Talking with "Artist" - Associate Professor Ninh Viet Giao about: Nghe An folk culture in the "flat world"
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| Associate Professor Ninh Viet Giao |
In the spring of the year of the Rat, we visited him before he prepared for a trip to “go North, South, West and East”. Several invitations to his participation in seminars on VHDG were sent to us at the same time when we entered the apartment building C3, Quang Trung, Vinh city, Nghe An. The room was filled with rare books. Books on the walls, on the windows, the vents and on the table...
PV:Dear Associate Professor, what opportunity brought you to the path of scientific research, studying the cultural heritage of a land that is not your "place of birth"?
Associate Professor Ninh Viet Giao:When I was in high school, I was better at natural sciences. But when it came time to take the university entrance exam, I thought simply, in natural sciences, in Vietnam, if we invent a theorem, find a rule, it is very difficult. But with social sciences and humanities, if we study it, there will be many interesting things. So, I applied for the Literature major at Hanoi Pedagogical University... I am also a lover of literature, that love was passed on to me by my mother through her lullabies. A humane and beautiful world is shown through each lyric, folk song, which has permeated my soul since childhood... So, when I was a student, I "paid attention" to folk literature and classical literature. I started researching this field, and had an article published in the magazine "Van Su Dia"... After graduating, the school intended to keep me as a lecturer, but I refused. Mr. Truong Tuu advised: “If you stay in Hanoi, you should go into the field of modern literature research, and if you stay in the locality, you should go into folk literature. In folk literature, there is a genre that no one has explored yet: riddles. When you teach high school, you should spend time collecting and studying them”…
Following the advice of Professor Truong Tuu, in 1956, the young man Ninh Viet Giao went to Nghe An, working as a literature teacher at Huynh Thuc Khang High School. Nghe An, a land mentioned a lot in history books, now revealed in the mind of the young teacher from Thanh Hoa with unexplored cultural layers. Riddles were a completely new field. During his field trips, the young teacher Ninh Viet Giao heard many simple, rustic, yet very intelligent folk riddles... Unable to record them all by himself, he suggested that the school launch a movement for students to collect riddles. After 2 years, he had thousands of riddles in his hands, which could be compiled into a book. And so, "Vietnamese Riddles" - his first compilation work was published. It was a thin book, about 200 pages, but it had the meaning of opening and leading to nearly fifty scientific research, compilation, and research works; There are works with 6000 pages - 9 volumes such as "Treasure of Verses"... In 2001, he received the State Prize for Literature and Arts (first round) with a group of works: Hat Phuong Vai (1961, 1984), Ve VHDG Nghe Tinh (1982), Quynh Luu Cultural Geography (1988)...
PV:Professor, what made you passionate about discovering and preserving the treasure trove of folk cultural values of Nghe An?
Associate Professor Ninh Viet Giao:After the success of the first book, I understood that my life's "mission" was the folklore of Nghe An. The appeal of the folklore of Nghe An is enormous. Hidden in each verse, story, legend and tangible and intangible cultural characteristics are the centuries-old past of the people of Nghe An - the former frontier region of Vietnam. "Hat phuong vai" was completed in 1961, a work that attracted the attention of public opinion and academics, and I am also very satisfied with this work. When mentioning the folklore of Nghe An, we must mention hat phuong vai, hat vi dam with many rich melodies. There, the distinctive voice of the Nghe people is displayed in a smooth and attractive way, the content of the lyrics in the Vi Dam singing reflects the hard life, the persistent struggle with nature and war for centuries... Nothing else but the pure, pristine beauty of folk songs, proverbs, folk songs, legends, fairy tales, the precious qualities of the land and people of Nghe An has attracted and enticed me to follow, to learn deeply, to research my whole life... I think that my comments on Nghe An folk literature from my youth, from the mid-1950s until now, are still difficult to replace, even difficult to add much...
PV:And in the “flat world”, amidst the current “globalization” whirlwind, how will the Nghe An folk cultural values that Associate Professor has sought and preserved survive and develop? Or in other words, what will be their fate?
