Birthday of President Hồ Chí Minh, 19 May

President Hồ Chí Minh was born on 19 May 1890 in Hoàng Trù, his mother's village, in Kim Liên commune, Nam Đàn district, Nghệ An province, under the birth name Nguyễn Sinh Cung. His father, Nguyễn Sinh Sắc, was a poor but devoted Confucian scholar, and his mother, Hoàng Thị Loan, a gentle and hard-working woman. There were four children, and Cung was the third.

In 1895 the boy went with his parents to Huế, where his father sat the court examinations. In 1901 Hoàng Thị Loan died in Huế, and the same year Nguyễn Sinh Sắc passed the doctoral examination. The family returned to the father's village of Sen, and Cung was renamed Nguyễn Tất Thành. The years in Sen village, among lotus ponds and bamboo hedges, nurtured in him compassion and an awareness of the suffering of a people without a country.

Nguyễn Tất Thành went on to study at the Quốc Học school in Huế, then taught at the Dục Thanh school in Phan Thiết in 1910. Seeing the patriotic movements of the early twentieth century fail one after another, the young man concluded that he had to go abroad, learn how other nations had done it, and come back to help his people.

On 5 June 1911, from Nhà Rồng wharf in Sài Gòn, Nguyễn Tất Thành took the name Văn Ba and signed on as a kitchen hand aboard the Amiral Latouche-Tréville bound for France. Over the next thirty years he travelled through many countries in Europe, Africa and the Americas, working many jobs to live and learn, from kitchen hand and snow shoveller to photo retoucher, while teaching himself languages and reading constantly.

In 1919, under the name Nguyễn Ái Quốc, he sent the Demands of the Annamese People to the Versailles Conference, calling for freedoms and democratic rights for the Vietnamese. In 1920, after reading Lenin's theses on the national and colonial questions, he attended the Congress of Tours and became one of the founders of the French Communist Party, having found his path to national liberation.

In 1925 he founded the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League in Guangzhou to train cadres. On 3 February 1930 he chaired the conference in Hong Kong that merged the communist groups into the Communist Party of Vietnam. On 28 January 1941, after thirty years away from the homeland, he returned to Pác Bó in Cao Bằng, and on 19 May 1941, his birthday, the Việt Minh Front was founded.

On 2 September 1945, at Ba Đình Square, President Hồ Chí Minh read the Declaration of Independence that founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. From then until the end of his life he served as President, leading the people through the resistance against France with the victory at Điện Biên Phủ in 1954, and through the early years of building the North and struggling for reunification.

Though he held the highest office, he lived very simply. From 1958 he lived and worked in a small wooden stilt house beside a fish pond in the grounds of the Presidential Palace, with a wooden bed, a bookcase, rubber sandals and a worn khaki suit. He often visited factories, cooperatives and schools, and wrote thousands of articles in short, plain words that anyone could read.

I have only one desire, a supreme desire: that our country be fully independent, our people fully free, and that every one of our compatriots have food to eat, clothes to wear and the chance to study.

President Hồ Chí Minh, answering foreign journalists, January 1946

On 10 May 1965 he began writing his Testament, revising and adding to it in the following years, always around his birthday in May. The Testament is brief, speaking of the Party, of young people, of the working people, of the resistance and of rebuilding the country after the war, and it closes with his hope for a peaceful, reunified Vietnam.

President Hồ Chí Minh passed away at 9.47 am on 2 September 1969 in Hà Nội, at the age of 79. The Hồ Chí Minh Mausoleum was inaugurated on 29 August 1975 on Ba Đình Square, where he had read the Declaration of Independence. In 1987 the 24th session of the UNESCO General Conference adopted a resolution marking the centenary of his birth, honouring him as a hero of national liberation and a great man of culture.

My ultimate wish is that our whole Party and people, united in struggle, build a Vietnam that is peaceful, reunified, independent, democratic and prosperous.

President Hồ Chí Minh's Testament

Every year around 19 May, Nghệ An holds the Sen Village Festival at the Kim Liên memorial site, with cultural events, sport and incense offerings. In Hà Nội, delegations, students and ordinary people queue from early morning to visit the Mausoleum. The lotus of West Lake and of Sen village come into bloom, the familiar image of a May spent remembering Uncle Hồ.

On 15 May 2016 the Politburo issued Directive 05-CT/TW on promoting the study and following of Hồ Chí Minh's thought, ethics and style. Many offices and companies use 19 May to review their progress, recognise teams and individuals for good work, organise volunteer activities and reread his writings on diligence, thrift, integrity and uprightness.

19 May is not a public holiday under the Labour Code, but for many working people it is a moment to reflect on how they work each day. The simplicity, matching words with deeds, valuing time and respecting working people that he left behind remain close, practical standards for any profession.