The Tày people

Leave the lowlands, take the road northeast, to where the hills fold into green valleys and the rivers run clear over the pebbles. One morning, around a bend in the path, a hamlet of wooden stilt houses appears, backed against the mountain, facing the terraced rice fields. Beneath the floor the buffalo chew their cud; above, smoke from a hearth drifts out through the roof; on the veranda an old woman sorts seeds. You have arrived among the Tày (say "tie"), the largest ethnic minority in Vietnam.

The first of the minorities

Of the 54 recognized ethnic groups in Vietnam, the Tày are the most numerous minority — the largest group after the majority Kinh. They live mainly in the mountainous provinces of the northeast, in regions such as Cao Bằng, Lạng Sơn, Bắc Kạn, Tuyên Quang and Hà Giang, not far from the Chinese border.

Unlike some other peoples of the peaks who farm the high slopes, the Tày settled in the lower and middle valleys, the most fertile parts of the mountainous zones. They are accomplished rice farmers, poised at the hinge between the world of the Kinh plains and that of the high mountains. This position historically made them a prosperous, well-structured people, with orderly and enduring villages.

Their name, Tày, links them to the vast family of Tai peoples, a family that stretches far beyond Vietnam, across southern China, Laos and Thailand. A people of the valleys, then, but facing wide horizons.

The Tai language

The Tày speak a language of the Tai-Kadai family, entirely distinct from the Vietnamese of the Kinh, which belongs to the Austroasiatic family. This is a fundamental difference: Tày and Kinh do not speak related languages but languages of separate origins, even if centuries of proximity have produced many loanwords.

The tiếng Tày (Tày language) is very close to that of their neighbors and kin, the Nùng — so close that people sometimes speak of a Tày-Nùng continuum. It is a tonal language, rich in words for water, mountain, rice and spirits.

Many Tày today are bilingual, speaking Vietnamese fluently for school, administration and trade, while keeping Tày at home and in the village. In the past there also existed a distinct script inspired by Chinese characters, the chữ Nôm Tày, used especially by ritual masters to record chants and incantations.

The stilt house

The most immediate symbol of Tày culture is the stilt house (nhà sàn, nya-san, in Vietnamese). Built of solid timber, often without a single nail, joined by mortise and tenon, it stands on tall posts. This architecture reflects a genuine intelligence about the environment:

• The open space beneath shelters the livestock (buffalo, pigs, poultry), the tools and the firewood.
• The raised floor protects against damp, floods and wild animals.
• The living level is organized around the central hearth (the fire never truly goes out), with a corner for receiving guests, a corner for sleeping, and the space reserved for the ancestor altar.

To enter a Tày house is to climb a few weathered wooden steps, leave your sandals below, sit cross-legged near the fire, and be offered tea and often homemade rice liquor. Hospitality here is a cardinal virtue.

Terraced fields and the cycle of water

Around the village, the Tày have sculpted the mountain into terraced rice fields (ruộng bậc thang, roo-ong buhk-thang, "staircase fields"). Each terrace holds a thin mirror of water; the whole descends the slope like an immense staircase of light, tender green at transplanting time, golden at harvest.

Growing rice in the mountains demands a fine mastery of irrigation: capturing water from the high streams, channeling it from terrace to terrace through patient conduits of bamboo and earth. This hydraulic knowledge is a precious inheritance, passed from generation to generation. The Tày also grow maize, cassava and vegetables, raise the buffalo essential for plowing, and fish in the rivers.

The Tày landscape has a seasonal beauty: in spring, water reflecting the sky in every step; in autumn, waves of gold before the harvest, when whole families descend into the terraces, sickle in hand.

Spirits, the then, and the invisible world

Tày spiritual life is deeply marked by animism: the world is peopled with spirits (phi) — spirits of the house, the earth, the springs, the mountains, the ancestors. Nothing is quite inanimate; one must live on good terms with these presences.

