Ancient wells in Quang Tri attract visitors

Visiting former war sites in the central province of Quang Tri tourists can view a system of ancient wells from the New Stone Age, which related to the wet-rice cultivation of Vietnam.

Professor Bui Huy Dap, researching a project on rice cultivation in Vietnam, said the system consists of 14 wells in Gio Linh, in Vinh Linh district of Quang Tri, dating back about 4,000 years.

The sandstone-lined wells are linked by a canal. The water flows from the high wells to the lower ones, maintaining an even temperature in summer and winter.
These wells are also connected to vegetable fields by canals which are also lined with sandstone.

Professor Dap said that new technology in the New Stone Age helped the Vietnamese people irrigate the fields and develop rice cultivation.

The ancient well system, an important historical relic among dozens of war sites in Gio Linh, including the Truong Son cemetery and Doc Mieu firebase in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), is near Ho Chi Minh Highway.

The DMZ is located at the 17th parallel, dividing Hien Luong bridge spanning the Ben Hai river. The zone was set up under the Geneva Accords on Indochina in 1954 and was a military demarcation line between the north and the south of Vietnam in 20 years of the resistance war against the US imperialists, until 1975.

Vietnam’s Got Talent judges named

Meritorious Artist Thanh Loc, former model Thuy Hanh and musician Huy Tuan are the jury members for the Vietnam’s Got Talent TV show.

The three will accompany contestants from the Judges Audition to the coronation night of the first season of Vietnam’s Got Talent”.

Vietnam’s Got Talent 2011, which started in September, finished its first audition in Long An in October and its next destinations are Can Tho, HCMC, Buon Ma Thuot, Danang, Haiphong, Quang Ninh, Lang Son and Hanoi.

The winner(s) will receive a cash prize of VND400 million and will have a platform to make a career in the showbiz world.

The program aims to give a chance for people of all ages to turn their dreams into reality. They can show their talent by singing, dancing, performing magic and other forms of performance. The series is organized by VTV3, MediaCom Vietnam BHD and P&G Vietnam.
 
Vietnam inspires French artist Dominique de Miscault  

French artist Dominique de Miscault arrived in Ho Chi Minh City for a painting exhibition called “Meeting poet Tran Dang Khoa” at the Ami Art Gallery in Van Thanh Tourist Area.

The exhibition features the artist’s illustrated paintings for a French-Vietnamese collection of 37 children’s poems by Tran Dang Khoa.

The artist said that she was interested in poems by Tran Dang Khoa. Khoa is one of the most famous Vietnamese poets and well-known for children’s works, about family life, Vietnamese children during war time, love for pets and the country.

The artist has displayed her works in many painting, photo and installation exhibitions in Vietnam.

The painter and installation artist who has visited Vietnam many times since 1992 and spent a lot of time studying the late President Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese people and the country made a documentary film on Uncle Ho.

She presented the documentary film titled “President Ho Chi Minh- Dream of Peace” to Vietnam Television in Hanoi.

The documentary film “President Ho Chi Minh- Dream of Peace” is based on the book “Je reviens au Vietnam libre” (I Returned to Liberate Vietnam), written by Leo Figuerre, a French journalist and a senior official of the French Communist Party, who was impressed by President Ho and documented his experiences at the Viet Bac resistance base in north Vietnam in the 1950’s.

Miscault received much assistance from Vietnamese and French friends, especially the author Leo Figuerre, to complete the film in October 2011.

The artist said that Vietnam never fails to inspire her.

Japanese cartoon characters make a mark in HCMC  

An exhibition titled “JAPAN: Kingdom of Characters” featuring popular cartoon characters of Japan is being held at the Ho Chi Minh City Exhibition House from now until December 4.  
 
The Japanese anime and manga forms have attracted worldwide attention. These animated characters are printed on bank passbooks, train ticket passes and also presented as mascots at local police stations. They seem to have permeated every aspect of Japanese daily life.

The current exhibition will help answer many a visitors’ curious query. What exactly is a character? Why are they so popular? What kind of society do these characters reflect and what kind of influence do they have on that society? And finally, where is the Japanese character culture headed?

Viewers at the exhibition will have a chance to enjoy popular characters like Astro Boy, Ultraman, Hello Kitty, Doraemon, Mobile Suit Gundam, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Pokemon, Haruhi Suzumura, Sentokun, Hikonyan and Namisuke through standing figures, panels and DVD’s.

The exhibition will also give audiences a comprehensive view of the culture, history and background of the characters, the Japanese people’s love for them and the future of these characters in Japanese contemporary society.

Hue woman turns grass into art

It was a rainy day when Trinh Kim Chi, a 51-year-old Hue woman, was meticulously working on a half-finished painting in her small souvenir shop on Nguyen Chi Thanh street.

Under her skillful hands, the art piece depicting a typical scene from the Vietnamese countryside with bamboo trees, old tile house roofs and peaceful rice fields gradually took shape.

The painting, like hundreds of others hung on the four walls of the small shop, was made of grass.

Before she became an artist, Chi was an accountant, a job that did not earn her much money. To make ends meet she opened and ran a small grocery store in the central city and supported her family.

In her free time she did not forget her long-time hobby of making cards to give to friends and relatives on special occasions.

Back in 1998, when she was designing her hand-made cards with some lifeless paper flowers, it suddenly dawned on Chi to use more lively material.

Picking up wild grass growing right outside the shop, Chi tried trimming, arranging and putting the blades onto a blank card frame on a sketch she did previously.

“Giang Sinh que” (The countryside Christmas), her first grass card, was the product of her experiement.. “I myself was amazed at how lively it became when I just added some random plants. I have never stopped working with grass since,” Chi said.

