Foreigners study Vietnamese calligraphy

A small number of foreigners from different countries around the world have come recently to Vietnam to study Vietnamese calligraphy. They are keen to hold a pen brush and draw calligraphic paintings under instructions by their teacher, Le Lan, a calligrapher living in Ho Chi Minh City.

Start studying

Located in the small alley on Hoang Van Thu street in Ho Chi Minh City is a three-storey house where calligrapher, Le Lan, has spent most of his time on calligraphy. It is also where students, one after another, come to learn calligraphy.

That house has witnessed dozens of foreign students patiently and excitedly studying Vietnamese calligraphy.

As it is a rainy afternoon in Ho Chi Minh City, I thought the class for foreigners would take a day off, but when I was there, nearly a dozen students attended the class. Members of this pre-intermediate class are not young. The youngest is over 30 while almost all students are as old as the teacher in his sixties.

On the house’s third floor, the foreign students industriously learn what the teacher tells them, from how to hold a pen brush straight to how to write without using much ink.

Kelvin, a 30-year-old French architect working in Ho Chi Minh City, applied for the class on one of his friends’ recommendation. He shows letters a, b, c he wrote on several pieces of paper, and says that “I have written many letters. Have a look and give me your comment!”. He excitedly laughs.

“I like studying Vietnamese calligraphy because it uses the same Latin alphabet like other countries in the world. After my study, I can easily write calligraphy in French and English languages”, Kevin joyfully adds.

Of those students, Frandi and Natasha, an Italian couple, decided to apply for the class during their visit to Vietnam. After three lessons, the couple, aged 35, made other classmates envious and respectful as each of them wrote a word at the same time. They compared the words written to see whether they looked like the teacher’s writing or not.

In order to study better, the Italian couple hire a Vietnamese priest as an interpreter. Natasha says that, in free time, they often drop in to galleries to learn more from calligraphic works shown there.

However, not many foreign students can follow the 20-day-course. About this, calligrapher Le Lan explains that foreign students often come to Vietnam twice a year for travelling, working and studying calligraphy. Numerous students knew the class through tours offered by Vido Tourist or Saigon Tourist.

Send the love with Vietnam via foreign students

Le Lan, an overseas Vietnamese engineer with more than 30 years of experience in Germany, has a predestined love tie with calligraphy and painting since he came back to Vietnam.

“It is said that calligraphy is only present in China. In fact, script paintings appeared in Arab and many countries a long time ago. In Vietnam, for several years now, the habit of studying Vietnamese calligraphy has become more popular. That is an opportunity for calligraphers to send Vietnamese culture to the world”, Lan said.

He recalled the year 2004 when the Swiss Tourism’s Association invited three Vietnamese calligraphers, including Lan, to join in the International Tourism Fair. At that time, three containers of cyclos, conical hats, curtains, pieces of paper and frames were shipped to Switzerland in order to introduce and promote Vietnamese culture and it’s Latin calligraphy in Vietnamese and English languages.

“A Westerner finds it easier to understand a sentence and words written in the Latin alphabet even if they are shown on Asian materials and by Asian methods”, he confided.

The calligrapher also held a number of small seminars to talk about Vietnamese calligraphy among tourist guides and foreigners whenever they visit his gallery. “It is a chance for me to popularise Vietnamese calligraphy. It is also an opportunity to recommend a cultural quintessence of Vietnam to friends over the world”, calligrapher Lan said.

Source: TP

Translated by Mai Huong