It was also during these memorable April days that the first book series covering the entire history, economy, politics, religion... of Ho Chi Minh City, from the early days of "carrying swords to open up the country" until it became the major economic and political center of the country was officially born. "Gia Dinh - Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City: Long Miles of History" is the sweet fruit that Mr. Nguyen Dinh Tu cherished and nurtured through countless ups and downs over 20 long years. The book series is considered a handbook, a dictionary so that when you want to find something related to the city, you just need to open the book to be satisfied immediately, without having to look far.
At the age of 103, researcher Nguyen Dinh Tu calls himself a " strange old man" because he still diligently works 8-10 hours a day, compiles manuscripts on the computer without glasses, walks without a cane, and needs no one to help him. Above all, it is his never-ending passion for national history .
Living simply in a small alley, few people know that the old man with white hair and beard has a great desire to contribute to Ho Chi Minh City and the country. It is his patriotism that has urged him to find research documents and write books about Vietnamese history .
Born and raised when the country was still a French colony , studying French , how did you come to your passion for Vietnamese history ?
- Born in the poor countryside of Thanh Chuong, Nghe An, the journey from learning Chinese characters, learning the national language, primary school, and high school... for normal people only took a few years, but for me, it lasted more than ten years. I kept going to school, then had to drop out because my family's circumstances were too difficult, had to herd buffaloes, farm, earn a living, had a little money, then went back to school, then went to earn money again. At the age of 22, I graduated from high school. I was able to take the first and only primary school college exam under the Tran Trong Kim government. Right after graduating, the August Revolution broke out. I put down my pen and joined the resistance until the Geneva Accords were signed, then packed my bags and returned to my hometown.
That year, the Central region suffered a terrible flood. To make a living, my whole family moved to Hanoi for a while and then to Khanh Hoa. Thanks to my elementary school diploma, I got a job as a substitute teacher at a primary school in Nha Trang. A substitute teacher means that when a school lacked a teacher, I was allowed to teach temporarily until they recruited another teacher and let me go. The salary was low and the job was unstable, but to support my family, I still had to do it. After that, I passed the exam to study land in Phu Yen, which was when things started to become relatively stable. After a while, I started to return to my passion for researching geography and writing history.
When I was in primary school, I accidentally borrowed a book about Phan Dinh Phung, then the story of King Ham Nghi's resistance against the French. I truly respected our ancestors and was passionate about Vietnamese history from then on. At that time, I waited for each book published weekly by Tan Dan Publishing House in Hanoi. Reading books by famous writers at that time such as To Hoai, Bui Hien, Truc Khe..., I thought "if they can write, I can write too", so I "dared" to write about the founding hero Nguyen Xi and sent it to them. Unexpectedly, a month later, my book was sold in Vinh. "Riding on the victory", I continued to write "Revenge of the nation and debt of the country" and some other small books.
During several years working in Phu Yen, when my job was stable, I returned to research and write the geographical books "Non nuoc Phu Yen", "Non nuoc Khanh Hoa", "Non nuoc Ninh Thuan". Another thing is that I "literaryize" when writing geographical books, that is, not only dryly describing the geographical features of the area but also adding literary details, people, famous poems related to that land. Thanks to that, my geographical books are completely different from the books written before, easier to read, easier to understand and easier to remember. That research work was still in progress when the times changed, I was no longer qualified to continue.
The ups and downs of life , the hardships of making a living, have you ever given up, abandoned your love and passion ?
- After the events of 1975, the country changed a lot after liberation. At that time, I was nearly 60 years old, unable to escape the changes of the times. Without a job, to earn money to support my wife and children who were still in school, I had to go to the crossroads to fix bicycles, earn 5-10 dong to buy rice to feed my children.
During the quiet times, sitting and waiting for the cars to pass by, I regretted the time so much that I had to write. The series "Loạn 12 Sứ Quân" is the only historical novel that was born in such a desperate situation.
