First Visit to Chang’s

I met Hien in a bar in Hanoi. He is Vietnamese but grew up in Indiana and is now living back in Hanoi with his wife and family. He asked me why I was in Vietnam, and I explained that I had been coming from the UK regularly for over a decade and had spent a lot of time in the mountainous areas integrating with the ethnic minority groups — an interest that developed after initially working with the British Council in Vietnam on a photo project about artisanal heritage. I explained that I was a photographer trying to figure out what to do with a huge archive of ‘reportage’ images I’d accumulated over a ten-year period. For years I had searched for a project to make from them, but had eventually realised they were simply diary images; there wasn’t a ready-made project hidden in there — because I had never really set out with one in mind. I told him I was searching for a meaningful project to embark on. I mentioned that the images I always returned to were the ones involving spiritual practice, particularly shamans. His eyes lit up and he said, “Oh man, you gotta meet Chang!” He explained that Chang is a young shaman living in Yên Bái and suggested we go and visit him. We kept in touch, and a few weeks later we were on our way to stay in Chang’s village. We had timed the trip to coincide with the Xip Xe festival, a particularly spiritual period in the lunar calendar — a time when, as Hien put it, “all the ghosts are going wild, dude!”

A friend of Hien’s, Palmer — an ethnomusicologist who originally introduced Hien to Chang — joined us. He spends a lot of time visiting ethnic groups across Southeast Asia. On the journey to Yên Bái he explained that Chang describes being “visited” in a sequence of “dreams” by the village’s original ancestral sorcerer. He was instructed to attend a ‘classroom’ — which he says is a kind of shamanic university full of other students — where he has learned ritual chants, ancient Thái scriptures, and the making of traditional instruments used to beckon spirits. Now recognised as his village pháp sư phù thủy, he serves as an intermediary between the physical and ‘unseen’ worlds, performing ceremonies, offering counsel, conducting ‘spirit-possession’ rituals for villagers to communicate with departed family members, and performing ‘spirit-retrieval’ for those possessed by restless spirits.

We arrived in the village, dropped our things at the homestay, and went to Chang’s house for dinner. I was curious and intrigued. When we got there, it was a familiar evening scene: the women preparing food, the men sitting together drinking tea and smoking thuốc lào (Vietnamese tobacco smoked through a traditional bamboo pipe), children running riot, and unkempt dogs milling about and occasionally barking at us strangers.

While Hien and Palmer were deep in conversation with Chang about the musical instruments he was making for them, I found myself trying to help the women with the food — fully aware that, as a guest, it wasn’t really my place, but I was mostly trying to get a peek at what we were eating. I larked about with the kids, pulling stupid faces and letting them have fun at my expense. Some of the women began laying out bamboo mats on the floor for us all to sit on while we ate.

There were about ten of us, plus the children, sitting in a circle with the food in the centre. A teenage girl, Chang’s neighbour, sat opposite me between her mother and Chang’s mother. After maybe ten minutes, I noticed she looked distressed. Her face had gone vacant, and she was gently rocking back and forth as she sat cross-legged. I quietly asked Hien, “Do you think that girl is ok? She looks sick.” He agreed.

She began sobbing, then wailing. Her eyes stayed closed as her body tensed — her shoulders stiffened but seemed to contort at the same time. Her fists clenched around her wooden chopsticks so tightly her knuckles turned white. Then she began snarling and thumping her fists on the floor while her body jolted — not quite fitting, but as if something inside her was writhing or trying to get out. Chang’s mother and the girl’s mother held her, trying to calm her. I looked at Chang; he was watching her intently. The atmosphere had become intense — the dogs were barking and everyone was speaking at once. They took the girl upstairs. Chang asked us — Hien, Palmer, and myself — if we wanted to come up.

