Every culture has their own pantheon of deities, but also ghosts and demons. Vietnam is no exception. Here are just a few of them.
Bonus:
Quỷ Một Giò: one-legged demon
Xà Niêng: a human-turned gibbon after getting lost in the forest
Hồ Li Tinh or Cửu Vĩ Hồ: nine-tailed fox
Quỷ Nhập Tràng: a zombie created when its corpse was not properly wrapped and a black cat jumped over it
Ghost of betel and areca garden
Source: Võ Huỳnh Phú
During Lí and Trần dynasties, tattoos were extremely popular. Tattooing was already a custom to the Vietnamese before Chinese occupation, with vicious animal patterns to scare away sea monsters when working on the water. In fact, the practice was so widespread that the name of the pre-Sinicized kingdom of Vietnam was Văn Lang, or Land of the Tattooed People.
After Vietnam was occupied, this practice did not go away. By Lí dynasty, it was still present in the Vietnamese communities that worked in the sea. By the Trần dynasty, to increase the nationalism of Vietnamese, the Trần court ordered tattoos to become part of court laws. Every mandarin was required to have tattoos, or else they would not be allowed to be inside the palace. Emperors were required to have tattoos, and so did women of the harem. Servants and slaves were also tatted, and it was so widespread that when Marco Polo came to Vietnam, he described that to the Vietnamese, the more tattoos one had, the more prestigious and high class one would look.
The tattooing laws during this period was strict. One could only have tattoos at the thighs, chests, stomachs, and backs. Servants and slaves would have their occupations tatted on their foreheads to indicate their status. Only the emperors could have dragon tattoos, but not everyone adhered to that law. Tattoo patterns were varied, and mostly of animals due to the original purpose of this custom. Birds, reptiles, beasts like lions, dragons, phoenixes, and many others were used. Tattoos of words were also common, such as when soldiers tattooed 殺韃 on their foreheads when fighting against the Mongols.
This practice no longer became part of the court after Emperor Trần Anh Tông was so scared of needles that he refused to tattoo, thereby abolishing the mandatory tattoos. Although it was no longer required, the practice was still widespread, and was only completely gone from Vietnamese customs after Ming occupation. To Chinese, tattoos were only for prisoners and it was disrespectful to the body your parents gave, a belief stemming from Confucianism. This idea became widespread after Ming invasion, and stayed with Vietnamese ideals until the end of the monarchy.
Source: Ngàn Năm Áo Mũ - Phong Dương Comics
after eight years, I finally updated my huge Historical Fashion Reference & Resources Doc! Now in the form of a MUCH more easily updated Google Doc with better organization, refreshed links, and five more pages of books and online resources.
I know tumblr hates links, but it’s worth it for a doc that I can now update with far more regularity going forward! RIP to the original, you did your duty for far longer than you should have. 😔🙏🏼
Đại Việt Lịch Đại Long Văn Đồ (大越歷代龍紋圖) depicts five different styles of Vietnamese dragons throughout every major dynasty (from left to right): Lí, Trần, Early Later Lê, Restored Later Lê, and Nguyễn. Lí and Trần dynasties had the most distinctive dragon designs (with some influences from Chinese Tang and Song dynasties). By Early Later Lê onward, Vietnamese dragons became highly influenced by Chinese dragons of contemporary periods with few differences.
Source: Sên
Viên lĩnh & nón ba tầm are clothings of Lê dynasty. Credit to Nguyễn Hùng & Đông Phong
Talking
“How much can you hear”
The craft itself
The golden rule
Artist: Qi Sheng Luo Title: serenity “A tradional Chinese beauty. everything is hand sculpted in Zbrush, texturing in Substance painter, rendered in Arnold” So beautiful…
The Dayak /ˈdaɪ.ək/ or Dyak or Dayuh are the native people of Borneo. It is a loose term for over 200 riverine and hill-dwelling ethnic subgroups, located principally in the central and southern interior of Borneo, each with its own dialect, customs, laws, territory and culture, although common distinguishing traits are readily identifiable.
1. Dayak woman, Indonesia, c 1900
2. Ibans or Sea Dayak
3. Dayak dance, 2007
4. A Dayak Longhouse, known as Rumah Betang in Indonesia or Rumah Panjang in Malaysia, the traditional dwelling of many Dayak Tribes. Original watercolour painting by Carl Schwaner, 1853.
Opening on May 18th, 2019 at Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles, California is part two of the 13 year anniversary exhibition, “Lucky 13.”
The exhibition features a massive amount of artists from the New Contemporary movement including (above): Yuka Sakuma, Bruno Pontiroli, Andrew Brandou, Helice Wen, Kristen Liu-Wong, Soey Milk and Hikari Shimoda plus many, many others.
The exhibition will be on view until June 22nd, 2019.
In the valley of Fruitless mountain, a young girl named Minli lives in a ramshackle hut with her parents. In the evenings, her father regales her with old folktales of the Jade Dragon and the Old Man on the Moon, who knows the answers to all of life’s questions. Inspired by these stories, Minli sets off on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man on the Moon to ask him how she can change her family’s fortune. She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way, including a dragon who accompanies her on her quest for the ultimate answer.
Grace Lin, author of the beloved Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat returns with a wondrous story of adventure, faith, and friendship. A fantasy crossed with Chinese folklore, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a timeless story reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz and Kelly Barnhill’s The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Her beautiful illustrations, printed in full-color, accompany the text throughout. Once again, she has created a charming, engaging book for young readers.
by Grace Lin (Author)
Grace Lin is the award-winning and bestselling author and illustrator of Starry River of the Sky, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, When the Sea Turned to Silver, The Year of the Dog, The Year of the Rat, Dumpling Days, and the Ling & Ting series, as well as picture books such as The Ugly Vegetables and Dim Sum for Everyone! Grace is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and lives in Massachusetts. Her website is gracelin.com.
letting a traumatized character have their happy ending where they can recover from their trauma will always be a thousand times more powerful than killing them off for shock value
America’s foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid?
Drawing on her Norton Lectures, Toni Morrison takes up these and other vital questions bearing on identity in The Origin of Others. In her search for answers, the novelist considers her own memories as well as history, politics, and especially literature. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Camara Laye are among the authors she examines. Readers of Morrison’s fiction will welcome her discussions of some of her most celebrated books―Beloved, Paradise, and A Mercy.
If we learn racism by example, then literature plays an important part in the history of race in America, both negatively and positively. Morrison writes about nineteenth-century literary efforts to romance slavery, contrasting them with the scientific racism of Samuel Cartwright and the banal diaries of the plantation overseer and slaveholder Thomas Thistlewood. She looks at configurations of blackness, notions of racial purity, and the ways in which literature employs skin color to reveal character or drive narrative. Expanding the scope of her concern, she also addresses globalization and the mass movement of peoples in this century. National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Morrison’s most personal work of nonfiction to date.
by Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and a Pulitzer Prize. She is the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, at Princeton University.
‘Let’s deport the worst people’ you say? The takers? The meritless?
Trump family is top three.
Aishwarya Rai in Aa Ab Laut Chalen (1999)
Better together!
