Lim Festival is one of the famous traditional Tet festivals of Bac Ninh provnce, in the North of Viet Nam. This festival is usually held in Tien Du district, Bac Ninh province and is considered the quintessence of Kinh Bac culture.
Group of female (Đàn Chị) anf group of male (Đàn Anh) are reciprocal singing
Lim festival will usually take place from the 9th to the 14th day of the first lunar month. The focus of the festival will be conducted on the morning of the 13th day of the first lunar month.
According to many bibliographic sources, Lim festival is a large festival that has grown to the scale of a town (Tổng Nội Duệ) – an administrative geography unit dating back to the 18th century. Lim is an ancient land converging many historical and traditional elements. The long-standing cultural system of the homeland of Bac Ninh – Kinh Bac. Besides, Lim land developed strongly in economy, trade and people’s life was prosperous and happy. Through the maintenance and renovation work of Duke Do Nguyen Thuy and General Nguyen Dinh Dien, Lim festival has more and more rich folk activities such as army drum singing, cheo singing, ca tru singing, tuong singing and singing. Quan ho, … as well as naturalization ceremonies to pray for blessings in January according to the tradition of “spring and autumn two periods”.
Similar to other traditional festivals, the Lim festival will begin with a parade with participants who organized the festival in ancient clothes with majesty and solemnity. During the main holiday, there will be rituals of revelation, sacrifices to the gods, famous gods and goddesses of the homeland at Co Lung temple, Hong Van mausoleum, Do Nguyen Thuy’s mausoleum, offering incense to Buddha and worshiping A Holymom (Bà Mụ Ả) at the Hong pagoda.
Besides the ceremony, there will be a convergence of folk games of martial arts, wrestling, chess, nine fairy, weaving contest, cooking rice … and especially cultural activities of special Quan Ho folk songs and folk songs which are unique that is only held in Bac Ninh province.
