HCM City to develop more cultural works, improve cultural environment
HCM City will upgrade or build 28 cultural works from now to 2010, with the focus on four key projects, according to the HCM City Department of Culture and Information.
The four key cultural projects are a circus and multi-function performance complex at Phu Tho in District 11, a museum about HCM City at the Thu Thiem New Urban Town in District 2, a ballet theater at 23 Le Duan Boulevard and a multi-functional cultural complex at 164 Dong Khoi Street in District 1.
Other works include completing technical infrastructure for cultural development at localities, zoning and building a system of museums, preserving and protecting historical sites, and rearranging and modernizing the General Science Library, theaters, cinemas and statues.
The movement to encourage all people build a cultural life will be expanded while the gap on cultural enjoyment between urban and rural areas will be narrowed.
At a recent meeting with the Department of Culture and Information on the city’s culture development plan to 2010 and vision to 2020, delegates of the HCM City People’s Council remarked that the city still lacks a strategic vision on cultural development.
The thinking of most cultural officers does not catch up with cultural development while no cultural works measuring up to the status of the country’s most dynamic city has been built, delegate Vo Van Sen said.
HCM City People’s Council Chairwoman Pham Phuong Thao asked the cultural sector to build a civilized and healthy cultural environment, encourage the participation of the society in cultural activities and preservation of traditional cultural values, and improve the qualification of cultural officers.
At present, HCM City has four publishing houses, nearly 300 bookstores and companies engaged in book distribution, 272 printing businesses and 1.500 advertising enterprises and establishments.
The city has 76 historical sites, 10 museums and six commemorating houses, 7 city-level cultural houses and 24 district cultural houses. It has proposed an additional 212 sites for ranking.
Cultural Merging
Over hundreds of years, with the vicissitude of history, the world’s various cultures seemed to have found a common place to converge in Saigon-HCM City. The city has been gradually turned into a non-discriminating community, a cultural kaleidoscope, for people from almost every corner of the world, regardless of race and ideology.
Atheism and theism were all absorbed, blended and “Saigonized” into the Vietnamese cultural background – the revolutionary refinement. All the cultural flows converged and supplemented each other to produce a unique “common home” with a wide-ranging characteristic e.g. Vietnamese-Chinese-English-Indian-Russian-Korean-American-French-Japanese, and more.
Saigon, depending on individual appraisal, is sometimes called “Saigon Potpourri”, “Multi-faced Saigon”, and “Amalgamated Saigon,” all to describe the uniqueness of this lively and colorful city.
People With A Difference
It is difficult to answer clearly what Saigonese, Hanoians and Hue people are like. Trinh Hoai Duc and Nguyen Dinh Chieu described Saigonese as “respecting faithfulness and despising talent wealth.” Hanoians, Hue people and Saigonese are all Vietnamese. To some extent, Saigonese and southerners are not very different in their character from people in the other main centers. But a study of Saigonese does show that the natural, social and historical conditions of the Saigon area have crafted a people with distinctive characteristics.
Cai luong
Training Centers and Institutes for Culture and Arts Research
As a center of culture and sciences in the southern region and Vietnam as a whole, Ho Chi Minh City has training and research activities in the field of culture and arts, which are on a scale second only to Hanoi. At present, the city has seven training schools, one center, and one research institute specializing in all fields of culture and arts. In addition, a series of theaters, research agencies in social sciences and schools with training courses on social sciences and humanities are places with noticeable activities in training and research in culture and arts.
(Source from HCMC gov website)
