A civilized wedding shortens the procession of the bride to less than 10 people in Hanoi. Photo by Thanh Thuy.
Implementing a civilized lifestyle in marriage and mourning has been implemented by Hanoi for many years, with the participation of the whole political system and the response of a large number of people in the area.
Only a few days after the fourth Covid-19 pandemic outbreak appeared, the Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports issued Official Letter No. 1095/SVHTT-NSVH to the People’s Committees of districts, towns and departments and units directly under the Department on the implementation of measures to prevent and control the pandemic in cultural activities and in building a civilized lifestyle. In particular, the Department suggested the local authorities and unions to mobilize people when organizing a wedding to only announce or postpone the wedding party. When organizing funerals, do not organize large groups of people to visit, shorten the organization time, and require strict implementation of regulations on pandemic prevention and control.
Weddings and funerals are important things in every person’s life, it’s not only the job of the individual, the household, but also the family business. However, in the current complicated pandemic situation, places with large gatherings of people are easy to become super infectious outbreaks. With the active communication and mobilization by the authorities from the city to the grassroots in changing the organization of weddings to congratulation and organizing civilized funerals, Hanoi people have taken it very seriously.
Dong Anh district, which is one of the areas with many complicated cases, has been very seriously implemented in the mobilization of simple, civilized weddings and funerals. In addition to pandemic areas, stopping weddings is mandatory, in other areas, people also strictly comply. In particular, Co Loa commune is one of the typical examples, from the beginning of May until now, the government and mass organizations have campaigned for a wedding to hold only the bride procession, and five weddings to be delayed. Co Loa commune cultural officer Nguyen Thi Yen said: “Cômunication and mobilization for the implementation of a civilized lifestyle and compliance with regulations on prevention and control of Covid-19 have been carried out in the commune for more than a year. Therefore, when “activating” the stiuation of pandemic prevention again, people support it. There is a wedding that has been set up and booked parties, but the pandemic happened, so the family agreed to cancel”.
In Ha Dong district, right after the city had a policy of mobilizing people to hold weddings and postpone weddings, the government stepped up communication to all people. Young couple, Viet Anh – Dieu Linh returned to the same house on June 4 under the witness of parents on both parties of the family and siblings. The families of both parties have widely announced to relatives and friends via facebook, zalo with the message: “Thêm “cước sắc” giữa mùa dịch dã/ Không ồn ào cũng loan báo đôi câu/ Nay gắng sức ta cùng nhau dập dịch/ Chén rượu mừng khất hẹn có ngày sau“. Ms. Dieu Linh also emphasized that the wedding day is an occasion for fun, an opportunity for people to meet again and talk about stories, so let that occasion be complete and for the joy to be complete, we must first ensure health for everyone.
The districts, towns in the area have succeeded in mobilizing people to announce and postpone the wedding with thousands of cases. In which, the most are districts such as Thach That, Hoai Duc, Nam Tu Liem, Tay Ho, Dong Da…
For funerals, districts mainly focus on mobilizing families to shorten the time to organize funerals, perform cremations, and mobilize people to offer condolences from afar instead of visiting crowds, etc.
From the beginning of the year to the middle of June 2021, the city has up to 13,000 weddings that are organized neatly, or converted to the form of a happy announcement; more than 2,400 couples delay their marriage. These are incomplete statistics because many families organize their own weddings, or delay the wedding time without reporting. As for funerals, from the beginning of 2021 to now, the city has had 21,653 people die, up to 20,382 families have strictly complied with pandemic prevention measures.
By Nhat Minh