18 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 29 NO 2, APRIL 2013

Patrick McAllisterThe author is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. His current research interest is in the Vietnamese lunar new year (Tet), its associated rituals and beliefs, and the ways in which it is celebrated in Ho Chi Minh City. His previous work on public ritual has included research in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province, and he has recently published a book on the inter-ethnic and local dimensions of national days in New Zealand and Australia. His email is patrick.mcallister@canterbury.ac.nz.

The Vietnam Communist Party and government have changed their attitudes towards religion, as has been well documented in the academic literature.1 With religious activity surging in Vietnam over the past three decades, one of the main trends is the distinctly religious overtones of Party-state involvement in well-publicized national commemorations.

Here I examine the ways in which the Party and govern-ment have increased their involvement in the ritual and celebratory activities of the Vietnamese lunar new year and national festival (Tet Nguyen Dan or ‘Tet’ in short). Many Tet beliefs and practices link back to the ancestor cult and, through this, have provided a new avenue for political leadership to connect with the population at large. Tet is also used to communicate with and encourage overseas Vietnamese to invest. It furthermore allows connections to be made between ritual activities, historical (including military) events and national figures. By turning festivals such as these into spectacular events, televised nationally, leaders link the Tet festival to the Party-state and use it to foster nationalist sentiment and imagination.

The backgroundThe efflorescence of religion in Vietnam has coincided with and been linked to the economic reforms and lib-eralization of the country after 1986 (known as đổi mới, meaning ‘renewal’ or ‘renovation’) and also to events such as the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Religious institutions and practices formerly forbidden in terms of communist ideology are now accepted and officially approved, or in some cases just tolerated.

Both the Party and the government (which the Party controls), have formally recognized a number of the established faiths. Other practices that have become very popular, such as spirit mediumship rituals (lên đồng), are still regarded as ‘superstition’ (mê tín), but are tolerated as part of ‘folk culture’ (Pham Quynh Phuong 2009: 159). These also currently enjoy considerable coverage in the popular press.

Similarly, ‘Soul-callers’ and specialists in finding the graves of war dead, ‘formerly regarded as fraudsters’ now have credibility (Endres & Lauser 2012: 131), and state-appointed mediums are used to find the bodies of soldiers killed in the American war (Bouquet 2010) so that they can be afforded a proper burial. A wary state still care-fully monitors religious activities through regulations and organizations such as its Institute of Research on Religion, established in 1992. However, leaders now not only sanc-tion non-threatening practices but also actively participate in public rituals and festivals in the name of national unity and praise them as contributing to ‘building the fatherland’ (Bouquet 2010: 91-96).

Anthropologists have pointed out that the state’s renewed interest in religion stems partly from the activities of the people themselves and the upsurge in religious practices during the 1980s and 1990s (Taylor 2007; Pham Quynh Phuong 2009). This resonates with what Kerkvliet (2001) has termed the ‘dialogical’ model of state-society relations in Vietnam, whereby the state acts partly in accordance with pressures from below.

Various reasons have been suggested for this turnaround which seem to fit this model. The development of ‘market socialism’ and the move away from centralized economic

I am grateful to the following who have assisted me at various times with my research on Tet Nguyen Dan: Lê Hoàng Anh Thư , Nguyễn Huỳnh Thanh Bình and Phan Thị Thanh Thúy. I am especially grateful to Bùi Thị Diễm Trinh and Lê Thị Cẩm Tú for assistance with the translation of Vietnamese news reports. I am also very grateful to Hoa Sen University, Ho Chi Minh City, for supporting my research on Tet, and to the University of Canterbury for research funding. I also thank two anonymous reviewers who made useful comments on an earlier draft and whose suggestions I have incorporated.

