For additional information:
Karen Fjelstad and Nguyen Thi Hien Spirits Without Borders: Vietnamese Spirit Mediums in a Transnational Age. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011
The Third Princess in White (Cô Bơ Thoải Cung)
The third princess is associated with the Water Palace, and she is depicted wearing white robes and rowing across a sea of sorrows. Her compassionate heart holds a special place for the boat people who escaped in dangerous voyages over uncertain waters. As she rows, she is praised in songs that describe her beauty and her empathy for those who have known hardship. Sometimes, the mediums incarnating this princess will start to cry as they empathize with the problems that their “spirit children” have had to face. She rows a dragon boat standing up, holding on to brightly painted wooden oars, in a style of rowing still found along the many rivers that link Vietnamese villages in the Red River and Mekong deltas.