. After being held under “temple arrest” until mid1995, he was moved to an isolated area in Quảng Ngãi.43 In February 2005 he sent clandestinely via the Paris-based International Buddhist Information Bureau (IBIB) an “Open Letter” to the Vietnamese leadership denouncing recent harassments of UBCV monks, and condemning the unlawful detention of the UBCV Deputy leader and himself under house arrest without charge.44 The Deputy of Thích Huyền Quang (now aged eighty-seven) is Thích Quảng Độ (now aged seventy-eight), the UBCV’s Secretary General. After a seven-year sojourn in India, Sri Lanka and other parts of Buddhist Asia in the 1950s, Quảng Độ returned to Saigon, where in the 1960s and 1970s he taught Buddhist philosophy. By April 1977, he was in jail, and from 1981 he was exiled to a remote pagoda in Thái Binh province without undergoing trial. After a decade in internal exile, Thích Quảng Độ returned to the Thành Minh Pagoda in Hồ Chí Minh City in 1992 on his own initiative (Thành Minh had been his pagoda of residence before his internal exile). In 1994 Quảng Độ assumed a higher profile, and renewed his calls for the restoration of the UBCV. Following international pressure, he was freed in an amnesty in September 1998, after spending more than eighteen years in prison or under house arrest for his persistent criticism of Vietnam’s human rights record.45 In October 2000, he attempted to lead a contingent of UBCV monks to provide assistance to flood victims in An Giang. Security police reportedly detained the monks for twelve hours on 7 October before ordering them to leave the province and return to their pagodas in Hồ Chí Minh City.46 On 21 February 2001, the eve of the Ninth Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party, Thích Quảng Độ launched an appeal for democracy in Vietnam. He proposed an eight-point political programme, which included calls for a multi-party system, free elections, independent trade unions and the abolition of all degrading forms of imported culture and ideologies that pervert Vietnamese spiritual and moral values.47 For launching this appeal Thích Quảng Độ was sentenced to two years administrative detention incommunicado. However, he was released two months early on 27 June 2003, following a historic meeting in April 2003 in Hanoi between Thích Huyền Quang, and the then Prime Minister Phan Văn Khải.48 Thích Quảng Độ suffers from a heart condition, diabetes and high blood pressure, and in August 2003 underwent a heart operation.49

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Despite these apparent moves towards reconciliation, in October 2003 Huyền Quang convened an unauthorized meeting of the UBCV at Lương Sơn [Nha Trang] in which a new UBCV leadership was appointed and he formally assumed the title of “the Fourth Supreme Patriarch of the UBCV”. Immediately following this he and Thích Quảng Đo were again detained. Thích Huyền Quang reports that he remains under house arrest, isolated at Nguyên Thiều Monastery in Bình Định province.50 Thích Quảng Độ reportedly also remains under police surveillance, confined to Thanh Minh monastery in Hồ Chí Minh City.51 From here, on 9 February 2005, he launched another open letter calling for democracy and a more pluralistic society: We shall never be free from religious repression until a process of democratisation is under way. The important thing is that all parties participate on an equal footing, and people have the freedom to choose between competing political platforms. At the same time, we must encourage the emergence of a multitude of civil society movements in every domain to defend the people’s interests and rights. The best way to ensure political stability is to build a regime founded on the support of the people.52

Thích Quảng Độ emphasized that whilst monks and nuns could not engage in politics, this was not so for Buddhist lay followers. There was not any overt response to this open letter from the Vietnamese Government, which continues to maintain that the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha represents the interests of all Buddhists in Vietnam. However, before this, in probable response to the heightened international focus on religious freedoms in Vietnam, the Communist Party Central Committee in a resolution on religion in January 2003 had moved towards greater acceptance of the role of “legal” religious activity in society, and had acknowledged the legitimate role of recognized religious groups in social and charitable activities. It nevertheless continues to cite the overriding importance of “national unity”. Legally, the Vietnamese Constitution provides for freedom of worship.53 In practice, however, official government recognition is still required for all religious groups to operate legally. Also, even if they are officially recognized, religious organizations must consult with the government about their operations, including leadership selection, and are supervised by the Office on Religious Affairs. The government significantly restricts the activities of religious groups that it does not recognize, or that it declares to be at variance with state laws and policies. The greatest restrictions on religious figures are encountered

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when, like the UBVC leaders, they engage in activities that the government perceives as political activism or as a challenge to its rule. An Ordinance on Religious Belief and Religious Organizations effective November 2004 reiterates citizens’ right to freedom of religious belief, but it also advises that “abuse” of freedom of belief or religion “to undermine the country’s peace, independence, and unity” is illegal, and warns that religious activities will be suspended if they negatively affect the cultural traditions of the nation. The restrictions on senior UBVC leaders were among the examples given in the report of September 2004 by the U.S. State Department that designated Vietnam as a “Country of Particular Concern” under the U.S. International Religious Freedom Act “for particularly severe violations of religious freedom”. In July 2005 Thích Quảng Độ issued a statement via the International Buddhist Information Bureau (IBIB) applauding the recent Opinion 18/2005 issued by the United Nations regarding the arbitrary detention of Patriarch Thich Huyền Quang and himself in violation of international law.54

Pilgrimage Preparations As previously stated, it is likely that one of the main reasons for the Vietnamese Government’s having invited Thích Nhất Hạnh to return was to demonstrate that it subscribes to a policy of freedom of religious belief. However, it is also clear that one factor in the ongoing conflict with the UBCV is the continuing pressure exercised by its senior monks for greater autonomy and pluralism and their public appeals for change as demonstrated by the circulation of “open letters” to those within and beyond the country. What scope then would there be for Thích Nhất Hạnh, an internationally prominent Buddhist monk with historical links to the UBCV, to freely move around on such a tour? Would the state permit him to express himself openly? Might not his message and movements prove too confrontational to the authorities? A precedent for how the logistics might be managed was given in May 1999 when Thích Nhất Hạnh took a Plum Village Sangha delegation to China. During a second visit there in October 2001, he met with the Chinese vice-minister of religious affairs.55 As the pilgrimage to Vietnam was being planned there was considerable uncertainty, apparently on both sides, about the trip’s arrangements. On 5 July 2004 it was announced by Plum Village that Thích Nhất Hạnh might

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be able to go back to Vietnam, though “it was only eighty per cent sure”. In March 2004 two top officials of the Vietnamese Embassy had come to Deer Park Monastery in California to participate in the last three days of the winter retreat, and to invite Thích Nhất Hạnh to go back to Vietnam. Then later, the Deputy Vietnamese Ambassador in Paris came to Plum Village with two assistants also to invite Nhất Hạnh to visit Vietnam. Nhất Hạnh accepted on condition that he be able to teach to large audiences, that twelve of his books be published before his return, and that he could travel with 100 monks and nuns and 200 male and female lay members of his international sangha. The tour would be from 12 January until 11 April 2005, and would be spread over four main locations, namely, Hanoi, Hồ Chí Minh City, Huế and Bình Định, divided into four segments of about twenty-three days each. Lay participants were required to purchase their own return tickets to Vietnam, and could join any or all of the four segments. They were invited to join the delegation as if joining a retreat, and to keep mindful in their every step, act, and word; they were requested to stay in a hotel near the temple where the monastics stayed; and they were asked to wear the Áo Tràng (Buddhist grey robe) when they accompanied Thích Nhất Hạnh. All the dharma talks would be in Vietnamese, with a translation system being set up by Plum Village for participants. The criteria for admission to the trip were that those who joined should be solid and sincere practitioners, and should have practised with a local sangha. Also their health should permit them to deal with the hot and humid weather of Vietnam. On 10 August 2004, Plum Village disclosed in an e-mail that the Vietnamese government was concerned about the number of lay members in the delegation. At that time Plum Village expected the total number to be in the 500–600 range. But the Vietnamese Government was worried that people might join the trip for reasons other than just to be with Thích Nhất Hạnh and his monastic sangha for a retreat. The Plum Village organizers assured the Vietnamese Government that Plum Village had a good system for selecting members for the trip; also that even among the monastic community, although this comprised more than 200 monks and nuns, only 100 were being selected to go to Vietnam. The selection was done by the sangha. In order to further allay Hanoi’s concerns for security, the Plum Village organizers told the officials that they would submit personal and passport information of participants to them, so that Hanoi could check the names of this list against those on their list of concerns. This list of

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participants would be sent to the Vietnamese Embassy in France (the representative organization of the Vietnamese Government for the trip). On 17 August 2004, an e-mail from Plum Village stated that Brother Pháp Ấn, the senior Plum Village monastic negotiating in Vietnam, had just informed them that the way was clear for participants to reserve/buy their tickets for Vietnam. The number of lay people then registered for the trip was 150, with 24 going for the whole period. In a later e-mail about registration dated 19 September, it was stated that 320 people had registered, with 31 going for the whole trip. However, another e-mail from Plum Village that day said that the Vietnamese Government was still reviewing Plum Village’s requests for the trip. Then, on 6 October, in a shock e-mail from Plum Village, participants were informed that Plum Village was extremely sorry to have to announce that the trip of Thích Nhất Hạnh and the Plum Village Sangha to Vietnam had been definitely cancelled, due to various unresolved issues between Plum Village and the government of Vietnam. However, Plum Village said it was working to develop further understanding between the two parties. Lay members who had already bought flight tickets and did not plan to go to Vietnam for a visit, were asked to please cancel their tickets. In a further Plum Village e-mail dated 11 October it was stated that the total number of lay participants then registered for the trip was 380. Subsequently, to everybody’s great relief, on 28 November, in an e-mail from Plum Village, it was stated that during the previous oneand-a-half months there had been further communications between the two sides, and Plum Village was then in a position to go ahead with the project. According to the new agreement, the sangha would travel with 100 monastics and 90 lay members in each segment, for the period originally planned. The registration process would be re-opened, and during the first week places would be reserved for existing participants. It was hoped that by 14 December all the groups would be formed and all paperwork submitted. Visa applications for both monastic and lay members of the delegations would first be submitted to the Interior Ministry in Vietnam. On 2 January 2005, the lay participant list contained 50 participants for Segment 1, and 90 participants for each of the following three segments. An analysis of the roster of lay participants dated 24 December 2004 (when six places were still available on Segment 2) gave the total then registered as 232 from some twenty-one countries, including 46 per cent

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from the United States, 10 per cent from France, 7.3 per cent from the UK, 6.9 per cent from Germany, 5.6 per cent from the Netherlands, and 3.9 per cent from Italy and from Australia. The registration procedure for the tour, set out by Brother Pháp Kham, who was in charge of this, in an e-mail dated 26 January 2005, headed “Yes, sir — I will follow the instructions” stated that for participants’ visas to be approved their applications would have to go through the following cumbersome process: submission of all passports and trip information to the Vietnamese Embassy in France; transmission of this information by the embassy in France to the Government Office of Religious Affairs in Vietnam; this office to pass on the information to the Public Safety Section (Police Department) of the Interior Ministry for approval of visas; the approval notices to be passed through the Religious Committee to the embassy in France; finally, notification of the appropriate consulates that the visas could be issued to participants. Participants were also advised that the Vietnamese Government had stated that it wanted to make sure that all trip participants were good people, and did not belong to a known list of “terrorists”. What was important was that participants had their names approved on the list.

Pilgrimage Highlights Thích Nhất Hạnh arrived back in Vietnam at 7.00 a.m. on 12 January 2005 at Nội Bài airport Hanoi. A large crowd had gathered to greet his arrival. The swell of people that rushed forward to him on his exit from customs was described as more befitting a rock star than a monk.56 He was very happy to be back in Vietnam and said his delegation of monks and nuns wanted to learn more about the country and to share their ideas with their Vietnamese colleagues.57 During both their initial twelve-day visit to Hanoi (and their second fifteen-day visit from 15 March) the 100 monks and nuns stayed at the large Bồ Đề Temple located in the suburban district of Gia Lâm. The lay members of the delegation were accommodated in a nearby hotel. During the eleven days of their first visit to Hanoi, Thích Nhất Hạnh and his entourage followed a busy sightseeing schedule, visiting some eighteen temples in and around the city and a number of historical sites, including the Văn Miếu (Temple of Literature) and the history museum. They also visited the new Buddhist Institute being developed at Sóc Sơn in the northern outskirts of Hanoi. Thích Nhất Hạnh led a Day of Mindfulness

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at two different temples and a walking meditation in Đồng Xuân Market. On 17 January an official reception for the delegation was held at the Quán Sứ Temple by the government-recognized Vietnam Buddhist Sangha. On 18 January, Thích Nhất Hạnh gave a dharma talk at the Religious Research Institute. On 21 January he gave another at the Bồ Đề Temple attended by a large gathering of abbots, abbesses and monastics from Hanoi and nearby regions. The dharma talks were extremely well attended and at each of them the audience was engrossed in the message and the manner of its presentation. Thích Nhất Hạnh’s talks were generally preceded by an inspiring period of devotional singing and chanting by the Plum Village monastic sangha. After the talks, Thích Nhất Hạnh responded to questions from the audience. The atmosphere at one of these talks was described by Alissa Fleet, one of the lay participants who kept a web log of the trip: On the afternoon of our last day in Hanoi, Saturday 22 January, Thay [Teacher] gave a Dharma talk at Quan Su, the central temple and monastic training school for Hanoi. As the Plum Village Sangha had then been in Hanoi for ten days word had got out and the temple was much more full than it had been at any of the previous public talks by Thay. There must have been 2,000 people there, including the older grandmothers that we tended to see at all the temples we visited, and also middle aged and young people. It was very very crowded, so that when the Plum Village delegation arrived they could barely find a place close enough to the translation boxes to sit and listen to the talk. It seemed that people were very interested in what they were hearing and wanted to learn more. Thay’s style and message is so different from the experience Vietnamese people have of Buddhism; they tend to think that Buddhism is something you worship, but Thay has been telling them how to integrate it into daily life. He has also been talking about the Sutra on Conscious Breathing. At his talks Thay often introduces some of the monastics, a strong theme being how international the Sangha is (representing 20+ countries) and how well educated they are. He keeps emphasizing that the Plum Village practice has been presented in a way that is appropriate for the young and the intellectuals of the West.

As regards the theme of this important talk, Trish Thompson, one of the core ordained lay delegates reported: The focus was on mindfulness. Thay was attempting to bridge the gap between the East and West, between the practice of devotional Buddhism,

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a kind of basic level of understanding which believes in a future Pure Land that exists outside of one’s self, and Buddhism as taught by Thay which says that the Buddha, the Pure Land, is within each of us; and that our Buddhist practice is to help us in this life, to help us take care of the present moment. He also said, in answer to questions regarding 9/11 and the U.S. role in the world, that it is a pity that the U.S. has self-proclaimed itself to be the leader of the world, and that this U.S. policy is a very dangerous one because it does not respect the opinions, the beliefs, and the experience of other smaller countries.

On 23 January the delegation moved to Hồ Chí Minh City (HCMC) for twenty-six days. The accommodation for the visiting monastics during this segment of the trip was at the Pháp Vân Temple, whose original structure had been designed and built by Nhất Hạnh himself more than forty years ago. It had housed the first classes for the School of Youth for Social Service. The schedule in HCMC included dharma talks at the Vĩnh Nghiêm Temple, the Higher Buddhist Research Institute [Viện Nghiên Cứu Tôn Giáo] and the Vạn Hạnh Buddhist Institute [Thiền Viện Vạn Hạnh], plus an important public talk to communist cadres at the Hòa Bình Theatre, one of the biggest auditoriums in the city. Thích Nhất Hạnh also held a retreat for Vietnamese monastics at Hoằng Pháp Temple in Hóc Môn and another at the same temple for lay people. At the end of the two-day lay retreat, Thích Nhất Hạnh announced to those attending who were aged twenty-five or younger, that if they would like to train as monastics in the Plum Village tradition, six centres throughout Vietnam would be prepared to receive them, including Pháp Vân Temple in HCMC, Prajna [Bát Nhã] Temple in Bảo Lộc, in the Central Highlands province of Lâm Đồng, and Từ Hiếu Temple in Huế. The delegation attended an auspicious inauguration ceremony for a new dharma hall and monastic residence at Pháp Vân Temple, and went on a two-day visit to Phương Bối and Prajna Temple in Lâm Dồng province. Over the period of 8–11 February, they took part in Tết (New Year) celebratory activities at Pháp Vân Temple. On the second day of Tết, Thích Nhất Hạnh read and interpreted oracles based on extracts drawn at random from Nguyễn Du’s Tale of Kiều. He also led the visiting delegation on a walking meditation in the city’s colourful Tết market. The walking meditations that the Plum Village delegation undertook through Vietnam’s crowded urban streets and markets were among the most memorable and impressive aspects of the trip. These were silent processions

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led by Thích Nhất Hạnh, the whole delegation walking in two single files, men on the right women on the left, monastics in front, lay members behind. Their purpose, in keeping with the philosophy of mindfulness outlined by Thích Nhất Hạnh, was to practise and exhibit peaceful mindfulness. These slow, meditative processions strikingly contrasted with the bustle of traffic, beeping horns, advertisements for consumer products and the overwhelming atmosphere of materialistic preoccupation that grips Vietnam’s urban streets. The way through the traffic was cleared by police. Many local people stopped to watch the processions pass and many also joined in. After Hồ Chí Minh City Thích Nhất Hạnh spent twenty-five days in Huế, where the monastic delegation was accommodated at Nhất Hạnh’s root temple Từ Hiếu. This part of the tour was highly significant for Thích Nhất Hạnh, as this temple is where he trained as a young monk. Sita Ramamurthy, a lay member of the delegation researching for a BBC Radio 4 programme, offered insights into his emotional return to Từ Hiếu: As we made our way behind Thay towards the Temple entrance, we walked in long lines in silence. We heard drums in the distance, and traditional Vietnamese music. We were surrounded by trees, the leaves glistening in the late morning air. The route was lined with people holding Buddhist flags, flowers, and paper lotuses containing candles. Some cried silently; no one said a word. After fifteen minutes we arrived at the archway entrance. Ahead of us we could see the Half-Moon Lotus Pond. As Thay stood there he turned to one of the monastics and said, “Am I dreaming or is this real?”

While he was in Huế, Thích Nhất Hạnh was able to go back to see his native village, Trung Xá in Quảng Điền district. The delegation visited some fifteen temples, including the famous Linh Mụ Temple, and Thích Nhất Hạnh gave dharma talks at several of them. There were also visits to the former Royal Palace, the imperial tombs, and a walking meditation in the Đông Ba market. The Plum Village monks and nuns held a monastic retreat at the Từ Hiếu Temple for 900 visiting monastics from Huế and its vicinity. They also embarked on a traditional alms round from the root temple, during which the monastics were overwhelmed by the generous donations of food from the local lay Buddhist congregation. Half way through his visit to Huế, Thích Nhất Hạnh gave an open public talk. An account of this was given by lay delegate Nancy Nina Bethan Lloyd:

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This was the first talk given outside a temple complex during the third segment. We gathered at the Government Cultural Centre by the Perfume River in the late evening. There were thousands of local people gathered and seated all over the grounds, and big screens and loudspeakers had been erected. The lay Plum Village delegation went to the patio area outside where Thay was going to speak and scrambled into a relatively small area for 150 or so delegates and friends, where the translation boxes were set up. Thay invited the Plum Village monks and nuns to come up and chant Avalokiteshvara, the ancient chanting of the name of compassion, of understanding and love. The sounds of this chant brought healing and nourishment to the minds and hearts of each person gathered there sitting in stillness mindful of their breathing.

From Huế, Thích Nhất Hạnh returned to Hanoi for a second period, and on 17 and 18 March he gave two significant talks to senior government cadres at the Hồ Chí Minh National Political Institute. The following are excerpts from an account of these talks by Jay Rabin, a member of the lay delegation: Thay’s talk today was at the Ho Chi Minh National Political Institute in Hanoi. Space was very limited, so only a small number of the Plum Village lay delegation was allowed to attend. Reputedly the most important Dharma talk to date, it was for government officials, party members, educators and intelligentsia. Thay started by saying all things are interrelated and interconnected. Then he offered Buddhism and the temple as a spiritual solution for the problems in the country manifesting as greed, craving, alcoholism, drugs, sex and violence. He said both biological and spiritual needs must be nourished. At the end of the talk questions from the audience came heavy and hard, such as: “Marxism is not perfect and neither is religion, how can we blend to take advantage of the two?” Thay said that his understanding is that Marx had a deep spiritual aspect of his life. Both Buddhism and Marxism must grow with the times to survive and they can grow together and help one another. As the Buddha said, nothing can grow or even survive if it is not fed. In the second day of these two talks Thay spoke of not dismissing prayer as superstition, but seeing it as a way of communicating with our ancestors who are in every cell of our body and can help us. He also said, “Those of us without possessions are true communists.” Modernizing the nation has to start with the families, be continued in the schools and the temple. The Buddhist schools in Vietnam are too theoretical and need the ingredient of practice immediately. He spoke of corruption in Vietnam in society, the government and the Party. He also spoke of teaching not with

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In his talks at the National Political Institute, Thích Nhất Hạnh said that without a spiritual direction, the path of modernizing the Vietnamese nation will fail. It is necessary to take care of the problem at the roots by helping families re-establish communication and share love and happiness. Also centres needed to be established where monastic and lay people can be trained to help build harmonious and loving communities. The cause of ninety per cent of our suffering is wrong perceptions; there is a lot of fear and suspicion. Engagement in bribery will cause destructive bacteria to grow within society. Cultures received from other countries need to be metabolized so that they become Vietnamese: Buddhism has to become Vietnamese Buddhism, and Marxism has to become Vietnamese Marxism, then the two can hold hands and walk in harmony. In this process, Buddhism can play a great role if there is the courage to go beyond theoretical learning, and adopt concrete practices of transformation. Dharma teachers can be trained, both monastic and lay, who have the capacity to bring Buddhism into life, to help society, to re-establish communication, and to rebuild the roots of the family.58 The second visit to Hanoi also included a visit to the Hùng Kings Temple, commemorating the legendary ancestral founders of Vietnam, as well as to Yên Tử Mountain, home of the Trúc Lâm School of Vietnamese Buddhism, and to Hạ Long Bay. Thích Nhất Hạnh also gave another dharma talk at the Buddhist Research Institute and held a two-day retreat for local lay people and a five-day retreat for monastics from Buddhist institutes of Hanoi and nearby regions. On 25 March 2005, Thích Nhất Hạnh had a meeting in Hanoi with the prime minister, Phan Văn Khải. The prime minister affirmed Buddhism’s close link with and contributions to the nation. He said that the party and state have focused on maintaining the policy on national unity, and have considered this to be the driving force behind the past struggle for national independence and current national construction.59 After the second visit to Hanoi, on 30 March the Plum Village delegation went for twelve days to Bình Định province on the south-central coast, where the monastics were accommodated at the Long Khánh Pagoda at Qui Nhơn. The planned itinerary had included paying respects there to the UBCV Patriarch Thích Huyền Quang at the Nguyên Thiều Monastery, but there was a setback to this as the patriarch declined to meet Thích Nhất

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Hạnh, reportedly on the grounds that he had sided with the governmentrecognized Vietnam Buddhist Sangha.60 The visit to Bình Định included an alms round and a communal breakfast at the Bàu Beach. Basic themes from Thích Nhất Hạnh’s teachings and writings were repeated throughout the dharma talks he gave during the tour. Addressing a very large crowd at the Hòa Bình Theatre in Hồ Chí Minh City on 4 February, he said that Buddhism should be followed as a practice [thực tập] and not as a religion [tôn giáo]. He said that he had been teaching Westerners to practise mindfulness [chánh niệm], but had encouraged them to remain with their Christian, Jewish or Muslim roots. The dharma talk at the Pháp Vân Temple on 15 February was on “The Beauty of the Two Cultures of East and West in the Vietnam of the 21st Century”. Thích Nhất Hạnh said that there is a need to combine Eastern and Western medicine: meditation could assist Western medicine to be more efficient; also preventative medicine could be practised through being aware of our breathing and by walking meditation. At a talk delivered the next day he said that if a person has a family problem, it is no use going to the temple to light a large bunch of incense, because that way the problem will remain unresolved. Similarly, there is no point in studying the sutras unless they provide practical solutions to people’s problems. On 6 February at Pháp Vân Temple, the dharma talk was entitled, “Re-establishing communication between Two Generations, Connecting the Two Cultures Gap and Rebuilding Relationships in the Family”. Thích Nhất Hạnh said that the older generation needs to do deep listening [lắng nghe]. There is a high incidence among young people of suicides, drugs, alcoholism, sexual misconduct, and materialism. The youth of Vietnam needs to re-establish good relationships with their mother, father, and other family members. This will also bring meaning to their elders’ lives. Every family member tends to have a perception that he or she is separate from the others. Each generation blames the other generation for showing disrespect [sự thiếu tôn trọng]. There is a large gap between the two generations: Vietnamese youth are migrating to the United States and Europe and accepting Western cultures; the older generation does not understand, and feels they cannot communicate with the younger generation. The older generation wants the younger generation to learn and study abroad, but yet they do not want their children and grandchildren to lose the family tradition of respect [hiếu].

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At this talk Thích Nhất Hạnh delivered a powerful message about fathers reaching out to their sons. He told two heartbreaking stories, one about a son who killed himself because he and his father could not communicate, and another about a father who was able to mend a relationship with his son that had been painful for years by hugging him. The father did not know what to say but he could embrace his son. At first the son was stiff, but the father just kept hugging him. After three to four minutes the son responded and they both held each other and cried. They did not say anything then but the next morning at breakfast they spoke to each other and healed their relationship. Thích Nhất Hạnh suggested that fathers should reach out to their sons in this way, and say something like “I know you have been suffering and that I have made it worse because I have put so much pressure on you. I have been unable to support you in becoming your own person. But I love you and want to hear what is in your heart. So please share with me all the things you haven’t been able to tell me.” The father then has to be in the space where he just listens: the son may blame or express his anger and resentment, but the father can offer powerful healing if he can just listen deeply until the son is done, and then reflect back on what he has heard. During Tết celebrations at Pháp Vân Temple, Thích Nhất Hạnh delivered a dharma talk on the family. We should look at the barriers within the family; many difficulties between family members are due to lack of deep listening and loving speech. If there are barriers of poor communication, such as hatred [sự căm ghét] and blame [sự phê bình], then the first direction for each of us is to learn to take care of our own emotions: we cannot be available to take care of others until we are emotionally stable ourselves. From our ancestors and parents we get both wholesome and unwholesome seeds [innate traits, hạt giống xấu]. In order to transform our unwholesome seeds we must initially look at our faults and not blame our parents. It is also important to practise prevention by putting ourselves in a protective environment. We need to water people’s positive seeds and not the negative ones. In this way we will transmit positive models to our children. It is important to learn to deal with any difficulties in our family relationships rather than to run away from them. Many Vietnamese people have been educated into Confucianism, which is a philosophy that does not express positive statements. When children do something bad, the parents or adults quickly correct them. It is important to acknowledge a person’s good qualities.

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Thích Nhất Hạnh said that it is also important to give expression to the love we feel. He gave some very emotional accounts of letters he had received about families who had suffered from alcoholic husbands, suicidal mothers, and depressed children, but who when they had applied his teachings were able to recover their life with their loved ones at a time that most of us would have given up. He said that it may be that present conditions are not sufficient for us to come together with our estranged family in order to bring about positive transformation. The whole family may be suffering because of the deeds of ancestors and parents. Barriers [rào cản] and negative habit energies [tập kết xấu] may be locking each family member into isolation [sự cô lập]. When the family is willing to talk, it is important to share (but not to express) the anger that has created the separation. This should then be followed by deep listening. When a relationship has many obstacles, it is important to concentrate and be mindful at all times. We can then open our hearts and build a foundation of understanding and compassion. Suffering [sự thống khổ] can be a block to happiness which in turn can lead to anger and depression. We need to disperse the blocks of suffering through walking and sitting meditation and touching the earth. At the Hoằng Pháp Temple on 12 February, the dharma talk was entitled, “Re-establishing Communication, and Transforming Hatred”. Through re-establishing communication with family members hatred and addiction can be transformed. We must not ignore suffering but embrace it. The energy of tenderness can alleviate suffering. It is important to recognize the suffering and that it is often caused by internal knots [nội kết] that are too great to be untied quickly. But we can slowly untie them by practising the Five Mindfulness Trainings.61 It is important to use gentle words and right speech when talking to our spouse or a family member about our or their suffering. We should listen without interruption instead of arguing who has the right perception. At Hoằng Pháp Temple on 13 February, the dharma talk was entitled, “Welcoming Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha of Loving Kindness”. Thích Nhất Hạnh said that Maitreya is here now in the form of the sangha community. The twentieth century was a period of individualism [cá nhân chủ nghĩa], which caused a lot of suffering. If we continue with individualism in the twenty-first century we will be destroyed. This century needs to be about love [tình thương]. If we do not have love for all living beings, then we will have a world of war and hatred. We need to prepare ourselves to

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be a cell [tế bào] of the Buddha Maitreya by practising loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity in a great spiritual community. When we have blocks in our relationships we create hatred, anger and ignorance. Once we open our eyes, we can see our connection with everyone and everything. If we learn these ways of practising, we will know how to heal the illnesses of anger, sorrow, insecurity, sadness, hatred, loneliness and unhealthy attachments. We need to offer true love to our parents and to our children, otherwise they will not experience happiness. We need first to decrease our level of complaining and reproaching, and to practise letting go of our anger [sự giận dữ] and irritation [sự bực tức]. Our greatest investment is to be present to our children. Compassion needs to be empathic [thông cảm]. When we love by practising deep listening we can remove suffering, difficulties and despair: if we take time to listen to our spouse, parents and children then the seeds of happiness will grow. Joy does not discriminate between ourselves and others: with love there are no boundaries, if our love does not bring joy to both ourselves and others then it is not true love. In a dharma talk on 14 February entitled, “Stop To See, Look Deeply to Understand and to Love”, Thích Nhất Hạnh said that for people to be truly in love they must have a foundation of understanding; if you marry someone who does not understand you it will result in suffering. On 16 February the dharma talk was on the theme of “No Death, No Fear”. Thích Nhất Hạnh said that death does not mean that something turns into nothing: we do not come from nothing, therefore we cannot decay into nothing, we just change our form. Your child is a continuation of you and you are a continuation of your parents. Every cell in your body is from your mother and father. Birth and death, coming and going, same and different, existing and non-existing, being and non-being are all merely concepts created in the mind. Even such taboo topics as homosexuality were raised in the dharma talks. A nun asked “What are we to do if the nuns at our monastery catch this illness [bệnh]? How can we get rid of this disease?” Thích Nhất Hạnh’s immediate reply was that this tendency should be regarded not as an illness but as an attachment [ràng buộc], like any other romantic relationship, which can distract a monastic or lay person from their pursuit of equanimity [sự thư thái]. At the Hòa Bình Theatre, he was asked why he had not wanted to sign a petition for abortion. He said it was because he wanted to focus on prevention and not on symptoms. He wanted people

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to control their cravings, because these put us into a mindset of delusion [ảo giác].

Views of the Pilgrimage Many conflicting views have been expressed on Thích Nhất Hạnh’s return to his home country. It is seen by some as an attempt by Vietnam to brush up its tarnished image on religious tolerance.62 By others Thích Nhất Hạnh’s invitation to return to Vietnam is seen as a response to the United States’ November 2004 listing of Vietnam as a country of particular concern for freedom of religion, after the arrests of several dissident Buddhist and Christian leaders.63 Whether the United States’ designation of Vietnam as a “country of particular concern” paved the way for Thích Nhất Hạnh’s return remains unclear [ Thích Nhất Hạnh was invited by Hanoi in March 2004, but the U.S. designation was made in September 2004], but one former U.S. diplomat who was based in Hanoi believes it probably factored into the government’s decision. “They would like to get off that list,” he said, “and having an internationally respected Buddhist cleric helps the government in terms of its PR, vis-à-vis the United States and European countries.”64 The U.S. State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report released on 8 November 2005 noted that the Vietnamese Government continued to place restrictions on religious freedom, to oppose efforts by the unrecognized UBCV to operate independently, and to discourage religious leaders from engaging in activities that the government perceives as political activism; however, there had been significant examples of these limitations being eased in comparison to previous years. The report also notes that Thích Nhất Hạnh was permitted to return to the country in January for a ten-week trip, and was able to travel widely through the country, meet with large groups of Buddhist adherents, speak to intellectuals and political leaders, including Prime Minister, Phan Văn Khải, and that many of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s comments had been critical of the situation for Buddhist believers in Vietnam.65 But despite these positive developments, on 8 November, the U.S. secretary of state announced the decision to again put Vietnam onto the (eight-nation) list of countries whose governments have engaged in “particularly severe violations of religious freedom over the past year”. The response from Vietnam was swift. On 12 November 2005, Nhân Dân newspaper, published by the Communist Party, reported that the

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decision to retain Vietnam on the list of “countries of particular concern” not only failed to reflect the real religious situation in Vietnam, but was also contradicted by the positive changes in the country. Thích Nhất Hạnh’s return trip was given as an example of this situation: Early this year, the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha welcomed a delegation of nearly 200 representatives of monks, nuns and laymen from over 30 countries in Europe and America led by Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh from the Làng Mai (Plum Village) in France. The delegation organised services in different cities and provinces across the country during a period of nearly four months. This proves that the Vietnamese Government’s policy on religious freedom is ever ensured.

