DA NANG (VNS)— The central city of Da Nang yesterday presented the Certificate of Merit to director of the Institute for Vietnamese Culture and Education (IVCE) Tran Thang.

Thang donated a collection of 150 maps to the city published between 1826 and 1980 which indicate the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagoes belong to Viet Nam.

The American-Vietnamese travelled to the US, England and Poland between July and October last year to collect the old maps using his own money.

He spent US$8,000 on two editions of Postal Atlas Maps of China which were published in 1919 (consisting of 49 maps) and in 1933 (29 maps) by the Directorate General of Post of the Ministry of Transportation of the Republic of China, as well as a copy of Atlas of the Chinese Empire published in 1909 (23 maps) by the China Inland Mission. None of the three books list Hoang Sa and Truong Sa in the maps or index pages. — VNS