I.
The place where I was born and raised was less than a kilometre from Trieu Khuc village. Many people when mentioning the Temple of Literature often talk about "crushed" and " fatty". But this ancient village right in the heart of Hanoi has a specialty every spring. That is the melody of "the child beats the ball".
Every year, after Tet, we ask each other: "Drieu Khuc village society is not yet off, to go see the big bear". The unique feature here is that the dancers are men and boys selected to play girls to dance on drums. When dancing, they often wear dresses, chicken tail hair or scarves, peach marks, four-tone shirts, pink and blue bags. Red painted raincoats are a long, small drum, tightly worn in front of the dancers with a red silk strip that removes the smell from the back.
According to historical records, in the 8th century, Bo Cai Dai Vuong Phung Hung, before surrounding and defeating Tong Binh citadel (ie Hanoi today), stationed a large army in Trieu Khuc village in Cau Do, Son Nam town (now Thanh Tri district, Hanoi). To encourage the spirit of the three generals and also the entertainment needs of the army before entering the battle, the person who disguised the soldiers as girls and wore drum and dancing with the raincoats.
After hundreds of years, fortunately, the people of Trieu Khuc village still truyen this dance in the spring days. However, there are concerns that this unique dance is also at risk of fading away. A part of the young generation is now shy about having to point and bottle plastic and dress in a kim sa dress, and a part of the villagers are also worried about doing business. However, there are many ways to preserve it.
In the digital space, it is difficult for many clips introducing and preserving this dance on social networks. Even on Facebook, the fanpage Trieu Khuc, my hometown, attracted more than 60,000 followers, flooded with photos and clips of the villagers' preparations and performances at the Spring festival. It is the spread of the beauty of the unique "river god" melody in cyberspace that has made the Trieu Khuc village festival more attractive to visitors and learn about, and also made the younger generation more bold in dressing up as girls at village festivals.
II.
I have a friend, from Hanh Thien village (Xuan Hong commune, Xuan Truong district, Nam Dinh) where the famous Keo Hanh Thien pagoda is located.
According to legend, the original pagoda was built by Zen master Khong Lo on the banks of the Red River in 1061 under the reign of Ly Thanh Tong, at Giao Thuy incense shop, Hai Thanh prefecture (now Nam Hong commune, Nam Truc district, Nam Dinh province). Initially, the pagoda was named Nghiem Quang Thu, and in 1167 it was changed to Than Quang Thu. Because Giao Thuy's name is Nom Keo, this pagoda is also known as Keo pagoda.
After nearly 500 years of existence, in 1611, the Red River water rose, flooding Giao Thuy village, where the pagoda was located. A part of the population moved to the south of the Red River, established Hanh Thien village, built a new Keo Pagoda, commonly known as Keo Duoi Pagoda (Keo Ha) or Keo Hanh Thien Pagoda (now in Xuan Hong commune, Xuan Truong district, Nam Dinh). A part of the population moved to the left bank of the Red River, founding Dung Nhue village in Thai Binh, and later built a pagoda, called Keo Tren pagoda (Keo Thuong).
A friend boasted that the Keo Pagoda in Hanh Thien village has a close folk architectural style, a history that goes hand in hand with the village, and is preserved almost intact. In addition to its architectural beauty, the pagoda also preserves valuable ancient artifacts: Sketch system, bells, Khanh, ancient stele, majors, sentences, royal decree... and Chinese characters about Keo pagoda. However, due to being busy with many things, I did not have the opportunity to go there. The other day, I met him again and admitted my mistake to him, but he laughed: "The digital age is here, you can visit my hometown through... online". So I researched and found out that Hanh Thien village has a website that is complete: Introducing the village, Keo Pagoda festivals to each famous family line of the village (Hanh Thien village is also famous for its land of learning as the birthplace of more than 60 professors and associate professors from before).
Just through a village website can you fully learn about the history, culture, and festivals of the village. This is the result of love and desire to preserve the values of the village heritage, a group of experts from Hanh Thien village, along with architects, researchers, and young artisans with the same passion, have gathered together to carry out research projects, collect data, digitize heritage... to build a data system, create other forms of "liveness" for original materials, preserve and prolong the life of materials in the digital space.
In 2016, the Prime Minister decided to rank Keo Hanh Thien Pagoda as a special national monument. This is an important legal basis for authorities at all levels to implement projects and programs to preserve, restore and promote the value of the relic site reasonably and effectively.
The annual Keo Hanh Thien Pagoda Festival takes place in two periods in Spring and Autumn. The Spring Festival is held from the 12th to the 15th of the second lunar month at Dinh Lan Pagoda (Kao Ha Pagoda or Keo Ngoai Ngoai) with the following rituals: Offering incense, fee-for-year, bird's nest...
With the spread and digitalization process, Hanh Thien village festivals will certainly become more crowded.
III.
From the story of Trieu Khuc village (Hanoi) and Hanh Thien village (Nam Dinh), it shows that the digitalization of village festivals and the digitalization of the village's cultural and historical space plays a very important role in preserving and maintaining beauty. At the same time, it is also a channel to attract tourists to visit and attend village festivals.
This year 2025 is also the year the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism evaluates and summarizes the Project on Digitizing Festival Data in Vietnam for the period 2021 - 2025. This project was issued on July 16, 2021, with the purpose of a general inventory of the cultural sector on festivals, streamlining to standardize festival information and organize festivals better. The project is divided into two phases: 2021 - 2023 and 2023 - 2025. Up to now, the project has achieved many positive results, most notably collecting and storing valuable documents - important raw materials for digitalization.
The country currently has 8,868 festivals, including 8,103 traditional festivals, showing that the majority of festivals in our country are traditional festivals. The cultural sector has been strategizing 100% of traditional festival data with specific contents such as: Developing a plan, making ballots and organizing surveys, classifying festival types, making statistical tables, surveying locally, collecting information on written documents, images, organizing seminars, talks, evaluating collected data...
Up to now, data on traditional festivals has been completed and basically digitized. The Vietnam Festival Portal software has updated thousands of pages of documents, articles, images, and videos about festivals in general and traditional festivals in particular. This is an important basis for festival management, especially during the Lunar New Year. It is easy to see that thanks to data digitalization, in recent years, traditional festivals have had many positive changes in organization and management: more respect, safety, economy, and civilization. Digitized documents have partly served the needs of managers and people: Faster, more timely.
However, according to some experts, there are still bottlenecks that need to be resolved. For example, the awareness of each locality about the issue of digitizing festival data is still not uniform, some places still take the collection, search for documents, and sketching out information forms lightly. The work of propagating and introducing the origin, meaning, cultural history and typical cultural activities of the festival to the people and tourists in the past time has been limited. The application of information technology and digitalization of traditional festivals have not been effectively exploited. The requirement is that digital documents need to be edited, edited, and arranged in a creative, scientific, and easy-to-understand manner, thereby increasing people's access, especially the younger generation.
Digitizing cultural values, including village festivals and digital rural spaces in Vietnam, is the way for the cultural sector and other sectors to boldly enter the technology era, while entering a new era, the era of the Vietnamese people's rise.
