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Why do doctors always have bad handwriting? Bao rewiews one of the Chinese Han script books in his collection. He started collecting old Han medical books in 1990. _ VNS Photo |
HA NOI — While society's traditional values are fading little by little, there is a man who continues to maintain a large collection of small terra-cotta statues, antique coins and ancient Chinese script books.
The man, who is well-known for his antique collecting is Nguyen Khac Bao, head of a trade union branch in the northern city of Bac Ninh.
Bao was born to family with five generations of experience in making oriental medicine. After graduating, he became a maths teacher at the Teacher Training School 1 in former Ha Bac Province.
In 1989, Bao took early retirement after 26 years working as an educator.
He recalls being taught ancient Chinese Han script and Nom script (ancient Vietnamese ideographic script based on Chinese characters) by his great-grandparents when he was a little boy, so he decided to return to his family's traditional career as an oriental medicine doctor.
"Oriental medicine is divided into two types: oral teaching and learning how to cure through textbooks written in either Han or Nom scripts, so I had to learn both of them," says Bao.
Bao is extremely careful in his prescriptions for his patients, and his skills as a maths teacher has proved invaluable in making him a better physician.
Bao says he could not earn a living if he only concentrated on studying, so he decided to work and learn at the same time.
"When you fully understand the meaning of the old scripts in the medicine books, it makes issuing the prescription easier," says Bao.
In 1990, he started collecting old Han script medical books to compare them with Vietnamese transcriptions.
He realised that some words in the Chinese Han medical books did not match the Vietnamese versions, and he began seriously collecting the original Chinese Han sources.
Bao currently owns 52 Han and Nom books, among which are 22 original versions and 30 copies, making him the largest collector of such books in the country.
Bao has also revised 918 characters of 701 sentences in the well-known Vietnamese epic poem Truyen Kieu (The Tale of Kieu), which was later verified by the local education council and published by the Viet Nam Education Publishing House.
Since Bao has such a wide knowledge of old Chinese and Vietnamese characters, well-known antiques collectors frequently come to ask him about the meaning or the date of characters engraved on a horizontal lacquered board or old dishes, bowls and coins.
Besides ancient script books, Bao also collects ancient coins, including Vietnamese coins from the Dinh, Ly, and Tran dynasties, paper money from 1946 to date and foreign coins.
He even owns over 2,000 kinds of animal and human statues made from stone, porcelain and terra-cotta.
"Each statues in my house are worth from VND5 to 10 million (US$250 to 500) each, which makes it a costly hobby," says Bao. — VNS