Majestic

It was related to a national event so I decided to put "him" on Facebook and edit it into a post, not knowing if it would make him angry. Apart from a handsome face and an intelligent face, his "meat" was not as impressive as his identity.
More than 40 years ago, after my military term ended, I returned to continue my third year of the so-called "ten-year literature foundation" (literature class K18, Hanoi University). I saw him in class, a handsome 19-year-old boy. We were all hungry but thirsty for knowledge, so he, I, and one or two other students went to study guitar with Mr. Trinh Dinh Thi in Hoa Binh alley, Kham Thien street. After a few months, he dropped out. After probing, I found out he didn't have money for the tuition (four dong). I, with a salary of a corporal and a change of profession, offered to sponsor him, but he flatly refused. I've been paying attention to him ever since.
He seemed delusional and confident when he "charged" at the faculty's beauty queen. Unable to destroy the "fortified citadel", he seemed dialectical, enlightened, and not sad.
Writing a thesis was so hard. Successfully defending it felt like a burden had been lifted off our shoulders. We all lay down in the sand pit for the long jump. It was cold and dry... suddenly he sat up and said: Now I suddenly want to die! We all were shocked to see that he was right. It was the feeling of loss and uncertainty about leaving school...40 years later. No one died, but everyone grew old because of the struggle to make a living. People found each other and often said: He did not earn any academic titles or government positions, but many people who were mandarins, mandarins, or had any problems asked him for advice. He gave hungry students money to eat out, he gave them tickets to go home to visit their sick mothers... none of the students who loved him were beauty queens.
My close friends are all those who were close to him such as Nguyen Hai Trieu, Pham Thanh Hung, Pham Quang Long, Pham Gia Lam... every time talking about him, they all show sympathy for a talented person but poor, playful, carefree. He was very enthusiastic about social work, working as Secretary of the Faculty Youth Union, Standing Committee of the School Youth Union in the post-war period when the stomach was empty but the movement was growing rapidly. Then the General School was dissolved, the University of Social Sciences and Humanities was established, he was the Standing Committee of the School Union for many years, had many initiatives to unite people, develop the school... and was very dedicated to his work.

When I wandered around Hanoi to work for the Van Nghe newspaper, I often called him to drink beer and eat at the pub. Honestly, I was fed up with his "carefree" lifestyle. After all, we were journalists from the provinces to the central government, so we had to earn a living. I said: "You should focus on your family, wife and children, what good is rolling around like this?". He laughed, spontaneously reciting some lines of poetry in the style of "Tran Con's poetry", who was also my brother and friend:
I tear my life into small change
The market of love is in ruins.
Wish to have hair loss fly away once
Suddenly from the mud to the green distance...
I quickly wrote down those verses and memorized them because I saw that he was like me, full of troubles, tearing his life into a thousand different things.
Around 2006, 17 years ago, we met by chance in Sam Son. I opened my bag and offered him a sweet potato because I had to diet. He thoughtfully said:
- I'm old, I'm over fifty, fifty years old and know my destiny, stop having fun, stop writing, in ten years I'll retire, I'll stop working in the union. Stop writing, Mr. Ha Van Tan had a stroke when he was 63, stopped writing, in total he had 116 research articles. Just writing is enough for me.
From then on, his short, serious, and thoughtful research articles poured out from nowhere, printed everywhere on all kinds of topics: folklore, classical literature, language, anthropology, culture, religion, architecture, archaeology... Up to now, he has written more than 100 articles. Quite impressive.
Then suddenly he often appeared on VTV, searching for relics of temples, pagodas, and shrines and giving comments like a general. I don't know when he learned to read or if he thought of it himself. At first, about 15 years ago, he spoke a bit stuttering, swallowed words, I called to give him frank comments. Now he's good.
My hometown has an ancient pagoda from the time when Buddha King Tran Nhan Tong traveled to Champa (which later led to the political marriage between Princess Huyen Tran and King Che Man), he built a hermitage and stayed to preach, now 710 years old. People restored it, but the core part, that is, the Han Nom characters, had to be done by Master Ha Noi. When Master Ha Noi came, it was magnificent. A group of officials gathered around a person and talked nonsense. I looked curiously and blurted out: "Vi! What are you doing here?" The group of officials seemed displeased because I dared to call him "Master Ha Noi" so rudely. That's him! I don't know when he learned Chinese characters. It turned out that all the Chinese parallel sentences, more than 10 pairs, were composed by him, and the large characters on the 16 horizontal lacquered boards were selected by him from the vast ocean of Buddhist idioms. The organizing committee, with the participation of the Church, sent the manuscripts north and south, asking learned Buddhist laymen for comments. As a result, not a single word was corrected. I remember him in French class back then.
When the pagoda was inaugurated, he was asked to write the script for the Hoan Phuc Pagoda Historical and Cultural Relic Festival and trusted him to be the general director. He wrote the rituals, the sacrifices, the festivals, and directed the folk traditions, rehearsals, and other things. The first festival was a big hit, especially the midnight water procession from Troc Vuc to bathe the statues. The whole district came in droves to attend.
I remember the first day of the festival, he seemed to have jumped into the house from the sky, saying as if giving an order: “Let me go to Le Thuy to meet some Ho Khoan ladies”. His hair was messy, his dark blue windbreaker did not match his rather modest height. He looked more like an old man selling fried cakes than a university teacher.
On the bus, he said that this morning he had a meeting with the provincial delegation that had traveled overnight to Hanoi. He presented the script and they asked him to get on the plane and fly here right away, without having time to go home to change properly. But whatever he wore, he looked like a farmer's father.
I drove him back to his hometown, straight to the Department of Culture and Information to meet Thuy, the deputy head of the department. He confidently proposed a plan and requested to gather the Ho Khoan club immediately to work. I also drove Thuy to Ly's house (Meritorious Artist Nguyen Thi Ly), head of the Le Thuy Ho Khoan Club, in Dai Phong village. The artists had all gathered. I knew a few of them. He introduced me and the department's staff as if he were the leader of the group... and immediately requested to listen to the singing. It felt like a fish in water.
Those ladies sang really well. I listened to them many times and still loved them. Suddenly, he stepped out, raised his hands like a conductor: "Okay! Great! I will write a Ho khoan, you guys will practice it and after Tet we will perform it at the festival. Agreed!" That day was the 15th day of the 12th lunar month.
The whole club was stunned when he pulled my hand and left to find a motel. Mrs. Ly followed me, grabbed my shirt and asked: “Eng Tuong! Is this guy crazy?”. That’s right, so many “cadres” went to study and never came back. People know that.
From then until Tet, he lived in my hometown, did not get involved with any girl, and got hold of a Le Thuy Ho Khoan club that had survived many ups and downs. I don’t know when he started learning, but he could immediately sing all 6 songs and composed songs for them.
I remember that afternoon, he sat down and finished typing the extremely long Huyen Thoai Phat Hoang Tran Nhan Tong Van Chau performance, singing for 11 minutes. He asked me to take him back to Mrs. Ly's house at 9 pm to give him the performance. Mrs. Ly received the performance, read it quickly, then exclaimed: "Oh my! You wrote it so easily", and sang a part in the style of Van Chau Hue:
…Over the steep Ngang Pass
Birds cry sadly, gibbons sing in the distance
Gianh River and Nhat Le River gradually pass by
Beyond Hac Hai is Kien Giang.

