Photo exhibition depicts country's land and people

An exhibition featuring 117 photos taken by 14 members by the Viet Nam Association of Photographic Artists are on display at the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang.

The exhibition, titled A Meet of March, depicts the country's landscape and people in preparation for the 40th celebration of the country's Reunification Day (April 30) and the city's Liberation Day (March 29).

The event also marks the 62nd anniversary of the Viet Nam Photographic Day (March 15).

The exhibition will run until next Tuesday.

Artist sells paintings to save wife's life

It may not be the ideal way to present a painter's work, but Pham Khac Quang is trying to gather every last penny he can to save his wife, currently in a coma at Ha Noi's Viet Duc hospital.

Quang's wife slipped into a coma after undergoing two operations on March 13 to terminate a nine-week foetus and remove gall bladder and kidney stones.

Doctors have said that blood infection caused by her having to stop taking medicines for the stones because of her pregnancy had led to her current condition.

Trang Thanh Hien, one of Quang's friends who has put up an appeal on her Facebook account, said that Quang, a graduate from Ha Noi's most prestigious Fine Arts School, did not want just to receive donations from well-wishers. He has put up some of his paintings for sale.

He's asking for VND11,000,000 (about US$510) for an original woodblock painting.

Dong Bao (Fellow Countrymen), tells the symbollic story of Vietnamese people emerging from a giant egg. (In Vietnamese, the term literally means sharing one cocoon.)

The total costs of medical treatment, including the operations and kidney dialysis, has been estimated at VND500 million ($24,000), Hien said.

She said she's hoping that someone can organise an auction to raise the money needed to pay rising hospital fees.

Int’l puppetry festival to promote Hanoi tourism

The 4th International Puppetry Festival is set to get underway in Hanoi this October, according to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MoCST).

The event, within the framework of the National Tourism Year 2015 themed ‘Connecting World Heritage sites’, is expected to draw the participation of a number of puppet troupes from many countries from around the globe.

The festivalaims to promote cross-cultural exchange and introduce Vietnamese puppetry art to regional and world audiences.

It is also a good chance for the capital city to elevate its image and cultural heritage as a positive contribution to developing inbound and outbound tourism.

Colourful Vietnam to shine in London

Vietnamese students in the UK are working hard preparing for a cultural day themed “Colours of Vietnam”, to be held on March 24 at the University College London (UCL) in London with the goal to promote Vietnamese culture to international friends.

The event, an initiative of the Vietnamese Society (Vietsoc) UCL, received strong support from the Vietnamese Embassy in the UK and the Vietnamese Student Association in the UK (SVUK) as well as the UCL which allows the use of the entire main campus as the venue.

A wide range of activities are planned such as artistic performances, Vietnamese folk games and traditional cuisines offered by London’s best Vietnamese restaurants such as Sen Viet, Mien Tay and House of Ho.

Several big businesses sponsor the event including FPT and Vietnam Airlines of Vietnam and UK group Dragon Capital.

Vietnamese students in the UK currently number around 5,000.-

Dao Xa villagers look to preserve waning traditional craft

The craftsmen in Dao Xa trade village are calling for incentives to preserve and develop the production of handmade traditional musical instruments to ensure their craft’s continuity.

74-year-old Dao Van Soan, who is now considered one of the top craftsmen in the village, said it took a lot of patience, skill and energy for an artisan to complete an instrument such as a “ dan ty ba” (a pear-shaped guitar with four strings) or “dan thap luc” (Vietnamese 16-chord zither) .

To produce one, the appropriate wood must be selected, and most work is done by hand from shaping the body, attaching the neck to the body to fitting the strings and the final decoration. According to Soan, the most important and difficult work is to check the instrument’s pitch and the sound quality.

It takes at least one week to make a “dan ty ba”, he said.

Soan voiced concern over the possible loss of the 200-year-old traditional craft, saying that only ten households in the village still continue to produce the instruments. Most of the craftsmen are old and the young generation prefer to do other better-paid jobs, he added.

It takes great love and passion for the makers to pursue the craft, because the work itself hardly supports their lives, young maker Dao Van Khuong said.

Classes have been organised to teach local youngsters how to make traditional musical instruments. The village craftsmen have also focused on making the products that meet clients’ demand to ensure a stable income.

The Dao Xa village in Dong Lo commune, Ung Hoa district, Hanoi, also produces other traditional instruments, such as the “dan bau” (a single-stringed instrument), “dan nguyet” (full-moon-shaped guitar with two strings) and “dan nhi” (upright two-string fiddle).

The village, which was recognised as a traditional craft village in 2009, has its products sold in every locality across the country and attracted crowds of international and domestic tourists, but the aging artisans are worried the craft will die out one day in the near future.

New Zealand night market features ASEAN culture

The Vietnamese Embassy in New Zealand set up pavilions featuring various products such as fine arts, handicrafts, and traditional cuisines at the ASEAN Southeast Asian Night Market in Wellington on March 13-14.

The Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, for the first time, sent a dancing troupe to perform at the event, which was held in celebration of the 40th anniversary of diplomatic ties between ASEAN-New Zealand, and Vietnam-New Zealand.

All ASEAN member states brought to the market special Southeast Asian dishes, traditional art performances, and non-stop entertainment.

Mayor of Wellington Celia Brown described the event as an occasion for New Zealand friends to understand better about the country, people and culture of ASEAN nations, and thus enhancing the people-to-people exchange.

