Thai Binh Province

Infobox province of Vietnam
Name = Thái Bình
Meaning = Great Peace


Council Chair = Bùi Tiến Dũng
Committee Chair = Nguyễn Duy Việt
Capital = Thái Bình
Region = Red River Delta
Area = 1,542
Population = 1,827,000
Population year = 2004
Population density = 1,185
Ethnicities = Vietnamese
Calling code = 36
ISO code = VN-20
Website = www.thaibinh.gov.vn

Thái Bình (or Thaibinh - "great peace"; Han Tu: ) is a coastal eastern province in the Red River Delta region of northern Vietnam, named after the Vietnamese name for the Pacific Ocean: "Thái Bình Dương".

It is about 18 km from Nam Dinh, 70 km from Haiphong, and 110 km from Hanoi.

Districts

Thái Bình is divided into one city (Thái Bình city) and seven districts:

*Ðông Hưng
*Hưng Hà
*Kiến Xương
*Quỳnh Phụ
*Thái Thụy
*Tiền Hải
*Vũ Thư

People and culture

Although situated in the centre of the Red River Delta, in the past, Thai Binh was considered an island bounded by three larger rivers, and is the only province never to have been merged or separated. This position gives the people of Thai Binh a quite distinct culture. Thai Binh is the homeland of "hát chèo" opera (in Khuốc village, Phong Châu commune, Đông Hưng district [http://www.thaibinhtrade.gov.vn/default.aspx?ID=70&LangID=2] [http://www.nhandan.com.vn/tinbai/?article=106337&sub=81&top=43] [http://www.thaibinh.gov.vn/end-user/index.asp?website_id=39&menu_id=624&parent_menu_id=624&article_id=2392&fuseaction=DISPLAY_SINGLE_ARTICLE] ) and water puppet (in Nguyên Xá commune, Đông Hưng district [http://www.culturalprofiles.net/Viet_Nam/Directories/Vi_ACYAIw-7879_ADs-t_Nam_Cultural_Profile/-3643.html] [http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-845417_ITM] [http://www.nhandan.com.vn/tinbai/?top=37&sub=130&article=114929] ). Thai Binh people are noted for their practical and clever character.

Thai Binh is the homeland of the most prolific and famous Vietnamese savant in the Middle Ages: Lê Quý Đôn. Tran Thu Do, the founder of the Trần Dynasty, was born in Hưng Hà district.
Bùi Viện, the founder of Haiphong city, was a famous reformer in the 19th century. He was the first Vietnamese known to have visited the United States and also served as ambassador to the United States under the Nguyễn Dynasty.

The first Vietnamese to travel into outer space was the cosmonaut Phạm Tuân, a native of Thai Binh. Two other natives of Thai Binh are the ones who finalized the two infamous wars in Vietnam: Tạ Quốc Luật, who captured Christian de Castries and raised the victory flag in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (the First Indochina War) and Bùi Quang Thận, who led a group of Northern tanks and entered the headquarters of South Vietnam's government to make president Dương Văn Minh unconditionally surrender (the second Indochina War). Thai Binh is also the homeland of several famous Vietnamese political dissidents and humanitarians. Thích Quảng Độ is a Vietnamese Buddhist leader and critic of the Vietnamese government. In 2006, he was awarded the Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize, and was also a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. Dương Thu Hương, arguably the most famous postwar Vietnamese writer, whose novel "Paradise of the Blind" (Những thiên đường mù, 1988) became the first Vietnamese novel ever published in the United States in English [http://www.utdallas.edu/research/cts/Publications/Annotated%20books%20received/6-1/6-1vietnamese.htm] , is also a famous political dissident. Nguyễn Hữu Đang, born in Kiến Xương district, was the leader and prominent victim of the Nhân Văn affair - a movement for a movement for political and cultural freedom of Vietnamese intellectuals. This affair is one of the most tragic events in modern Vietnamese history.

Some Thai Binh people are among the richest in Vietnam, including Vu Quang Hoi who is the founder of Bitexco group (who owns The Financial Tower in Ho Chi Minh City, The Manor luxury building in Hanoi, etc.), Vu Van Tien, founder of Geleximco - the largest private company in Hanoi and AB Bank, a large private bank. Quách Tuấn Ngọc, a native of Đông Hưng, while a professor of computer science in Hanoi University of Technology, authored the first successfully commercial domestic software: BKED ("Bach khoa Editor") - a system for processing Vietnamese text, in the 1980s.

External links

* [http://www.thaibinh.gov.vn/ Official Site of Thai Binh Government]
* [http://www.thaibinhtrade.gov.vn/default.aspx?ID=58&LangID=2 Thai Binh Introduction|Site of Thai Binh Trade & Tourism Department]