With the new act titled “The Fire God’s Memory – the Mysterious Land Prequel” performed on weekend evenings, the Gia Dinh Park Circus in HCMC has become a popular venue for the city’s dwellers.

Enticing both young people and families with children, the Gia Dinh Park Circus has led viewers to a seemingly mysterious world. Following the success of the Mysterious Land act, its prequel explores the origin of the Fire God through the journey of a young boy lost on a wild island. The circus aims at sending a humane message and is suitable for all kinds of audience, especially families, children and adolescents. According to baotintuc.vn, the Fire God’s Memory – the Mysterious Land Prequel act is being performed in the context that the HCMC Arts Center has been put into operation. The center is responsible for organizing performances, art exchanges, movie activities and public services. It manages the Municipal Theater, the Gia Dinh Park Circus, the Phu Tho Multipurpose Circus and Performance Hall, and Lao Dong A and B cinemas.

Community-based tourism in Kep Village

In Kep Village, Ia Ly Commune, Gia Lai Province, H’Uyen Nie, a Mnong ethnic minority woman, helped Gia Rai ethnic minority women develop community-based tourism associated with cultural identity preservation. Thanks to this effort, many women and their families in the village have been able to escape poverty.

Having lived with the Gia Rai people for years, H’Uyen Nie built a community-based tourism team that connects traditional culture preservation with sustainable economic development. Initially, the team had 15 members who were artisans making brocade and weaving rattan and bamboo products. Now, the team has 74 members, including 30 female artisans making brocade, seven artisans weaving rattan and bamboo items, and 35 men skilled in playing gongs and sculpting statues. Thanks to the efforts of H’Uyen Nie and the team, the community-based tourism model attracts over 5,000 guests per year, 40% of whom are foreign tourists. Aside from economic development, H’Uyen Nie also pays attention to cultural protection. She encourages young villagers to learn playing gongs, making brocade and weaving rattan and bamboo products. According to the Gia Lai Province Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Kep Village will become one of the province’s key community-based tourism destinations, dantocphattrien.vietnamnet.vn reported.

An artisan’s effort to preserve Mo Muong heritage

With nearly 40 years of studying Mo Muong (an intangible cultural heritage of the Muong ethnic group, including rituals, songs, and narratives performed by shamans during important events or festivals) and a collection of about 1,000 artifacts, Bui Van Minh, an artisan living in Thuong Coc Commune, Phu Tho Province, is a guardian and educator of the cultural heritage of the Muong community.

At the 2nd Muong Culture Festival held recently at the Vietnam National Village for Ethnic Culture and Tourism (Son Tay Commune, Hanoi), Minh introduced stories and artifacts pertaining to spiritual life of the Muong ethnic group to the public. Studying Mo Muong when he was 19 years old, Minh told baotintuc.vn that he fell in love with the heritage because of his family’s tradition and his love for his people’s culture. He traveled far and wide to see and learn songs and narratives from old shamans, and to buy as many Muong artifacts as he could for his collection. In 2019, Minh founded Mo Muong Club in Lac Son (formerly Hoa Binh Province) as a place to teach the Mo Muong language to young people. He also encourages teaching the Muong language at some local schools to help promote Muong heritage.

The love for Uncle Ho among overseas Vietnamese in Japan

The contest to tell stories, draw pictures, sing songs or read poems about Uncle Ho among the Vietnamese community in Japan this year attracted nearly 100 entries from Vietnamese teachers, parents and students living in 16 prefectures and cities in Japan.

On December 15, the Vietnamese Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, the Vietnam Union of Associations in Japan (VUAJ) and other community associations held a ceremony to award prizes to the winners of the contest. According to vietnamplus.vn, the organizing board granted 15 individual prizes and two collective prizes to the winners of the contest. A special prize went to Trinh Anh Tu (seven years old, Aichi Prefecture) for his painting depicting Uncle Ho and Vietnamese children abroad. Two Japan-Vietnam roundtrip air tickets were also granted at the event. The Vietnamese Community Book Station in Japan project was launched on the same day. The Vietnamese Community Book Station in Japan is located in Tokyo and operates as an open reading space where books can be borrowed online. This project is jointly carried out by Vietnamese scientists, experts, and associations in Japan.