Featured photo: Trail of Chùa Hương Tích (Perfume Pagoda) in the province of Hà Tĩnh (Ha Tinh). This must have been one of the hardest hikes I’ve attempted. Even with the electric vehicle & cable car that took us to the base of the temple complex, there was still another 500+ steps to go. And then, the ever adventurous souls that we are, we decided to look for the altar of Princess Diệu Thiện (there are no signs, we just followed our intuition and survival instincts). In early Spring, the air was misty and the ground was drenched. We hiked in what felt like 100% humidity and came back with our feet and pants completely soaked.
A few weeks ago, during a month-long escapade to Vietnam, I was able to visit Hải Phòng (Haiphong), the birth city of my late father. In truth, despite having known him all my life until his passing, I must admit that I don’t know much about him. I knew of the big headlines: poverty, toxic family, post-colonialism, war, immigration.. but I didn’t know anything of his youth, where he lived, how he eventually came to Saigon, or how he even met my mother. And I’ve often felt that these stories, the stories of our ancestors, don’t get told because they are entangled in too much trauma. The happy stories are buried under the insufficiency of life, under what Buddhists refer to as dukkha. And so, I never even knew the name of his birth city until his passing, when this was indicated on some of the legal documents. I’ve visited a few times my own birth city, which is where both sides of my family have been residing for three generations. But I rarely wondered about those that came before. And as expected, the story isn’t so straightforward.
In Vietnamese culture, there is this very strong notion of ‘homeland’ or the very land that has been your family’s home for many generations. We call it quê. In essence, it’s the land that has belonged to your entire family for centuries: it’s where the houses of your ancestors were built, where their tombs are found, and where part of your family & relatives continue to live. Traditionally, the land was divided and given to the sons of the family. After several generations, a small village of the same family was formed consisting of several dozen houses (let’s call this the ‘ancestral village’). Since we venerate our ancestors, the family land over time becomes important to both the living and the dead. In fact, if you strike a conversation with any Vietnamese person, the first question they will ask is “Quê ở đâu?” (Where’s your homeland? Where are you from?) For context, many people choose to move to Hanoi or Saigon (or another larger city) but are rarely native of that place. We’re nosy, we want to know your origins. And quite often we can guess someone’s quê by their accent but we’ll ask anyway.
Vietnam is divided into three main regions (and a sub-region): the North, the Centre, and the South (with the “Western region” located in the South-West). Although we all speak Vietnamese*, each region has its distinct accent, culture, traditions, cuisine, and even climate. Long story short: my family has been in the Southern region for three generations but my paternal family is actually from the North (my maternal family comes from the Central region). And the plot thickens: our ancestral village in the North is not where my father was born. Somewhere in between all the political turmoil that came upon the country in the aftermath of colonisation and war, my grandparents moved a few times. Where they themselves were born, where they gave birth to my father, and where they eventually settled and passed on are all different places. Retracing my father’s steps was really like undertaking a pilgrimage. (I suppose it’s not so different from my own life: birthed in Vietnam, lived several years of my younger self in a refugee camp in Thailand, and eventually made my way to a few different cities in Canada.. perhaps a story that my successors will not get to hear either.)
*Vietnamese is spoken by the Kinh people. There are many other ethnic groups with their respective language and culture.
As a city, Haiphong felt incredibly comforting. I’m sure 60 some years ago it looked entirely different: certainly the Haiphong that welcomed my father was not the Haiphong that welcomed me. Nevertheless, I fell in love with the picturesque contrast between old Chinese temple architecture, vestiges of French colonial settlements, and the more contemporary urban landscape. The late February weather was on the chilly side and this gave young & old an opportunity to just be outside, to take a stroll near the waterways or to exchange pleasantries over chrysanthemum tea and sunflower seeds. It was also in this city that I became even more enamoured with the goddess religion. At the centre of Haiphong there is an enormous statue of Lê Chân, a female general from 20-43 c.e. now venerated as a cultural heroine and sometimes part of the goddess pantheon. Rumour has it that in recent times this statue saved the city from an incredible storm and the site has since become a public altar. (Her temple is also in the vicinity, very well worth visiting if you’re in the area.) And, speaking of temple architecture, what more impressive than the famous Chùa Dư Hàng (Du Hang Pagoda), a Buddhist pagoda from the time of the Early Lê dynasty of 980-1009 c.e.? And thus I wondered, had my father perhaps ventured on these streets in his former life?