Moreover, as the article went on, in the present context of the war against terrorism, the United States needs to look at the implementation of human rights and religious freedom in its own country before providing conclusions on religious freedom in other countries.66 Nhân Dân also reported Thích Nhất Hạnh as saying that “the Vietnamese State’s decision to receive the delegation was a practical action reflecting the country’s open policy towards religions.” Indeed, in a dharma talk that he gave in Hanoi on 22 January, Thích Nhất Hạnh expressed reservations about the direction of some U.S. international policies. It is notable that in his talks to the Hồ Chí Minh Political Institute on 17 and 18 March, he referred to similarities between Buddhism and Marxism, saying that the two might even hold hands and walk in harmony, yet only if they were able to grow in response to the times as well as able to adapt themselves to Vietnamese traditions. Also, when asked by media workers in early 2005 about U.S. conclusions on the religious situation in Vietnam, he expressed the view that it is a mistake if someone jumps to a conclusion without inquiring into reality. He said “The U.S. should look at the real situation in Vietnam without prejudice.”67 According to the Paris-based International Buddhist Information Bureau (IBIB), the communication arm of the UBCV, Thích Nhất Hạnh’s visit amounted to a “Faustian pact” with the country’s communist dictatorship, enabling him to promote the development of his own sect. “He gives a precious propaganda bonus to the Vietnamese regime. But he does nothing for the cause of religious freedom and human rights in Vietnam,” said Võ Văn Ái, the IBIB’s president.68 It is likely that the Vietnamese Government intended Thích Nhất Hạnh’s visit to be an opening up, particularly in the direction of the two million overseas Vietnamese. However, among

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Vietnamese-Americans, Thích Nhất Hạnh is not universally popular. “Their feelings about Hanh range from outright hatred to saint-like respect,” said Henry Nguyễn Hũu Liêm, a professor of philosophy at San José City College. “Many ardent anti-communists have not forgiven him for his antiwar stance, and they believe that by returning to Vietnam he is boosting the communist government.”69 Representatives of the Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha argued that the government was not opposed to religion as such. In an interview with a U.S.-based reporter, Thích Giác Toàn, vice-dean of the Vietnam Buddhist Academy [Học Viện Phật Giáo Việt Nam] said that clashes between the government and religious groups in Vietnam usually have more to do with politics than with religion: “The government is apprehensive with regard to certain religious groups. They fear that ill-intentioned people backed by hostile regimes are involved.”70 Regrettably the present leaders of the UBCV refused to receive Thích Nhất Hạnh.71 He was, however, able to meet Thích Trí Quang, the leading UBCV figure of the anti-government movement in the 1960s, but who is nowadays discreet. The meeting took place on 24 January at the Già Lam Pagoda72 in the presence of a monk from the Official Buddhist Church. Thích Nhất Hạnh said that the principal leaders of the UBCV are victims of a lack of information. “They do not know what we have come to do in Vietnam, and that we are working for liberty, reconciliation and healing.”73 Just before his arrival at the Từ Hiếu Root Temple at Huế on 19 February, Thích Nhất Hạnh was asked in an interview what his thoughts were about coming back, and how engaged Buddhism might develop in the future. He said that during the almost forty years that had passed since he was last there about thirty-five million Vietnamese had been born, whom he would meet for the first time, and many of his generation were no longer there. He had been spending quite a bit of time with those of his generation who were still alive. When he had been a novice he had learned that in the past Buddhism had played a very important role in helping the country to be peaceful, to resist invasion from China and so on. This had made him believe that Buddhism would be able to do the same in the future, and end the situation in Vietnam of war, social injustice, oppression, and poverty. That was why engaged Buddhism had been born. This kind of Buddhism can be practised everywhere, not only in cloisters, and will respond to situations with understanding and compassion, so that

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one’s peace can be maintained, and one can share the practice in the way one leads one’s daily life. Buddhism in Vietnam has to renew itself. There is always a conservative wing that is powerful, but many young people, including monastics, want to change and need support to do so. This visit had been a very big support for them. In the last few days, many young people had come to listen to the kind of Buddhism they want to learn. But Thích Nhất Hạnh thought that the most important achievement of the trip was that it had brought about a change in the thinking of people in the Communist Party and government, who had had many wrong perceptions. But the Plum Village delegation’s presence, their walking, sitting, smiling, and interacting with people, had helped to remove a lot of the wrong perceptions and fear and suspicion.74 Sister Chân Không, one of the first members of the Order of Interbeing [Tiếp Hiện], in an interview held at the end of the tour, said that before Thầy decided to go back to Vietnam, there had been a lot of fear in the leadership of the conservative wing of the Vietnamese Communist Party, as they thought that Thầy was for the Americans, and could not understand that it was possible for him to love both the Americans and the Vietnamese. However, finally Thầy decided to go back, even though there was a controversy among Vietnamese abroad, some saying that he must go, others saying that he must not go because the communists might make use of his presence. But he thought that if the Plum Village Sangha were equipped with compassion and understanding, they would be able to see the situation and they could remove the fear, and that was the reason they decided to go.75 In an article describing the tour, written shortly after his return to Plum Village, Thích Nhất Hạnh suggested that in essence Buddhism is a source of insight that transcends perceptions of being/non-being and of mind/body; and which has the capacity to cultivate brotherhood, love and compassion, and to transform hatred and discrimination. It comprises a wealth of concrete practices that help one to untie internal knots, to re-establish communication, and bring about reconciliation in oneself, in one’s family and in society. If these insights and practices are applied properly, they can rebuild peaceful and happy families, villages, and cities, free from social ills such as crime, violence, drugs, gangs, and debauchery. He also said that lighting incense on an ancestral altar in your home is part of Vietnamese culture; it is not superstition, but a tradition of insight to acknowledge that you have roots in your ancestors. Buddhism is not something outside of

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you but is inside. He expressed the view that it was necessary to respond to the immediate needs of the people without being dogmatic. Opposition to communism blocks communication, whereas discussion of difficulties without condemnation or judgement makes it possible to open a door to communication and development.76

Pilgrimage Outcomes During the tour, it was agreed that the Từ Hiếu temple in Huế, which at present has 101 monks and male aspirants, will serve as a centre for implementing reforms through collaboration between resident monastics and their counterparts from Plum Village. Closely associated with Từ Hiếu is the nearby Diệu Nghiêm nunnery where fifty nuns live and practise in the Plum Village style. In addition a Plum Village type monastery [Prajna/Bát Nhã] is being developed on a ten-hectare plot of donated land in southern Vietnam, at Bảo Loc Lâm Đồng Province, near Phương Bôi, the forest monastery founded by Thích Nhất Hạnh in the late 1950s. Prajna Monastery has two hamlets: Fragrant Palm Leaves Forest Hamlet with 110 monks, and Rosy Hearth Hamlet with 220 nuns. Additional training accommodation has also been built at Pháp Vân (Dharma Cloud) Temple in Hồ Chí Minh City. Collaborative support to these developments is being provided by some ten brothers and fifteen sisters from Plum Village. On 7 August 2005, Thích Nhất Hạnh transmitted the novice monk/nun precepts to 40 female aspirants and 7 male aspirants at Prajna and to 29 male aspirants at Từ Hiếu. In January 2006 preparations were made at Prajna for another novice ordination of 25 female aspirants and 21 male aspirants. Prajna monastery will serve as a training centre (“nursery”) for young monks and nuns, who will subsequently be sent out to monasteries in big cities as well as to rural areas to help with the practice. Although the crowds at Vietnam’s pagodas tended to be dominated by older women, particularly in Hanoi, Thích Nhất Hạnh hoped to reach out to a broader cross-section of the population — especially to the young.77 In retreats organized for lay persons he was able to concretize this concern by inviting the young people in attendance to train as monastics in the Plum Village tradition at centres to be organized in Vietnam under the auspices of Plum Village. Some sixteen of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s books have now been published in Vietnam, with official approval. They include: No Death, No Fear [Không

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diệt không sinh, đừng sợ hãi]; Miracle of Mindfulness [Phép lạ của sự tĩnh thức]; Touching the Earth [Sám phát địa xúc]; Speaking to Young People [Nói với tuổi 20]; Transformation at the Base [Duy biểu học]; and The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching [Trái tim của Bụt]. CDs of the dharma talks that Thích Nhất Hạnh gave in Vietnam have also been made widely available. Sister Chân Không reported that at the end of the three months’ tour, 50,000 CDs of the teachings of Thầy had been bought, not only by ordinary people but also by members of the Communist Party. Thầy said that although the events of the pilgrimage “would go out like the fire”, something would remain: in the future, the monastics will represent him, and among those monastics will be ones who are brighter because they are the young generation, they have a new facility, and their teachings will be much larger and deeper.78 In a dharma talk79 that he gave at Plum Village on 14 April 2005, immediately after his return from Vietnam, Thích Nhất Hạnh said that at least six months would be needed to digest the experiences of this trip. At Plum Village they had thought that a lot of obstacles would be encountered in Vietnam, because there were many people in power there who were in conflict with each other. The Plum Village delegation did not want to be upset or angry because of these obstacles, so they had to learn how to accept what occurred. There was a faction in the government that was oppressive, scared, and discriminatory; and who could create a lot of anger and division; they did not want him to return to Vietnam, but accepted it only through pressure to improve their human rights record; and they were determined to restrict him to speaking only to the old people. Many police belonged to this group. But, he continued, there were also people who wanted him to return, who saw that his presence would be beneficial for the country. They hoped those opposing would see that he was not a threat but a help to Vietnam, that his presence would reduce the fear and discrimination. There were also people in the government who supported him very much, but who felt that they could not speak out without risk to their careers. We sometimes think, Thích Nhất Hạnh continued, that it is best if everything goes according to our plan. But in truth, it is not so. When the delegation was in Hanoi, they asked the government’s permission to use large venues that would hold up to 6,000 people. They thought that speaking to as many people as possible would be the most effective way to share the practice. But the government would not allow this. At first,

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they wanted him to speak only within temple grounds. But after strong representations, they also allowed him to speak in venues holding from 300–500 people. However, this turned out to be crucial, because the people who attended these talks were influential in society: scientists, scholars, and people from important sectors of the government. Having 300 people of this status and influence was more effective than having a crowd of 30,000. Altogether eight such public talks for government workers and politicians were held, in Hanoi, in Hồ Chí Minh City, in Huế, and in Bình Định. After these, Thích Nhất Hạnh met the prime minister, Phan Văn Khải and suggested to him that Vietnamese communists are firmly rooted in Vietnamese culture, and that Buddhism also plays an important role in that culture. He said that Buddhism is an essence inbred into the blood of the Vietnamese people. Thích Nhất Hạnh said that the Buddhists who listened to his talks were very happy because they need a Buddhism that will help them resolve their daily difficulties. In China and Vietnam at present, the practice of Buddhism is mostly prayer and offering incense, the devotional aspect. Only a few people know of the most important aspect of Buddhism, the tradition of wisdom and insight. In a paper presented at the World Buddhist Forum in China on 14 April 200680 a Plum Village delegation reported: While in Vietnam, Thay offered the government seven points of recommendation to allow the Buddhist church in Vietnam to heal itself and help reduce the suffering of Vietnamese people due to social ills such as the drug trade. He proposed mutual acceptance and reconciliation between the two opposing camps of the divided Buddhist church, saying we should discuss as brothers, not shout as enemies. A high monk who used to speak angrily on this subject now speaks kindly. The attitude of the Vietnamese Government has changed; it is giving sincere respect and attention to Thay’s proposals, and showing much more respect for Buddhism and what it can do to help Vietnamese society. The government has allowed the formation of many local groups of the Buddhist organization that previously did not have government approval.

As regards achievement of the reported aims of the Vietnamese Government in inviting Thích Nhất Hạnh back to Vietnam, one development has been that on 21 June 2005, the Prime Minister Phan Văn Khải met U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington. Mr Khải is the first premier to visit the United States since the end of the Vietnam War thirty years ago. During the talks Mr Bush said he would back Hanoi’s bid to join the World

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Trade Organization (WTO). The two leaders announced that they had signed an agreement to broaden freedom of religious worship in Vietnam.81 In the U.S. State Department’s annual report on religious freedom worldwide issued 15 September 2006, Vietnam was credited with having made significant improvements in religious freedom in the past year, following its commitments made to the United States in an exchange of letters in May 2005.82 On 13 November, just days before President George W. Bush went to Hanoi for a meeting of the AsiaPacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, the United States removed Vietnam from its list of countries of particular concern for severe violations of religious freedom. Vietnam formally joined the WTO on 11 January 2007.

Analysis and Conclusions Thích Nhất Hạnh’s 2005 pilgrimage to Vietnam was without question a momentous homecoming. For Thích Nhất Hạnh to return to the land of his birth after nearly thirty-nine years’ absence, visit its symbolic historical and religious sites and make contact with the people and places that had shaped him as a person, undoubtedly had powerful resonance for the elderly monk himself. His homecoming was also a momentous reunion for those people in Vietnam associated historically with his religious and social activism and those who had, over many decades, stood alongside him in the effort to apply Buddhist precepts and methods of social engagement to avert and redress some of the violence and suffering visited on their countrymen. For him to be able to move again among familiar people and places and to again share his message in his mother tongue with the people in his homeland struck not a few of those in his entourage as an extraordinary, precious and deeply moving opportunity: of reconciling and healing the pains of separation and alienation experienced by millions of Vietnamese people of his generation. Yet in many respects, Thích Nhất Hạnh’s return visit was also a new encounter, an attempt to introduce to his homeland the practices of Buddhist mindfulness that he had been perfecting over several decades of living in the West. This was a message that had reached an entirely different audience and had, since the late 1970s, made Thích Nhất Hạnh one of the most influential masters of modern Buddhism in many different countries around the world. Clearly one of the dramas of his visit was to see if

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this message could find fertile ground among his countrymen, particularly those who had matured in very different historical circumstances, and whether it could be palatable to a government with its own priorities and unique interpretation of ideas such as enlightenment, social engagement and morality. Judging by the crowds who listened to his message and the hundreds of government officials and intellectuals who attended his dharma talks, he was, at the very least, successful in opening up a line of communication with this new audience. Clearly his skills as a gifted communicator stood him in good stead in this endeavour. In addition, the many members of the international sangha who accompanied him in most places he spoke served as a concrete example of the relevance of his message to people living beyond Vietnam, in countries that are commonly deemed by Vietnamese people to embody both the prestigious and perilous faces of modernity. For people in Vietnam to witness this evidence of the impact of his teachings in such places is likely to have added potency to the message that Thích Nhất Hạnh was trying to convey about the suitability of Buddhism to the modern world. One of the themes emphasized during his visit was the identity that Vietnamese people, irrespective of backgrounds, ideologies and even religion share as Vietnamese. Visits to places of national significance, sacred sites such as the tomb to the Hùng kings and Yên Tử Mountain, were a symbolic manifestation of this notion. The need to create a strong unified society by countering harmful phenomena such as drug addiction, depravity and corruption, as well as lingering resentments between former enemies, featured prominently in his dharma talks and presentations to state authorities. Buddhism was presented as a practice that would enable effective communication within families and communities, and facilitate the purposive building of wholesome social relations. Even messages such as achieving self awareness and giving up superstitions were tempered by a view of practices such as ancestor worship being not only Vietnamese traditions but also a resource in the building of a healthier and more viable nation. Thus an important question raised by the pilgrimage is whether in taking root in Vietnam, the universalistic style of Buddhism known to his followers outside of Vietnam will remain recognizable as such now that it has been repatriated, ostensibly, to the country of its birth. This question is raised by Alexander Soucy in his essay in this volume on the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist revival in northern Vietnam, a phenomenon that he notes has been in part inspired by Thích Nhất Hạnh’s return visit. In

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answer to this, it can be pointed out that Thích Nhất Hạnh has tended to be ecumenical in his teachings, emphasizing to people of all faiths not only the need to practise mindfulness but also the importance of “going back to one’s roots”. It is probably essential to the successful (re)implanting of his message that the new practice centres being developed by Plum Village in Vietnam be led by Vietnamese monastics and adapted to Vietnamese culture. That is not to say that his message will inevitably be pressed into the exclusive service of Vietnamese nationalism and be purged of its universalistic content. Rather, one might suspect that, as his internationally recognized philosophy and practice is adapted to Vietnamese social and cultural realities, Vietnam will rise in prominence as one of the new centres of his transnational following. The momentum generated by the pilgrimage is likely to continue. The hundreds of monastics and lay persons with whom he interacted in retreats, dharma talks and meetings will transmit his ideas to their own circles and localities. One indication of his impact is the vastly increased shelf space devoted to books on Buddhism, including those by Thích Nhất Hạnh, in bookstores in Vietnam. Nonetheless, the geographical extent of his visit was limited to four localities and primarily to urban centres. Those who attended the dharma talks were largely from urban areas and included many members of the political and intellectual elite. Therefore it remains to be seen how widely and deeply his approach to Buddhism will spread. It needs to be recognized that at present, the vast majority of Vietnamese Buddhists practise a form of Pure Land [Tịnh Độ] devotionalism. According to Thích Nhất Hạnh the notion of the Pure Land as an exterior reality is just for beginners; but if we deepen our practice within a sangha body, we can touch and enjoy the Pure Land here and now.83 Bringing about a change in these traditional religious practices is likely to be a very longterm process. Commitment to his form of Buddhism, even among sectors of the urban population who have been receptive to his message may have limitations, for the worship of goddesses and recourse to spirit mediums is also increasingly popular among such groups.84 At the time of this writing, it is impossible to say what kind of common ground and institutional harmonization will be found between Thích Nhất Hạnh’s new followers and the monks in Vietnam who are affiliated with the UBCV, although some monks associated with this non-recognized organization did attend retreats and meet with Thích Nhất Hạnh during his visit. The difficulty of reconciling the differences between the government-

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sponsored Vietnam Buddhist Sangha and the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam hinges on the UBCV’s demand for a Western multi-party model of “democracy”, which is clearly quite unacceptable to the Hanoi government (as it was also to the pre-1975 governments of South Vietnam). Yet the prospects for some kind of accommodation seem promising, particularly as the dynamics of this relationship are changing. The Vietnamese Government has responded to domestic and international demands for a greater role for religion in society. The monks affiliated with the UBCV continue to interact informally with many Buddhists in Vietnam and press for more recognition, using a variety of forms of communication. And a new element has been added into the mix, the new institutional presence within Vietnam of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s transnational following and organization. As a source of new ideas and material resources, with a clearly articulated commitment to reconciliation and with the independence and connections to act as an effective mediator, he and his associates are likely to play a positive role in helping to resolve this historical stand-off. Related to the problem of resolving the VBS/UBCV dispute is the need to increase the involvement of Buddhist organizations in charitable activities. Paradoxically, Đổi Mới (economic renovation) has led to a considerable increase in social inequality in Vietnam, particularly as regards health and education,85 and the government has now adopted a policy of encouraging recognized religious organzations to engage in charitable activities. Thích Nhất Hạnh is, of course, a proponent of “socially engaged Buddhism”, one of the ways in which this was expressed before 1975 being through the SYSS. But in recent years when the non-recognized UBCV has attempted to engage in such welfare activities as flood relief it has been prevented from doing so by the police. On the other hand, Buddhists within Vietnam, including some former members of the SYSS, have been for many years quietly involved in numerous welfare activities, and Buddhists overseas have also been sending back funds for humanitarian assistance and Buddhist education through family channels and connections with individual pagodas. One consequence of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s visit may be to increase the visibility of such meritorious activities and help to propel forward their official normalization. The majority of Vietnamese alive today were born after the end of the war and one of the acknowledged challenges facing Thích Nhất Hạnh and all others who would seek to revitalize Buddhism in Vietnam is their

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capacity to speak to the young generation in ways that are meaningful. One of the most insistent themes in Thích Nhất Hạnh’s dharma talks was how to overcome misunderstandings between generations and improve communications within families. This emphasis offers an indication that the need to deal with new social tensions and cultural rifts that are opening up in Vietnam is today seen as just as urgent as resolving political differences or healing the enmities of war. The concern among many people in Vietnam to find a way to live in harmony and obtain inner peace and balance in their fast changing and often chaotic lives is likely to be one of the main reasons for the strong, positive reception to Thích Nhất Hạnh’s lectures and publications. It is probable that with the economic liberalization at present taking place in Vietnam, together with demographic changes, the development of a more educated and knowledgeable population, and the impact of Western influences through globalization, not only will the old ideological conflicts generated over the past sixty years gradually be abandoned, with the consequent achievement of a more unified national community, but there are also indications that there will be a parallel spiritual rejuvenation.

Epilogue In July 2006 it was announced by Plum Village that plans were being made for Thích Nhất Hạnh to return to Vietnam for another tour in Spring 2007, from 20 February until 9 May. The two main aims of this tour would be: 1. to comfort and show Thầy’s care and appreciations for the 450 young monastics undergoing training in Plum Village practice at the two monasteries, Từ Hiếu in Huế and Prajna/Bát Nhã in Bao Lộc. 2. to heal the remaining wounds of the Vietnam War by organizing three Great Chanting Ceremonies in Hanoi, Hồ Chí Minh City [Saì Gòn], and Huế to pray for the liberation of those people who died tragically during and after the war. Thích Nhất Hạnh’s second pilgrimage to Vietnam took place from 20 February to 9 May 2007. This second visit awaits treatment in a separate study, however, several of its distinctive features can be briefly mentioned here. The delegation consisted on average of about 150 monastics and lay

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participants from some twenty different countries. Their itinerary took in several important centres not included in the 2005 trip. The three chanting ceremonies to offer prayers to those who died in the war and to effect reconciliation were focal points of this visit: an estimated 5,000 people participated in the Hồ Chí Minh City ceremony and some 3,500 in those at Huế and at Hanoi. Nhất Hạnh also officiated in Ordination and in Lamp Transmission ceremonies for the many new monks and nuns in Bát Nhã Monastery. Several large monastic and lay retreats were held, along with public alms rounds, walking meditations and numerous dharma talks. As one who participated in both pilgrimages, it appeared to me that, compared with the 2005 trip, the 2007 delegation had noticeably more scope to move around the country (within firm negotiated guidelines), the numbers participating in dharma talks, retreats and ceremonies were higher, and the public reception Nhất Hạnh received from civic leaders, officials and the domestic press was more effusive. In Ðà Nẵng and Hội An, business entrepreneurs vied to entertain the delegation at a top class restaurant and luxurious seashore resort. Nhất Hạnh met with business leaders in Hồ Chí Minh City and Hanoi, and presented dharma talks to expatriate foreigners in Hanoi’s international hotels. He also met with State President Nguyễn Minh Triết, retired General Võ Nguyên Giáp, and the vice head of the Committee for Religious Affairs. While the second trip again provoked criticisms from overseas supporters of the unrecognized UBCV, it also indicated the Vietnamese government’s willingness to permit the staging of new and complex public religious events and comprised another milestone in Thích Nhất Hạnh’s ambitious project to introduce his teachings to a new generation of people in Vietnam.

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FIGURE 9.1 Thích Nhất Hạnh Leading the Alms Round in Huế. Photograph by Kate Cummings.

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NOTES 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

The author is an ordained lay member of the Plum Village Sangha, and was a member of the delegation accompanying Thích Nhất Hạnh on the first segment of his 2005 tour. He later participated in the entirety of the 2007 visit. His personal observations were augmented by excerpts from online diaries kept by other delegation members, through personal communication and the tnhvntrip/oi-discussion yahoogroups.com. The author wishes to thank Alissa Fleet, Nancy Nina Bethan Lloyd, Jay Rabin, Sita Ramamurthy, and Trish Thompson for making available their helpful observations and insights. He is also very grateful to Philip Taylor of ANU for all his encouragement and assistance with writing this chapter, to Mai Nguyễn and Dr Hồng Phước Hồ for their help with translation, and to Đỗ Thiện and David Marr for their helpful comments on the draft manuscripts. King, S.B. (1966, p. 322). Hunt-Perry, P. and L. Finse (2000, p. 35). King, S.B., ibid. King, R.H. (2001, p. 73). Laity, Sister Annabel (2001, p. 5). Ibid. Chân Không (1993, p. 29). Thích Nhất Hạnh (1998, p. 7). King, R.H., 2001, p. 76. Chân Không, op cit. King, R.H., op cit., p. 81. Schecter, J. (1967, p. 204). Phạm Văn Minh (2002, pp. 258–59). Topmiller, R.J. (2002, p. 68). Phạm Văn Minh, op. cit., p. 260. Topmiller, R.J., op. cit., p. 25. Hunt-Perry, P. and L. Fine (2000, p. 40). Chân Không, op. cit., p. 89. Ibid., pp. 92, 109; 2003, p. 89. King, R.H., op. cit., p. 82. Ibid., p. 85; Thích Nhất Hạnh (1991, p. 115). Chân Không (2003, p. 89). Thích Nhất Hạnh (1967, p. 126). King, R.H., op. cit., p. 84. Ibid., p. 89. Ibid., p. 91. From 1976 until 1977, Cao Ngọc Phượng and a number of others in the sangha organized an operation in the Gulf of Siam using three rented boats to rescue

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30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

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48 49 50

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54 55 56 57

John Chapman refugees (“boat people”) escaping from Vietnam. But hostility from the governments of Thailand and Singapore made it impossible for them to continue. Prior to moving to Patates Douces, Thích Nhất Hạnh had been teaching the history of Vietnamese Buddhism at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. The three-volume history of Vietnamese Buddhism was published under the pen name of Nguyến Lang. Hunt-Perry, P. and L. Fine, op cit., p. 45. Thích Nhất Hạnh (1991, p. 91). Topmiller, R.J. (2002, p. ix). Rambo, A. Terry (1982, pp. 426, 439); Schecter, J. (1967, pp. 204–05); Phạm Văn Minh (2002, pp. 214–15). Chân Không, op cit., p. 85. Queen, C.S. and S.B. King (1966, p. 326). Topmiller, R.J., op cit., pp. 7, 49. Ibid., pp. 63, 144. IBIB, 1 May 1999 . Nguyen The Anh (2002, pp. 8–9). IBIB, 16 May 1999, ibid. . IBIB Press Release 16 May 1999 PEN . IBIB/Quêmẹ Press Release, 23 February 2005. BBC News, 3 September 1998. Human Rights Watch World Report 2001. According to this report, the Foreign Ministry later denied that the monks had been detained. IBIB, “Vietnam — Appeal for Democracy in Vietnam — Thích Quảng Độ”, 27 February 2001 . BBC News, 28 June 2003. , 12 November 2003. Human Rights Watch Vietnam Country Overview 2006. According to a press release issued by the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in December 2005, Thích Quảng Độ remains free to travel to other pagodas to participate in religious ceremonies (Press Release, MOFA 22 December 2005). IBIB/Quêmẹ Press release, 23 February 2005. IBIB, 11 February 2005 . U.S. Department of State, International Religious Freedom Report 2004 — Vietnam. IBIB/Quêmẹ Press Release, 11 July 2005. Thích Nhất Hạnh (2003, p. 29). Kay Johnson, Time Asia, 16 January 2005. Việt Nam News, 18 January 2005.

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Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Mindfulness Bell, Summer 2005. Vietnam News Agency, 25 March 2005. IBIB News Release, 25 March 2005. Five precepts taken on first entry to the Order of Interbeing [Tiếp Hiện] comprising (i) not killing, (ii) cultivating loving kindness, (iii) avoiding sexual misconduct, (iv) practising loving speech, and (vi) practising mindful consuming. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Hanoi 12 January 2005. Johnson, Kay, Voice of America, 12 January 2005. Stocking, Ben, Mercury News, 31 March 2005. U.S. Department of State, International Religious Freedom Report 2005 — Vietnam. Nhân Dân, 12 November 2005. Viet Nam News Agency, Hanoi, 24 January 2005. Agence France Presse, Hanoi, 18 January 2005. Stocking, Ben, op. cit. Steinglass, Matt, Boston Globe, 13 February 2005. IBIB News Release 25 March 2005. Ibid., 26 January 2005. Jean-Claude Pomonti, Le Monde, 22 April 2005. Ramamurthy, Sita, BBC Radio 4, 22 December 2005. Ibid. Thích Nhất Hạnh, “To Be Ready”, The Mindfulness Bell, Autumn 2005. Stocking, Ben, op. cit. Ramamurthy, Sita, op. cit. Thích Nhất Hạnh, “To Be Ready”, The Mindfulness Bell, Autumn 2005. . BBC News, 21 June 2005. In the International Religious Freedom Report 2005, it was stated that on 5 May 2005, the United States and Vietnam concluded an agreement that addresses a number of important religious freedom concerns, including commitments by the government to fully implement the new laws on religious activities and to render previous contradictory regulations obsolete; to instruct local authorities to strictly and completely adhere to the new legislation and ensure their compliance; to facilitate the process by which religious congregations are able to open houses of worship; and to give special consideration to prisoners and cases of concern raised by the United States during the granting of prisoner amnesties. Dependent upon the government’s fulfilment of these commitments, the United States committed to consider the removal of Vietnam from the CPC list. Thích Nhất Hạnh (2003, p. 23). See Taylor (2004a); Endres and Phạm Quỳnh Phương (this volume). Taylor, Philip (2004b, p. 10).

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10 Nationalism, Globalism and the Re-establishment of the Trúc Lâm Thiền Buddhist Sect in Northern Vietnam Alexander Soucy

Introduction: Zen at the Core While conducting research on contemporary Buddhist practice in Hanoi from 1997 to 1998, people frequently brought up the subject of Zen [Thiền]1 mummies.* These mummies were said to have been exceptional Zen masters whose level of spiritual attainment was so high that when they died sitting in meditation, their bodies naturally preserved. The mummies would be lacquered and worshipped as holy relics. Their mummified remains were evidence of the mastery of these monks over meditative techniques. At the same time, a nationalist sentiment was vicariously given support by their remains, with people proudly pointing to them to show the achievements of Buddhism in Vietnam. Viewing these mummies from time to time at famous pagodas in the vicinity of Hanoi, however, would prove the closest I would come to Zen Buddhism in Vietnam during that period. My observations were reflected in Cuong Tu Nguyen’s description:

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There are few recognizable traces of any specifically “Zen Buddhism” in Vietnam. In the still extant bibliographies of Buddhist books in Vietnam, we find more writings on sutras, rituals, vinaya,2 but almost nothing on Zen in the form of either independent works or commentaries on Chinese Zen classics. There are no Zen monasteries, no sizeable Zen communities (we can even say no Zen community), no recognizable Zen monasticism or practices as in the case of Japan or Korea (1997, p. 98).

While Cuong Tu Nguyen’s statement agrees with my own experience, he goes contrary to the few available descriptions of Vietnamese Buddhism. Since at least the early twentieth century, Zen has been taken by academics and practitioners alike as the core of Vietnamese Buddhism, though there has clearly been a tendency since as early as the fourteenth century to favour Zen in written accounts of Buddhism in Vietnam. A text called the Thiền Uyển Tập Anh (Outstanding Figures in the Zen Community [of Vietnam]), discovered by Trần Văn Giáp, was central to this construction.3 It was intended to be a narrative history of Vietnamese Zen Buddhism and aims to show that it is a continuation, or development, of the Chinese Zen tradition. The Thiền Uyển is constructed as a series of biographies of famous Zen monks in Vietnam from the sixth to thirteenth centuries, and follows the literary genre of the “transmission of the lamp” texts in Chinese Zen Buddhism (Cuong Tu Nguyen 1997, p. 3). The Thiền Uyển, Cuong Tu Nguyen argues, is in fact a revisionist collection of various voices, which has nonetheless been taken in modern Vietnam to be the authoritative text on Vietnamese Zen Buddhism. Its authority has largely gone unquestioned because it provides a convenient framework to study the history of Vietnamese Buddhism in the absence of other comprehensive descriptions (Cuong Tu Nguyen 1997, p. 24). This is not to say that there is a total absence of Zen Buddhism in Vietnam, for, as the Zen mummies clearly show, there have indeed been individuals engaged in Zen practice. However, what I believe Cuong Tu Nguyen is saying — and his conclusions certainly resonate with my own conclusions — is that there may be a small number of monks practicing Zen, but this is not ample justification for equating Vietnamese Buddhism with Zen. This construction of Zen as the heart of Vietnamese Buddhism, gained renewed momentum during the Buddhist reform movement of the 1920s (Thien Do 1999, pp. 259–61; DeVido, this volume).4 The revival in Vietnam was part of the pan-Asian movement to cleanse Buddhism of culture-specific overlays that were perceived as impurities or deviations

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from the original teachings of the Buddha. A number of monks travelled to China during this period, where a Buddhist revival was being led by a monk named Taixu (1890–1947), and returned with the intention of making Buddhism more responsive to contemporary needs (Marr 1981, p. 304). In large part, this movement was in reaction to Western colonialism. Thích Nhất Hạnh comments that Buddhism was a strong ally of the anti-colonial resistance, and that the Buddhist revival of the 1930s coincided with the resistance movement (Thích Nhất Hạnh 1967, pp. 32, 40). However, this re-assessment of Buddhist tradition should also be seen as an implicit acceptance of Western criticism of local practice. It was during this period that the idea was put forward that Buddhism was the “true national religion” of Vietnam (Hunt-Perry and Fine 2000, p. 36). This primacy placed on Zen has been assumed by Buddhists and academics alike in colonial and communist Vietnam because it fits the rhetorical requirements of the nationalist elite who continue to disparage “folk” beliefs and practices. Trần Văn Giáp’s acceptance of the Thiền Uyển as history, rather than a text with a particular agenda, has been repeated by the few writings in French or English on Vietnamese Buddhism, as well as by all the works in Vietnamese.5 Thích Nhất Hạnh and Thích Thiện Ân have exported the identification of Vietnamese Buddhism with Zen to the West; Thích Nhất Hạnh with particular success. As representatives of Vietnamese Buddhism in the West, it should be noted that they have both been able to draw Western converts. Thích Nhất Hạnh has been especially successful in establishing a global organization. He was born in central Vietnam in 1926 and became a monk as a teenager. His activism during the Vietnam War led to him becoming nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King Jr., but also to be exiled from his homeland. He first went to the United States in the early 1960s to study and teach at Columbia University. In 1973 he attended the Paris Peace Talks but was refused permission to return to Vietnam. In 1982 he established Plum Village in France and since then has established an extensive network of followers throughout the West based on ecumenical teachings of mindfulness. In the introduction to his account of Buddhists during the war, Thích Nhất Hạnh wrote: “In the history of Vietnamese Buddhism, [Zen] is by far the most important sect” (1967, p. 4). However, he qualifies this a few pages later:

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The small village pagoda often does not have a well-qualified Zen Master, since most people, and in particular the villagers, cannot practice Zen as taught in the monastery. This must be performed by qualified monks and possibly by a few educated laymen. For this reason popular Buddhism in Vietnam is a mixture of some basic Zen elements and many practices of the Pure Land (Amidist) sect, which is a sect of Mahayana Buddhism that is very popular among the masses. (Thích Nhất Hạnh 1967, p. 6)

The addition of “qualified” for monks and “educated” (not to mention “few”) for laymen undermines his assertion regarding the importance of Zen in Vietnam. My experience in Hanoi and the provinces surrounding Hanoi is that by Thích Nhất Hạnh’s criteria there are, indeed, few “qualified” or “educated” Buddhists. However, I have met a good many who knew a great deal about complicated rituals and who could recite and explain sutras with ease. They were held in high regard for their knowledge and were considered exemplary Buddhists. Their lack of interaction with Zen activities did not seem to diminish the respect they were accorded. This calls into question the notion that Zen, though its symbolic importance has remained undeniably steadfast, holds more than a peripheral place in northern Vietnam. Thích Thiện Ân, a monk born in Huế in 1926,6 entered the monastery at the age of fourteen and received his Doctorate of Literature degree at Waseda University in Japan. He returned to Vietnam and taught in university. In 1966 he went to Los Angeles and started teaching at UCLA and later founded the International Buddhist Meditation Center (Thích Thiện Ân 1975, p. 12). Similar to Thích Nhất Hạnh, he places Zen not only in the centre of Vietnamese Buddhism, but makes it the defining feature of the Vietnamese: “Zen comes closest to expressing the Vietnamese character, and as such, their attitude in all walks of life can best be described as a ‘Zen outlook’” (Thích Thiện Ân 1975, p. 27). He, therefore, not only accepts the rhetoric in regard to Buddhism in Vietnam, but also makes the tenuous proposition that Zen is central to the entire Vietnamese culture.7

Cô Tuyết and the New Trúc Lâm Zen As Thích Thiện Ân’s and Thích Nhất Hạnh’s accounts of Vietnamese Buddhism were the only ones available to me when I started research on Vietnamese Buddhism in the early 1990s, I had trouble reconciling their descriptions with what I saw being practised by the Vietnamese in Canada.

