Nearly 12 bln VND to upgrade Hanoi’s ancient citadel

The Hanoi Housing Development and Investment Corporation on March 19 kicked off a 12 billion VND (613,000 USD) project to refurbish the moat surrounding the Son Tay Ancient Citadel.

This is one of the five projects under the Municipal People’s Committee’s plan to improve the environment of lakes in the inner city to mark Hanoi ’s 1,000th founding anniversary. The project is expected to be completed within four months.

Located in Son Tay town, 42 km from central Hanoi , the Son Tay Ancient Citadel was built in 1822 under the reign of King Minh Mang to defend the western gateway of the city of Thang Long , which is now Hanoi . Its walls were made of laterite, an extremely strong type of stone.

Covering an area of 20ha, the square-shaped citadel is surrounded by a 20m-wide, 2,000m-long moat. It has four gates, namely the Front (Tien), the Back (Hau), the Right (Huu) and the Left (Ta).

Inside the citadel, there are an 18m-high flagpole, a ceremonial place called Kinh Thien Hall, a lotus pond, a water well and soldiers’ camps.

During the 1870-1980s, the citadel was the Nguyen Royal Court ’s defence centre during the resistance war against French colonialism.

Time and war have destroyed many areas inside the unique military fortification, which was recognised by the State as a national historical and architectural relic in 1994. In February 2009, the Hanoi People’s Committee decided to preserve and restore the Son Tay Ancient Citadel to serve the millennium celebration of Thang Long-Hanoi.

Together with the moat, several other sections in the citadel such as the flagpole, water well and Vong Cung - a place for the King and mandarins to relax and offer scarifies – have also been restored and upgraded./.

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Birthday facelift for Hanoi

The Construction Department is expected to join a project to rejuvenate Thang Long-Hanoi for the city’s 1,000 anniversary at the beginning of April.

It will paint houses; refurbish public works; clear illegal advertising signs and ban pavement encroachment.

Municipal agencies will help home owners who take responsibility for the renovation of their houses.

City-managed offices will receive 47 billion VND (about 2.4 million USD) for the work.

“Black and red are banned to ensure consistent colour,” said Tran Duc Dung, director of the Ba Dinh Urban Management Office.

About 2,000 dust bins and public toilets will be installed at bus and train stations.

Parks and flower gardens will also be replenished.

Thoroughfares including Bac Thang Long-Noi Bai, Lang-Hoa Lac and Highways 1.5 will be renovated in addition to those in Hoan Kiem and Ba Dinh districts.

Encouragement for people to join project has been disseminated in most wards.

“Most people support the project but some still hesitate to repair of repaint their houses because of their financial situation,” said the management office director.

The director said he was worried about the clearing of uncontrolled advertising signs and stopping pavement encroachment.

“The problem is how to keep the advertising signs in order and pavements clear and clean,” he said.

Tu Liem district Urban Management office director Do Anh Tuan warned that commune, wards and hamlet officials would have to “diligently follow up the project to ensure its success.”/.

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VNA launches Thang Long-Hanoi website

The Vietnam News Agency launched its website on Thang Long-Hanoi at www.hanoi.vietnamplus.vn on March 18, becoming the first and only website on the capital city published in four languages.

The site - a cooperative project between the Hanoi People’s Committee and the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) - not only aims to serve the 1,000 th anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi but also will be continuously updated to provide full and plentiful information for Hanoi lovers in and outside the country.

In her opening speech, Ngo Thi Thanh Hang, Vice Chairwoman of the Hanoi People’s Committee, said the millennium anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi is an important event of the country.

“We believe that with the strong contingent of more than 1,000 journalists and a network of bureaus in all 63 provinces and cities nationwide and 27 foreign countries, the VNA website will be an effective and special information channel that diversifies forms of promoting the 1,000 th anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi and timely provides all-in information on the capital city as well as the whole country,” she said.

VNA Deputy General Director Nguyen Duc Loi said, “the advantage of having four languages, which no other e-paper in Vietnam has, will make an important contribution to implementing the goal of “promoting news for foreign service” as part of the media campaign on the millennium celebration in particular and the capital city of Hanoi in general.”

He affirmed that VNA will actively improve the content of the website in order to make it more plentiful and useful to readers.

Vice Chairwoman of the Hanoi People’s Committee Ngo Thi Thanh Hang, Deputy Minister of Culture, Sport and Tourism Tran Chien Thang and VNA leaders together clicked the button to launch the Thang Long-Hanoi website.

The website is designed and managed by the VNA’s e-paper Vietnam Plus.