1. Useful summaries of this literature can be found in Taylor 2007 and DiGregorio & Salemink 2007.

2. Kwon 2006: 104, cited in Roszko 2010: 4-5.

3. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1N8wyGsJBA&feature=related; Thành kính, trang nghiêm Lễ giỗ Tổ Hùng Vương (‘The respectful and solemn Hung Vuong Death Aniversary’); http://baophutho.vn/den-hung/huong-toi-ngay-gio-to/201203/Thanh-kinh-trang-nghiem-Le-gio-To-Hung-Vuong-2160134/

4. ‘Phó Chủ tịch nước dâng hương đền Kinh Dương Vương’ (‘The Vice-President offers incenses at Kinh Duong Vuong Temple’), http://truongtansangvn.blogspot.com.au/ 2012/06/ chu-tich-nuoc-truong-tan-sang-dang.html; http://www.quytubodenhung.vn/ news/928/Den-tho-Duc-Quoc-to-Lac-Long-Quan.html

5. ‘Lễ hội đền thờ Hai Bà Trưng’ (‘The Hai Ba Trung temple festival’); http://www.tinmoi.vn/le-hoi-den-tho-hai-ba-trung-08831931.html

Religion, the state, and the Vietnamese lunar new year

Fig. 1. Pagoda side-altar for Ho Chi Minh.Fig. 2. Domestic ancestral altar including an image of Ho Chi Minh.Fig. 3. Altar for Ton Duc Thang in the Ton Duc Thang Museum, Ho Chi Minh City.

PATR

ICK

MC

ALLI

STER

PATR

ICK

MC

ALLI

STER

PATR

ICK

MC

ALLI

STER

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 29 NO 2, APRIL 2013 19

6. See http://www.vietnameasytravel.com/Vietnam-travel-festival/Lam-Kinh-Festival-honours-national-hero-Le-Loi.asp; http://www.easysapatours.com/Sapa_travel_news.asp?id=6; http://www.vnnnews.net/lam-kinh-festival-2

7. ‘Offering incense at Hung King’s temple before giao thừa’. http://vietnamnet.vn/vn/xa-hoi/109040/dang-huong-o-den-hung-truoc-giao-thua.html; see also http://hcm.24h.com.vn/tin-video/le-dang-huong-dem-giao-thua-tai-den-hung-c499a520530.html

8. See ‘Dong Da Victory celebrated in Binh Dinh’; http://news.chaobuoisang.net/dong-da-victory-celebrated-in-binh-dinh-194261.htm; ‘Hanoi marks 222nd anniversary of Dong Da victory’; http://en.baomoi.com/Home/cultureart/ en.vietnamplus.vn/Hanoi-marks-222nd-anniversary-of-Dong-Da-victory/108661.epi;

9. The tree planting tradition continues today; See ‘President Ho inspires tree planting’. http://english.vietnamnet.vn/en/society/4636/president-ho-inspires-tet-planting.html

10. ‘Leaders Pay Tet Visits with Best Wishes’; http://www.saigon- gpdaily.com.vn/ National/ 2006/2/44716/

11. Christoph Giebel (personal communication) has commented that there was no altar in the Tan Duc Thang Museum when he did fieldwork there in 1992, and the altar in the Ho Chi Minh Museum was probably added when it changed its status from ‘exhibition’ to ‘commemorative place’ in 1982, or possibly when it became a ‘museum’ in 1995.

12. See, for example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fd4VlEIc4g&feature=related; and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzv52Px7q2M&feature=related

13. ‘Temple to worship President Ho Chi Minh’s relatives to be built’; http://www.nhandan.com.vn/cmlink/nhandan-online/homepage/society/current/temple-to-worship-president-ho-chi-minh-s-relatives-to-be-built-1.352688?mode=print.

