2 - Returning Home: Ancestor Veneration and the Nationalism of Đổi Mới Vietnam

Summary

A few minutes before noon on 18 May 1994, a middle-aged foreigner in a business suit mounted the stairs of Đô Temple in the northern Vietnamese community of Đình Bảng. Villagers had just rebuilt the ancient temple, devoted to the worship of the eight kings of Vietnam's Lý dynasty (1010–1225), and a freshly lacquered altar shined bright red and gold in flickering candlelight. The stranger lit incense in front of the altar, got down on his knees, and bowed his head to the ground, overcome with the joy of a much-anticipated but long-delayed homecoming. After more than 700 years, Korean businessman Lee Chang Can, known as Lý Xương Căn in Vietnam, had at last been reunited with his Vietnamese ancestors. Căn descends from a branch of the Lý royal family that fled to Korea when the dynasty fell, and in 1994 he became the first person in his family to set foot on native soil since the thirteenth century. “Today, with a heart full of feeling, full of sentiment impossible to express, I have been able to return home,” Căn inscribed in Korean script in the Đô Temple guest book. “As a result of this pilgrimage, I am basking in feelings of great warmth, honor and glory” (Lý Hiếu Nghĩa 1994, p. 21).

This chapter seeks to understand why, even as Vietnam rushes into a brighter, more cosmopolitan and prosperous future, its people ardently pursue homecomings and reunions. Why, in the midst of the forward-looking “Renovation” age, does the entire nation and its leaders seem transfixed by a quest to “return to origins” [vể nguổn] and “remember the source” [nhớ nguổn]? Why do ancestors, royal or otherwise, exert such a strong pull on modern Vietnamese, and even more puzzling, why has the avowedly secular Đổi Mới state so enthusiastically promoted a revival of ancestor worship?

I argue that ancestor worship in particular, and the vể nguổn movement in general, models a flexible “coming and going” engagement with the nation.