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The charge by Cuong Tu Nguyen, that “the fabrication of the Zen schools in Viet Nam only stems from the efforts of the elites eager to bring orthodoxy to Vietnamese Buddhism” (1995, p. 113), reflected also what I saw when I did my doctoral research in Hanoi in 1997 to 1998. As in Canada, the Buddhism that I saw being practised there was uniformly devotional and ritualistic in nature and consisted primarily of making offerings and chanting sutras. Nor did monastics in Hanoi that I spoke with include meditation in descriptions of their practice (though the monastics I knew in Canada did meditate). Typical of Buddhist laity in Hanoi was a woman named Cô Tuyết, who I first met in 1997.8 She is an intensely devout Buddhist practising — and conceiving of her practice — in ways that are normative in northern Vietnam. By this I mean that she went twice monthly to pagodas to make offerings as well as making offerings at a home altar, went on pilgrimages and attended lectures and special events whenever she could at places like Chùa Quán Sứ (the largest pagoda in Hanoi, the headquarters of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha and the location of the Vietnam School of Higher Buddhist Studies). Her Buddhist practice could be characterized as being devotional, inclusive, syncretic and impregnated with popular beliefs.9 Thus, while she recited sutras and listened to Buddhist lectures, she would also seek advice from fortune-tellers and give offerings to gods, goddesses, ancestors, spirits and ghosts for family protection, to get good luck and to protect from bad fortune. Her practice continues to be aimed towards these concerns. For example, she recently said to me that “all women in Vietnam go to pagodas to make wishes for everyone in the family, to bring them good things and good luck.” Therefore, I was surprised in December 2004 when she told me that she was going to take me to a monastery nearby where she goes for Zen meditation. I had heard that she had intensified her Buddhist practice since the last time I had last seen her near the beginning of 2001. Most of these reports were from members of her family, who complained to me that she was donating too much of the family savings to monks from southern Vietnam, and who strongly suspected the monks of being charlatans.10 She told me that she was following a monk at a meditation hall in Gìa Lâm, close to the banks of the Red River. She explained that she had been meditating for about a year, and had primarily taken up meditation for health reasons. The first time she mentioned this, she said: “I meditate to calm myself, make myself healthy and not worry about things.” A week

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later she rephrased it in a similar way: “I meditate to understand about the Buddha and to improve my health.” This connection between practising meditation and improving health was repeated by a number of individuals during interviews and during conversations, which I will discuss further below. Cô Tuyết’s attachment to the Zen centre and the master of the tradition was, however, not exclusive or as intense as I later found with a number of other followers. While she was enthusiastic enough about meditation that she sat a few times a week at her home, and clearly respected the master, she also spoke of other monks whom she followed. Her deepening involvement had not yet resulted in her severing ties with other Buddhist organizations.

Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự Cô Tuyết took me to a unique Zen monastery nearby called Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự. The meditation center [thiền tự] had taken over the site of a village pagoda [chùa]. The main sanctum and altar of the pagoda were still there, as was the lotus pond in front and the reception house, resembling very much the norm for that area. Its difference was that it was simpler, with the main altar consisting solely of a large central statue of the historical Buddha, Śakyamuni [Thích Ca Mâu Ni], while a few other statues were placed behind the main statue. On either side were sub-altars dedicated to Ksitigarbha [Ðịa Tạng] and Guanyin [Quan Âm]. The configuration of altars and statues resembled the simpler layout of pagodas in southern Vietnam more than those of the north, which usually feature ascending rows of Buddhist saints, buddhas, bodhisattvas and sometimes non-Buddhist deities. It appeared to have been simplified, with aspects that would commonly mark the pagoda as northern Vietnamese cleansed to a certain extent. Noticeably absent were any non-Buddhist statues, and among these the mother goddesses that are usually housed in a structure behind the main sanctum called the nhà mẫu, This is especially important, as this section is usually attached to the lên đồng spirit possession practices associated with the Mother Goddess cult [Ðạo Mẫu]. This cult is entirely non-Buddhist, though there is a view by some monastics and laity in the north that the four palaces cult and Buddhism are complementary parts, both integral to the spiritual world of the Vietnamese. Nonetheless, it tends to be a marginal cult that is scorned as superstitious “women’s practice” by the male elite of both past and present.

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Other buildings in the complex include accommodations for the monks, a guest house for visiting monastics, a large kitchen to feed the lay practitioners during their day-long sessions that take place once a month, and a grass and bamboo pavilion built partially over a lotus pond. Towards the back of the complex, a large, two-storey, wooden meditation hall dominates the area. The meditation hall is unlike anything I have ever seen in Vietnam, and instead more closely resembled meditation halls from the Ch’an monasteries in China.11 I was told that they were trying to acquire more land in order to expand the complex to accommodate their growing number of practitioners. Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự has a half-day programme every week in which lay practitioners come to meditate and listen to lectures that could have been taken from Walpola Rahula’s hugely influential book What the Buddha Taught,12 dealing with fundamental themes held in common by all Buddhists, such as the Four Noble Truths. Once every month there is an all-day programme that draws a crowd of several hundred lay Buddhists. This day is a much bigger event, to which monks from the Trúc Lâm Yên Tử monastery — the head monastery of the tradition for northern Vietnam — bus down. The lecture is given by Thích Thông Phương, the abbot of the Trúc Lâm monastery at Yên Tử and the author of several books on Zen and the Trúc Lâm school. On this day, lay followers overflow out the door of the meditation hall on both storeys so that many have to sit on the balcony outside. They start with forty-five minutes of sutra chanting, followed by one hour of meditation, during which lay followers are expected to sit still, stay awake and concentrate. Following a practice more common in China and Japan, a monk walks the ranks of lay practitioners during this session, carrying a large stick which he taps on the shoulder of people who are drifting off to sleep and correcting the posture of those who are slouching. The vice abbot of Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự explained that the strikes are light for lay practitioners and heavier for monastics, who do not meditate with the laity on these public days. Following the morning meditation session, a lecture is given which lasts about an hour. A vegetarian meal is served at noon, eaten in the Zen style — in silence and one mouthful at a time, regulated by rings of a bell. The diners are expected to focus on their actions as they eat. In the afternoon there is another meditation session and lecture. It is altogether an unusual event to witness, unlike anything I have encountered in Vietnam before. Surprisingly, there is nothing that would

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differentiate the group that attends these sessions at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự from groups that follow the more normative practice of reciting sutras at other pagodas. Both are made up largely of older women, with a smattering of younger women and older men. The proportion of women versus men is not notably different, with about eighty-five to ninety per cent being women. Indeed, aside from the meditation, the only outwardly remarkable thing about this group is that they wear grey robes more common in the south rather than the more usual brown robes of the north. The grey robes signify the strong influence and affiliation of this group with Buddhists of the south. Indeed, as I will discuss below, the founder of this organization, the majority of monastics at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự, and the abbot at the Trúc Lâm Yên Tử Monastery are all either from southern or central Vietnam. This southern influence on religious practice in the north may represent the start of more profound changes to come, especially since the globalized overseas Vietnamese community is almost completely identified with the south. The irony of this Zen group is that Cuong Tu Nguyen had, I believe, been correct in his assessment that the claim that Zen was the core of Buddhism was largely a case of cultural invention. Now, the processes of reform that had started early in the twentieth century and continued in the West as part of an increasingly globalized movement have started to bring reality to that Zen cultural invention. A great deal of attention has been paid to how Buddhism has “come to the West”, stressing the changes that Buddhist practice has undergone as a result. Though variously phrased, the central division that is made is between Buddhism practised by Western converts, who typically accentuate meditation practices and seek after a “pure” Buddhism untainted by culturespecific “superstitions”. Western followers of the Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Order of Interbeing would be an example of this. On the other hand are those who have brought Buddhism with them as “cultural baggage” from their native countries. For them, their Buddhist communities largely function within the idioms and in the languages of their native cultures. While there have been variations on this division, they have largely tinkered around the edges (by, for example, offering different terms for the same categories).13 There has been some limited look at how the West has influenced Buddhist practice by Asians. Robert Gimello, for example, writes in passing of how the Western versions of Buddhism have influenced younger, second generation, Asians in places like North America. Gananath Obeyesekere’s

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work has been pivotal in drawing attention to some of the Western roots to the Buddhist revival in Asia and how figures like the Theosophist Colonel Olcott affected Buddhism in Sri Lanka (Obeyesekere 2003, pp. 67–70). However, there has been an overall tendency to treat the movement of Buddhism from East to West and to then focus on changes that have occurred as a result. Literature is very weak on how this, in turn, is having an affect on Buddhist practice in the countries of origin. In the Vietnamese context, Đổi Mới and normalization of relations with the United States has dramatically increased interaction between overseas Vietnamese and those who remain in Vietnam. Discussions I had in Montréal in the early 1990s indicated that there was a reluctance to return to Vietnam to visit estranged families for fear that they would be imprisoned. The huge influx of money from overseas Vietnamese sending money to their families has been a boon to the Vietnamese economy, and makes their imprisonment highly unlikely. In recent years the Vietnamese Government has, on a number of occasions, issued statements welcoming overseas Vietnamese to return home to participate in the building of the new economy. Ashley Carruthers has argued that, far from fearing retribution, returning transnational Vietnamese are now more concerned with the recognition and conversion of cultural capital that they have amassed by living overseas, gaining material wealth and acquiring international qualifications and competences (2002). The return of Thích Nhất Hạnh in early 2005 is clear evidence that the communist government is indeed loosening former controls, perhaps in response to U.S. criticism of human rights violations combined with a desire to improve their global image to increase their chances of being admitted into the World Trade Organization. The effects, which I am exploring in a preliminary way here, are that the transformations of Buddhism in the West, which have been well documented elsewhere, are now changing Buddhist practice in Vietnam. The rest of this chapter explores some prominent features of the new Trúc Lâm school and how the followers contrast this new Buddhism with the normative practices in northern Vietnam.

Trúc Lâm Zen The monks at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự explained that they followed a Zen school called Trúc Lâm Thiền Tong, or the Bamboo Grove Zen school. The Trúc Lâm school was founded by a former king of Vietnam, Trần Nhân Tông (1258–1308), who defeated the Mongol invaders. He abdicated

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the throne, and retired to Yên Tử Mountain in northern Vietnam, where he founded the Trúc Lâm Zen School. According to Thích Minh Châu, The Trúc Lâm school expanded under the second patriarch, Pháp Loa (1284–1334), gaining 15,000 monks and 200 monasteries (1994). With the death of the third patriarch, Huyền Quang (1258–1308), the Trúc Lâm school had effectively come to an end. There is evidence that some of the disciples of the first three patriarchs established scattered groups, and there were attempts to revive the Trúc Lâm sect, but of these attempts the historical record provides no details except a list of names (Cuong Tu Nguyen 1997, p. 342n). The Trúc Lâm school is notable in that it is the only school of Zen that was founded in Vietnam rather than originating in China. According to Cuong Tu Nguyen, its main accomplishment is that it “marked the first serious effort to establish a Zen school in medieval Vietnam” (1997, p. 20). Its Vietnamese origin makes it especially important for the symbolic role it plays in nationalist assertions that take China as a point of comparison for proving Vietnamese uniqueness and merit. Nonetheless, the Trúc Lâm school is unavoidably a combination of Chinese Zen schools: “The Trúc Lâm sect mainly had is origin from monks of the Wu Yantong sect, not to mention the influence of a Chinese Chan sect [Linji; Lâm Tế in Vietnamese], which entered Vietnam at that time. The establishment of the Trúc Lâm sect marked the unification of the Buddhist Congregation of Vietnam” (Hà Văn Tấn 1993, p. 109). The character of Trúc Lâm Zen in regard to practice is not entirely clear, but it appears that its methods relied largely on encounter dialogues in which the teacher directly transmitted the mind of enlightenment to the student. The followers of the three patriarchs appeared to be laymen and monks, primarily from the aristocratic class (Cuong Tu Nguyen 1997, p. 21). The Trúc Lâm Zen Buddhism that Cô Tuyết is following is not, strictly speaking, the original Trúc Lâm school originally founded by Trần Nhân Tông, but was started by a prominent Vietnamese monk named Thích Thanh Từ. He was born in the Mekong Delta [Cần Thơ] in 1924. Unlike Thích Nhất Hạnh and Thích Thiện Ân, who are more famous outside of Vietnam, he never studied abroad. In 1968 he says that he discovered meditation and decided to try to revive Vietnamese Zen, and particularly the Trúc Lâm school. In 1971 he founded the Chân Không Monastery in

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Vũng Tàu, close to Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). In 1974 he founded the Thường Chiếu monastery in Đà Lạt, which became the headquarters of his organization in 1986.14 The fact that Thích Thanh Từ’s intention is to recreate the spirit rather than replicate the original Trúc Lâm Zen school is recognized in websites dedicated to the school (see Hoàng 2002), as well as by Thích Thanh Từ himself, who claims that the form of Buddhism which he is calling Trúc Lâm, is actually his own construction: When I talk about Vietnamese Zen, I mean to talk about the Zen practising method that had been implemented earlier at Chân Không monastery (1970– 86) and now at Thường Chiếu monastery (1974–present). This practising method was instructed by me. I did not follow the lineages extended from China such as Tào Ðộng, Lâm Tế, Qui Ngưỡng, Văn Môn, and Pháp Nhãn. I only combine three important key ideas from the historical Zen transmissions from China to Vietnam. The first key idea is from patriarch Huệ Khả, the second one is from patriarch Huệ Năng, and the third one is from patriarch Trúc Lâm Dầu Ðà. Putting together their discernment, enlightenment, and practice, I developed a unique Zen method for us to practice at our monasteries. (Thích Thanh Từ 1998, p. 3)

Nonetheless, Thích Thanh Từ is clearly trying to use the symbolic value of Trúc Lâm in order to strengthen his Zen movement. On this point, it is notable that they have re-established a Trúc Lâm monastery at Yên Tử Mountain, given its historical connection to the Trúc Lâm sect. The process by which this monastery has been established is illustrative of the local/national/global tensions that are present. While the lay Buddhists and monastics were only positive about the monastery at Yên Tử, it appears as though there has been considerable tension at the local level. The (unconfirmed) story that I was related was that a few years ago the local council at Yên Tử decided that they wanted to renovate their local pagoda. They first approached a wealthy woman from Hanoi who had previously been a generous donor. However, the woman said that she would be willing to provide statues for the interior, but not to be involved in the structure itself, as getting government permission would be too complicated. Without a patron, they turned to the Trúc Lâm organization who had previously expressed interest in the pagoda. The organization brought in an army of workers from the south and the new structures were erected in a matter of months. For the first week the locals were invited to meditation sessions. Not long after, however, they realized that their local

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pagoda had been taken over by an organization from the south that had no intention of fulfilling some of the traditional roles of local monastics. For example, the monks from the new Trúc Lâm monastery refused to conduct funerals, though they would chant sutras at the pagoda. This left the locals feeling that their local pagoda had been invaded and was no longer theirs or responsive to their needs. Consequently, there is a great deal of local resentment about the arrival of the Trúc Lâm organization.15 Whether or not the story is accurate, it illustrates some of the tensions involved between local, traditional, practices and new forms of Buddhism that are not always responsive to local needs. A feature of Thích Thanh Từ’s new Trúc Lâm is the emphasis that he places on lay involvement. In the words of an acolyte at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự, “Trúc Lâm Zen is democratic”. This lay focus is evident in the weekly meditation sessions and lectures that he has opened to the public. He explains lay emphasis by reinterpreting the Zen concept of “transmission of the lamp”. Usually this phrase refers to the practice of a Zen Master passing on his teachings to his chief disciple, and in this way we can speak of a Zen lineage. Thích Thanh Từ, however, talks about lighting ten or twenty torches that will light thirty or forty others, in order to light up the whole world (Thích Thanh Từ 2000, p. 29). It is precisely this lay emphasis, according to Đào Thế Đức, that has led some monks in Vietnam to criticize Thích Thanh Từ’s method of teaching meditation techniques to “uneducated women” as irresponsible (personal communication). Đào Thế Đức has related to me rumours that there have been some women who have fallen into a trance and been stranded there. These women needed monks from outside to help them get out of their trances. Again, whether these rumours are substantiated or not, the very existence of them points to some concern amongst Buddhist elites in Vietnam that meditation is being opened to the laity (and especially to women). Zen for lay Buddhists is a new phenomenon in Vietnam, but has been a prominent feature of Buddhism in the West.16 Indeed, meditation has been a defining feature, even an obsession, among converts to Buddhism in the West in a way that marks Western Buddhism as significantly different from Buddhism as practiced in Asia or by most Asians in the West. Charles Prebish, who has written extensively on Buddhism in America, remarks that, “American converts treat Buddhism as if it were a ‘onefold path,’ focusing on meditation and little, if anything, else” (1999, p. 63).17

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In setting up a new Trúc Lâm Zen school, Thích Thanh Từ appears to be drawing on these global currents of reform and Western Buddhism that privilege meditation as more authentic than other practices, such as devotionalism, ritual or merit-making through offerings. Since Đổi Mới the rate of interaction with overseas Vietnamese has accelerated, affecting not only economic and social, but also religious dimensions in the lives of Vietnamese in the north, confirming Taylor’s observation that Weber had been wildly incorrect in thinking that the rationalism of modernity would bring about a disenchantment with religion (Taylor 2004a, p. 12). This global communication has created a greater awareness of some global trends in Buddhism and has been accompanied by wider availability of books written by Vietnamese and translated from other languages. The increasing cross fertilization was illustrated to me in my most recent trip to Vietnam in late 2004 and early 2005, when photocopied versions of books by Thích Nhất Hạnh were being given to me by earnest Buddhists. Of course, these books were merely presaging his impending visit (his first return in nearly forty years), which was on everyone’s lips. One monk would tell me of the coming visit, the next would say that he had heard that it was cancelled. The reception that Thích Nhất Hạnh received during his three-month tour of Vietnam in early 2005 clearly indicates that there is an appetite for his form of Zen Buddhism, which is intended as a tradition of practice suitable for Western sensibilities and practicable by followers of any religious tradition. His visit will likely have a major effect in bringing Vietnam more fully into an increasingly globalized “Buddhist Movement” that diminishes the value of cultural particularities. It can be argued that what Thích Thanh Từ has created is not Trúc Lâm Zen at all, and that after the third patriarch the lamp flickered and died. However, while Thích Thanh Từ may not be heir to an unbroken line of Zen masters representing a discrete school, he is in some ways recreating the spirit of a Vietnamese Zen school, which nonetheless takes part in a reform of Buddhism that has been accelerated by globalization. I will turn now to look at some features of this reincarnated Trúc Lâm sect and what the use of this label represents.

The Attraction of Zen Practice Global trends in Buddhism seem to favour meditation and Zen Buddhism that is more or less culturally neutral. However, while the broad trends

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appear to be discernable, it is important to understand why people in the north are personally attracted to Zen practices. In other words, what is the relation between their personal decisions regarding religious practice, globalized Buddhism, and the traditional Vietnamese Buddhist practices that I have outlined above?

Meditation for Health The health benefits of meditation are frequently cited as the initial reason for involvement in this form of practice. This, as we have seen, was certainly central to Cô Tuyết’s motivations behind taking up meditation. A young medical anthropologist’s reasons for becoming involved also initially related to the health benefits of meditation, but with the twist of it being for curing others. She explained to me that she became increasingly involved after taking a course on secular meditation, intended to channel energy for the healing of others. She had also taken part in yoga for her health. She explained: In fact, the reason that I meditated at that time (when I first became interested) was I had a class that was called “meditation for healing”. They use the method of meditation to open energy points in the body for the purpose of healing sickness in others. That is, they gain the ability to make energy that can then be transmitted through their hands. They lay their hand on the energy points of the other person’s body to open these energy points and are able to cure the person of a number of ailments. At that time I attended that class and the teacher of that class really liked me. He said that I had an aptitude for doing this. In fact I didn’t like it much myself because, before starting, I was a Buddhist and had been reading books on Buddhism since I was young. I felt that this method attached importance to laying on of hands to open the energy points and that was very interesting. If you do normal meditation it will take you ten or twenty years to get this kind of energy and you will have to retire to a forest cave. But with the method they were teaching the teacher helps (by giving some of his power) so that your energy can flow more quickly. However, there is a shortcoming, which is that they don’t concentrate on controlling your breath, and if you can’t control your breath then you can’t regulate your heart. I also wanted to regulate my heart because in Buddhist meditation, like in Indian yoga and in other kinds of meditation, they all speak about controlling the heart. I felt that the teacher was not paying attention to regulating the heart so I switched to Buddhist meditation. That is what pushed me to study Zen, though actually I have been a Buddhist since I was very young.

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The health benefits of meditation seem not only to be a principal draw but are also used to attract new followers. An acolyte at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự urged me to take up meditative practices in precisely this language when I was leaving after my first visit. He explained that the kind of life that I was living was very busy and stressful. Meditation was the way that I would be able to relieve some of this stress and improve my health. This “New Age” way of viewing meditation and Buddhism mirrors some of the ways that meditation is presented in the West. There are now books available in Vietnam that reinforce the view of meditation and Buddhism as something other than a traditional religion. For example, in 2004 a book entitled Buddhism and Health was published, featuring a Shaolin type monk in a martial arts stance on the cover (Dương Quốc An 2004). It is one of what seemed to be an increasing number of books that took this approach. It does not at first seem entirely surprising that alternate forms of medicine and health practices are becoming popular, given that the state has withdrawn the availability of free medical care. However, I am not convinced that this assumption would be entirely accurate. Just as in the West, it is often those with more disposable income and leisure time that have the luxury of becoming engaged in activities like meditation or aerobics. The practitioners at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự seemed to be those who would not have suffered most from the withdrawal of state support for public healthcare.

The Lure of the Elite Another notable explanation for beginning to practice Zen was disenchantment with normative, devotional Buddhist practices. Many of the followers of Thích Thanh Từ drew a clear distinction between their practice, and the more usual devotional practices found in Vietnam, commonly described as Tịnh Độ — Pure Land Buddhism. Pure Land Buddhist doctrine holds that we live in an impure world and a degenerative time, and therefore making any religious progress takes extraordinary perseverance and talent, well beyond the capacity of most people. The key figure in Pure Land Buddhism, Amitabha Buddha, or A-Di-Ðà Phật in Vietnamese, therefore made a vow to assist those who recite his name in faith by having them reborn in his paradise, called Sukhavati. This realm, The “Land of Bliss” or the “Pure Land”, was created through the merit of A-Di-Ðà Phật in order for the devout to practice Buddhism

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without the encumbrances of our tainted world, and thereby achieve enlightenment with ease. The Pure Land form of Buddhism, that stresses reliance on external forces for salvation, is diametrically opposed to the radically individualistic teachings of Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhism holds that because we are all essentially undifferentiated our task is not to become a Buddha but to realize that you are already a Buddha. This is accomplished through meditation and the guidance of a master. While there are several schools of Zen Buddhism, they all stress the need for meditation as an essential tool for achieving this realization. Zen, or Thiền in Vietnamese, is a Japanese translation of the Chinese word ch’an, which is a translation of the Indian dhyana, literally meaning “meditation”. In fact, Pure Land Buddhism is still a step removed from the practice and beliefs of most people. While some may hold part or all of the beliefs described above of A-Di-Ðà and the Pure Land, Sukhavati, the practices of most Buddhists in Vietnam are undertaken in the hopes of achieving more mundane goals, such as having a successful career, a male child or a healthy family. On a soteriological note, most people would be happy enough to avoid a prolonged stint in hell to atone for past sins and to be reborn in a more fortunate existence next time around. Most people do not give much serious thought, or speak about, attaining a Pure Land. While the everyday practice of most people is not Pure Land Buddhism, strictly speaking, “Pure Land Buddhism” has become the label that Vietnamese use for normative practices. It therefore is used as a point of reference by which followers distinguish themselves from normal practice and raise themselves up as “elite”. These distinctions appear to be intentionally taught by Thích Thanh Từ. In the forward to his book My Whole Life, translated by an overseas Vietnamese living in California, Thích Thanh Từ writes: I take courage to say things that are deformed from Buddhist dharmas and those that are digressed from the original Vietnamese Buddhism, even though it will make a number of people unhappy and not able to change their instinctive customs of Vietnamese Buddhism” [sic]. (Thích Thanh Từ 2000, p. 11)

It is clear that most practitioners feel that meditation is not just about health, but is considered a higher Buddhist path than the devotional “Pure Land” practices that the majority of people engage in. An acolyte at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự, frequently juxtaposed what he called the “path of wisdom”

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with the “path of devotion”. He, along with other monks at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự, would not go so far as to directly say that meditation is a better path, but he implied that it was better for those who are at a high enough level to do it. For example, he once said to me: “the Zen path is not better, but it is faster”, and implied it was better for those who were at a sufficiently high spiritual level. I questioned the vice-abbot whether all of the practitioners at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự adopted meditation as their exclusive practice or whether they continued to take part in devotional rituals. He replied that he was sure it was the case that some still did both, but that this was no real problem, given that different people were at different spiritual levels. His opinion was not shared, however, by three lay women I interviewed a few days later who had a much stricter view of what constituted correct practice, and juxtaposed their Zen practice with standard lay devotional practices: Before [we started practicing Zen] our hearts were very small. We would go to Buddhist rituals and force the monk to read out individual names to wish for good things for us and our families. If the monk did not read our names, we would start to complain: “why aren’t our names in there?” Now we are not like that and don’t make wishes anymore. The Buddha taught us the Law of Causality: If you give good things, you deserve good things. If you do cruel things then you will get the same back, and making wishes won’t alter this. In our ignorance, we wished for everything and always complained. We brought small offerings but asked for the world, because our greed was enormous. If you don’t give good things, how can you ask or expect good things? It is nonsense… Now, even when people ask us to take part in Pure Land rituals we say no. We absolutely believe in our master.

Thích Thanh Từ’s writings on the subject are very clear about which practice is superior. In fact, his writings appear to be less sensitive than the monks’ at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự. He somewhat sarcastically wrote: Have you ever heard [of] the Buddha praying for the liberation of the deceased at any funeral? Never. The Buddha was so compassionate to save all sentient beings, but he would never pray. Now, we are more compassionate than he is as we pray for their liberation. Thus we have instructed the Buddhists to know only praying, not practising [sic.]. (2000, p. 33)

In a more direct critique of the devotional tendencies of mainstream Buddhism in Vietnam, he writes:

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Nowadays, we chant without knowing if it’s effective. In the past, only when we [were] near death, the monks would remind us of our daily practising methods… How about us? We don’t say anything, but chant. After chanting, we make prayers. That’s all [we do]. The emphasis is on praying. And emphasis is also on the belief. But the belief is not relevant to wisdom. Therefore, having a belief means having no wisdom and vice versa. We practice Buddhism and teach people the practising methods, but we don’t teach them how to be bright and how to attain wisdom. We just develop a belief in them. This is not the principle of Buddhism. It’s ignorance [sic.]. (2000, p. 35)

While the monks at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự expressed understanding and leniency regarding orthodoxy of practice, other lay followers felt that it was extremely important that everyone was rigorous in their practice and in following Thích Thanh Từ exclusively. During the conversation with the three women that I quoted above I brought up the practice of another follower. Without giving names, I asked about a woman who had shown me a picture of her on a trip to the south, in which she was wearing a grey robe and had a small mantle around her neck. I had presumed that the mantle had something to do with their organization. However, they immediately became alert and a worried look came over their faces. “Who is this woman?”, they asked. “She shouldn’t be wearing this if she is following the master. She must be following another monk as well. This is very bad.” Later I ran into one of them at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự and she was speaking about this “problem” to another woman. Clearly, she was far more concerned about strictly following Thích Thanh Từ’s teachings exclusively than were the monks at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự.18 It appears, therefore, that for some people there is a feeling that the normative practices are not as effective or, worse, are misinformed and useless. These practitioners made it clear that they held little respect for the more common beliefs and practices and saw their practice as superior. For a number of practitioners, it is therefore not surprising that Zen is more than just an activity in their lives, but becomes a central part in the construction of their identity and how they represent themselves. In this sense, Zen practice as part of a construction of identity (not to be confused with Zen meditation) takes on aspects of what Erving Goffman has characterized as a social “performance” involving actors, audiences and props in his analogy of social practice as dramaturgy (1959). By way of example, let me single out Cô Trúc, who turned up to a pre-arranged

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interview wearing grey clothes that were distinctly monastic. During the interview she related how Zen had changed her life: When I started, I didn’t know anything about Zen. Inside me there were a lot of bad things such as greed and attachment. When I started to follow Zen I learned my body is not mine and my soul is impermanent. I was therefore able to let go of greed, anger, desire for revenge, and even love and hate. I realized that nothing is real and this idea freed me… Before, my life was not going very well. Now I have let go of worries and don’t get upset. I have followed Zen for nine years. After three years my family changed dramatically. Before there was a lot of discord. My husband and I fought and both always wanted to be right. Now I understand that everything is empty of reality and I let things go so that we don’t fight.

Cô Trúc’s body language, which was calm and measured, as well as the props of monastic-style clothing were intended (consciously or unconsciously) to express to me that she was an intent follower of Zen, and her story emphasized the transformative effect that it has had on her life. Her words and actions made it clear that she wished to be seen as a student of Zen. To underline this fact, she related how she had gotten rid of three stores that she owned and now stayed at home to practice Zen and help her family. Money and material possessions, she insisted, held no meaning for her. Further, she was happy to relate how two of her children have now renounced and become monks. For Cô Trúc, as well as many of the other people I spoke with, transformative stories and statements contrasting Zen with normative Buddhist practices (“Pure Land”) are central to the performance of the new identities that they have assumed as Zen practitioners.