14. ‘Chủ tịch nước cùng kiều bào thả cá chép tiễn ông Táo về trời’. (‘The President and overseas Vietnamese release carp to see Ong Tao off to Heaven’); http://dantri.com.vn/c20/s20-556942/chu-tich-nuoc-cung-kieu-bao-tha-ca-chep-tien-ong-tao-ve-troi.htm

15. ‘Gigantic Banh Chung Takes Long Journey to Ancestral Land’; http://www.saigon-gpdaily.com.vn/Culture_Art/2007/4/55496/

16. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G331biRxwaQ; http://clip.vn/watch/Tong-bi-thu-du-le-dang-huong-gio-to-Hung-Vuong,DbFU?fm=se

planning as a consequence of the modernizing project of đổi mới is also associated with a more open and tolerant attitude towards religion. Economic reform, it is argued, presented ordinary folk with various challenges associated with a market economy, and the popularity of the spirits is linked to the everyday concern with economic security. Recourse to religion and ritual alleviates uncertainty and inequality under market conditions, and offers meaning and agency to the relatively marginalized and disadvan-taged. Economic growth after đổi mới also increased dis-posable income and made greater expenditure on ritual (including Tet ritual) possible.

Others attribute the proliferation of religious practices and the re-emergence of those formerly banned or hidden, to a decline in state power and loss of faith in the ideology of state socialism. After đổi mới the state’s legitimacy and credibility, based on what the ‘revolution’ had achieved and put in place, dwindled, and its former role in unifying the nation became insufficient to guarantee popular sup-port as the economic and social changes associated with đổi mới took hold.

Given the increase in popular ritual activity, supporting religious and commemorative practices has become a way for the state to redefine its role; to be seen to continue to provide leadership and foster national integration while maintaining a distinctive Vietnamese culture in the face of possibly undesirable foreign influences and values that đổi mới made possible. It nevertheless also continues to remind the population of its role in liberating and unifying the country, and Tet provides a good opportunity for this due to its association with military events such as the ‘Tet offensive’ of 1968.

Ancestor worship plays a crucial role here. State involvement in the religious sphere is facilitated by the Vietnamese view that the dead influence the lives of the living, and that the latter have obligations towards their ancestors. On this basis, the Party-state innovatively makes links between the ancestor cult at family, local and national levels. Ancestor worship is officially approved as a ‘national religious tradition’ (Roszko 2010: 4), per-haps because of the emphasis on family reunion at an ancestral home, and because rituals which stress common origins or locality act as an antidote to the new economic and social realities often characterized by mobility and dispersion (Jellema 2007). Returning to an ancestral home during Tet remains a strong ideal and is common practice in Vietnam.

The practice of ancestor worship has been extended to include dead war heroes and former military leaders. This fits into a long tradition of venerating those who have repelled foreign invaders and who are seen as pro-tectors of the fatherland (Malarney 2001: 47). In other words, ancestor worship has become ‘the technology of national integration. Imagining the nation-state became a matter of thinking about dead war heroes within the familiar system of ancestor worship’.2 During Tet these things come together: family ancestors are worshipped, certain important historical events associated with national heroes are commemorated, and crucial military victories recalled.

National heroes include legendary founders of the nation, especially the Hung Kings. Official commemo-ration of such figures attempts to maintain continuity with the past, reinforce the legitimacy of the Party-state, and construct an imagined national community led by it. Figures such as the Trung sisters, who led a rebel-lion against Chinese rule some 2000 years ago, and Tran Hung Dao, the military tactician who repelled Mongol invasions in the 13th century, are effectively used by the state for the purpose of nation building (Pham Quynh Phuong 2009: 8).

Of course, this is not entirely new. The promotion of ‘national culture’ and ‘national identity’ in association with the veneration of ‘national heroes’ by the state goes back to at least 1946 (ibid: 149-153) and there are prec-edents from previous centuries as well. However, heroes such as Tran Hung Dao have been ‘rediscovered’ and the intensity, range, and frequency of Party-state involvement in the commemoration of ancestral heroes has increased.

