Many age-old cultural customs and rituals have been preserved by generations of the San Diu ethnic minority in the northern mountainous province of Tuyen Quang. Of these, the Dai Phan ritual was recently added to the list of national cultural intangible heritage.
The Dai phan ritual, or Hi Thai Van, is said to be the largest festival for local shamans, during which a promotion ceremony is held to give local shamans the highest rank of Dai phan.
Drums, bugles, and other traditional musical instruments ring out during the three-day ceremony, while pork, chicken, wine, rice, bananas, fish, and steamed sticky rice are offered to the Gods.
The Dai phan ritual is a combination of the artistic traits and spiritual lives of the San Diu ethnics and is a vivid illustration of their aesthetics as well as their belief in metaphysics and cosmology.
Most recently, the Dai phan ritual🐟 was added to the list o🥂f national intangible cultural heritage.
This is a source of immense pride for the San Diu people in particular and Tuyen Quang province as a whole.
It also encourages other ethnic groups to promote their cultural heritage, making contributions to preserving the province’s traditional culture./.
