The 2022 Dalat Flower Festival will be held for nearly two months in Dalat City, a popular tourist destination, in Bao Loc City and the two districts of Lac Duong and Duc Trong in Lam Dong Province. The festival opened to tourists on November 11, but its opening ceremony will be held on December 18 at the Lam Vien Square in Dalat.
The Central Highlands province expects the festival to become a significant cultural and art event to promote local tourism and food specialties, said Nguyen Viet Van, director of the provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
This year’s ninth edition will feature a massive zone of flowers, art performances, a fashion show and an art exhibition. It will focus on the tourist experience to develop new tourism products.
The great effort to success of a poor student
Kieu Thi My Dung, 32, was born into a poor family in Di Linh District, Lam Dong Province, where her parents sold sugarcane juice to make a living. Dung was aware that she could escape from poverty only by learning as hard as she could. Later, when her parents shifted to opening a small coffee shop with karaoke service, she tried to get up early to learn.
An excellent student in all subjects, Dung won a gold medal for English language when she was a 10th grader. Also in this school year, she was selected as one of the two students of the province to attend an exam in Hanoi to win a full scholarship for the ASEAN high school program in Singapore. At the age of 15, Dung was one of the 20 Vietnamese students qualified for studying in the island nation.
Despite quite a few difficulties, even stress, Dung tried her best to be an outstanding student during four years studying in Singapore. Her endeavor paid off: she was the only student of the National Junior College to receive a full scholarship to study at Yale University, the U.S.
Having completed politics studies at Yale University, Dung continued studying psychology in Denmark and then history of art in France. According to vnexpress.net, she did some jobs before working as a strategy consultant in the pharmaceutical sector. She got married in 2019 and now lives with her husband, a strategy consultant in finance, in Berlin, Germany.
To better preserve cultural heritages in town
The HCMC Department of Culture and Sports has asked the municipal People’s Committee for permission to establish a foundation for preserving and promoting cultural heritages in the city.
According to tienphong.vn, the Cultural Heritage Preservation Foundation will mobilize voluntary contributions from agencies, organizations and individuals at home and abroad, and call for international aid to preserve and promote cultural heritages in HCMC.
At present, there are 185 relics in HCMC which have been classified in line with the Law on Cultural Heritage of Vietnam. Nevertheless, due to a tight budget for preservation and restoration, many of such relics have severely deteriorated, or been deliberately destroyed, or been on the verge of disappearance. As a result, these deteriorated relics are in need of capital to be timely preserved and restored in order to promote their cultural and historical values.
A breadwinner at the age of 11
Sung A Minh, 13, is an eighth grader at Nam Ke Day Boarding School for ethnic minority students in Muong Nhe District, Dien Bien Province. Two years ago, his father died of a fatal disease; his mother fled, leaving the children behind.
Minh’s eldest brother is a mental disability person; another brother is working in Hanoi; his elder sister is married; Minh then had to become a breadwinner supporting his eldest brother, an 11-year-old brother and a six-year-old sister. On schooldays from Monday to Friday, Minh and his two younger brother and sister have three meals a day at their school, which is some 18km from their house. On the weekend, Minh has to go to the forest to look for vegetables or work on the rice field of his family. He had to learn how to cook meals for his brothers and sister.
In summer vacation last year, because of an accident when hunting in the forest, Minh lost the sight of his right eye. He can now receive a small sum of money a month for his physical loss. His teachers sometimes donated food and clothes to their pitiful students, vnexpress.net reported.
