Vietnamese poet wins Romanian Academy prize

HA NOI — Acclaimed Vietnamese poet Nguyen Duy has been awarded this year's Grand Prize for Poetry by the Romanian Academy.

Founded by famous Romanian writers and poets, including two Nobel-prize holders, the prize is awarded to a foreign poet every year.

Duy was unable to be present at the awards ceremony in Bucharest, Romania last Friday due to health problems.

The 62-year-old poet, whose real name is Nguyen Duy Nhue, has published several works, including six volumes of poetry, a number of personal narratives and one novel. Many of his works have been translated into English.

He has given several lectures at universities in the US and has won several national poetry awards.

He recently finished a poetry collection that was published by the Nha Nam Publishing House.

City Opera House hosts rhythm and blues concert

HCM CITY — A rhythm and blues trio led by Roland Tchakounte will present a concert at HCM City's Opera House this evening.

Born in Cameroon, Tchakounte learnt percussion, guitar, piano and harmonica and creating a synthesis between his African roots, blues influences and his native dialect.

He has released four albums, the latest being Blues Menessen.

The trio with Tchakounte as the main vocalist, Mick Ravassat guitarist and Mathias Bernheim percussionist, has performed in many countries.

They were last in Ha Noi in 2008, organised by the French Embassy in Viet Nam. This tour is organised by the Institute for Culture Exchange with France. Tickets for the 8pm performance range from VND50,000 (for students) to VND100,000; they are available at the Opera House, 7 Lam Son Square, District 1.

Painting contest for Asian teenagers kicks off

HA NOI — The Mitsubishi-Enikki Arts Festival for Asian Teenagers was launched yesterday in Ha Noi.

The contest was jointly held by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism's Department of Arts, Photography and Exhibition and UNESCO's Unions in Japan.

Teenagers aged from six to12 nationwide can join the contest which aims to encourage their understanding of daily life.

Under the main theme, Here Is Your Life, contestants can describe any aspects of daily life, such as their family, school, their entertainment, local traditional customs, city and people.

Entries should be sent to the Department of Arts, Photography and Exhibition, 36 Cao Ba Quat, Ha Noi, by November 15-18.

A grand prize will be provided by the Japanese organising board.

Four special prizes will be given to each country or each region and many other prizes will be given to groups and individuals by Viet Nam. — VNS

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CIE grants US$35,000 in scholarships

Center for International Education (CIE) of Vietnam National University HCMC last week handed over 20 scholarships worth US$35,000 for its students at a ceremony to start the new school year at the Kim Do Hotel in HCMC’s District 1.

Five students in the MA program received scholarships worth US$1,000 each while fifteen students in the BA program received US$2,000 each. The scholarships aimed to honor outstanding freshmen, excellent academic results and contributions to the university’s social activities.

Nguyen Thi Kim Xuan, one of the freshmen who received CIE scholarships, said, “I would like to give my sincere thanks to my mother who has sacrificed all of her life to make what I am on Wednesday. And I’m proud to be a student of CIE with seasoned teachers and good friends. On behalf of all the freshmen, I promise to study hard to pay tribute to parents and teachers.”

CIE, which was established in 2001, is one of the nation’s leading educational organizations with its main function to operate international training programs jointly developed by Vietnam National University HCMC and prestigious foreign universities. The center has educated over 1,200 students and transferred more than 760 students to study at universities in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. 253 of them were granted scholarships worth US$3.1 million by universities in the U.S.

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CIE grants US$35,000 in scholarships

Center for International Education (CIE) of Vietnam National University HCMC last week handed over 20 scholarships worth US$35,000 for its students at a ceremony to start the new school year at the Kim Do Hotel in HCMC’s District 1.

Five students in the MA program received scholarships worth US$1,000 each while fifteen students in the BA program received US$2,000 each. The scholarships aimed to honor outstanding freshmen, excellent academic results and contributions to the university’s social activities.

Nguyen Thi Kim Xuan, one of the freshmen who received CIE scholarships, said, “I would like to give my sincere thanks to my mother who has sacrificed all of her life to make what I am on Wednesday. And I’m proud to be a student of CIE with seasoned teachers and good friends. On behalf of all the freshmen, I promise to study hard to pay tribute to parents and teachers.”

