Quang Nam, a land of rich cultural traditions in central Vietnam, is the convergence of the world’s two cultural heritage sites recognised by UNESCO: Hoi An Ancient Town and My Son Sanctuary. Over the past years, authorities of Quang Nam province have paid due attention to the preservation and restoration of the two sites in an effort to protect them amid rapid urbanisation .
Quang Nam is home to more than 300 relics. In 2006, the province issued the regulation on management of historical and cultural relics as well as famous landscapes. The regulation was replaced by the new rules on management, preservation of relics and famous landscapes in 2010. Accordingly, Hoi An Ancient Town, My Son Sanctuary were handed over to the specialized agencies of Hoi An city and Duy Xuyen district, which are responsible for managing and protecting the two cultural heritage sites. Total ticket revenue from the world’s cultural heritage sites is managed and used by local authorities to preserve and restore these relics.
Annually, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism allocates funds to facilitate the preservation and restoration of the two heritage sites, together with the province’s State budget, social contributions and grants from international organizations. To date, the total cost spent on the preservation and restoration of Hoi An Ancient Town has reached VND161 billion while that on My Son relic site is VND69 billion. The preservation and restoration have been carried out scientifically and carefully after consulting senior domestic and international scientists and experts.
The Hoi An Centre for Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation has consulted the Hoi An municipal People’s Committee about a plan costing VND162 billion to preserve and restore cultural relics in Cam Thanh commune and submitted it to the authorized agencies for approval. Notably, the Prime Minister has recently approved an overall plan for preserving and bringing into play the cultural values of Hoi An ancient town in relation to urban and tourism development in the 2012-2025 period with a total investment of VND1.468 trillion. Hoi An has been implementing consistent policies to harmonize its development in combination with its preservation. Hoi An has also paid due attention to the launch of many programmes and activities to promote its traditional culture, both tangible and intangible cultural values, thus contributing to the tourism development.
Mr Dinh Hai, Director of the Quang Nam provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said that people play an important role in preserving, restoring and bringing into play cultural values. The State and people should join hands in dealing with problems, including financial ones, facing preservation plans so as to better manage relics.
Quang Nam authorities are determined to preserve cultural and historical values associated with bringing into play these values to ensure its sustainable development. The province has approved a new integrated culture and tourism strategy that aims to ensure the sustainable development of the province’s culture and tourism sector in the future. The strategy contains specific activities and defined timelines that aim to ensure the sustainability of Quang Nam’s culture-tourism sector, including the protection of cultural and natural resources, increasing local communities’ benefits from tourism and diversifying provincial tourism products. Quang Nam has developed community-based tourism to enable tourists to enjoy local characteristic values.
The province is also building programs to raise people’s awareness about the importance of preservation and restoration of local cultural values to the sustainable cultural and tourism development. The movement to encourage people to build civilized life is a useful tool which has helped local authorities to impart the message to people. Moreover, intangible cultural values such as ancestor and spirit worship plus folk games have been integrated into general schools’ curriculum. Mr Hai noted that “We always create favorable conditions for schools to organize sightseeing tours to local historical and cultural relics and landscapes. We are striving to teach our future generations about love of local cultural values and encourage them to do more to protect these values.
My Chau
Đăng ký: VietNam News