Global Zen It is not entirely remarkable that Zen and Pure Land are compared, with Zen being upheld as a higher path. Devotional, “folk” practices have been the target of the Confucian and Buddhist elite alike for centuries. The creation of a Vietnamese “Transmission of the Lamp” style text is itself an indicator of this long critique. What is unique is the people who have adopted this formerly elite rhetoric. The crowd of mostly women that were meditating at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự, were indistinguishable from the crowds of women that I would normally see taking part

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in devotional rituals. Their intensity was only redirected from devotional practices to meditation. The processes that have resulted in these older women switching to Zen Buddhism have been underway for at least the last one hundred years. Reformists and apologists in Vietnam reacted to French colonialism in part by seeking to modernize Vietnamese society. One of the targets of this modernization was to distinguish superstition from religion, equating the former with typically Vietnamese “folk” practices and the latter with world religious traditions. Within Buddhism, Zen was singled out as being particularly valuable for its elite and radically individualistic aspects, while devotionalism was given a much lower rating. The fact that this opinion was held by only a few elite and was not reflected in general practice is an important consideration. However, what we are seeing now, I think, is that these elite opinions, that have been perpetuated by the government’s and media’s continual criticism of “superstition”, are being popularized by figures such as Thích Thanh Từ and Thích Nhất Hạnh at a time when global communication is increasing and economic and political constraints have eased.19 This criticism of local practice, and the desire to reform Buddhism in order to find the core of the Buddha’s teachings was part of a larger movement of Buddhist reform that took place throughout Asia from early in the twentieth century. The Western academy’s study of Buddhism — and Asian religions in general — also played a role in this self-conscious reformation process. Gimello illustrates this nicely with his description: Especially fascinating is the way in which the modernist academic study of Buddhism actually helped conjure up in the present the very kind of “rational religion” it claimed to have discovered in the past. For example, the “Buddhist modernism” or “protestant Buddhism” of Walpola Rahula's enormously influential book What the Buddha Taught was created in an accommodating response to Western expectations, and in nearly diametric opposition to Buddhism as it had actually been practised in traditional Theravada. Likewise, the denatured Zen of Suzuki Daisetsu, Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, and Abe Masao; the Buddhist humanism [renjian fojiao] of the contemporary Chinese scholar-monk Yinshun Daoshi; and the “Critical Buddhism” [hihan bukkyo] movement in contemporary Japan are all deeply indebted to modern, largely Western notions of what Buddhism ought to be. (Gimello 2004, pp. 240–41)

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These factors, combined with historically and politically grounded discourses on religion, superstition and nationalism, are creating unique reinterpretations of what constitutes “real” Vietnamese Buddhism by some Buddhist practitioners in northern Vietnam. While discourses of Vietnamese Buddhism and nationalism have been central to many descriptions of Vietnamese Buddhism by both Vietnamese and nonVietnamese scholars, these assertions and arguments remained largely academic and non-reflective of actual Buddhist practice. In recent years there has been an emergence of this discourse embodied in the practice of lay Buddhists, who self-consciously place a primacy on meditation and speak of the Zen school of Buddhism as being foundational for Vietnamese Buddhism. In this light, the Buddhism that tries to cleanse itself of local practices and beliefs that Thích Thanh Từ is promoting, is very much a part of the same currents that have influenced Thích Nhất Hạnh’s teachings on “mindfulness”. While Thích Thanh Từ does not preach the same kind of ecumenist Buddhism, the Zen Buddhism that he is teaching has striking similarities with Western forms of Buddhism that accentuate the individual aspects of Zen meditation, such as Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Order of Interbeing. As with the initial Buddhist reform movement in the 1920s, nationalist sentiments are an underlying motivation for the critique against devotional, “folk” practices and are overt in the new Trúc Lâm school. It was repeatedly stressed in conversations I had that Trúc Lâm is the one uniquely Vietnamese school of Zen founded in northern Vietnam rather than transferred from China. Thích Thanh Từ calls it “a true Vietnamese sect” (Thích Thanh Từ 1998). In fact, even Thích Nhất Hạnh has referred to Trúc Lâm Buddhism as being of fundamental importance, saying that the “Bamboo Forest Buddhism [that is, Trúc Lâm] is a kind of engaged Buddhism” (Hunt Perry and Fine 2000, p. 37). Several websites created by overseas Vietnamese continue the claim of Trúc Lâm Zen being the Vietnamese Zen school par excellence. For example, the site prints a short history of Buddhism in Vietnam, written by a monk from Ho Chi Minh City: It was the first Vietnamese Ch’an Sect that had ever been founded and the king was consecrated as the first Patriarch of Trúc Lâm Ch’an sect of Viet Nam, the other being Vinitaruci (an Indian monk), Wu Yan T’ung (a Chinese), and Tsao T’ang (a Chinese). It was under his leadership that

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the 3 Ch’an sects (Vinitaruci, Wu Yan T’ung-Speechless Understanding, and Tsao T’ang-Hermitage) were unified into one Vietnamese Ch’an Sect (Thích Minh Châu 1994).20

An acolyte at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự made similar claims to me, and went on to show that it was uniquely Vietnamese by explaining that they recite sutras in the vernacular rather than in the regular transliterated Chinese. The nationalist aspect to the practice of using Vietnamese language is clearly expressed by Thích Thanh Từ: Do you understand what it says in the scriptures? You keep chanting Chinese words. In India, after the Buddha's extinction, his disciples inscribed his teachings in Pali and Sanskrit. When Chinese people studied Buddhism, they translated everything into Chinese. Therefore, the Tripikata was inscribed in Chinese. In the early days, we used Chinese language because we had not yet had a unified language. In the present, we have our own language… why don't we translate the texts from Chinese language to Vietnamese language? We keep reading Chinese words. Many monastic people don’t fully understand what they chant even though they know Chinese language. Then, the Buddhists follow their footstep because they also don’t understand what it says… Obviously, even though we want cultural independence, we are still religiously dependent. It’s quite sad and painful [sic.]! (Thích Thanh Từ 2000, pp. 58–59)

He continues: [I]t’s quite pitiful that Vietnamese Buddhism is not independent [from China]. My plan is to untie those attachments. We have to change the slavery — the slavery in political affairs, economy, and culture. Do we want to be slaves?” (2000, p. 60)

There are some interesting contradictions that arose from Thích Thanh Từ’s construction of Trúc Lâm as the Vietnamese Zen school. The first of these is that, as we have seen, the recreated Trúc Lâm school has largely emerged in response to pressures from colonialism in the first half of the twentieth century, and more recently the impact of Western Buddhism and the changes that have taken place in overseas Vietnamese Buddhism. Thus, his “true Vietnamese sect” owes a great deal to Western Buddhism. Another is that, while carving out a Vietnamese Zen school, imagined or otherwise, the organization holds aspirations for global expansion — to transmit the lamp around the world. At the

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instruction of Thích Thanh Từ, a devotee in California has created an English language website and started translating Thích Thanh Từ’s books into English, and distributing them for free. Global aspirations were not something that lay practitioners in Hanoi were talking about. However, it was brought up by the vice-abbot at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự. He claimed that Trúc Lâm Buddhism was spreading around the world and produced a list of contacts in Western countries to illustrate the extent to which it has already spread. He also confided that one of the reasons that he was happy to sit and answer my questions was that I might help spread the word (and I suppose he was right). As the list of the vice-abbot showed, and as both the Vietnamese website and the English website dedicated to the Trúc Lâm organization confirmed, there are currently fifteen Trúc Lâm monasteries [thiền viện] in Vietnam (consisting of monasteries for monks as well as nuns) and eight meditation centres [thiền tự], five monasteries and three meditations centres in the United States, one monastery and four meditation centres in Australia, and one meditation centre each in France and Canada.21 The contradiction of a universal Vietnamese Zen can be seen in the forward written by the translator of Thích Thanh Từ. Từ Tâm Hoàng writes of Thích Thanh Từ’s intentions: “his primary goal is to renovate Vietnamese Zen Buddhism, and make it beneficial to all of us, regardless of our ethnicity” (Thích Thanh Từ 2000, p. 9). It appears, however, that success to date in attracting Western converts has been limited.22 Dilemmas in regard to international expansion are commonly found in other organizations. For example, The Buddha’s Light International Association (BLIA) organization, more than any other Chinese Buddhist organization has tried to spread overseas from its origin on the island of Taiwan. The common experience is that these organizations either maintain a core of supporters by relying on an integral ethnic association, or they make adaptations which may attract converts, but take away the cultural aspects that serve the ethnic community. While BLIA has worked very hard to attract Western converts, it has found it to be a difficult task, despite its huge resources. The result is that the international part of the organization continues to be primarily supported and attended by overseas Chinese, especially those originating from Taiwan (Chandler 2004, p. 6). Chandler estimates that as much as eighty per cent of funds raised for the largest overseas pagoda (Hsi Lai in Los

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Angeles) comes from key Taiwanese donors who visit periodically from Taiwan (2004, p. 266). Prebish’s distinction between “ethnic” and “elite” Buddhism”, and the various offspring of this distinction made between Buddhism as practiced by converts in the West as opposed to Buddhism brought and practiced as part of an ethnic identity, has drawn some criticism (Prebish 1999, pp. 57–63). Nonetheless, the distinction he makes, (as a general guideline rather than a pure category), continues to have merit. The distinction between the groups brings to light some of the difficulties that Thích Thanh Từ has experienced in gaining non-Vietnamese converts to date. Thích Thanh Từ’s construction of a Vietnamese Zen contains nationalistic elements while at the same time holding up a model of rational Buddhism that accentuates meditation and the core teachings of the Buddha, stripping it of particularly Vietnamese characteristics. Such a construct seems to be having resonance in Hanoi at the moment, and his groups are growing. I have been told that overseas, his followers are also increasing. However, it has been difficult to attract Westerners. One explanation for this difficulty may well be that the nationalistic elements that are present in Trúc Lâm Zen hold a great deal more meaning for overseas Vietnamese than for Westerners who come from a non-Buddhist background. However, the reformed nature of Thích Thanh Từ’s Trúc Lâm Zen likely sits well with overseas Vietnamese who have had more contact with Western styles of Buddhism and their quest for an “authentic” Buddhism, as does the nationalist elements of the school. This remains speculation without a more thorough investigation than I have yet been able to undergo. It therefore seems that there are two things happening. At the individual level, a new way for laity to express the depths of their religiosity, and thereby make statements about their character and who they are, are opening up and being embraced. Just as previously I had seen practitioners use devotional practices and increased participation in organized religion as statements of identity (Soucy 1999, pp. 231–36), so too were the laity at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự talking about their practice as a defining aspect of their lives. What has changed in this case is that Zen practice — long accorded the cloak of orthodoxy — has been made available for those who have the time and inclination. By adopting Zen they define themselves in relation to normative practices which are relegated to the status of superstition. This

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label, not coincidentally I think, accords with the state’s view of religion, as it is portrayed through both the media and the academy. At the institutional level, a similar statement of identity was being made. However, at this level the statement was regarding the worth of Vietnamese Buddhism, especially in juxtaposition with the Chinese “other”. Extended, it also involved nationalist sentiments of Vietnam as a country that was taking a more prominent place in the world.

Conclusion Zen Buddhism has had a long history in Vietnam, but it has mostly been an imagined history. During the Buddhism reform movement of the 1920s transmission of the lamp style texts were unearthed and used to show, by Buddhists and academics alike, that Zen was at the core of Vietnamese Buddhism. While this might be the impression that one would reach by surveying available materials in English or Vietnamese, it does not bear out in fact. The overwhelming majority of laity, and also monastics, continue to practise a devotional Buddhism that tends to be focused towards concerns of this life and the after-life. While efforts to reform Buddhism in the early twentieth century had little traction, what we are seeing is that the overseas Vietnamese, coming into contact with Western sensibilities and tastes have popularized the Zen teachings of figures like Thích Nhất Hạnh. These currents have now returned home and are starting to change the way that Buddhism is practised in Vietnam. Thích Thanh Từ’s Trúc Lâm school seems to provide a bridge between the Westernized traditions that stress meditation and traditional Vietnamese Buddhist practices by appealing to nationalism and formerly elite views regarding authentic Buddhism. It appears that Thích Thanh Từ’s teachings are starting to have an impact in the way that Buddhism is practised by Vietnamese in the north. It remains to be seen, however, whether he will be successful in fulfilling his intention of turning his Trúc Lâm Zen Buddhism into a global movement with the success of Thích Nhất Hạnh.

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FIGURE 10.1 Zen Meditation at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự Pagoda.

FIGURE 10.2 Zen Meditation Enforcer at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự Pagoda.

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NOTES * I would like to extend my deep appreciation to The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and to the Australian National University for the support they gave me to conduct research in Hanoi in 1997–98. Many thanks also to Philip Taylor for his useful comments at all stages of writing this chapter. I would like to extend my special appreciation to the laity and monastics of Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự who took the time to speak with me, and to Từ Tâm Hoàng who generously sent me copies of Thích Thanh Từ’s books. 1

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The Vietnamese term for Zen is Thiền. I have chosen to use “Zen” because it has been generally accepted as the English term for the tradition called Ch’an in Chinese and dhyana in Sanskrit. Sutras are the canonical scriptures containing the teachings of Siddartha Gautama (the historical Buddha), while the Vinaya contains the monastic rules. Trần Văn Giáp discovered the text in 1927 and wrote a lengthy paper on the history of Vietnamese Buddhism based on the Thiền Uyển Tập Anh which was published in the Bulletin de l’École Français d’Extrême Orient in 1932. Shawn McHale (2004, p. 144) and Heinz Bechert and Vu Duy-Tu (1976, pp. 190–91) both touch on the reform movement, but neither specifically addresses it in relation to Zen orthodoxy. For example, Maurice Durand (1959); Mai Thọ Truyền (1959); Thích Nhất Hạnh (1967); Thích Thiện Ân (1975); Heinz Bechert and Vu Duy Tu (1976); Nguyễn Tài Thư (1992), and; Minh Chi et. al. (1999). Cuong Tu Nguyen (1995, pp. 82– 83, n.5) gives a concise appraisal of all available works dealing with Vietnamese history up to that time. Since Cuong Tu Nguyen completed his important work, descriptions by Western-based academics have adopted his assessment (for example, Do 1999, p. 278; McHale 2004). Most of the biographical information on Thích Thiện Ân comes from the website of the organization he founded in Los Angeles, The International Buddhist Meditation Center . Cuong Tu Nguyen writes of Thích Thiện Ân’s book: “It is unfortunate that this is the only book on Vietnamese Buddhism in English. It is full of errors, exaggerations, and mistranslations. Needless to say, the author only repeats Giap’s ideas” (Nguyen 1995, p. 83, n. 5). The research for this chapter is based on one-and-a-half years of fieldwork in Hanoi on Buddhist practice in 1997 to 1998, and six weeks of research in Hanoi in December 2004 and January 2005 with the followers at the Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự in Gìa Lâm. The fieldwork information is supplemented by an examination of some of the recent writings by masters in the new Trúc Lâm School. Cô Tuyết, as with the names of all other non-public figures, is a pseudonym.

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This description comes close to the way that Nguyen (1997, p. 94) and McHale (2004, pp. 146–50), describe Vietnamese Buddhist practice in medieval Vietnam and in the Twentieth Century, respectively. Her religious activity and donations to one particular monk had also aroused interest from the local police. Last year she went on a trip to Ho Chi Minh City to meet with a renowned monk with a number of other lay women from her area. Following the trip the police visited her home and asked some questions about her involvement with this monk. Criticisms of such women’s practice are common in the media, which frequently features stories of the woman squandering their family’s resources as well as the suspect nature of the monastic recipients. The principal resemblance is the very fact that there is a meditation hall at all. However, the configuration on the inside differs from the meditation halls described by Welch (1973, pp. 47–88) or the meditation hall at Foguangshan in Taiwan (described by Chandler 2004, pp. 15–16), which has the practitioners face toward the centre of the room rather than in rows facing the front, as at Sùng Phúc Thiền Tự. This may well be due to special constraints rather than design principles. Walpola Rahula, a monk from Sri Lanka wrote what amounts to the authoritative text on the “actual” teachings of the Buddha, used by many university courses on Buddhism taught in the West. It represents the modern orthodoxy of Buddhism. So, for example, Mathieu Boisvert calls them “converts” and “ethnic Buddhists” (2005, p. 70) and Stuart Chandler (2004, pp. 289–90) takes his cue from Charles Prebish (1979, p. 51; 1999, pp. 60–63) in distinguishing between “elite” and “ethnic” Buddhists, though Chandler feels that the categories fail to take into account the non-exclusivity of these categories. Biographical data was taken from his website: . This story has not been confirmed. Many thanks to Ðào Thế Ðức for sharing this story from his research on pilgrims at Yên Tử. There is a tradition, of course, of elite practitioners of Zen in Vietnam in the past. This, however, was relatively rare and did not extend to the practice of meditation by regular Buddhist laity. This is in references to the Noble Eightfold Path which forms the centre of the Buddha’s teachings for how to achieve enlightenment. These include: (1) Right View; (2) Right Intention; (3) Right Speech; (4) Right Action; (5) Right Livelihood; (6) Right Effort; (7) Right Mindfulness, and; (8) Right Concentration (that is, meditation). This interaction also seems to indicate a level of competition that exists between Buddhist masters and is an issue which deserves considerably more research than I have had occasion to do thus far.

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Alexander Soucy Shaun Malarney has done an extensive study of the relationship between the Communist Party and religion in Culture, Ritual and Revolution in Vietnam, based on his ethnographic work in a village outside of Hanoi (2002). Thích Minh Châu is the Rector of the Vietnam Buddhist Research Institute in Ho Chi Minh City . The information on associated monasteries and meditation centres comes from the websites: , developed by an overseas Vietnamese, Từ Tâm Hoàng, and devotee of Master Thích Thanh Từ living in California; and , the website for Thường Chiếu Monastery in Vietnam. The monasteries in Vietnam are: Thiền Vien (T.V.) Chân Không (Vũng Tàu); T.V. Đạo Huệ (Đồng Nai Province); T.V. Hiện Quang (Đồng Nai Province); T.V. Huệ Chiếu (Vũng Tàu); T.V. Hương Hải (Đồng Nai Province); T.V. Liễu Đức (Đồng Nai Province); T.V. Linh Chiếu (Đồng Nai Province); T.V. Phổ Chiếu (Vũng Tàu), T.V. Thường Chiếu (Đồng Nai Province); T.V. Tịch Chiếu (Vũng Tàu); T.V. Trúc Lâm (Đà Lạt), T.V. Trúc Lâm Yên Tử (Yên Tử Mountain, Quảng Ninh Province); T.V. Tuệ Quang (Ho Chi Minh City); T.V. Tuệ Thông (Đồng Nai Province); T.V. Viên Chiếu (Đồng Nai Province). The eight meditation centres in Vietnam are: Quan Xu Thiền Tự (T.T.) (Hanoi); Sen Hong T.T. (Phan Rang Village); Sen Xanh T.T. (Phan Thiết Province); Sùng Phúc T.T. (Gìa Lâm; Hanoi); Tam Nhu T.T. (Ho Chi Minh City); Thái Tu T.T. (Ho Chi Minh City); Truong Lam T.T. (Gìa Lâm, Hanoi); Tue Tam T.T. (Ho Chi Minh City). The meditation centres and monasteries in the United States are: Quan Thiền Tự Vô Ưu (San Martin, CA); T.V. Bồ-Đề (Braintree, MA); T.V. Đại Đăng (San Diego, CA); T.V. Diệu Nhân (Rescue, CA); and T.V. Quang Chiếu (Fortworth, TX); Ngọc Chiếu Monastery (Reno, NV); Mindessence Meditation Center (Oklahoma, OK); T.T. Ngoc Chieu (Garden Grove, CA). The monasteries and meditation centres in other countries are: T.V. Tiêu Dao (Australia); T.T. Hỉ Xả (Australia); T.T. Hiện Quang (Australia); T.T. Pháp Loa (Australia); and T.T. Tuệ Căn (Australia); T.T. Thường Lạc (France), and; T.T. Đạo Viên (Canada). In fact, an overseas Vietnamese informant from Australia told me that many overseas Vietnamese are suspicious of Thích Thanh Từ because his prominent position in the state-controlled Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha and his seeming ability to travel overseas at will implies a level of complicity with the Communist Party that does not sit well with the diasporic community.

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11 Miracles and Myths: Vietnam Seen through Its Catholic History Jacob Ramsay

Vietnamese Catholicism has a rich store of myths and miracles and its own heretics and gnostics.1 Indeed, the story of Catholicism’s reception and interaction with local religious culture, and the history of its intersection with the Vietnamese state — from dynastic to recent times, over the last 400 years — is as complex as it is long. Underpinning this heritage is the influence of the myth, as widely expressed in French colonial, postindependence Vietnamese and Western scholarship, of Catholicism’s essential foreignness. Introduced by Western missionaries from the late 1500s and more forcefully imposed by French priests during the colonial era — the myth proposes — the religion was anathema to local tradition. Because missionaries sought to impose the religion in absolute terms, placing obedience to God above loyalty to the temporal authority, Christianity could not but be rejected by the Confucian order (Buttinger 1958). With only a small and marginal following, the religion was rejected by the mainstream, and hence the faith never attained harmony with local ways

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(Lê 1975). Vietnamese Catholics, who subsequently became surrogates of their imperial masters, turned their backs on traditional culture, creating a rift within mainstream society (Kiệm 2001). Yet, as powerful as this shorthand overview of Catholic history is, like all myths and cursory interpretations of social conflict it clouds a complex reality. Certainly mission successes in converting tens of thousands of Vietnamese from the seventeenth century can be attributed to Catholicism’s absolutist spiritualism. But we cannot assume all converts were attracted to the religion simply on this basis alone, or that, having converted, Catholics could not accommodate loyalty to local political authority with their beliefs. Buddhism is also an imported belief systems, but in contrast to Catholicism is regarded in popular discourse as essential to Vietnamese tradition. It would be unthinkable to consider personal identification with Buddhist beliefs as anathema to one’s position within the political order. For all the violence generated by Catholicism’s integration, the religion has become arguably just as much a Vietnamese faith as Buddhism and for that matter, Confucianism. The aim of this chapter therefore is to illuminate the ambiguous relationship between the church, the state and mainstream Vietnamese society by looking at the everyday manifestations of the religion in popular myths and material culture and contrasting these with the religion’s representation in post-independence official historiography. I argue that contemporary perceptions of Catholicism’s place in Vietnamese popular religion and tradition draws on an official conception that has been recycled from the dynastic period. In short, the myth of Catholicism’s incompatibility derives in part from pre-colonial Confucian thought that loyalty to the throne necessarily supercedes religious and familial obligations. While there are vast difference between the dynastic and modern period in terms of how officials dealt with questions of belief, identity and political loyalty, one thread, the conflict between an individual’s obligations to the state and personal belief, remains as contentious today as it did in the early nineteenth century.

Miracles: The Weeping Statue Affair In late October 2005, thousands converged on the Cathedral of Our Lady in Ho Chi Minh City’s centre after rumours spread that the statue of Mary there had been weeping. Waves of Catholic faithful, curious onlookers and sceptics flooded the square late on the Saturday afternoon, forcing the

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city’s police to close off surrounding streets to motorcycle traffic. For days after, hundreds came to the square, to see the statue, to pray or simply mill around in the crowd. Although numbers dropped after several days, a vigil at the statue base lasted for much of November. From the very first, the episode stirred the ire of church authorities who sharply rejected the miracle — they accused “bad elements” of seeking to exploit the blind faith of the city’s Catholics. In the end, however, the episode retreated from public attention. In late November, special Vatican envoy Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of the Peoples, visited Vietnam. During his “pastoral visit”, Sepe met with high-ranking officials, including the Deputy Prime Minister Vũ Khoan and Head of the Religious Affairs Department Ngô Yên Thi. In Hanoi, Sepe ordained fifty-seven priests in one ceremony at Hanoi Cathedral — the largest ordination in Vietnam under socialism, and the first ordination in years. Concluding his visit in early December, he consecrated the diocese of Bà Rịa, the first new ecclesiastic division to be created in the country after 1975. In the wake of the weeping Mary affair, numerous stories circulated as to the source and timing of the rumours. One popular version claimed that a “young boy selling lottery tickets” in the square first noticed the white streak, which appeared like tears, down the right cheek of the statue at 2 p.m. on the afternoon of 29 October. The boy, not a Catholic, was an admirer of the statue. Another version claimed that a “believer” noticed the tears at 4 p.m. Still other versions claimed the tears were not noticed until 8 or 9 p.m. One rumour, according to Nguyễn Thanh Long, editor of Catholics and the Nation [Công Giáo và Dân Tộc], had that the tears first started on 28 October, but had gone unnoticed. Once the rumour spread, however, there was no controlling the response as thousands of people packed the picturesque square in the middle of Ho Chi Minh City. While the majority of the onlookers came from surrounding parishes and the towns dominated by Catholics to the north and east of Ho Chi Minh City, followers also came from provinces further afield: “Đồng Nai, Long An and Bình Dương”, according to a report in Saigon Liberated (31 October 2005). I spoke to people who came as far away as Bến Tre in the Mekong Delta and Đà Lạt in the southern Central Highlands, some six hours’ drive away. Most remarkable was the diversity of people, from curious youths to devout elderly women, hawkers and sharply dressed young male and female

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office workers. Denomination and belief did not seem to be too much of a factor. A young woman in her early twenties who told me she was a Protestant, declared confidently that now she had seen the statue, she did not believe it was really weeping. A young Catholic man of about the same age professed the complete opposite. A glazier, who had come from Đà Lạt, shyly explained he was compelled to come and see. Taking the day off work, he had left before sunrise to come and pray at the statue. Meanwhile, weaving their way through the crowd, trying to be inconspicuous, were a number of hawkers — one of whom claimed to be Cao Đài — selling reproductions of zoom photographs of the statue’s face (Figure 11.1). The photos were professional enough and were selling between VNĐ5,000 and 10,000 (roughly US35–75 cents) — a reasonable price. After authorities banned the sale of photographs, the cost rose and the hawkers took their trade away from the statue to the square’s side streets. These images played a key role in the rapid spread of the rumours of the weeping statue — they also fuelled the myth. Of the samples I collected, the statue is pictured against different backgrounds, one against the red-bricked cathedral to the foreground of which the statue is located, the sky and a distant office block. In one picture the background has been doctored with sky-bluish hue that fades to a pale yellow. Unfortunately, I was unable to collect further samples, but newspapers and friends reported the circulation of numerous versions in which the statue itself had been doctored — “using Photoshop”, according to one source — to “add more tears to the face”. One unusual version, seeking a more dramatic visual impact, had Mary uprooted and placed in the foreground of Đà Lạt Cathedral, located some three hundred kilometres away (SGGP, 31 October 2005). Significantly, these pictures started to appear within twenty-four hours after the rumours spread; over the three weeks of the vigil around the statue, hundreds, possibly thousands were sold. Whatever the motivation for coming to see the statue, the majority of people there were adamant that the statue was weeping and sought to pay homage. People prayed and some wept. Women politely jostled each other to get closer to touch the statue pillar and place water at its base for it to be blessed (Figure 11.2). People came for a wide range of reasons. One woman in her fifties came down to pray for her family. Another, sounding a little oddly like a cadre who had inadvertently wandered off-message, claimed to me that Mary was crying because of all the “social evils” — drugs, prostitution and corruption — afflicting the city

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at the time. Against the backdrop of rapid economic and social change over the last decade, such views are perhaps not surprising and give us an insight into the sense of uncertainty — perhaps fatigue — with the wider impact of rapid economic development on public morality. But the one thing many of the onlookers had in common was a general disdain and bewilderment that local church leaders had denied the possibility of a miracle. Some people around the statue complained that the church hierarchy had been completely muzzled by the state. One woman claimed that the priests “simply don’t want to believe”. Fascinating on this last point is how neatly the church’s suspicions of the “miracle” came to represent the official view, as seen with the press coverage. Indeed, in all the newspaper articles reporting the event of which I am aware, not a single government official is cited as commenting on the event. Instead all official rejections and condemnations were delivered by priests, notably the Ho Chi Minh City head of the Catholic Solidarity Committee, Father Nguyễn Công Danh. According to him, “This is a false rumour, trumped up and baseless. Catholicism deeply reveres the Holy Lady, we venerate the Holy Lady, but [belief] must be reasonable [hợp lý], based on sound principles [niềm tin], in that way we cannot depend on the numerous false rumours which serve the benefit of bad elements [bọn xấu]” (SGGP 31 October 2005). He echoed these words several days later, stating that “in order to avoid confusion, which is having an influence on [public] safety and order, we must boldly open our eyes and severely punish those individuals exploiting Christian beliefs, thus distorting the truth for bad purposes” (SGGP 3 November 2005). Taking up Danh’s interpretation, a cartoon in a local newspaper implied that tales of the weeping statue were being spread by opportunists to make money out of believers who were too blinded by superstition [mê tín] to safeguard their interests (Figure 11.3).2 As these responses demonstrate, the state did not need to respond to the rumours and the spontaneous gathering. The church capably spoke for it and delivered a damning indictment. Predictably, to dismiss the legitimacy of the event, a vague source was identified and targetted: the “bad elements”, or “exploitative individuals” who sought to gain from the spectacle. According to Father Nguyễn Công Danh, these individuals might have been from “outside the religion”. But even this claim, which was clearly intended to divert scrutiny away from “good Catholic citizens”, could nevertheless have been Catholic in origin (SGGP 31 October 2005).

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In the end, the affair highlighted the deep contradictions between the publicly sanctioned image of Catholicism and popular-public perception. The event symbolized much more than a blind expression of piety by the city’s Catholics. A spontaneous gathering in a region renowned for religious efflorescence, the weeping statue affair was one further installment in the longer evolution of the Catholic church’s relationship with the Vietnamese state. The episode burst unexpectedly like a shooting star, brightly illuminating the intricacies of Catholicism’s Vietnamese profile: its contentious role in national politics, the church hierarchy’s politically cautious approach to public attention, and the wider community’s eclectic attitude towards “miracles”. In the end, however, with the church expressing its disapproval of the miracle, the state barely needed to act. Indeed, significant in this event is the manner in which the episode aroused public excitement then subsided quietly. Although a miracle, its occurrence was assimilated seamlessly into memory.

Bad Faith: Missionary Outsiders in the Political Realm The church leaders who made their voices heard during the weeping statue affair are trustees of a 400-year history of Catholic presence in Vietnam. The Catholic church in Vietnam today is the second largest religious body and potentially one of the most influential organizations in the country. Catholics account for six to eight million followers, or eight to ten per cent of the population (according to unofficial estimates), and belong to the most clearly defined and most widely dispersed organizational hierarchy of any of the state-recognized religions in the country. Today, the local church boasts a cardinal — Phạm Minh Mẫn — it enjoys good ties with the Vatican and numerous international Catholic organizations. Church-state relations are cordial, and although Hanoi does not have formal diplomatic ties with the Vatican, it has no qualms in receiving senior figures such as Cardinal Sepe. Yet, because public life is so completely dominated by one institution, the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), the church must constantly negotiate with the state in order to conduct its activities. From the party’s perspective all public activity is political, and the presence of an equally hierarchical and ideologically-driven organization in the public sphere poses immediate challenges. In this context, that representatives of the church should play a lead in the policing of expressions of popular piety in the name of law and order

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appears paradoxical in light of what we know from existing literature of the highly fraught history of church-state relations. Perhaps the most notorious example of the conflict that is said to characterize this historical relationship concerns the role of Catholic missions in the loss of independence in the midnineteenth century. From the 1830s, during Vietnam’s greatest single antiCatholic persecution, the Nguyễn court executed many missionaries, local priests and followers on the grounds that they were involved in a “perverse cult” [tả đạo]. The persecution paved the way for Franco-Viet tensions in the 1840s, which in turn culminated in the French invasion — ostensibly to protect Catholics in Vietnam — of 1858. The events surrounding the persecution and the French invasion ignited sectarian antipathy between Catholics and non-Catholics, giving rise to devastating internecine violence in the 1880s and intermittent attacks and counter-attacks well into the twentieth century. The events of the nineteenth century continue to cast a shadow over religious relations, especially in scholarly depictions, which portray the history of the relationship between Catholic missionaries and the pre-colonial political order as one of mutual antagonism. Culturally-inclined post-colonial scholars depict the Confucianized court as intolerant of heterodox religious expressions such as Daoism or Catholicism, which were considered to have threatened the supremacy of the state’s political ideology (Smith 1968, pp. 21–22; Jamieson 1995, p. 43). Nationalists in the colonial and post-colonial era argued precisely the opposite line: that the absolutist doctrine propagated by Catholic missionaries contrasted unfavourably with the accommodating stance towards folk beliefs displayed by Confucianism and Buddhism (Đào Duy Anh 1938, p. 252; Thích Nhất Hạnh 1967). Mission perspectives, as made popular for example in letters published for fund-raising and mission expansion purposes in French missionary newspapers in the mid-1800s, gave highly emotive renditions of the court’s persecution of Christians. They cast Catholicism’s place in the socio-cultural setting solely in terms of the conflict between the church and the Nguyễn state (Ramsay 2004a, pp. 324–25). And in post-independence Vietnamese historiography, missionaries are predominantly viewed as proxies of French imperialism (Nguyễn Phan Quang 1971, 1990; Nguyễn Văn Kiệm 2001). These very different perspectives cumulatively add up to a vision of relations between missionaries and the pre-colonial indigenous political order as fraught with tension and seeded with antipathies that ultimately exploded into fullblown conflict with destructive consequences for both. They understandably

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focus on the violent and fateful events of the mid-1800s that led to the French occupation of the country. Yet such views simplify the considerable social and historical complexity in relations between the mission and the indigenous political order. First, post-colonial depictions of Catholicism’s cultural incompatibility are belied by the size and long-standing presence of Catholics in Vietnam. Missionaries have been visiting coastal areas along the coast of Vietnam (and Champa) since the sixteenth century, claiming large conversions by the mid-1600s — over two centuries before the protections afforded by French rule. And Vietnamese have been following the religion since, in many instances in long stretches of isolation from and independently of European mission efforts. Catholicism’s reception at the grassroots from the early decades of mission contact was beholden to varied geographic and social conditions. From the mid-seventeenth to late eighteenth century, missionaries in the Lê-Trịnh-ruled North sought to create almost self-reliant, wholly Catholic villages, and were successful (Forest 1998). Over the same period, at the frontiers of Nguyễn rule in the South, Catholics lived side-by-side with non-Catholics, even in many cases during the worst years of the anti-Catholic persecution in the 1800s (Ramsay 2004a, pp. 313–34). Unlike the all-Catholic villages in the Tonkin vicariates, Catholics in the South lived in small congregations, known to French missionaries as “chrétientés” and, representative of the social heteogeniety of this region, continued to share the same villages as nonCatholics. By the early nineteenth century, many local Catholics claimed to a heritage spanning several generations and constituted a well-integrated community of mainstream society.3 Close relations of trust and respect between missionaries and local communities, which drew on locally salient notions of status and prestige, undermine the notion that the religion was simply a foreign imposition (Cooke, 2004a, p. 262). In the pre-colonial south in particular, Catholicism provided one alternative socio-religious system among others — notably folk-Buddhism — through which communities organized themselves, for communal cohesion and security. Missionaries and local Catholic priests enjoyed considerable social standing on account of their specialist knowledge and the imputed efficacy of their faith (Cooke, 2004b; Ramsay, 2004b). Moreover, prior to French colonial rule foreign missionaries had only a minimal presence throughout the kingdom’s remote and widely dispersed Catholic congregations. For many, the local priest offered leadership in

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community and religious affairs in ways not too different from that of a village head. Indeed, for decades the priesthood offered one path to higher social standing among various others — one alternative to the prestige and esteem of the mandarinate (Ramsay 2004b, p. 134). Such accommodations between missionaries and local congregations attest to the culturally pluralist nature of pre-colonial Vietnamese society, made up of a patchwork of many different religious identifications (Ho Tai 1983; Brocheux, 1995; Do Thien 2003; Dror, 2003). They also illustrate the incompletely centralised nature of the Nguyễn court’s authority in the nineteenth century, as attested to by the existence in several regions of localized followings commanded by figures of religious and military prowess (Keith Taylor 1998; Choi 2004). Finally, they draw attention to the presence within Nguyễn-ruled territory of a diverse array of foreign cultural influences and linkages that were distinct from those endorsed by the Sinicized court (Li 1998; Cooke and Li 2004; Philip Taylor 2007). Similarly, the assumptions in mission historiography and postindependence scholarship of cultural and imperial antagonism are belied by a longer term historical view of mission-state relations which, even at the level of the court, saw dramatic fluctuations in the official treatment of Catholics. Over the 400-year history of the mission presence in Vietnam, systematic proscriptions and persecutions did occur, yet also did many examples of patronage and personal proximity. While in Nguyễn Vietnam king Minh Vương (r.1691–1725) ordered a bloody execution at the turn of the eighteenth century, he had no qualms employing two Jesuits in 1704 to teach him mathematics and astronomy (Li 1998, p. 72). Most famously, Bishop Pigneaux of the Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP) won considerable concessions for his mission society through his long friendship and alliance in the 1780s and 1790s with Nguyễn Ánh, the future founder of the Nguyễn dynasty. Pigneaux’s support for Nguyễn Ánh’s campaigns (which led to the latter’s enthronement as the Gia Long emperor in 1802) resulted in protection of the MEP’s activities throughout Vietnam until the 1820s, when Gia Long’s successor, Minh Mạng, adopted a hostile stance. Far from epitomizing church-mission relations, such examples alert us to the more complicated political-religious circumstances in which missionaries operated and illustrate the eclectic and at-times accommodating outlook of Vietnamese kingship. At the local level, the dynamic and shifting nature of the accommodations forged by missionaries is nowhere more evident than in the mid-1800s period

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itself.4 In the early 1830s, Minh Mạng implemented various institutional reforms in response to the dangers of political and social regionalism, central to which was the consolidation of the kingdom’s administrative units into thirty-one provinces which were for the first time to fall under direct rule from Huế. These reforms also included a rigorous consolidation of ritual practice in the kingdom. This reconfiguration saw a number of measures designed to homogenize spiritual observance and religious communities. It included the construction of state-cult shrines to spirits of the soil and agriculture [xã tắc] in each provincial capital to concentrate and enhance productive forces in the realm. At the same time, all Buddhist sects throughout the kingdom were compelled to register with Huế and seek an official seal to practise legitimately. Crucially, sites of worship important to Lê dynastic remnants and their supporters in the North were integrated into the Nguyễn ritual hierarchy or destroyed (Langlet 1990). Against this background of ritual and political re-ordering in the kingdom, Catholicism was prohibited. Catholicism as a religious practice and the presence of missionaries in the kingdom presented a major challenge to Nguyễn centralization efforts. The Nguyễn dynasty insisted on the primacy of its own Confucian orthodoxy; to allow the practice of a religion that claimed a competing spiritual universality had the potential to undermine royal legitimacy. Yet the court did not resort to violence against the mission and Catholics until 1833, with the outbreak of a rebellion in the far south of the kingdom. In the early 1830s, firmly entrenched regional interests had prevented Minh Mạng from implementing the sweeping bureaucratic reforms in the South, Cochinchina, as in the North and Centre. Standing in his way was the region’s Viceroy, Lê Văn Duyệt, whose authority rested on the firmly entrenched support of parochial networks comprised of a culturally diverse, multi-ethnic constituency (Choi 2004). Prominent among these was the mission, which enjoyed considerable protection under Duyệt’s patronage. In early 1833, after Duyệt’s death, the court implemented the reforms in the south. But regional interests responded by gathering under the leadership of Duyệt’s adopted son, Lê Văn Khôi. The revolt he led quickly precipitated the mutiny of Gia Ðịnh citadel (Saigon) and collapse of the provincial administration in outlying areas. Huế responded by marching on the south and besieging the rebel forces; the rebellion resulted in a two year siege in which royal forces ultimately won. The royal court

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subsequently concluded that a French missionary in Gia Ðịnh, Fr. Joseph Marchand, had been central to the instigation of the rebellion, and in late 1835 subjected him to the method of execution reserved for rebels, “death by slicing” [xử lăng trì]. In the aftermath of the rebellion, the Nguyễn court cracked down hard on Catholics throughout the kingdom, mounting a campaign to arrest and execute all missionaries and local priests who refused to apostatize. But far from achieving his aim to rid the country of the “perverse religion”, Minh Mạng’s punitive campaign exacerbated social divisions between grassroots society and central authority. The strains at the local level created by official pressure to expose Catholic communities and force Catholics to abandon their religion created fissures between Catholics and non-Catholics living in close proximity to each other. After issuing a proscription decree in 1835, court efforts to force Catholics to recant began mildly. Before 1836, village heads were required to submit statements to local mandarins, usually at the canton or district level, reporting that local Catholics had publicly recanted — the process was generally negotiated between a visiting official and the local village head. After 1836, testing increased in frequency and severity. A visiting official could force all villagers to line up and one-by-one walk over a cross. If the community was suspected of harbouring a missionary, militia blocked off village gates to perform a more thorough search. The capture of a missionary, or even the discovery of religious objects such as a cross or a medal, implicated the whole community and brought punitive measures. However, despite the court’s knowledge of the location of Catholic villages — many of which were grouped into concentrations of communities, particularly in Nam Ðịnh and around Huế — the campaign was inconsistent in its early stages. Pierre Jeanne, for example, who disembarked in East Tonkin in early 1836, claimed a local mandarin was notified of his arrival but failed to act. The disincentive for officials to arrest and report was clear — mandarins had the opportunity to gain from bribery, whereas reporting had the risk of exposing one to censure. The anti-Catholic campaign represented a dramatic shift in the political reality for Catholics in 1830s Vietnam: as the court employed increasingly coercive measures to search for and arrest missionaries and to force converts to recant, Catholics were forced to negotiate safety from the threat of statesanctioned violence through bribery, favour or by seeking isolation from mainstream, non-Catholic communities (Ramsay 2004a).