Tet thus provides an ideal opportunity for the political leadership to promote nationalist sentiment through rituals, with an emphasis on what Vietnamese refer to as ‘remem-bering the source’. It has been suggested that the aim is to boost Party-state authority and leadership as the memory of its role in the struggle against the French and Americans fades (Bouquet 2010: 99). However, given that the state not only imposes on religion but also reacts to the work of intellectuals and to popular practices, one also needs to see the changing shape of religious practice in Vietnam in terms of this interaction and mutual accommodation: if the Party-state imagines that it represents the nation, then it needs to persuade the nation to imagine that the govern-ment is in tune with it. By authorizing and participating in certain forms of religion (and tolerating others) the state shows that it is in harmony with the population at large as it exercises leadership.

The Hung KingsProbably the most prominent and spectacular state involve-ment in commemorative ritual concerns the Hung Kings, national ancestors (quốc tổ) and legendary founders of the Vietnamese nation. In 2007 a new national public holiday was created to commemorate their collective death anni-versary on the 10th day of the third month in the lunar calendar. Although these events are often translated as ‘festivals’ (lễ hội) this term actually combines ‘ritual’ (lễ ) – including actions such as offering incense, prayer orations and kowtowing – with ‘festivity’ (hội), which includes elaborate cultural performances and celebratory activities. Party and state officials regularly participate in both aspects, explicitly ‘on behalf of the nation’.3

More recent innovations have extended this trend to include worship of the legendary ancestor of the Hung Kings, the country’s ‘original ancestor’ (thủy tổ) Kinh Duong Vuong; his son, Lac Long Quan, ‘the Father of the Country’; and the latter’s fairy wife Au Co, ‘the Mother of the Country’.4 Other national heroes have also in recent years been accorded such attention in the name of patri-otism and nationalism, including the Trung sisters,5 King Ly Thai To (Hanoi’s founder), Le Thai To (Le Loi) and Nguyen Trai, the scholar-tactician associated with King Le Thai To (Pham Quynh Phuong 2009: 160).6

These elaborate festivals are constructed by the state using state funds, and can be seen as what Handelman (1997) calls ‘state spectacles’, in terms of which the Party-state attempts to present a vision of a cosmological and cultural order in which the Party-state itself features prominently as guardian and promoter of the nation’s her-itage. It is a case – to paraphrase Geertz (1980: 13) – of pomp serving power, similar to the ways in which other states (e.g. Singapore) have used national day spectacles to attempt to construct a particular kind of national identity and ethos (Kong & Yeoh 1997).

National heroes and the Tet festivalNowadays the Hung Kings are also worshipped as part of Tet. In 2013, an elaborate ritual on the day before Tet and in the lead up to giao thừa (the sacred moment marking the transition between the old and new year) was held at the Hung Kings Temple and broadcast nationally on TV.7 Incense was burned at the exact moment of transi-tion by Party and local government officials on behalf of

20 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 29 NO 2, APRIL 2013

Bouquet, M. 2010. Vietnamese party-state and religious pluralism since 1986: Building the fatherland? SOJURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 25(1): 90-108.

DiGregorio, M. & O. Salemink 2007. Living with the dead: The politics of ritual and remembrance in contemporary Vietnam. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 38(3):433-440.

Endres, K.& A. Lauser 2012. Contests of commemoration: Virgin war martyrs, state memorials, and the invocation of the spirit world in contemporary Vietnam. In Endres, K. & A. Lauser (eds). Engaging the spirit world: Popular beliefs and practices in modern Southeast Asia, 121-143. New York: Berghahn Books.

Geertz, C. 1980. Negara: The theatre state in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton University Press.

Giebel, C. 2001. Museum shrine: Revolution and its tutelary spirit in the village of My Hoa Hung. In Tai, H-T.H. (ed.) The country of memory: Remaking the past in late socialist Vietnam, 77-105. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Handelman, D. 1997. Rituals/spectacles. International Social Sciences Journal 153(September): 387-399.