Apart from information about Hanoi and activities to mark the 1,000 th celebration of Thang Long-Hanoi, the website gives detailed information about the capital relating to its history-geography, administration, culture, artisans, craft villages, gastronomy, among much else. It also provides useful details on the city’s entertainment venues, tourist sites, hotels and entrepreneurs for the benefit of both tourists and companies seeking business opportunities in Hanoi .

To date, nearly 900 entries in the Vietnamese language and hundreds of others in other languages have been posted on the website.

The photo albums include rare photos of the ancient quarter of Hanoi , Long Bien Bridge and collections of maps of Hanoi from the 19 th century./.

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Overseas composer dedicates work to Hanoi’s 1,000th anniversary

The French composer of Vietnamese descent Nguyen Thien Dao has devoted almost a year to the creation of a 60-minute work dedicated to the 1,000th anniversary of Hanoi-Thang Long.

Called “Soul of Vietnamese fatherland”, the work is comprised of 16 movements, which involve performances of a symphony orchestra and a traditional Vietnamese band, both traditional and modern-style dances, and a demonstration of Tay Son drums.

The work also includes the recitation of General Ly Thuong Kiet’s poem “Nam Quoc Son Ha” (Rivers and Mountains of the Southern nation), which is considered Vietnam’s ‘first declaration of independence’, General Tran Hung Dao’s “Hich Tuong Si” (Proclamation to the Officers), and scholar Nguyen Trai’s “Binh Ngo Dai Cao” as well as a screen displaying film clips of Vietnam’s victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu and the unification of the country in 1975.

Dao, who has been named in France’s “Le petit Larousse” and “Le Petit Robert” dictionaries, the US’s “Who’s who?” and the UK’s “Who’s who in music”, said he felt honoured to create the work depicting the heroism the nation has upheld throughout the course of building and defending the country.

Binding his life to music for more than a century, the composer has thus far created 86 works of instrumental music and won many awards from international musical competitions.

In 1983, Dao was presented with the French Fine Arts Academy’s “Andre Caplet” award and the French Government’s “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres”.

Recently, the composer has written works for major musical events held by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Vietnam Musicians’ Association, such as “Tay Nguyen”, “Khoc To Nhu”, “Ba me Viet Nam”, “Phu Dong”, “Mau va Hoa”, and “My Chau-Trong Thuy”.

His “Enlightenment” concert dedicated to Buddha was performed by 500 instrumentalists and singers at the closing session of the 2008 United Nations Vesak in Vietnam.

Another of Dao’s symphonic works, called “Hon thieng song nui” (Sacred soul of rivers and mountains), will be performed at the “Vietnam – my fatherland” musical gala to welcome the country’s first ever conference for overseas Vietnamese in Hanoi on November 21-24.

Composer Dao and 14 other overseas Vietnamese were honoured by the Vietnamese State in 2005 for their contributions to the nation./.

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Thang Long Imperial Citadel relics to be exhibited

The Hanoi People’s Committee and the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS) have agreed to showcase a part of the relics at the Thang Long Imperial Citadel on the occasion of the capital city’s 1,000th founding anniversary.

At a meeting jointly held by the Hanoi People’s Committee and VASS on March 31, the two sides agreed that the showcase must comply with the Heritage Law and meet the demand and aspiration of people who want to study the relic site.

Relevant agencies are required to build a careful and quality plan for the display of the special tourist site’s relics before summiting it to the authorised level for approval.

Also at the meeting, historians and archaeologists said that initial studies have discovered the special cultural values of the Thang Long Imperial Citadel relic complex. It was a centre of the Chinese and Indian cultures lasting through 13 centuries and was also Vietnam ’s national administrative centre from the feudal dynasties of Ly and Tran to the era of Ho Chi Minh.

The Thang Long Imperial Citadel relic site is one of the 10 special national relics nominated for UNESCO recognition as a world cultural heritage in 2010./.

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UNESCO to attend capital city’s 1,000th birthday

Representatives of 193 UNESCO members have passed a resolution on the participation in the grand ceremony to mark the millennial anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi in October, 2010.

The adoption was made at the 35 th UNESCO General Assembly session on Oct. 22.

According to Pham Sanh Chau, Head of the Foreign Ministry’s Foreign Relations Culture and UNSECO, UNESCO participation in the event is not only an honour for the Hanoians but also for all Vietnamese people.

The news, together with the election of Vietnam to UNESCO’s executive council for the 2009-2013 period, prove the international community’s recognition to the Southeast Asian country’s role, position and contributions to UNESCO./.

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PM okays celebration plan for capital’s 1,000th birthday

The Prime Minister has approved a grand ceremony to mark the 1,000 th anniversary of the founding of Thang Long-Hanoi, with the highlight being a ten-day festival from Oct 1-Oct 10, 2010.