She moved on to produce more works on a bigger scale, like paintings, and put the grass on canvas, instead of hard papers.

Chi quit her job and pursued the less travelled path of the art world: making grass paintings and selling them right at her grocery store.

In 2009, her work “Que toi” (My homeland), which debuted at the National Applied Art Exhibition held in Hanoi, received a warm reception.

The grass work which depicted a Hue woman wearing purple ao dai standing by the Huong river with a flock of white birds flying overhead was made with dry grasses, seaweed, and sea shells arranged in a pleasant color combination.

“Making grass paintings isn’t difficult at all, but it takes months to prepare the right materials for your work. The weather in Hue is very unpredictable, so I go out to find wild grasses in the summer, and dry them then to use in the winter.” she said.

According to the artist, there are many kinds of grass in Hue; though types which do not contain much water inside are very rare.

Chi has learned from her experience that she always has to use naturally dry grass, since “juicy ones” easily rot and damage the paintings.

In order to find or buy the right materials, Chi often has to make trips to distant suburbs like Phu Vang or Phong Dien.

“I then classify and trim them before drying, dying and putting them into nylon bags to preserve their colors,”

“Now I have developed a habit of just picking up random grass I see on my way. And I always bring along bags or anything that can hold grass whenever I travel somewhere.” Chi added with a smile on her face.

Vietnam’s traditional culture and rural lifestyle is a recurrent theme in Chi’s works, thus many foreign tourists are especially drawn to her paintings.

Carey, an American woman we met at her shop couldn’t hide her excitement when she said: “This is wonderful! It is the first time I have seen any paintings like this.”

Having loved art from a young age, Chi said she received inspiration from her tireless travel across the country, and from music and poems, a habit she has had since her high school time.

“I used to have an art teacher in high school that made us paint what we felt after hearing a certain song or poem she gave us.”

In her now-souvenir store, Chi busily works on more paintings every day, while running a free art class for both young and old people who have a passion for her grass art.

“Someday I hope to open a large studio to bring grass paintings to more people,” Chi smiled gently.  

In 2009, all 30 paintings Chi sent to the Hue Festival were sold.

Grass painting is still very rare in Vietnam, although paintings made with dried flowers or leaves are more common.

Chi sells her paintings at VND 100,000- 500,000.
 
Central Vietnam expects over 2.5 million tourists

Vietnam will draw at least 2.5 million visits by both domestic and international tourists to its cultural and historical heritage sites in Hue and other North Central provinces in 2012, according to figures announced by Phan Tien Dung, head of the Hue Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

The number was given in an international press conference to launch Vietnam’s National Tourism Year in coastal Hue and North Central Provinces, a national campaign to promote heritage tourism in the central region of the country.  

Many events and activities to introduce and promote the national and UNESCO world heritage sites in Hue and the surrounding region, such as the old Hoa Lu Capital in Ninh Binh, the Ho Citadel in Thanh Hoa, the Quang Binh Cave Systems, and the Hue Capital, will be held throughout the year.

The highlight of the national campaign will be the Hue Festival, a biannual event held from April 7 -15 next year. More than 20 art and performing troupes from 17 countries will perform at the festival.

Local researcher proposes National Language Day

Vietnam is likely to have its first National Language Day as the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is considering the possibility of establishing it as a national holiday, and is conducting research to formalize it, The Thao – Van Hoa newspaper reported.

The central agency’s action was initiated by a proposal submitted by Nguyen Lan Binh, a local researcher who believes Chu Quoc Ngu, the country’s modern writing system which was originally created during the 16th century by foreign missionaries, deserves a more important place in the country’s psyche.

When he presented the plan to the central government agency in September, Binh said the idea came to him when he was a student in Bulgaria many years ago and observed their Bulgarian Education and Culture, and Slavic Script Day on May 24, a day that honors the country’s language.

“I have harbored the idea for quite a long time and done my own research on the world’s history of scripts and the creation of Chu Quoc Ngu in Vietnam. Every writing system has its own history and they all have direct influences on the cultures that are using them,”
“We all know that loving our language is a way to show patriotism, but what we have done to honor it has been quite simple and vague” he said.

Chu Quoc Ngu, or the Vietnamese alphabet, is based on the Latin script with digraphs and the addition of nine accent marks– four of them to create additional sounds, and the other five to indicate the tone of each word.

As early as the mid -16th century, Portuguese Christian missionaries in Vietnam began using Latin script to transcribe the Vietnamese language for teaching and evangelization purposes; however it was the French Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes who is best known for developing the system.

At that time, the country was still heavily dependent on “Chu Han”, a Chinese writing system, and “Chu Nom”, a Vietnamese creation combining Chinese characters to make up a new system that minimized the influence of Chinese language.

Binh said it was necessary for Vietnam to have an occasion to celebrate its own writing, especially since the country already celebrates Teacher’s Day, Doctors’ Day and The Vietnamese Cultural Heritage Day.

“I want to stress that honoring Chu Quoc Ngu shouldn’t be a general concept, as it holds a significant meaning for our society. As the 20th century educator and nationalist Phan Chau Trinh put it, if we had kept on using Chinese writing, we would never have been free from cultural dependence”.

Chu Han and Chu Nom remained in use until the early 20th century, when the French colonial administration made Rhodes's alphabet official. During the early 20th century, nationalists embraced the script as a weapon to fight the French administration, modernize the country, and import new ideas and knowledge from the West.

Thus, although Chu Quoc Ngu is a Western product, and Chu Nom is more of a pure Vietnamese creation, Binh said that the national language had opened a new era in developing the country’s literature, journalism and many other related fields.

He also suggested that more historians, linguists and cultural researchers should be involved in research on the writing system and more exhibitions and seminars should be held to raise awareness amongst the general public.