Jellema, K. 2007. Returning home: Ancestor veneration and the nationalism of đổi mới Vietnam. In Taylor, P. (ed.) Modernity and re-enchantment: Religion in post-revolutionary Vietnam, 57-89. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Kerkvliet, B. 2001. An approach for analysing state-society relations in Vietnam. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 16(2): 238-278.

Kong, L.& B. Yeoh 1997. The construction of national identity through the production of ritual and spectacle: An analysis of national days in Singapore. Political Geography 16(3): 213-239.

Kwon, H. 2006. After the massacre: Commemoration and consolation in Ha My and My Lai. Berkley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Malarney, S. 2001. The fatherland remembers your sacrifice. In Tai, H-T.H. (ed.). The country of memory: Remaking the past in late socialist Vietnam, 46-76. Berkley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.

— 2002. Culture, ritual and revolution in Vietnam. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

the nation. The use of customary Tet offerings (incense, rice cakes, a five fruits platter and flowers) made to the Hung Kings, as well as the performance of ‘traditional’ folk games and dances, helped to authenticate this event. Party-state involvement in Tet ritual can thus be seen at least partly as an attempt to transform the national cultural festival into a state spectacle.

As with other forms of Party-state ritual associated with Tet, the importance of family and the role of the head of the family in securing good fortune in the forthcoming year from mystical powers during Tet, is the idiom through which the leadership operates, assuming the role of head of the national ‘family’ and acting on its behalf.

Prominent government leaders also participate in Tet events associated with other ‘national heroes’ such as Tran Hung Dao (Pham Quynh Phuong 2009: 160) and Nguyen Hue, annually commemorating the Ngoc Hoi-Dong Da victory when Nguyen Hue and the Tay Son army defeated the Chinese at Thang Long (today’s Hanoi), on the fourth and fifth days of Tet each year.8 The most recent of Vietnam’s ‘national ancestral heroes’, of course, is Ho Chi Minh (popularly known as Bac Ho, ‘Uncle Ho’) and his successor, Ton Duc Thang, the commemoration of whom has taken on an increasingly religious form since đổi mới (Giebel 2001: 77).

Although Bac Ho himself tried to discourage the more ‘backward’ aspects of Tet and promoted the planting of trees as part of the festival (Malarney 2002: 71),9 he is now frequently the subject of Tet ritual. One of the main sites at which Bac Ho is venerated is the ‘house on stilts’ in Hanoi, the leader’s former residence and part of the Ho Chi Minh Museum and Mausoleum complex in Ba Dinh. In Ho Chi Minh City similar attention is paid to Bac Ho at Ben Nha Rong, the Ho Chi Minh Museum, and also to Ton Duc Thang at the nearby Ton Duc Thang Museum.10 In both of these museums there are rooms in which these former leaders are worshipped on important national days such as Tet, their birthdays, and their death anniversaries. These rooms were added to the two museums relatively recently and they include statues or portraits of the former leaders above altars with incense burners, candles, flower and fruit offerings and other accoutrements usually found in places of worship.11

Every Tet eve, the Vietnamese president delivers a tele-vised address to the nation, standing in front of a large bust of Ho Chi Minh on a table draped with the national flag, a form of ‘altar’ that is commonly found with flowers and sometimes an incense burner in front of it.12 Recently, Ho Chi Minh’s close relatives, too, have become the subject of national public veneration.13

Tet and the Party-state welcome overseas VietnameseIn the larger cities during Tet, local authorities organize elaborate welcoming events for overseas Vietnamese (known as Viet Kieu) who are visiting the homeland. I attended one of these events in Hanoi in 2012, a week or so before Tet. It took place at the Ho Chi Minh Museum. In the Museum forecourt an elaborate and sumptuous buffet had been laid out and a row of canvas booths provided accommodation for calligraphists making Tet wall hang-ings and for property developers and financial institutions offering the visitors brochures with invitations to explore investment opportunities in Vietnam. A full programme, including a welcome by the president, unfolded. It was a lavish affair, carefully choreographed, with no expense spared.