“BUT!” I hear you say, “why are we featuring a photo of Chùa Hương Tích (Perfume Pagoda), located in the province of Ha Tinh some 400+ kilometres away from Haiphong?” Let’s awkwardly segue into an entirely different though quite related topic, involving a different goddess and a different set of ancestors. The Perfume Pagoda in Ha Tinh (not to be confused with the Perfume Pagoda in Hanoi) is situated on the land of my husband’s ancestors in the Central region of Vietnam (more on this later). There’s a lot to say about this Buddhist site originally built sometime in the 13th century (during the Trần dynasty) and dedicated to Quan Âm Bồ Tát (the Bodhisattva Kuan Yin), but here’s the juicy bit: at the very top of the mountain (another 30 minutes of hiking past the tower), there is an altar dedicated to Princess Diệu Thiện who, after having achieved her awakening on this mountain, became deified and is also sometimes part of the goddess pantheon. I say “sometimes” because the goddess religion is a folk religion: while it has a general hierarchy and structure, each locale will also venerate its own local goddesses & cultural heroines (and occasionally gods/heroes).
Legend says that Princess Diệu Thiện left her home to run away from a forced marriage she absolutely did not want. When her prospective husband came after her, Kuan Yin sent the Tiger Spirit to protect and transport her to this mountain. Eventually in this place she became a revered nun, known for her generosity and humanity. Later on, her father the king, having fallen greatly ill, was told by an oracle that his only cure was to consume a tincture made from a hand and an eye of one of his daughters (who probably ran away upon hearing this). Or, he could seek the help of this revered nun. He did exactly so and she, Princess Diệu Thiện, full of altruistic humanness, did not hesitate to carve out her own eye and cut off her own hand. It was only much later, upon sending his troupes to bring offerings in gratitude, that the king discovered he had consumed from his daughter who ran away. Observing the great compassion of the princess, Kuan Yin bestowed upon her an eye and a hand. And this is how the altar to Princess Diệu Thiện came to be.
The Perfume Pagoda is not in any way directly related to my husband’s ancestors, other than the fact that they share the same province. It’s a well known pagoda and is said to be very holy: most of us visiting Ha Tinh will try to make our way here. But the reason we visited Ha Tinh in the first place was to return to his quê. There are several times in the lunar calendar whereby ancestors are officially venerated. The full moon of the first month is one such occasion and is particularly auspicious in the countryside. Ancestor veneration usually consists of offerings: food, drinks, flowers, incense, candles… In the South we typically burn joss paper (funerary money) and make our offerings the “quick-and-dirty way” with no strict or formalised ritual. In the Central region, however, the ancestral villages continue to preserve the older traditions. Longer ceremonies are held in which the elder sons of each family branch prostrate in traditional robes and pray rhythmically to the sound of gongs and drums. (Did I say ‘the elder sons of the family’? Yes, Vietnam was and continues to be a patriarchal society. Only the names of the sons are recorded on the family tree; women are literally erased from history. Yet I didn’t get the sense that it was that big of a deal for the women there. I still haven’t decided how I feel about this.)
Family trees are preserved carefully (thanks to Confucius). The one belonging to my husband’s family spans 18 generations or so. I’m sure people must have moved along the way, but it’s also quite possible that this ancestral village has been here for hundreds of years. In fact, we did see the tomb of the great ancestor from seven generations ago. These spirits are not to be messed with! And although I did not come face-to-face with my own ancestry, I still felt the potency of this sacred site. And while burning incense at their tombs, I wondered to myself: What does it feel like to walk the very land that your ancestors have walked for over five hundred years? To visit a place where everyone within the village is somehow related to you? To see a family tree of your lineage that spans almost twenty generations? To burn incense where both your great great grandfather was buried next to his own great great grandfather? Is this what it means to have ancestors who have lived in a place since time immemorial? I heard through the grapevine that my father’s ancestral village in the North also houses the tombs of my great great great etc. ancestors. I was only able to make it to Haiphong this time, but this Northern village is definitely a place I need to visit next.
While I brought with me a few books & decks to Vietnam, in the end I didn’t work with any and focused mainly on journaling. Sometimes geospirituality can be like that: reading, pulling cards, journaling, travelling — these practices can take any combination. That said, I did have some deeply transformative ah-hah moments pertaining to my practice that I might share later on.