Getting up at six for a walk sounds questionable right up to the moment you see it: several thousand people in red star-emblazoned shirts converging on the northern tip of Hoàn Kiếm Lake and setting off at the same minute. Hanoi holds the country's main gathering point, and anyone can join the column.

For the second year running the morning walk is run by Nhân Dân newspaper and the Ministry of Public Security, marking the 81st anniversary of the August Revolution and of National Day. The point of it is arithmetic: the organisers are aiming for 10 billion steps and a Guinness World Record claim for the largest number of localities joining an environmental walk at once. Guinness representatives are coming to verify the count in person, and the data has to be certified by an independent party.

A year ago the programme ran in all 34 provinces and cities and in 3,121 of 3,321 communes: 1,112,336 people turned out at the live venues, the online counter added another 261 million steps, and the combined total came to about six billion. By the evening of 25 August more than a hundred thousand people had signed up on the programme portal, with the counter close to half a billion steps.

How the morning is put together:

— from five o'clock the site, the warm-up and the green-living and Net Zero zones are open;
— at six all 34 venues across the country watch the national flag-raising on Ba Đình Square together and sing the anthem;
— at half past six the column moves off, and walking continues until eight.

The capital's venue is run by the ministry's political department together with the city police: 1,500 to 2,000 officers, soldiers and academy cadets will be deployed to Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục Square in Hoàn Kiếm. Last year the Hanoi column walked right around the lake, and the aerial shots of solid red travelled across every feed in the country.

The distance is short and undemanding — this is a walk, not a race, which is why the column is full of families with children and older residents. Organisers ask people to wear red and trainers; registering online is not a ticket, it is how your steps get into the national count. Buses and both metro lines in Hanoi are free from 29 August to 2 September, and the metro opens at 5:30, so you have time to get there.

A morning like this comes round once a year: the whole country makes one movement in one minute, and you have a chance to be inside the picture rather than watching it on the news.

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