More activities to celebrate Hung Kings Festival

VietNamNet Bridge - Approval was recently given for workers around the country to add one more day to their yearly holidays on the occasion of the Hung Kings Anniversary. It will fall annually on March 10 in the lunar calendar (April 26) this year.

Due to the fact that it is the first time this holiday has been observed there are many activities going on around the country to celebrate the event. The main theme of the celebrations is commemorating the history of Vietnam. All around town banners are hanging along the streets providing information about national heroes, so as to remind the young generation about the past.

There is also a wide variety of entertainment planned for the Hung Kings Anniversary, which coincides with Unification Day and May Day, plus the weekend, making it a longer holiday for workers. Many leisure centres around the country are organising a variety of activities to lure guests to their places for relaxation.

Phu Tho Province

The Hung Kings Festival has been celebrated with many activities from the 6th to the 10th day of the third lunar month (April 22 to 26) at the historical site of the Hung Kings Temple in Phu Tho Province, Viet Tri City and the areas surrounding this site.

The festival opens with the launching of the Hung Kings Fair with the participation of more than 100 businesses from the handicraft villages in and around Phu Tho Province from April 20 to 26 at the centre of Viet Tri City. Another fair of handicraft products and an art and cultural festival were also launched at the Hung Kings Temple on Nghia Linh Mountain in Phu Tho Province yesterday with activities such as folk musical performances, a traditional costume display, and more.

Tomorrow will be the cooking of square glutinous rice cakes and the making of round rice cake, and the display of food specialties of the region. A swimming competition in the Lo River will also be held tomorrow, and at night, there will be a fireworks display to welcome travellers from around the country.

On April 26, an incense burning ceremony to pay tribute to the Hung Kings will be held at Thuong Temple on Nghia Linh Mountain with the participation of the representatives of the Vietnamese government. The ceremony will start at the festival centre, proceed to Thuong Temple, the Hung Kings Tombs with flower offerings and an incense burning ceremony, and conclude at the bust of Uncle Ho.

At the festival lasting from April 20 to 26, there will be traditional cultural activities from the era of the Hung Kings, the founders of the country. Other venues will have a palanquin procession, copper drum beating exhibits, cooking contests and folk sports such as crossbow shooting and chess.

Ho Chi Minh City Zoological and Botanical Garden (2B Nguyen Binh Khiem Street, District 1)

In Ho Chi Minh City, the official ceremony to pay tribute to the Hung Kings will be organised at the Hung Kings Temple in the Zoological and Botanical Garden on April 26. The ceremony will start at 7 a.m. with activities such as a palanquin procession, incense burning ceremony, dragon dances and more. In addition, on this day, there will be the inaugural presentation by some enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City of the copper calligraphy of the famous sentence by Uncle Ho about the Hung Kings.

The guests of honour in the ceremony will present 2,000 gifts to visitors and children with difficulties and there will be a dance and music performance dubbed “The legend of the Hung Kings” to raise funds for the poor.

In the garden, there will also be an area for folk games such as clay pig beating, climbing trees, footbridge crossing, blindfolded coconut picking, human chess, wrestling and more. There will be other areas such as a calligraphy display area, a stage for children, mini-games and juggling. Visitors to the festival will also enjoy Vietnamese traditional dishes such as rice balls with sesame, grilled sweet potatoes, maniocs and seafood, square and round glutinous cakes and more.

In preparation for this first-ever event, Suoi Tien invested VND 4 billion to upgrade the King Hung Temple, which sits nestled in the park, and to build a stage with over 3,000 seats.

The park will kick off the festival on April 26 and close on May 1. During that time, there will be a Hung Kings parade in the park with the participation of some 1,000 people and representatives of 25 ethnic people coming from around the country, such as Thai, Tay, H’Mong, E De and K’Ho among others. In the parade there will be 600 pairs of banh chung or banh day, a sticky rice cake with origins from the Hung Kings legend.

Performances of Vietnamese martial arts, Son Tinh Thuy Tinh legend and folk games will also take place during the festival.

