Human chess in Vietnam

Human chess in Vietnam

Whenever taking part in Vietnamese village and temple festivals, you will have a chance to watch a traditional game - human chess (“cờ người”), which is the favourite to a great deal of Viet people .

Human chess is a variant of chess, often played by people who take on the roles of the various chess pieces (king, knight, bishop and so on). This is typically done on an outdoor field, with the squares of the board marked out on the grass. A move resulting in a piece being taken from the board will cause a choreographed fight to be played out to determine whether the piece is actually taken.

Rice cooking competition

Rice cooking competition

One of the meaningful acitivity in Vietnamese Tet festivals is rice cooking competition. A rice cooking competition is held to encourage women to take more responsibility in their traditional work.

During Tet holiday, a number of villages in northern and central Vietnam hold rice cooking contests that may sound simple, but follow strict and complex rules. Contestants cook in the open air while in a bamboo boat floating on the village pond. Charcoal, the usual fuel, is prohibited. Instead, each competitor receives some dried sugar cane, which burns only with difficulty.