The following day was 23 December, the day on which the kitchen god, Ong Tao or Tao Quan, is traditionally wor-shipped in households and sent to heaven to report to the Jade Emperor on the affairs of the family. In the north, Ong

Tao is provided with three golden carp which are thought to transform into dragons and are Ong Tao’s means of transport to heaven.

Just a few hours prior to the welcoming event I attended, there was another assembly of some 1000 over-seas Vietnamese in the same area, led by the Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang. Here, proceedings included ceremonial incense offerings to commemorate ancestral kings in Thang Long Royal Citadel led by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, followed by a visit to Mot Cot (One Pillar) Pagoda, where the deputy minister and over-seas guests conducted the ‘ceremonial of releasing birds to the heavens’. Later, President Truong Tan Sang led the assembly in offering incense in remembrance of Bac Ho at the stilt house. After that, the president and Viet Kieu conducted ‘the traditional ritual/ceremony’ (nghi lễ) of releasing carp to see off Ong Tao on his return to Heaven.14

Not long ago these kinds of Taoist rituals were regarded as unacceptable and attempts were made to ban them. Malarney (2002: 86-87) points out that the Party and state tried to ‘appropriate Tet for their own purposes’ from the 1950s onwards, but they wanted it to be celebrated in keeping with the socialist ideals of thrift and hard work and without the incorporation of backward ‘superstitions’ and excessive expenditure. In this attempt they were not successful. However, they did not discourage the close relationship between the living and their ancestors that is characteristic of Tet, but Malarney (2002: 92) feels that villagers did not appreciate the ‘subtle distinction’ between ancestral and other kinds of spirits, so by maintaining Tet, the Party-state unwittingly also allowed these beliefs and rituals to continue.

The Rice Cake Festival (Le Hoi Banh Tet)At a local government level, too, the Party is directly involved in both the festive and the ritual elements of Tet. In Ho Chi Minh City, the People’s Committee, through its major tourism operation Saigon Tourist Holdings, organ-izes a number of high profile public activities under the banner of the Rice Cake Festival (lễ hội bánh tét). Bánh tét are the cylindrical rice cakes associated with Tet in the south, which contrast with bánh chưng, the square rice cakes associated with Tet in the north.

The Rice Cake festival includes a variety of spectacular displays and performances, and attracts tens of thousands of citizens to the city centre each year. Some of these events involve religious activities in which leading mem-bers of the People’s Committee worship national heroic figures and founding ancestors on behalf of the citizens and the nation.

In 2008 its highlight was a three-hour street parade in the city centre, with many large troupes of marchers in col-ourful dress evoking Tet themes, elaborate floats, musical and dance groups, and so on. This event was watched by a live audience of tens of thousands of people and millions more on TV. The high point of the parade was the arrival of two giant rice cakes on flat-bed trucks, weighing 3.5 tons each, preceded by a uniformed brass band. These had been made at Dam Sen Park, a popular amusement park and also one of the local People’s Committee’s enterprises.

Proudly proclaimed as a Guinness record, these rice cakes were then officially offered in worship at a spe-cially constructed altar by the vice-chair of the People’s Committee, accompanied by other officials. Incense was burned, the official Party members kowtowed in front of the altar, and a large slice of the giant rice cake was offered to the heroes and ancestors of the nation, including Ho Chi Minh (the MC’s commentary made this quite explicit).

After this solemn act of public worship, the giant cakes were divided into thousands of portions and given to mem-

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 29 NO 2, APRIL 2013 21

(From above to below, left to right)Fig. 4. Tet rice cakes and assorted pickles.Fig. 5. Rice cake making competition.Fig. 6. Winning rice cakes carried into the Hung Kings Temple, Ho Cho Minh City.

Fig. 7. Officials burn incense for Ton Duc Thang.Fig. 8. Monument to those killed in the attack on the US Embassy during Tet 1968.Fig. 9. Hàng mã (votive offerings) shop.

