Hue Cultural Village “Back to the Source”
(Vietnam Review No 528, December 2002)
Hue Cultural Village “Back to the Source” is located in Huong Ho Village, Huong Tra District of Thua Thien-Hue Province, amid the greenness of the mountainous and hilly locality. A unique architectural complex made of wood, bamboo and thatch, it is the first cultural village in Vietnam built by the Hue Research Centre for Folk Culture where traditional customs, festivals and daily activities of the ethnic Ko Tu group are re-produced and introduced to visitors.
The village gate is built in the shape of a gourd, which is in both ancient and modern architecture and means that visitors are going to the source of the ethnic groups. The soul of the Village is the guol, a Ko Tu traditional wooden house built with a bamboo floor and roofed with rattan. The rattan leaves are placed next to one another, producing special designs. Ko Tu painters painted the traditional Ko Tu designs of humans, poultry, birds and animals on the pillars. Four wooden planks in the shape of arms dancing Ko Tu dances have been painted with many designs and are stuck to the main pillars. The pillars are also carved with designs and images of reptiles. Along the stairs, there are symbols of agriculture with the notable ones being a couple of buffalo heads with sharp, curving horns. There are also wooden statues of men and women painted in colour, which are full of the Southeast Asian characteristics.
Around the Village there are gardens and farms of bamboo, jack fruit trees, grapefruit trees, etc. At the front of the guol and in the centre of its yard, a pole for worship was erected that represents the world’s axis. It is called the “Tree of the Universe” or the pole for worship and designed delicately with motifs that relate to the symbol of the Sun. According to Ko Tu people, the pole is the rice plant and is where a buffalo is often tied to before it is killed to worship the ancestors during the traditional buffalo-stabbing festival.
In the Village’s compound, there are four smaller guols, which are showrooms for Ko Tu cultural products and are places to perform Ko Tu people’s daily activities. At the back of the Village is the burial house, which is also a cultural masterpiece of the Ko Tu people.
Visitors to the Village can enjoy unique performances of the Ko Tu cultural life and daily activities performed by original Ko Tu people. They can watch Ko Tu dances, enjoy Ko Tu food with pork and fish placed in bamboo tubes and grilled, and rice cooked in bamboo tubes. Young women pound rice with hand pestles, sift and winnow rice, weave brocade on traditional looms, weave bamboo baskets, carve statues and paint folk paintings. Life of the original Ko Tu people is reproduced vividly. To the sounds of the drumbeats and gong, Ko Tu girls are charming when dancing the Yaya (pray for harvest), and strong men look vigorous in the Tungtung (victory dance). These two dances, when performed together, make up the “Sun of the Ko Tu” dance that represents the images of the carvings on the ancient Dong Son bronze drum.
Mai Khac Ung, a researcher from Hue Research Centre for Folk Culture and one of the founders of the Village, said: “Through research, we find that Ko Tu culture is sparkling and it echoes to the sound of the Dong Son Culture in the era when the Hung kings built the country of Vietnam. For this reason, we built the Village to preserve the valuable cultural asset of the Ko Tu in particular, and of the country in general.”
