Vietnamese return to Hung King temple
05:50 07/04/2009

  Last year's event at Hung Temple in Phu Tho Province. Around three million people will attend the temple for the commemoration today.   Around three million pilgrims have arrived at Hung Temple in the northern province of Phu Tho for the commemoration of the death anniversary of the Hung Kings.

 

 

The event has been better organized this year than last year with a limit placed on food offerings to prevent waste and for the first time the government has invited around 60 Vietnamese expats from 15 countries.

 

Today, the tenth day of the third lunar month, is the main day of the festival beginning with an incense carrying ritual. It follows a fireworks display last night.

The organizers this year only allowed Mai Linh Corporation to make the cake offering because in previous festivals, so many companies and organizations made offerings of banh chung and banh day (Vietnam's traditional cakes respectively indicating earth and sky) that the cakes went rotten.

Mai Linh will offer a three-ton banh chung made from 6,000 smaller cakes, which will be given to people after the offering ritual.

This year's commemoration also includes traditional music performances and regional food and craft exhibitions.

Disabled people from Ho Chi Minh City and South Korean artists will also be present at the commemoration festival.

Vu Duc Vuong, a lecturer at De Anza College in San Francisco, who has just returned to his home country, said "When I came here and met people, I saw that the spirit of the country is still living in each of us.

"The commemoration of Hung Kings is the best symbol to unite Vietnamese people."

The National Committee for Overseas Vietnamese has called home Vuong together with some 60 established expatriates from 15 countries for the occasion.

Vuong said he has returned to Vietnam several times in recent years but "this is the first time I and other overseas fellows came home for such a special day."

The area for the festival was extended a further three hectares for the five-day event. An area was also built to hold more than 10,000 people.

So far the traffic jams that affected the past festivals have not happened

this year, the organizers said.

There has been no jostling or pushing either at the crowded Hung Mountain and temple of Au Co, the woman who gave birth to the first Hung King. She had 100 children!

More than 100 college students from Hanoi and Phu Tho's capital city Viet Tri have volunteered to collect rubbish.

Visitors to this year's festival will also see the new temple of Lac Long Quan, who fathered the country's creators and his statue.

HO CHI MINH CITY GETS FESTIVE FOR THE HUNG KINGS

Besides offering rituals, the National Culture and History Park in District 9 will hold a ground-breaking ceremony for the commemoration zone of Hung Kings at 7 a.m. Saturday.

At the district's Suoi Tien Theme Park, more than 2,000 people including people from 30 ethnic minority groups will perform lion dances and many legends from the country's earliest days more than 4,000 years ago. Meanwhile visitors to Dam Sen Culture Park in District 11 at 5 p.m. will enjoy literature and martial arts shows, before enjoying some of the five thousand banh chung handed out after the rituals.

An incense carrying ceremony will start at 10 a.m. at Saigon Zoo in District 1.

Several hotels and tourist sites around the city will add to the festive air with buffets of many kinds.

Lunch and dinner buffets at Van Thanh Tourist Park on Dien Bien Phu Street comprise more than 40 dishes.

Customers who buy 15 tickets, which cost VND150,000 (US$8.60) or VND100,000 ($5.70) for children, will get one free.

Binh Quoi Tourist Village at 1147 Binh Quoi Street will serve a dinner buffet with more than 60 dishes from coastal regions. Tickets cost VND130,000 ($7.50) for adults and VND90,000 ($5.2) for children.

Dinner buffets on Saturday and Sunday at Bat Dat Hotel at 238 Tran Hung Dao Street will serve more than 40 northern dishes for VND170,000 ($9.80) or VND100,000 ($5.70) for kids accompanied by traditional music performances. Customers who buy ten tickets will get another one free.

Reported by Truong Son - Huong Giang

Source : thanhniennews.com