Ethnic Nung people entice romance with songs of love
To visit the Nung is a technicolor experience
Epic love poem inspires art, study
Greetings! Welcome to Vietnam Art Gallery's September 2004 newsletter.
This month we feature a story on the body-as-canvas, and highland songs sung to entice new lovers - also, your purchase from the gallery of our feature artist will provide the perfect backdrop to serving this month's feature recipe... Enjoy!
=============== CONTENTS ===============
- Ethnic Nung people entice romance with songs of love. To visit the Nung is a technicolour experience - not only is the air sweet and the forests lush as they drape the stepped rice fields, but if you're lucky, the air is also filled with the sweet sounds of the Nung's traditional 'sli' songs. Go >>
- Tasty delights. Vietnamese food is light, quick, fresh and flavoursome - perfect for dining on as summer continues to heat the northern hemisphere skies. The recipe below can be tailored to your desires - add shredded green spring onions, strips of fresh capsicum, carrot, or greek cucumber as you roll the rice paper. Go >>
- September's Feature Artist: Luong Dung. Luong's art, inspired by a childhood spent fishing on Vietnam's waterways, freshens the eye with his clean palette and simple motifs. Go >>
- Vietnam's MTV generation change image of tattoos. Linh, a stunning 22-year-old with long painted finger nails, wavy brown hair and large sunglasses, says times are changing. "We think of tattoos as an art form now. They are beautiful, and that's why I got my tattoo." Her mother did not share Linh's taste in artistic expression and took a broom to her daughter after discovering the tattoo. Go >>
== Ethnic Nung people entice romance ==
with songs of love
One of Vietnam's ethnic minority groups, the Nung, live mostly in the northern mountainous provinces, in hillside hamlets with rice fields in the front and orchards of tangerine and persimmon decorating the backyards. The Nung's stilt houses are made of wood with thatch or tile roofs. They wear clothes of dyed indigo, a colour that according to a local fairy tale, represents faithfulness, and number approximately 700,000 individuals.
When drinking alcohol, the Nung host and their guest cross their hands to drink from the other's glass as an age-old demonstration of trust. Besides their ancestors, the Nung worship Gods and genies, Confucius and Kwan-in Boddhisava.
Anise trees bring a considerable income to the Nung, and they also trade well in handicrafts such as weaving, carpentry, bamboo, rattan and ceramic ware.
To visit the Nung is a technicolour experience - not only is the air sweet and the forests lush as they drape the stepped rice fields, but if you're lucky, the air is also filled with the sweet sounds of the Nung's traditional sli songs. Sung to celebrate weddings, the spring festival, and the dedication of new houses, the lyrics of sli cover every aspect of life; such as the weather, nature, history and relationships. However, most young men and women sing sli as a way to get acquainted with each other and to secure a date with someone who has caught one's eye.
Groups of young people or couples gather to sing sli by the riverbanks or hillsides, under canopies of leaves, or in the stilt houses. They take turns singing melodies that they have learnt by heart or composed themselves. Songs typically have three parts: first young men and women greet each other, then share their emotions, and finally bid farewell and wish each other well.
If a Nung woman from a nearby village attends a sli singing event in another village, a young man from the host village may sing to her:
That you crossed the forest to come here
You lit a torch to find the way to my village
Have you been here for long?
Did you eat before you came?
If not, I will prepare rice and soup for you
I sincerely ask you
To raise your beautiful voice
And sing a sli song
In response to mine
If the young woman wants to challenge the man,
she may keep silent for the next three or four songs.
Then she sings:
I don't know if you are singing for me
Or singing for somebody else?
If so, there's no use answering you!
As a result, the man has to express his feelings:
I am singing just for you, not for anyone else
I am honest and sincere
I my songs is not for you, then who is it for?
The two may continue to sing to each other through the night. When it is time to say goodbye, they both show their disappointment. The man may take this opportunity to express his love:
We have sung sli until morning dawns
We have given our hearts to each other
I love you so much that it hurts.
Then the young woman may pave the way for the man's hope:
Please tell your emotions to your parents
And bring betel and areca nuts to ask for my hand.
Sli singing is thus one way that Nung couples meet each other and become acquainted, and perhaps engaged.
=== Tasty delights ===
Vietnamese food is light, quick, fresh and flavoursome - perfect for dining on as summer continues to heat the northern hemisphere skies.
The recipe below can be tailored to your desires - add shredded green spring onions, strips of fresh capsicum, carrot, or greek cucumber as you roll the rice paper.
Barbecued Beef Wrapped In Rice Paper (Banh Uot Thit Nuong) with Hoisin dipping sauce
Ingredients- 2 tablespoons lemon grass
- 2 cloves garlic - finely chopped
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 3 medium shallots - finely chopped
- 1 tablespoon fish sauce
- 1 tablespoon sesame seeds, lightly toasted
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1 pound beef (preferably sirloin)
- packet of rice paper discs - can be found in most delis.
- mint leaves
- cilantro
- 6 oz rice noodles - preferably vermicelli thickness
- Soak the bulbs of the lemon grass in water for 5 minutes, discard the tops. Chop very fine.
