At the age of 67, folklorist Ma Thanh Soi still looks healthy. He has been living in Ria village of Nghia Do commune, Bao Yen district, in the northern province of Lao Cai.

His village is located at the foot of Khau Ria mountain, on rugged terrain that the locals often say “It’s easy to climb up but difficult to go down”.

Soi belongs to the third generation of a family who are credited as having stored and preserved Tay ancient tales.

He takes great pride in his old house on stilts, made of ironwood tree trunks.

“Once, a rich man from the lowland drove his luxury car to our village and asked me to sell the house to him, but I refused. The reason for this is that the house is like the soul of the village. Therefore we cannot lose it," Soi says.

After graduating from the provincial Teachers Training College in 1965 he started teaching in the remote commune of Nam Xay in Van Ban district in 1966, and on account of his contributions to eradicating illiteracy he was quickly promoted to chief of the district's education section in 1972.

Then his life reached a turning point when Soi volunteered to join the army and fight for liberation of South Viet Nam.

In 1981, he was demobilised and came back to his native place.

In 1982, Soi was appointed chairman of the local agricultural co-operative.

Later, as from 1984, he held the post as Deputy Secretary of the Commune Party Committee and chairman of the Commune People’s Committee.

Since retiring in 2000, he has devoted much of his time to collecting ancient legends of Tay people living in the mountainous region.

“When my father was alive, he was regarded as a ‘living treasure’ of Tay people in the village,” says Soi.

“He longed to see me come back from the war, so that he could relate all old fairy tales of Tay people he knew.”

Following his father’s steps, Soi has travelled to all Tay villages in the region to record old legends.

“It is really a hard job to collect ancient legends,” he says.

Soi had to climb up many mountains, hacking his way through dense jungles to meet village elders in seven communes.

“In order to hear some fairy tales, I had to drink a lot of alcohol to thank the village elders who agreed to let me record,” he recalls.

Hard work

To date, Soi has collected a large number of fairy tales, 378 idiomatic phrases and proverbs, customs of building houses, getting married, giving birth, holding funeral services, eating traditional food, and using medicinal herbs which are considered priceless as they represent the Tay’s aspirations to purify the soul.

 “Sometimes I feel bored with the job and ask myself: What's the good of collecting folk stories,” he confides.

However, Soi has continued his work tirelessly since many of village elders like him are no longer alive and some others are too old to remember all in detail.

 “For this reason, I have to meet a lot of people to compare notes and record the most impressive stories, in addition to what I have learnt through my whole life,” he says.

The Tay’s old legends include Legend of the Koel, Legend of the Tortoise, Su tich cay Thanh Thao (Legend of a Green Tree), Mountain of Three Elders, Two Old Friends’ Meeting and Chon Village.

In Soi’s own collection, there are many interesting and mischievous tales, like Buddha Fixes A Man.

“Once upon a time, there was a young orphan named Pia who lived with his grandmother.

He could not find a wife because he was so ugly and poor, and no girls cared about his feelings. One day he was wandering in the jungle where he suddenly met Buddha. The youth cried and told Buddha his problem. Feeling pity for him, Buddha metamorphosed him into a very handsome man.

Before he came back to the village, Buddha told Pia that he would marry any girl who would touch his ‘member’.

When he returned to the village as a handsome man, all village girls struggled to touch his ‘member’. The young man was in such a panic that he made his escape from the village. Then he luckily met a beautiful girl who touched his ‘member’ and became his wife. They lived together happily ever after.

Afterwards, all young men in the village wished to be like Pia, so they rushed into the jungle to find Buddha…”

"Old legends of the Tay are like underground gold mines that require many hard working people like Soi to explore," says the commune People's Committee chairman, Nguyen Van Quay.

To ensure that such fairy tales can be handed down to younger generations, Soi has presented his entire collection to the Cultural Department of Lao Cai province.

He plans to publish more than 5,000 pages of handwritten material for a book on the life of Tay people.

"I feel so worried that if we lose cultural identities, we will lose everything,” he says.

“I am so old now, so my aspiration is to find some donors who can help me continue to collect and publish a new collection of Tay fairy tales.

For his active contributions to preserving the ethnic minorities’ intangible heritage, Soi was recognised by the Government as a “folk artisan” in 2008.

Soi and his wife Hoang Thi Dinh have got six children, all of whom are now State officials and employees.