The festival will start with an opening ceremony at the foot of King Ly Thai To monument and streets around Hoan Kiem (Sword) lake.

A series of activities will follow, including exhibitions, art performances and sports event.

To mark the event, a national press competition on Thang Long-Hanoi was launched on June 10.

Addressing the launching ceremony, Chairman of the Hanoi People’s Committee Nguyen The Thao stressed the significance of the competition, which aims to encourage not only journalists but also all Vietnamese people at home and abroad to write on the topic.

The organising board will receive entries in the forms of articles for printed and online newspaper, photo and programmes for television and broadcasting from January 2 to August 19, 2010./.

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Vietnam holds first international piano contest

Vietnam will host its first international piano competition in Hanoi from September 4-12, according to the country’s National Tourism Administration.

This will be just one of the many cultural events to mark the 1,000 th anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi and will also commemorate the 200 th birthday of world-renowned Polish composer Frederic Chopin.

The 2010 Vietnam International Piano Contest aims to identify and support talented young classical musicians not only in Vietnam but throughout the world.

The contestants, aged between 10-23, will play works by four world-renowned composers, namely Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, Frederic Chopin and Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff.

The famous Vietnamese pianist Dang Thai Son will act as the competition’s Honorary Chairman and Artistic Director and the contest is expected to be held every two years./.

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Hoa Lu Ancient Capital Festival 2010 opens

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan and Secretary of the Ninh Binh provincial Party Committee Dinh Van Hung beat the drum and gong to open the Hoa Lu Ancient Capital Festival 2010 on April 18.

This year’s festival is to mark the 1,042 nd year since Dinh Bo Linh defeated 12 warlords to unite the country, made himself king and named the country Dai Co Viet as well as the 1,000 th anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Chairman of the Ninh Binh provincial People’s Committee Bui Van Thang highlighted the accomplishments of Kings Dinh Tien Hoang, Le Dai Hanh and Ly Thai To, who founded strong dynasties fostering long-term independence for the nation.

In the opening night, the provincial Cheo (traditional opera) theatre staged a Hoa Lu festive drum performance which took aspiration from a magnificent period in the nation’s history.

A special art performance directed by People’s Artist Pham Thi Thanh provided the audience an insight of the glorious historical period of the Dinh, Le and Ly dynasties in the ancient capital of Hoa Lu, ended with the moving of the capital to Thang Long (now Hanoi ) by King Ly Thai To.

On the morning of April 18, the festival’s organising board held a fire parade from the Dinh King’s Temple in Gia Phuong commune, Gia Vien district – the birthplace of King Dinh Tien Hoang – to the Hoa Lu Ancient Capital, a water parade from the Hoang Long River and a palanquin parade by 24 local delegations.

During the four-day festival, there will be many cultural and sports activities, including music and water puppetry performances, wrestling, volleyball, human chess, tug of war and walking on stilts.

From now until the grand celebration of Thang Long-Hanoi, Ninh Binh province will implement a number of works of historical significance such as dredging the Sao Khe River , the waterway which King Ly Thai To used to travel to Thang Long-Hanoi.

Traffic routes to the Hoa Lu Ancient Capital relic, the Trang An ecotourism area, the Bai Dinh Pagoda and the statue of King Le Dai Hanh will be built./.

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Foreign capitals to celebrate Hanoi’s anniversary

Up to 22 capital and cities around the world and foreign embassies in Vietnam have registered to take part in activities marking Hanoi’s 1,000th anniversary that will be held later this year.

According to the National Steering Committee for the 1,000th anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi, the city of Fukuoka , Japan , has registered for Japanese culture days in Hanoi .

The capital city of Seoul in the Republic of Korea has offered to organise a wide range of activities, entailing artistic performances, a Seoul-Hanoi friendship night, a Seoul-Hanoi trade fair, and a seminar on the Red river project.

The capital city of Moscow in Russia has proposed organising Moscow days while Berlin , Germany has offered to hold a classical music concert during the event.

The Ile de France region of France said it wants to organise a fashion show and a seminar featuring French architecture in Hanoi , and other French cities such as Toulouse , Lyon and Rouen have registered to participate in street shows, and various musical, circus, and modern dance performances.

The committee said a number of cities and international organisations have registered to take part in projects to light the Long Bien bridge and public works located in the heart of Hanoi , such as the Government Guest House and the Ly Thai To garden.

The Australian embassy has registered with a programme to introduce its country’s ancient and aboriginal culture, while the Danish embassy has offered a street art performance, the Italian embassy, a photo exhibition and a musical concert, and the Argentine embassy, a performance of tango./.

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