The Clan Council in Hoa Phu Village, Hoa Minh Ward, Lien Chieu District organise a festival on Friday to express their gratitude to their ancestors, and to pray for prayed for peace and prosperity through the year.

The festival is held annually on the 12^th and 13^th of the first lunar month to express the national tradition of “when drinking water, remember its source”.

A drum and lion dance performance at the Hoa Phu Village Communal House Festival on Friday.

This year’s event featured a number of solemn rituals to honour ancestors and to pray for peace, happiness and prosperity throughout the year. Also, there were many cultural activities, lion dance performance, and a tea ceremony.

Hoa Phu Village was established in 1757 when Lord Nguyen Hoang went to the southern to build villages.

In the early days, Hoa Phu Village had only a few dozen households, living by farming wet rice and hunting products from forests, rivers and sea. Along with setting up a village, people built a communal house to worship gods, village lords, and ancestors who built the village today.

The communal house worships 9 priests, eunuchs, black tigers, Ba Chua Ngoc, Ba Thuy, Ba Ngu Hanh, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Dao Tu.

The Hoa Phu Village Communal House was rebuilt in 2006 and recognised as a municipal-level relic site in 2015.

Through the process of urbanisation, the Hoa Phu Village Communal House Festival has been still maintained throughout the past time to commemorate and express gratitude to ancestors.

The annual festival is also an opportunity for the descendants, including those who work far away, to find their roots and together preserve the good cultural identity of the village community.

Reporting by X.DUNG - Translating by M.DUNG