Huong River upstream

The National Tourism Year - Hue 2025 will choose a stage on the Perfume River as the opening venue. For many years, there have been many major festival events, including the Hue Festival, that have chosen the Perfume River as the setting to tell stories about Hue. These include major festivals such as the dragon boat procession to Hue Nam Palace, the lantern festival, the boat racing festival, and many major festivals staged right on the Perfume River to honor this river itself, such as "Legend of the Perfume River", "Echoes of the Perfume River", and many other gratitude ceremonies and programs held over the past decades on the legendary river of the capital... Each festival held on this river is a different story about Hue's cultural heritage.

In 2008, an event honoring the Perfume River was held right on this river and was included in the highlight of the Hue Festival that year - "The Legend of the Perfume River". A stage stretched across the "riddled river, the river that does not flow" partly recreated the scene of cultural activities, beliefs, and production labor... as if taking visitors upstream to reminisce about an old space. All of this was hidden deep under the river, under the riverbed so that one day the Perfume River would be honored, although it was difficult to express all the feelings of that river. Later on, many festivals were held right on the Perfume River. An open stage with lighting effects arranged to make the already illusory river even more mysterious, as if immersing the audience in the dreamy space of the river of poetry - music - painting.

Many tourists, when mentioning the Perfume River, cannot help but admire the beauty that nature has bestowed upon Hue. They also cannot help but be jealous because nature has been so generous to this land, which is already poetic, soft, and gentle, and now becomes even more charming and luxurious. Let me ask, if there were no Perfume River and the Perfume River did not flow through the city of Hue, what would Hue be like?

But to honor the Perfume River, to make this river become a model river with many important cultural events, is that enough? The answer is probably not! That poetic Perfume River needs more caressing from human hands, caressing and loving to make it a more sparkling, more poetic river. Further, it is a cultural economic problem when put on the scale of experts, those who have the responsibility to resolve and earn revenue from that river.

Hopefully, there will be more festival spaces built right in the middle of the poetic Huong River - like the stage behind the Quoc Hoc stele. From there, there will be more festivals organized systematically to attract tourists born right in the middle of the Huong River. So that the Huong River is not only poetic during the day but also shimmering, magical and creates a highlight for Hue at night. So that the Huong River is not simply a poetic river, but there is a way to make money from that poetry.

Hopefully, the space right in the middle of the Perfume River - the section flowing through the center of Hue city - will have special and unique art programs staged. And hopefully, visitors to Hue will have another satisfactory choice to immerse themselves in the Hue space - the poetic space of the Perfume River. And of course, they will pay a fair price to immerse themselves in the art space right on the famous beautiful river of Vietnam.

But to do that, Hue needs a thorough plan right now to be worthy of the title of cultural heritage city - a place that not only preserves but also creates unique cultural values ​​- Hue culture.

Nhat Minh