The biennial event is organised by the Asia-New Zealand Foundation, the Wellington City Council, and the embassies of ASEAN countries in New Zealand.

Oxford Dictionary with Vietnamese translation released

An English - Vietnamese dictionary, the first of its kind to use data from the famed Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, hit shelves in bookstores across Vietnam on March 14, the publishing house behind the book announced.

It is also the first English - Vietnamese dictionary to be printed by the same publishing house in Hong Kong that has produced the origin Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary editions, Nguyen Minh Nhut, director of the Ho Chi Minh City-based Tre (Youth) Publishing House, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) Newspaper.

“The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary with Vietnamese translation was published to serve English teachers and learners,” he said.

The dictionary uses the new 8th edition updated early this year and has a massive capacity of 184,500 words and phrases, Nhut added.

The bilingual dictionary has thousands of items with the most common meanings, helping learners to improve their vocabularies, according to the director.

It also has the Oxford writing tutor part which can guide learners on how to write different types of essays in English, as well as help learners to develop ideas for their writing.

Nhut said the negotiations to get the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary translated into Vietnamese lasted five years.

“Since 2007, we planned to translate the dictionary into Vietnamese,” Nhut said. “At first, the Oxford publishing house was indifferent towards our project since they had received many similar offers from around the world and at that time, they only approved the translation rights for four bilingual editions.”

Nguyen Trung Tanh, Director of the Foreign Language Center of the Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy, also expressed his good impression of the bilingual dictionary.

“One thing that makes the dictionary different is its short translations,” Tanh said. “It doesn’t translate sentences, it gives parallel words in Vietnamese and then gives examples in English. This is a new way of making a bilingual dictionary in Vietnam.”

“Another thing that makes me like the dictionary is it retains the original images in the original Oxford dictionary with Vietnamese translation,” he added. “It’s a eurhythmic combination between language and images, offering readers a detailed view of the English language in the life of British and Vietnamese people.

“The grammar of the dictionary is also detailed and accessible.”

Amazing time-lapse video features Son Doong Cave

American photographer Ryan Deboodt recently uploaded an incredible six-minute video to the internet capturing the amazing images of Son Doong, the world’s largest cave.

The 31-year-old photographer travelled to Vietnam three times to retrieve his time-lapse cameras that he has placed in the cave, which he then spliced into the video.

Located approximately 500km south of Hanoi, the cave is more than 200m wide, 150m high and about 9km long. It houses a jungle and a river and could fit a 40-storey skyscraper within its walls.

Exhibition showcases war paintings by late veteran

More than 70 of late war veteran Pham Ngoc Lieu's paintings are on display at Museum of Viet Nam Military History in downtown Ha Noi.

The painter, who passed away a year ago, left behind thousands of sketches and paintings depicting the American War. Some of his works were drawn long after the war.

Noted painter Pham Luc said Lieu stuck to the theme of war because his generation spent their whole youth working for the revolution.

"Many of our friends died during the war," Luc said. "That's why we are often obsessed with images of the war."

The paintings are on display at 28A Dien Bien Phu Street.

HCM City launches design contest

The HCM City Department of Tourism and the Handicrafts and Wood Industry Association of HCM City have instituted a handicrafts and gifts design contest in which the theme is the city's distinctive features.

The first Hoa Sen Contest is aimed at meeting local and foreign visitors' demand for typical souvenirs, identify talented souvenir designers, raise awareness about the role of design in the handicrafts industry, and link up manufactures and designers.

Open to all Vietnamese and foreigners, the contest requires designs – in wood, bamboo, rattan, hyacinth, plastic, composite paper, or lacquer – to be submitted by August 25.

The organisers will give away awards to the winners at a ceremony in September.

Author of best-selling cookbook to hold talk with readers

Linh Trang, author of the best-selling cookbook Nhat ky hoc lam banh (Diary of Learning to Make Cakes) will have a session to introduce and sign the second volume of her book on Sunday (March 15) at Nha Nam Bookshop in HCM City.

Born in 1985 in Ha Noi, Linh Trang is currently a research student at Antwerp University in the Kingdom of Belgium.

She is the owner of the virtual kitchen Savoury Days (www.savourydays.com) which has attracted nearly 30 million views in three years.

"Savoury Days has become the general kitchen of people who have love of cooking as well as a craving to make delicious dishes and beautiful cakes for their lovers," says a release from Nha Nam.

Linh's Nhat ky hoc lam banh became a phenomenon in the cookbook sector last year as 2,000 copies were registered a few hours after being launched last March. All of its 20,000 copies eventually sold out.

The book includes seven chapters with 40 recipes of cakes with illustrated photos. Each chapter starts with the author's dairy of her progress in learning to make the cakes herself.

The second volume, Nhat ky hoc lam banh 2, was published by Hong Duc Publishing House and Nha Nam Culture and Media Company on International Women's Day.

"The book is a world of bread, pastry, cookies and artwork-like entremets," says the release.

Besides the meticulous instruction and basic knowledge of Savoury Days and Nhat ky hoc lam banh, the second book features cakes that are more difficult to make, but more attractive and practical.

"If I have a dull day and everything seems to be utterly unsuccessful, I know there is still one thing that I can do well. That is a batch of soft and crispy cookies which leaves a sweet-scented kitchen," Linh says.

Nha Nam Bookshop is located at 43 Ho Van Hue Street, Phu Nhuan District. The session will start at 9:30am.

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