There are so many festivals in Vietnam
including a folk festival, special art performances, the inauguration,
ecological tours, a traditional rowing contest on the Son River, and
buffalo fighting festival ...
Buffalo
Fighting Festival is a traditional festival of Vietnam attached to a
Water God worshipping ceremony and the “Hien Sinh” custom to show
marital spirit of the local people in Do Son, Haiphong.
A
good fighting buffalo must not be castrated and must have one or all of
the following: big horns, a large neck, short legs, red eyes, thick
cilia, strong and good-looking teeth, and a strong and red scrotum
(affectionately dubbed the “gear box”).
Each
buffalo has a distinct method of attack: charging headlong into an
opponent; lifting an adversary onto its hind legs, exposing the
vulnerable underbelly; or jabbing the eyes, ears or neck with its horns.
Determining the loser its simple – it’s the buffalo that dies or runs
away first.
In
one of the fights, a buffalo is killed by a ho lao strike, prompting
festival organisers to remove the carcass in a truck. Some of the fights
get out of control.
Some
buffaloes visibly despise the violence. When they are supposed to
charge one another, the more docile opponents just nuzzle. But this is
rare – more often than not, the green grass of the field is covered in
blood by the end of a fight. The fiercer the clash, the louder the
applause from the crowd.
Unfortunately
for the buffalo, this good treatment is short-lived. At the end of the
festival, all of the contenders – regardless of whether they win or lose
– are slaughtered and fed to the crowd. Although it may seem strange to
eat the entertainment, village residents say the meat is some of the
best they’ve ever tasted.
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