Dec 22, 2018

Yao House, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

Yao House

Tay House, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology


Tay House
 
This house was built in 1967 and originally belonged to Mr.Dao The Dien’s family in Tham Roc village, Thai Nguyen province. It was reconstructed at the museum in 1999 by twelve Tay people from the region.

According to traditional techniques, wood and bamboo are soaked in water and mud for at least 3 to 6 months to protect against woodworm. The house at the Museum is covered with 6,000 palm leaves. It sits on 1.8m high stilts and its surface area is more than 100m2. The walls and the shutters are patterned with bamboo laths that are naturally dyed in black with a mixture of soot and brown tuber juice. These flower and diamond-shaped patterns are widely used in Tay textiles and basketry.

The space under the house is for domestic animals, firewood, tools, implements, and mill and mortar for pounding rice. Children play and older people rest in the shade.

The family kitchen god is worshipped in a simple shelter erected at the entrance of the house.



 
Interior spaces

The house interior is symbolically divided by two crossed axes 
interior, interior and exterior parts. The upper space along the patterned wall is separated by a partition: the outer for men; the space for the mistress in front of other female members’ room is at the interior end. The Tay follow a patriarchal tradition and worship three generations of their ancestors. The altar locates at the interior part. It is forbidden to worship impure offerings like buffalo or dog meat. Women is periods and mothers-to-be are not allowed to come close to the altar.

The inferior part is for pantry and food preparation. The bedroom of the daughter-in-law is in the inside inferior space.

The space around the house and above the ground side is for the head the household and important guest; the lower for daughters, stepdaughters and their guests. The outdoor space between the wall and the fireplace is for sons, step-sons and their guests. The space inside is for the hostess and her guests. It is forbidden to spit in the hearth as the Tay believe that this is where the Kitchen God who take care of the house resides.


 
Room of the newlywed

This room is always at the house’s “bottom”, separated by plaited bamboo partitions. Inside the room, there is a wooden 
 and personal items, and a woven 
 tools. It is the private space of the young daughter-in-law where she receives her sisters and friends. In the past she gave birth in this room. According to tradition, neither her father-in-law nor her husband’s older brothers may enter this room.

On the wedding day, after a ceremony in front of the altar to present her to her husband’s ancestors, the bride is accompanied to her room by an elderly woman who is the epitome of virtue: having lead a good life and having a husband, and many sons and daughters. This woman prepares the ‘marriage bed’ on which the bride spends her first night with a bridesmaid. The second night is her wedding night which she spends with her husband.

This daughter-in-law is the first person to get up early each morning to prepare breakfast and warm water for here parents-in-law.


Cotu tomb house, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

Cotu tomb house

This was made by Mr.Briu Nga (aged 36, Cotu people) in Alieng village, Quang Nam province. Its model was similar to the tomb house that he made for his father-in-law in 1996. The tomb house was brought to the Museum in December 2005.
This kind of tomb house is for rich and high-ranking people, and is made for the second funeral. On this occasion, the coffin is excavated and put on a big tree trunk which is elaborately carved. A bier carrying the corpse to the graveyard and aa shelf for offerings are also presented in this tomb house.
Sculptures of water buffalo heads represent a buffalo sacrifice in the funeral and are also symbols of property. Other figures such as varan, dragon, tring birds, fern leaves, moc leaves or sadly-sitting people are traditional decorations in Cotu tomb houses.

Jarai tomb house, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

Jarai tomb house

It was built in 1998 by five Jarai Arap men from Mrong Ngo village, Chu Pa district, Gia Lai province.
Thirty dead people can be buried in this large tomb house in the village. The decorated sculptures are carved from tree trunks using axes, chisels, and knives. Statues of men and women showing off their secret parts and pregnant women symbolize fertility and birth. The wooden roof is covered with plaited bamboo planks on which designs are painted natural red pigments. Figures on the roof depict activities of the tomb abandoning ritual.
It is thought that the tomb house is for the dead in the afterlife. Broken dishes, bottles, cups, trays, and wooden tool models are put inside the tomb to provide necessities to the deceased in their other world. After the ritual, the bomb falls into oblivion.

Bahnar Communal House, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

Bahnar Communal House
 
Role of the communal house

The communal house has a significant meaning in villages. It is the largest and the most spectacular architecture, showing power and talent of the community.

Traditionally, the communal house was used for social and ceremonial activities. It was a place for guests to be received, for men to be together during their free time for the elderly to transmit knowledge to younger generations, for old villagers to deal with village affairs, and for villagers to deal with village affairs, and for villagers to concentrate togerter in community events. Collective rituals were also held at the communal house. In the past , the youth were on duty here to prepare for fights or to defend the village. Young bachelors and widowers also spent nights in the communal house. Women did not usually enter this house.

Heads of sacrificed buffalos and hunted animals are often hung in the communal house. These are trophies and pride of the community. Other ritual objects and protecting talismans of the villages are also preserved in the communal house.





Ede House, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

Ede House
Ede long house
The Ede long house is 42.5 meters long and 6 meters wide and sits on one meter high stilts. It was reconstructed at the Museum in 2000 by 16 Ede Kpa people in two and a half months. It was originally built in 1967 and belonged to Mrs. HDish Eban’s family in Ky village, Buon Ma Thuot city, Dak Lak province in the Central Highlands.
The house is oriented in a north-south direction according to Ede tradition. The north side is the front with the main entrance. The south end was where families lived. As a house of a powerful family, it was built with big columns and beams, on which many decorations were carefully carved. It original staircase, over one meter wide, was carved from one large wooden board.
Traditionally, extended matrilineal families lived in long houses. The more people who lived in a house, the longer it was. Some houses were 200m long. In the 1970s three were still houses 50m to 60m in length. Since the 1980s, extended families have split into nuclear ones that live in smaller house.



