Uong Bi: Developing tourism from exploiting indigenous cultural values

Along with many beautiful natural landscapes, Uong Bi City is a locality with many unique cultural values. In addition to the famous Yen Tu heritage, the city is focusing on exploiting the typical indigenous cultural values, aiming to create new tourism products, increase attractiveness and highlights to "retain" tourists.

Special "museum" of Dao Thanh Y culture

Thuong Yen Cong is the only mountainous commune of Uong Bi City with nearly 60% of the Dao ethnic people living there. Especially Khe Su 2 village with 100% of the people are Dao Thanh Y. Therefore, along with the advantage of beautiful natural landscape right at the foot of the sacred Yen Tu mountain, this locality also has a unique cultural identity of the Dao ethnic group. Legend has it that since ancient times, the people here are descendants of the concubines and beauties who followed King Tran Nhan Tong to Yen Tu to practice, stayed to live a normal life, married the local people, and made a living. No one knows for sure whether the above story is true or not, but the Dao people have lived here, become a unique community, and built prosperous villages. Up to now, the Dao people in Thuong Yen Cong still preserve their rich traditional culture with unique cultural values such as: Village festivals, coming-of-age ceremonies, wedding and funeral customs, sewing and embroidering ethnic costumes, love songs, folk games... These are unique cultural features with profound humanistic values.

Uong Bi City opens the Dao Thanh Y Cultural Space Exhibition House. Photo: Hoang Nga

Recognizing the strengths of indigenous culture in Thuong Yen Cong commune, in order to preserve and promote cultural values and develop community tourism in the locality, Uong Bi has focused on developing new cultural tourism products by deciding to build a Dao Thanh Y Cultural Space Exhibition House in Khe Su 2 village from the fourth quarter of 2023 and was inaugurated at the end of August 2024. The total investment cost of the project is 800 million VND.

Visiting the Dao Thanh Y Cultural Space Exhibition House in Thuong Yen Cong Commune, visitors will be attracted by 5 Dao Thanh Y cultural spaces vividly recreated, with bilingual captions (Vietnamese - English). These are the space displaying male and female costumes of the Dao Thanh Y ethnic group; the space introducing the Dao Thanh Y ethnic ordination ceremony (a cluster of models simulated by statues at a scale of 1:1 and images and explanations about the ordination ceremony); the re-enactment of a model of a Dao Thanh Y rammed earth house (designed to simulate); the space displaying the kitchen corner of the Dao Thanh Y people; the space displaying a number of images and artifacts associated with the life, activities and culture of the Dao Thanh Y people.

Many unique areas in the Thanh Y Dao Cultural Space Exhibition House. Photo: Hoang Nga

Impressing in the exhibition space are precious and rare artifacts such as: A set of Buddha paintings (ancient) over 100 years old of Mr. Dang Van Son's family (shaman, Khe Su 2 village, a prestigious person in Thuong Yen Cong commune); a bronze pot over 120 years old of Mr. Ly Duc Hai's family (Dong Chanh village); a 100-year-old bronze tray of Mr. Truong Van Thien's family (Tap Doan village); a loom over 75 years old of Mrs. Truong Thi Bich's family (Khe Su 2 village); and many other rare artifacts donated by people in the commune.

The exhibition house has become a museum, a center for preserving and promoting the cultural heritage of the Dao Thanh Y people in Uong Bi city, a new and attractive tourism product right at the foot of Yen Tu heritage that any tourist after their journey to the sacred mountain should visit.

New community tourism experience

Determining that the preservation of Dao culture must be closely linked to the lives of ethnic minorities, creating unique products, recently, Uong Bi City and Thuong Yen Cong Commune have encouraged and created conditions for the development of community tourism among the Thanh Y Dao people in the area.

A "check-in" corner for tourists at the Dao Thanh Y community tourism model of Ms. Truong Thanh Huong.

Understanding the cultural value of the locality and their people, the Dao Thanh Y people have started to develop community tourism. Ms. Truong Thi Thanh Huong is one of the pioneers in building a community tourism model in the locality, now the model is called the Dao Thanh Y Ethnic Community Cooperative Group.

Ms. Huong shared: Having traveled to many places and seen ethnic minorities developing community tourism, while our locality also has many unique cultural values, my family and I were determined to build a community tourism model in Khe Su 2 village, Thuong Yen Cong commune. With the encouragement and support of the commune government, I boldly invested in borrowing capital, learned more experience from community tourism models and from February 2024, we started putting the model into operation.

Tourists experience Dao herbal foot bath service.

The Dao Thanh Y ethnic community cooperative group invested in an area of about 300m2 with a budget of more than 1 billion VND. The model has many services such as: Restaurant area serving special dishes of the Dao people, foot bath services, herbal baths of the Dao Thanh Y people... Coming to the cooperative group, visitors will experience the life of the Dao Thanh Y people, see Dao women wearing traditional costumes, introduce visitors to the unique art of brocade embroidery; enjoy cultural performances, community sports or enjoy traditional dishes with a strong flavor of the mountains and forests, rustic but attractive. After hours of experience, visitors will be taken care of and relaxed in herbal baths or foot baths, which are very famous of the Dao people.

