The bronze statue of King Tran Nhan Tong will be cast on December 16, the 1st day of lunar November, in the Yen Tu Buddhist Relic in Quang Ninh province.

After five years of research, a council of historians and experts has decided to place the huge statue in Yen Tu relic. The statue will be placed in a 2200 sq.m piece of land. To cast the statue, over 100 tonnes of bronze has been imported from Australia. The 9.9m statue will sit on a 5m high lotus-shaped platform.

Senior monk Thich Thanh Quyet said this is the place where King Tran Nhan Tong often sat in meditation and watched the landscape.

The site for the giant statute plays an important part in the system of pagodas and relics in Yen Tu. The work is scheduled to finish in December 2010 to honor the Buddhist capital of Vietnam – Yen Tu.

The cost of this project is nearly 80 billion dong (US$4.5 million).

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Quang Ninh province will ask for the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to recognize King Tran Nhan Tong as a “Man of Culture of the World”. Vietnam currently has three “Man of Culture of the World” recognitions namely Nguyen Trai, Nguyen Du and Ho Chi Minh.

PV