APEC Park Da Nang

The wind off the Hàn River passes among the sculptures on its west bank in Da Nang. They take the place of billboards. Nobody comes here to see an exhibition. People simply walk in and let the works of art tell the story.

This is APEC Park, which belongs to the Hải Châu area of the city.

In 2017, Da Nang hosted the APEC summit. It was the first time the city had stood before more than 20 major economies of the Asia-Pacific region, from the United States, China and Japan to Australia and Russia. To mark that moment, the city chose a place beside the river to keep the memory. It was not a museum and not a monument. It was an open park, where art and everyday life could live side by side.

APEC Park grew out of that idea.

The central image of the park is the kite. In Vietnamese culture, a kite is more than a child's toy. It stands for freedom, for the dream of flying upward, and for the wind. Da Nang placed a kite in a park tied to an international economic summit. It wanted to say that the city is open not only in its policies, but in its spirit.

Along the riverbank, outdoor sculptures stand in the sun and wind. There are no glass walls around them and no electric lamps shining from above. There is only natural light, which changes through the day, so each work looks different in the early morning, at midday and as evening comes on.

Few city parks manage this.

When the afternoon sun sinks lower, the Hàn River turns yellow and red. The sculptures become dark shapes against the glowing water. From the far side, the Dragon Bridge and the Trần Thị Lý Bridge appear as two parallel streaks of light. People of Da Nang come here in the late afternoon to sit and watch this, and nobody needs to say a word.

Da Nang is a city of river and sea. The Hàn River runs through the center and divides the city into two banks. The west bank is Hải Châu, with its old streets, Hàn Market and the daily rhythm of families who have lived in Da Nang for generations. The east bank is Sơn Trà and Ngũ Hành Sơn, where the sea and tourism are the face of the place. Ngũ Hành Sơn is the Marble Mountains near Da Nang.

APEC Park lies exactly on the west bank, on the side where the people of Da Nang live, not the side where visitors rest. That gives the place a more real feel than many tourist parks.

In the early morning, residents come here to exercise. Late in the afternoon, some sit reading in the shade of the trees, some walk their dogs, and some only sit and watch the river. The sculptures that commemorate APEC stand still through all of it. They are a reminder that in 2017 the city opened itself to the whole world, and that this did not disappear when the summit ended.

The wind from the Hàn River still blows. The kite still flies.