Street festival honours ancestral land

More than 3,000 artists and artisans took part at a street festival highlighting the folklore of the land of the nation’s ancestors in northern Phu Tho province on April 13.
The artists came from 13 districts and towns in the province, the Central Ethnic Minority Pre-University School and Phu Tho Ethnic Minority Boarding School.
Thousands of locals flocked to watch the performances of local Xoan singing – part of the world intangible heritage, Du drum dancing, gong performances from the Muong ethnic group as well as the distinctive folk songs of Cao Lan people.
Pham Ba Khiem, Deputy Director of the provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said that the festival is the first in a series of activities commemorating the nation’s legendary founders – the Hung Kings and the 2013 Hung Kings Temple Festival.
This is an opportunity to honour and popularise the province’s intangible cultural heritage, and the worship of Hung Kings in particular, he added.
Phu Tho province is scheduled to hold a ceremony on April 13 to receive a certificate from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) recognising the Hung Kings Veneration Ritual as part of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
The seventh session of the UNESCO committee in Paris approved the recognition on December 6, 2012.
Vietnamese legends recount the rule of the 18 Hung Kings during the first period of Vietnamese history. The worshipping rituals are closely related to the worship of ancestors that is a tradition of most Vietnamese families and an important part of the people's spiritual lives.