Vietnam Town

You can usually tell by the drizzling rain and the blooming fresh buds that Spring is in the air in Xuan Dinh, an ancient village near Hanoi’s West Lake. This is also when the village holds a special festival to honour its patron genie.

One of the customary celebrations is to organise a performance of cheo, which is often described as Vietnam’s traditional kind of opera.

In the middle of the village’s communal house, Eva, a Czech tourist, is engrossed as she listens to an extract of a famous cheo play called Guan Yin Thi Kinh. It is considered to be one of the treasures of Vietnamese traditional stage, though in Xuan Dinh, there is no stage.

“This is the first time I have seen a cheo performance. How strange it is to watch a performance on some mats in the open air!” Eva says.

In less than favourable weather conditions, the two female performers playing the main protagonists, Thi Mau and Kinh Tam, move gracefully to the harmonious melodies in their thin-silk gowns. Thankfully a large crowd gathers and huddles closely together, generating a warm and spirited atmosphere.

Despite enjoying the show, Eva can’t follow the dialogue. Fortunately, 75-year-old Nguyen Thi Co, who graced the stage as Thi Mau for decades, is on hand. Chewing a piece of betel in her mouth, Co slowly explains the plot to the village’s guest with the help of an interpreter.

A landlord’s beloved daughter named Thi Kinh has reached the age of consent and after days of interviewing prospective suitors, the landlord finally chooses Thien Si, a talented student, to marry as a groom for his daughter.

The couple lives a happy married life. Thien Si studies hard in hope of becoming a good mandarin and Thi Kinh works diligently as a seamstress.

One night, feeling tired, the hard-working husband heads to bed early. While he slumbers, Thi Kinh notices a beard on her husband’s chin emerging and believing something is amiss, she takes out a sharp knife and cuts it off. All of a sudden, Thien Si wakes up and screams as the knife hovers over his face.

Hearing her son’s cries, Thien Si’s mother rushes in and accuses Thi Kinh of trying to murder her own husband. She scolds the young bride and drives her away.

Lamenting her bad luck, Thi Kinh decides to disguise herself as a man and join a pagoda far from her native village where she says her name is Kinh Tam.

In Thi Kinh or rather Kinh Tam’s adopted village, lives Thi Mau who comes from a wealthy family and visits the pagoda regularly. One fateful day, she meets Kinh Tam and falls head over heels in love.

She tries by means both fair and foul to make designs on the monk and can’t understand it when Kinh Tam resists her advances. As a result the lovelorn Thi Mau returns home and has an affair with her family’s gatekeeper.

But her father catches the couple in the act of love and so he gives the gatekeeper some money and banishes him from the village.

However Thi Mau soon discovers she is pregnant and is fined by the disapproving village heads, a common practice in rural areas of Vietnam in the past (The illegitimate child would also be given to someone else to rear).

But the story has another twist. When the village heads question Thi Mau, she claims the child is Kinh Tam’s! Of course, Kinh Tam denies this, but the village chief orders the disgraced monk to be beaten.

The pagoda’s chief mandarin pities Kinh Tam, pays the fine on her behalf and continues to let Kinh Tam live in the pagoda.

When Thi Mau finally gives birth to a son, she gives the child to the pagoda. Seeing the weak and motherless child, Kinh Tam takes the baby in search of milk to feed it.

Three years later, exhausted by her travels, Kinh Tam writes a long letter recounting what had actually happened and dies.

“Then it was discovered she was a woman and so she was vindicated,” explains Co.

Co’s granddaughter, 20-year-old Bui Thi Nhung, plays the role of Thi Kinh and Kinh Tam. She and the other performers have been working hard to practice their roles for the festival.

“I have liked cheo since I was little girl and I have played a host of roles in different plays. My grandmother taught me to perform this role which is a difficult one as the character embodies mercy and patience,” Nhung says.

“Why doesn’t Kinh Tam confess she’s a girl?” asks Eva.

“If she says she’s a girl, she would be absolved and avoid a punishment, but she wants to save the baby as she sees that as the most important deed,” says Nhung.

Nguyen Thi Lien, who is also just 20 years old, plays Thi Mau. She claims her role represents the more brazen members of society. Neither she nor Nhung are professional artists.

“We are locals and work in a factory in the village,” says Lien with a smile.

As the festival ends, the costumes and stage set are stacked away and tomorrow, Nhung and Lien will go back to work in the factory while the local farmers will resume their normal work on the paddies in spite of the piercing cold.

(Source: Time-out)