At that time, I had sold all my books and documents to buy rice, and I didn't have time to go to the library to look them up because I had to fix my bike. Looking back at history, I saw that the period of the 12 warlords was very lacking in history and had few documents, so I put the paper on a box of bike repair tools and sat writing in the middle of the intersection. The first readers were the students who came to fix their bikes, reading to relieve boredom while waiting for their bikes to be fixed...
Actually, I wrote just to write, to satisfy my passion, not to satisfy my need for food and water, because it was not until nearly 20 years later that those 1,500 pages of my writing were first published.
He was also the first person to write about the renamed streets of Ho Chi Minh City after the liberation . What made him go alone to do such a "prison and village" job ?
- After liberation, the government changed more than 100 streets in the city. Sitting at the intersection fixing motorbikes, I saw the motorbike taxi and cyclo drivers having a hard time. They didn't know what the new street names were, where they were, and couldn't take passengers so they lost their jobs. No one knew the background of the people who had new street names, and there was no note of the old street names under the new ones, so people couldn't remember and couldn't find the place they needed to go. I was urged to think that there needed to be a book written about the street names of Ho Chi Minh City to serve the people.
I used my mini bike to travel all over Ho Chi Minh City to research each street name, see where it goes from here to there, how long it is, what is on both sides of the street, which agencies, the history of the old street... After several years like that, the book "Ho Chi Minh City's inner city streets" was published, and I was honored to have the same-age historian Nguyen Dinh Dau write an introduction. He said: You did this very well, it is very useful for everyone.
After my book was published, the Department of Culture and Information invited me to join the City Street Naming Council. During my time on the council, I named and changed nearly 1,000 streets. But the thing I am most proud of is the proposal to name two new streets along the Nhieu Loc Canal Hoang Sa and Truong Sa. These two streets were inaugurated on the 300th anniversary of Saigon – Ho Chi Minh City.
Many people ask me why I named Hoang Sa - Truong Sa, I have only one thought: Those are our archipelagos, the flesh and blood of the country, our descendants must not forget that Hoang Sa - Truong Sa belong to Vietnam and future generations will have to reclaim them.
After liberation, someone invited me to settle in America but I refused. I simply thought: The country is liberated, why should I leave? I am just a citizen who loves my country.
"Gia Dinh - Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City: Long Mile of History " has gone through many ups and downs to be published today. What has helped you keep the flame of passion like that ?
- Many years of living in this city have urged me to write about the city's history. For a long time, many people have written about Saigon - Cho Lon, Ho Chi Minh City, but each person only writes about one issue, one aspect of the city, no work has comprehensively covered all aspects and fields of activity of the city. Even the book series "Cultural Geography of Ho Chi Minh City" only talks in general about the fields of history, culture, art, ideology, religion and does not mention other fields. Therefore, I have been thinking of writing a book series that provides a comprehensive, general, and specific view of the historical periods from 1698 to 2020, the political regimes, the fields of activities in administration, economy, society, culture, education, health, religion, sports... of each period.
The story must be told from 1998, Ho Chi Minh City announced that it would organize a 300-year anniversary celebration. But I did not see any cultural, scientific or historical association or group organizing any activities. Too impatient, I drafted an outline for a comprehensive book on Gia Dinh - Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City throughout its 300-year history (1698 - 1998) and sent it to Professor Tran Van Giau with the following words: If the Professor finds it acceptable, please suggest that the Historical Association or another association, group or agency use this outline as a reference document, to create another, more complete outline to write the above book. A few days later, the Ho Chi Minh City Center for Social Sciences and Humanities invited me to sign a contract to produce the book "Gia Dinh - Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City 300 years" according to the content of my outline.
I devoted my time and energy to libraries and archives collecting documents, writing day and night. Near the anniversary, 1,500 typed pages were finished, the work was accepted, even the layout and cover were drawn. Everything was almost finished when a big obstacle happened, the book was not released.
However, I treasure my documents very much and cannot throw them away. Waiting for a favorable day, I will use them to write another more complete book, so I have kept the manuscript for the past 20 years. Now the favorable day has come. I took out the old manuscript, reread each page, edited the sentences, added new materials I found, and continued writing the period 1998 - 2020 to form this book series.
