Hue Festivals: Helping Popularise Ancient Royal Capital

Five Hue festivals have been successfullyorganised and the ancient capital’s residents are now waiting for the 6th to be held from 5-13 June. Many activities and programs of the Hue festival have become attractive tourism trademarks to visitors such as the Nam Giao festival, Huong (Perfume) River Legend, the Hoang Cung (Imperial Palace) Night, the Ao dai (traditional dress) festival, the enthroning ceremony of King Quang Trung, the countryside market festival.

There are different opinions as thinking of the effectiveness of festivals. Many people said that the Hue Festival has become an international trademark, creating a foundation for Vietnam’s central city to develop into the festival city, and waking up traditional cultures of the Hue city in particular and of Vietnam in general. However, others said that investing tens of billions of dong and organizing widely in numerous contents have not brought in high effectiveness. In the social aspect, almost all residents in Hue watched the festival on television instead of coming to the performance place.

Regarding the economic-social aspect, which effectiveness does the Hue Festival bring in?

According to our opinions, the biggest benefit is that the imperial palace culture and folk culture have been exploited via the Hue Festivals. The Hue Festival has been known in many worldwide countries. Thus, the number of foreign countries registering for the participation in Hue Festival has increased annually.

The Hue Festival 2008 attracted 23 nations and the figure increased to 30 foreign delegations from all five continents in the Hue Festival 2010. They were from ancient cities and cities which are home to many world heritages such as Cambodia’s Angkor, Laos’ Luang Prabang, Japan’s Gyonju, Kyoto, Thailand’s Nara, Sukhothai, China’s Nanjing and Xian. The delegations of traditional and modern artists from France, Belgium, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey, Denmark, Ukraine, China, South Korean, Japan, India, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Israel, the U.S., Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, Senegal, Central Africa, South Africa and Australia also attended the festival.

Many Vietnamese delegations from Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Quang Ninh, Quang Binh, Quang Nam, Tay Nguyen, Bac Ninh, Phu Tho, Ninh Binh, Thanh Hoa and art delegations of the Hue city such as the Imperial Palace Art delegation, the delegation of Thua Thien-Hue Opera Theater were present at the event. Each festival was estimated to lure 30,000-40,000 international visitors from 75 nations and territories. This is the biggest benefit which is unable to be evaluated by money.

The second benefit is through each festival, the Hue city was decorated more beautifully. Many road routes were upgraded and additional entertainment centers, hotels were built. Since the Hue festival 2006, many four or five –star hotels have been built and put into operation, contributing to raise the quality of hotel services. The old bridges from the French domination across the An Cuu River such as Nam Giao Bridge, Ben Ngu, Kho Ren, An Cuu have been also upgraded.

The third benefit is that the Hue Festival 2006 created a business environment for the central city’s tourism and trade sectors as well as for enterprises in the whole country. Hundreds of domestic firms attended the Trade and Tourism Fair at Hue Festival 2006 and a half of million visitors arrived in for see sighting and buying at the fair. Pottery kilns and pottery products reappeared at the Phuoc Tich ancient village. The Thanh Tien paper flower village also held for the first time a festival named “Thanh Tien colour”. The number of international tourist arrivals to Hue during the nine-day festival accounted for 10 per cent of the full-year’s total tourists to the city. In addition, each Hue festival also brought in high income for thousands of local laborers such pedicab drivers, taxi drivers, helmsmen, photographers, painters and book and picture sellers.

Through the five festivals, particularly the five international sculpture camps themed “Hue-Vietnam Impression”, hundreds of wonderful sculpture works have been created and located along the two banks of the Huong River, the Thien An tourism site, and the Thuan An tourism site. Based on these, the Hue city can build a park of sculpture works in the future.

Tags: Hue, Hue Festivals, Hue Vietnam, Vietnam Tourism