Main features
Religion and belief: The Tay people have many different forms of folk beliefs, such as ancestor worship, worship of the midwife, Quan The Am (Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva), Kitchen God, the earth god, and in some villages, worship of the God of the village. In some places, they even build pagodas to worship Buddha. The life cycle rituals also have an important meaning in the spiritual life of the Tay people.
Housing: Traditional houses of the Tay people include three basic types: houses on stilts, half-stilt houses and half-ground houses and defensive houses. In particular, the house on stilts is the most popular traditional type of house, with the general structure being a five-compartment, three-compartment or, two-wing stilt house, with a diagonal axe-shaped roof, which sits low compared to the floor. The floor is covered with bamboo or wooden planks. There are few windows, sets of 3, 5, and 7-column trusses or variations of 2, 4, and 6-columns. The roof is covered with grass, palm leaves, cork or tile.
Half-stilt, half-land house is a type of house suitable for sloping terrain, appearing only sporadically in a few places, especially in midland areas near mountains and forests. A defensive house is a form of housing with the function of preventing and fighting robbers and wild animals, only found in the border areas between Vietnam and China. In Lang Son, this type of house was later transformed into a two-story house with thick earthen walls, the second floor is made of wood, and the roof is styled with yin and yang tiles.
Clothing: Mainly made of black indigo fabric, with little decorative patterns. Men’s clothing consists of a V-shaped and four-flapped long dress, with fabric buttons, small and long sleeves, with two pockets on either side of the bodice.
Women’s outfits usually have two shirts, a short blouse and a long shirt; pants or skirts, belts; turban and square scarf worn on the head. The blouse is a short, thin shirt, made of white or light-coloured fabric, worn under a long dress. The shirt has four flaps, V-shaped, small sleeves, and two small pockets at the lapel. Ao Dai is a five-body shirt with five buttons with cloth or bronze buttons on the right armpit; a long belt that wraps around the abdomen and ties it behind, letting it drop down to the ankles; a round collar; and the sleeves are long and narrow.
Cuisine: The main food that Tay people use for daily cooking is plain rice. In addition to plain rice eaten daily, the Tay people also use plain rice and glutinous rice to cook porridge, lam rice, vermicelli, nuggets, and many sticky rice dishes and cakes. In particular, ant egg cake is considered a speciality of the Tay people because its filling is made from the eggs of black ants that build a nest on a tree branch, which is stir-fried with fat, salt, palanquin or scallions.
