(This is 4th, in the series of Haunted Trees in Vietnam.) Of all the trees I have covered thus far, The Kraik Protector Tree is the only one that is no longer alive. It is dead, not because of old age or disease––but because it was murdered. Why do I say 'murdered' instead of 'killed'... Continue Reading →
There is an ancient tale--more like a myth really--that has to do with two non-human entities called Sơn Tinh (the mountain god) and Thủy Tinh (the water god). My family told me of this tale (and other) myths and legends when I was a kid, so I knew the gist of this story which was quite... Continue Reading →
(Continued from Following the Ancient Scent of Trầm Hương 1) In one of my previous posts, Following the Ancient Scent of Trầm Hương 1, I touched upon the agarwood tree and how oud was processed. This post digs deeper into the dendrology (study of trees) of agarwood and the various types of agar resins. Ancient Origins... Continue Reading →
I have a very ancient multi-millennial ancestral grandpa. His name is Khương Thạch Niên (姜石年). Most folks know him as the farmer god. Yes. THAT farmer god known as Thần Nông (aka Shennong), the same one who gave us tea (among other things). Now, I don't like people who falsely claim famous relatives just to... Continue Reading →
(Continued from Ancient Viet 2: Sunken Paradise) As a young Viet-American child growing up smack dab in the middle of the US (New Orleans no less), I quite often identified with the Vietnamese/Chinese community living in and around the south because there weren't really that many of us Asians in that part of the neighborhood... Continue Reading →
(Continued from Lên Đồng 2: Mounting the Medium) Folk beliefs are all the rage nowadays. Everybody wants to go tribal. It is the hottest new trend. The Japanese have their Shinto. The Chinese have their Zhōngguó mínjiān xìnyǎng. And us Việts, we have our Đạo Mẫu. I am not surprised that this is so. Remember,... Continue Reading →
If anyone told you that they had a firm grasp of history because they went through years of university, studying through historical books on the subjects, don't walk---run away from them. Run far, far away. They only have the officially sanctioned, creative-writing version of what actually happened. This version is fine if all we want... Continue Reading →
(Continued from Ancient Việt 7: Văn Khoa Đẩu) I am one of those individuals who never learned my people's ancient history from a classroom. Everything I have learned all came from ancient books which I have had to painstakingly translate and/or decipher, using a very thick ancient Viet dictionary. Famous foreign sources (Chinese) usually have English translations,... Continue Reading →
I always knew my family's spoken language was slightly different than what was spoken on the streets. There were many terminology which didn't fit in with the Việt vocabulary that I learned in school and on the playground. For example, my father called his mother, my paternal grandmother, by the word Bu (母) pronounced as in... Continue Reading →
Vietnamese Women Rule. OK, so maybe not at this time, but in the past we did...kinda, sorta, in a way. Even as early as two-thousand years ago, we were a Matriarchal society. In my previous post on the Trưng sisters, I noted that not only were they twin queens of a huge geographic area, their... Continue Reading →
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