The story of the “restored” treasure has been written about in detail in the press. I would like to recount here the process that the cultural workers of Quang Nam and Da Nang carried out to achieve the beautiful ending as mentioned.
From 1978 (the time the statue was discovered) to 2019, these two religious objects were kept by successive presidents of Binh Dinh Bac commune (Thang Binh).
However, for nearly 25 years, from 1978 to 2002, this was almost a secret. It was not until after Quang Nam and Da Nang separated, the administrative boundaries of the commune also began to change, that the story of the two artifacts above was revealed to researchers.
I remember that the leaders and experts of the Cham Sculpture Museum directly worked with the local authorities several times to request the recovery of the two above-mentioned magical weapons, but were unsuccessful.
On the one hand, due to the lack of legal regulations on heritage management, cultural relics at that time were either not consistent or not strict. It was not until 2001, that is, 23 years after the Tara Bodhisattva statue was discovered, that the Cultural Heritage Law was promulgated.
In fact, in the world, many extremely famous ancient statues have lost or broken very important details, but their value has not decreased, on the contrary, it has aroused more interesting curiosity.
The Louvre Museum in France demonstrates this very clearly, such as the statue of the victory goddess of Samothrace missing its head, or the semi-nude statue of the goddess Venus de Milo missing both arms, which is still visited by a steady stream of tourists every day, every hour.
However, the loss of details in the above foreign statues is a permanent loss, beyond recovery. As for the Tara Bodhisattva statue, the two dharma instruments are still there, so the matter of how to restore it to its original state was set as an important and urgent task for the government and the cultural sector of Da Nang at that time.
In 2019, after learning that the Quang Nam Museum had recovered two magical artifacts that had been kept by the people after 41 years, we advised the People's Committee of Da Nang City to sign an official dispatch to the People's Committee of Quang Nam Province and related sectors and levels requesting support and assistance in restoring the treasures.
We also directly met and worked with the Department of Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Quang Nam province to discuss ways to coordinate and remove obstacles.
On the other hand, the Cham Sculpture Museum directly invited representatives of the leaders and people of Binh Dinh Bac commune - where two details of the national treasure are being preserved - to visit the Museum, thereby convincing them to speed up the work progress.
The work was progressing relatively smoothly when the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly struck, along with a change in Da Nang's leadership, causing the process of restoring the artifacts to stagnate. It was not until the second half of 2023 that the press brought this matter up again, and the cultural agencies of Da Nang and Quang Nam got involved again.
At the end of 2023, the two localities of Quang Nam and Da Nang proceeded to hand over the artifacts. Thus, after 45 years (1978-2023) of wandering, the two extremely important Dharma objects were returned to the original statue of the national treasure Bodhisattva Tara. This "return" journey was quite long and relatively difficult and bumpy; however, it had a happy ending.
Telling the story to see, people working in Quang culture, people who take on the responsibility of preserving cultural heritage for the future, sometimes need a very strong Quang personality...
People's Artist Huynh Hung made an impression at many forums in Da Nang City, because he often boldly presented recommendations and argued to the end to protect the historical and cultural heritage of this city.
He bears the strong character of a Quang Nam intellectual, pursuing historical truth to the end. A fierce personality but with a gentle face.
Having worked as a journalist for more than 20 years before becoming the cultural manager of Da Nang City, Quang's personality and the fact that journalism always requires critical thinking have created a Huynh Hung who puts the sense of fairness with history first. Perhaps that is the origin of Huynh Hung's footsteps in the stories of culture and special heritage of Da Nang.
Recently, when Hai Van Quan was recognized as a National Monument of both Thua Thien Hue and Da Nang, people immediately remembered the persistent and silent work of People's Artist Huynh Hung with this unique heritage.
XH
Source: https://baoquangnam.vn/cai-ket-dep-cho-mot-cau-chuyen-van-hoa-3139371.html
![[Photo] Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh chairs Government Conference with localities on economic growth](https://vstatic.vietnam.vn/vietnam/resource/IMAGE/2025/2/21/f34583484f2643a2a2b72168a0d64baa)
Comment (0)