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Vietnam's death sentinels stolen for
tourists
By Tran Dinh Thanh Lam
HANOI - It has muddy cracks at the bottom, but
the wooden figure of a woman with her hands cupped
around her face is exquisitely made enough to catch the
attention of a customer in a souvenir store in the
Vietnamese capital.
The shopkeeper who
approaches the customer says the 40-centimeter-tall
figure is a hundred years old, but is selling at a
"bargain" price of VND800,000 (US$53).
He says
it is the cheapest of its kind in his shop. Next to the
statue, in fact, is a slightly bigger figure of a man
beating a drum, but that has already been sold for
VND1.2 million.
For ethnic minorities in the
Central Highlands, however, there can be no price tag
for these statues. The shopkeeper may not admit it, but
chances are they were spirited away from Vietnam's
mountainous central provinces, where such wooden statues
guard graves and tombs.
"Almost every day,
people claim to have lost their statues," says Y Sieu
Djoai, a Daklak province artisan who makes such figures
for a living.
An officer from Daklak's
Department of Culture and Information also says, "About
100 statues have been stolen since the beginning of this
year, and a good deal were lost in previous years."
Officials there think they know where the
missing statues have wound up: in souvenir shops in
Vietnamese cities such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hue
and Danang, where they are being snapped up by eager
tourists at exorbitant prices.
Two thieves
caught in the southern province of Gia Lai admitted as
much during their recent court trials, saying they had
been told to get as many of the graveyard artifacts as
they could "because they are very popular with
tourists".
The thieves said they would usually
chat up locals to find out where the cemeteries are, and
then wait for nightfall to steal the statues.
But the disappearance of more and more statues
in the highlands is more than upsetting people there.
Explains Y Sieu Djoai: "The statues are very
precious to us. If a family loses one, it must hold a
ceremony in front of the funeral house to beg the dead
for forgiveness. Otherwise, they believe that bad things
will happen to them."
The Central Highlands
peoples believe that when someone dies, his or her soul
goes to the spirit world, where it lives until it is
allowed to return to earth in human form again. The
wooden statues are considered to be guardians and
companions of the dead while they are in spirit form,
but they are also supposed to reflect the deep love of
the living for their dead.
Hiding under thick
canopies of foliage up in the mountains, the statues
that come in various forms have long been part of the
region's wild beauty. Although associated with death,
they nevertheless illustrate the local people's simple
acknowledgement of the beauty of life and the surreal
worlds connecting the living and the dead.
Each
statue is carved during a grave-leaving festival, which
symbolizes the total breaking-off of relations between
the living and the dead. To this day, the locals rely on
traditional artists such as Y Sieu Djoai to make the
wooden sentinels of the dead.
The images - which
can range from people at work, to cars or even planes,
to animals - are carved from local wood with just a
knife or some other sharp kitchen utensil.
But
elders and officials there say thieves and insensitive
tourists are not the only problems they have these days.
They say the art of making the wooden sculptures is
disappearing as well, even though woodcarving is
supposed to be a vital part of the cultures of the
ethnic Xe Dang, E de, Giarai, Bana and M'nong peoples.
The stealing of the old statues has thus become all the
more painful for the Central Highlands people, who fear
that they will soon be without any wooden guard for the
dead at all.
One reason is that the supply of
good wood to make the statues is dwindling. Says one old
artisan: "The statues used to be made of a certain kind
of wood, which could last a very long time.
Unfortunately, this wood has recently run out and been
replaced by another kind of wood with much poorer
durability." As a result, there are now statues that
have succumbed to the elements and are now broken or
rotten.
To make matters worse, few among the
young in the highlands are taking up the art of
woodcarving, much less making the grave statues. Dinh Y
Dep, T'ra village patriarch in Gia Lai, laments, "Our
youngsters favor new things and are lax about
[continuing] traditions."
Y Sieu Djoai himself
admits that his son, Y Kyun, fails to see the importance
of seeing to it that the art does not die. To the
21-year-old Y Kyun, an ornate tomb means little. He
says, "Why should we decorate a tomb? Death is the end."
Not surprisingly, Y Kyun is not following the
footsteps of his artist-father. Instead, he is working
as a tour guide.
(Inter Press Service)
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