Preserving and promoting the value of Dinh Thay Thim Festival associated with tourism development

Dinh Thay Thim Festival (La Gi town) is considered one of the biggest festivals of the province, lasting for a long time, with many consecutive rituals; the number of people and tourists coming to visit and worship is increasing.

Over the past time, the town has always focused on preserving and sustainably promoting the unique folk cultural values of the festival. At the same time, it has carefully prepared and organized activities to contribute to raising the level of the festival, not only meeting the religious and spiritual needs of the people, but also aiming to turn Dinh Thay Thim Festival into an attractive tourism product that attracts people and domestic and foreign tourists.

According to long-standing customs, every year at Dinh Thay Thim, there are 2 festivals: The Grave Sweeping Festival of Thay Thim takes place on the 5th day of the first lunar month and the Death Anniversary of Thay Thim takes place from the 14th to the 16th day of the 9th lunar month. In which, the Death Anniversary of Thay Thim is considered the main festival with many traditional rituals following each other. This year's festival will take place for 3 days, from October 28 to 30, 2023.

In addition to maintaining the ceremony with all the rituals and ways of performing the ceremony according to the traditional customs left by our ancestors, from time, space, order, method of performing the rituals, participants in the ceremony... to the content of the chant, funeral oration, and prayers in each ceremony.

The festival will be organized in a diverse and rich manner with cultural, artistic, sports, games, and folk performances associated with the potential, strengths, and traditional cultural features of coastal residents such as: Cake making contest, carrying baskets out to sea, carrying fish, tug of war, etc. This year's festival will have many more attractive activities taking place before and during the festival, in response to the National Tourism Year 2023 "Binh Thuan - Green Convergence", contributing to raising the level of the Dinh Thay Thim Cultural - Tourism Festival 2023 such as: Open bicycle racing, beach volleyball, chess performance, open net weaving contest, bonsai exhibition and exhibition introducing products of businesses in the town, etc. Thereby, it will contribute to promoting and attracting people and tourists to participate, explore and experience.

In order to preserve, maintain and promote the value of relics, serve tourism development, contribute to promoting the local socio-economy; recently at the meeting to deploy the organization of Dinh Thay Thim Cultural - Tourism Festival in 2023, the People's Committee of La Gi town directed agencies, departments and branches to develop a plan to assign and arrange forces on duty 24/7 to ensure absolute safety in terms of security and order before, during and after the festival, ensure traffic safety, and prevent traffic jams on traffic routes in the town. Develop plans for fire prevention and fighting, environmental sanitation and food safety... to ensure the safety of people and tourists coming to visit and worship before, during and after the festival.

In particular, the town has directed the People's Committee of Tan Tien commune to reorganize business households, parking lots in an orderly, neat, airy manner, with signs guiding vehicles in and out. At the same time, maintain inspection and handling of households arbitrarily expanding on Ngo Duc Ton street; clear and arrange stalls, arrange forces to coordinate with functional agencies to manage prices according to regulations.

In addition, in recent years, the People's Committee of La Gi town has paid attention to and focused on investing in upgrading the roads connecting from DT 719 road to the palace (Ngo Duc Ton street), the traffic route from the palace to Thay Thim's tomb (Phung Hung street); expanding the land area, preserving the architectural space, protecting the green, clean and beautiful landscape environment around the palace and tomb area... creating favorable conditions for the preservation and promotion of the value of the relic as well as the organization of festivals.

La Gi town is making efforts to gradually improve the management and organization of festivals, not only to serve the religious and spiritual needs of the people but also to promote the value of cultural heritage in general, Dinh Thay Thim Festival in particular, to serve sustainable tourism development.

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