Impressive Thua Thien Hue - World Cultural Heritage Site

Area: 5,063.3 sq. km.

Population: 1,143.5 thousand habitants (2006).

Capital: Hue City.

Districts: Phong Dien, Quang Dien, Huong Tra, Phu Vang, Huong Thuy, Phu Loc, Nam Dong, A Luoi.

Ethnic groups: Viet (Kinh), Ta Oi, Co Tu, Bru Van Kieu, Hoa.

Vietnam National Administration of Tourism

Kites fly high in the Hue sky

Among many places in the country, Hue city seems to be regarded as the most ideal for kite flying. Except on rainy days, hundreds of kites can be seen soaring in the sky over Hue Citadel every afternoon, to the cheer of lively families, both adults and children.

Kite flying is an interesting and attractive game which has been around for a long time. Previously, kite flying was an interest of families and individuals, among whom were some artistic families in Hue who have been famous for kite flying for many generations. However, nowadays there is a Hue Kite Club, managed by Hoang and Nguyen Van Cu, deputy-head of the club. Fifteen club members support the exchange and preservation of the cultural feature of Hue kite flying.



Apart from kite flying over Ngo Mon (Noon Gate), the club also participates in dozens of exhibitions and kite flying contests nationwide in Hanoi, HCMC, Nha Trang, Nghe An, Hoi An, Quy Nhon, Vung Tau, Quang Nam, Quang Binh and Quang Tri.



In the annual Hue Festival many local and foreign clubs including the South Korean Kite Club and Hoi An Kite Club take 15 kinds of kites to the sky to glide over Ngo Mon. The most striking of them is the 100-meter-dragon kite owned by artisan Nguyen Van Cu. The record-long kite took two months and 20 meters long to make by artisan Nguyen Chung Cu and his two helpers. The artisan’s kites have even been flown in France, where Hue kites are very popular and famous, and the artisan spoke with the French about Hue kites and gave kite-making lessons in some schools. His kites also have been exported to the US.



At the third international kite flying contest, Nguyen Van Cu and Nguyen Van Hoang took 40 colored kites to fly in the French skies. They were much admired by the 34 participating countries and local kite lovers. Vietnamese-French kite enthusiasts came to watch and show their appreciation for the Hue kites soaring in French sky.

The 60-year old artisan Nguyen Van Cu now lives on Mac Dinh Chi Street in the central city of Hue. His hobby of kite flying has spanned over 40 years kite. His childhood was filled with the sounds of kite-flutes of his grandfather Nguyen Van Ban.



The artisan’s grandfather had to sell some domestic utensils to buy kite materials as he was very poor. However, the melodies echoing from the flute attached to the soaring kite in the blue sky seem to sweep away the sadness of his poverty and misery.

From: The Saigon Times
Pics from Flickr.com

The city of heritage. The city of festival

Thua Thien Hue is located in the centre of Vietnam and on principal North-South transport-tation axis with Thuan An sea port, Chan May deep sea port and Phu Bai Airport. Besides, Thua Thien Hue is an important economic development pole of the key economic area of the Centre and the gateway of East – West Economic Corridor connecting Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos with East Sea. This creates favourable conditions for the Province to develop commodity economy, services, tourism and expand cultural and economic exchanges internally and externally.

The center of Thua Thien Hue Province is Hue city, an ancient capital with a lot of historical and cultural monuments and famous landscapes. The complex of Hue monuments with unique architectural masterpieces were recognizied as one of the world cultural heritages by UNESCO. Besides tangible cultural heritages, Thua Thien Hue also has Hue court music, the first intangible cultural heritage of Vietnam, recognized as a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity by UNESCO.

Hue cultural heritage marks a decelopment period of the national culture with unique values of architect, art, music, manners and customs, traditional handicraft, cultural festivals, which create unique cultural identity of Vietnam. Hue heritages and other world heritages in the Centre of Vietnam, such as Quang Binh and Quang Nam have formed “the Central heritage road”

Hue is the land that possesses not only special cultural features of the Orient but also a great deal of resources for economic development of the key economic area of Central Vietnam. Hue urban is step by step affirming to be the city of tourism and festival of Vietnam. It is also the province situated on the East-West Economic Corridor connecting Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam with East Sea. Thua Thien Hue has focused on upgrading its infrastructure such as wharf, airport, industrial zone; consolidating local transportation system; reinforcing source of strength to construct institutional system for tourism, culture, health, education so as to create motivation to boost socio-economic development. Thua Thien Hue is gradually affirming its position and continuously striving to be one of the great national centers on culture, health, education and training, tourism, service and international exchanges.

