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HOI AN — The first-ever ethnic street festival will countdown the New Year in Quang Nam’s ancient town of Hoi An on New Year’s Eve.

As well as vividly coloured displays of Viet Nam’s ethnic groups, Western and American-style festive activities will be paraded in front of gathered crowds.

Director of the Hoi An City’s Culture, Sports and Tourism Centre, Vo Phung, said he is hoping to give local and foreign tourists a truly memorable, multicultural festival experience.

This festival will literally depart from other static, conventional festivals. This year’s event is spreading right across the city, to the An Hoi sculpture garden, the An Hoi public open-air stage, the Chua Cau roundabout and the Quang Trieu Chinese Communal House.

“Tonight’s festival will present the ‘cultural space’ of Viet Nam’s ethnic groups and other countries which historically traded in Hoi An’s bustling trading port from the 16th to 18th century. Those countries include the Netherlands, Spain, France and Japan,” Phung said.

The cultural nuances of each ethnic group and country will reappear in traditional costumes, national flags, and famous architectural symbols. Artists from 12 art troupes in Quang Nam province will demonstrate traditional folk performances from each ethnic group and foreign country.

From 10.30pm, processions of artists will group together from their spots across the city to the Hoai River Square. From there, the festival’s main activities will be performed . Tourists will join with local residents to release flower-shaped lanterns onto the Hoai River. On the stroke of midnight, everyone will join in the song Happy New Year. A dancing performance on the street will close the street festival.

A lantern festival will be held in the town on January 25 to welcome the Lunar New Year. To prepare for the festival, the Hoi An City’s People Committee has launched a lantern-making competition, focusing on the theme “Hoi An’s Culture” and “Cat Tuong” (Good Fortune). Everyone can join the competition and there are no limits on the number of lanterns made. The contest will end on January 10. The festival is aiming to honour the tradition job of lantern-making in the town. It’s also being held to impress visitors. — VNS

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HA NOI — Viet Nam’s ageing population was increasing so fast that there is a danger that the nation’s already overburdened healthcare system won’t be able to cater to the growing ranks of the elderly.

The warning was made by Nguyen Quoc Anh from the General Office for Population, Family Planning at the ASEAN forum on ageing in Ha Noi yesterday.

Like other ASEAN countries, Viet Nam has a tradition of respect for older people and hope to give them adequate care, however, economic conditions are making that lofty goal difficult to ensure.

Anh said that providing adequate health care for the elderly was a big challenge, as the economic realities showed the nation could not afford to support them.

Ageing population

Viet Nam is on its way to becoming an ageing population. In 1989, 7.2 per cent of the total population were elderly, while last year the proportion of elderly rose to 9.45 per cent out of a total of 85 million people.

Nguyen Dinh Cu, director of the Institute of Population and Social Studies, said the nation was at the edge of becoming an ageing population as defined by a UN regulation stating that any country whose population of elderly is 10 per cent or more of the total population is an ageing population.

Anh’s office calculated that the proportion of older people would reach 11.4 per cent by 2020, while the UN calculated that it would be 26 per cent by 2050.

Data from the General Statistics Office say 70 per cent of the older people in Vietnam need healthcare services, but less than 20 per cent of them have a health insurance card for free health care.

The data also show that about 80 per cent of older people are living in rural areas without a health insurance card. Many hold out without insurance until they reach the age of 85, when they can get a free health insurance card.

In addition, according to Luong Ngoc Khue, deputy director of the Health Check and Service Department, among the 63 cities and provinces of Viet Nam, there are only 28 clinics with about 3,000 beds for elderly people.

Khue added: “Many elderly people don’t even consider going to hospitals as they think that diseases are an unavoidable result of old age.”

“Many elderly only come or are taken to a hospital if they are in a serious condition,” said Khue.

On the other hand, hospitals often lack staff and resources to treat elder people who often develop chronic diseases such as heart, diabetes and stroke conditions and need long-term treatment and lots of medicine.

The deputy director suggested the establishment of a healthcare fund for the elderly as well as a reduction on hospital fees to help older people.

At the two-day forum, representatives from Brunei shared their experiences in taking care of elderly people at home, considering that most of their diseases were not communicative and the fact that older people benefited from having their children and families close by when sick.

In Thailand, 1.7 million out of more than 7 million people aged 60 and over receive 500 baht (US$15) each per month as government support. All elderly people also have a health card that provides them with free health checks and treatment.