At the heart of this spirituality shines the then (ten), one of the most fascinating of Tày cultural expressions. The then is at once:

• a form of ritual chant, a long, hypnotic melody carried by the voice of a ceremony master or mistress;
• accompanied by the đàn tính (dan-tinh), a long-necked lute with a sound box made from a dried gourd, whose round, gentle tone cradles the ritual;
• often punctuated by the jingle of a cluster of bells the celebrant shakes in rhythm.

According to belief, the then master undertakes a spiritual journey: the chant accompanies a soul, soothes a spirit, seeks a healing, calls fortune, celebrates a great milestone of life. It is a sung prayer, a voyage toward the invisible world. These sung ritual practices of the Tày, Nùng and Thái peoples have been recognized as intangible cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO — a sign of their worth far beyond the valleys where they were born.

Festivals, markets and colors

Tày life is not only labor and ritual: it is also celebration. The Lunar New Year (Tết) is the great occasion, but Tày villages also have their own spring festivals, such as the lồng tồng (long-tong, "going down to the fields"), an agrarian feast that opens the working season and prays for good harvests, with songs, games and the tossing of a cloth ball through a ring.

The traditional Tày costume is striking for its elegant sobriety: long robes or tunics of a deep indigo blue, almost plain, belted at the waist, adorned with discreet touches of silver, topped with a headscarf. Where other mountain peoples embroider dazzling patterns, the Tày cultivate the beauty of dark blue and the pure line.

At the mountain markets, held on fixed days, the Tày mingle with Nùng, H'Mông, Dao and Kinh: it is a crossroads of languages, baskets, herbs, fabrics and reunions, where people come as much to see one another as to sell.

A table and a valley knowledge

Tày cuisine, often overlooked, is worth the detour. Since valley rice is abundant, they draw a thousand things from it, beginning with colored sticky rice (xôi ngũ sắc, soy ngoo-sak, "five-color sticky rice"), naturally dyed purple, red, yellow and green with plants and leaves, and steamed for the great occasions. They also love sticky rice grilled inside a length of bamboo (cơm lam, kuhm-lam): the bamboo is set in the fire, and the rice emerges fragrant, barely crisp, to be broken open like a loaf.

In the warm months, families head into the forest to gather bamboo shoots, mushrooms and herbs; the rivers supply fish and shrimp; pigs and poultry are raised for the festivals. At the table, rice liquor (rượu, ruh-oo) circulates in small cups, accompanied by toasts and songs. To drink together, for the Tày, is not to get drunk: it is to seal friendship and honor the guest.

This valley knowledge — which fruits to gather, which plant dyes which color, when to open the water toward which terrace — is written down nowhere. It lives in gestures, in the voice of the elders and in songs. It is a fragile treasure, passed from mother to daughter and from father to son, as precious as the towers of the Chăm or the embroidery of the H'Mông, even if it cannot be seen from afar.

A bridge people

The Tày hold a singular place: through their numbers, their Tai language, their mastery of valley rice, and their long familiarity with the Kinh world, they form a kind of bridge between the plain and the high mountains, between the majority and the peoples of the peaks. To know them is to understand that northern Vietnam is not a mere postcard backdrop, but a living layering of cultures, each with its own house, language, songs and spirits.

Vietnamese to remember

• Tày (tie) — the largest ethnic minority in Vietnam
• dân tộc thiểu số (zun-top thyew saw) — ethnic minority
• nhà sàn (nya-san) — the wooden stilt house
• ruộng bậc thang (roo-ong buhk-thang) — the terraced rice fields
• then (ten) — the sacred ritual chant of the Tày
• đàn tính (dan-tinh) — the gourd lute that accompanies the then
• phi (fee) — the spirits that people the world
• lồng tồng (long-tong) — the spring agrarian festival, "going down to the fields"
• chàm (cham) — indigo, the blue dye of the clothing
• con trâu (kon-troh) — the water buffalo, animal of paddy plowing
• chợ phiên (chuh-fyen) — the fixed-day mountain market
• núi (noo-ee) — mountain; bản (ban) — the hamlet, the mountain village