Lantern exhibition «Cóc Cốc Tùng Tùng»

   A toad almost three metres tall, mallet in hand, standing in the courtyard of a communal house more than 160 years old, surrounded by a bee, a fox, a bear, a tiger and a crab — all built from split bamboo and hand-dyed dó paper, and all lit from within after dark. This is a folk tale rebuilt at full size rather than printed on a page.

   The centrepiece, «Cóc kiện trời» (The Toad Takes Heaven to Court), took the Khởi Đăng Tác Khí collective close to three months. The ensemble runs about four metres long and three and a half metres high. Nguyễn Thị Kim Thủy, who founded the group, says the idea came from climate change: the old story of a toad marching to heaven to demand rain is retold as a note about the environment. The hardest part was not the toad but the small details — its toes, the tiger's and bear's claws — which had to be jointed in bamboo so they move naturally while keeping modern materials to a minimum. Each sheet of dó paper is dyed by hand in several colour layers, and one bad batch means starting again.

   Around twenty-one further lanterns fill the hall, each tied to a story:

• — A mandarin-duck lantern copied from a figure on a Lý-dynasty terracotta roof tile excavated at Hoàng thành Thăng Long
• — A cá Ông lantern referring to the whale cult of fishing communities along the central and southern coast
• — Three moon-viewing offering trays side by side: a Vietnamese one with the paper doctor figure and the «green and ripe» fruit arrangement, a Chinese Bái Nguyệt Nương moon offering, and the Khmer Ok Om Bok rite with tubers, peanuts and flattened green rice

   Khẩu Cao Nhật Phúc, the cultural and historical adviser, says the team grew the theme from the toad tale into the story of the southward settlement, where Kinh, Hoa, Khmer and Chăm communities live side by side. «Customs differ, but every community has its own way of turning towards the moon, and that makes a Mid-Autumn story as varied as Saigon itself», he says.

   Each visitor gets 35 minutes inside, with sweets, tea and a short talk about how Mid-Autumn used to be celebrated and what the old lantern shapes meant. Because the slot is fixed and the hall is not large, a weekday visit is calmer than a weekend one, and you should come after dark if you want the paper actually glowing.

   The setting does half the work. Đình Sơn Trà was raised in the 1860s by settlers from Quảng Nam and Đà Nẵng, dedicated to the village tutelary deity and built in southern style. Dó-paper lanterns hanging between its wooden columns and lacquered boards make for a Mid-Autumn many people now know only from stories.