The 2023 Spring Calligraphy Festival will return at the end of January as part of a series of activities to celebrate Tet (Lunar New Year) after two years of being held online due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Calligrapher shows his calligraphic skills at a previous festival. Photo: Lai Tan/The Hanoi Times

The festival, whose motto is "Su dao ton Nghiem" (respect teachers), aims to encourage Vietnamese to continue studying and appreciate teaching.

The Spring Calligraphy Festival is an annual event held at the Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam (the Temple of Literature) in Dong Da District during the Tet holidays.

This year’s event marks the return of the festival after it was held online in 2021 and 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the two-week festival, the Temple of Literature will be open every day from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm. On the last day of the lunar year, which falls on Jan. 21, the site will open until 2:00 am on Jan. 22 to welcome people celebrating Lunar New Year's Eve. On the first three days of the Lunar New Year, it will remain open until 10:00 pm.

Among the many activities during the festival are the calligraphy exhibition, the re-enactment of ancient examinations, reading culture space, Kanji demonstration, Nom, and modern Vietnamese scripts.

Fifty calligraphers will join the festival and show off their writing skills. They qualified for the 2021 festival, but the event was canceled because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Other festival activities include the presentation of local handicrafts, traditional art performances, demonstration of local cuisine, traditional games, lion dance, and cay neu (new year’s tree) plantation, as well as water puppet shows.

“For thousands of years, studying is always one of the top priorities in Vietnamese people. So teachers have a key, honorable and respectable role in society,” Le Trung Kien, chief of the organization board for the Spring Calligraphy Festival 2023, said.

"During the event, we would like to tribute Vietnamese teachers. They are the symbols of intellectuality and good nature who have trained generations of Vietnamese talents," he said.

Le Xuan Kieu, Director of the Centre for Cultural and Scientific Activities of Van Mieu-Quoc Tu Giam, said that this year’s festival would become a remarkable event for Vietnamese and international visitors during the Tet holidays.

"We hope the festival activities will nurture the love for Vietnamese heritage and traditional culture among all Vietnamese, especially the younger generation."