Upstairs was typical of the stilted houses in the villages, essentially one large room with curtained off bedding areas and a shrine at one end of the room. The shrine in this case was actually Chang’s ‘altar’. Chang, and his mother, sat the girl with them in front of the altar.  Chang was talking, quite seriously, to the girl, or rather the spirit that had possessed her. He was chanting, perhaps reciting, some verses to her. He was opening and closing a paper fan and motioning it in front of her face and above her head, like he was trying to ‘push’ something away. As the girl became less animated, Chang started fanning more quickly until the girl collapsed into the arms of his mother. She eventually became lucid, but looked confused and disorientated. Chang’s mum explained to Hien that the same thing had happened the night before — it was her grandpa’s spirit and he was angry about something. Everyone went back downstairs, Chang’s mum led her down as she appeared unsteady on her feet. 

We continued to eat, almost like nothing really happened. Everything in a moment just returned to before anything had happened. There was no fuss or commotion made by or towards the girl, she just sat down and started eating again. Chang finished eating and began playing one of his instruments. Not long after, the girl became possessed again. They took the girl upstairs again. I didn’t follow them. Instinctually, it felt inappropriate. The girl and Chang returned back downstairs, and once again, everything seemed ‘normal’ again. I tried to help tidy up and once again got told off by the ladies for trying to do so. The girl seemed fine, she was helping with the washing up. 

I found it quite distressing. Of course, no one wants to see a young girl crying, and clearly going through something traumatic, and but it was in this moment, seeing the concern of her and Chang's mother tending to her, and the children watching on, made me think about how real this was. I keep coming back to this idea of it somehow being a performance, but if we're going consider this as some form of an act, as Hien said "if they are acting, that is Grammy award". And, as Chang says in the following video clip: "some things can't be explained".

We went back to the homestay. Palmer and Hien went to sleep. I sat up trying to process what I witnessed, trying to rationalise it and find a logical feasible answer. If it was a performance, what would be the impetus for that? The girl looked exhausted, traumatised even. I’m quite aware of how contentious these kinds of things are, it’s worth noting there were no drugs used in this, like many of well documented ‘shamanic’ rituals, and there was no money being exchanged. It is possible that there is something psychological going on with the girl. It’s possible there was some form of hypnosis going on. But unless I had been hypnotised or drugged, I'm pretty damn sure of what I saw, and I was surprised how 'real' this experience was for me. I am sceptical, perhaps 'there to be convinced' might be more accurate. I am not superstitious, I tend to operate on facts in most aspects of my daily life, — I guess photography is an anomaly for me in that respect, my 'escape'.

The following morning we went with Chang and his uncle for breakfast in the market place before going to what seemed like a shop for shamans! He was buying lots of votive gifts (paper money, paper horses etc), and a new bell — he had broken his old bell the night before, he broke a bell in the market, and broke the new bought in the market later day, I will take a big box of bell for him when I next visit ! It transpired that he was going to perform something of an ‘exorcism’ with the girl from the previous night. They were going to try and find out why her grandpa’s spirit was so unsettled and try to get him to stop possessing her. 

Chang said it was fine to take a video of the event. It lasted about an hour. It started with Chang, wearing his shaman clothing, tying a headscarf around his head in front of the altar. The girl, who seemed happy, was smiling and started laughing as her mum tied a headscarf around her head but mistakenly kept covering her eyes by accident. Her mum sat next to her as Chang began the ritual by starting to slowly chant. He started ringing his (new) bell, and this one also broke! Everyone, including the girl started laughing, Chang looked comically perplexed and asked someone to go and find another one. Slowly through a series of ritualistic chanting, reciting, singing, opening and closing his paper fan — he batted rice with the paper fan, tossing coins in a bowl — the girl seemed to go into a transcendental state. 

Chang was still facing away at the altar, when he wrapped some clothing around the top of a sword and placed the tip end into a very small bowl of rice — it was like he was trying to balance it in the bowl. Hien translated to me that Chang was asking the girl if the shirt was hers, she shook her head, and Chang asked someone to go and get one of her shirts from her house (next door). With the new shirt wrapped around the handle of the sword, he put it into the bowl of rice and it stood up on its own — I wondered suspiciously, again searching for answers to seemingly unexplainable things, if the sword might be counter balanced, and if under the rice in the the was a ‘slot’ the sword could have fitted into to hold it up. I thought about sneakily inspecting it later if a moment arose.

