Bài chòi: what UNESCO lists, and where Hội An plays it

What Bài chòi is

Bài chòi is a sung card game and performance art of central Vietnam that UNESCO inscribed in 2017 on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, as "The art of Bài Chòi in Central Viet Nam". UNESCO's description calls it a diverse art combining music, poetry, acting, painting and literature, and divides it into two forms.[1]

• Bài chòi games are a card game played in bamboo huts during the Lunar New Year.[1]
• Bài chòi performance is staged by male and female Hiệu artists on a rattan mat, either moving from place to place or at private family occasions.[1]

UNESCO names the people who carry it: Hiệu artists, solo Bài chòi performers, and the folk artists who make the cards and build the huts.[1] It says performers and communities have set up nearly 90 Bài chòi teams, groups and clubs. Most performers learn within the family, and the skills pass on mainly orally, with clubs, schools and associations also teaching the art.[1]

What the UNESCO decision adds

The Intergovernmental Committee's decision, taken at its twelfth session on Jeju Island in December 2017, gives the reasons for inscription.[2] It says Bài chòi stories carry lessons on morality, compassion and love for the village. It also describes safeguarding through festivals and through teaching the song repertoire, singing and performance skills, and hut- and card-making.[2] It records that the element was on Vietnam's national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2013-2014. It names the Departments of Culture, Sports and Tourism of nine provinces as responsible for updating information about it each year, with the Vietnamese Institute for Musicology managing the database.[2]

The decision is not a statement that the art is thriving. It speaks of revitalisation measures "since it is still threatened, mainly due to the difficulties in its transmission".[2]

The nine provinces, and Hội An among them

The 2014 inventory that UNESCO's element page links as Viet Nam's inventory, compiled by the Vietnamese Institute for Musicology, names the nine provinces and cities with Bài chòi heritage. They are Bình Định, Đà Nẵng, Khánh Hòa, Phú Yên, Quảng Bình, Quảng Nam, Quảng Ngãi, Quảng Trị and Thừa Thiên-Huế.[3] Those are the 2014 administrative names, before the 2025 reorganisation; the 2025 province mergers article covers what changed.

In Quảng Nam, the inventory says, Bài chòi was recorded in Hội An city, in Tam Kỳ and in six districts, with 55 folk artists counted across the province.[3] XTOUR's reading is that when Hội An stages Bài chòi it is staging a practice the nomination's own inventory records in the town, not one imported for visitors.

How Hội An's heritage centre describes the game

Hội An's heritage centre gives a practical description of the game form.[4] The deck is made from "bộ bài tới" cards pasted onto bamboo or wooden slips, of two kinds. Large slips with three cards are handed to the players. Small slips with a single card are drawn by the caller, the người hiệu, who sings out each one. Each card has its own verses, and the caller performs them, in the centre's words, in a lively and well-practised way.[4]

The centre describes the old setting: a public place such as the yard of a đình, with two rows of huts for the players and a main hut for the organisers and the caller. It calls Bài chòi a folk game common in Hội An and some other central localities, played especially at Tết and major festivals, and says it had recently been revived on the old town's weekly and monthly nights.[4] That page dates from 2012.

The English version of the centre's ticket page calls the game a "traditional bingo game".[6] XTOUR's reading is that the comparison catches the mechanics of matching called cards but leaves out the singing and the verses, which UNESCO's description treats as central to the art.

Where Hội An's programmes include it

The centre's own pages place Bài chòi in four kinds of programme.

• The "Phố đêm" night streets. The Vietnamese ticket page, dated May 2023, says that beyond the ticketed sites visitors can enjoy and experience the "Phố đêm" activities, and lists the Bài chòi game first among them, alongside folk games, a folk-song class and street instrumental music. It gives no schedule.[5]
• The monthly "Đêm phố cổ". A centre notice of July 2025 says this recreation of the early 20th-century old town is held on the night of the 14th of every lunar month. It says most of the night's activity points are run by local community groups, and lists the Bài chòi game among the other activities.[7]
• Tết. The centre's programme for the 2026 Lunar New Year listed Bài chòi among the games and performances in public spaces and at relics over the holiday.[8]
• Nguyên Tiêu. For the 2026 full-moon festival, the centre's notice put Bài chòi at the roundabout of Nguyễn Thái Học and Bạch Đằng streets on the evenings of 2 to 4 March 2026.[9] That is past; the Nguyên Tiêu article covers the festival.

UNESCO frames the game as a Lunar New Year practice, while Hội An's programmes also stage it on ordinary monthly and nightly occasions for visitors.[7][1] The two are not in conflict, but a visitor who sees it on an ordinary monthly night in Hội An is seeing the game outside the season UNESCO's description gives it.

What XTOUR does not know

None of the Hội An pages XTOUR read gives a current schedule, place or price for Bài chòi in the old town. None of them describes the second UNESCO form, the Hiệu performance on a rattan mat, being staged in Hội An. XTOUR does not know whether visitors can join the game or only watch. For the town, see the Hội An destination page; for the other elements UNESCO lists for Vietnam, the intangible heritage article.