Entrance tickets are priced at VND 30,000 per adult and VND 16,000 per child. On the April 26, the park offers 50% discount for tickets.

In another part of town, organisers at Dam Sen Park are rolling up their sleeves to prepare some traditional activities for the event. One that is sure to be popular is a huge banh chung, sticky rice cake, weighing around 2 tons and made from 1,000 kilogrammes of sticky rice, green peas and meat, and leaves to cover it. On April 26, after the ceremonial offering of the banh chung to King Hung, the cake will be cut into pieces to serve guests in the way guests received gifts from their ancestors.

Also taking place will be boat racing in the large ponds nearby with some 40 racing teams. The rowers will be students and workers.

Another main attraction will be a strange performances including people pulling a 5-ton van with their teeth, pumping a tire with their eyes, exstinguishing a candle flame with their eyes and playing the flute through the nose, among others.

Vietnamnet

Saigon exhibition and fair center to be built for MICE tourism

Construction of the Sai Gon Exhibition and Fair Center, a joint venture of Saigontourist and the Phu My Hung Corporation, began in HCMC’s district 7 on April 20.


The Sai Gon Exhibition and Fair Center.

The center, covering an area of more than 100,000 square meters of area “A” in the Phu My Hung urban zone, will cost an estimated US$200 million.

The center will feature four 10,000 square-meter exhibition halls, a 20,000 square-meter outdoor display area, a 35-storey office building, a 2,000-seat international conference center, and one four-star hotel and one five-star hotel with a combined total of some 1,000 rooms.

The first phase of the project, worth more than US$30 million, will be complete by October 2008.

The center is expected to be a perfect location for MICE (Meeting, Incentive, Conference and Exhibition) visitors. Mr. Nguyen Huu Tho, Director General of Saigontourist and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Sai Gon Exhibition and Fair Center, said.

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U.S. House approves war spending bill with pullout timetable

Defying a veto threat from U.S. President George W. Bush, the House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a compromise war funding bill which sets a timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq.


U.S. President George W. Bush speaks before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC.
The sharply-divided House voted 218-208 to pass the legislation, which requires the Bush administration to start withdrawing troops from Iraq by Oct. 1.

The 124.2-billion-U.S.-dollar bill, a compromised version agreed on by House and Senate negotiators earlier this week, is expected to reach Bush's desk by early next week following a final Senate vote Thursday.

The bill also sets a non-binding March 31 goal to pull out all U.S. combat troops from Iraq.

Last month, both the House and Senate attached language to their respective version of the war funding bill calling for U.S. combat troops to leave Iraq in 2008 -- the House by the end of August, the Senate by March of that year.

The original House version of the bill had set a firm date for withdrawal.

However, the compromise measure the House took up Wednesday is somewhat weaker in that respect, in order to boost its chance to win support in the Senate vote.

Bush has repeatedly said he will veto any bill with a timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino was quick to reject the House vote, saying that the House "voted for failure in Iraq and the president will veto its bill."

"The House has passed disappointing legislation that insists on a surrender date, handcuffs our generals, and contains billions of dollars in spending unrelated to the war," Perino said in a statement issued after the House vote.

"The president calls on the Senate to quickly pass this legislation so the president can veto it and then work with the Congressional leadership on a clean bill that funds our troops while respecting the judgment of our military commanders and helping ensure the safety of the American people," she said.

Last week, Bush invited lawmakers of both parties to the White House to discuss the impasse on funding the Iraq war, but neither side showed any signs of backing down.

If he vetoes the bill, which looks certain, Congress will need a two-third majority to overthrow the veto.

Otherwise, Congress will have to draft a new funding bill and send to Bush again.

With neither side willing to back down, an impasse will be a certainty.

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from VietNamNet

Japanese court rejects lawsuit by former wartime Chinese slaves

Japan's Supreme Court on Friday turned down the compensation demands of two Chinese women who were forced to be slaves for Japanese soldiers during the World War II.



Upholding an earlier high court ruling, the top court rejected the two plaintiffs' demand of compensation of 46 million yen (387,000 U.S. dollars) in total from the Japanese government, saying that the demands have lapsed under a postwar agreement.

