VietNamNet Bridge – At the age of 70, Kim Hy still works as Chinese hand scroll writer in front of a small apartment building on Lao Tu Street in District 5. He has done the job for the past 30 years.

Chinese-Vietnamese calligrapher Kim Hy

He normally cycles from his home in a small alley on Tran Hung Dao Street to his workplace, which is actually a small table on which he puts red and pink paper sheets along with sets of paintbrushes and ink.

Born into a Chinese family that migrated from Guangdong to Vietnam a long time ago and growing up in a Chinese community in Cho Lon area, Hy speaks Vietnamese but not very fluently.

He had done multiple jobs before he shifted to writing Chinese calligraphy which he learned at school to earn a living more than 30 years ago. Hy said he is the only one in his family to do this job.

On December 15 parallel sentences and hand scrolls in printed Chinese characters are beautiful and cheap, many Chinese-Vietnamese in Saigon still prefer handwritten ones because they look livelier. In addition, hanging parallel sentences and hand scrolls of handwritten calligraphy at home is a tradition that has been preserved over the years, says Hy.

However, according to Hy, his business is always good since on some days he has no single customer.

A set of paintbrushes Kim Hy uses for writing Chinese characters – Photo: Tuong Vi

To make his Chinese hand scrolls of calligraphy, Hy uses gold or black ink. Only old customers prefer characters written in black and most people prefer a hand scroll with gold characters because they look eye-catching.

He gets a lot of orders during the final lunar month when the Vietnamese, including those of Chinese descent, prepare for Tet, or Lunar New Year. Hanging a red hand scroll at Tet is a traditional practice to pray for good luck and prosperity.

Most of the time, he writes sentences wishing for peace, luck and prosperity.

“Each hand scroll costs from several thousand dong to tens of thousands of dong depending on the size and the number of Chinese characters written,” he says.

Hy says that apart from Chinese Vietnamese customers, Vietnamese people also place orders with him. Some curious foreigners buy his hand scrolls as souvenirs.

SGT