Ha Giang’s blend of sports, heritage tourism

Preserving unique cultural features

According to the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Ha Giang Province, culture holds an important position in the local socioeconomic development, contributing to raising people’s literacy rate, and consolidating the local ethnic groups' confidence in the Party and the State's guidelines and policies.

The northern province bordering China has issued many resolutions on the conservation and promotion of cultural heritage values and eradication of outdated customs. It also launched a project on preserving and promoting the typical cultural values of the H’Mong people in the province and a project on improving service quality in community tourism villages.

The provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism has also organized activities to preserve and promote cultural values of ethnic groups. These include embroidery classes of ethnic costumes of the Lo Lo, Dao and Tay ethnic groups in Meo Vac, Bac Quang and Quang Binh districts and teaching folk songs and traditional musical instruments of the H’Mong ethnic group in Bac Me District. These activities are coordinated with the Ha Giang Department of Education and Training to develop education materials on life skills and bring traditional culture into schools.

Some 131 tangible cultural heritages and 446 intangible cultural heritages have been identified so far as a basis for formulating heritage conservation and promotion. The province also has three recognized national treasures, 61 tangible cultural heritages, 27 intangible cultural heritages recognized and ranked as national and provincial-level heritage.

Paragliding and motor races

Ha Giang was honored among the top 10 tourism destinations in Vietnam by CNN for its natural landscape. With outstanding advantages in tourism and cultural resources, Ha Giang has also made great efforts to develop sports tourism products and is attracting large-scale domestic and international sports events.

The organizing committee of major holidays of Ha Giang Province cooperated recently with the New Race Joint Stock Company to organize an international marathon along the “Running on Happiness Route”, attracting 2,300 athletes to promote and introduce the landscape, friendly and hospitable people of Meo Vac District, and Ha Giang Province in general. Other national-level sports tournaments held in the province include the paragliding festival themed “Flying in the golden terraced rice fields”, the ninth provincial Gymnastics Congress in 2022, and the off-road motor race for both motorbikes and cars.

The tourism development associated with sports events brought 2.2 million visitors to Ha Giang in 2022, equal to 147 percent of the plan, including 2.15 million domestic tourists and 50,000 foreigners, generating tourism earnings of VND4.306 trillion.

Provincial leaders are viewing sports tourism as a promising potential for further development of local tourism.