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By 1841, according to mission sources, the repression of Catholicism had claimed at least 134 lives, provoking devastation in a number of Catholic communities and villages throughout the kingdom and threatening to cause the disintegration of the church organization in Vietnam. However, a substantial community of Catholics managed to resist the repression through special arrangements with local officials, and missionaries continued to enter Vietnam clandestinely. Intermittent French military intimidation from the later 1840s fuelled Nguyễn anti-Catholicism and escalated the persecution under Tự Ðức in the 1850s (Ramsay 2004b). The invasion and advent of colonial rule catalysed official and grassroots antipathy, which over the course of French colonialism’s tumultuous consolidation hardened sectarian animosities. Scholars in the past have attributed the explosion of anti-Catholic violence in the early colonial period to anti-colonial sentiment (Lê 1975). Catholic associations and support for the colonial regime, so the argument goes, made them a legitimate target for patriotic, royalist forces. But the situation was far more complicated. Catholics rallied to the French in the first place for protection from the Tự Ðức campaigns. Furthermore, as a result of earlier repressive policies, Catholics in many areas had slowly started to separate themselves from mainstream communities to isolate themselves from the threat of official harassment. Segregation entrenched sectarian divisions, leading in no small part to the violent conflagrations of the 1860s to 1880s, when thousands of Buddhists and Catholics perished in internecine conflict. Although French colonialism has been seen as a systematic patron of Catholics, this was not always the case (Cao Huy Thuan 1968). Even from the earliest days of the colony the relationship between the mission and the French administration — at first the admirals and after 1879 civilian officials — was fraught with competition for primacy as motives collided. The mission did not enjoy a free reign as it may have anticipated, largely due to the influence of anti-clerical, freemason officials. Captain Jauréguiberry, for example, was a Protestant who headed the first French garrison in Saigon and who later went on to become an important figure in the Cochinchina government in the 1880s. From his arrival in 1858, the mission loudly derided him as an “heretic” and enemy of the church. Some French officials were openly disappointed with the mission for its inflated claims that colonization would precipitate a flood of conversions. And although the naval governors of Cochinchina were generally sympathetic towards the mission, their favour slowly turned from the

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1870s out of concern for the church’s growth as a property holder (Tuck 1987, pp. 88–89). Anti-clerical sentiment gained momentum in the 1890s, with an ever growing chorus of anti-clerical editorialists, politicians and businessmen. An onslaught followed from 1900 when radical republicans in Paris gained the upper hand in domestic politics. Underlying much freemason anti-clericalism within French Indochina by the turn of the century was, as Tuck explains, the hostile relationship between the mission and the mandarinate now operating under French supervision. Mission antagonism was responsible for poisoning relations with the administration which had been largely unsuccessful in reconciling Vietnamese elites to French rule (Tuck 1987, pp. 248–58).

The Myth of Political Incompatibility For as long as the religion has sought to transmit its message, the church has had to wage a constant battle against heterodox representations of the scripture, imitators and fakes seeking to represent in their own way the church’s authority. In this regard, the church’s concern to defend orthodoxy is wholly political and bureaucratic, as embodied in the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — heir to the Inquisition founded in 1542 — whose responsibility is to “spread sound doctrine and defend those points of Christian tradition which seem in danger because of new and unacceptable doctrines”.5 There is some significant similarity in this regard to Vietnamese insitutions governing religion, notably the contemporary Religious Affairs Committee [Ban Tôn Giáo], established in 1955, and its dynastic predecessor, the Board of Rites [Bộ Lễ]. As with the Vatican, these institutions operate(d) on the same principle of the need to defend the state and people against public heterodoxy, to ensure the primacy of the state in the religious and political realms, and ensure the loyalty of subjects/citizens in their religious activities. In the contemporary political setting, the state, as Peter Hansen illustrates in his essay on Catholicism and religious freedom in Vietnam, is only intolerant of the Vietnamese Catholic church at the point that its religious activity impinges on the Communist Party’s monopoly on political discourse. So, while the church — along with other sanctioned religious groups — enjoys considerable freedoms in religious expression, it faces considerable restrictions in how it engages with the state-sanctioned public sphere. In this context, the church is in the difficult position of

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being at the mercy of official interpretations of the boundary between political and religious expresson, which inevitably turns on elite political fears for national security (Hansen 2005). Catholicism’s ambiguous position in Vietnamese public life, I would add, derives from the state’s strong endorsement for the church’s contribution to the nation, and at the same time, suspicion over its politicized heritage. And this is born out in the varied representations of Catholics in official literature and historiography since independence. The modern Vietnamese state, as with its dynastic predecessor, is in a constant process of attempting to circumscribe autonomous social movements and religious expressions that contain the potential to challenge central authority. The inauguration in 1955 of the Religious Affairs Committee symbolized for many Catholics the end of nearly eighty years of freedom and support under French rule and the beginning of a new church coopted to serve the state’s views. As it did with numerous other religions the Worker’s Party (the Communist Party after 1976) established mass organisations under the sponsorship of the Vietnam Fatherland Front [Mặt Trận Tổ Quốc]. Representing the Catholic Church is the Catholic Solidarity Committee [Uỷ ban Đoàn kết Công giáo]. From the consolidation of Vietnamese independent rule in northern Vietnam in 1954, the socialist regime established tight control over all religious communities and sought to control all forms of religious expression. Catholics did not become so much marginalized within the new political setting as co-opted into the Socialist-Leninist agenda. At a time when the Việt Minh had barely extended its dominance over competing anti-colonial groups within the country, the Catholic community in the Red River Delta represented a sizeable and powerful socio-political block that needed to be integrated into the new post-colonial national community. Given the volatile social and political situation in the North at the end of the war with the French — northern Catholics, for example, had sustained a sizeable militia from 1946–54, which clashed with Việt Minh forces in 1956 — integration was a matter of ensuring internal security (Fall 1967, pp. 153–54). Official discourse played an important role in promoting social unity and harmony. Perspectives were, however, ambiguous. Trần Văn Giàu’s references, for example, to the most controversial period in church history, Catholics’ alleged military support for the first French invasions in Danang and Cochinchina between 1858–62, smooths over the evidence of Catholic military support for the invaders by repeatedly

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emphasizing their solidarity with the rest of the national community (Trần Văn Giàu 1956). This work was published against the backdrop of the transmigration of over 500,000 northern Catholics to the South in response to fears of church suppression under the socialist regime at the separation of Vietnam at the Seventeenth Parallel following the Geneva accords in 1954. Encouraged by the U.S. propaganda and enticed by South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm’s pro-Catholic enticement stance, northern Catholics fled south to resettle in what represented a resounding vote of no-confidence in the Communist Party’s vision for an independent Vietnam. The transmigration removed from North Vietnam a large portion of a constituency hostile to the communist government (Fall 1967, pp. 153–54). And it tipped the scales on the geographic dispersion of the wider Vietnamese Catholic population. Where once Vietnam’s Catholics were concentrated in the North, after the transmigration the balance shifted dramatically, with over sixty per cent residing below the Seventeenth Parallel.6 In the South, under the Republic of Vietnam, the church enjoyed far greater freedom but also faced a more ambiguous situation in its relations with the state. The inauguration of Ngô Đình Diệm, a Catholic, as southern Vietnam’s first president in 1955 brought the church into the political elite for the first time. Diệm’s marginalization of Buddhists in the late 1950s and early 1960s inflamed sectarian tensions. By identifying so closely with the Catholic faith, appointing close family members to senior government positions, and embarking on a highly politicized morality campaign, Diệm squandered local support and alienated non-Catholics (Fall 1967, pp. 264–68; Gheddo 1970, pp. 118, 180–82; Thích Nhất Hạnh 1967, pp. 55–61). Antagonisms between Diệm’s pro-Catholic government and Buddhists exploded in Huế in May 1963 after a ban on the public display of religious banners — a measure which in practice appeared implicitly aimed at Buddhists — coinciding with celebrations for the anniversary of the Buddha’s birth. In the protests that followed, dozens of Buddhist protestors were killed or wounded and numerous monks and nuns committed suicide by self-immolation. In the aftermath of Diệm’s assassination in November 1963, his successors launched a repressive campaign against southern Catholics (Fall 1966, pp. 287–88). The broader social impact of Buddhist-Catholic antagonism at the grassroots is, however, less well-known. In brief, Diệm’s antagonistic attitude towards Buddhist leaders and popular-Buddhist groups such as the Cao Ðài and

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the Hòa Hảo created great emotional discord between religions, which continued for the duration of the Vietnam War. The greatest challenge to the church came in 1975, after reunification when Hanoi sought to marry two states with opposing political systems and which had been at war with each other for much of the previous two decades. While the Catholic church in the North had been muzzled and assimilated into the single-party setting, in Saigon it remained in political force to be reckoned with. In the wake of the communist takeover, however, Saigon’s Archbishop Nguyễn Văn Bình made effusive overtures to the revolutionary government and Hanoi, pledging cooperation and support. In several open letters on the church’s delicate position, Nguyễn Văn Bình sought to position the church as a social organization completely compatible with socialism and the state’s national reconstruction. He emphasized that the church’s agenda served similar aims to socialism, to help the poor and “combat exploitation” (Bùi Đức Sinh 2001, pp. 46–47). Nguyễn Văn Bình’s overtures might be seen as conciliatory and an act of submission to prevent the church’s destruction. But they could also be interpreted as political manoeuvring in their own right, an effort to maintain the church’s legitimacy and independence within the communist state. Nguyễn Văn Bình’s appeal reveals his shrewd judgement as a mediator, and his sensitivity to the delicate political situation of southern Catholics. While it is very difficult to determine accurately how Catholics fared as a community under the reunified state, at the very least the archbishop ensured the church in the South integrated into the existing political hierarchy. Compromise no doubt enabled it to avoid complete marginalization, and destitution as a result of the interruption to its funding from overseas sources. For no longer benefiting from direct links with the Vatican, the post-reunification church in the South was forced to make do with what it could raise from its parishioners as had been the case in the North for two decades. In official scholarship on religion in the post-independence period, the church’s activities are described through a discourse of unification and reconstruction as compatible with the party-state’s nation-building agenda. But this approval represents a truce rather than unqualified acceptance. The church’s heritage has faced highly varying degrees of scrutiny and criticism according to changing intellectual moods reflecting nation building, conflict and the post-75 reconstruction. Nguyễn Khắc Viện’s Vietnamese Studies volume dedicated to “Catholics and the National Movement”

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encapsulates the state’s suspicion of Catholics in the post-reunification period: Since the 17th century, the history of Vietnamese Catholicism has been characterized by a systematic opposition to the national liberation movement. The Western missionaries and the colonialist conquerors had cleverly succeeded in turning the Vietnamese Catholic community into a faction politically hostile to the rest of the country and standing aloof in the sociocultural field. This was the original sin of Vietnamese Catholicism: to have served as an instrument … of French and then of US colonialism. Looking objectively, this historical reality cannot be denied however painful it may be. If our articles sometimes appear to be indictments, it is the facts which accuse and not the authors. (Nguyễn Khắc Viện 1978)

Published in 1978, three short years after reunification, and at the advent of the country’s first steps at post-war reconstruction, this text epitomizes official attitudes to Catholicism and the question of tolerating popular religion that has the potential to contest the state’s authority over intellectual and cultural life. It defines how Catholicism can and should fit within the nation community, as an integrated contributor to the reconstruction. Despite vilifying the church and Catholics for their betrayal of the “national liberation”, Viện’s comments illustrate the possibility for reconciliation. The church’s right to exist is articulated in terms of its obedience and loyalty to the state before any other political-religious order.

History Wars Throughout the 1980s, the church faced much the same privations as all other religious groups in the country. But adding a further layer of tension to church-state relations was the challenge of maintining ties with the Vatican under John Paul II. The most contentious episode in relations occurred in 1988 with the mass-canonization of 117 Vietnamese martyrs. This was one of the largest single canonizations in Vatican history. Against the backdrop of ongoing Cold War tensions, not to mention John Paul’s II’s background of support for Poland’s “Solidarity” movement, the canonization was understandably interpreted by Hanoi as an openly hostile provocation. Many of these martyrs, the first of whom died as far back as the seventeenth century, had been officially viewed as rebels and criminals. Joseph Marchand, for example, was convicted by the court of Minh Mạng in 1835 for his involvement in a secessionist rebellion.

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And while the majority were Vietnamese, twenty-one were missionaries, including eleven Spaniards and ten French. In all, 111 of the group were executed or died after 1833 — in the tumultuous decades preceding the French invasion of Indochina and the end of Vietnamese independence.7 Hanoi had knowledge of Vatican moves towards a mass canonization in late 1985, after Hanoi archbishop, Cardinal Trịnh Văn Căn, wrote an impassioned letter to the Pope calling for the reconsideration of Vietnam’s martyrs for sainthood. Unsurprisingly, the matter raised tensions as it gained momentum. The party protested over the matter with the local church hierarchy through the Bishops’ Conference [Hội đồng Giám mục] in early 1988, well and truly after preparations had been finalized. But the party was largely powerless in its efforts to petition the Vatican to reconsider. In the end the event took place in Rome in front of a crowd of 50,000 faithful, which included some 10,000 overseas Vietnamese. No Vietnamese church representatives attended. Adding insult to injury, the day on which the canonization occurred, 19 June, unhappily fell — and allegedly not to the Vatican’s knowledge — on the former Republic of Vietnam’s Armed Forces day. And in an ironic twist that closed the loop on the Nguyễn dynasty’s links with France and Catholicism, Bảo Ðài, Vietnam’s last reigning monarch who had abdicated in 1945, was baptized in Paris a week before the ceremony (Bùi Đức Sinh 2001, p. 60). While up to this point attention to the Catholic heritage was subdued and largely limited to promoting political integration, 1988 opened the floodgates on long-neglected debates. Although most criticism was predictably directed at the MEP for its long list of alleged fifth-column agitators for French imperialism, Vietnamese Catholics also suffered humiliating attention. The journal Historical Research [Nghiên Cứu Lịch Sử], for example, dedicated a whole edition to the event. In his opening article, Văn Tạo sums up the journal’s general perspective of the canonization and at the same time explains the official line on Vietnamese Catholicism. “The reality of history has revealed that from the time the French colonialists invaded Vietnam, there has been not a few Vietnamese Catholics who have sacrificed themselves to fight for independence and the freedom of the people” (Văn Tạo 1988, p. 1). There had been plenty of Catholics involved in the wars against the French, the Japanese and the Americans. Moreover, he argued, the church had been well integrated in society for decades since independence. But the canonization had brought to the fore

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the church’s worst sins: among the 117 were criminals whose edification was an insult to the nation. “Among this group”, Tạo explained, “not a few acted as lackeys for the colonialists, even committed crimes, betrayed the country, hurt people, and were tried and punished”. Indeed, the event had thrown into sharp relief the main threat posed by the religion, conflict between the church’s guiding principle of “revering Christ … before love of the country” in contrast to the “law of the [Vietnamese] people’s history that ‘to love the country means fighting foreign aggression’” (Văn Tạo 1988, p. 2). Văn Tạo’s views represent a relatively moderate indictment of the church’s heritage. Other works took a much harder, uncompromising attitude, notably Đỗ Quang Hưng’s short but ominously titled monograph, Some Questions on Catholic History. Đỗ Quang Hưng is thoroughly critical of Catholics, more or less arguing that the local church was in league with French imperialism. He is unusually sympathetic to the Nguyễn dynasty on account of its troubled efforts to maintain its sovereignty in the face of the Western imperial onslaught. One particular example illustrates this view, where he argues that the Nguyễn court was justified in massacring some 4,800 Catholics in Nam Định in the wake of the French invasion of Danang in 1860 on the grounds of its responsibility to maintain “national security”. These Catholics, men, women and children, Hưng reasoned, posed the risk of rushing to support the French should they have attempted to invade the North. We can assert that the propagation of Christianity in Vietnam especially from the end of the eighteenth century through to the first half of the nineteenth century was not genuinely only to spread the good word but completely abounded with matters linked with the imperialist plot [âm mưu xâm lược] of the French colonialists. This foremost is the underlying reason which from the beginning brought on the concrete and direct policies to forbid and kill Christians (Đỗ Quang Hưng, 1990, pp. 45–46).

If for Văn Tạo the historical ledger revealed Catholics as more generally supportive of the nation, to Đỗ Quang Hưng the balance shows Catholics in the red, and he firmly defends the Nguyễn dynasty for its balanced and “realistic” responses. His tortured prose hits its mark; the underlying issue is Catholicism’s dilution of the individual’s loyalty to the nation. These arguments are seductive in their rationalization in that they convincingly exonerate the violence perpetrated against Catholics in view of France’s brutal colonization. They would be quite comfortable to accept were it not

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for the fact that they only portray the Vietnamese state as justified despite all its faults and its own inconsistencies. In early 1988, before the canonization took place and two years before Hưng’s monograph, the Social Sciences Institute, in league with the Religious Affairs Board in Ho Chi Minh City, produced its own volume exploring Catholicism’s heritage. Despite its strikingly similarly title — Some Historical Problems of Catholicism in the History of the Vietnamese People — the majority of the volume’s essays openly defend the religion’s heritage in modern Vietnamese history. Mạc Ðường’s article on southern Catholics from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries explores a broad panorama in church-state relations to argue that scholarship has not reflected enough on the number of Catholics who sacrificed themselves for the nation (Mạc Ðường 1998, p. 79). He blames imperialism and capitalism’s exploitation of the historical record to portray Catholics in another light. Also in the volume, Huỳnh Lứa defends Catholicism’s attractiveness to the peasantry under the “feudal” pre-colonial era and argues that adherence was motivated by genuine conviction. State antipathy towards the religion in the nineteenth century was the result, he continues, of the court’s obsession with social order and projecting itself as the universal authority. This is clearly illustrated in the opening sentences of most proscription edicts which begin with the words “Christianity is a perverse religion which mesmerises people’s hearts, and is harmful to customs and morals…” (Huỳnh Lứa 1998, p. 175). Lứa strikingly concludes that there is an error in describing Catholics as “lackeys” and traitors. In his conclusion he promotes a sympathetic view of “not a few” Catholics whom, he argues, “really died for their religion”. How is it possible that such divergent views could exist at one time within official discourse? While the underlying message remains that Catholics were at fault for serving their religion before serving the nation, Ðường and Lứa’s contrasting tone highlights the unfinished, and unreconciled interpretation of Catholic history in Vietnam.

Catholicism in Popular Commemoration While historians’ disagreements hold insights into complexity and contestation in intellectual constructions of the past, the sites of these fateful events are firmly etched, in a manner that is less controversial, into a popular landscape of religious symbolism and memory. A slow drive through some of Ho Chi Minh City’s narrow streets for an afternoon reveals numerous

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reminders of Catholicism’s legacy. Apart from Our Lady Cathedral in the very centre of the old quarter, the city sustains dozens of churches and shrines. Trần Hưng Đạo boulevard, linking Saigon central to Chợ Lớn, terminates at one extremity at the doorstep of a modest church built in the early 1860s to serve a fledgling migrant Hokkien-speaking congregation. In sight of the grey concrete statue of the child-god, Phù Đổng, on the bustling Avenue of the August Revolution, and squeezed between two shophouses, is a small shrine to Lê Văn Gẫm, martyred on the site in 1847. Matthêu Gẫm was a merchant sailor who was executed by the Nguyễn authorities for smuggling supplies and correspondence to the area’s underground church from Singapore. Two graves of pious Catholics share the shrine, and numerous votive plates dating back decades embellish the walls and exterior. A little further down the street, at the nearby Chợ Quán Church — a congregation which played a central role in the 1833 Southern rebellion against Huế-rule — the densely decorated concrete grotto dedicated to Mary is a stark illustration of the multiplicity of feminine deities in Vietnamese religious culture. But scholars of Vietnamese religion do not naturally think of Catholicism as an indigenous religion. Part of the problem is the difficulty in contextualizing the religion alongside other traditions. It might be a cliché to think of Mary as a “version” of Quan Âm (Kuan Yin), but there are other models and parallels between Catholicism and traditions associated with the indigenous world. Martyrs, for example, present a unique conundrum as a source of inspiration for Catholics. Over one hundred saints grace the Vietnamese church and countless victims who would with the right recognition be identified by the church as martyrs. Among the faithful who pay homage to shrines each day, non-Catholic devotees also visit. Such shrines attract a wide following because they have come to represent a source of spiritual power. But how do we historicize such associations and blurred intersections? Is it possible to disentangle the Catholic from the local? Has the Catholic presence “retreated” so far into the local world that its legacy has become indistinguishable from the wider religious context? Perhaps more than anywhere else in Vietnam, Huế offers numerous examples through which a curious historical pattern is discernable, offering an explanation for the gradual retreat of Catholic heritage into the local religious landscape. On a tour of Huế and its surrounding Catholic communities in November 2005, I was struck by the location and positioning

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of Catholic communities and memorials in relation to Buddhist shrines and pagodas. Huế, and its environs, which served as the capital for the Nguyễn family since the early seventeenth century — first as lords and kings and then from 1802 as emperors. Catholic history in this region dates back to at least the 1620s, to the early decades of the Nguyễn establishment. Eclectic in religious and cultural outlook, the Nguyễn aristocracy more often than not tolerated the spread of Catholicism, despite the fact it faced fierce opposition from the Buddhist clerisy attached to the court. Traces of persecutions can still be found around Huế today and the geographic relation between Buddhist and Catholic sites is intriguing. In particular, Thiên Mụ Pagoda, one of Vietnam’s most important Buddhist temples, illustrates the power of the Buddhist clerisy in Nguyễn politics. In dynastic times, Thiên Mụ was a veritable bastion of official Buddhism and a centre of conservative orthodoxy at that. The island on which dozens of Catholics were imprisoned and forced to choose between apostasy or starvation is a stone’s throw across the Perfume River from Thiên Mụ. Across the river, on the southern bank lies the now mixed-faith village of Dương Ðức (formerly named Thổ Ðức), where Catholics were brought for execution until at least the 1850s. According to a local source, the village is the second oldest Catholic congregation in the region. Today on a bustling thoroughfare between central Huế and outlying towns along the riverbank, the community, like so many in the region, is mixed with Buddhist and Catholics. And travelling through the village one would never think or imagine that anything remarkable ever took place there. But blood has been shed here, property razed to the ground and families torn apart many times over. Although the bustling setting gives nothing away, various unheralded shrines scattered around the village build an enduring picture. My interest in Dương Ðức comes from research into Nguyễn antiCatholicism in the nineteenth century. I wanted to visit the village to find if there was any memory of a French missionary executed there in late 1835. Luckily for me the local priest was more than willing to guide me around. Our first stop, after winding our way through several back lanes, was at a row of twelve martyrs’ graves. Here were Catholics of a series of executions between 1714–15, during the reign of Minh Vương, in which the victims were trampled by elephants [thảo tượng]. A little further up the lane, a solitary statue marked the execution site of Phêro Tống Viết Bường, a Catholic military mandarin — the religion was

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popular within the Nguyễn army. Beheaded in 1833, Bường was probably the first Catholic executed in the persecution launched by Minh Mạng. A popular figure in the local area, he is also honoured in St Mary’s Cathedral in Huế. Driving back around the village, the priest took me up a gentle rise to visit a final shrine, that of Joseph Marchand. On two sides of the village are located large cemeteries, one Catholic and one Buddhist. Stopping at the Buddhist cemetery, I was surpised and intrigued. It was already dusk, and we wandered down the narrow path in the dim light treading carefully around numerous Buddhist graves. There, in the middle of the graveyard, squeezed in between a group of several brightly painted, round lotus-shaped graves, stood an imposing square, flat grey slab. Below a grey cross, a small black plaque announced a memorial to Joseph Marchand, the French missionary executed in 1835 after being implicated in a rebellion in Saigon two years earlier. According to my guide, the memorial marked the “exact” location where the missionary was ceremonially cut to pieces and beheaded before his remains were taken and dumped at sea. The slab was bare, except for a glass jar with dozens of burnt-out incense stick ends. The memorial’s location in the middle of a Buddhist cemetery made little sense in light of recent decades’ of animosity between the two churches. More to the point, the grey slab appeared completely out of place amidst the numerous brightly painted white, red and pink concrete lotuses. Marchand’s was a lone grey block in a flowering garden. Yet the priest was not at all bothered by its location. Sectarian incompatibility remained in this instance secondary to spiritual significance.

Conclusion: The Myth of Cultural Incompatibility Catholic sites in Vietnam are potential symbols of dissent to an officially atheist government, and reminders of a painful colonial past. So how can the state accommodate such reminders? Under the Nguyễn dynasty, the Board of Rites was responsible for the court’s religious ceremonies, the educational system, foreign affairs as well as the authorization and licensing of worship sites, clerics and sects. The Religious Affairs Department, which plays a similar sort of role as the old Board of Rites, imposes very similar limits on contemporary religious practice. But the contemporary board is perhaps less flexible than its predecessor in Minh

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Mạng’s times. Under Minh Mạng, Catholics faced the dubious benefit of official recognition: although de-legitimized, they could argue their adherence was founded on filial piety. Their individual identity as the king’s subjects, and therefore subjects of the Vietnamese kingdom, was beyond question. Today, in contrast, the keepers of public orthodoxy describe Catholicism as a legitimate religion, but adherents belong on the margins of “traditional” Vietnamese cultural identity. Some prominent religious studies scholars make concessions for Catholicism, arguing that it is converging with “Vietnamese culture”. But it is an ambigious truce, as Nguyễn Xuân Hưng suggests: The Catholic church, on its way to adapt to [national] development has carried out steps in the spirit of “cultural integration”, especially after Vatican II. It allows Catholics to set up ancestral altars, to follow rites, and use architecture and arts which feature from the national culture. Moreover, the worship of the Holy Mother [that is, Mary] is somewhat near the mentality of venerating the Mother among Vietnamese and the worship of Immortal Mothers of Vietnam. (Nguyễn Xuân Hưng 2001, p. 46)

Although reconciled with Catholicism, he goes on to describe a series of qualifications. Protestantism, which forbids “image worship” and “engages in proselytization”, comes under considerable fire. “Dances, clapping hands and theatrical performances”, he notes of Protestant religious practice, “are quite normal but they cannot be accepted in Vietnam” (Ibid.). Such descriptions suggest that Protestantism to the likes of Nguyễn Xuân Hưng has come to replace “Catholicism” as culturally anathema to official perspectives on traditional Vietnamese culture. A relative newcomer to the Vietnamese religious setting, Protestantism now suffers arguably the same approbration and official scrutiny as Catholicism did in the pre-colonial period. The myth of incompatibility remains, therefore, although it has been reincarnated in a slightly difference guise. Đặng Nghiêm Vạn, a religious studies stalwart, epitomizes the view in his discussion of different beliefs and approaches to religious faith between “Catholics” and “non-Catholics” in and around Hanoi. While Đặng Nghiêm Vạn is openly positive towards Catholicism — though less so to Protestantism — he illustrates the religion’s place: openly tolerated and protected, it must nevertheless support, or at least be seen openly to support, nationalist aims.

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Hanoian Catholics who have been here since 1954 exodus, and who, together with the rest of the nation, experienced anti-US and, for some, anti-French resistance, wish to do away with inferiority complexes arising for historical reasons. They hope that the fresh outlook of the State and the Party will result in the lifting of the moral blockade against them as Catholics. Therefore, it is the State’s and the Party’s responsibility to enable the masses of the Catholic population to feel that they may embrace God of their own free will, that they deserve the same proper and just treatment as believers in other religions or as the non-Christian population. At the same time, State and Party should encourage Catholics to take an active role in national reconstruction, and support them in directing their religious activities into taking on a national colour. (Đặng Nghiêm Vạn 2001, p. 253)

The tension of competing religious and civic demands is palpable and the reason is, to venture an observation, the continued essentialization within elite discourse of “traditional” Vietnamese culture. Catholics may strongly believe in the notion of a Vietnamese version of a Catholic citizen, but to Đặng Nghiêm Vạn they do not yet exist because “the Catholic population has not yet spoken in the Vietnamese voice, has not yet converged with Vietnamese culture and has not yet been ‘reincarnated’ into the Vietnamese soul’ (Ibid., pp. 253–54). Such views hardly make sense in light of popular outpourings like the weeping statue affair, where Catholic symbols took on popular spiritual significance and participation in the event attracted a broad church of curious followers. Đặng Nghiêm Vạn’s dismissal of Catholicism’s assimilation epitomizes official perceptions that see religiosity in neat black-and-white contrasts; they sadly deny the blurred overlap between diverse expressions of faith. In short, such official perceptions rest on their own network of myths: on what constitutes “traditional” Vietnamese culture and that the Vietnamese state is firmly rooted in a purely Confucian past. This approach is no more tolerant of expressions of popular religiosity than the custodians of orthodoxy in the church hierarchy, who attempt to supress popular devotionalism in the name of religious authenticity. But perhaps the most consequential aspect of this reading of Vietnam’s Catholic history is the assumption that religious identity negates local political identity and loyalties, and requires continuing direction from the state, in the interest of the nation.

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Jacob Ramsay FIGURE 11.1 Photograph Sold by Street Vendors of the Tear-stained Face of the Statute of Mary.

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FIGURE 11.2 Prayers at the Plinth of the Đức Mẹ Statue, Ho Chi Minh City.

FIGURE 11.3 Cartoon in Tuổi Trẻ (30 October 2005) on the Perils of Rumours and Blind Belief.

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NOTES 1

2

3

4 5

6

7

I would like to thank Philip Taylor for his generous support in bringing this chapter to completion. He patiently commented on numerous drafts offering enormous help in moving it forward. While any mistakes in the paper are mine, I owe Philip a debt of gratitude for his many insightful suggestions. I would also like to thank David Marr and Tim Winter who read and commented on drafts of the chapter, and my anonymous referee for her/his useful comments. Finally, I am grateful to the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, which funded the fieldwork to Vietnam in October 2005 where I first developed the idea for this chapter. The cartoon (Figure 11.3) was published by Tuổi Trẻ (The Youth) newspaper on 30 October 2005. For the Catholic mission, under the auspices of the Missions Étrangères de Paris (the Foreign Mission of Paris), Vietnam belonged to three ecclesiastical divisions established by the Vatican in the seventeenth century. In the north, the Catholic community, which numbered around 200,000, was administered under two separate vicariates. East Tonkin, administered by Spanish Dominicans, covered the coastal provinces from Nam Ðịnh north and west to southern China, while West Tonkin — an MEP vicariate — comprised the provinces from Tuyên Quang south of Hà Tĩnh. The largest communities were concentrated in the coastal delta provinces of Nam Ðịnh and Hưng Yên, and west of Hanoi in Sơn Tây province. The division covering the southern half of the region was known as the vicariate of Cochinchina. It encompassed the territory from present-day Quảng Bình province south of the Mekong Delta and west into Cambodia, and had a Catholic population of an estimated 80,000, a figure which represented around one percent of the total population. Due to the relatively sparse settlement of Vietnamese in Cochinchina, Catholic communities were widely dispersed throughout the region. The largest communities could be found in Quảng Trị province at the northern end of the vicariate, around the Nguyễn capital at Huế, in Bình Ðịnh province, throughout Gia Ðịnh (the area around present-day Ho Chi Minh City) and in the Mekong Delta province of Vĩnh Long. In the following discussion I draw on Ramsay (2004b). . Giáo Hội Công Giáo Việt Nam (The Catholic Church in Vietnam) in three volumes. Calgary, 1998. cf. Hansen, “The Virgin Heads South: Northern Catholic Refugees in South Vietnam, 1954–1964”, Vol. 3, p. 214. See the following Vatican website link for a full list of the martyrs: , accessed March 2006.

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12 Strangers on the Road: Foreign Religious Organizations and Development in Vietnam Andrew Wells-Dang

Introduction When news of the disaster in Tân Cảnh village reached the office of “Protestant Aid”, the project officer, Mr Ðỗ, left immediately with his assistant and driver in their white Land Cruiser. It was early in the morning, yet there were already many people on the road. When Mr Ðỗ stopped by the side of the road to ask for directions to Tân Cảnh, another car went by with several white faces inside and an unfamiliar logo on the side door. Mr Ðỗ did not recognize them, and the car passed on. Less than a minute later, a second car pulled up alongside the Land Cruiser. In the back seat were two monks in orange robes. Mr Ðỗ did not recognize them either, and the car passed on. Following them, a third car with tinted windows and blue license plates travelled down the road. Mr Ðỗ could not see inside the car, and it too passed on. Having found the correct way to Tân Cảnh, Mr Ðỗ stopped in a field near the village gate. To his amazement, not only were the three cars that passed him on the road parked nearby, but several other vehicles

399

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Andrew Wells-Dang and dozens of motorbikes as well. Some of these were marked with organizational names and symbols; others were unmarked. “Who are all these people?” he asked himself. From one of the unmarked cars, a well-dressed Asian stepped out carrying two large suitcases. Mr Ðỗ had brought nothing but his notebook. At this point, he wondered if he should go on.

