particularly on family spirit. For generations, more than 90 percent of the Việt lived in rural areas, where they practiced wet-rice farming and rarely stepped outside the bamboo hedges encircling their villages. Their rice paddies held their ancestors’ graves and the joys and sorrows of their own lives. Houses had a sacred, mystical character, since they sheltered the altar for the family’s ancestors and secondary altars for the mother goddesses and the Genie of the Home and the Genie of the Sun. Thus, the building of any house entailed rites and sacrifices, since people and supernatural beings—the living and the dead—would share the same abode.
The traditional Vietnamese house evolved in northern Việt Nam’s Red River Delta, the nation’s cradle, beginning with the Bronze Age in the first century before Christ. In early times, the rural Việt built their mud, wattle-and-daub houses (nhà tranh vách đất) with walls made from a mixture of clay, rice husks, and straw. They made their roofs from thatch. The Việt modified the basic model as they extended their territory southward after a thousand years of Chinese domination. The variations reflect Việt acculturation with other ethnic groups, including the Chăm in the country’s center and the Khmer and overseas Chinese in the south.
The typical Việt house has three rooms (ba gian) and two attached lean-tos (hai chái), with the foundation (nền) higher than the courtyard, which is used for drying rice and corn. The gian are not closed-off rooms but, instead, are compartments separated by bamboo or hardwood columns. The central room (gian giữa, the largest) contains the ancestral altar. The head of the family hosts visitors on a bed in front of the altar, and he also sometimes sleeps there. The two adjacent gian have beds for the male and female members of the family. There are two attached lean-tos (one to the left and one to the right). One is the sleeping area for the head of the family and his wife, and the other is a storage area for rice, clothes, and tools. In order to deter thieves, traditional houses have no doors on the side or back. In the old days, the floors of even rich houses were made from packed earth to symbolize the harmony between Heaven and Earth and the universal principles of yin (female) and yang (male). In later wooden houses, the roof was supported by large columns, heavy beams, and joists with mortise-and-tenon joints to hold the weighty roof tiles. Lattice walls, which were independent of the roof, obscured the interior and blocked the tropical sun. The effect was solid yet graceful.
Rural houses are usually one story and face south within an enclosed compound (khuôn viên) formed by a hedge of spiked bamboo, cactus, or some other trimmed shrub. The front gate usually faces the middle room of the house. The family may have flower beds alongside the courtyard and may also plant trees and vegetables behind the house, where they may have a well, pig sty, cow or buffalo shed, and latrine. Most rural house compounds also have dug ponds stocked with fish. Behind the house, families will often build a small temple dedicated to the Genie of the Earth, or they will have a pedestal in front of the house with an urn for burning incense to the genie. The kitchen is in a separate building.
Construction of a residence for both the living (nhà ở) and the deceased (mồ mả) becomes a semi-mystical task. The owner must prepare for the happy or unhappy future of his family members. The deceased ancestors must do the same for their descendants by fostering riches, honor, longevity, and many offspring. Although the building materials for a house are simple, construction requires complicated rites. Decisions about a favorable site (with configuration of terrain and orientation), the dimensions for the house, and the proper time (the specific day and hour) to begin construction require the magical competence of a geomancer (thầy địa lý), who performs certain rites. For example, when it’s time to raise the ridgepole (thượng lưỡng), the geomancer attaches to the pole some red fabric (representing the Genie of Fire) and a cycad leaf (thiên tuế, a fernlike tropical evergreen representing ten thousand years and, therefore, permanence). During the 1800s and 1900s, the traditional lattice walls began to disappear in favor of brick. A geomancer tending to a brick house will define two walls to establish the spread of the beams.
The homeowner offers a feast for all these ceremonial occasions.
Vietnamese usually orient their houses toward the south, since the south is the principle (yang, male) direction and provides access to fresh ocean breezes. A popular saying recommends:
When marrying, you take a woman;
When building a house, you face it to the south.
Using his compass, the geomancer determines the house site and orientation. However, it is the astrologer (thầy phù thủy) who protects a new house from possible adversity. He creates a paper model of the future house, on which he places five reeds representing five destructive devils (ngũ quỷ). He burns the model and mannequin reeds during the ceremonial rites.
In Vietnamese, “nhà” (house) takes on many meanings, including religious identification (nhà chung = a Catholic priest; nhà chùa = a Buddhist monk or nun); a political era (nhà Lý = the Lý Dynasty); professions (nhà báo = a journalist); and political definitions (nhà nước = government). “Nhà” also designates esteemed professions, including writers (nhà văn), poets (nhà thơ), and mandarins (nhà quan). “Nhà” can imply a level of intimacy not found in the Western word “house.” For example, “nhà” can be the pronoun “you” when speaking to one’s spouse or with someone for whom the intimate French pronoun “tu” might be used. Further, “cả nhà” (literally, “the entire house” and therefore “the entire household”) can mean “family.”
Poet Nguyễn Du (1766–1820) used “nhà” more than a hundred times in Việt Nam’s national epic, The Tale of Kiều (Truyện Kiều), which he wrote in 3,254 lines of six-word, eight-word meter. A profusion of Vietnamese sayings and proverbs relies on “nhà” to crystalize Vietnamese culture in a few words. Among the most famous sayings are:
• “Life’s two main tasks: build a home for the living and a home for the dead.”
• “Men build the houses, women guard the doorways.”
• “Children without a father are like a house without a roof.”
• “Householders near the market leave debts to their children.”
• “While guests eat for three, household members splurge and feast for seven.”
• “For advice about a trip, ask the elders; for the truth within the home, ask the children.”
• “Once you leave home, you are lost.”
• “For a wanderer at night, any place is his home, and any place he lies down is his bed.”
• “A master leaves his home, his chickens freely roam.”
• “Only when a house burns, do the rats appear” warns that only amidst trying circumstances does a person’s real personality show.
• “Corrupt households are corrupt from the roof down” uses “nhà” to refer to a family, society, a business, or a government.
• “When the house lights go out, rich and poor are alike” warns of the equalizing effect of life’s challenges.
The Communal House
Lines from an oral folk poem describe a traditional Vietnamese village’s communal house. Here, “nón” is the emblematic Vietnamese conical hat.
Crossing the bridge,
