The power of culture and new vitality

Carving furrows - a beautiful feature in the culture of the Thai ethnic group, performed at the Bua Cave Festival, Quy Chau. Photo: Thanh Cuong

As a province in the Northern midland and mountainous region, Yen Bai is setting high goals and making breakthroughs in economic development, while making cultural content a factor in the people's happiness index.

Meaningful traditional festivals have been restored, a series of unique cultural and tourism activities have recently taken place such as ethnic cultural festivals; fairs displaying and introducing traditional products, local OCOP products; introducing costumes and unique folk songs and dances of ethnic groups are associated with organizations, forming community tourism tours.

Director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Yen Bai province Le Thi Thanh Binh said that on September 24 in Nghia Lo town, Yen Bai province will hold a ceremony to receive the UNESCO Certificate recognizing "Thai Xoe Art" as a representative intangible cultural heritage of humanity and open the Muong Lo Cultural and Tourism Festival, to honor and widely promote the representative intangible cultural heritage of humanity "Thai Xoe Art".

The above event was attended by eight Northwestern provinces, localities that are having tourism development cooperation programs with Ho Chi Minh City. This is an effective model to form inter-regional and inter-route tourism products, contributing to the preservation and promotion of cultural-historical values ​​and tourism resources of each locality. The number of tourists to the Northwest increased sharply. In the first six months of the year alone, the Northwestern provinces and Ho Chi Minh City welcomed 20 million tourists, of which tourists from localities in the cooperation group alone reached about 10 million...

On the same topic, Ha Tinh Provincial Party Secretary Hoang Trung Dung said that the province is focusing on doing a good job of preserving cultural heritage to preserve and enrich tourism resources, promote tourism, and at the same time, through tourism activities, impact cultural heritage, contributing to preserving, maintaining and enhancing the value of cultural heritage. In 2022, Ha Tinh city chose 2022 as a breakthrough year in culture and education.

Secretary of the City Party Committee Duong Tat Thang discussed that the Standing Committee of the Ha Tinh City Party Committee identified 5 topics, 30 contents on the cultural field, 9 contents on the education and training field. The focuses are: improving the quality of cultural and civilized urban lifestyle; improving the effectiveness and efficiency of state management in the cultural field, building the city's cultural ecosystem, aiming at identity diversity, creating endogenous strength for socio-economic development.

Currently, “cultural tourism” is becoming the mainstream in tourism development. Therefore, many local leaders believe that: Promoting the value of cultural heritage must be associated with sustainable tourism development, ensuring socio-economic benefits, protecting resources and the environment, preserving traditional cultural values, and at the same time, there must be a close combination between the State, investors and people.

In recent years, the Provincial Party Standing Committee has focused on leading and directing the completion of cultural and human value standards of Nghe An through cultural, educational, scientific and health care activities for the people.

Many programs and projects have been issued and implemented by the province: Promoting the good values ​​of family relationships and supporting the building of happy and sustainable families; developing physical strength and human stature; building a model of new-age youth; building and developing the province's human resources.

Thereby, many new models and good practices have been replicated such as: The club for preserving and promoting the cultural identity of the Thai ethnic group in Khe Ran village, Bong Khe commune, Con Cuong district; the typical cultural village of the Northern Block, Dien Hong commune, Dien Chau district and the model of building and organizing well the activities in the system of cultural, information and sports institutions in Hoa Son commune, Do Luong district... have encouraged and mobilized resources among the people to build a cultural life and environment.

Leadership and direction work associated with practical activities in Nghe An has focused on the goal of building people and cultural families, promoting traditional ethnic identities associated with the process of socio-economic development, ensuring national defense, security, and Party building in the area.

In Bac Ninh, the strategic theme and task of "Building Bac Ninh people to develop comprehensively with specific virtues and qualities to meet the requirements of industrialization and modernization" has left a new mark in the province's awareness and actions in this field. According to Deputy Secretary of Bac Ninh Provincial Party Committee Nguyen Quoc Chung, the province has increased investment in resources for cultural development, promoting cultural and human resources commensurate with economic growth.

Thanks to that, Bac Ninh is the province that has implemented early and well the mechanism and policies to care for and treat artisans, support villages, quan ho clubs... directly impacting the preservation and promotion of intangible heritage.

In particular, Bac Ninh has been forming a movement to encourage learning and talent, to build a learning society. Chairman of the Bac Ninh Provincial Association for the Promotion of Learning Trinh Nam Dien said that the province currently has more than 400,000 members, accounting for 1/3 of the population. The entire political system of the province participates in promoting the emulation movement to build studious families, studious clans, communities, units for promoting learning, and effective learning models. At the same time, the system of cultural and sports institutions throughout the province has received attention for investment, construction, and upgrading, to meet the needs of people for enjoyment and artistic creation.

Discussions and surveys in some Northwestern provinces and the Red River Delta also show that along with the achievements and new steps made in this field, compared with the connotation of the position, role and goals of the cultural field set forth by the Party and State, many localities still reveal limitations and inadequacies: not commensurate with strategic development goals; not yet exploiting well the potential, advantages, and promoting the endogenous strength of culture as a foundation for social development.

Investment resources for culture are not commensurate and spread out; human resources for cultural activities have not received due attention. Some localities have a lack of uniformity in their thinking about methods of preserving, developing, and promoting traditional cultural values, without any breakthroughs; and have not ensured a harmonious handling of the relationship between preserving and promoting traditional cultural values ​​in human development and socio-economic development.

It is worth mentioning that in some localities and sectors, the promotion of social responsibility, civic duty, and awareness of law compliance is still limited. A number of cadres and party members have not really paid attention to building a civilized and modern public service culture; there is still a potential risk of "self-evolution" and "self-transformation" in ideology, ethics, and lifestyle.

The above reality requires that, first of all, Party committees and authorities at all levels need to continue to thoroughly grasp and implement, concretize the Party's viewpoints and guidelines, the State's policies and laws on culture, the latest from the documents of the 13th National Party Congress and the spirit and direction from the National Cultural Conference in November 2021; mobilize the participation of the entire political system, enhance the role of cultural subjects of each citizen in building and developing culture and people.

It is necessary to thoroughly grasp and clearly demonstrate the viewpoint of "not trading environment, culture, and social civilization for economic development" as a principle in leadership, management, and operation, ensuring its realization in social life.

Dang Hai Nam - Trinh Bich Thuy