CIE, which was established in 2001, is one of the nation’s leading educational organizations with its main function to operate international training programs jointly developed by Vietnam National University HCMC and prestigious foreign universities. The center has educated over 1,200 students and transferred more than 760 students to study at universities in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. 253 of them were granted scholarships worth US$3.1 million by universities in the U.S.

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Country cooking - fried cricket style

A plate of plain fried crickets- Photo: Ngoc Xoan

In the countryside, children often catch crickets so they can watch them fight with each other. Adults prefer to eat them, making fried de com (rice cricket) a rural favorite.

In sandy areas in the Mekong Delta, when it rains, many crickets appear. Rice crickets have round body and stumpy dark-yellow wings. They live in deep burrows that are about a finger width wide. People often catch crickets in the rainy season as the soil is soft and crickets wait at the entrance or climb up trees to escape the water.

After the crickets are caught, people pluck their wings and gut them and wash them in salty water. After the cricket dries, they stuff a peanut into its belly. Then they mix flour with water and knead it into a dough that they wrap the crickets in before deep frying. When the batter turns into yellow, the crickets are done and ready to serve. Crickets should be enjoyed with fresh vegetables, star fruit, green banana and fish sauce mixed with sugar, chili, lemon and garlic.

Com crickets have a life cycle of four months during which they shed their skin four times. The cricket becomes an adult when it’s two months old and two centimeters long. Price for a cricket is VND500.

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Saigontourist Reaps Results From ITE HCMC 2010

The sixth International Travel Expo HCM City 2010 (ITE HCMC 2010), held from September 30-October 2 at the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center in District 7, HCM City, was among the big events of Vietnam’s tourism this year.

Saigontourist Holding Company was one of the key entities to join and sponsor the event. Its booth with the exhibition of travel companies, hotels and resorts as its subsidiaries always attracted visitors and signed cooperation agreements with partners from various countries and territories.

At the expo, Saigontourist Travel Service Company, an affiliate of Saigontourist, had outstanding activities in exchanges and meetings and signed tour programs with international partners. The company also received the “Inbound Travel Operator of the Year” title for the second time. The award, which was given to businesses of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, was examined on the basis of the recipient’s contributions to the growth of the tourism sector; its ability to develop new, diverse and effective tourist products and services; its competitiveness, scale of service network development and application of renovations in corporate management.

Bong Sen Corporation, another affiliate of Saigontourist, also reaped results in promoting its trademark, seeking partners and selling its tourist products. With diverse services from its hotels and restaurants as well as its travel services and trading activities, the company made appointments with nearly 50 buyers as travel firms from Australia, Denmark, Singapore and Thailand. The partners were invited to visit its hotels and restaurants to evaluate products before signing contracts on sending and receiving guests. In addition, Bong Sen hosted a party for sellers—the companies to participate in the ITE HCMC 2010. More than 20 local and foreign companies joined the party to study each other’s potential and strengths for the goal of development cooperation with bilateral benefits.

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Guava – A Folk Medicine

All parts of guava have long been used to treat many illnesses

The guava (Psidium guajava), also known as apple guava and called i in Vietnamese, is grown throughout the country for fruit, shade and firewood. It is also grown as a beautiful bonsai that is favored by quite a few bonsai lovers.

Varying between species, guava fruit skin is usually green before maturity, but becomes yellow, maroon or green when ripe. Depending on species, guava pulp may be sweet or sour, white to deep pink, with the seeds in the central pulp of variable number and hardness.

Guava fruit is rich in dietary fiber, vitamins A, B and C, folic acid and such minerals as potassium, copper and manganese. The fruit contains both carotenoids and polyphenols, the major classes of antioxidant pigments. As these pigments produce the fruit skin and flesh color, red-orange guavas have more pigment content than yellow-green ones.

Many studies conducted on apple guava show that extracts from its leaves or bark have therapeutic properties against cancer, bacterial infections, inflammation and pain. In traditional Vietnamese medicine, guava leaves and bark have also been used to treat diarrhea and diabetes.

Remedies

To relieve external pain, squeeze young guava buds with a little alum and salt; add a little water and stir the mixture well. Apply the mixture onto painful areas a few times a day. Or, squeeze fresh guava leaves and apply them onto the painful areas during the day.

To relieve toothache, simmer guava root bark with a little vinegar. Hold this solution in the mouth as many times as possible until the pain disappears.

Roast young guava leaves and grind them into powder. Dissolve a little of this powder with water and drink it twice a day to treat stomach or intestine inflammation. Or, squeeze guava leaves with fresh ginger rhizome and a little salt; simmer them and drink the solution.

