Wrestling festival in Sinh village

This year’s event attracted nearly 100 wrestlers across the country competing in events of three age categories.

A fight of the festival

According to artisan Ky Huu Phuoc, a famous folk painter of Sinh village, the festival is hundred-years-old.

Phuoc added that under the Nguyen dynasty, thanks to its important position in waterways, Sinh T-junction was selected as training ground for naval troops. With the aim to improve the health for troops, the Nguyen dynasty encouraged its soldiers to join wrestling games and then observed the tenth day of the first lunar month as the Sing village’s wrestling festival.

As regulated, wrestlers are not allowed to make any vicious attacks as the festival aims to heighten sportsmanship.

The winner is the wrestler who could make the rival lie with his back on the ground while his stomach faces the sky, while being pinned in this position by his opponent.

As the Sinh village elders said, the festival is just an entertainment during Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday, unlike of old, when it was an event to select enlistees for the army of the feudal dynasties.

Together with entertaining with performances of wrestlers, tourists could contemplate the poetic space of the village, tour folk painting workshops and production facilities.

Translated by Mai Huong