Lang Son city – Preserving and promoting the values of historic sites in association with tourism development

(LSO) – Lang Son city is an area with a rich and diverse historical and cultural system. Taking advantage of these, Lang Son City People’s Committee has recently implemented various measures to preserve and promote the value of relics in association with tourism development in order to receive practical and fruitful results.

When visiting Cua Bac Temple – a recognized cultural site, located in Chi Lang Ward, on early days of September 2020, we were surprised with a cupboard  near the temple gate containing leaflets and brochures about city tourism attracting attention of many tourists. Mr. Hoang Van Dung, a visitor from Hanoi, said that he had visited the temple many times but never seen this cabinet. There is a great deal of interesting and interesting information about the tourism of Lang Son city tourist can find from reading the leaflets or brochures in here. The phone numbers of functional local government offices are also listed on the cabinet for tourists to contact if they wish.

Tourists read leaflets and brochures about Lang Son city tourism at Cua Bac temple, Chi Lang ward

Ms. Hoang Minh Thao, Head of Culture and Information  Unit of Lang Son city told that over the past time her had  consulted Lang Son City People’s Committee to issue guiding documents with the aim to instruct People’s Committees of communes and wards to establish and consolidate Heritage Management boards, enhance the management activities at heritage sites,  instruct the application and assessment processes, and complete application for permission to restore, embellish and restore monuments. Along with that tourism  propaganda and promotion activities are accelerated.

From the beginning of July 2020, Lang Son City People’s Committee has set up 7 cupboards to display tourism and heritage broches and leaflets at 10 heritage sites in the city. Along with that, the locality posted the customary code of polite behavior in public and published phone numbers of relevant agencies at 10 tourist attractions and monuments.

In addition, from the beginning of 2020 up to now, Lang Son City People’s Committee has printed 10,000 leaflets about the city tourism to distribute to tourists at heritage sites, restaurants and hotels in the city. Besides, the city already formed a team of tour-guides at monuments and tourism sites, and organized intensive training for this team. At the same time, annually Lang Son City People’s Committee invites experts to research and investigate the current state of the system of worshiping statues and decorations with the aim to collect information to propose and develop a restoration plan suitably, organize thematic seminars to promote the value of heritage sites in association with tourism development aiming to lay out practical solutions to preserve and promote the value of the historic and heritage sites.

Currently, Lang Son city has 28 heritage sites categorized in the provincial inventory list, of which 13 sites are ranked at national level, 7 sites are ranked at provincial level. Associated with tourism advertisement, the city pays attention to repair and embellishment to preserve the values of the relics. Accordingly, a number of degraded relics have been built and repaired in time such as Cua Bac Temple, Cua Nam Temple, Ky Cung Temple, and Ta Phu Temple … Since 2017, Lang Son City People’s Committee has  invested more than 64 billion VND (over 36 billion VND from the socialization source) to restore and embellish 21 relics.

Thanks to the investment in the embellishment of relics in association with tourism development, the relic  sites of the city are preserved, and cultural and historical values are promoted. Thus, many heritage sites and landscapes become more attractive to visitors such as Ky Cung temple, Ta Phu temple, Thanh pagoda, Tam Thanh pagoda … It is noted that the relic site of Tien pagoda – Tien well was recognized as a tourist destination of the province in the year of 2020.

Up to now, Lang Son city is the area with the largest  number of relics recognized as the tourist attraction of the province, with 13/15 points.

In the coming time, all functional offices and unit at all levels and branches of the city will continue to carry out activities to promote the values ​​of the tangible and intangible cultural heritages in the area. In particular, the priority is to focus on investment in restoration and embellishment of relics in order to effectively exploit the potential of spiritual tourism and festival tourism, and to coordinate  with travel agencies to introduce and promote the tour “Tam Dong – Tu tran” which can be understood as visiting the three caves  and four towns of Langj Son city.