Fig. 10. Overseas Vietnamese (Viet Kieu) in front of Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum.Fig 11. Calligraphists making Tet wall hangings.

PATR

ICK

MC

ALLI

STER

PATR

ICK

MC

ALLI

STER

PATR

ICK

MC

ALLI

STER

PATR

ICK

MC

ALLI

STER

PATR

ICK

MC

ALLI

STER

PATR

ICK

MC

ALLI

STER

PATR

ICK

MC

ALLI

STER

LÊ H

OÀN

G A

NH

TH

Ư

22 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 29 NO 2, APRIL 2013

Pham Quynh Phuong 2009. Hero and deity: Tran Hung Dao and the resurgence of popular religion in Vietnam. Chiang Mai: Mekong Press.

Roszko, E. 2010. Commemoration and the state: Memory and legitimacy in Vietnam. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 25(1): 1-28.

Taylor, P. 2001. Fragments of the present: Searching for modernity in Vietnam’s south. Sydney/Honolulu: Allen & Unwin/University of Hawai’i Press.

— 2007. Modernity and re-enchantment: Religion in post-revolutionary Vietnam. In Taylor, P. (ed.). Modernity and re-enchantment: Religion in post-revolutionary Vietnam, 1-56. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Thomas, M. 2001. Public spaces/public disgraces: Crowds and the state in contemporary Vietnam. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 16(2): 306-330.

bers of the large crowd just before it dispersed. This was reminiscent of a family partaking of the food offered to the ancestors after a ritual propitiating or welcoming the latter into the home (a ritual known as rước ông bà commonly performed by most Vietnamese families on the day before Tet). This is another example, then, of how ancestor wor-ship at familial and national levels are conflated by means of government ritual, and of how officials use Tet ritual to promote the Party as popular leader.

In 2007, Dam Sen Park workers also made a giant 2.6 ton bánh chưng and a 1.2 ton bánh dày rice cake, and sent these 1,800 km to Phu Tho province in the north for the Hung Kings death anniversary.15 The association between the Hung Kings and Tet lies in these two rice cakes, especially bánh chưng, which is an indispensable part of Tet in the north, an essential offering on ancestral altars, and a symbol of regional and national identity. These two rice cakes are also a prominent part of the offerings to the Hung Kings during Tet and on their annual collective death anniversary.16

From 2009 onwards however, due to the changed finan-cial climate in Vietnam and internationally, the expen-sive street parade in Ho Chi Minh City and the giant rice cakes were replaced with a city-wide rice cake-making competition. This competition concluded with well pub-licized public worship at the Hung Kings Temple near the botanical gardens and zoo. Here, the ultimate winners of the competition had the honour of seeing their rice cakes being carried into the temple on a palanquin by traditionally dressed young men and women (employees of Saigon Tourist Holdings) and placed on the altar as offerings by a representative of the city’s People’s Committee. Immediately after this, some of the winning rice cakes were also offered to Ho Chi Minh and Ton Duc Thang by the same group of dignitaries, who lit incense, kowtowed and offered flowers, fruit and rice cakes to these two supreme modern heroes at their respective museum-shrines.

Messages on the streets and the Tet offensiveIn Vietnam’s cities, during the lunar new year festival large street posters and banners hung from public build-ings make general links between the Tet festival, the Party, and the nation. They also link the party to the national social and economic development attributed to đổi mới. For example:

Celebrate the year of the Tiger, celebrate the glorious Party, celebrate the renewed country.Some banners also reference specific events that enable

this link between Tet and the Party to be made, particularly certain important political and military anniversaries that coincide with Tet such as the founding of the Vietnamese Communist Party (3-7 February 1930). Thus among the banners and billboards displaying Tet slogans and images are others reminding people of this anniversary, the debt that the country owes to Ho Chi Minh, the Party, the revo-lution, and so on, such as:

Celebrate the year of Buffalo 2009 on the occasion of the 79th anniversary of the Vietnam Communist Party: the Party Committee and the people of Binh Thanh District warmly wel-come the New Year of Buffalo 2009.The founding of the Party is also celebrated at com-

memorative gatherings broadcast on national TV imme-diately before Tet, and accompanied by various activities such as public exhibitions. For example, in 2010 the Youth Cultural Centre in Ho Chi Minh City held an exhibition to welcome the new year and at the same time mark the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the Party. Similar events took place during the Party Congress (held every five years) at around this time. The 2011 Party Congress in Hanoi was announced in Ho Chi Minh City with banners like:

HCM city greets the new year 2011, and welcomes the 11th National Congress of the Party.The phrase ‘when you drink the water remember the

source’ is commonly heard in public during Tet, often spoken by leaders at commemorative events in reference to family ancestors and national heroes as well as heroic martyrs, including soldiers, who died in the cause of the nation. In this respect one of the things now remembered nationally every Tet is the 1968 ‘Tet offensive’, a turning point in the war which played an important role in finally ousting the Americans and their allies in 1975. So in spite of the đổi mới reforms the state reminds the nation of its guardian role each Tet, through actions such as recalling the Tet offensive with street banners urging citizens to remember ‘Xuân Mậu Thân 1968’ (‘Spring in the Year of the Monkey 1968’).

Public events during Tet include special exhibitions depicting the actions of war heroes and martyrs, receptions for war veterans, and so on. During Tet, a monument outside the site of the former US Embassy building in Ho Chi Minh City commemorating those who died in the attack on the Embassy on 31 January 1968 by North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong troops is transformed with banners, while those who died are commemorated through the addition of flowers and incense placed on the memorial. In 2008, the banners on either side of the monument read: ‘Eternal spirit of the general offensive New Year of the Monkey 1968’ and ‘The country is eternally grateful and remembers the service of the heroic revolutionary martyrs’.

ConclusionThomas (2001) argues that in the 1980s and 1990s ordi-nary people in Vietnam, critical of the government and its policies, withdrew from participating in stage-managed Party-state activities and started to find new ways of con-gregating in public spaces for activities that were largely non-political (e.g. celebrity funerals, football matches) but which were nevertheless potentially threatening to the authorities. Initially the Party-state attempted to discourage some of these gatherings, which included religious pilgrim-ages and festivals, which were growing in popularity every year, and which facilitated the development of ‘a sense of community and shared emotion’ (2001: 321). I suggest that the evidence presented above shows that the Party-state later reacted to this by itself becoming more involved in these festivals and pilgrimages, providing financial and logistical support for them, re-inventing them in some ways and inventing others, declaring them to be part of national identity and Vietnamese culture, and positioning itself as the guardian and promoter of this identity and cul-ture by means of these events and the media coverage of them. This applies to the Tet festival as much as it does to the commemoration of national heroes.

In this respect the Party-state continued to claim, as it had in the past, that the various festivals and com-memorations which it supported and participated in, upheld values and principles that were a manifestation of Vietnamese tradition and culture, which it continued to uphold in the post đổi mới era. Some have in fact claimed that the success of the Vietnam Communist Party from the 1930s onwards was due to its ability to represent traditional concerns (Taylor 2001: 7-8). On the other hand, the religious revivals in Vietnam are closely linked to its engagement with aspects of modernity, economic liberalization and globalization, so to portray them as ‘traditional’, as the Party-state attempts to do, is clearly questionable from a scholarly point of view. Rather, it is a notion of tradition that is continually being ‘re-invented’ and used by the Party-state as a strategic symbolic resource in its attempts to maintain power and legitimacy. l

Fig. 12. ‘Celebrate the Year of the Dragon, celebrate the glorious Party, celebrate the renewed country’.Fig. 13. ‘Eternal spirit of the general offensive. The Year of the Monkey 1968 lives on!’

PATR

ICK

MC

ALLI

STER

PATR

ICK

MC

ALLI

STER