Over the next hour, Chang continued trying to remove the spirit from the girl. She went through a series of ‘states’, from being calm to being agitated and distressed like the previous evening, again, wailing, sobbing, snarling, banging her fists. Chang made offerings of votive gifts, placing them on and around her. He offered rice wine, which was refused, and cigarettes which were also refused — Hien translated to me that the grandpa was asking for cigarettes but didn't appreciate the particular brand of cigarettes that was on hand! Hien also said the grandpa was complaining that he didn't have enough gifts. At one point there were so many gifts placed on the girl she reminded me of a Xmas tree! 

The ceremony continued and became quite intense when Chang began batting rice into the girl's face with his fan — it seemed to be the moment when Chang was trying his hardest to expel the unsettled spirit. It concluded in a similar way to the previous evening with the girl slowly returning to a lucid state. Chang used some plant stems and leaves to splash water onto the girl's face and hair in what I guess was some form of cleansing ritual. The girl fell into her mothers arms, but seemed to stay there much longer than how she had done the previous evening, and her mother looked worried before the girl seemed to come around fully. I followed everyone downstairs. Chang, the girl and her mother took the paper votive gifts used in the ritual to the front of the house and burned them. 

The girl seemed absolutely fine, she was smiling and chatting and I tried to join in. I felt compelled to try and ask the girl if I could take a portrait of her. Hien translated and she happily agreed. The mother asked me if she should go home and put her best dress and some make up on and the girl asked Hien why I would want to take a photo of her and that she didn't consider herself pretty. 

I asked Chang if there was a place he loved to go to, a quiet place, or a place that is special to him. He said he loved to go to the river and swim. I told him how much I loved to swim too and he took us to the river. There was a very small section of white water rapids which he showed us how to sit above and slide into. 

That evening, Chang invited us to another ceremony, this time for his mother’s side of the family. Around thirty relatives gathered. A young woman served as the conduit for inviting spirits — a possession ritual in which living family members can speak with their departed relatives. The atmosphere was calm and reverent. The ritual lasted about four hours; the conduit was fed offerings of wine, thuốc lào, and food throughout. Oddly, despite consuming quantities that would incapacitate anyone else, she remained composed, and even smoked thuốc lào repeatedly without coughing — despite normally neither drinking nor smoking at all.

I left Chang’s village with so many questions, Hien and Palmer too — neither of them had seen something like this with their own eyes either. I’d like to think the three of us, all relatively worldly, educated and of a certain age and experience, had enough about us collectively to not get too carried away with things in the moment and not rationalise things in reflection. Regardless of this being interpreted as psychological, spiritual, or performative, the experience was emotionally undeniable and hard to categorise, but one could say it is representative of how such emotionally real events are integral to, and deeply rooted in, this culture. 

I think I built up a decent rapport with him over the few days I was there. I felt he was interested in me too, I often found him staring at me, and he seemed to gravitate towards me when in down time — trying to communicate with each other the best we could through the language barrier. In as far as making a project about ‘this’ in some capacity, I am interested in Chang specifically. I don’t want to make a project as some kind of survey or ‘factual’ documentation of shamanic practices and beliefs, and that is not my place — It’s not my culture, I can’t speak without living that experience, and culture is way too complex to speak ‘about’. I would like to spend more time with Chang and see what develops. Of course the spirit rituals are fascinating but I think there is more to Chang that just this. He is young for a start, unlike most shamans I have met in ethnic minority groups in Vietnam. We learnt that his dad is maybe sceptical about the practice — he said he wanted Chang to just be ‘normal’ and get a ‘normal’ job. Chang’s dad is a construction labourer in Hanoi, like so many villagers of the working-age men and women from the minority groups, he travels to the city Monday to Saturday for work during the week. I remember when I started visiting the mountains well over a decade ago, I questioned why there were hardly any 20-60 year olds about, just elders who seemed to be looking after the kids. This opens up a wider context about the sustainability of traditional cultural heritage in relation to economic pressures in a rapidly changing Vietnam. 

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