Beautiful scenery of the river as silk
The shadow of Than Dinh Mountain falls on the slope
Simple and honest residents
Is this the realm of the twelve Buddha realms?

Namo Amitabha Buddha…

He is truly talented, at noon on the car he was asking about this mountain and that river and now he can write it down quickly and smoothly. That is the path of Tran Nhan Tong's propagation of Buddhism to my hometown Le Thuy.
The next day, he typed a 4-act scene called "Going down the boat to Quan Pagoda festival" and sent it back, then returned to Dong Hoi, boarded a plane to Hanoi to take care of other things for the festival.
Then, this is shocking: Where did he get the money to take that club with its hands and feet covered in mud that had never left the commune to exchange everywhere, from his hometown Nghe Tinh to his sister's hometown Phu Yen, to Bac Ninh, to Hanoi... Not only that, he asked for money from his old students to take the artists over 80 years old to Hanoi for the first time to visit Uncle Ho's Mausoleum, to the General's house to burn incense. Then he saw VTV broadcasting live Ho Khoan singing right on the shore of Hoan Kiem Lake.
After two years of traveling, he printed and gave me a book of 130 Ho Khoan songs he composed for the people to sing. I read a few of them and then put them aside in a pile of books. Unexpectedly, at the National Folk Song and Music Festival held in Quang Ninh province in 2018, the song Lia Trau he wrote won the Gold Medal. People thought it was a folk song from long ago. Some writers even carelessly used it in their live performances because they also thought it was a folk song from the past.
In the end, Ho khoan Le Thuy was honored as a NATIONAL INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE.
He also helped the district organize a grand death anniversary ceremony for Thac Canh Le Thanh Hau Nguyen Huu Canh at his mausoleum. The eulogy he wrote resonated as well as the Proclamation of Victory over the Wu. He also helped contribute to the national heritage of boat racing on Kien Giang River.
Riding on the momentum, he wrote a stage play called The Legendary Song of Vo Nguyen Giap, 70% of which was folk music, performed for tens of thousands of viewers, and VTV8 broadcast the entire program live.
When I met him again, I asked him how many songs he had written, and he said it was a little over 200. I just thought, the songs for wedding singing were 19, the songs for Hat Bai Choi were 23/24 cards, and many others. Whatever people needed, he wrote. So awesome. If printed, it would be a thick book. But he didn't print it, he just took pictures and gave them to friends and artists. He said:
- Let's go with the folk music, brother. They like it and sing it a lot, that's enough for them. It's all in my computer, not anywhere else. I came from the folk music, so let's give back to the people a little of my effort. I consider all the folk artists in this world to be my so-called "Professional Ancestor". Making offerings to the Professional Ancestor is a virtue, the right thing to do."
On the full moon of January, we organized Vietnam Poetry Day for Quang Binh several times. Near the opening time, he crawled out from a crack and asked to read. He read and felt secure. The poems he composed were about the people and the land of my homeland. The hall was noisy. An old member exclaimed: "The Central Poet is different!"
But in his old age, he was quite well off, where did he find work in this dry central region? When I took him out, he generously paid for the gas for my poor four-wheeled vehicle. As for buying gifts for the artisans, oh my, the trunk was full. I don't know where he got the money from when he gave all his pension to his wife.
Recently, when a friend of mine came back from the US, we visited Professor Nguyen Kim Dinh. He said: “That’s Vi! People in my hometown, when they watch TV, call him “Mr. Trạng Nguyên” because in his head there is a mountain of knowledge to teach the people.”
Now, we can't say his little "butt" isn't MAGNIFICENT. If anyone has a photo, please post it up for everyone to see his handsome face.