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Embracing the past: Nguyen Manh Hung's rich collection reflects his love of Ha Noi. — File Photo |
HA NOI — He wasn't born in Ha Noi. Before Viet Nam was liberated, he hadn't even been to Ha Noi but with a strange love for the capital, he's spent much of his life collecting photos of the city. Nguyen Manh Hung began collecting memorabilia and photos of Ha Noi in the 1960s and currently owns a collection of around 700,000 photos and documents.
To share the fruits of his labour, he has released two pictorial books featuring Ha Noi in the old days to celebrate the city's 1,000th anniversary in October.
As a small child, he lost his father, a revolutionary martyr in the war of resistance against the French invaders. As a result he formed a strong attachment with his mother which remains strong today.
In 1977, he founded Hong Bang International University in HCM City and is currently the president.
In around 1908-09 in Ha Noi, Henri Oger, a French Orientalist placed an order with craftsmen working with woodblocks for around 4,500 sketches, recording and illustrating the lives of people in the northern delta. Oger printed all the drawings in a 700-page book called Technique du Annamite (Techniques of Vietnamese).
Hung discovered the book by chance in 1962 at the Archaeological Library in Sai Gon (now the HCM City Library of Social Sciences), where no one was aware of its true meaning and value.
The thick book of woodblock paintings is divided into various topics such as children's games, daily and spiritual life, folk paintings, Ha Noi's Old Quarter and vendors.
Hung was impressed by its simple pictures depicting scenes such as a farmer in a field, a craftsman engrossed in his work and the gap between the rich and poor of Ha Noi between 1908-09 when the north of Viet Nam was colonised by the French with their western life style.
The book changed his feelings for Ha Noi and he became determined to find and collect documents about the ancient capital to show his gratitude and respect to the ancestors, history and origins of Vietnamese people, he said.
All the captions and introductions in the book were written in Han Nom (ancient Chinese-Vietnamese scripts) which Hung couldn't understand.
"I was intrigued by the drawings in the book but couldn't understand clearly the contents," Hung said, "I asked my friends to help me translate the old script."
"The more I understood about the book, the more I wanted to find out about Ha Noi so I decided to collect documents about the city."
As reward for discovering the book, the An Pha Sai Gon Film Studio photographed its contents for Hung, which started his collection.
His collection of late 19th and early 20th century Ha Noi links the past with the present and demonstrates how rapidly the capital changed.
Western architecture contrasts with the Old Quarter and its old roofs and ancient temples help the 1,000-year-old city maintain its traditional culture.
Hung is also interested in photos depicting the spiritual lives of people in the early 20th century in which gods played an important role in helping the people overcome adversity.
"Photos of graves and funerals haunt me, because they remind me of religious and spiritual life and also evoke the image of my poor father who died when I was only two," Hung shared.
The impressive images not only inspired him to continue searching and collecting from friends, libraries and outdoor markets but also led to a turning-point in his life.
From a major in French, he decided to switch to history, and completed a PhD in the field.
Hung's rich collection reflects Ha Noi as a mixture of tradition and modernity and the traditional lifestyles and changes from colonial times.
Hung said that humans should be able to cope with the harsh environments of life, and where a man has a will, there's always a way. "For me, I live a quiet, ordinary life. All that I really need is the two daily meals that I take with my old mother, and time with my wife and children, not being interested in drinking and smoking," Hung said.
"I used to compare myself to a pack-horse, well practised at carrying and transporting, but when relaxing, gazing out to the horizon, where other horses compete and play." — VNS