After Tet, go to Con Temple festival

(Baonghean) -In the folk consciousness of Nghe An people about temples, there is a song that goes: First is Con, second is Qua, third is Ma, fourth is Trung. Con Temple is located in Quynh Phuong commune (formerly called Phuong Can), Quynh Luu district, Nghe An province. Every year after Tet, on the 15th, this place is bustling with festivals.

Coming to Quynh Phuong at this time, the bustling atmosphere of preparing for the Con Temple Festival seems to have spread to every small alley. Unlike the communes in the suburbs, the Tet holiday usually only lasts until the 3rd day. In Quynh Phuong, the people here have kept the habit passed down for many generations, often seeing off their ancestors after the Temple Festival. On the main festival day, the descendants of the village, no matter how busy they are in business, try to return to celebrate. If they cannot return, they respectfully set up an altar, burn incense in memory of the sacred temple. On the festival day, boats return to anchor in front of the temple, drop anchor, hang lights, and decorate their ships to make them as bright as possible. These days, any visitor from all over can follow the rope that anchors the ship to the shore to board the ship, get drunk on the dances, sing, and drink with the boat owner and the locals. There is plenty of wine here, people are willing to invite you to take a sip for good luck even though they don't know who you are or where you come from.

Con Temple before the opening day.

The Con Temple Festival lasts from January 15 to 19. Like many other folk festivals, the Con Temple Festival consists of a ceremony and a festival. The ceremony includes a proclamation ceremony, an enthronement ceremony, a palanquin procession from the Inner Temple to the Outer Temple and a palanquin procession from the Outer Temple to the Inner Temple (both by water and land), and a thanksgiving ceremony. As for the festival, visitors from all over the world will be immersed in the space of unique folk games that usually take place from the morning of January 19 to the evening of January 21, such as chess, human chess, cockfighting, sports with traditional boat racing, volleyball, soccer, and table tennis. Culture and arts are also an indispensable spiritual food on the main festival day. There will be cultural exchange programs, Chau Van singing, excerpts from Cheo plays, video screenings, and specialized mobile exhibitions.

The highlight of the Con Temple Festival is the boat racing festival that lasts from the 21st to the 24th of December, "21st rowing with boys, 22nd rowing with poles, 23rd rowing with gold, 24th rowing with wells" and the procession of the sacred wood or the vomit-running custom. The vomit-running custom is a unique feature of the Con Temple Festival. The procession of the sacred wood takes place at night and all day on the 21st, but the villagers have prepared from the 16th to the 20th of January. Because this is a procession by both water and land, the participants are all 4 hamlets, including both men and women; the space extends from Quynh Phuong commune through Quynh Lien and Quynh Bang communes and the destination is Quy Linh - Quynh Luong temple, the procession distance of nearly 10 km has attracted people from the whole region.

In the changing times of modern life, the Con Temple Festival is no exception to the rule of fading many traditional cultural features. Many values ​​have been more or less commercialized. However, every time Tet comes, Spring comes, hearing the coastal people of this area excitedly telling each other to come and join the festival, we can see that the Con Temple Festival still has a sacred attraction not only in the hearts of the coastal people of Phuong Can but also spreading to many other places. That is why every year when the festival opens, Con Temple is bustling with visitors from all over the country coming to worship.

Ho Viet Thinh