With its over 300 years of establishment and development, Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City is now focusing on developing the city into a smart city for the digital age.

During a meeting between the Politburo and Ho Chi Minh City in preparations for the 11th City Party Congress for the 2020-2025 tenure, Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong emphasised that Ho Chi Minh City should develop in order to deserve the honor of being the only locality in the country to bear the name of the great President. The city’s Party Committee needs to think how to make the name become the driving force of its development and the local cultural attribute. Each citizen should thoroughly grasp Ho Chi Minh's ideology, morality, and lifestyle, reported NDO.

Activities dedicated to President Ho Chi Minh have been held at Nha Rong Wharf (Source: NDO) 

From the wishes of the Party General Secretary and people nationwide, Ho Chi Minh City’s Party Committee was determined to transform President Ho Chi Minh’s legacy, including his ideology, morality, lifestyle and career, into the property of the cadres and people of the city. In order to realise that goal, the City Party Committee featured the formation of Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space in the important contents of the Resolution of the 11th City Party Congress for 2020-2025 tenure. That was a new spotlight point in the City Party Congress’s document. According to former Politburo member and Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan, the city must develop the Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space so that all visitors can feel the unique characteristics of the city named after Uncle Ho.

As a person who is always concerned with the city’s development, former Deputy Secretary of the City Party Committee and Chairman of the City People’s Councils, Pham Phuong Thao, said that the formation of the Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space can serve not only the planning and development of cultural works and institutions but also the building of diverse unique art programmes dedicated to the life and career of the great leader. The Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space is not limited to places where Uncle Ho passed but will include works associated with his journey to find a way to save the country.

Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Culture and Sports Vo Trong Nam, stated the city will conduct a project on the building of the Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space in conjunction with the city's cultural development strategy until the end of 2035. The municipal cultural sector has advised on the construction of Ho Chi Minh Square at the Thu Thiem new urban area in Thu Duc City. A wide variety of other works such as Uncle Ho’s stilt house, fish pond and “great solidarity” street garden will feature. The work will have the typical scale and stature of a central square, the space imbued with President Ho Chi Minh's imprint. It will meet the political and cultural demand of the city with its over 10 million citizens as well as people around the country and international friends. Besides, literary and artistic works on Ho Chi minh will continue to be written, becoming the pride of many writers and artists living in the city. Dramas and Cai luong (Vietnamese reformed opera) plays such as “Dau xua” (Old Marks) and “To quoc noi cuoi con duong” (Fatherland in the end of the path) as well as emotional songs about President Ho Chi Minh will be brought closer to the public, contributing to spreading beautiful cultural values.

The Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space will brighten the great leader’s ideology, morality and lifestyle, creating a unique source of strength for the city named after him. Therefore, in addition to focusing on the tangible cultural space, Ho Chi Minh City needs to strongly develop its intangible culture that has long been considered the traditional beauty of the morality, lifestyle, customs and style of the local people, in association with the humanistic values of the spirit of studying and following Uncle Ho.

The construction of the Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space is the work of not only the political system but also all residential areas as well as the responsibility of not only Party members and cadres but also every citizen, towards core spiritual abd foundational values associated with the overall development of the city.

Accordingly, each grassroots Party organisation must really be a miniature Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space and each cadre and Party member must be the most specific image, demonstrating the transmission of good cultural values. Beside the common standards of cadres and Party members, each action in daily life and the work of each person should also be imbued with Uncle Ho’s ideology, morality and lifestyle. Only then, the development of the new Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space will become substantive and sustainable, an endogenous power for the common development of the southern city.

Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City, is a new land that preserves the vestiges of a time when the fathers went to open the realm, and gradually created the impressive beauty of a modern urban area. The arduous and challenging development process has formed resilience, dynamism and creativity for local people who dare to think. Therefore, during the current integration and development process, citizens in the city named after Uncle Ho continue to refine their cultural values and constantly improve themselves. The formation of the Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space will further foster these noble moral values, helping Vietnamese people improve comprehensively in the new era, meeting the requirements for national construction both today and tomorrow.

With boundless love and gratitude for President Ho Chi Minh, the Party Committee and people of the city are determined to realise the goal of forming the Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space to gradually developing it harmoniously towards a great stature in the near future./.

BTA