Nguyen Thi Hien, Vice-Chairwoman of Thuan An city’s People's Committee: "Lai Thieu in ripe fruit season" festival 2023 has many new features…

After many years of being delayed, due to many objective reasons, this year, the "Lai Thieu in ripe fruit season" festival will be held again in the right season of ripe fruits. To get more information about the activities of this year's festival as well as preparatory work for the festival, Binh Duong Newspaper has just had an interview with Nguyen Thi Hien, Vice-Chairwoman of Thuan An city’s People's Committee.

Visitors visit the specialty fruit garden of Lai Thieu  at the previous festival

After a few years of being delayed, this year the "Lai Thieu in ripe fruit season" festival will be held again. Compared to the previous festivals, what are new features in this year's festival?

- The "Lai Thieu in ripe fruit season" festival was identified by leaders of Thuan An city as an important event, with the desire to contribute to building up a "festive brand" with the local traditional characteristics.

After 3 years of suspending the organization, due to many objective reasons, including the Covid-19 pandemic, compared to the previous years, this year's festival will be held with more exciting and innovative activities. Particularly, it is organized at the peak time of the specialty fruit crop of Lai Thieu region with longer festive period (7 days). The festival's activities will be also more diverse with the nature of service, meeting the needs of visitors. The stalls will be selected in accordance with the festival and arranged in each area. In addition, the Organizing Board has decided to organize "free parking lots" around the festive area to serve and create favorable conditions for tourists and locals to participate in the festival.

- Could you tell me more about the activities of this year's "Lai Thieu in ripe fruit season" festival?

This year's festival has the theme of "Cau Ngang in the appointment season". In addition to booths on various fruits and nurslings, food…, the festival will also have many other interesting activities for visitors. The highlight will be the opening ceremony of the festival on the night of May 22 with a special art program. In addition, within the framework of the festival, the Open Thuan An Cross Country Championships with the theme of "Road of orchards" will be also organized. To date, more than 1,700 professional and amateur athletes have registered to participate in the tournament.

The beauty contest "Grace in the garden" is also launched for registration throughout the city. In addition to test part for individuals, this year, there will be also a collective competition with the content of performing two types of costumes: “ao dai and “ba ba”. In addition, there will be a beautiful photo composition contest "Colors of the ripe fruit season"; an exhibition on beautiful photo space named "Thuan An’s land and people"; a painting contest "Children's Art Award".

Street music and “don ca tai tu” (southern folk opera) exchanges will be arranged in the space near the booths and there will be many other performances to serve visitors during the festival. For the main stage, there will be music performances with free entrance every night.

For food stalls, this year we will invite more southwestern provinces to participate in folk cake stalls. At the booths, there will be live performances so that visitors can enjoy them.

- After learning that this year's festival "Lai Thieu in the ripe fruit season" will be held again, it is suggested that the Organizing Board should consider arranging appropriate festive stalls as the name of the festival. What is the opinion of leaders of Thuan An city on this issue?

- Drawing from previous experience, the city’s leaders have organized meetings with relevant sectors, mass organizations and People's Committees of communes and wards to offer more appropriate contents for the experience of locals and tourists when visiting the festival.

Of course, visitors to the festival need to be satisfied with their needs for entertainment, cuisine and shopping. To satisfy these needs, this year the Organizing Board will arrange more convenient booths for visitors to visit, experience and shop. Regarding cuisine, the Organizing Board will restrict fast food stalls. We will only invite quality and typical stalls of regions and localities, booths of quality restaurants... Regarding fruits, we will give priority to farmers, traders in the city to participate in selling specialty fruit products of Lai Thieu region. In terms of trade booths, this year there will be the participation of OCOP products in and out of the city.

- This year's festival will take place for a long time, so how have leaders of Thuan An city directed relevant sectors and localities to ensure that the festival will take place safely and civilly, leaving a good impression in the community?

- This year, the festival will take place with the time that is longer than previous years. Therefore, leaders of the city have directed sectors and localities to urgently deploy contents to ensure that the festival will take place safely, politely and civilly.

The festival’s 6 service groups have been established and assigned tasks to jointly implement them. Currently, the security group has planned to arrange security forces during the festival. The group on price and food safety management will coordinate with localities to organize people's meetings to propagandize and mobilize people to accompany the local authorities in organizing the festival’s activities; inspect and strictly handle the situations of price fraud, violations on food hygiene and safety. The voluntary group has also implemented voluntary work to support and guide visitors during the festival.

In addition, we have also established 3 hotlines to reflect on violations pertaining to price, food safety and hygiene, security and order, traffic safety, commercial fraud to support visitors during the festival.

 - Thank you!

Reported by Hong Thuan-Translated by Kim Tin