HUE’S BEATING HEART

Hue’s beating heart

In Thua Thien, the men are gentle and the women elegant

The mountains verdant, the water azure, the palaces carved from jade, and the temples adorned with dragons.

This folk poem paints an exquisite picture of the old imperial city of Hue, home to a confluence of propitious factors, such as mild weather, favorable terrain, and harmonious people. The city was the capital of Cochinchina and the successive states of Dai Viet, Vietnam, and Dai Nam for hundreds of years, from 1636 to 1945.

Located in Central Vietnam, Hue is home to a shoreline that runs more than 120 kilometers in length, famed for its lovely bays and the largest coastal lagoon in Southeast Asia, which has an area of more than 22,000 hectares. Hue also boasts the Huong (Perfume) River, widely considered one of the most beautiful rivers in the world. In addition to its stunning nature, Thua Thien-Hue province is also a treasure trove of cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible. Hue city is home to thousands of historic buildings and monuments, hundreds of court and folk festivals, dozens of traditional handicraft villages, and thousands of dishes that boast Hue’s iconic culinary flair. Tourism, a key industry in this imperial city, has long been associated with cultural and heritage tourism.

Culture- and heritage-based tourism and services contribute immensely to the city’s socio-economic development and create job opportunities for the local community. They also provide the city with an effective channel to communicate its cultural heritage values to other Vietnamese regions and countries. Increasingly close links between the authorities, local people, and the region’s heritage, both cultural and natural, have helped to ease conflicts between preservation and development, making the resolution process much smoother.

More than 200 years ago, the inhabitants of eight wards located on and around Vuong Dao (the King’s Island) voluntarily relocated so that the imperial court could construct a citadel on an area of more than 1,100 mau (520 hectares). Now, at the behest of the government, thousands of households living in the core of the imperial city have happily agreed to relocate to new areas to preserve the invaluable heritage of their forefathers. Despite being more than two centuries apart, these two mass relocations show the importance of winning over the community.

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