Palanquin procession is an important ritual of the Hùng Kings Temple Festival. Photo phutho.gov.vn

PHÚ THỌ Many activities to honour the cultural heritage of the northern province of Phú Thọ will be held within the Hùng Kings Temple Festival 2023 that begins today.

This year’s festival will highlight the values of two provincial cultural heritages that have been recognised by UNESCO as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, namely the worship of Hùng Kings and xoan folk singing.

Besides traditional rituals like incense offering and the palanquin procession, the Hùng Kings Temple Festival and the Culture and Tourism Week of Ancestral Land 2023 will include performances of intangible cultural heritages of Việt Nam honoured by UNESCO, and the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the implementation of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

A conference on promoting cultural heritages in association with tourism development and a photo exhibition of Việt Nam’s legendary capital lands will also take place within the nine-day festival.

Visitors to the Vietnamese ancestral land will be immersed in numerous sports and cultural activities, like the swimming contest, a football and a volleyball tournament, xoan singing and water puppetry performances.

To those interested in tourism, food and fashion should not miss the chưng cake cooking or giầy cake pounding contests, food festival, the Northwestern Tourism Fair, children’s áo dài (traditional long dress) festival, the Cultural Camp and Art Festival to celebrate the legacy of the Hùng Kings and a tourist trip to explore the ancestral land.

'Chưng' cake cooking contest is one of the many interesting elements of the Hùng Kings Temple Festival. Photo phutho.gov.vn

Nguyễn Đắc Thủy, director of Phú Thọ Provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said this year's festival activities will be closely linked with tourism to attract visitors while widely promoting the potential and strengths of Phú Thọ’s cultural tourism resources.

The province is expected to receive eight million visitors at this year’s festival.

Phú Thọ is regarded as the ancestral land and the root of the Vietnamese people. In this place more than 4,000 years ago, Hùng Kings founded the country of Văn Lang, the first state of Việt Nam. From this cradle, valuable cultural heritages of the Vietnamese people were established, including the worshipping of the Hùng Kings and xoan singing.

The anniversary of death of Hùng Kings is commemorated on the 10th day of the third lunar month, which falls on April 29 this year, and is a national holiday.

Xoan singing was officially recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in need of urgent protection in 2011 and the practice of worshiping Hùng Kings in Phú Thọ as part of the world's intangible cultural heritage in 2012. VNS