Mr Ðỗ’s fictional predicament is becoming increasingly common in Vietnam. Of course, not all communities in need attract as many good Samaritans as the one in this retold parable. However, hundreds of foreign religious organizations are currently operating in different ways, alongside greater numbers of secular non-governmental organizations (NGOs), larger multilateral and bilateral development programmes, and existing programmes of the Vietnamese state. This expansion of development and charitable activity has occurred quietly since the mid-1990s, paralleling rapid growth in domestic religion. It is little known outside Vietnam and barely understood inside the country, due to a combination of unclear and shifting Vietnamese regulations, limited coordination among organizations, and incomplete or outdated outside perceptions of the operating environment in Vietnam. This chapter attempts to describe the scope and complexity of foreign religious organizations’ activities in Vietnam through three lenses. First, it reviews Vietnamese law and practice regarding foreign religious activities. Second, it seeks to place organizations on a virtual map of differing characteristics: registered and unregistered; religious and humanitarian purposes; Buddhist, Catholic, and Protestant. Third, these descriptions are mixed with a series of anonymous case studies of organizations and some of the issues and problems they currently face. The information presented here draws on my own experience as a staff member and consultant for several international NGOs (INGOs) and as a member of an international, ecumenical church in Hanoi since 1997. (The organization that I represented in Vietnam from 2002–05, the Fund for Reconciliation and Development, is non-religious in nature, though it comes from American Quaker roots linked to the anti-war movement.1) Since I am based in Hanoi, my findings reflect relatively more northern than central or southern experience. The specific cases and examples in this chapter are taken from personal interviews, published documents, and the Internet. Wherever possible, information has been checked and confirmed from outside sources. Since some interview respondents preferred

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to remain anonymous, I have left all organizational and individual names out of the chapter, instead identifying them randomly as “Organization A”, “Organization B” and so forth. No details have been changed, and a reader who is familiar with the case studies will be able to recognize them clearly. A few advance words about definitions. “Foreign” [nước ngoài] refers as in common Vietnamese usage to any person or organization coming from outside Vietnam; this includes overseas Vietnamese and other East and Southeast Asians, as well as those from further away. “Organization” [tổ chức] means any self-defined group, whether large or small, legally registered in Vietnam or in another country, or not. However, when Vietnamese law refers to “foreign organizations and individuals” [tổ chức, cá nhân nước ngoài ] this means only those with a legal presence in Vietnam. Overseas Vietnamese who still possess Vietnamese citizenship, and sometimes even those who do not, are not treated as “foreigners” under Vietnamese law. Defining “religious” [tôn giáo] is more complex. Vietnam recognizes domestic organizations of six religions: Buddhism, Cao Ðài, Catholicism, Hòa Hảo, Islam, and Protestantism. Confucianism and Taoism are not considered religions, but rather philosophies co-existing with Buddhism.2 This chapter follows this terminology, although it differs somewhat from foreign usage. Examples are drawn from Buddhist, Catholic and Protestant organizations.3 As a general principle, groups that self-identify as Buddhist or Christian are considered as such, regardless of the activities they carry out. The difficulty lies in identifying those groups that may hide their religious identity because they think this affords them greater access inside Vietnam — a belief that is often mistaken and can backfire against them. Less controversially, many humanitarian or charitable associations may be founded or staffed by religious people acting out of spiritual motives, yet the content, structure and legal definition of their activities are entirely secular. In these cases, if the organization does not identify itself as religiously-based, it is not included as a “religious organization” for purposes of this paper.

Part I: Vietnamese Law and Practice Vietnamese law guarantees some religious rights for foreign organizations and individuals, while placing restrictions on particular activities. Over time,

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the number and extent of restrictions have decreased, resulting in greater public space for religious activities in general and foreign organizations in particular. Thus, the relative amount of freedom to operate has increased, while still subject to state regulation and permission. This legal situation, while anathema to religious freedom advocates who believe church and state should be entirely separate, is not uncommon among developing countries in Asia. Article 70 of the 1992 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam guarantees “freedom of belief and of religion. [A citizen] can follow any religion or follow none. All religions are equal before the law. The places of worship of all faiths and religions are protected by the law. No one can violate freedom of belief and of religion; nor can anyone misuse beliefs and religions to contravene the law and State policies.” Since foreigners residing in Vietnam are subject to the constitution and Vietnamese law (Article 81), these provisions also apply to them. Other vaguely worded provisions of law limit and restrict the expression of religion in certain circumstances. One of these is found in Article 74 of the constitution: “All acts violating the interests of the State, the rights and legitimate interests of collectives and citizens shall be dealt with severely in time.” Vietnamese law is quite sweeping in its prohibitions of activities that are determined to be anti-state, including “using religion as a pretext to carry out other activities that are against the people’s interest.”4 (Vietnam is far from the only country in Asia or worldwide to have such provisions.) Religion is not singled out for any special treatment: non-religious activities that fall afoul of these restrictions are equally subject to punishment. Specific legal instruments relating to religion in postwar, unified Vietnam were promulgated in 1977, 1991, 1999 and 2004 (see Tables I and II). The highest and most recent of these is the Ordinance on Belief and Religion [Pháp lệnh Tín ngưỡng, Tôn giáo], passed by the Standing Committee of the National Assembly on 29 June 2004 and effective as of 15 November 2004. Most of the ordinance, like the preceding decrees, outlines rights and responsibilities of Vietnamese religious organizations, which are outside the scope of this chapter.5 Regarding foreigners, the law distinguishes between activities of individuals and activities of organizations, as the following analysis will clarify.

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English Translation

Constitution Law Ordinance Resolution Decree Decision Regulation Instruction Circular Guidelines

Vietnamese Name

Hiến pháp Luật Pháp lệnh Nghị quyết Nghị định Quyết định Quy chế Chỉ thị Thông tư Hướng dẫn

National Assembly National Assembly Standing Committee of National Assembly Government, Communist Party, or National Assembly Prime Minister (formerly, Council of Ministers) Prime Minister or State President Government (issued as elaboration of a decree) Prime Minister Government ministerial-level agencies, such as the Committee for Religious Affairs Government committees or sub-agencies, such as the Committee on NGO Affairs

Issuing Authority

TABLE 12.1 Summary of Vietnamese Legal Instruments (ranked from highest to lowest)

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Decree

11 Nov. 1977 1990 21 March 1991 19 April 1999 16 June 1999 16 July 2003 29 June 2004 4 February 2005 1 March 2005

297-CP

24

69/HDBT

26/1999/ND-CP

03/1999/TTTGCP

n/a

21/2004/PL-UBTVQH11

01/2005/CT

22/2005/ND-CP Decree

Instruction

Ordinance

Resolution

Circular

Decree

Decree

Resolution

Type

Date

Number

Instructions of the Government on Implementing Ordinance on Belief and Religion

Activities of the Evangelical Church

Belief and Religion

7th Plenum of the 9th Party Congress on Religious Work

Religious Activities of Foreigners who Lawfully Reside in Vietnam

Religious Activities

Regulating Religious Activities

Politburo Resolution on Religious Work [công tác tôn giáo]

Religious Activities

Description

TABLE 12.2 Vietnamese Legal Instruments Relating to Religion

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Rights and Restrictions on Foreign Individuals’ Religious Activities As noted above, foreigners are subject to Vietnamese law while residing in Vietnam. Chapter V of the 2004 Ordinance describes “International Relationships of Religious Organizations, Believers, Religious Dignitaries and People of Religious Vocation”. Article 37 in this section outlines the rights of foreigners: Foreigners entering Vietnam must obey Vietnamese law; they are allowed to bring along printed materials and other materials for religious practice for personal use as prescribed by Vietnamese law; they are allowed to take part in religious activities at places of worship; they are allowed to invite Vietnamese religious dignitaries to conduct religious rituals for themselves, and shall respect the rules of Vietnamese religious organizations. [unofficial translation]

On an individual level, thus, non-Vietnamese may participate in religious activities to the same extent as Vietnamese citizens. Article 25 of Decree 26 (1999) states further that “gathering into separate groups to conduct religious activities at a place of worship must be granted permission by the chair of the provincial or city People’s Committee.” The circular issued by the Government Committee on Religious Affairs [Ủy ban Tôn giáo] in elaboration of this article adds that foreigners may either “jointly take part with Vietnamese believers at an appropriate, lawful actual place of worship in Vietnam” or “gather into a group for private religious activities at a worship place in Vietnam”. Actual practice differs somewhat from these provisions. Foreign worshippers do frequently attend temples and churches, especially in larger cities. In the case of Buddhists and many Catholics, foreign believers worship together with Vietnamese. There are also separate foreign Christian fellowships meeting regularly in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Some specific issues relating to these congregations will be discussed below; the key point here is that while these are certainly “foreign religious organizations” for purposes of this chapter, they are not legal organizations in Vietnamese law but rather, individuals meeting for a private religious purpose. The 1999 Circular outlines procedures for foreign religious groups to register with the city/province People’s Committee where they are located. First, a full list of group members, intended activities, time and

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place should be submitted to the city/province Department of Religious Affairs. Second, the local Vietnamese place of worship should send a letter to the People’s Committee asking for a permit. The chair of the People’s Committee must respond within twenty days. In practice, several of the above-mentioned Christian congregations have, in fact, applied for legal status with city governments, but this has not been either granted or rejected.6 Rather than city governments, it is districtlevel police that appear to be the primary authorities regulating these activities. There are also specific restrictions in the 1999 Circular. Foreigners may not rent or construct their own building for religious activities (Article 5). They may also not bring a “foreign religious dignitary” [chức sắc người nước ngoài] to preach or preside over religious rites, but should instead apply to a registered Vietnamese religious group to send (Vietnamese) clergy to preside (Article 7). Tourists and others visiting Vietnam for short periods are allowed to attend Vietnamese religious services but may not carry out their own religious activities (Article 8). Some of these restrictions are loosened in the 2004 Ordinance and accompanying 2005 Decree. Article 36 of the Ordinance enables foreign “dignitaries” to preach or teach in Vietnamese religious establishments “after approval by the central State governance body for religious affairs.” The 2005 Decree outlines specific procedures for such requests and states that authorities must give a clear reason if they decline. According to the Government Committee on Religious Affairs, there has been one such case granted permission under Article 36: a Vietnamese-Australian Catholic professor who came to Vietnam in spring 2005 to lead a two-week theological study course for Vietnamese priests on request of the Bishop of Hanoi.7 More notably, the three-month visit of Thích Nhất Hạnh and his entourage from January–April 2005 was approved by the state and received wide coverage in and outside Vietnam. Here, once again, actual practice is broader than the letter of the law. International Christian congregations are currently led by foreign pastors (and laity) who have no official permission to preach in Vietnam. As long as their activities are kept to the established place and time, and the congregation is (largely) foreign, Vietnamese authorities have not intervened in the operations of these churches. When international churches have pressed the limits of these grey areas, however, authorities have taken action; one such case is profiled below.

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Rights and Restrictions on Foreign Organizations and Charitable Assistance Vietnamese law does not distinguish between religious and non-religious organizations coming to Vietnam for humanitarian purposes. Officials frequently state that they welcome all international assistance, including that from religious organizations. Foreign representatives and staff of these organizations are free to participate in individual religious activities, but the organizations themselves are subject to restrictions on their work. This explains the apparently anomalous situation whereby obviously evangelical organizations that work as traditional missionaries and church planters in other countries have been granted permission to operate in Vietnam, and indeed may enjoy close relations with government counterparts. It is equally possible for a Catholic mission order, staffed by priests, nuns and lay missioners, to operate legally and successfully in Vietnam as an NGO. As long as its project activities remain within the laws and customs of Vietnam, the origin or motivation of the organization remains secondary. According to the Ministry of Public Security, all religious groups in Vietnam presently carry out relations with their overseas counterparts; this is as true of indigenous faiths like the Cao Ðài and Hòa Hảo as it is of Catholicism, Protestantism and Buddhism. “As long as people entering or leaving Vietnam to and from overseas follow the law, there is no problem with this. Those who come in opposition to Vietnam’s interests are not allowed, just as the U.S. puts strict visa requirements in place against terrorism. But those who come for positive purposes, such as friendship and cooperation, are welcome” (interview, April 2004). Foreign religious organizations that are registered as NGOs to conduct humanitarian work are governed by the same guidelines as their secular counterparts (see Table 12.3). The Committee for Foreign Non-Governmental Organization Affairs, formed in 2001 as the successor to a related body, consists of seven members. One of these is the chairperson of the Government Committee on Religious Affairs, which is a ministerial-level body. The Committee on Religious Affairs has the mandate of “guiding and assisting national agencies and organizations in implementing the State policy on religious affairs during their NGO aid reception and utilization processes” (Article 15 of 2001 Regulation). This is the key link between state management of religion inside Vietnam and of foreign religious NGOs.

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24 May 1996

24 May 1996

7 August 1996

26 April 2001

26 April 2001

26 April 2001

340/TTg

06/UB-PCPNN

59/2001/QD-TTg

64/2001/QD-TTg

— Regulation

Decision

Decision

Guidelines

Regulation

Decision

Decision

24 May 1996

339/TTg

—

Type

Date

Number

Accompanying Decision 64

Management and Utilization of Aid from International Non-Governmental Organizations

Reconfiguring Committee for Foreign NGO Affairs

Implementation of Regulations on Foreign NGO Operations

Accompanying Decision 340

Regulations on Operation of Foreign NGOs in Vietnam

Establishing Committee for NGO Affairs

Description

TABLE 12.3 Vietnamese Legal Instruments Relating to Activities of Foreign Organizations

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The use of INGO project funds is governed by Decision 64 and its accompanying regulations. According to these stipulations, most INGO projects need only to be approved by the head of a relevant central or provincial government agency. However, certain projects require approval of the prime minister. This includes all projects valued at over US$500,000, as well as any project concerning law, culture, religion, or national security, among other areas. The Ministry of Public Security is responsible for submitting proposals for such projects to other ministries for comment; a senior Public Security official explains this clause as relating to the ministry’s overall responsibility for public order, human rights, and law enforcement (interview, April 2004). According to a representative of the Government Committee on Religious Affairs, however, these restrictions on “religion” apply only to projects containing activities with a religious purpose, such as construction of temples or churches. Projects in which a religiously-based organization engages in non-religious activities do not require special approval. The same applies for projects that assist Vietnamese religious groups to carry out humanitarian activities (interview, April 2004). What international NGOs are not allowed to do is to “take part in organizing and operating religious activities and to propagate religion” (1999 Decree, Article 25.2). Thus, nothing in the regulations prevents a foreign NGO (religious or not) from entering into a project agreement with a recognized Vietnamese religious organization such as the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha or the Catholic Patriotic Association to conduct activities that are not directly “organizing and operating” religion. Similarly, at the local level, there is no legal barrier to an NGO including a local pagoda or church as a partner in a development project, for example in health services or education, presuming the approval of local authorities (usually the commune or district People’s Committee). Although some INGOs do maintain contact and relationships with local religious organizations, however, there are no known examples of the first type of partnership and few of the second. Some examples of INGO-local religious partnership that have occurred to date are including a village priest or monk on a Project Management Committee; holding Christmas celebrations, including gifts, at a local church; and giving “non-project aid” (that is, charitable donations) to parishes and temples for social activities such as healthcare. Further cooperation would require the advance approval of a local or provincial official, which is only likely to be given in relationships with a significant degree of trust.

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By law, even small amounts of “non-project aid” from INGOs must be approved by the Prime Minister if it has an ostensible religious purpose. In practice, this is nearly equivalent to a prohibition, as no religious INGO project has yet to receive such approval. (The Prime Minister has approved other large INGO projects in some of the other restricted categories, such as culture and national defence, often after lengthy delays.) However, there is no law restricting charitable contributions by individuals, whether for a religious or non-religious purpose. Article 28 of the 2004 Ordinance states: 1. Religious organizations are entitled to raise their own financial resources from the voluntary support of domestic and foreign individuals and organizations according to law.8 2. Fundraising by religious organizations must be conducted in a transparent manner, with clear information about the intended use. The People’s Committee of the location where the collection takes place must be notified in advance. 3. The abuse of fundraising for personal gain or for illegal purposes is prohibited.

None of the government laws and policies mentioned here differentiates among religious groups, with one exception: the Prime Minister’s Instructions on Protestantism issued in March 2005 in response to specific internal and diplomatic issues. For international organizations, the same rules apply to Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants and others. However, there is some question whether different religions are in fact treated the same in practice. Some observers perceive that Buddhists enjoy somewhat more freedom of movement than Christians, and that Catholics are treated more leniently overall than Protestants. On one side of this debate, some evangelical Protestants claim that government policies “facilitate the revival of other religions…on the pretext of cultural preservation. These non-Christian religions…are opposed to Christianity and will themselves help to suppress the Church.”9 In reality, Buddhists do nothing of the sort (and neither do animists or Confucians). Moreover, overseas Vietnamese Buddhists affiliated with the pre-1975 Unified Buddhist Church are restricted as severely by the government as any non-registered evangelical Christian group. Vietnamese law does not provide any firm definition of “illegal activities” that might cause a foreign religious organization to be forced to leave the country. Article 17b of the 1996 Regulation on use

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of INGO assistance, states only that “NGOs with activities not in conformity with the issued permit, or violating stipulations of the present regulations, shall, depending on the gravity of the violation, have their permit partially or completely suspended, or withdrawn by the issuing agency.” This presumably includes the prohibitions on “organizing and operating” and on “propagating religion” mentioned above. Activities such as direct proselytizing, distribution of unauthorized religious publications, or holding of religious services or classes for groups of Vietnamese have led to trouble for foreign organizations in the past. However, personal interactions, informal witnessing and contacts with Vietnamese religious believers are unlikely to result in deportation. Despite the many improvements and clarifications in Vietnamese law, gaps remain between law and practice, with uneven implementation over regions and time. As a result, while many activities of foreign religious organizations are more legal than they were in the past, others remain in a grey area where the boundary between legality and illegality is fluid and negotiable. More recent laws are often broader than those they replace, but this leads to inconsistencies, of which the largest is this: foreign individuals can now freely engage in charitable donations to Vietnamese religious entities for both non-religious and religious purposes, up to and including organizing, operating, and propagating religion. Legally registered foreign religious organizations may not, or do so only with the approval of the prime minister. But unregistered foreign religious organizations and their members are counted as individuals under the law, hence there appears to be more freedom of action for unregistered groups than for registered NGOs. Given this situation, it is no wonder that the actual amount of foreign religious assistance goes uncounted by government authorities, and that registered and unregistered donors pass each other like strangers on the road.

Part II: Varieties of Religious Experience An overseas religious organization that wishes to come to Vietnam faces several key choices at the outset. The first, most public option is to register as an international NGO. Alternately, and less formally, some organizations form agreements directly with provinces or local governments, usually to carry out specific, small projects. A third and less transparent approach

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is to enter Vietnam on tourist or business visas and provide financial assistance or training without any formal status or recognition. Finally, some individuals come into Vietnam as “tentmakers”, doing other work (such as business or English teaching) with the long-term goal of engaging in mission activities. Size, not religious beliefs or theology, appears to be the main factor affecting the choices organizations make. Larger, more bureaucratic groups, typically Christians from developed countries, tend to register as INGOs. Smaller groups, especially Buddhists and Asian Christians, often follow more informal paths, developing relationships locally and/ or quietly visiting their Vietnamese counterparts. This may be helped by the fact that other Asians, as well as overseas Vietnamese, blend in more easily in Vietnam and may have a closer appreciation of Vietnamese culture. Monks, nuns and lay Buddhists and Christians come to Vietnam informally to meet colleagues in their respective orders, travel on retreats or pilgrimages, and teach training classes relating to their faith. The final category of foreign religious activity, individual “tentmakers”, may be sent by a church or other religious organization in their home country, or may come to Vietnam entirely on their own. Perhaps as many as a quarter to a half of foreigners studying Vietnamese or teaching English (and other foreign languages) do so with some present or future religious purpose in mind. On this basis, organizations can be categorized along a number of lines: Registered

Unregistered

Religious purpose

Humanitarian purpose

Work with VN religious orgs.

Separate from VN orgs.

Political

Non-political

— or any combination on the above spectrum. Adding in extra variables of religious affiliation (Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant) and national origin, no two organizations are exactly alike. For this chapter, I have chosen organizational status in Vietnam as the dependent variable, but the map could be described in any number of other ways too. The case studies and descriptions in the remainder of the chapter draw on the following typology.

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II.

I.

Unregistered organizations A. Funding charitable projects B. Funding religious activities C. Sending missionaries/ tentmakers D. Training VNese workers, in or outside VN E. Combined religious and political motivations

Registered religious NGOs A. No religious content B. Religious content, pursuing gradually C. Religious content, pursuing vigorously

III Associations of expatriates in VN A. International places of worship B. Cultural Associations

These circles are not mutually exclusive. Category III includes members who may work for organizations in either Category I or II. Some registered organizations have partners in unregistered groups, and vice versa. The relative sizes of the circles, while not exact in any sense, are intentional, although the size of each sub-group may vary considerably.

Registered Religious Non-Governmental Organizations According to official Vietnamese statistics, there are currently 560 international NGOs operating in the country (data as of December 2004). Of these, 456 have been granted licenses by the Committee on Foreign NGO Affairs, including 62 new licenses in 2004. They combined to provide a total of $140 million in aid in 2004, up from an average of $80 million over the previous five years.10 At least fifty INGOs are openly religious in basis. Several others have an unclear affiliation, including many with religious roots of some kind. An official at the Government Committee on Religious Affairs estimates that the majority of INGOs have some religious connection (interview,

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April 2004), though a closer examination does not seem to bear this out.11 Among the registered religious NGOs are traditional mission alliances, relief and development arms of churches, and Catholic orders. Permits have been granted on a relatively equal basis to Catholics, mainstream Protestants and evangelicals—distinctions that may be less crucial (or apparent) to Vietnamese authorities than to Christian groups themselves. Religious NGOs are almost exclusively Christian. One registered INGO with a Buddhist name, run by overseas Vietnamese in France, carries out education, health and flood relief projects in northern and central Vietnam, in consortium with secular French NGOs. At least one large Taiwanese Buddhist organization is registered to carry out charitable assistance as well. However, most overseas Buddhists have followed informal contacts for their work in Vietnam, which is partially explicable by cultural factors. There may also be a religious element, in that Buddhism — perhaps especially the Zen [Thiền] tradition in Vietnam — is a less hierarchical and bureaucratic religion than most forms of Christianity. This is not to say that Buddhists are not well-organized when necessary, but the professional development jargon and aspirations of international NGOs have not yet found large numbers of converts among personalistic Buddhists. Permits for INGOs are issued by the People’s Aid Coordinating Committee (PACCOM), a “specialized and functional body” of the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organizations (VUFO), which has itself been assigned by the Committee for Foreign NGO Affairs (COMINGO) as “Executive Member [with] principal responsibility for aid mobilization and for relations with foreign NGOs.”12 Three different grades of permit are offered: Representative Office, Project Office and Operation (Regulations accompanying Decision 340, 1996). As of the end of 2004, only 46 organizations had been granted representative office status, 78 project offices, and 332 operations.13 Permits also indicate which provinces an organization is legally authorized to work in, and how many Vietnamese staff and expatriates they are entitled to employ. The vast majority of INGOs who have only operation permits are technically not entitled to hire Vietnamese staff or set up an office (1996 Guidelines), though this is almost never enforced in practice. More enforceable are limits on foreign staff (and international consultants and visitors), since PACCOM also sponsors entry visas for INGOs, and geographic restrictions, though some INGOs

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have skirted this issue by entering agreements directly at the provincial or local level (see below). This system has led to difficulties for some religious NGOs who believe that Vietnamese counterparts have placed obstacles in their path because of their history or affiliation. The level of permit granted by PACCOM grants certain legal privileges that make operation in Vietnam easier; this is particularly true at the representative office level. Up to now, PACCOM (and its supervisors in VUFO and COMINGO) have exercised a significant amount of leeway in the processing and issuing of permits. Many organizations whose size and scope would seem to merit a representative office still hold permits at the project or operation level, and so forth. For instance, one large Christian NGO has been present in Vietnam for more than a decade and has carried out programmes valued in millions of U.S. dollars, yet for years had only an operation permit, finally upgraded to project office status several years ago. Although this organization’s permit only allowed it to work in several northern and north-central provinces, it has found ways to provide “non-project aid”, particularly disaster relief funds, to the centre and south as well, in the process opening up new relationships that are below the central level. Although this process led to some stress and tension in the organization’s relations with PACCOM, the situation has since improved and the organization feels it is in a stronger position than before (interview, June 2004). Other religious NGOs, meanwhile, say that they have had no difficulty in dealing with Vietnamese authorities. One representative points to the fact that non-religious groups also frequently have lower-level permits than expected and may face similar obstacles in attempting to expand to new regions of the country (interview, March 2004). Along with religion, factors of nationality and history may play a role in organizations’ relations with the government. In particular, those groups who worked alongside American troops and Vietnamese leaders in wartime South Vietnam were subjected to extra scrutiny and delays when they returned to work in reunified Vietnam in the 1990s.14 Although frustrating for staff who had nothing whatsoever to do with this period of history, this concern is understandable, especially when coming from the older generation. Over time, as these organizations have built up relationships and shown successful development results, suspicions have lessened. Many religious NGOs say that their relations with PACCOM and other authorities are much more cordial and smooth now than they were in the 1990s (interviews, 2004–2005).

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Category 1a. Organizations with no Religious Content to their Work These NGOs have a religious basis but no present or future aspirations to do religious work or traditional missionizing in Vietnam. Faith forms the motivation for the organization’s humanitarian development work, but has little to nothing to do with the daily life of either expatriate or Vietnamese staff, who may or may not be religious themselves. Rather than theology or religious practice, these organizations emphasize solidarity with the poor, eradication of poverty and disease, and sometimes voluntary service as key expressions of spirituality. As one might expect, they tend to be liberal or left-wing in political orientation and are predominantly European, along with some North American groups. In terms of organizational culture, there is often no substantial difference between these organizations and secular development NGOs such as Oxfam or CARE. Their work is often highly appreciated by local partners, development professionals, and the Vietnamese Government. An added aspect of these organizations’ emphasis on works, not faith, is that they do not discriminate among aid beneficiaries. Some NGOs may take this to an extreme, specifically not wanting to assist people from their faith background for fear of being misunderstood or labelled. Vietnamese project staff of one organization describe how when they first went to conduct an appraisal in a new province, the provincial Foreign Relations staff took them at first only to Catholic villages, in the belief that since the organization is Christian, they must want to help other Christians. The project officers, who are non-religious, explained patiently that no, the NGO wished to assist people in the poorest communes, regardless of religion. Finally, the province relented (interview, 1998). Organizations of this type tend to have few contacts with Vietnamese religious leaders and believers, or if they do, they are on a somewhat cold and distant level. On their part, Vietnamese religious counterparts sometimes feel that NGOs are too closely aligned with the government and not responsive enough to the needs of their communities. “I know that we have an organization up there in Hanoi,” says one leader in the central region. “But they’ve never come here, and I haven’t met them” (interview, May 2005). NGOs, in return, do not always trust the motives of Vietnamese religious leaders, for instance complaining that some Vietnamese Catholics “act as if Vatican II never happened” (interview, March 2004). A Protestant NGO representative says, “I’ve never been to the [Protestant] church here. It’s not my style, and I’m not sure I’d feel

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welcome” (interview, April 2004). All of these views may be valid, yet they combine to make communication and cooperation difficult. Since engaging with religious groups in Vietnam is not the purpose of these organizations’ presence in Vietnam, however, this shortcoming takes little away from the overall effectiveness of their development work.

Case Study A.

Devolving to National NGOs

Organization A is an international Catholic development coalition, headquartered in Europe and founded during the height of the Vietnam War to assist victims on all sides of the conflict. It was one of the first INGOs to establish operations in Vietnam in the late 1980s in the early years of Ðởi Mới and engaged primarily in agriculture and irrigation projects, managed by long-term, capable Vietnamese staff, most of whom are not Catholic. In 1997, the board of directors took the far-reaching decision to dissolve itself at a future date and replace offices in each country with independent, indigenous NGOs. This process took years to complete. In Vietnam, staff decided to divide operations into two national NGOs, each of which is to begin separate work at the end of 2005. Neither has any religious affiliation. Organization A’s transformation is an unusual and significant step in the development of civil society in Vietnam. What is surprising is that the question of religious identity does not seem to have been an issue at any stage in the process. In a two-hour dissemination meeting led by the outgoing expatriate director and the two appointed leaders of the new Vietnamese organizations in June 2005, religion did not come up until the very end, when the representative of another religious NGO asked about it. The outgoing director replied that the organization’s church affiliation is “very low profile”. Its mission statement mentions “Christian values” but perhaps because they felt the church in Vietnam was a sensitive topic, they went no further than that. The new organizations will have no institutional connection to Catholic organizations in or outside Vietnam, though they may continue to be funded by European Catholic donors, at least in the immediate term. In other words, since Organization A has no religious purpose or content to its work, it can accept secularization with equanimity, feeling that any loss is far outweighed by the addition of two new Vietnamese NGOs to that growing community. The directors of the new organizations say that

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Case Study A.

(cont’d )

Case Study B. Humanitarian servicelevel and will religious freedom their local project partners at commune probably see no difference Organization B is a North American development agency with at all in ongoing work. This is reasonable, given that the sameaffiliated non-religious aVietnamese small Protestant denomination. Like Organization A, it was one of the staff will be managing the projects. firstThere INGOs to set up an office in Vietnam after the war. It works primarily is a great deal of discussion in the NGO community at present in thedecentralization north, with a few projects in of one southern Most province as religious well. Its about and localization operations. INGOs, organizational culture is strongly consistent with the values of the church, or not, are unlikely to follow Organization A’s lead. For those with a stronger and the organization is widely respected for its humanitarian work. religious identity, the only way they could nationalize would be if they had During the 20th century, missionaries came to Vietnam set up a number Vietnamese religious staff in leadership positions. Mostand organizations have of churches in the center and south of the country, although the chosen to hire on the basis of skill and experience, not faith. membership The pattern remained The churches were closed after 1975, but overseeing Vietnamesea of one or asmall. few (religious, usually male) expatriate managers believers continued to worship privately. It is a testimony to their and larger (non-religious, mostly female) Vietnamese staff is likely to faith continue perseverance that the denomination is now larger in Vietnam than it was for some time to come. at the end of the war, even though it has never gained official recognition.

Case Study B.

Humanitarian Service and Religious Freedoms

Organization B is a North American development agency affiliated with a small Protestant denomination. Like Organization A, it was one of the first INGOs to set up an office in Vietnam after the war. It works primarily in the north, with a few projects in one southern province as well. Its organizational culture is strongly consistent with the values of the church, and the organization is widely respected for its humanitarian work. During the twentieth century, missionaries came to Vietnam and set up a number of churches in the centre and south of the country, although the membership remained small. The churches were closed after 1975, but Vietnamese believers continued to worship privately. It is a testimony to their faith and perseverance that the denomination is now larger in Vietnam than it was at the end of the war, even though it has not yet gained official recognition. Since 2001, some senior Vietnamese members and clergy in some, but not all, areas of the country have been detained and jailed by the government. This has raised strong concern among North American believers, who are distressed by these apparent violations of religious freedom. Organization B has had little contact with the indigenous Vietnamese church over the years, preferring to focus on its development work. When the local church’s conflicts with the government came into the open, this put Organization B in a difficult position — not, interestingly, with

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(cont’d)

the Vietnamese Government and its project partners, since these relationships had been close for years, and the organization is known and trusted. Rather, a crisis developed on the home front. Church members in North America called the headquarters demanding to know what Organization B was doing about “persecution in Vietnam”. Explanations that the religious freedom situation in Vietnam was complex and not as one-sided as portrayed in the overseas press did not suffice. As a result, in keeping with their culture and faith, leaders of Organization B have been engaging in quiet diplomacy with the government and saying little in public. In September 2005, the detained clergy were released in an amnesty; however, the denomination has not yet succeeded in achieving registered legal status with the government.

Organization B’s predicament illustrates one additional pitfall that religious NGOs sometimes face in Vietnam. For practical reasons, they may downplay their religious identity or shy away from contacts with local believers. Or, less commonly, staff in Vietnam are quite open about their identity and maintain that it is connected with their work, but that their purpose is simply not to proselytize. Either of these stances is consistent with Vietnamese law and practice. The difficulty is that their home offices, international fund-raising efforts, and websites often portray the situation differently: “Organization X shows God’s love in action.” “Organization Y shares experiences, resources and faith in Jesus Christ.” More evangelical organizations may face the same inconsistency, as their workers in Vietnam are described at home as “missionaries” while they are actually teaching English or helping disabled children. Of course, this could be considered as another type of “mission”, just a non-traditional one, but the churches who support the work of the “missionaries” may not be aware of, or appreciate, the distinction. Aside from the potential embarrassment and disconnect for the “missionary”, the gap between presentation at home and abroad probably does not cause any serious problems in most organizations’ work in Vietnam. The exception would be in a case like Organization B’s, when issues inside Vietnam come to the attention of the sending agency or overseas supporters — then serious explanations must be made.

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Category 1b. Organizations with Long-term Religious Objectives Religious NGOs in this grouping may not look much different on the outside from those described in the above category. Like them, they abide by Vietnamese law and customs and carry out humanitarian development and relief work together with government-affiliated partners. The difference is that while the previously-mentioned organizations are content with this arrangement, these groups are cooperating as part of a long-term strategy to introduce specific religious content into their work. Most organizations in this category do not presently work directly with church counterparts inside Vietnam, but they would welcome the opportunity to do so were it available. Catholic organizations tend to be more optimistic about the feasibility of such cooperation than their Protestant colleagues: at least one evangelical Protestant representative believes “it will never be allowed” under the current government (interview, March 2004). Several Catholics, however, describe unofficial, but condoned, non-project assistance to church communities in the areas where they work. One organization maintains a small project fund that is divided into small donations, usually without formal agreements or documentation. Another provides English classes (interviews, 2004). For Catholics, it is easy to identify which structures they would like to engage: there is only one Catholic church in Vietnam. The same holds for Buddhists — all recognized Buddhist temples are part of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha, with the exception of the minority, dissident Unified Buddhist Church mentioned above. For some Protestants, the issue is more complex. Legally, there is only one Evangelical Church in Vietnam, divided anachronistically between North and South. Neither branch is large, with the result that since “there are only a few Vietnamese Protestants, all the international groups are tripping over themselves to work with them” (interview, March 2004). As the main roots of the Evangelical Church in Vietnam are from the North American Christian and Missionary Alliance in the early twentieth century, those Protestant groups who come from different denominational backgrounds face the choice of cooperating with the legally registered church or seeking out remnants of pre-1975 denominations still living in central and southern Vietnam, often as unregistered house churches. In the long term, there may prove to be tension between a partnershipbased approach and one aiming to evangelize new churches. An alternative option is to work with individual Christians, rather than with church structures. Given that Vietnam is eight to ten per cent

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Christian overall, more in certain provinces, any population of development project beneficiaries is likely to include some Catholics and/or Protestants. There are no particular restrictions on religious organizations working with religious villagers. If organizations give (or are perceived as giving) preference to Christians over non-Christians, however, this can bring damaging unintended consequences, reinforcing stereotypes of “rice Christians”. One Vietnamese NGO staff with experience working with Christian organizations feels that although she is attracted to some aspects of the religion, it seems to her like an exclusive club run by and for the members, not for the wider society (interview, October 2003). No doubt most international Christian organizations would be horrified to hear themselves identified as elitist, but it is a common perception among non-religious Vietnamese. One international representative recounts a story of state-sponsored relief assistance being distributed in one flood-stricken province in 1999 to all villagers except the Christians, since they supposedly had international channels of aid to take care of themselves. This was not, in fact, true; the Christians were as poor as or poorer than anyone else (interview, June 2005). If an international agency does then step in and help the Christians, it confirms the discriminatory policy of the local government. Of course, such stereotypes do not arise out of nowhere: there have been numerous historical cases where aid has favoured Christians over others, particularly in pre-1975 South Vietnam. Fairly or unfairly, Christian NGOs in Vietnam must deal with the legacy of past injustices.

