Ceremony «Bác Hồ với ngày hội non sông» (unveiling of the monument at Đền Hùng)

   On 19 September 1954 Hồ Chí Minh stopped at the Đền Hùng temples and said a sentence every Vietnamese schoolchild knows: the Hùng Kings founded the country, and it is for us to guard it together. On the morning of 19 September, exactly seventy-two years later, a monument called «Bác Hồ với ngày hội non sông» — Uncle Hồ and the festival of the homeland — is unveiled on the same ground.

   The ceremony takes place inside the Đền Hùng historical relic complex in Phú Thọ province. The organisers have not yet announced the exact starting time; admission is free and the complex is open to visitors, and on state occasions people come here from all over the country. The programme itself has been published in full.

   What the ceremony includes:

   — an opening arts programme;
   — the flag ceremony and the commemorative address;
   — a documentary about the 1954 visit and about the building of the monument;
   — speeches by party and state leaders;
   — the ribbon cutting, flower offering and the opening of the monument to visitors.

   Come if you want to see Vietnam inside its own frame of reference. Đền Hùng is not simply a temple complex on Nghĩa Lĩnh hill: it is the point from which the country dates its own origin, and the commemoration of the Hùng Kings is a national public holiday. The 19 September ceremony is protocol, but protocol is exactly where you can see how history and the present are wired together here.

   A practical note: after that day the complex has one more thing to see, permanently — the monument stays. So if you cannot make the ceremony itself, the trip still works in autumn: the hill, the stairways between the tiers of temples, the view over the valley and the shade under the trees.

   Đền Hùng lies about eighty kilometres north-west of Hanoi, roughly two hours by road. The organisers are the Phú Thọ provincial people's committee and the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism; details are still being finalised, so check the provincial newspaper before you travel.

   Seventy-two years on, the sentence spoken here is being cast in bronze. If you are in the north in September, this is a date worth planning around.