Filled up on dragon spirit

The dragon lay along at the street like a train at a railway station. We could not see the beginning or the end of it. Occasionally dragon-operators in dragon green nudged the side of the dragon, so that it shifted about.

Other dragon-operators on the inside of the beast did not seem be able to see out, but waltzed to the indicated side, showing only their feet and leggings. This was said to be the longest dragon in Asia and the number of dragon-operators was uncountable, given their movement and mingling with the crowd.

The dragon had to be avoided by all and sundry when it moved. The crowds lining the street had to retreat out of its way. Ever chasing a globe on a stick, the dragon rushed and lunged in a monstering manner but did not hurt anyone. Altars had been placed at the fronts of the shop houses, bearing fruit, candles and other offerings. Sedate old women sat as if in a picture to the rear and to one side of the altars. A mysterious gap in the crowd facing the street was due to the making of a view of the dragon for one of the matriarchs. One quickly made sure not to stop this view.

The dragon, chasing the globe on a stick held by one of the dragon-operators, went at the houses with altars in front, bestowing good luck: it seemed any devils of negativity that had accumulated over the past two years would have been driven out of the houses by the fierceness of the dragon - and its friendliness. Winking, with a mirror in the centre of its forehead like an eye that returned your gaze and told you to look within yourself, with fabulously clean teeth and curving canines, feelers for sensing what really happening and going beyond what is said, the dragon took hours and hours to go through the streets of  Phan Thiet city Vietnam, the capital of of Binh Thuan province Vietnam, watched in joy and awe from balconies as well as footpaths.

Is the bauble on a stick the dragon chases the world of so-called reality that we live in and can never get satisfaction from? The dragon never catches the globe and never stops chasing it. Life is suspended between the desire and the non - attainment .So the procession goes on, every second year, as it did on 14 August (western calendar) this year, beginning at 5 am and going well into the dy, as the dragon stops at all the little station of piled fruit and sweets and bowls of incense, picking up people in its spirit.

This is the festival of welcome to a great Chinese deity called simply ‘Mr’. The procession comprised also palanquins and banners and tasselled and pompomed uniforms of four Chines groups redolent of lodges, secret societies and craft guilds. There were serious - faced older men in glorious garments and basketry hats and smiling men in serious burger felt like - hats. Children in troops thrust platics swords toward the sky, and other children sat on their father’s shoulders to watch, dressed for the occasion, in a beret or carrying a sword, and looking serious, so that they would never forget and would one day carry a chair for a god or miniature temple in the procession, with the same expression.

Only a handful of pale foreigners were numbered among the many thousands who filled the streets on the morning that drizzled and nothing more during a break in heavy rain that had fallen over a period of days and resumed after the dragon had been put away. We had got up at 4.30 to attend the procession, to rush for the dragon from four directions, down different streets. The energy of the dragon made up for loss of sleep. We were riding on the dragon spirit, taken inside of us. Would it take only two years for this spirit to subside - when there would be the festival again, the Festival of Mr, in which around town banners on buildings simply said, ‘Welcome Mr. ? The procession is for the forgetful and the children, as the dragon inside would not easily be lost to those who felt it.

The Province of Binh Thuan, a very tourism - oriented province that is home to the resort beach of Mui Ne, claimed Mr. (Ong) in a brochure, in Vietnamese, that welcomed people to the ‘Binh Thuan Festival to welcome Ong’ (11-14 August). This was not a put - up, tourist - industry job, however, as neither was the food we had eaten at a cheap café by the beach in Phan Thiet. ‘Have you got enough dragon’ people asked each other after a few hours, when they should be going. Slowly we searched for the car, and only then noticed such amazing sights as a child enthroned or horseback wearing the crown an robes of one of the lesser deities of the festival, one of a triumvirate of characters from a popular Chinese story.

This was a good year for the dragon. The most common comment by the spectator locals was ‘Very long’. A long body, that is. The time flew.

By James Gordon (The GUIDE, September 2006)