VietNamNet Bridge – More than 500 performers will parade through HCM City's District 5 tonight to celebrate the traditional Chinese Lantern Festival, which falls on the 15th day of the first lunar month.

Artists dressed in traditional Chinese costumes and lion dancers will go from the Oân Lang club-house to the District 5 Cultural Centre through Luong Nhu Hoc, Nguyen Trai, and Tran Xuan Hoa streets where multi-coloured lanterns have been put up.

At the cultural centre, artists will perform Chinese dances and songs and traditional opera to bid goodbye to the Lunar New Year and wish for a healthy, wealthy, and peaceful year.

The highlights will include singing by Thanh Thuy and La Chi Cuong and performances by the Rang Dong dance group and Thong Nhat Arts Troupe.

The festival, organised by the District 5 Cultural House and other agencies, will also feature exhibitions of paintings, calligraphy and lanterns at Au Lac Park, An Dong Plaza, and Thuan Kieu Plaza among other places.

Pham Thanh Tam's new book on Dien Bien Phu . - VNS File Photo

The French newspaper Le Point ran an article on Tuesday about a book on Viet Nam's 1954 victory in Dien Bien Phu by Vietnamese author Pham Thanh Tam.

War Notebook of a Young Viet Minh Soldier at Dien Bien Phu (in French: Carnet de Guerre d'une Jeune Viet-Minh a Dien Bien Phu) was published by the France-based Armand Colin Publishing House this month.

The article said that Tam was once a student at the Hanoi University of Fine Arts who fought for the Viet Minh (League for the Independence of Viet Nam). Tam wrote the book after seven years at war, when he was just 22 years old, never imagining that his work would ever be published.

Tam tells readers why and how the Viet Nam People's Army defeated the French colonialists at the Dien Bien Phu stronghold.

According to the article, thousands of books have been written about the Indochina war, which ended in defeat for the French colonialists at Dien Bien Phu. Most of them were written by French war veterans, who expressed their sorrow about the defeat in their writing.

Tam's book gives readers a chance to understand the war and the French colonialists' loss through the eyes of a solider on the opposing front line.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News