Cultural activities celebrate upcoming Hung Kings Temple Festival

The book festival at Van Lang park
attracts many visitors on its opening day

An array of cultural activities kicked off on April 3 in the ancestral land of Phu Tho to celebrate the upcoming 2017 Hung Kings Temple Festival, which will be observed nationwide on April 6 or the tenth day of the third lunar month.

A book festival opened at Van Lang Park in Viet Tri City, bringing together 17 publishers, book companies and those working in the culture and communication field from inside and outside the province.

The participating companies introduced around 20,000 book titles and stationery items. Talks and seminars with authors are also scheduled during the four-day festival.

Meanwhile, hundreds of visitors flocked to Phu Tho provincial children’s cultural house to enjoy a Xoan (Spring) singing festival for children and ‘Cheo’ (traditional opera) performances delivered by artists from Viet Tri City and Thai Binh Province.

Assorted activities also took place at Hung Kings Temple historical site, include an arts programme, Xoan singing festival, and an offering of ‘banh day’ (glutinous round cake) and ‘banh chung’ (square cake) to Hung Kings by folk artists from Ha Noi and Phu Tho Province’s Cam Khe District.

The Hung Kings Temple festival is celebrated annually to commemorate the Hung Kings, the legendary founders of Van Lang – the first known state of Viet Nam.

The worship rituals of the Hung Kings are closely related to the ancestral worship tradition of most Vietnamese families which forms an important part of people's spiritual lives and were recognised by UNESCO as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2012.