Hung Kings' Commemoration Day
Next: April 16, 2027
Honouring the nation's first ancestors.
The story
Where it comes from
Giỗ Tổ Hùng Vương honours the Hùng Kings, the 18 generations of rulers of Văn Lang, remembered as the first state of the ancestors of the Vietnamese, which tradition places between about the 7th and 2nd centuries BCE. Legend says the kings descend from the dragon lord Lạc Long Quân and the fairy Âu Cơ, whose hundred children were born from a sac of a hundred eggs. The day falls on the 10th day of the third lunar month, and since 2007 it has been a paid public holiday across Viet Nam.
How it's celebrated
Millions of people travel to the Hùng Temple on Nghĩa Lĩnh mountain in Phú Thọ province, where the main festival lasts about a week. Villages dress in fine costumes and vie to present the best palanquins, drums and gongs are carried in procession to the temple, and people offer incense and rice cakes, beat bronze drums and sing Xoan. Across the country, temples and families make their own offerings to honour the nation's origins.
Did you know
- UNESCO added the worship of the Hùng Kings in Phú Thọ to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2012.
- Legend says Prince Lang Liêu won the throne by making two rice cakes, the square bánh chưng for the earth and the round bánh dày for the sky.
- The Vietnamese word đồng bào, 'compatriots', comes from the same legend: đồng means 'same' and bào means 'sac'.
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