Hanoi museum to display Co-tu tomb house
http://www.thanhniennews.com/entertaiments/?catid=6&newsid=12575Hanoi museum to display Co-tu tomb house
The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi has made a replica of a
typical grave house of the Co-tu,
an ethnic minority group in the central region, which will be unveiled
for public viewing Feb. 17.
The house was built mainly by Briu Nga, a Co-tu from Alieng hamlet in
Quang Nam province’s Dong
Giang district. It is a model of the one Nga built for his
father-in-law who died in 1996.
After nearly six months of gathering materials for it at Alieng, Nga
and five other villagers
arrived in Hanoi to build the structure at the museum’s open-air
exhibition area.
The house, a stretcher for carrying the dead, coffin, and shelf for
placing offerings are made of
wood. It has special decorations using sculptures and colors.
This is the 10th traditional Vietnamese ethnic style house built for
display at the museum for which
it received funding from the Sweden-Vietnam Fund for Culture Promotion.
The Co-tu, numbering nearly 50,000, inhabit Hien and Giang districts
of Quang Nam and A Luoi and Nam
Dong districts of Thua Thien-Hue province. They believe in Giang
(Genie) whom they worship.
They bury their dead close to one another in the village burial
ground, build a funeral house on the
grave and put up many wooden statues around it.
Death anniversaries, or grave cleaning, popular among the majority
Kinh in Vietnam, do not exist
among the Co-tu.
Reported by C.M.V. – Translated by Thu Thuy