Since the time of investment, with its novelty and uniqueness, the Cooperative has begun to attract visitors. During the journey of visiting and worshiping at Yen Tu heritage, visitors have had an additional destination to rest, relax, and experience the unique culture of the indigenous people. Moreover, with the addition of the tourism product of the Dao Thanh Y Cultural Space Exhibition House, these two new tourism products will create unique and rich tourism highlights in the journey of visiting and traveling to the Yen Tu relic and scenic complex, creating more attraction for visitors.

With this model, there are regularly 4 local workers and some seasonal workers. In addition, the Dao Thanh Y ethnic people also directly participate in cultural, artistic and community sports activities according to the needs of tourists.

Foreign tourists experience the indigenous cuisine of the Dao people.

Along with the model of Ms. Truong Thi Thanh Huong, the people in the commune have also known how to take advantage of local strengths to develop tourism service models such as: The community tourism model of Mr. Truong Van Duong's family (in Goc Da hamlet, Khe Su 2 village), the Quang Vinh apricot wine cellar model. Thanks to that, the Dao people here have both preserved and promoted traditional culture, developed tourism, and improved their lives.

Ms. Pham Thi Phuong Thuy, Vice Chairwoman of the Commune People's Committee, affirmed: Community tourism not only helps people protect the ecological environment, but is also a form of preserving and promoting unique local cultural features. This is also one of the solutions for the locality to promote the cultural identity of ethnic minorities, preserve, protect, and contribute to enriching the value of Yen Tu heritage.

In order to serve the needs of developing community tourism for the Dao people in the area, Thuong Yen Cong commune also plans to organize cooking and brocade embroidery classes for the people in the commune who want to preserve indigenous culture and develop local tourism.

Traditional brocade embroidery is introduced at a community tourism model. Photo: Nguyen Trang

Promote and connect with systematic tourism products

It is not until now that the indigenous culture of the Dao Thanh Y people in Thuong Yen Cong has been exploited and developed for tourism. Previously, Tung Lam Development Joint Stock Company had a vision and large-scale investment in tourism products imbued with local cultural values. Notably, not only exploiting the values of Yen Tu heritage associated with Truc Lam Buddhism, Tung Lam Development Joint Stock Company has focused on finding new tourism products by exploiting indigenous cultural capital. Visitors to Nuong Yen Tu Village will be impressed with the experience of immersing themselves in cultural performances of the Dao people in the area in "Yen Tu - Village Festival Night".

With a thorough investment in the program, Tung Lam Development Joint Stock Company has introduced to visitors the most unique cultural features of the village festival of the Dao Thanh Y people living at the foot of the sacred Yen Tu mountain. That is the village festival with full ceremonies performed by the shaman in sacred prayer rituals; that is the festival with folk games such as: playing chess, throwing con, tug of war, shooting crossbows or pushing sticks, walking on stilts; that is singing together in love songs. The experience will bring visitors both curiosity and excitement because they are immersed in the spiritual and mental activities of the Dao Thanh Y community directly and vividly.

The program "Yen Tu - village festival night" attracts tourists to experience the unique culture of the Dao Thanh Y village festival.

Ms. Le Thu Hien, a tourist from Hanoi, shared: Last holiday, my family and I had a wonderful vacation in Lang Nuong after visiting the Yen Tu relic and scenic area. Staying overnight here, we experienced the unique atmosphere of Lang Nuong Festival; we were really impressed with the culture of the Dao people here.

From Yen Tu, tourists will be connected to cultural tourist attractions in Thuong Yen Cong commune to increase their experience of local culture, extend their stay, increase service usage; contribute to local economic development. At the same time, local people will be self-conscious in preserving, promoting and spreading local cultural values.

Performing art performance of Dao Thanh Y people for foreign tourists in Thuong Yen Cong commune.

Indigenous culture is an important factor in tourism development, especially for the international tourist market. Therefore, promoting indigenous cultural values will contribute to creating different products, creating impressions and highlights in tourism development of each locality.

Implementing Resolution No. 17-NQ/TU, dated October 30, 2023 of the Provincial Party Committee "on building and promoting cultural values, human strength of Quang Ninh to become an endogenous resource, a driving force for rapid and sustainable development", with the goal of welcoming more than 3 million tourists, including 500,000 international tourists, Uong Bi City is focusing on efforts to preserve, promote and exploit the strengths of cultural values, including indigenous culture. Thereby, increasing diverse, rich and unique tourism products, creating attraction for local tourism in addition to traditional tourism products; affirming the Uong Bi tourism brand.

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