Guest room
This space, called gah, occupied more than half the area of the house. Its architectural features, columns, and girders were carefully 5haped and decorated with designs incised and carved on the wood surface. The room was decorated and arranged with furniture and benches made from solid wood. The presence of other utensils, drums, gongs, jars, and large copper pots showed the economic status of the house owner.
This space was for receiving guests, holding meetings, and performing family rituals. For big events and banquets people played gongs and drums and drank wine together, sipping through tubes from a common jar. Singe, widowed, and divorced men of the family slept in this room following matriarchal traditions. There was a separate room for female guests at the end of this guest room.

Private space
The ok was a private space for bedrooms, food preparation and storage. It was separated from the guest room by a partition.
Traditionally each extended matriarchal family, including two or three generations with common ancestors, lived in one long house. They worked together and shared common property, which was managed by the grandmother or her oldest daughter. Each family was a single economic and social unit. Couples had their own rooms where they slept with their young children, their heads facing east. They kept personal possessions, mostly clothing, in these rooms. They could light cigarettes and warm themselves in winter by the cooking fire inside their room.
In this long house, 16 people of Mrs. HDiah Eban’s family lived together forming three small, semi-inde-pendent homes, each with their own kitchens in the common corridor. Space for the matriarch was at the end of the house. Other rooms were for her daughter’s families.



Viet house, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

Viet house

Viet house
Originally this house belonged to a wealthy family who lived in the early 20th century in Tho Loc commun, Tho Xuan district, Thanh Hoa province. Mrs Hoi’s family’s main house, built in 1906, had 5 rooms including a living room where they received guests, worshipped ancestors, and the head of the household’s space. This room was passed down to Mrs Hoi’s eldest son, then to her grandson and great-eldest son. The ancestor’s altar was carved with stylized flowers, dragons, and phoenixes. Chinese characters are engraved on the walls and along the beams and lintels.
This house was enlarged in1933 adding 5 rooms that were used for teaching and for Mrs. Hoi’s bedroom. The detached structure, built in 1937, was built for a great-grandson. The entire family shared the kitchen and dining room.
Because of strong typhoons is the region and a regulation that forbid houses from being higher than the village’s communal house, these houses maintained a low profile. In the village, the main house was oriented to face south; at the Museum, due to lack of space, it faces north.











Cham house, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

Cham house


House of the head of the household
Traditionally, only aristocratic families and religious dignitaries had this kind of house. Being the largest house made of valuable wood and decorated with carving, it is considered as a “fabulouse horse”. The roof has two layers. The thick lower layer is made from a mixture of mud and straw, protecting the house from heat and the risk of fire.
The front hallway is where the women weave. The large common room is for receiving guests. Precious family property including ornaments and silk textiles are stored in a wooden trunk. The bedroom is linked with the common room by a narrow door. Behind the bedroom is a small room to store copper pots and trays, plates and bowls, old jars, gongs, and drums. Only the housewife and her first daughter are allowed to arrange, take out, and put back family property in the trunk or in the store room. They choose lucky and good days to do these tasks.
Adjacent house
Built alongside the customary house, it is the home of the eldest daughter’s family after her younger sister’s wedding. The customary house where they used to live is given to her younger sister’s family.
The room at the centre of the house is the common room where the unmarried and guests sleep. The corridor facing the courtyard is where women weave. The couple’s room is behind the common room. People have to go through the common room to enter the couple’s room. Two mats are spread on the bed; the reverse side of the lower mat is on the upside, facing the reverse side of the upper mat. Two jars at the foot of the wall in the room contain rice. Candles and two bronze boxes for betel and areca nuts are kept in a basket. Every night before going to bed, the hostess wipes the mat, lights a candle, replaces old betel quid by new ones, and parys her ancestors for protection.


Customary house
Traditionally, this house is situated in the northeast direction of the family house compound as it is thought that this place signifies fertility and growth. It is particularly important as all rituals of the Cham qreat matriarchal family are performed here. This is the only house in which no rafter structure, tenon joints, or nails are used.
In the Cham conception, the customary house symbolizes the human body. The first common room represents the head; it is use for receiving guest and ceremonies. The center room symbolizing the chest is for weddings and then becomes the bedroom of the newlweds. The door to go to the next house, sang mayau, is the nose, and the door directed to the kitchen is the mouth. The ridge is the backbone; the rafters are ribs; the battens are knuckles; and the grass on the roof is hair.

The upper house
Traditionally, this house faces east in the direction of the sun and gods. Its entrance cannot be opposite to the sun and gods. Its entrance cannot be opposite to the sang mayau house’s door. The Cham think that doors facing each other are similar to human mouths quarrelling. It will affect the family’s peacefulness.
This house is for dignitaries or people over 50. They are respected as it is considered that they have completed their secular life. The large room is a space for the householder and his guests. The bedroom is reserved for his wife where she prays before going to bed at nights. It is arranged in the same way as the bedrooms of other surrounding houses.

Kitchen
It is the first house built in the family house compound. Traditionally, it is located in the northwest of the house compound and includes two spaces for the family and storage.
In the kitchen there are three stones arranged like the tripod used in cooking. The Cham consider these stones as signs of life and the place where the kitchen God resides. Arranging these three stones and worshipping the kitchen God is done by women at least once every three months or when the family children are sick. They make offerings of betel, tea, three sticky rice plates and three bowls of sweet soup. The side of the fireplace in which firewood is put must be directed towards the kitchen entrance. This entrance is opposite to the sang ye house’s door that is on the other side of the central house. This door symbolizes a human mouth.