A Corner of Vietnamese Culture
Thursday, September 18th, 2008….to Paradissa Vietnam - thank you for your care and your dedication to what we are doing, and for the trip that we had…
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Thanh Chuong’s Viet Houses complex
It was a nice sunny day when we took off on a FAM trip to Thanh Chuong’s Viet Houses complex. The goal was to build up a preparation for guides who were going to conduct clients from Intercontinental hotel on cultural trips. The drive was over an hour and a half. We were all guys, 8 of us. It was a freaking hilarious day when funny nasty stories were told out loud in the van. All what we knew was that we were having a good time. It was wicked but the majority of us had…no idea of the particular place that we were heading for.
….I saw him, I recognized him since he was a famous artist, and more because he was the son of a famous writer whose literature works were put on our school curriculum. He was in a nice car. Man, anytime I see cars like those, my flicker of desire is lit up to a flame. Yep, he’s now covered in arts and money, he can ride whatever he wants. But hardly anyone of us knew he had had a hard life in his childhood…
Born in 1949, he is of the same age with my Dad. Thanh Chuong began his first strokes when he was seven. Entered the Fine Arts College in 1960, his paintings were later on mainly executed by lacquer, but sometimes in Oil or Paper as well. Regarded as being inspired by Picasso, Chuong soon became famous with his extraordinary paintings. Lots of his exhibitions were carried out in Vietnam and all over, including USA, Britain, Korea, Germany, Hong Kong…I suspect that I have the will to finish the list.
Car stopped, ended the long drive. We were surrounded by green hills. From afar, we had already notice a tall structure emerging from the green color of a hill. I started to notice that we were entering something huge that looked like a castle. The gate was very impressive to me, I had had hardly seen a gate like that earlier. I held my camera up for a shot, just to realize that it was out of battery. Holy…!!!
An old man appeared behind the huge wooden gate and led us in. He told us that we could wander around while waiting for his host to come. What was in my eyes was a huge complex of, well, I would say traditional Vietnamese houses, plus another building was still in construction. We could obviously saw the old details such as the beams, the carving pieces of wood…among the new material used to build that house. It’s easy to understand since I had learnt of those rich who threw money to collects antique houses and bring them to their courtyard. But, still, that was definitely out of my imagination.
There were probably over 10 houses like that. They seemed to cover a half of the hill to me. As a Vietnamese, you can took it for granted that they were all traditional or designed in a traditional Vietnamese way. Now the most important thing to me was to find a place where I could charge my battery. I got out of the crow and found myself wander in a strange complex, very strange to me at first. I saw a house alike to the one that I spent my childhood in, I saw another one that was a tribal group house up there. I walked through a little gate surrounded by the banyan-type trees, a replica of a traditional village’s gate. And just before I found what I wanted, I had felt that I was walking in a huge replica of Vietnam in term of architecture.
There was a soft voice and we realized that the host had arrived. She was kindly invited to come and show us around and (in my thoughts) hopefully we would have a business co-operation later on. A minute before her arrival we had leant that she was Mr. Thanh Chuong’s wife. But no one told us she was so poetically beautiful. Around her 40s, hardy do I see girls around their 20s whose beauty could compare. She appeared in her violet shirt, revealing her dreamy shoulders. And her black shorts…Her tall small nose stood gracefully on her face under the two round seductive eyes. She pictured a complete beauty. I shrugged and murmured: He is rich. I meant the artist, you know. And that was the moment I really wanted to be rich, almost more than ever.
….
The house complex was built on a hill. The construction began in 2001 and by 2003 the majority had come into shape. Man, how short time it was. There had to be hundreds of people working constantly. It’s amazing knowing that the whole house complex along with thousands artifacts (let me call them by this word) were respectively designed and installed by the artist himselft. As for the houses, nearly each of those was dissembled somewhere and brought over here to stand. For example, the 200 year-old house on stilts that we first sat in was bought from a tribal family, it was a several months’ matter of convincing the original host to make a deal. The deal only came after the artist agreed to build a new modern house for the original owner’s family. I guessed it was a totally crazy hobbies when tons of money were spent to collect those hundred years old houses. Each of the house writes their own stories from the bricked walls to the roof. And that’s not everything yet. Just open the door, you’ll be seeing the interior contains hundreds of antiques, from rusty Buddha’s statues to carved panels…but all of them posed as a great work of Installation Art. The site has been visited by the US embassador, Danish king and queen…The artist’s wife, in her soft sweet voice, continued explaining that her husband had spent his whole life collecting those antiques…It’s admirable that a hundred percent of the capital was raised from the sell of his paintings. Oppss…someone must be wishing he was a painter by now.
So, it’s only 1,5 hour driving out of Hanoi following the road leading to Noi Bai airport then take the left turn directing Phu Lo. There, a quiet story of Vietnam will be told. Thanh Chuong is among top contemporary artists in Vietnam and for sure if you fancy arts, you can purchase artworks here since lots of them are on display.
And, nearly finally, to my surprise, the artist family is going to build another complex nearby, which is….bigger than the current one.
Sometimes I ask myself: What ya goin to do if possessing a mount of gold…
