Dong Van ancient town in Dong Van district is located at an altitude of 1,000m to 1,600m above sea level. Surrounding by mountains and forests, Dong Van ancient town is hidden in the quiet and impressive antiquity of hundreds of years old houses, bustling highland markets, and unique architecture of Vietnam’s northernmost region.

Since the early 20th century, a few Tay, Chinese, and Mong families migrated to the town. The town became more bustling when the Nung, Dao and Kinh people gradually came here to settle down.

And now, Dong Van town has become a particularly interesting destination, always crowded with tourists all four seasons. However, the town is most bustling during the festival seasons, especially the buckwheat flower season, which takes place from October to early December.

For the past year, cultural activities imbued with national cultural identity have been performed every evening in the center of Dong Van ancient town by officials and collaborators of the Dong Van District Center for Culture, Sports and Tourism. Along with that are friendly exchange activities with domestic and foreign tourists. In the middle of the ancient town, the flickering campfire stirs up emotions, making each visitor feel excited in this unique cultural space of Dong Van.

After learning experience in organizing tourism activities from some other localities, the Dong Van District Center for Culture, Sports and Tourism launched some unique tourism products in Dong Van ancient town from August 2022, with the participation of local art troupes and mobile propaganda teams.

With a spirit of enthusiasm and responsibility, the Dong Van District Center for Culture, Sports and Tourism has exploited many cultural values and indigenous folk arts to create many appropriate performance contents to introduce to visitors such as folk games, traditional songs and folk dances of ethnic groups. The enthusiasm of cultural officials and collaborators has created attractive tourism products, which attracts a large number of domestic and foreign tourists to Dong Van ancient town every night.

Particularly, cultural activities serving tourists in the old town space are organized in the direction of socialization. This is a very creative and effective way when performers work during the day and participate in organizing cultural spaces in the evening to exchange and interact with tourists.

Every evening, the performance team consists of 7-8 members work from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m., and from 7:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m on weekend nights. Most of the members are local ethnic minorities, who have deep knowledge about traditional culture.

These cultural activities are very interesting to tourists. With the enthusiasm of performers, visitors are very satisfied and have offered both spiritual and material support to the team. Thereby, it is a motivation for the staff of the Dong Van District Center for Culture, Sports and Tourism to maintain cultural activities every night in Dong Van old town for more than 1 year.

Minh Yen