Courtesy of Caroline Levin
In Hanoi… mostly
Episode 1 – 07/ 10/ 2024, 11:16am
From where do we begin? … Maybe with something small. And material. Oh, but perhaps equally spiritual? I sound like the Sphinx from Greek mythology—posing riddles and devouring those unable to solve them. “What is both mobile and immobile, as material as it is spiritual?” I’m hazy and hungry (not for humans! à la Sphinx), so I can’t muster much more pseudo-intellectual build-up.
And so: altars! Buddhist altars.
As subtle a city detail as obligatory a part of set-design decor
…to he/she/they who’d wish to create a Hollywood hit about Hanoi (planting seed here). This year, I visited Hong Kong in Winter, then Hue in Spring—different cities (countries at that), different occasions (seasons at this), but the same observation: the altars were so …simple. Minimalistic, or maybe bland, depending on one’s taste in religious accessories (could not be a more white-girl phrasing than to alternate altar with “accessory”).
These descriptors check out when my gold standard has been Vietnam’s urban capital. Ohh, the altars of Hanoi— a trip, a treat, a peculiar delight. Elaborate, excessive, ecstatic, often literally electric (battery-powered lights and all). The altars, embodying centuries-old Buddhist practice of ancestral offerings, consist of three-dimensional frames, centered around a fallen family member’s portrait.
Preserved throughout generations
… the practice, the prayer, and the pillars of presentation; incense, flowers, wine, oil lamps, fruits (Buddha’s hand lemons are not in fact edible, I will save you the embarrassment) — the variants that incapsulate the immobile of tradition with the spiritual of the routine (most often) floor-level performance.
Now for the mobile, the material: the beloved 21st-century offerings. You still see the standard fruits and flowers, but also… Chocopie, Thang Long cigarettes, Heineken beer, Coca-Cola cans, Hi-Chews. The golden symbols of globalized capitalism, woven into the very fabric of Buddhist rituals, as the present generation proved piety to their ancestors.
How I dream
…of someone someday doing a photography-based research project to track the evolution of Hanoi’s altars over the last 50 years… Imagining Bác Hồ’s reaction to something as anti-Marxist and quintessentially American as Coke nestled among a Vietnamese assortment of offerings for the spiritual world.
The mobility is also in the act of re-arrangement, re-decoration – moving so as to sustain contemporary character, both in the everyday modifications (micro lens) and in the broader socio-economic, cultural, and political background noise (macro). The pre- and post-Đổi Mới Hanoian altar has spanned decades, running global marathons in just a few generations.
And in the stillness of prayer, the city catches its breath.
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(c) 2024 Caroline Levin. All rights reserved.
About the Article
Dichotomies of the mind. Mobile and immobile. Imagined and pondered.