Associate Professor Ninh Viet Giao:When the concept of a “flat world” was introduced by American journalist Thomas L. Friedman, with the meaning that all “bumps” in all categories of borders, territories, national sovereignty, political and social regimes, preservation of cultural identity, differences in religion, race, history, geography…, all must be maintained, protected, and handled in a way that contributes to the “flatness” of the world; every country must behave like that if it does not want to isolate itself… then in my mind, I still wonder why the word “Xu” Nghe, which only appeared and was used in administration for a few decades, around the middle of the 15th century, compared to the word “tran” Nghe An which was officially used throughout many centuries until the beginning of the Nguyen Dynasty… but then, in the end, until the 21st century, the word “Xu” remains. Explaining this, we will see the law of movement and development of “impossible” cultural values. From that, it can be inferred that globalization with its "terrible" power will not necessarily "flatten" everything, especially in the cultural and spiritual fields.
PV:But, many other researchers and scholars have predicted that there will be a shaking of those values...
Associate Professor Ninh Viet Giao:In the "flat world", to survive and rise, one must have "vitality". The vitality of Nghe An's VHDG certainly exists and will continue. I would like to illustrate with examples in the family field. Nghe An used to be a frontier town, the forefront of the country. Living conditions and living space were very harsh, so Nghe An residents had to constantly struggle. At that time, what strength did they have to preserve and protect their families? Such a living environment forced families and even larger clans to create for themselves a solid but fragile invisible fence - that is family tradition. Thus, the education was serious, strict, even sometimes quite conservative and harsh according to the rules of each family, gradually over time forming the tradition of Nghe An's family tradition. There will be "shaking" but not "being flattened", that is a two-sided shaking. It will strengthen cultural and spiritual values, and at the same time, adjust and refine those that have proven to be outdated and unsuitable for the new era; build and develop new cultural and spiritual values. For example, the patriarchal and conservative nature of many Nghe An families in the past has caused family members to lose their dynamism. The “flat world” will change that, because later generations have a different perception of the role of the individual. Right now, we have seen that socio-economic conditions have shifted to a new “substance” that is dynamic, creative and autonomous, so its operation will “sweep” along, control every individual, every institution to self-adjust accordingly… If there are still a few families and clans that resist that rule, it will certainly lead to conflict… The “shaking” caused by “globalization” affecting the cultural and spiritual values of Nghe An can be inferred from the small example above.
PV:But we have a state apparatus with full cultural institutions, Professor, should we just let everything happen naturally?
Associate Professor Ninh Viet Giao:What the state, cultural institutions, and management agencies in this field will do in the “flat world” is a big question. But I think we must awaken the pride of bloodline, pride in the values of Vietnamese and local cultural heritage, honor the values that have been preserved throughout history; artisans, culturalists. Widely promote the beauty of behavior, interpersonal relationships between people, between people and organizations. It has always been the same, when you go to a house, just by looking at the way the children respond, behave, and walk, you will immediately know whether that family has family traditions and customs or not. That is the result of a process, the effort of many people: parents, teachers, relatives and neighbors. Witnessing a collision, resolving a conflict, a dispute, we will see who is a good person, who is a person with high cultural level... All the good and bad aspects belong to our community, no one can deny their responsibility. How can we make it so that when Nghe people go to other regions, they will be respected for their traditional good cultural qualities but also easily integrate into the life of the native place...
Through the window, a ray of golden spring afternoon sunlight penetrated and rested on the white hair of Associate Professor Ninh Viet Giao. 75 years old, and more than half a century of diligently researching Nghe An culture and education, living in Nghe An, but I still recognized in him the personality and character of a scholar who did not care about fame and fortune, only knew how to speak the truth and not succumb to any obstacle... Perhaps it was thanks to that, that he achieved many successes in his career. I remember Associate Professor Ninh Viet Giao's warm Thanh Hoa accent, on a spring day in Nghe An.
Tran Hoai - Tran Hai
