Tuy Loan Communal House Festival

Located in Tuy Loan Village, Hoa Phong Commune, Hoa Vang District, this communal house was built in the late eighteenth century and rebuilt in the year of Mau Ty (1988). Like those in Nai Nam and Bo Ban, Tuy Loan Communal House is used to worship the village gods and the bygone sages.

On the 9^th day of the first lunar month every year, people of Dong and Tay Hamlets in Tuy Loan Village, and also visitors, gather together to organise the two-day traditional village festival.  The festival features the King’s honour ceremony (le sac phong) to remind people of their five ancestors, Đặng, Lâm, Nguyễn, Trần, and Lê.  These people obeyed King Le Thanh Ton’s order to travel to the southern region to expand the country, and selected fertile land for a settlement.  They named their village “Tuy Loan”.

Tuy Loan Communal House covers an area of 110 square metres and has brick walls with a pantile roof. It is decorated with two dragons flanking a moon and flying dragons, all encrusted with shards of pottery. The interior is in three sections and there are two lean-tos, the rear one being 2.4 metres wide and 2.7 metres long.  It has four rows of jackfruit wood pillars, each of which has six pillars from 2.5 to 4.5 metres high.  The pillars against the walls are carved with stylised floral designs, and their bases are decorated with pumpkin shapes.  At the two sides, the roof beams are each decorated with a dragon’s head, and the tie beams have floating clouds, daisies and peonies reflecting their artistic value.  The house still preserves 20 honour decrees dating from King Minh Mang’s reign (1826) to King Khai Dinh’s reign (1924).

Each year, two ceremonies are held at this communal house.  One is held on the 14^th and 15^th days of the second lunar month to welcome spring, and the other is on the 14^th and 15^th days of the eighth lunar month to welcome autumn.  Gala activities, including many funny traditional games such as pushing sticks, arm wrestling, and tug of war, take place in front of the communal house.  Tuy Loan is famous for its “banh trang” (rice paper/rice cracker), and therefore “banh trang” making competitions are a main feature of this festival.  Dong and Tay Hamlets choose the most skilled girls to join in the competition to bring pride to their hamlet and contribute to honouring the village’s traditional skill.

In the anti-French resistance war, Tuy Loan Communal House was a place where local people, and those in the neighbouring villages of Bo Ban and Cam Toai, held a demonstration and usurped the power of the district chief of Hoa Vang in August 1945.

In the anti-American resistance war (1957-1975), the puppet government of Ngo Dinh Diem made this house a place for betraying and executing communists.  Accordingly, it was a place where the local people rose to oppose the Americans and the Diem government.

Tuy Loan Communal House was recognised as a historical and cultural relic by the Ministry of Culture and Communication on 4 January 1999.