To cure dysentery, slice some dried guava fruits and simmer them. Drink the broth many times a day. Or, simmer fresh guava leaves and drink the solution during the day to replace water.

Slice a big apple guava fruit and squeeze it. Drink the juice twice a day to treat diabetes. You can just eat two or three ripe guava fruits a day to cure diabetes. Or, simmer dried guava leaves and drink the broth every day.
To boost digestion for children, simmer a small amount each of guava leaves, hng trà (tea buds collected from cold highlands) and roasted rice; add a little sugar and salt. Let the children drink the solution three to four times a day.
To treat diarrhea, simmer guava buds and bark with a little fresh ginger rhizome and tô mc (Caesalpinia sappan). Drink the solution as many times a day as possible. Or, simmer guava buds, or young leaves, with a little dried tangerine rind and fresh ginger rhizome. Drink the solution hot.

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Paper Lanterns In Dilemma

children enjoying their paper lanterns. Retaining good traditions proves to be an effective way to combat the negative effects of modern lifestyle

The demise of the Mid-Autumn paper lanterns is more than just the death of a craft village. It may involve losing a good tradition.

Several dozens of children are forming a paper lantern procession on the sidewalk. Each child, lit up with the joy on the face and the candle beams inside the lantern, walks one after another in a circle, singing in chorus favorite songs.

This is a typical scene found during the few weeks of Tt Trung Thu (Mid-Autumn Festival), traditionally a feast for children in Vietnam. However, in HCM City, the scene is now almost history as modern lifestyle has invaded urban households.

The Mid-Autumn Festival arrives around the middle of September. In the old days—about half a century ago—when video games and the Internet had yet to be conceived, children were eager to celebrate the festival specially held for them. It goes without saying that moon cakes are indispensable to the Mid-Autumn Festival. But to the kids at that time, one item was even more important: The paper lantern.

Weeks before the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, children in the city implored their parents to buy one paper lantern for them. Some even asked for more than one. The then Saigonese childhood was often associated with, among others, the world of colorful paper lanterns. To them, being submerged in hundreds of lanterns in all shapes and sizes when the Mid-Autumn Festival came was an immortal childhood experience.

The kids’ treasured lanterns were made of transparent paper glued on a bamboo frame. At the center of the frame was a wire coil strong enough to hold a candle upright. One of the most exciting things about the lantern was that it could be made into almost whatever children could manage to imagine—from their household pets, wild animals and automobiles to spacecraft. In the skillful hands of craftspeople, paper lanterns stepped into the dream world of children.

During the Mid-Autumn Festival, that dream world lasted for several weeks on end. Every night, often under the guidance of adults, children in the same blocks of houses flocked together, lit candles inside their lanterns, made procession and played traditional games which required a lot of physical activities. “Accidents” occasionally happened when a paper lantern caught fire, making its owner burst into tears. After the procession, the children went home to taste moon cakes reserved for them.

Of course, not all children in Saigon could enjoy that happiness as their families were too poor to afford neither a lantern nor a traditional cake. Those children expected a time when they could join their peers in a lantern procession.

Nowadays, Saigonese children’s eagerness for and delight in Mid-Autumn Festival and paper lantern procession have faded away substantially. Aside from competition from battery-operated, Chinese-made lanterns, fast pace of life, video games and other kinds of modern entertainment around the corner are all behind that fact.

Pay a visit to Phu Trung Quarter in District 11 and you’ll see how the tradition has changed. This area is the “craft village” in HCM City that provides Saigonese children with their favorite paper lanterns. Lantern making during Mid-Autumn Festival used to provide craftspeople in Phu Trung and its neighborhood with a lucrative business. During the festive season, tens of thousands of lanterns were produced to satisfy children’s need. Sadly, like the lantern procession, the hectic scene in Phu Trung is now just a memory.

Meanwhile, the Mid-Autumn Festival, a children’s celebration, seems to have turned into an event for adults with moon cakes being a common gift exchanged between companies. In fact, it is apparent that the moon cake business is less lucrative this year because the global economic downturn still drags on.

Entrepreneurial Saigonese are still obsessed with how to make money out of the moon cake. But Saigonese should also be mindful of the disappearing lantern village and their children’s indifference to traditional customs.
When paper lanterns are overwhelmed by violent video games in kids’ timetables, a high crime rate among the youth is often inevitable.

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