Case Study C.

Biding its Time

Organization C represents a conservative Protestant denomination; its Hanoi office is led by a pastor with long experience in Asia. The organization has a “clear missionary purpose…We don’t usually do solely humanitarian work, our intention is to be church.” In spite of this, the country representative says he has an unusually close relationship with Vietnamese partners, including the government. “As long as we promised not to open churches, they were fine with everything else. We tell our partners everything and stay within the law.” Unusually, the organization has no Vietnamese staff, only expatriates. According to the director, this has the advantage of not putting Vietnamese staff in a difficult position, and it means that the international staff relates to partners in Vietnamese government offices and institutes “as colleagues, not as the boss.”

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Case Study C.

(cont’d )

Organization C works in northern Vietnamese provinces with a heavy Catholic population. One district People’s Committee suggested they open projects in several poorer Catholic villages. Central-level government counterparts were suspicious of this at first, but now are no longer concerned. Perhaps because of its sectarian Protestant basis, Organization C has not pushed hard to have the Catholic church participate in projects. Once, staff asked about contributing to renovating an old church and were told that was no problem as a private donation, but not as an organization. The operating environment for Organization C has widened considerably since it first arrived in Vietnam in the mid-1990s. The representative feels that this is a positive development, but it is also in some ways more dangerous, since at the present time it is not always clear where the boundaries are. The organization has been visited by the police several times, but this has never led to any difficulties. The environment is “a swinging door, sometimes open, sometimes closed….The problem is that some people want to push it open.” “Evangelization and church planting are not possible in Vietnam now,” the representative continues. “We accept that, and we play by the rules. We believe in being open and transparent about our actions. We will eventually see the fruit of our labor, even if there are a lot of lean years without noticeable results. What we do is a Christian ministry, even if we don’t convert people. God has universal grace.” Yet the representative feels personally frustrated that he is unable to use his theological training to teach, as he would like to do. He is, however, active as a leader of one of the international Christian congregations in Hanoi.

Category 1c. Registered NGOs with Immediate Religious Objectives This category is virtually a null set. As described in Part I, Vietnamese law and practice proscribe proselytizing and direct religious operations. Organization C’s experience shows that Vietnamese government counterparts will accept most any structure or names for registered NGOs, as long as they stay away from acting like a church. Nevertheless, over the last decade of international NGO presence in Vietnam, there have been several organizations that tried to have it both ways. One is a Protestant sect considered extreme by many other Christians; another is a para-church service agency. In the latter case, it was specific unusual characteristics of

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the group’s dress and behaviour that led to its rejection by the Vietnamese authorities. In the first, the church opened an office of its lesser-known service and charity branch in Vietnam, rather than its more common direct missionary efforts. At one time, there were as many as twenty expatriate volunteers living in a house in Hanoi, most engaged in English teaching as their profession. Traditional mission activities, however, went on under the surface. After one investigation, the number of staff was reduced to two, an elderly couple; the office then closed for good several years later. Since that time, the organization has made repeated efforts to re-enter Vietnam,15 all of them unsuccessful to date. In this case, the line in the sand was quite clear, and the organization nevertheless stepped over it — whether intentionally or not.

Unregistered Religious Organizations in Vietnam These organizations have no formal presence in Vietnam. Aside from this, they may look exactly like registered organizations on the outside: many groups in this category are legitimate, legal entities in their home country and other countries, where they might work as NGOs or missionaries. Some groups may, indeed, be in the process of registering in Vietnam — a procedure that can take time and repeated visits before setting up a formal project and obtaining a permit. Other organizations have made conscious decisions not to apply for legal status, but rather, work through informal means. They may send people in and out of Vietnam on tourist or business visas. While in Vietnam, they may meet with Vietnamese and international partners who are legally registered. It is important to clarify that unregistered does not necessarily equal illegal. As will be shown in the examples below, many activities of unregistered organizations are perfectly legal, even encouraged by the state. The legal analysis in Part I shows that in some respects, unregistered organizations have more freedom to operate than those bound by the regulations governing INGO project funds.

Category 2a. Unregistered Organizations Funding Charitable Projects This is the primary legal avenue for contributions from unregistered groups. This includes virtually all foundations and private donors supporting activities in Vietnam, as well as many NGOs. For instance, several European Catholic organizations without offices in Vietnam serve as

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donors for projects of those who do. Individual dioceses, denominations, churches and temples, and other religious associations also fund relief and development efforts on their own. One of the primary advantages that these organizations cite — and use as a basis for fund-raising — is that they do not have to pay administrative and overhead costs for an office or staff in Vietnam. Instead, all, or almost all, of the funds they raise go directly to assist beneficiaries, either directly or via a Vietnamese partner (such as, for instance, the Red Cross, or a Catholic diocese). This arrangement is particularly attractive to some overseas Vietnamese who retain a suspicion that the government extracts a commission from aid that passes through legal NGOs (it does not) or is prone to corruption (it is). Of course, the counter-argument is that local beneficiaries can also engage in corruption, and that it is easier to guard against such misuse of funds if the donor is present to oversee distribution. There are no figures, official or otherwise, regarding the number of unregistered charitable groups or the amount of assistance they give. Charitable religious assistance might be best thought of as a sub-set of remittances from overseas Vietnamese, since the vast majority of such funds come through family members or villagers returning from overseas. In overseas Vietnamese communities, such assistance has long taken place informally, often hand-carried into Vietnam (and, if carrying more than the legal limit of US$3,000 per person, stitched into luggage and undergarments) by one family member to distribute to relatives and neighbours. Given the importance of temples and churches in traditional Vietnamese villages, these buildings were often the first to be repaired, even before family homes. This pattern has changed in several ways in recent years. One, relations between Vietnamese overseas and the Vietnamese state have mellowed to the point where many overseas Vietnamese are now willing to donate through open channels. At the same time, procedures for sending funds have been simplified and made more transparent. Official remittances totalled US$3.8 billion in 2004,16 roughly 10 per cent of Vietnam’s GDP. The actual amount remitted, including hand-carried gifts, is probably at least twice that. Outside Vietnam, communities have matured and prospered, with more money to donate and increased sophistication in fund-raising. In the United States, a conference of forty to fifty Vietnamese-American development

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organizations met for the first time in May 2004 to discuss cooperation and information-sharing; this included several groups with a religious basis. In another example of international networking, the archdiocese of Ho Chi Minh City convened a consultation of overseas Catholic donors with an interest in providing support for the care and treatment of HIVAIDS patients through the church. The conference was carried out with the cooperation and support of local government officials.

Case Study D.

Support to Leprosy Patients

Organization D was founded by a Vietnamese-American priest who returned to visit his family and was “led by the grace of God to discover a group of social outcasts living remotely in squalor and isolation on the outskirts of the village…totally devoid of human dignity.” The men and women were suffering from leprosy. The priest enlisted the sponsorship of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith from his local diocese in the United States and founded a volunteer organization to support lepers across Vietnam. The organization’s logo shows a map of Vietnam superimposed over a yellow cross. Over the years, Organization D has, according to their website, “installed water wells with electric pumps for many villages, created childcare centres, constructed classrooms, and provided daily medication and basic sustenance for invalids.” In 2004, US$40,000 in contributions went to communities in seven provinces in all regions of the country. There is no Vietnamese partner except for the beneficiary villages themselves. The organization is completely funded by individual and church contributions. It has no salaried staff and no operating costs except for fund-raising. (It is unclear how travel to Vietnam is financed.) In any case, Organization D states proudly that “a maximum of the funds received is put into the places they are needed, and then performance is subsequently verified.”

Category 2b. Unregistered Organizations Funding Religious Activities These organizations are similar in type to those engaged in charitable work, and there is some overlap between the two categories, particularly

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in the area of supporting temple- and church-based social programmes. As mentioned above in Part I, these programmes, and foreign donations to them, are now fully legal, recognizing a reality that has existed in Vietnam for some time, particularly in the south. Of more questionable legality are contributions to unregistered religious groups in Vietnam. If these remain at the level of individual-to-individual transfers of funds or equipment, they are probably legal and unlikely to attract official scrutiny, unless the unregistered group is perceived to be involved in “illegal activities”. As long as the definition and scope of what is legal for Vietnamese religious groups is unclear, therefore, there will be some uncertainty about international funding for their activities. In any case, unregistered foreign organizations engaging in this type of support are unlikely to quibble too much about legal details in Vietnam, as long as the support reaches its destination. Probably the majority of such funding goes for construction and renovation costs for religious buildings, and this is uncontroversial. One foreign Catholic priest living in Vietnam notes, “Almost every international Catholic organization is giving donations of some kind, supporting their counterparts. There’s no way to measure the size of this, but it is large. The police are aware, of course, but they don’t clamp down on it….A lot of the money for church buildings comes from Việt kiều. This is especially true in the south, where things are generally more relaxed” (interview, March 2004). Among Buddhists, one overseas Vietnamese practitioner says that donations to Vietnam are “mostly by locality, based on where your family’s origin is. This is seen as a form of community good works as well as religion — in fact, the community contribution is probably more important than the religion for many people” (interview, June 2005). Contributions from abroad are currently being used to support construction of religious establishments, publishing of religious books and scriptures, and domestic and overseas training of clergy and staff. An official of the Government Committee on Religious Affairs confirms that the amount of foreign assistance to religious groups in Vietnam is “large, probably the majority of all contributions they receive. Vietnamese people can only contribute to a certain level. How else could all of the new and reconstructed temples and churches be financed?” (interview, July 2005). Few of these donations are recorded, and the Government Committee on Religious Affairs does not attempt to track them. As with charitable

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contributions, the scale of religious assistance is perhaps best approximated as a percentage of remittances sent from overseas Vietnamese to family members. Even if only 3 per cent of the recorded remittances are used for religious purposes, a very conservative estimate, this totals US$100 million — nearly as much as the total of all INGO annual budgets. One international expert estimates that 90 per cent of all informal religious assistance is family- or community-based, originating from overseas Vietnamese who support projects in their villages or areas of origin (interview, June 2005). Contributions are rarely recognized publicly, and receive no coverage in the Vietnamese press. The most honour that contributors receive might be a plaque or picture inside the building or organization they helped support. Larger projects are funded on an organization-to-organization basis. To cite one example, the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha is currently constructing a new national institute in Sóc Sơn district outside Hanoi. The estimated cost of the centre is 200 billion đồng (US$12.6 million), to be funded by “donations from Buddhists from within the country and abroad”.17 This captures the gap between restrictions and reality: when the institute is complete, foreign Buddhists will be welcome to visit and attend activities there, perhaps even to teach classes with prior approval. And despite current law, there will surely be joint projects between the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha and Buddhist organizations in other countries; it is only a matter of time.

Case Study E.

Funds For Temple Construction

Organization E is an overseas Vietnamese Buddhist temple, founded by a nun who left Vietnam and resettled abroad after 1975. The temple was named after a temple in her home community. The nun and other members of the temple kept in touch with relatives still in Vietnam, and eventually the temple overseas was recognized as a branch of the original one with the same name. When the temple in Vietnam requested funds to repair and improve its buildings, the overseas temple sent the nun to bring their offerings for the construction. The temple is not really an organization in the Western sense of the term. Much of the contact back and forth depends on the vision and determination of a single woman. At most, the nun might meet with the

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Case Study E.

(cont’d )

local Buddhist Association when she visits Vietnam. The temple also has connections with Buddhists in Taiwan and Japan, and these relationships are visible in the temple. But none of the overseas contacts has any organizational presence in Vietnam. Not having an organization is not necessarily a disadvantage for Temple E. It gives them more flexibility in their actions. None of their activities are illegal, but they are still monitored to make sure they do not cross over the line into political advocacy. Aside from this, there is no limit on international cooperation or funding.

Category 2c. Organizations Sending Missionaries, Volunteers and Service Workers This broad category covers a range of foreign individuals who are affiliated with foreign religious organizations and come to Vietnam under other legal auspices. The amount of affiliation can vary widely. Some individuals are hired or commissioned by religious groups overseas on a salaried or stipend basis, perhaps with the task of exploring future options in Vietnam if the organization does not yet have contacts there. Others come entirely on their own, representing only themselves, or claiming to. “One type of missionaries comes under false pretenses, using a variety of fronts to work with the underground [Protestant] church,” says one respondent. “Their system is often very decentralized, so that if one person gets kicked out it doesn’t affect the structure. For institutions like churches, this is a much bigger deal since it affects the whole organization” (interview, April 2004). For short-term visits, tourist visas are the easiest type to obtain. Those staying longer typically obtain business or student visas. Business visas can be purchased easily from a number of brokers in and outside Vietnam, but this opens the holder to the risk of not knowing who his or her actual sponsor is. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some foreigners who have thought they were losing their visas for religious reasons might actually have been the victim of unrelated complications, such as not informing their visa sponsor of their actual work in Vietnam, or of corruption investigations against the sponsor within the Vietnamese system (interview, June 2005).

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Some evangelical Protestants use the term “tentmaker” to describe individuals who come to Vietnam to work legally while engaging in private mission activities on the side. (The term comes from St Paul, who sewed and sold tents to support himself on his travels.) The classic tentmaker job is as an English teacher, since native speakers are in high demand in Vietnamese schools. Unless the teacher makes a valiant effort to learn Vietnamese and break out of an English-speaking environment, efforts at witnessing run the risk of further confusion of Christianity with Western culture. Overseas Vietnamese and Asian Christians are less likely to face this difficulty, and may be more effective as a result. Among Catholics, religious orders send lay missioners and clergy into communities primarily in southern Vietnam. Of the dozens of Catholic orders, most have some presence in Vietnam; one survey of religions in Vietnam lists twenty-three orders as of 1998.18 Many orders have specific connections with foreign countries, based on pre-1975 provinces and divisions; there is a much heavier presence in the south. One French lay organization has a number of Vietnamese communities, living simply and working with the poor. A European priest comes and visits from time to time (interview, March 2004). A better-known religious order currently has two overseas Vietnamese lay missioners working as volunteers in social service and rehabilitation centres outside Ho Chi Minh City (interview, August 2003). Some Catholic religious congregations, seeing that Vietnam (unlike many Western countries) is fertile ground for vocations, come trying to recruit members and set up local communities. This is not quite the same as proselytizing, since the targets are already Catholic. But it can lead to misunderstanding with authorities who do not understand what religious orders are and believe they are setting up foreign groups (interview, March 2004).19

Category 2d. Training Vietnamese Religious Believers, in or outside Vietnam The 2004 Ordinance on Religion and Belief, and the 2005 Decree elaborating on it, both allow for increased exchange between (registered) Vietnamese and (unregistered) international religious organizations. Section 8 of the decree outlines specific procedures for inviting foreign dignitaries to teach in Vietnam and sending Vietnamese to study religion abroad. It then adds a large exception, which is that “in other cases that Vietnamese religious believers and dignitaries travel abroad, they should

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follow Vietnamese immigration laws” [unofficial translation]. This implicitly allows for much more overseas training than has taken place to date, though it is too early to see the results of implementation of the decree. Most Vietnamese citizens, except those under some form of administrative probation, can obtain passports relatively easily. In some cases, the greater obstacle is obtaining visas in receiving countries, especially to Europe and the United States (interviews, 2005). It is reasonable to expect that the number of Vietnamese religious studying outside the country will increase rapidly in the near future, as quickly or more so than Vietnamese students of other types. Many religious groups are also sending short-term teachers into Vietnam. One Catholic order sends Asian and European priests and nuns from communities in Cambodia and other regional countries to lead short-term formation and training courses for Vietnamese seminarians (interview, September 2004). As with missionary efforts described above, overseas Vietnamese and Asian teachers carry distinct advantages in communication and their lower profile to authorities.

Case Study F.

Bringing Vietnamese Buddhism Back to Vietnam

The visit of “Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh”, as he is described in the Vietnamese press, was the most significant religious event in Vietnam in 2005. Not only is the monk a captivating speaker and presence, he brought along an entourage of 200 practitioners of mindfulness from around the world, including Western Buddhist monks and nuns. Nothing of the sort had been seen in Vietnam before. During his three months in Vietnam, Thích Nhất Hạnh taught in temples and schools across the country. He also gave several talks in English, including one at the Goethe Institut in Hanoi, standing room only to at least 200 participants. Towards the end of his visit, supporters rented the main ballroom of a five-star high-rise hotel in Hanoi. Thích Nhất Hạnh spoke in English inside the ballroom to 500 listeners, while several hundred Vietnamese sat on the floor in the hallway inside and watched a close-circuit video with simultaneous translation. Not only were no questions asked about the rental, but the hotel offered a discount. The visit would not have been possible without a long period of preparation. Thích Nhất Hạnh could have returned to Vietnam much earlier on a private visit, but without permission to teach publicly along

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(cont’d )

with his followers. He waited patiently until his conditions were met. In the meantime, Vietnamese Buddhists began to come to study at the Plum Village community in southern France, bringing the ideas and books of this overseas Vietnamese Buddhist back to Vietnam, where they had not been heard for decades. When Thích Nhất Hạnh returned to France in April 2005, he left no new organization or representative office behind in Vietnam. Cooperation will continue organically, perhaps even a resurgence of Vietnamese Buddhism.

Category 2e. Organizations with Combined Religious and Political Motivations Many religious organizations take political positions from time to time, such as opposition or support for wars or other policies of their home governments. This category refers only to those organizations that take clear political positions against the Vietnamese government, or positions that the Vietnamese Government construes as oppositional even if not directly intended as such. Without exception, these groups have historical roots dating from the Vietnam War and immediate post-war period and maintain a Cold War-era anti-Communist spirit. Some are continuations of religious groups in the former South Vietnam who fled overseas after 1975, while others were set up in response to refugee movements and Vietnamese government policies. From the Vietnamese Government’s point of view, these groups are “enemies [who] always use religion to divide our nation” (Mai Thành Hải 1998). One government official believes that while oppositional religious groups comprise only a small minority of overseas Vietnamese, those without goodwill will never change their views, regardless of the actual situation inside the country (interview, July 2005). For instance, one overseas Buddhist advocacy group attempted to influence the return visit of Thích Nhất Hạnh, distributing a press release alleging that the monk had been stopped from visiting certain dissident Vietnamese Buddhists. The allegations appeared to be untrue and were denied by Thích Nhất Hạnh and his followers. The same Buddhist organization has regularly testified before Congressional committees in Washington, as

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well as the Congressionally-mandated U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, asserting a right to speak for Buddhists inside Vietnam who would otherwise be voiceless. Politicized groups have faced additional restrictions on their attempts to provide charitable and religious assistance inside Vietnam. One international Buddhist group, for instance, was blocked from distributing assistance following flooding in 1999. The situation may have changed enough since 1999, however, that even a perceived anti-government group that wished to distribute assistance quietly, instead of drawing international press attention to its actions, might well be allowed to go ahead and do so, depending on the context. In any case, the political posture of the group is far more important than a religious affiliation.

Case Study G.

Using Religious Freedom for Political Ends

Organization G is an overseas Vietnamese service organization in the United States, founded by a dynamic young doctor, a Catholic who left Vietnam as a “boat person”. Like some, but not all, Vietnamese community groups in his part of the United States, Organization G takes a politicized, anti-communist approach to its activities, such as advocating for local recognition of the pre-1975 South Vietnamese flag. It has been known to engage in “red-baiting” of other organizations that do not agree with its political agenda. Around five years ago, Organization G and other like-minded Vietnamese-Americans identified religion as a key pressure point against the Vietnamese Government. In December 2000, Organization G’s director began a persistent campaign to involve American religious and human rights organizations in a campaign for religious freedom in Vietnam, centring on the case of a Catholic priest whose actions were being restricted by the government. Perhaps for legal or tax reasons, these efforts were then separated from Organization G to form a new committee focusing specifically on religious freedom. At the time that the campaign began, the priest inside Vietnam had not yet been placed under arrest; several months later, he was. While all indications are that the priest was a willing participant in the campaign, his arrest and subsequent trial and imprisonment were anticipated by Organization G and used to their full political potential. The campaign effectively exploited residual anti-communism and emotions

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(cont’d )

from the Vietnam War, combined with the increased attention in Washington towards religious freedom as “the first freedom” (George W. Bush), higher and distinct even from other civil and political rights. These efforts culminated in the State Department’s listing of Vietnam as a “country of particular concern” for religious freedom in September 2004. The Vietnamese Catholic priest was released in an amnesty in January 2005, but Organization G’s efforts continue. Its name and activities are little known in Vietnam.

Case Study H.

Rebellion in the Highlands

Far better known, and demonized, inside Vietnam than Organization G, this group is the primary overseas base for “Dega Protestantism” in the Central Highlands. It arose out of an alliance between refugees from a number of ethnic groups in the highlands together with U.S. Special Forces and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) veterans who supported them during the Vietnam War. Few of the highlanders were Protestants before 1975. Since then, conversions among refugees in the United States and among dissatisfied groups remaining in Vietnam have brought about a rapid spread of the religion. Many different Protestant groups operate in the highlands, some of them with strong international backing. Of these, “Dega Protestantism” combines ethnic nationalism with millennial Christianity, a difficult combination for Vietnamese officials to swallow. (The term “Dega” was coined by FULRO activists in the 1960s as a collective name for ethnic groups in the Central Highlands.) With a presence centred in two conservative southern U.S. states, Organization H has marshalled strong support and resources for a series of uprisings in the highlands since 2001, which it has described as “our peaceful demonstrations”. These movements have been suppressed by Vietnamese authorities, and some highlanders who participated in them have sought asylum in Cambodia, or according to reports circulating inside Vietnam, been coerced by Organization H into fleeing. Demonstrators are also said to have been paid or misled by agents of Organization H into taking part in the unrest in the first place. Organization H denies these charges.

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Case Study H.

(cont’d)

Regardless of the exact breakdown of ethnic, religious and land issues that have fueled unrest in the highlands, both supporters and detractors of Organization H credit it with a significant role in supporting and publicizing conditions there. In the early years of disturbances, many observers believed that Vietnamese authorities restricted all forms of Protestantism in the Central Highlands, lumping them together with the Dega movement. Recently, the government has attempted to distinguish among Protestants, giving strong condemnation only to Dega Protestantism and Organization H. The Prime Minister’s February 2005 instructions on Protestantism, while seeking to “establish advantageous conditions for ethnic compatriots to carry out normal religious activities”, specifically does not apply to “members of FULRO [or]… of ‘Dega Protestantism’ (which is really an organization of FULRO reactionaries)”.20 Organization H continues to be blamed for instigating unrest in the highlands and carrying out illegal religious activities, even if the reality is more complex.

The activities of Organizations G and H, as well as the international Buddhist organizations mentioned above, may seem far removed from the reality of most foreign religious groups operating in Vietnam. These examples are included here, however, because they are never far from the minds of Vietnamese officials who are forming religious policy. It is not mere paranoia that results in some religious groups being labeled as “enemies” or “reactionaries”: in some cases, religious and political motivations really are mixed. Of course, harsh Vietnamese responses to provocations have played directly into the hands of the foreign advocates, who then use (and sometimes exaggerate) the crackdown to build support for their views. The primary impact on other foreign religious groups, whether registered or unregistered, has been to muddy the waters, as less sophisticated officials have been unable, or unwilling, to distinguish among religious groups with and without political agendas. Whatever the intentions of political activists, conflicts over religious freedom have done at least temporary harm to the interests of those humanitarian and missionary groups who hope to build relationships with the authorities — or simply be left alone.

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Associations of Expatriates in Vietnam A final category of foreign religious organizations comprises a few groups formed in Vietnam by and largely for expatriates already living there. These groups have no legal status, being neither international NGOs nor businesses. Nor do they have any formal Vietnamese counterpart organization to turn to. They exist informally, with the knowledge and tacit acquiescence of local authorities who, in some cases, rent them space to hold meetings and religious services. As noted above, these are considered as private “individuals” under Vietnamese law, and hence able to carry out a somewhat wider scope of religious activities than INGOs.

Category 3a. International Places of Worship This category includes international churches and several mosques that exist in set locations with fixed worship schedules. Smaller groups of foreigners may, and do, meet independently in private homes, but these are not public organizations of the same type. To the author’s knowledge, there are no separate international Buddhist events in Vietnam; foreign Buddhists take part freely in Vietnamese temple activities. Several Catholic churches — Saigon Cathedral and Cửa Bắc in Hanoi — hold weekly bilingual masses in Vietnamese and English or French. Small mosques serve the foreign Islamic communities in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Of the six separate international Christian congregations known to the author (three in Hanoi, two in Ho Chi Minh City, and one in Danang), only one — a Korean Protestant group in Hanoi — meets in a “lawful actual place of worship in Vietnam” (1999 Circular), namely the Hàng Da Tin Lành Church. (A second group of Koreans uses the former Grace Baptist Church in Saigon.) Three of the others rent space in hotels, and one meets in a private home. The two larger evangelical Christian groups, as well as the Korean churches, have permanent pastors. International religious groups formed organically in the mid-1990s as large numbers of foreign diplomats, businesspeople, and development workers began living in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City for the first time since reunification. As most such foreign residents come for relatively short periods and do not speak Vietnamese, language has been a primary factor in the desire for separate worship rather than inclusion with existing Vietnamese religious groups. Secondary reasons may include theological differences, social activities, and perceptions of religious relations at the

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time. Foreign Protestants from denominational backgrounds quite distinct from the Christian and Missionary Alliance style of worship, for instance, might feel less than comfortable in many Evangelical Church services in Vietnam. Some Catholics meanwhile find Vietnamese churches, with their usual segregation of men and women and distant clergy, to be too strict compared with practices in their home countries. Vietnamese Christians, on their part, might have their own reasons for wanting, or not wanting, foreign visitors to attend their churches. As long as membership consists entirely of non-Vietnamese, foreign congregations can safely assume that they will receive little notice from the authorities. Vietnamese spouses of foreign Christians have also attended services for years without any questions being asked. Individual Vietnamese are potentially in a more precarious situation, as is any Vietnamese who takes part in a non-registered religious activity. Legally speaking, since no foreign church or congregation has official status, any group could be closed down at any time. The presence of international churches serves an ambiguous function in religious policy. Most Vietnamese are not aware of these groups’ existence, since they do not build churches or own property of their own. However, they could serve to reinforce existing perceptions of Christianity as a “foreign” religion or provide a rationale for separating Vietnamese and nonVietnamese Christians. Those individual Vietnamese who do participate in international churches, at some risk to themselves, clearly do so for cultural and linguistic reasons as well as religious ones, since if they were only interested in religious practice there are plenty of Vietnamese churches to choose from where they would potentially attract less attention.

Case Study J.

An International Ecumenical Church

Organization J formed in the early 1990s in Hanoi, meeting originally in a United Nations apartment building and later moving to rent space in a government-owned hotel complex that also houses offices of a number of international NGOs. Two INGOs took leadership roles at the outset, one Catholic and one Protestant. The church grew rapidly to over 100 members, all English-speaking but coming from a variety of national origins, including North Americans, Europeans, Australians, and Asians. However, most of the leadership of the congregation was, and still is, American.

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(cont’d )

Several years after the church formed, it divided in two, with a more contemporary, evangelical-oriented group moving to a larger hotel location and an ecumenical, liturgical group remaining in the original location. The few members remaining from this time recall that it was difficult, but soon afterwards the two branches returned to amicable, if sometimes distant, co-existence, and agreed to occasionally worship together on holidays and special occasions. The evangelical fellowship has continued to grow over the years, approaching a smaller version of an American evangelical “megachurch”. The more traditional church has shrunk in size to a membership of forty to fifty, with some Catholics preferring to attend bilingual services at a Vietnamese Catholic church and some Koreans moving to the Korean Protestant congregation. As in many other parts of the world, as well, the evangelicals have proven to be more outgoing and effective at recruiting new members. The ecumenical church continued to be led by one Catholic priest and one Protestant who left the country to study for ordination and then returned as co-pastor. The church practices open communion, even though both denominations of the leaders do not normally allow this. Sermons and service leading are rotated on a voluntary basis among members, a process that is sometimes disorganized to the point of chaos. Most members dress casually. Vietnamese visitors have sometimes expressed shock at how little the group resembles their picture of church. Several, however, have stayed and become active members of the congregation. Over the years, the congregation has become less self-conscious about its identity and place in Vietnam. Issues dealing directly with Vietnamese society and religion are rarely discussed in sermons or prayers; the focus is on personal and community concerns. Decisions are made by general consensus of members. One current issue facing the congregation is whether to move to a new location; however, so far no appropriate venue has been identified. One large international NGO suggested that its meeting room could be appropriate, but the building’s private landlord was unwilling to take the step of hosting an informal religious gathering. Despite this, the congregation has never experienced difficulties with the government, although some of its members work for Christian NGOs who have. Both this church and its larger sibling raise significant (for Vietnam) amounts of money through offerings. After paying the overhead and low operating costs for the groups, they donate these funds to Vietnamese

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Case Study J.

(cont’d )

charities. Recent contributions from the ecumenical church have supported an orphanage and a transition house for juvenile delinquents and recovering drug addicts. This forms a small part of the larger picture of foreign religious contributions for humanitarian activities.

There appears to be no limitation on international worship groups advertising or announcing their services to other foreigners. Two churches in Hanoi have posted signs, obtained listings in tourist magazines, and/or printed invitation cards for distribution. In Ho Chi Minh City, one larger evangelical/charismatic church began in early 2005 to take out quarterpage ads in the English-language Việt Nam News, announcing “Sunday Celebration Services” with inspirational sermon titles. Interestingly, the words “Christian” and “church” do not appear on the ads, which look remarkably similar to adjacent promotions for Sunday brunch at five-star hotels. Recent ads have noted that attendance at the church is “free of charge” (!). Unlike others in this category, this fellowship has begun to hold separate English and Vietnamese-language services, with the English services marked as “for foreigners”. All of this was done with the knowledge and tolerance of local authorities. In September 2005, however, the Ho Chi Minh City fellowship’s hotel rental agreement was abruptly cancelled by local authorities. The final straw did not appear to be the newspaper advertisements or the Vietnamese-language services, but rather an attempt to rent the hotel pool for a mass baptism on Vietnam’s National Day. Following the loss of the hotel lease, the Ho Chi Minh City Religious Affairs Bureau and members of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South) offered the international fellowship a rental arrangement in an existing Vietnamese Protestant church building — an offer which the international church leaders refused, asserting their right to worship where and how they wish. At present, members of the fellowship are meeting privately in smaller groups until a resolution is found. Foreigners participating in other international congregations, such as Organization J in the above case study, have expressed concern about the situation in Ho Chi Minh City but have not been affected by it directly.

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Category 3b. Cultural Associations These are non-religious clubs of expatriates that meet for cultural, social and entertainment purposes. Legally and organizationally they are no different from international churches and religious groups, including fundraising efforts. They are included as a category here because members’ interest in Vietnamese culture sometimes includes involvement in religious activities. Since these activities are carried out under the rubric of “culture,” they are entirely uncontroversial, while a religious group engaging in the same activities for “religious” reasons might attract more attention. Hence an additional paradox: non-religious groups have relatively more leeway to engage in religious activities than overtly religious organizations have.

Case Study K. A Non-Religious Organization Involved in Religious Activities Organization K formed in 2001 as a loose network of several dozen expatriates in Hanoi with an interest in historic preservation, art, and travel. It now includes more than 700 people on its mailing list, with weekly activities scheduled that include lectures, walking tours, excursions, and film showings. Several sub-groups meet regularly to discuss specific topics. Like other groups of expatriates, Organization K has no legal status; it exists with the knowledge and support of the Ministry of Culture and Information and the Hanoi city cultural authorities. Early in its existence, interested members of Organization K formed a Buddhism Study Group. The group invited experts to give lectures on Vietnamese Buddhism and visited temples and pagodas across the north, particularly focusing on those in Hanoi. Some members of the sub-group consider themselves Buddhists, while others do not. In autumn 2003, owing to personal contacts of one member, the group took part in its first full meditation day at a temple on the outskirts of Hanoi. The meditation was led by a young nun who had recently returned from study at Plum Village, Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Buddhist community in southern France. This event was well attended by members of Organization K as well as Buddhists from the local villages near the temple. Meditation days began to be held on a monthly basis in two temples. Initially, most teaching was in Vietnamese only; later, English translation began to be provided.

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Case Study K.

(cont’d)

When Thích Nhất Hạnh visited Vietnam in early 2005, Organization K was well-positioned to serve as an informal local host. The Buddhism Study Group organized the public lectures in several locations described above. Organization K’s president says that they had no difficulties in arranging these sessions. They would not have been able to rent government property, but private locations were no problem. (Interestingly, this is the opposite of the situation facing Organization J above.) Without setting out to engage in religious activities or challenge the limits of foreign religious activity in Vietnam, thus, Organization K succeeded in hosting probably the largest and highest-profile audience to hear a foreign religious leader ever in Vietnam.

Part 3: Conclusion As with religion in general, the activities of foreign religious organizations in Vietnam are more diverse and open than at any time in the recent past. Vietnamese law is clear in some areas of what foreign religious groups may and may not do, less clear in others. The overall trend, with the entry into force of the 2004 Ordinance on Belief and Religion, is towards slightly more transparency and slightly more legal space for organizations to operate. Actual practice remains ahead of legal stipulations and in a few cases, significantly different from what the law suggests. Legal definitions have also created several unintended loopholes that give unregistered or non-religious organizations somewhat more freedom to operate than registered religious groups. In all cases where practice differs from law, practice is more rather than less open. Some overseas religious groups, particularly Christians, remain critical of the Vietnamese Government’s overall record on religious freedom and rights. Taking cues from contacts inside Vietnam, some have also critiqued the 2004 Ordinance as representing a step backward. At least in how the ordinance relates to foreign organizations, this has not been the case so far. Implementation of the ordinance and accompanying legislation has not led to dramatic changes in the operating environment, and there is no sign that foreign organizations, registered or unregistered, are facing more difficulties than before.

