Many cultural and historical researchers suggested the recognition of salanganes nest festival as a national intangible cultural heritage and museum to honor salanganes nest career.
Many cultural and historical researchers suggested the recognition of salanganes nest festival as a national intangible cultural heritage and museum to honor salanganes nest career.
The profession of making salangane products in Khanh Hoa has a cultural tradition of hundreds of years with many distinct values. Every year, on lunar May 10, people working on salanganes nest career always hold ceremony to worship the career’s ancestor at the temple of Yen Island’s Goddess on Hon Noi. In recent years, Khanh Hoa Salanganes Nest Company has organized salanganes nest festival with increasingly larger scale. Many scientific seminars on salanganes nest career in Khanh Hoa have also been held. At the recent seminar on preserving and upholding the values of the cultural heritages to boost Vietnam’s tourism, many researchers asserted the long-lasting cultural and historical values of the salanganes nest career as well as proposed the province to promote the activities to honor this career.
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| Statue of Yen Island’ Goddess on Hon Noi Island. |
Specifically, Associate Professor – PhD Dang Van Bai, Vice Chairman of Vietnam Cultural Heritage Association, suggested that Khanh Hoa should submit the proposal for the recognition of salanganes nest festival as a national intangible cultural heritage. According to historian Duong Trung Quoc, the salanganes nest festival, having been maintained throughout hundreds of years, has many meanings of culture and history. The salanganes nest career has brought high economic efficiencies to Khanh Hoa Province. Therefore, the traditional festival of salanganes nest career should be honored and maintained.
At this seminar, Associate Professor – PhD Dang Van Bai and many cultural and historical researchers proposed Khanh Hoa to build the museum of salanganes nest career. Le Huu Hoang, General Manager of Khanh Hoa Salanganes Nest Company, said that the company has being prepared to implement the project of building salanganes nest cultural park in the north of Tran Phu Street, Nha Trang City. The project, approved by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Khanh Hoa Provincial People’s Committee, is expected to include main construction works such as salanganes nest career museum, club-house where theatrical items are performed in order to introduce the history of salanganes nest career to the public, artificial salanganes’ cave created based on the ones on Hon Ngoai Island where the salanganes nest, and so on. In addition, the company intends to build statues of sanlaganes and Holy Mother on the salanganes islands.
The fact that many cultural and historical researchers suggested a salanganes nest career museum and recognition of Khanh Hoa salanganes nest festival as a national intangible cultural heritage has partly asserted the values of the salanganes nest career. “Building salanganes nest career museum and statues of salanganes, etc. not only asserts the tradition of this career but also shows the moral philosophy “when eating a fruit, think of the person who planted the tree.”, and contributes to increase the value of Vietnam’s salanganes nest in general and Khanh Hoa’s salangages nest in particular,” said historian Duong Trung Quoc.
Xuan Thanh
Translated by H.N
