Tay people in Chiem Hoa district, Tuyen Quang province, bring the offerings for the rituals (Photo: VNA)
Tuyen Quang (VNA) – The Long Tong (goingto the field) Festival began in Chiem Hoa district of the northern mountainous provinceof Tuyen Quang on February 23.
The festival, celebrated annually by Tay ethnicminority people in the province on the eighth day of the new lunar year, is a religious ritualdedicated to the god of agriculture to win his blessing for verdant crops andprosperity for villagers throughout the year.
It consists of an offering ritual, a ploughingceremony and folk games.
When the offerings are ready, a shaman deferentiallyrecites prayers in Tay dialect, inviting gods and goddesses to the rite andasking for their blessing for the village to have bumper crops and growingherds of cattle and be freed from diseases and misfortune.
The offering ritual is followed by the tich dien (ploughingceremony) in which the festival host leads a carefully selected male buffalo tomake the first furrows of the year. In Tay belief, villagers will get good luckand yield bumper crops throughout the year if this buffalo makes straightfurrows.
Then comes the most exciting part of the festival,folk games, central to which is nem con (throwing con through the ring on thetop of the con pole). Other games in the festival include tug of war, blindman’s bluff and yen playing (a game similar to badminton, but played between aman and a woman).
Long Tong is the most typical festival of the Tay, abig ethnic minority group living in the northern mountain region with apopulation of over 1.6 million.
The festival was named national intangible culturalheritage in 2013.-VNA
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Tay people in Chiem Hoa district, Tuyen Quang province, bring the offerings for the rituals (Photo: VNA) 
