One of the joys of river cruises is being able to travel in comfort and style while countryside, villages and towns pass slowly by. Once or twice a day we tie up by river banks or jetties to step ashore for a wide variety of excursions and demonstrations.

The dancers of Bat Trang

On the Red River in North Vietnam our boat, the RV Angkor Pandaw, called at Bat Trang. It’s a village famous for ceramics but it’s also home to a very accomplished traditional dance and drumming group who treated us to a fabulous performance before we climbed back aboard to continue our cruise.

The drummers in the unicorn and lion dance troupe of Bat Trang, North Vietnam.

Have a look at the short about video (about three minutes) here to see part of the show.
Or view it on YouTube here.

Lions and unicorns

All the lion dances of Asia are based on Chinese originals. Two men wear the costume; the head is made from papier-mâché over a bamboo frame and is beautifully decorated including blinking eyes and movable ears; the body and tail is made from shiny material covered with different coloured ‘fur’.

The unicorn and the lion dancing to the sound of drums and cymbals at Bat Trang, North Vietnam.

The lion dance is also called the unicorn dance (mua lan) in Vietnam.

The unicorn is one of the four sacred animals of Vietnam – the others are the dragon, tortoise and phoenix.

Our show featured a lion and a unicorn and the dancing was basically the same (to the untutored eye at least). I think the lion had yellow fur, as lions do, so the unicorn was the one with red fur. They both had ‘horns’ on top of their head so I couldn’t tell them apart that way. If anyone knows better I’d love to hear.

Apparently the unicorn’s horn never butts anybody and symbolises mercy not aggression.

The dancers are obviously very fit, acrobatic and strong.

And it looked as though they were enjoying the dance, as far as I could tell behind the masks.