In this Lunar New Year festival, the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology is an exciting entertainment place with the program "Enjoying the Year of the Tiger" taking place in three days from 19 to 21 February 2010 (6th to 8th January of the lunar calendar - Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; the opening ceremony is on 19th at 9 am).
With this program, the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology creates good conditions for many visitors, especially the people living in Hanoi to spring walk. They can wallow in the folk cultural space in order to discovery, enjoy and experience many traditional colors, sounds and tastes of different ethnic groups and areas.
From Kon Tum province in the Central Highland, over twenty Triêng people (Gié-Triêng ethnic group) come and join the fun with gong musical performance combined with collective dances. At the same time, they also present several other musical instruments and folk songs of their community. Nearly twenty Thái people from Tương Dương, a mountainous district of Nghệ An province, will perform loỏng in the new rice celebration and new year festival. Visitors can also participate in nearly ten bamboo dances and enjoy folk songs of the Thái.
In the area in front of the Việt house, the pavilion is for the Hồng Phong water puppetry group (from Ninh Giang district, Hải Dương province) to perform water puppet show four times a day. There will be many attractive stories with pastoral nuance. Children have chances to try to control and perform the puppets in a miniature water puppetry stage in the yard of the Việt house. The water puppetry shows will be started from 4th day of the New Year festival – the first opening day of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in the Tiger year).
Many people have fun on the Lunar New Year festival with the pleasure of calligraphy. The Museum invites two prestigious calligraphers come to meet the demand of “asking for grass style handwritings” in the new year. People who like Đông Hồ paintings not only see artisans from Đông Hồ village (Bắc Ninh province) perform printing woodblock folk paintings but also can print paintings to by themselves.
There are many traditional games for both children and adults with earthen squib, swinging, tug of war and walking on stilts of the Kinh and throwing còn of the Tày. Games of Thái people include tỏ mạ mằng, taking mandarin squares and other playing-chess forms that have not been known clearly such as mạc hạp, mả mú xứa, pa mạ na ố, mả hạp, tỏ hốn tá lòn.
The Museum also instructs people to make toys with a theme turning around the Tiger as this is the year of the Tiger according to the lunar calendar; it is drawing and coloring earthen tiger and kneading dough into tiger.
In this program, the visitors can also enjoy traditional, special and delicious foods of the Tày from Lạng Sơn such as roast pig with mác mật leaves, sweet-and-sour buffalo meat, smoke-out Chinese sausage, colorful steamed glutinous rice, cakes such as cóc mò, dried pẻng, khẩu sli… and leaf fermented wine. From 4th day of the first lunar month, the Tày from Lạng Sơn begins to present their foods to the Museum comers.
In addition, on the 6th day of the new year festival (19th February) – the opening day of the program, the Museum will set off the firework tree and perform water puppets.
The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology will close for Tết from 12th to 16th February 2010 and re-open from 17th February 2010 (4th of the first lunar month).
For further information, please contact:
- Mrs. Lê Thị Vũ Hằng, Marketing Section
Tel: 0988741249; Email: hangbtdt@yahoo.com
- Mrs. Trần Thị Thu Thuỷ, Head of the Education Department
Tel: 0989993546; Email: thuybaotang@yahoo.com
- Mrs. An Thu Trà, Department of the Open-air Exhibition
Tel: 0978485135; Email: traanvme@gmail.com
International Children’s Day – 2010
“Friendship Connections”
(05/21) 
