Binh Da: The Festival That Still Honors the National Ancestor

Lac Long Quan is not remembered only in chronicle text; a living annual festival at Binh Da, in what is now Hanoi's Thanh Oai district, continues to venerate him by name as Quoc To, National Ancestor. Vietnam's cultural heritage authorities recognized the Binh Da Festival as a National Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2014, the first festival in Hanoi to receive that designation, and Vietnamese press covering recent editions of the festival describe its central rite as a solemn procession, ritual offerings and incense ceremony held in Lac Long Quan's honor at the Noi Binh Da communal house, which preserves a bas-relief said to date back more than a thousand years and to have been commissioned under the tenth century king Dinh Tien Hoang. The festival is held annually around the sixth day of the third lunar month, placing it close to the better known Hung Kings' Temple Festival that honors Lac Long Quan's own son, and both observances draw on the same founding narrative, that the Vietnamese people descend from the union of the dragon lord and the mountain fairy, con Rong chau Tien. The continued state recognition and annual observance make Lac Long Quan's veneration a matter of documented, ongoing public practice rather than only of recorded myth.