From the Vietnam-France Cultural Festival jointly organized by Hue City and CODEV in 1992, the idea of a festival with a series of cultural activities and impressive and specific festivities was performed right in the beginning year of the new millennium. Success of Festival Hue 2000 created premise for the successes of Festival Hue 2002, 2004 and 2006, step by step affirming the brand name of Festival Hue and capability of organizing cultural activities and festivities of regional and international scale, creating premise to turn Hue into the city of Festival of Vietnam.

Hue city, the gloomy tourism holy land

The ancient city of Hue has successfully organised the tourism festival 2008. It has been recognised by the government as the tourism city, the festival city. However, it still has the discouraging appellation of ‘gloomy tourism holy land’.

‘Gloomy tourism holy land’ are the words Trinh Quang Thang from Vietnamtourism used to describe Hue city, which is proud of its nearly 900 relics and the fact that it spends several thousand billion VND a year to organise festivals.

In fact, the number of tourists visiting Hue rises year after year, from 1.1mil in 2006 to 1.5mil in 2007. The number of tourists visiting the city by the end of September 2008 had increased by 24% over the same period of 2007.

However, the average number of days tourists stay in the city has just increased from 2.03 days in 2007 to 2.05 days in 2008.

Thang said that it is because Hue does not have many attractive tourism products to retain tourists.

“For the last many years, Hue has only had the Perfume River, royal tombs and Hue traditional songs to attract tourists. I consider Hue a tourism holy land, but the holy land is now gloomy,” Thang said.

Providing what tourists want or what Hue wants to provide?

Nguyen Ngoc Thien, Chairman of the Hue city People’s Committee, affirmed that Hue needs to provide what tourists want, not what Hue has already. However, when asked if the local authorities had taken any surveys on the demands of tourists, Phan Tien Dung, Director of Hue’s Culture, Sports and Tourist Department, said that no such surveys had been conducted.

In fact, Dung said that there was a survey conducted by the local Tourist Junior College. However, the main purpose of the survey was to serve the training plan of the college. Therefore, the local tourism industry still does not know what tourists want so as to better serve them.

Hue now has only several small supermarts and Dong Ba Market to serve the shopping demands of tourists. There are a lot of souvenir shops, but they offer the same things.

Hue has traditional non bai tho (hats made of the highest-quality latania leaves), rush fans, sesame candy and royal tea to offer to tourists, but it does not have luxury items to offer to satisfy the shopping demands of rich tourists.

Tourists who want to go places at night can only go listen to Hue traditional songs or walk around Trang Tien Bridge, as Hue still does not have any big entertainment complex, and because local residents go to bed at 10 pm. Hue serves tourists from the morning to the evening, but it does not serve them from the evening to the morning, when many tourists want to go out and spend money.

Hue needs tourist development strategy

Experts say that in order to develop Hue’s tourism, the province needs to push up the popularisation of its images through cultural events like Hue Culture Week, road shows or television advertisement pieces.

The Hue Culture, Sports and Tourist Department has also emphasised the need to introduce Hue to tourists via the Internet, which has hitherto not been given much attention. Meanwhile, according to the World Tourist Organisation, 78% of US, 50% of French and 10% of Chinese tourists seek tourism information on the Internet.

Nguyen Phu Duc, Chairman of the Vietnam Tourist Association, has suggested 10 ideas to develop Hue’s tourism. Duc thinks that cultural events like ‘Royal night’, 'Perfume River Mystery’ should be organised more regulary to attract tourists instead of only organised annually during festivals.

Responding to experts, Thien said that the local economy in the future will be ‘service, service and service’. However, he said that it will take time to turn the plan into reality.

Dan Tri