Few people know that, to get those manuscripts, I had to "stay" at the City Archives Center for 3 years, "stationed" there every day as an official employee. Then for many years I spent wandering around libraries to find every book, every line of documents about the city. From French books, Han Nom books to translated books, feudal documents, Republic of Vietnam... I tried to find them all.
The series "Gia Dinh - Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City - Long Mile of History (1698 - 2020)" gives readers a complete understanding of Saigon, from people's lives to the political system, from folk poetry to administrative units, from economy - society - culture to religion - beliefs through each historical period.
A thousand pages of "Long Miles of History" is not long enough for readers who want to understand Saigon from its history in the Stone Age, the Phu Nam period, to the Nguyen period, the French colonial period... Saigon's life appears in the book not only through relics and documents but also through legends, folk songs, the transformation of canals, and forests into crossroads...
My book series is like a handbook that agencies, officials, civil servants, and families in the city should have. So that when they want to find a problem related to the city, they just need to open the book and they can be satisfied immediately, without having to look far.
Looking back on my life, the book "The Rebellion of the 12 Warlords" was first published after 20 years, "Gia Dinh - Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City: Long Mile of History" was completed but had to wait 20 years to be published, but during that entire time, I never felt discouraged or wanted to give up. It was all because of passion that I waited...
Vietnamese history is heroic and proud , but in reality, history in schools today is not accepted by students. In your opinion, is the reason objective or is it because adults themselves cannot pass on their passion to the younger generation ?
- History is the inheritance and continuity, connecting the past to the present. Teaching history must relate past events to reality, even to politics and current events.
When I was in school, History was the subject that students loved the most. The teachers at that time based on the textbooks to prepare their own lessons, detailed and complete, relating to many aspects of life, making us very interested in learning. I remember my History teacher was the younger brother of Mr. Vo Nguyen Giap, who was teaching History at Thang Long Private School in Hanoi. Mr. Giap had a very good set of History lesson plans, we learned History from this set of lesson plans.
We learned about our ancestors, learned about the patriotic spirit of the peoples of the world, from which to foster patriotism and national pride in the Vietnamese people. Teachers not only taught us knowledge in textbooks but also taught us life lessons, the harsh realities of political life so that we could have our own lessons.
Nowadays, students only like to hang out, watch TV, use their phones, don't read, don't ask questions, teachers don't want to answer outside questions, only teach what's in the book, so it's natural that students are bored.
History is not just dry information and numbers on paper, but it is also the flow of life. History teachers not only teach knowledge but also a system of thinking and ideology. To change, to make students more interested in the glorious history of the nation, the first and most important thing is to change the teaching method. Teachers must prepare their own lessons, with passion and love for history, then they can pass that passion on to their students.
At 103 years old, he still diligently researches and continues to write. Is there a time when his historical facts are doubted by others ?
- Teaching history is different from writing history. When writing history, you have to be objective, don't put your subjective opinions and feelings into the book. "No one is perfect", so history cannot be all rosy. However, the perception of the person writing, reading, and perceiving history can only be filled with time, sometimes wrong, sometimes childish, so if there is a problem and today we can't find a way to tell the truth, then we will continue to wait.
Regardless of the regime or era, national governance is all about humans, and as humans, everyone makes mistakes. We can think wrongly, put forward wrong policies, but the important thing is to see mistakes and correct them, like President Ho did. And when correcting mistakes, we must do better, choose better things to correct mistakes.
After completing two books on the history of Gia Dinh - Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City, I am being ordered to continue writing the Dictionary of Administrative Place Names of the North and Central regions. At the same time, I am also completing an autobiography about myself as "ordered" by Secretary of the City Party Committee Nguyen Van Nen.
That will be the page that records my journey, associated with memories of my family, my hometown Nghe An, where I was born and raised, as well as the lands I have passed through and stopped at until now.
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