Rare woodblocks to be preserved

HÀ TĨNH — Hà Tĩnh Province has planned different solutions to preserve and promote the Phúc Giang School’s woodblocks, following their recognition in May as UNESCO World Heritage at the seventh Memory of the World Committee for Asia and Pacific summit.

The Phúc Giang School’s woodblocks were created by scholars of the Nguyễn Huy family in Hà Tĩnh Province in the 18th century. The blocks were used to print text books for the Phúc Giang School, which was located in the old Trường Lưu Village, Can Lộc District of Hà Tĩnh.

The director of Hà Tĩnh Museum, Nguyễn Trí Sơn, said it would cooperate with the National Library of Việt Nam and the Institute of Literature to organise exhibitions of the woodblocks, translate them into Vietnamese and print them into books.

The People’s Committee of Can Lộc District also plan to make Trường Lưu a tourist cultural village, helping tourists to find out more about the village’s rich history and culture.

The Phúc Giang School’s woodblocks comprise of 379 well-preserved blocks to print textbooks, said Sơn. The total set used to number 2,000 blocks, but many have been damaged or destroyed over time. The blocks are rare, unique and contain valuable content.  The two-century-year-old set of woodblocks form the heritage of the Nguyễn Huy family, that has been preserved by the family’s descendants, he noted. They are the only ancient woodblocks created by a family for education preserved today in Việt Nam.

In 1732, well-known scholar Nguyễn Huy Oánh, built a local school in Trường Lưu village to teach students. He also founded Phúc Giang library with thousands of books that he and his family collected over many years.

Thanks to Oánh’s deep knowledge, his teaching methods and the rich library, the school attracted a great number of students from different regions. 

The contents of the woodblocks were composed by five cultural scholars of the Nguyễn Huy family, who were teachers at the Quốc Tử Giám University, the country’s first university.