Second World

Written by Jonathan Smylie

In the afternoon of our eighth day, we cycled for hours through a long series of country villages that were surrounded by cemeteries, an area just north of Cau Hai Lagoon. There was no apparent order or pattern to the area, no separation between homes, hay stacks and graves. We’d pass a house or small shop that stood by the road and next to it laid a grave or behind it stretched acres of graves, large and small, facing one direction or the other, some in the starkness of the sun, others dappled in the shadows of long leaf pines.

The people here live in humble dwellings, wooden shacks or brick, one-room structures, yet they spend significant amounts of money to build a grave to honor their ancestors. The graves are made of brick, finished over with plaster, covered with ceramic tile or painted with bright reds, blues and yellows. From a distance these elaborate structures looked like enlarged pieces of ceramic art that you’d find in an antique store. Some of the graves were in the shape of lotus flowers, some stood two stories high, some used beautiful, dark red marble or stone for their sarcophaguses, some employed arches, high walls, and had great detail in their roofs.

Tanh, our guide, explained that at first when someone dies they are buried in a coffin and put in the ground with a simple marker or nothing at all. I saw many mounds of sand that looked like unmarked graves. After three years the casket is dug up, the bones removed, placed in a jar and put in a permanent grave, the location carefully selected, often with the help of a geomancer. Tanh explains that this is all a part of the Taoist beliefs. He says there is a second world where the dead live and from where they watch the living. The more the living honor them, in part by giving them a handsome grave that some actually planned for themselves, the more the dead will help in this life.

The guide books say Taoism is the least visible and most mystical element of Vietnam’s mix of beliefs. It’s a philosophy that dwells on nothingness, on the yin and yang symbol that emphasizes the harmony between contradictions. It’s a belief system that focuses on the absence of personal ambition, desire and sensual pleasure. It values simplicity.

Tanh told me that after his father retires in a year or two, he will start looking for his brother (Tanh’s uncle) who was killed during the American War and whose body was never found. He will use a gifted psychic to help him locate the body. The Vietnamese army employs five such psychics who have help relatives of the dead find the remains of 10,000 soldiers.

Tanh’s story left me wondering what kind of grave has his father, in his daydreams, envisioned for his brother.