Overall view of the Xuong Giang Temple

Historical - cultural – spiritual hallmarks

The construction of the Xuong Giang Victory relic site has met expectations of many generations of officials and people in Bac Giang city. Present here in the last days of the Year of the Monkey, we witnessed construction teams urgently completing the final jobs for the work.

Nguyen Thi Thuy, Director of the Hanoi Fine Art Company, said her company has completed up to 90 percent of the decoration work inside the Xuong Giang Temple and support facilities, adding that all work will be done by January 25 (the 28th day of the 12th lunar month).

Thuy and Nguyen Dinh Uoc, Director of the Thanh Cong Fine Art Stone Hoa Lu, Ninh Binh directly supervised and instructed their workers to use specialised machines to carefully place altars, steles and lion-like head statues inside and outside the temple. The ancient capital’s artisans meticulously sculptured the pieces of blue stone weighing several tonnes taken from Yen Dinh in Thanh Hoa province.

Meanwhile, Phung Duc Linh from Hanoi-based Nhan Binh JSC, technical manager of the project, and his team are completing the paving of the temple yard. In some phases, hundreds of workers were called to work around the clock in order to complete the work in 10 months,” Linh said.

The festival this year takes place from the second day until the fifteen day of the first lunar month (January 29 to February 11). The rituals will include the worship of King Le Loi King and the Lam Son heroes.

The relic complex locates in Xuong Giang ward so local authorities and residents feel excited and proud of the project. The clearance work on a site of 10 hectares involving 400 households was done in a quick and smooth manner. The stature of the magnificent relic complex marking the glorious feats of our ancestors nearly six centuries ago, a lively proof of the patriotic tradition of generations of Vietnamese people has created an important historical, cultural and spiritual highlight in the scared land in the northeast entrance to the city. The wooden temple holds the key value of the complex, with support facilities such as the ritual practicing square, the pre-worship house, the incense-burning house, and the 200sq.m sanctum built in traditional two-storey and eight-roof design.

The life-size bronze statue of King Le Loi is placed in the sanctum, with the ancestral tablets of strategist Nguyen Trai and 16 commanders engaging in the Chi Lang – Xuong Giang battle in both sides. The temple has decorative patterns, stone sculptures and architecture components including Fresco style painted doors, horizontal lacquered boards and parallel sentences dated back the post-Le period between the 15th and 16th centuries.

Outside, there are two halls on the left and the right, gong and drum towers and a water well, and a man-made pine hill behind the temple, brick-paved paths, grass carpets, a main gate and two side gates, and surrounding walls.

Preparing the stone platform to place in the Xuong Giang Temple.

Well-prepared for the opening of the festival

Nguyen Van Chinh, Head of the village elders association of the Dong Giang residential group, is busy preparing for the festival, yet spends his time talking with reporters who visit the temple. He said 21 local elders selected for ritual performance at the festival are practicing under the instruction of an artisan from the Thai temple in Dong Ve ward, Thanh Hoa city.

Previously, the main ritual of the Xuong Giang Festival was worship to the Tutelary God in the Thanh Communal House. Now the Xuong Giang temple is dedicated to King Le Loi and his generals and soldiers, therefore, the ritual oration and costumes change.

Besides the completion of the relic complex construction, in October 2016, the Bac Giang city People’s Committee issued a plan and established an organizing board of the city-level Xuong Giang Festival to ensure security, order, traffic safety and cultural value of the festival in a bid to lure more visitors.

This year marks the 20th annual Xuong Giang Festival since Bac Giang province was re-established. It is associated with the Chi Lang – Xuong Giang Victory 590 years ago.

With joint efforts made by the Party Committee, authorities and people of Bac Giang city as well as support from cultural researchers, historians, Buddhist monks and enterprises, the construction of the complex has basically been completed and the rituals are ready for the festival.

This spring, Xuong Giang Festival will open on the second day of the first lunar month. Let’s join the festival to offer incense and express gratitude to our ancestors, to feel the old-day Xuong Giang spirit and wish for a new year with peace and prosperity!

By Vu Phuong