Community cohesion

Visiting Gai Bun village, Dao My commune in an early morning, we were surprised to see the ancient village gate dating back more than a hundred years. The two-storey gate is quite wide, allowing cars to pass through easily.

Not far from the gate is a guard station located near an ancient banyan tree - where many villagers often sit and chat after hard working hours. All create a picture of a peaceful village.

Elderly people in the village recounted that these two works were built in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In order to protect the village from robbery, the people of Gai Bun village built the village gate and surrounded it with ramparts and bamboo trees. The guard station was also used as a place to worship the Earth God and host the village’s community cultural activities.

Although Gai Bun village has built a large and beautiful cultural house, the Gai guard station is still a venue for village's community cultural activities.

Saying goodbye to the people of Gai Bun village, we visited Trang Quan communal house in Nua Quan village. It has been ranked as a provincial historical relic site. Built in 1876, the communal house is about 300sq.m wide, including three main rooms and three wing rooms. All pillars and rafters are made of ironwood, with many beautiful carved motifs.

Trang Quan communal house is a venue for spiritual and cultural activities of not only Nua Quan village but also Gai Bun village, creating stronger cohesion between the locals.

A special feature of Dao My is that communal houses and pagodas are venues for cultural and religious activities of not only one but many villages, thus increasing exchanges in the community.

Together cultivating, promoting the value of relic sites

Despite time and wars, generations of Dao My people have always been conscious of preserving the legacy left by their ancestors. Currently, the entire commune has 26 religious works built by the community hundreds of years ago.

Among them, many relic sites are ranked by the State as national and provincial ones such as Phu Lao Trang Quan and Trung Ha communal houses, Phuc Quang pagoda (Ba Nuoc pagoda), Phu Lao pagoda and many temples and guard stations. Many ancient village gates hold historical, cultural and architectural values such as the gates of Gai Bun and Ruong Cai villages.

When visiting Trung Ha communal house in Dong Quang village, we saw Nguyen Nhu Khoa, Vice Chairman of the Dao My communal People's Committee, inspecting the newly renovated construction items.

He said: "In order to protect the communal house from deterioration, in 2023, with the motto of the State and the people working together, the locality invested more than 1 billion VND (39,260 USD) in repairing its roof, doors, walls and floors. This is a very precious communal house that needs to be protected and preserved."

Every year, the commune directs reviewing the current status of relic sites and spends 300-350 million VND on the restoration and protection of them. At the relic sites, the commune set up a reception committee whose members are selected by local people.

In particular, the commune has paid attention to communication work, helping raise locals’ awareness of preserving and protecting the relic sites. Many families even voluntarily donated land to expand the sites.

In 2023, Dao My was recognised as an advanced new-style rural area, with an average income per capita of 64.5 million VND per year and the ratio of cultural families reaching over 95.6%.

Do Thanh Nam

 

 

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