In Tuy Loan Village in Danang City, the Communal House Festival is one of the most anticipated events as it is one of the largest spring celebrations as well as a traditional spiritual endeavor among local residents.
Image by: http://www.danang.gov.vn/
Tuy Loan Communal House was constructed in 1889 in Tuy Loan Village, Hoa Phong Commune, Hoa Vang District. To this day, it is able to conserve the 20 honors decrees beginning from King Minh Mang’s ruling in 1826 to King Khai Dinh’s reign in 1924. It stands on a 110-square metre area and is built with brick walls and yin-yang roof tiles with pottery-made dragon designs. There are wooden pillars against the walls carved with floral style that were handmade by local artists.
The Communal House Festival is a two-day affair wherein on the ninth and tenth day of the first lunar month of every year, residents of the East and West (Dong and Tay) hamlets of Tuy Loan Village congregate at the said communal house in order to celebrate. The activities include a king’s honor ceremony called the le sac phong as well as other rituals to thank and praise the first ancestors of the five communal houses namely Dang, Lam, Nguyen, Tran and Le. They were the ones who executed King Le Thanh Ton’s orders to widen the country’s power to the Southern region in 1470. It is in this following of their leader’s instructions that they discovered the place where they would settle and named it “Tuy Loan.”