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For Christians, particularly evangelicals, Vietnam represents a challenging missiological conundrum. Traditional missionary techniques of church planting, preaching and literature distribution are not available. Yet most evangelicals believe in following the law and working with established governments, even if they are imperfect or restrictive. Staying away entirely is also not an option, since this could deprive people of a chance to hear the gospel. Thus, evangelicals look for alternative ways of mission, some of which have been described in this chapter, and continue to hope for change in the future. Of course, there is no guarantee that change will come in the ways evangelicals desire it. Although Vietnam is certainly changing very fast in almost every respect, outsiders and insiders alike have a difficult time predicting even the near socio-political future. In the meantime, religious organizations must ensure that their social and economic development projects are effective in their own right, not merely a way of marking time until they can do what they would prefer. Non-evangelical Protestants and Catholics see the situation somewhat differently. Mainstream Protestants and liberal Catholics are generally content with a “theology of presence” in which overt, traditional mission activity is not only unnecessary but seen as disrespectful to people of other religious traditions. In this view, foreign Christians should come to Vietnam to serve and work, living quietly as witnesses to God’s love (or, as St Francis of Assisi put it, “Preach the gospel; use words if necessary”). The drawback of this approach is that Vietnamese observers may miss the Christian aspect of the presence and see only Western or other, developed Asian culture. In any case, their preconceptions of Christianity will remain unchallenged. Alternately, a quiet theology of presence may simply open the field for more evangelical forms of Christianity, or non-Christian religions, to achieve a higher profile. The institutional Catholic Church and the Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha present another set of opportunities and risks for foreign organizations. Both organizations are well established in Vietnam, so the main role for outsiders is simply to support the existing structures. This has led to a warming of relations between Vietnam and the Vatican on one hand, and overseas Buddhists on the other. International contributions to religious development will face the fewest obstacles in these cases. However, the foreign organization may have little direct role to play besides providing funding.

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How then should foreign religious organizations of different types seek to operate in Vietnam? Perhaps surprisingly, several international and Vietnamese government sources give similar answers to this question: work with integrity. From a Vietnamese standpoint, this means following the law and building respectful relationships with partners. “We don’t ask if an organization is religious or not, or what you believe, just whether you achieve what you set out to do” (interview with government official, July 2005). Foreign religious believers speak more in terms of personal humility and commitment. “If you engage in mission work under a false cover, you’re not being honest with God and yourself, and I wonder what else you’re lying about,” says one (interview, June 2005). This does not mean that either side necessarily believes in complete transparency or sharing of all information about future plans and intentions. What matters in both cases is integrity of actions. Here Vietnamese practice and that of Buddhists and Christians meet. The (re-) insertion of “foreign elements” means that Vietnamese religion is no longer co-terminus with the boundaries of the state — if indeed it ever was. The National Assembly and government pass laws and regulations asserting state authority over religious organizations present in the country, but it is no longer possible for the state to control religious practice. Foreign religious organizations of all types exist far more outside Vietnam than in it, and Vietnamese organizations increasingly have their own independent foreign contacts, partners and funding. The 2004 Ordinance on Belief and Religion writes this existing reality into law, rather than the other way around. Where foreign and Vietnamese organizations meet — in some pilot NGO projects, or on the visit of Thích Nhất Hạnh, or in cultural meditation practice — there are no clear lines as to whether the religion being practised is “Vietnamese” or “foreign”. Which is as it should be: religions are global or at least regional in nature, and Vietnam is integrating itself into regional and global society. The forms of interaction across religious and national boundaries will continue to be unique, but foreign religious organizations are no longer strangers in Vietnam. NOTES 1

The Fund for Reconciliation and Development advocates for fully normalized relations between the United States and Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Cuba. This includes resolution and non-discriminatory treatment

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of human rights disputes. FRD has taken a leading role in opposition to U.S. sanctions against Vietnam for alleged violations of religious freedom. These issues inform the background to this chapter but bear no direct relation to the subjects presented here. Mai Thành Hải. Tôn giáo thế giới và Việt Nam (Religion in the World and in Vietnam). 1998, pp. 61–63, 69–71. There is also overseas Cao Ðài, Hòa Hảo (Buddhist), and Islamic activity in Vietnam, but at a smaller level than the three large religious groups. Cao Ðài and Hòa Hảo practice follows similar patterns to those of overseas Vietnamese Buddhists. Islamic groups are not considered in this chapter. Interview with officials of the Government Committee on Religious Affairs, Hanoi, April 2004. An unofficial English translation of the ordinance, somewhat clearer than the official translation published in Vietnam, is posted at , along with several critical commentaries by Vietnamese religious leaders. A more nuanced analysis can be found at . Anecdotally, then Foreign Minister Nguyễn Cơ Thạch is said to have presented a permit to an Indian diplomat for an international Christian church in Hanoi in the pre-Ðổi Mới period, but this permit was then lost in a plane crash, and no permits have been issued since. It was not clear whether the theology professor is himself a priest or not. Interview with the Government Committee on Religious Affairs, 5 July 2005. This is a significant change from the 1991 and 1999 Decrees, which stated that Vietnamese religious organizations that wished to receive “purely religious aid must ask for permission from the Prime Minister”. In practice, significant aid has been coming for some time now, and the 2004 Ordinance legitimates a pre-existing reality. Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, “The Persecuted Church”, Occasional Paper no. 32, September 2004, p. 24. Briefing by Deputy Foreign Minister Lê Văn Bằng, Hanoi, January 2005. VUFO-NGO Resource Center, Vietnam INGO Directory 2004–05; listing of registered INGOs provided by the People’s Aid Coordinating Committee, June 2004. VUFO-NGO Resource Center, Vietnam INGO Directory 2004–05, Annex L, p. 307. Briefing by Deputy Foreign Minister Lê Văn Bằng, Hanoi, January 2005. Interview with unnamed Vietnamese government officials, 2001. Interview with unnamed Vietnamese government official, January 2004. “HCM City Makes Plans to Support Việt Kiều Investors”, Việt Nam News, 2 February 2005. The figure is sourced to the Association of Overseas Vietnamese Businesses.

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Andrew Wells-Dang “Thousands Gather across Country to Celebrate Buddha’s Birthday”, Việt Nam News, 25 May 2005. Mai Thành Hải, pp. 105–08. Vietnamese popular culture, perhaps following the lead of books like The Da Vinci Code, portrays the Vatican as a shady, secretive organization, perhaps with aspirations to world power. (Jews are sometimes depicted in similar ways.) Vietnam does not yet have diplomatic ties with the Vatican, though relations have been warming in recent years. Lê Hoàng, “Chỉ thị của Thủ tướng Chính phủ về đạo Tin lành: Một dấu mốc mới trong chính sách tôn giáo của Nhà nước Việt Nam” (The Prime Minister’s Instructions on Protestantism: A Landmark in Religious Policy of the Vietnamese State), interview with Dr Nguyễn Thành Xuân, Vice-chair of the Government Committee on Religious Affairs, Nhân Dân, 17 February 2005 [author’s translation].

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Index

A All-Vietnam Buddhist Association, 281 alternative modernities, 4, 195, 203–205, 217 Amidism, 190, 270, 274 amulets, 36, 54, 271 ancestor worship, and mobility, 16–21, 73–76, 166–68 and national identity, 12, 18–20, 46–47, 61–64, 70–73, 333, 394 and Việt Kiều returns, 76–83 Catholics’ relationship to, 46–47, 56, 71, 87, 393–94 feasts associated with, 104, 121–60 laws relating to, 69–70, 86 prevalence, 19, 121–22, 162 regional identity, 166 research on, 18–19, 70–73 state support for, 65–69

underpinning the family, 124–26, 130–31, 162 ancestors, debts to, 75–76, 125–26, 165 exchanges with, 125–26, 129–30, 165–66 return journeys of, 62–65 spiritual ties to, 16–17, 19–20, 73–74, 76–78 animism, 16 Annam Buddhist Association, 258, 266, 268–69 anthropological studies of Vietnamese religion, 5–6, 10–13, 16–19, 33, 38–40, 70–73, 91, 122, 153–54, 198–99, 203, 223–24 Association of Chan Sects, 265 Âu Cơ origin goddess, 68 B Bà Chúa Kho [The Lady of the Storehouse], 195

479

14 Index p479-488.indd

479

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1:49:23 PM

480

Index

Bà Chúa Xứ [The Lady of the Realm], 164, 195 Bảo Đại, 258 Báo Quốc Buddhist Institute, 268, 282, 300 Board of Rites [Bộ Lễ], 11, 383, 393 Buddhism, and Marxism compared, 319–20, 326 as antidote to modern ills, 257–58, 273, 319–25, 328–29, 333–34, 336 as obstacle to modernization, 33, 36 charitable activities, 226, 275, 279, 281, 426–28 construed as Vietnamese tradition, 27, 28, 273–75, 342–45, 350–51, 362–63, 331 contemporary practice described, 27–28, 281–84, 315–37, 345–49, 352–66, 426–28 devotional practice criticized, 266, 271, 357–59, 361 engaged practice, 25–26, 254, 257–58, 264, 290–91, 302–303, 305–306, 327 gendered aspects, 171–73, 189, 278–79 imputed superficiality in Vietnam, 22, 317, 331 in decline, 254–55, 258, 266, 274–75 mythic golden age of, 273–75 reform of, 356–64 (see also Buddhist Revival) seen as quietist, 14, 22–23, 29–30, 33 see also Amidism, Pure Land, Trúc Lâm, Zen

14 Index p479-488.indd

480

Buddhist mendicant order, 189, 279, 295 Buddhist protest movement (1960s), 24, 251, 301–303, 307–308, 385 Buddhist Revival [Chấn Hưng Phật Giáo], achievements, 23, 25, 27–29, 281–84 colonial patronage, 258, 273, 289 ethnic Chinese and, 259–61, 277–78 in central Vietnam, 267–69 in northern Vietnam, 265–67 in southern Vietnam, 260–61, 262–65 intellectual debates, 29–30, 169–70, 270–76 involvement of middle class, 276–78 Marxist interpretation of, 252, 255–56 origins, 254–59 scholarship on, 23–24, 252–56 transnational aspects, 259–62 Việt Kiều and, 280–81 women in, 278–79 Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương, 23, 182 C Cadière, Father Leopold, 16, 22, 162, 168 canonization of Vietnamese martyrs, 47, 387–90 Cao Đài, 11, 18, 21–23, 24, 28–29, 251, 265, 274, 294, 385 Catholic church, attitudes towards popular devotionalism, 373–76 ordination of priests, 2, 373 relations with Vietnamese state, 8, 55, 373–87

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1:49:23 PM

481

Index

Catholic missionaries, alignment with imperialism, 43–44, 377, 387, 388–89 in pre-colonial society, 43, 45, 378–82 influence with Nguyễn leadership, 43–44, 379 Catholicism, and ancestor worship, 46–47, 56, 71, 87, 393–94 associated with imperialism, 43–44, 47–48, 55, 377, 387, 388–89 compared with Buddhism, 377 compared with Protestantism, 394 devotional practice, 372–76, 396–97 in pre-colonial society, 43, 45, 378–82 in Vietnamese history writing, 377, 384–85, 386–87, 388–90 “incompatibility” with Vietnamese culture, 44, 46–48, 56, 377, 393–95 popular commemorative practice, 390–93 prohibitions on, 380–82 under colonialism, 44, 382–83 under Republic of Vietnam, 44, 385–86 under socialism, 383–87 “Vietnamization” of, 44, 47, 48, 394–95 Catholics, charitable activities, 45, 48, 417, 424–26 contemporary outreach activities, 429, 441 executions, 379, 381–82, 388–90, 392–93

14 Index p479-488.indd

481

numbers and distribution, 44, 378–79, 398 political activities, 432–33 worship, 48, 405, 435–38 central Vietnam, religious characteristics, 121–60, 267–69 certification, of relics [di tích], 37, 105, 111–12, 120 [sắc phong] of tutelary spirits, 12, 104–105, 120 Cham, religious aspects, 16, 17, 36 Chân Không, 302, 328, 330 Chầu Văn music, 36, 197, 199, 216 Christianity, 42–48 and Vietnamese identity, 46–48, 394–95 see also Catholicism, Protestantism, Cochinchina Buddhist Society, 263, 265, 266, 271 commemoration, 1, 19–20, 50, 60–61, 66–73, 105–17, 244–45, 390–93 commercialization of religion, perceived degradation of spirituality, 33, 54, 205–206, 213–17, 375 and the sale of spirits, 33, 211 communal house [đình], 6, 14–16, 20–21, 37, 90–91, 103–18, 168, 171–72 Confucianism, 9–10, 11–12, 22, 32, 125, 171–72, 235, 274, 322, 371–72, 377 critiques of religion in Vietnam, associated with foreign domination, 9, 10–11, 42–48, 56–57, 377, 387–89 backward, 9, 39, 317, 331 commercialized, 19, 33, 52, 54, 205–206, 213–17, 397

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1:49:23 PM

482

Index

disorderly, 33–34, 37–38, 48, 52, 204, 213–16, 240, 274, 375 divisive, 8, 103, 312, 387 elitist, 23–24, 30, 377, 390 exploitative, 37–38, 54–55, 213, 375, 397 expressing ignorance, 55, 169, 240, 353, 358–59 feudal, 17, 41, 103 frivolous, 103, 203–204, 236, 240 futile/impotent, 9, 15, 29–30, 31, 39, 264, 274 ideology of domination, 5, 10, 30, 44 intolerant, 46–48, 56, 371, 377, 394 irrational, 13, 29, 35, 169–70 marginal, 6, 9, 39 materialistic, 45, 204, 214 not in keeping with national identity, 44, 46–48, 56, 274, 363, 387, 394 obsolete, 5, 23, 30–31, 39, 51, 203 obstacle to modernization, 10, 33, 46 parochial, 5, 22–23 patriarchal, 17 pre-scientific, 9, 30, 103 quietist, 14, 22–23, 29–30, 33 status-oriented, 9, 13, 31, 103, 176, 203–205 subversive, 9, 10, 37–38, 52, 55, 431, 434 superficial, 22, 317, 331 superstitious, 8, 10, 22, 29–30, 55, 70, 215, 241–42, 271, 361, 375 wasteful, 13, 29–35, 103, 169–70, 198, 203, 216 cultural heritage, religion seen as, 33, 65–73, 215–16, 274–75, 362–64

14 Index p479-488.indd

482

negative effects of religiosity on, 33–34, 54, 215 D Dampier, William, 45 Đào Duy Anh, writing on spirits, 18 view of Catholicism, 46, 377 Daoism, 9, 14, 121, 377 death anniversaries [ngày giỗ], 68, 97, 104, 121–60, 166 destined aptitude/fate [căn] for mediumship, 199, 202, 209, 213, 228, 231–36, 245–46 diaspora [Việt Kiều], religious observances, in Vietnam, 73–74, 76–83, 280–81, 297–341, 423–28 overseas, 64, 280–81, 345–46, 349, 353, 364–65 disenchantment, predictions, 2–4, 195, 354 E economic bases for ritual revitalization, 33–34, 45–46, 113–15, 171–77, 202–203, 211–12 elite endorsement of religious activity, 65–73, as “folk culture”, 5, 10, 18–19, 37, 38–39, 46–7, 53, 197–98, 215–16 as resistance, 10, 174, 225, 242, 255–56, 281 as return to the roots/origins, 21, 66–69, 72–74, 91–92, 102–105, 116–17, 273–76 as tradition, 5, 32, 46–47, 48, 70–73, 102–106, 215–16, 242, 320, 326, 361–66

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483

Index

for improving morality, 32, 75–76, 273–76, 333 for social welfare, 32–33, 335 for societal cohesion, 32–33, 69–73 engaged Buddhism, 25–26, 254, 257–58, 264, 290–91, 302–303, 305–306, 327 ethnic Chinese religious practices, 19, 25, 175, 183, 259–61, 277–78 ethnic minorities, ancestor worship among, 71–72 Christianity among, 2, 6, 8, 10, 17, 45–46, 433–34 religious orientations criticized, 33, 46, 55 evolutionist theories of religious change, 2–3, 5, 9–10 exchanges between the living and the spirits, 106, 129–30, 141–42, 165–66, 174–76, 205–209 exorcism, 36, 233, 238, 240 expenditures on religion, and the status economy, 20–21, 32–33, 173–74, 176 Buddhist reformist critique of, 29–30, 169–70 criticized by intellectuals, 29, 33, 173, 205, 211, 215 for communal house rituals, 112–15, 172 limited under socialism, 30–31, 103–104 pre-colonial state’s view of, 31–32 underpinning the cosmic order, 174–77 F feasting, ancestor rituals, 104, 121–60

14 Index p479-488.indd

483

and mediumship, 209 communal house rituals, 106 female spirits, 10, 13–14, 19, 38, 45, 59, 61, 162–63, 171, 175–76, 183, 186 embodied by mediums, 191, 199, 206–208, 212, 218 five elements [ngũ hành], 16 food in rituals, commensalism, 106, 122, 125–31, 209 consumerist aspects, 205–208 nutritional importance, 132–33 symbolic meanings, 133–43, 147–49 foreign religious organizations, 48–49, 399–444 fortune telling, 8, 36–38, 54–55, 104, 213, 271 Four Palaces [Tứ Phủ] cult, 36, 38, 194–220, 224, 233–34, 237, 239–40, 243, 246, 347 freedom of religion, 7–9, 53, 55, 297–98, 308–12, 325–27, 331–32, 401–406, 440 Freemasons, 44, 383 frugality in ritual practice, advised by Buddhist modernizers, 29, 169–70 implemented by Hòa Hảo, 30 official policies about, 30–32, 33, 103–104, 155 popular support for, 30, 115 reflecting economic constraints, 30, 202, 211–12 fundamentalism, 3, 4 G General Phi Vận, 163–64, 188 ghosts, Buddhist notions about, 270, 272

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exorcism, 36, 270 offerings to, 15–16, 18, 130, 158, 166 Gia Ðình Phật Tử [Buddhist Youth Family Movement], 268, 282, 283 Gia Long (Emperor), attitudes towards popular religion, 31–32 Giran, Paul, 12, 238, 239, 248 globalization, and the Buddhist Revival, 251– 52, 259–62, 272–76, 282–84 and Vietnamese Buddhism, 25–29, 333–34, 344, 349–50, 353–54, 360–66, anxieties about, 72, 103, 215–16, 242 religious resistance to, 59, 72–73, 103, 174, 215–16, 242 Great Aunt Fifth [Tịnh Độ Cư Sĩ ], 179–84, 191–92 H heroes, cult of, 11–12, 16, 42, 237–39 Hindu motifs in Southeast Asian religion, 16 Hmong, religion among, 46 Hồ Chí Minh, veneration of, 12, 50, 65–66 Hòa Hảo, 10, 11, 21–23, 24, 28–29, 43, 53, 187, 251, 265, 294, 386 Hùng kings, veneration of, 19, 63, 68–69, 173, 320 hybridity, 40, 137–41, 167, 212–16, 240, 274, 361–65, 394 I inter-village ritual exchanges, 107–11 Islam, 10, 17, 18, 51

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J Joseph Marchand (Father), 381, 387, 393 K Khánh Hòa (Buddhist reformer), 263, 280 Khmer in Vietnam, powers imputed to, 36, 164 religious practices, 33, 36, 281, 306 Korean religious practices in Vietnam, 57, 80–82 L La Vang pilgrimage, 56 laws on religion, 8–9, 53, 69–70, 76, 86, 87 Lê Ðình Thám (Buddhist reformer), 268–69, 283, 286 Liễu Hạnh, 163, 228, 245 life-cycle rituals, 13, 124–26, 173 lineage shrines, 96–98 linh [supernatural efficacy], 14 and liminality, 164–65 of ritual performances, 201 of spirits, 164, 214, 238 lộc [blessed offerings], 174–75, 205–209, 217, 245 Lưỡng Xuyên Buddhist Association, 265, 268, 278 Lý kings, veneration of, 57, 65–67, 75–76, 80–82, 84, 85 M magic and modernity, 4 Mandate of Heaven, 11, 167 market economy, links to ritual economy, 171–77 spiritualisation of, 4, 59–60, 195, 202, 205–209, 211, 214

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485

Index

Marxism as a religious outlook, 17, 50 Marxist perspective on religion, 22–23, 30–31, 34, 252, 255–56 Mary [Ðức Mứ], 45, 48, 372–76, 391, 396–97 master mediums, 40, 209–16 Mật Thể (Buddhist Reformer), 264, 267 materialism, as a religious motivation, 31, 45, 48, 194, 204, 214 degrading effects on religion, 33, 205–206, 213–16 meditation for health, 27, 346–47, 355–56 mediumship, and “innate” female traits, 39, 203–204 apprenticeship and initiation into, 196–201, 209–12 among urban middle class, 39–40, 203–205, 221–49 as resistance to marginalization, 40–42, 225–26, 233–46 as subaltern modernity, 40, 203–204 construed as folk culture, 38–39, 55, 197–98, 215–16, 394 consumption patterns reflected in, 203–209 explicit principles, 197–201, 209–10, 212–16 political restrictions on, 37–38, 202 political support for, 38–39, 215, 242–43 revival after Đổi Mới, 224 seen as frivolous, 203–204, 236 seen as superstition, 36–38, 55, 228, 231, 235, 242, 347

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status competition in, 40, 201–205, 214–15 middle class women, and post-socialist transitions, 41–42, 235–36 as mediums, 40, 203–54, 226–33 religious practices of, 40, 203–204, 224–26, 278–79 migration and religious beliefs, 16–21, 58, 62–65, 72–83, 96–98, 112–17, 166–68 Minh Mạng (Emperor), cultural centralization policies, 43–44, 380 policies towards Catholics, 380–81, 387, 394 Minh Trí (founder of Tịnh Độ Cư Sĩ ) “monks war” (1898), 255, 269 Mus, Paul, 16, 22 N nationalism, and ancestor worship, 20, 46–47, 61–64, 70–73, 394 and Buddhism, 27–28, 267, 273–75, 320, 333–34, 342–45, 362–66 and “folk beliefs”, 5, 18–19, 38–39, 102–103, 215, 242, 394 and religious revival, 12, 18–19, 27–28, 32, 65–73, 267 nature spirits, 15–16, 266 Ngô Đình Diệm, policies towards religion, 44, 385–86 conflict with Buddhists, 24, 251, 300–301, 385 Ngô Tất Tố, 176 Nguyễn An Ninh, 5, 54, 264 Nguyễn Trung Trực, 162, 167, 187 Nguyễn Văn Bình (Archbishop), 386

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486

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Nguyễn Văn Huyên, 18, 56, 71, 163, 203, 238, 239 Nhất Lang, 219, 220 northern Vietnam, religious characteristics, 31–32, 90–120, 163, 176, 194–220, 221–49, 265–70, 342–70, 378, 398 nuns (Buddhist), 278–79, 294–95, 324 P pagodas (Buddhist), and ethnic Khmer precedence, 36 as markers of Vietnameseness, 267, 274–75 as sites of feminine ritual economy, 171–73, 189 reconstructions, 33, 36, 267, 274–75, 352, 426, 427–48 parallel worlds (of the living and the dead), 37, 106, 125, 165, 227 performance in ritual practice, 40, 194–220 Phan Kế Bính, 5, 29, 169, 203, 238, 239 Phủ Giày, 217, 245 Pigneaux de Behaine (Bishop), 43, 379 post-socialism and religious revival, 11, 60–61 prosperity religions, 4, 195, 215 Protestantism, charitable activities, 418, 420–23 compared with Catholicism, 394 conversion to, 43, 45–48 evangelism, 412, 422–23, 428–29, 441 organizational presence, 420 political conflicts, 433–34 relations with the state, 8, 55, 410, 422–23 worship activities, 435–38

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psychological aspects of religious practice, 146–67, 168, 226–36, 238–39, 241–42, 245–46, 255 Pure Land [Tịnh Độ] Buddhism, 27, 165, 177–78, 188, 190, 270–71, 317, 334, 356–60 Q Quan Âm (Kuan Yin) 183, 193, 227, 270, 347 Quán Sứ Pagoda, 266, 267, 271, 272, 280, 346 R re-enchantment, 49–53, 59–61, 195 rituals and social conflict, 114–15, 143–45, 149–52 royal spirits, veneration of, 64–69, 75–76, 84, 85 S sacrifices, 29–36, 106, 174–79, 202, 205–209 School of Youth for Social Service, 251, 301–303, 307, 317, 335 secularization, predictions, 2–3, 195 self-cultivation, 15, 183 self-immolation, 35, 177–84, 281 social change and rituals, 16–21, 45–46, 50–51, 115, 147–52, 166–77, 201–209, 211–16, 239–46 socialist era, religious observances during, 71, 103–104, 207, 224 state policies towards religion, 13, 24, 30–31, 103–104, 308–10, 384–86 southern Vietnam, religious characteristics, 14–15, 35, 161–93, 262–65, 351–52, 378, 398

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487

Index

state incapacity to regulate religion, 61, 91, 117, 167–58, 172, 381–82, 423–30, 435–36 state officials, religious practices, 1, 39–40, 51, 65–69, 85, 100–101, 110–11, 277–78, 280 status competition, among mediums, 40, 201–205, 214–15 as target of socialist reforms, 13, 103 in communal house activities, 32, 111–17, 176 in ancestor feasts, 134–37, 146–52, 173 in ritual economy, 171–77 superstition, 8, 10, 22, 29–30, 36–40, 55, 70, 215, 241–42, 271, 361, 375 T Taixu (Chinese Buddhist reformer), influence on Vietnam’s Buddhist Revival, 252–53, 257–58, 264, 268–67, 270–71, 272, 300, 344 visit to Vietnam, 278 temple reconstructions, 33, 36, 66, 59, 267, 271, 275, 426, 427–28 Tết commemorations, 33, 47, 60, 64, 72, 77–78, 110, 142 Theravada Buddhism, 36, 178, 189, 279, 280–81, 282, 296, 299, 306 Thích Huyền Quang, 281, 309–12, 320 Thích Nhất Hạnh, and engaged Buddhism, 25–26, 251, 257–58, 302–303, 305–306, 327, 362 on the Buddhist Revival, 252, 255, 257–58, 264

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opposition to Vietnam War, 301–304, 344 ordination and early training, 281–82, 299–300 return to Vietnam (2005), 1–2, 26–27, 283, 297–341, 430–31, 439–40 return to Vietnam (2007), 336–37 teachings on Buddhism, 300–306, 316–25, 332–36, 362 writings on Catholicism, 44, 48, 56, 377 writings on Zen, 344–45, 362 Thích Quảng Ðộ, 310–12 Thích Quảng Ðức, 35, 250–51, 269, 280–81, 283, 284 Thích Thanh Từ, critique of popular devotional Buddhism, 357–59, 361 critique of superstition, 29–30 influences, 351–54, 361–64 nationalistic Buddhism of, 362–66 re-establishment of Trúc Lâm Zen, 351–66 Thích Thiện Ân, 344–45 Thích Trí Quang, 268, 281, 282, 301, 306–308, 327 Thiện Chiếu (Buddhist Reformer), 29, 259, 261, 263–65, 271, 281, 285 Tịnh Độ Cư Sĩ, 35, 179–84, 251, 265 Toan Ánh, 18–19, 163, 169 Tonkin Buddhist Association, 258, 272, 275, 277, 280 trade in spirits, 33, 205–206, 211 Trần Hưng Đạo, and Mother Goddess cult, 222, 224 as a public symbol, 238, 241, 244–45 as national hero, 237–38, 243 as “Saint of the People”, 244–45

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Index

empowerment of women, 42, 238–46 innovations in his cult, 42, 225, 239–46 possession by, 36, 42, 221–22, 224–33, 237–49 Trần Huy Liệu, 5, 22 Trần Nhân Tông, founder of Trúc Lâm Zen school, 350–51 Trí Hải (Buddhist reformer), 169, 262, 265–67, 270–71, 275–76, 278, 285 Trúc Lâm Zen Buddhism, as reformed Buddhism, 356–60, 362, 365 global influences, 354, 361 globalization of, 364–65 nationalistic aspects, 362–66 southern influences, 352–53 traditional inspirations, 350–52, 354 Tứ Đức (Emperor), persecution of Catholics, 382 tutelary deities, 98–99, 106–11, 162–64 U Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, 8, 26, 301, 306–12, 337, 334–35 unjust death, 35, 162–64, 166–68 V Vạn Hạnh University, 283, 301, 302, 317 Vietnamese research on religion, 5, 18–19, 69–73, 87, 91, 102–103,

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215, 252, 255–56, 343–45, 371–72, 377, 386–90, 394 votive offerings, 60, 64, 130, 168–70, 176, 195, 271 W war dead commemoration, 1, 31, 36, 50, 158 women, and the ritual economy, 171–73, 189 as mediums, 40, 196–99, 203–205, 221–49 effects of liberal reforms upon, 41–42, 223, 235–36 imputed religious proclivities, 203–204, 223 in the Buddhist Revival, 278–79 religious empowerment, 237–46 Y Yên Tử mountain, as source of Zen tradition in Vietnam, 267, 321, 351 desecration of, 54 pagoda, 267, 348 re-establishment of Trúc Lâm monastery, 352–53 Z Zen [Thiền] Buddhism, and Vietnamese nationalism, 267, 342–45, 362–66 construed as a Vietnamese tradition, 27, 28, 267, 342–45, 350–51, 362–63 globalization of, 353–55, 360–66

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About the Contributors

Nir Avieli is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben Gurion University, Israel. He obtained his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2003 then worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute, Singapore. His main research interests include contemporary Vietnamese culture, the anthropology of food and the anthropology of tourism. He has published on identity, food and tourism in Vietnam and is currently preparing a culinary ethnography of Hội An, central Vietnam. John Chapman is an ordained lay member of the Plum Village Sangha and was a member of the delegation accompanying Thích Nhất Hạnh on his historic return visit to Vietnam in 2005. He obtained his M.A. in Oriental and African Religious Studies from SOAS in 2001. With a longterm interest in Engaged Buddhism, he has made nine one-month visits to Vietnam since December 1999. His experience prior to his specialization in religious studies was as a university lecturer in Human Resources Management. Horim Choi is Second Secretary in the Office of Planning and International Organizations, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Republic of Korea. He obtained his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Seoul National University in

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2003. His publications have focused on ritual, cultural policy, and statesociety relations in contemporary Vietnam. He was Research Professor at Chonnam National University, Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University and Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies, Seoul National University. Elise Anne DeVido is Associate Professor of History at National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. She obtained her Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University in 1995. She has published articles on contemporary religion in Taiwan and has completed a manuscript on women and Buddhism in Taiwan. She is currently working on issues in the comparative history of Buddhism in twentieth century China and Vietnam. Ðỗ Thiện is Visiting Fellow in the Division of Pacific and Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. He obtained his Ph.D. in History from the Australian National University in 1996 and taught for several years at the National University of Singapore. His research interests include Vietnamese Buddhism, popular religiosity and ritual economies. He has published a book on southern Vietnamese supernaturalism and several chapters and articles on religion in Vietnam. Kirsten W. Endres is Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Freiburg, Germany. She obtained her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Munich in 2000. With many years’ experience working and researching in Vietnam, she is author of several articles and book chapters on Vietnamese culture and popular religious practices. She is working on a book manuscript on spirit mediumship in northern Vietnam. Kate Jellema is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan and Visiting Professor at Marlboro College, Vermont, where she teaches the anthropology of religion, Vietnamese history and comparative European and East Asian experiences of late and post-socialism. Her research interests include memory, historical consciousness, nationalism, senses of home, and the social construction of kinship in Vietnam. She has published articles on post-war transformations in morality and the cult of ancestors in Vietnam.

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Phạm Quỳnh Phương is a researcher at the Institute of Cultural Studies, Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences, Hanoi. She obtained her Ph.D. in Anthropology from La Trobe University, Melbourne in 2005. She has done extensive research on traditional religions and festivals in the north of Vietnam and has published various chapters/articles on the worship of mother goddesses and national heroes. She is presently working on her book on the worship of the national hero Trần Hưng Đạo as well as doing fieldwork on religion, gender, and cultural change in northern and southern Vietnam. Jacob Ramsay is an independent scholar based in Canberra, Australia. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Australian National University in 2004 on the history of Catholicism in Vietnam, after which he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He has published articles on the history of Catholic-state relations in Vietnam and Islam in contemporary Indochina. He is completing a book manuscript on Catholicism and the Nguyễn dynasty in nineteenth century Cochinchina. Alexander Soucy is Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies Department, Saint Mary’s University, Canada. He obtained his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the Australian National University in 2000. He has published widely on gender, religion and ethnographic practice with a focus on Buddhism in Vietnam. He has also worked on China and Taiwan and on the Vietnamese Buddhist community in Canada and is currently researching transnational dimensions of Vietnamese Buddhist practice. Philip Taylor is QEII Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, at the Australian National University. He obtained his Ph.D from the ANU in 1998. He specializes on the anthropology of southern Vietnam and has published several books and articles in contemporary Vietnamese history, society, culture, popular religion and ethnicity. Andrew Wells-Dang serves as Deputy Country Representative for Catholic Relief Services/Vietnam. He holds an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and has worked as a consultant and staff for educational and development organizations in Asia since 1993, including the Fund for Reconciliation and Development. His essays and articles have appeared in U.S. and Vietnamese journals and newspapers. He is an active member of the Hanoi International Church and the Community of Christ (Lutheran) in Washington, D.C.

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Publications in the Vietnam Update Series Doi Moi: Vietnam’s Renovation Policy and Performance, edited by Dean K. Forbes, Terence H. Hull, David G. Marr, and Brian Brogan. Monograph 14. Canberra: Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University, 1991. Vietnam and the Rule of Law: Proceedings of Vietnam Update Conference, November 1992, edited by Carlyle A. Thayer and David G. Marr. Canberra: Department of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1993. Vietnam’s Rural Transformation, edited by Doug J. Porter and Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet. Boulder: Westview Press; and Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1995. Dilemmas of Development: Vietnam Update 1994, edited by Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet. Monograph 22. Canberra: Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University, 1995. Vietnam Assessment: Creating a Sound Investment Climate, edited by Suiwah Leung. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1996. Doi Moi: Ten Years after the 1986 Party Congress, edited by Adam Fforde. Monograph 23. Canberra: Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University, 1997. The Mass Media in Vietnam, edited by David Marr. Monograph 25. Canberra: Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University, 1998. Consuming Urban Culture in Contemporary Vietnam, edited by Lisa Drummond and Mandy Thomas. London: Routledge/Curzon, 2003. Getting Organized in Vietnam: Moving in and around the Socialist State, edited by Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, Russell H.K. Heng, and David W.H. Koh. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003. Beyond Hanoi: Local Government in Vietnam, edited by Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet and David G. Marr. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2004. Social Inequality in Vietnam and the Challenges to Reform, edited by Philip Taylor. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2004. Modernity and Re-enchantment: Religion in Post-revolutionary Vietnam, edited by Philip Taylor. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007.

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