On Sunday, 33 years later, leaders at Mary Queen of Vietnam Church in east New Orleans introduced Cao (pronounced GOW), a Republican, as the first Vietnamese American elected to Congress. The congregation stood and applauded.

“Never in my life did I think I could be a future congressman,” Cao, 41, said at a victory party Saturday after he beat out nine-term Democratic incumbent William Jefferson. “The American dream is well and alive.”

Cao’s victory represents not only a stronger voice for Vietnamese in America but payoff for generations of hard work and sacrifice by Vietnamese immigrants, said Luke Nguyen Hungdung, a pastor at the main church in east New Orleans. “The older Vietnamese generation is especially proud to see a Vietnamese enter Congress,” he said.

Cao, a newcomer, won the 2nd Congressional District race, 50% to 47%. The win could be the final blow to the political career of Jefferson, who is charged in a 16-count federal bribery and money-laundering indictment. Prosecutors allege Jefferson took more than $500,000 in bribes, including $90,000 that investigators found in his freezer.

“People are innocent until proven guilty,” said Faye Leggins, 54, a Democrat who voted for Jefferson on Saturday.

Cao capitalized on low turnout in the mostly black and Democratic district. The election schedule was delayed because of Hurricane Gustav this summer. Only 66,846 people voted Saturday for the general election, compared with 164,000 for the Nov. 4 Democratic runoff, state figures show.

“I think people just ran out of gas a bit,” Jefferson said Saturday.

Cao was born in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), the fifth of eight children, as the country’s civil war was ramping up, according to his website. Shortly after Saigon was overrun by North Vietnamese troops, he came to the USA with two siblings. His father was in a North Vietnamese prison, and his mother stayed behind to raise five children.

Cao earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Baylor University in Texas. He also has a master’s degree in philosophy and a law degree. He and his wife, Hieu “Kate” Hoang, have two daughters, Sophia, 5, and Betsy, 3. His parents now live in New Orleans.

After Hurricane Katrina, Cao, an immigration lawyer, fought the utility companies and helped return power to and rebuild the Vietnamese community.

His victory is still sinking in, spokesman John Tobler said.

“It’s still a major adjustment to his life and what he represents not only to the Vietnamese community here but throughout the country,” Tobler said.

A US publisher has cancelled publication of a Holocaust memoir after its author revealed that he had made up crucial parts of it.

Herman Rosenblat did survive a German concentration camp, but he did not fall in love with a girl who threw him food over the fence, as stated in the book.

Instead, he met her on a blind date in New York and married her 50 years ago.

His book, Angel at the Fence, came under public scrutiny after a number of scholars questioned important details.

The fabricated story says that when Rosenblat moved to New York after the war he met Roma Radzicki by chance and discovered she was the girl who had thrown apples and bread to him.

They fell in love and married.

But some questioned Rosenblat’s descriptions of Schlieben – a sub-camp of Buchenwald – and said it was impossible to throw food over the fence there.

‘I wanted to bring happiness’

The book was due to be published by Berkley Books, part of the Penguin Group, in February.

Advance publicity had included a couple of appearances by Rosenblat on the chat show hosted by Oprah Winfrey.

In a statement, Rosenblat, 79, said: “I wanted to bring happiness to people.

“I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world.”

His agent Andrea Hurst told the Associated Press: “I question why I never questioned it. I believed it; it was an incredible, hope-filled story.”

A statement from Berkley said Rosenblat and his agent will be required to return “all money that they have received for this work,” Reuters news agency reported.

Historical records prove that Rosenblat was an inmate at Buchenwald and other camps.

But Rosenblat’s agent said the love story involving meeting his future wife through the fence when he was a teenage prisoner at Schlieben was invented.

Brought to book

The Angel at the Fence is the latest in a series of high-profile literary fabrications.

Earlier this year, a Belgian woman revealed she had invented her tale of survival as a Jewish girl searching for her parents with a pack of wolves in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Monique De Wael, who adopted the pseudonym Misha Defonseca, admitted she was not Jewish and had lived in Belgium.

And a memoir by a white woman that claimed she was raised in poverty by a black foster mother and sold drugs for a Los Angeles gang was also exposed as a lie after her sister contacted the publisher.

Margaret B Jones, the author of Love and Consequences, actually grew up in a well-off area of California’s San Fernando Valley.

Meanwhile James Frey, another author championed by Oprah Winfrey, admitted he “embellished” his bestselling memoir about his battle with drug addiction published in 2003.

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