Ta Thi Tam
Ethnology Institute
The Cong is a small ethnic minority group living in the northern mountainous provinces of Lai Chau and Dien Bien with a population of around 2,200. A small part of the group lives in areas bordering on
The Cong, also called Xam Khong, Mong Nhe or Xa Xeng, lives mainly on swidden farming. The group also does wet-rice farming and raises buffaloes to serve farm work.
The Cong lives in a stilt house which consists of three or four parts. The interior part is for worshiping the family ancestors and cooking. It is also the parents’ sleeping place. The middle part which has a fire is for receiving guests who can sleep here. Next to this part is a room for the oldest son’s family, followed by another for the second son’s. A daughter whose husband stays with her family lives in the most outer room near the entrance door. Rooms are partitioned with bamboo wattles. Unmarried children of the family often sleep in their friends’ houses or a widow’s, which are the gathering places of young villagers.
A Cong house only has one entrance door and one window in the middle part. It also has a bamboo sub-floor at the back, which is raised about 15-16 cm higher than the main floor.
The Cong family names include Lo, Ly, Chao, Chang, Hu and Lung. Clans live in the same village, but usually with one making the majority. Clans are distinguished by their own taboos and ways of worshiping ancestors. Chao clan, for instance, has the taboo against eating kestrel while the Ly clan does not eat squirrel and the Hu, not tiger. Each clan has a head who deals with general affairs of the clan, including marriage.
The Cong follows monogamy under which members of a clan may marry one another after seven generations. But the group allows marriage between the son and daughter of two sisters or between the son of a sister and the daughter of her brother. However, marriage between the son of a brother and the daughter of his sister is disallowed. Cong custom also prohibits a widow to marry her husband’s brother or a widower to marry his wife’s sister.
Before a wedding is the engagement ceremony (hu men ti xe) in which the groom’s family asks the bride’s family to allow the groom to stay at the latter. The engagement is held in the evening of a good date which must not coincide with the date of death of a family member. The groom’s family brings to the bride’s home a pack of salt, a pack of tea, a roll of hemp yarn (for knitting fishnet), three grams of opium and a jar of ruou can for the two families to smoke and drink during their talk about the groom’s stay. Such matrilocal stay often lasts three or four years, much shorter than in the past when a groom had to stay up to 12 years. If being consented by the bride’s family, the next day, the groom brings a knife, quilt and pillow to start his role as a son-in-law in her family. During his stay, the groom is treated as a family member even though he is not supposed to do a number of things such as sitting on a chair, wearing slippers or shoes inside the house, entering the room of his mother- or sister-in-law or lying when his parents-in-law are having a meal. After a meal, the son-in-law is supposed to offer water to his parents- and sisters-in-law. He also has to wake up early cooking or going fishing.
A couple of months before the groom’s stay ends, his parents go to the bride’s home to propose the wedding which is usually held in November or December after harvesting time. The wedding present is five silver coins. On the wedding day, the bride wears Cong traditional costume. The delegation escorting the bride to her husband’s home comprises the groom’s parents, uncles, aunts and siblings. Before entering the bride’s house, delegation members are offered wine and a salad made from banana flower mixed with sesame and chilly, and they must join the bride’s family in responsive singing.
Going to her husband’s home, the bride brings her dowry which includes a cushion, quilt, knife, hoe, spade, pig and chicken and clothes. An aunt of the groom has to carry the bride on her back to the groom’s home if the bride and the groom live in the same village. If not, she has to carry the bride for a stretch of road. The Cong has the custom to sprinkle water mixed with ash to the groom family delegation before they leave the bride’s home. That’s why, in a Cong wedding, people do not wear new clothes.
Arriving the groom’s home, the couple prays in front of the ancestor altar and greets the groom’s relatives. Then comes a wedding party which lasts two or three days. After that, the couple returns to the bride’s home to greet her parents and stays there one night.
Due to the groom’s long stay at the bride’s home, a couple often has one or several children before the wedding is held.
During delivery, a Cong woman often stays at home, sitting near a fire. The placenta is put into a piece of bamboo and buried under the stilt house. The Cong often pours boiling water into the place in which the placenta is buried to kill ants in the belief that a child will suffer itch if the placenta is eaten by ants. After the wound in a child’s navel heals, his maternal grandfather or uncle ties a thread to his wrist and names him. If the child is ailing, a ceremony to call his spirit and rename him is held. A Cong child often has adoptive parents.
The Cong worships ancestors of three generations. The father is in charge of this work, which is passed to his wife when he dies, and later to the oldest son when the mother dies. If brothers of a family do not live together, each sets up an altar in his own house to worship ancestors separately.
The Cong does not make offering to ancestors on their death anniversaries, but in the lunar new year festival, the new rice worshiping festival and other occasions such as wedding, funeral, birth giving or illness of children.
A Cong altar is simply a bamboo wattle fixed at the wall on a wooden pillar. Offerings are a bowl of rice, a bamboo cylinder of water and a small chicken. Holding the chicken in his hands, the person who conducts the offering ritual sits in front of the altar, praying to the ancestors. After that, he kills the chicken and applies its blood to a banana leaf which is then wrapped and stuck to the altar together with some chicken feathers. The chicken is then boiled as offering of the second ritual. This time, the chicken meat is wrapped with another banana leaf and again stuck to the altar. Apart from worshipping ancestors, Cong people make offering to the spirits of their dead parents-in-law on the Tet occasion after making offering to their own ancestors.
The Cong has farming-related beliefs. The most important farming ritual is worshiping animal spirits, which is annually held in March before the group sows seeds for a crop. The worshiping place is a big tree in the village. The ritual is conducted by the village wizard who, after the ritual, pricks holes with a pointed stick in the land area around the tree to sow rice seeds symbolically. Every family in the village also conducts this ritual at its own field. The night before sowing seeds in his field, the family host stays at the field, making offerings, which include some fish and crabs, to the spirits of the field to pray for a bumper crop. After that, he plants some clumps of scallion in the field in the hope that rice will grow well like this tree. The rice which grows near the scallions will be harvested last and brought home for a ritual dedicated to the rice god.-