Rice fields in Vietnam (ruộng or cánh đồng in Vietnamese) are the dominating area use in the valley of the Red Waterway and the Mekong Delta. A 3000-kilometer-long extensive network of dykes has kept seasonal river flooding under control in the northern Vietnam region of the Red River Delta.

An interlacing drainage and irrigation canal system has developed into the region’s mascot in the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam. Additionally, the canals serve as transportation routes, enabling farmers to sell their produce. The cultivation of glutinous rice in upland fields, which necessitated terracing of the slopes, was the foundation upon which the Thai people of Northwestern Vietnam constructed their “valley culture.”

The primary festival associated with the agrarian cycle is called “lhin,” which means “descent into the fields,” and it is celebrated at the beginning of the planting season in the hope of a plentiful harvest. The ceremony was traditionally conducted with great pomp. While local dignitaries and farmers followed, the monarch ploughed the first furrow in a rite. Prayers and sacrifices were made in remembrance of the earthly deities Th a, Thành Hoàng Ling, Thn Nông, and Thn La, as well as the village protector spirit Thành Ling.

In common Vietnamese, a person’s wealth is frequently linked to the size of their land holdings. The expression “storks to fly with their wings out-stretched” (ng la thng cánh c bay) refers to enormous paddy fields. Literary Vietnamese refers to the undulating rice plants blown by the wind across a paddy field as “waves of rice plants” (sóng la).