According to the high court ruling, Japanese soldiers abducted the two women from Shanxi province, China in 1942, when they were 13 and 15 years old, and d them repeatedly for from one to several months.

Earlier in the day, the top court also rejected a damage lawsuit of former Chinese laborers who were forced to work in Japan during the World War II.

VietNamNet

VietNamNet Bridge - 50 years after its birth, Vietnamese circus seems to have come to a cul-de-sac. Old items, which used to be popular but are now unable to keep audiences awake are still being performed.

Golden times

Circus has long been essential to the lives of Vietnamese. A long time ago, many circus troupes wandered from village to village throughout Vietnam to perform.

At the beginning of the 20th century, when Vietnam was still under French rule, several French circus troupes visited the country and performed with the cooperation of Vietnamese artists such as André Troupe in Sa Dec (1917), and Nam Tu Troupe in My Tho (1918).

Ta Duy Hien Troupe is considered the originator of Vietnamese circus. And on January 16, 1956, the Central Circus Troupe was born, ushering in an era of modern circus. Afterwards, other provincial and city troupes such as Hanoi Circus, HCM City Circus and Long An Circus appeared.

In the 50s and 60s of the 20th century, many troupes in the South became very popular. Some examples are Doc Lap (Independence), Tuoi Tre (Youth), and Huong Mien Nam (Southern Fragrance).

But the golden years of Vietnamese circus were in the 1970s and 1980s when a new generation of performers came home after professional training in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Such novel acts as balancing on ropes, body curling, riding unicycles, and animal training attracted public enthusiasm.

Today

For many reasons, the public is now not very interested in visiting the circus. Revenues from shows aren’t enough to be reinvested in creating new items. For weekend shows in a thousand-seat auditorium, for instance, audience members are often enough to fill only one or two hundred seats.

So it seems that 50 years after its birth, Vietnamese circus has come to a cul-de-sac. Old items, which used to be popular but are now unable to keep audiences awake are still being performed.

How do circus performers live?

The married couple Phi Son and Thuy Trang, who graduated from circus schools in the USSR in 1983 and are now the main performers of HCM City Circus Troupe, said: “Circus is a type of art whose language is action. But recently, it has sunk into oblivion. Nowadays, only those troupes with government support can survive. Most performers support themselves by having extra jobs. Of the 10 performers sent to study in the USSR, we are the only ones to hang on to the profession still.”

In the stifling 38 degrees, 60 members of HCM City Circus Troupe patiently practised. Sweat covered their faces and bodies. With strong and nimble figures, Thu Trang and Bich Lien, the two hoop performers, looked much younger than their actual 34 years of age. "We’ve been in the profession for 20 years. One can work in this profession out of passion without expecting to support oneself with it.”

These performers practise hard from 4 to 6 hours a day to prepare for only 2 performances per week. Their average monthly earnings are VND2million (US$125).

The animal stock of the biggest circus troupe in the south isn’t very impressive either. There are only an old elephant, 4 skinny and tiny monkeys, and 5 or 6 dogs. It is yet an impossible dream to own such animals as tigers, lions or crocodiles.

"We don’t have interesting items simply because of lack of investment and professionalism. Foreign performers often have different directors and musicians as well as light and sound technicians for each of their performance items. So how can they not perform well and better than us?” asked Phi Son and Thuy Trang.

Signs of revival

One year ago, Idecaf Theatre thought about adding dramatic talks to circus performances. This idea proved to be successful with the popularity of the circus/play performance Forest Boy.

And HCM Circus Troupe and Idecaf Theatre have recently worked together to create another performance of this type titled Adventure on the Wild Island in which circus performers play the main role, while an MC reads the story.

The familiar Vietnamese folk story, Story of the Watermelon, was also adapted to circus and performed from the first day of Tet, February 17, 2007 to March 25, 2007. Public response was favourable.

And HCM City Troupe seems to have been reborn.

"We were so glad, looking at the crowded seats and audience members closely watching our performance. For a long time, we hadn’t attracted such attention,” said Thu Trang and Bich Lien.

Vietnamnet.vn

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