The typical product of Ao Dai is one of the important elements making up the soul of the nation of Vietnam. Yet, for making Ao Dai truly a famous national brand name and a creative and cultural industry product, perhaps we still have to put in a lot of effort. What the Korean have done for their Hanbok is one of the good practices that we need to refer to.

These are 6 of 121 Vietnamese culinary dishes that have just been honored by the Vietnam Cuisine Culture Association (VCCA) as typical national dishes in phase I of a project titled "Building and Developing Vietnamese Culinary Culture into a National Brand Name”. All of these 6 dishes, including: Hue beef noodle soup, glutinous rice dumplings stuffed with roasted pork in sweet soup, mussel rice, banh loc (glutinous rice dumplings), vegetarian fig salad, and lotus-leaf-wrapped steamed rice; all are close to the gardens and paddy fields of the land.

Once following a friend of mine to Hoi An (Quang Nam province), I was quite impressed with the communal house of Cam Thanh commune. From outside, the building has a bold characteristic of the image of a Vietnamese village with a row of upright areca palm trees. In particular, the structure of sturdy wooden columns and bamboo frames, and available natural materials make visitors feel close to their homeland.