Tracing Uncle Ho’s Youth in Hue

While Nghe An was his hometown, where Ho Chi Minh was born, Hue was considered as his second hometown with his best youth memories, where his revolutionary ideology was fostered.

Four relics related to Uncle Ho in Hue have been ranked as Special National Sites

New educational tour

The Provincial Department of Tourism has recently cooperated with the Museum of Ho Chi Minh and experts and tourism businesses for a survey of routes and sites to plan a tour called “Tracing Uncle Ho’s Youth in Hue”. The tour is to diversify tourism products to magnet visitors to Hue, and at the same time develop a comprehensive educational tour in response to new customer demands.

The Director of Museum of Ho Chi Minh, Le Thuy Chi, said that the tour “Tracing Uncle Ho’s Youth in Hue” was designed to promote the values of relics related to President Ho Chi Minh in Thua Thien Hue for the development of local tourism. This tour takes visitors to the sites commemorating President Ho Chi Minh as well as cultural and historical sites, combined with experiencing tourism products in the localities. The targeted visitors of these tourism products are war veterans, students, domestic tourists, and some international visitors from Thailand, Korea, and Japan.

Truong Thanh Minh, Director of the Center for Tourism Promotion and information, said that Hue used to be where Uncle and his family lived and worked, as well as contributing to patriotism movement for about 10 years, during 1895-1901 and 1906-1909.

Thua Thien Hue has been regarded as the second hometown where Uncle Ho’s spirit, patriotism and revolutionary enthusiasm were nurtured, and his will of revolution was strengthened. This urged him to go find a way to save the nation later.

Therefore, the organization of an educational tour “Tracing Uncle Ho’s Youth in Hue” is expected to help young generations and visitors better understand and have awareness of revolutionary ideology. This fosters the patriotism and at the same time creates a new tourism product.

Visitors experienced making Sinh painting during the tour “Tracing Uncle Ho’s Youth in Hue”

The highlight of the tour is at the cluster of relics commemorating President Ho Chi Minh in Duong No village. The exhibition space of this cluster of relics will expanded for more connections. The additional exhibition, which is arranged along Pho Loi River bank, from Duong No village communal house to Uncle Ho memorial house, includes the display of Duong No village’s history of development and the agriculture-specific artifacts. This creates a landscape and cultural space connecting the relics.

Thua Thien Hue currently owns about 20 relics and memorial sites related to President Ho Chi Minh. Especially, the system of 4 sites commemorating President Ho Chi Minh in Thua Thien Hue, including Uncle Ho’s memorial house (in Mai Thuc Loan St.), Quoc Hoc School, President Ho Chi Minh’s childhood memorial house (in Duong No village) and Duong No village communal house, was ranked as a special national relic in 2021.

Nguyen Thi Ngoc Cam, a lecturer at School of Tourism and Hospitality, Hue University, said after the tour that short as a day was, she had a mixed emotion and she promised to herself to make efforts and follow uncle Ho’s shining example in her life and work.

Towards interesting products

Le Thuy Chi said that the Museum has been organizing activities and games for students to experience. However, the activities were held in the scope of a single site, lacking connection with other sites related to Uncle Ho’s Youth. This hinders visitors’ thorough understanding about Uncle Ho’s youth in Hue. With the cooperation from tourism businesses this time, it is expected that there will be a comprehensive, well-organized and professional tour.

Tran Thanh Tu, Vice Chairman of the Provincial Travel Association raised the awareness of challenges. In practice, the educational tour has been launched; there is a large amount of information about Uncle Ho’s life on media channels; the target visitors for the tour, students and specialists, will not be of a mass customer.

To signify these values and maintain the tour, it is necessary to make the period of Uncle’s youth part of the educational program. Tourism businesses play the role of an intermediary to help the study tour better. A good plan should be necessary, too. The tour should target the visitors within the province first and from the nearby provinces later.

An issue raised for tour operators concerns the experiential activities. Without these activities, the sole presentation of the tour guide will not leave much impression and visitors will easily find it boring.

Truong Minh Thanh affirmed that there would be connection between the tour and experiential activities in craft villages, such as making Sinh painting, making Truc Chi paper, as well as visiting some nearby sites such as the Museum of Nguyen Dynasty ceramics, the Museum of General Nguyen Chi Thanh and the Cha mangroves forest.

Truong Minh Thanh added that for the sake of promoting the values of the tour, Hue tourism may cooperate with Nghe An counterpart to make the tour expanded to Uncle Ho’s Sen village. There must be survey to evaluate customers’ demands and desires and seek for the recommendations from schools before any connection or integration is implemented. This helps solve the most difficult problem in content, that is, the continuum of Uncle Ho’s youth activities and the educational tradition of Hue in order to increase interests in learning and the quality of being realistic and attractive of the tour.

Experts suggest that experiential activities of the tour program should include meals, meager but full of love, that Uncle Ho experienced. Visitors should also have an opportunity to go shopping in the local market to prepare meals by themselves. The local people at tourist sites like in Duong No village will have services for visitors.

Story and photos: Duc Quang