Rehearsal of art performances at Yen The Festival.

Cau Go town (Yen The district, Bac Giang province) is dazzled with flags, flowers, banners and slogans of Yen The festival in mid-March. This year, the district-level festival is organised with traditional rituals featuring the locality’s standout cultural characteristics. 

New aspects of the festival are tug and war championship tournament hosted by the district and the introduction of dishes made from Yen The hill chickens.

The Yen The Insurrection (1884-1913) was the largest scale revolt in history before the Party leadership. After 134 years, vestiges of the glorious battle still echoes back the locality. According to some documents, in the second détente with France in 1897, Hoang Hoa Tham paid due attention to taking care of spiritual lives of insurgents and local residents. Along with building religious works like communal house and pagoda, he organised spring festival to pray for good luck in the beginning of the year and requiem held on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month. 

An event recreates flag offering ritual of ancient hero Hoang Hoa Tham at Yen The Festival.

The festival was held in large scale when the locality had bumper crops or the insurgents had victorious battles. De Tham always had meeting relatives of the fallen soldiers on the occasion.

Besides traditional games, the festival also featured competitions of archery, shooting, hunting, horse racing, wrestling, rice cooking and making vegetarian meals.

This year festival will go vibrant with various activities like, incense offering, fish releasing, campfire, art performances, “Thu linh ao nau” (leader in brown shirt) film screening, love duet singing on boat, water puppetry, performance of traditional costumes, folk games, traditional sports and trade fair introducing local staples and ornamental creature exhibition.

Students perform flutes at Yen The Festival.

The organising board will arrange tour guides at relevant relic sites like Thong pagoda, Cau Khoai temple, Dinh Thep communal house and Leo pagoda.  

The province hosted Yen The Festival for the first time in 1984. Since then, it has become one of the province’s signature activities enriched with historic and cultural values and martial spirit. The festival aims to promote patriotism, traditional martial spirit, and national pride for the preservation of local cultural heritages and the tourism development.

To promote Yen The Festival as a civilized and friendly event, Yen The district plans to organise all activities and ceremonies solemnly, strictly following the tradition.

According to Vice Chairman of the district People's Committee Nguyen Ngoc Son, the district has set up a special force for social affairs that are tasked to keep a close watch on the festival’s areas and clear beggars out of these areas. The force must also have plans to manage the beggars during the festival.

In addition, the district asked environmental service workers to maintain regular garbage collection, set up mobile toilets at appropriate locations, and encourage businesses and visitors to keep clean.

The district has been reviewing and repairing or replacing facilities for the festival while developing plans to ensure security, traffic safety, environmental sanitation and smooth communications. It also established an inspection team to get tough on violations of security and food safety as well as social evil like theft and gambling. 

This year, the district continues to cooperative with a telecom firm to text people promotional messages about the festival.

The festival’s facilities and landscapes have been improved while relics have been restored to meet the needs of visitors.

People and visitors offer incense at the monument of national hero Hoang Hoa Tham.

The event will require more investment from the State and the province to preserve and promote its cultural values and to attract more visitors.

Nguyen Huong