- Slice beef into 1/4 inch thick slices.
- In a food processor, process garlic, sugar and shallots into a paste. Then add fish sauce, sesame seeds, pepper, sesame oil and lemon grass.
- Transfer to a ceramic bowl, and mix in beef slices. Allow to marinate in refrigerator overnight, or at least for 4 hours.
After marinating
(You may want to make the Hoisin dipping sauce at this stage. See below for the recipe.)
- Cook the rice noodles according to the directions on the packet. Set aside at room temperature.
- Preheat oven to 450F degrees. Cover the bottom and sides of a baking pan with aluminum foil. Spread the beef slices over the bottom of the pan allowing the pieces to touch and overlap. This will prevent the meat from drying out. Pour over the marinade juices. Bake for 10 minutes.
- Prepare the rice papers - usually this involves immersing them, one by one, in warm water for a few seconds, until soft. Place each rice disk on a flat surface, ready for you to spread the filling.
- Place some rice noodles in a line from top to about a third from bottom.
- Put a few slices of beef on top of the rice noodles.
- Finish with a sprinkle of mint leaves and cilantro.
- Tuck the bottom flap over filling, and then roll cylinder fashion and serve.
Serves 8
Hoisin Dipping Sauce
Ingredients- 1 clove garlic, mincedv
- 2 teaspoons oil
- 1/2 cup hoisin sauce
- one teaspoon honey
- 3 tablespoons water
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1/4 teaspoon (or more) hot sauce or red pepper flakes
- 2 tablespoons chopped peanuts
Saute garlic in oil until fragrant. Stir in remaining ingredients except peanuts. Remove from heat and let cool. Divide among individual bowls for your guests. Sprinkle with peanuts.
Enjoy!
==== Feature artist: Luong Dung ====
Luong's art, inspired by a childhood spent fishing on Vietnam's waterways, freshens the eye with his clean palette and simple motifs.
Luong Dung - The Fish 4 - $350 - more >>
Also featured this month: Minh Phuong's new work, "Bamboo frame 9", delights the eye with the rounded forms and jewel colours.
Minh Phuong - Bamboo frame 9 - $1,000 - more >>
Hoang Giap, a favourite of Vietnam Art Gallery clients, presents "The Old Street 1" for your viewing pleasure:
Hoang Giap - The Old Street 1 - $250 - more >>
== Vietnam's MTV generation ==
are changing the image of tattoos
Tattoos, once regarded by Vietnamese as the preserve of prisoners, gangsters and common foot soldiers, are becoming increasingly popular among the country's emerging 'MTV generation'.
In step with the international trend for tattoos as promoted by the likes of David Beckham and Angelina Jolie, increasing numbers of urban Vietnamese twenty-somethings are using permanent body art to express themselves. Young women with swirly designs on their lower backs and men with barbed wire designs or other patterns round their biceps or shoulders have become a familiar sight in Ho Chi Minh City's nightclubs and bars.
And the yet the concept of tattoos as a form of artistic expression is new to Vietnam, a country where tattoo parlours are illegal and where permanent body art is usually taken as a sign of criminal connections.
But Linh, a stunning 22-year-old with long painted finger nails, wavy brown hair and large sunglasses, says times are changing. "We think of tattoos as an art form now. They are beautiful, and that's why I got my tattoo," she says, referring to the 20-centimetre wide swirly design on her lower back. Linh and three friends marked themselves out as unapologetic members of Vietnam's new, and often highly privileged leisure generation, when they hired a tattoo artist to decorate their lower backs in a hotel room two years ago.
Her mother did not share Linh's taste in artistic expression and took a broom to her daughter after discovering the tattoo. "Most Vietnamese still think anyone with a tattoo is bad, but things are changing and young people have been getting tattoos as a fashion statement for a while now," says Linh.
Giang, an elvin 32-year-old from near Haiphong, is not the kind of Vietnamese woman you would expect to have a tattoo. And yet not only does Giang have a crown on the back of her neck, she makes her living by tattooing, either in her incognito parlour or at clients' homes. "There are two kinds of tattoos in Vietnam: the ones people used to get, which mostly indicated a link with crime or intimidation, and tattoos for art or beauty. People have only been getting the arty ones for about two years now," she says.
"Most of the tattoos I do now are the sexy ones. Men make up the majority of my customers and they tend to get tattooed on their arms. But I get a lot of women too. Some of them are prostitutes, but a lot of them are ordinary women," she explains.
Giang does most of her tattoos at clients' homes because most Vietnamese don't want to be seen going in or out of a tattoo parlour, even one which is not marked as such. "I'd like tattooing to be seen as an art form like in other countries and not as something that is bad and illegal," she comments.
But one form of tattooing enjoys legitimacy in Vietnam. Tattooed eyebrows are a popular method of corrective surgery in Vietnam, and women seeking the perfect arch can check into hospitals or visit self-trained beauty specialists to have the operation done.
Thank you for reading! We wish you peace and good fortune for the coming month!
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