A dedicated and enthusiastic teacher

When the Faculty of Literature was still in Me Tri, every day students coming from Hanoi to study often saw a small, agile person, wearing a mahogany outfit, walking quickly from the bus station to the dormitory. That was Associate Professor Nguyen Van Tu, the Vice Dean of the Faculty whose name and career were closely linked to the arduous wartime days in the growth of the Faculty of Literature from the evacuation area in the mountains of Dai Tu, Thai Nguyen to all regions such as Ung Hoa, Van Giang, Ha Bac...

Working since the French resistance, Professor Tu had a habit of reacting quickly during wartime. That habit formed a pattern that continued during peacetime. Any cadre admired him very much. In a flash, he was seen shaking hands with a colleague or student and then walking quickly beside the train tracks. Before we could say hello, he was already sitting on the bus, his legs crossed. Although the bus was crowded, he still calmly took out a newspaper to read.

Associate Professor, Meritorious Teacher Nguyen Van Tu (1922-1988)

He is a Lexicographer and Vice Head of the Faculty of Philology, Hanoi University of Science (1971-1984).

During his lifetime, when lecturing, Associate Professor Nguyen Van Tu had a unique style. He often sat with his legs bent, his calves and ankles tightly twisted together like two ropes. He would sit in that position and passionately lecture on vocabulary for hours. Sometimes two hours. Later, many young cadres tried to sit in that position, but could not. They even fell over.

His sitting posture also became the subject of many folk songs and other compositions. It created a very unique characteristic of Nguyen Van Tu.

According to his biography, he was from Nam Ha (old). Before becoming a teacher, he had gone through many different revolutionary missions. Starting from the commune chairman. Then… over many years, he worked and studied on his own, becoming one of the senior lexicographers. Once, at a conference, I saw Professor Do Huu Chau happily introduce him as his old teacher, which was very surprising.

From a commune cadre, Professor Tu always maintained a simple style, sometimes casual, making people both love and not fear him, even though at that time, the Vice Dean of the Faculty seemed very big and powerful.

During the evacuation years, he and his faculty traveled everywhere. Wherever he went, people saw a university teacher who always wore a pair of mahogany pants and a short-sleeved, coarse cloth shirt (if it was summer) running around this village and that commune to urge work. In the situation where the head professor was always "floating" on high, taking care of the big things of "national affairs" and not paying much attention to small things, everything fell on his shoulders and Associate Professor Do Duc Hieu. Professor Tu did the organization work and was in charge of students, so he was the one who often had contact with students more. Because of that, there were many anecdotes surrounding him. But the funniest anecdote that later generations of students passed on to each other was the story of him "selling the faculty".

As a manager, Professor Tu had to deal with a lot of work every day and sign a lot of papers. At that time, he was still innocent and not as cunning as he would become later. He was also easy-going, so he had a habit: whenever he saw a student handing him a piece of paper, he would take out the pen from his pocket. The question he often asked was:

- Where do I sign?

Those were the times when he was in a hurry. Normally, he would glance at the content of the document before writing. At that time, he often took the bus from Thanh Xuan to Bo Ho because his house was all the way on Chan Cam Street, near Viet Duc Hospital. He was very enthusiastic about the department's work, so every day when he was on duty, he would often finish everything until almost noon before returning home. After finishing his work, he would run to the train station as fast as he could for fear of missing the last bus. He was small so he ran very fast. Students sometimes couldn't keep up with him.

Knowing his work schedule and easygoing personality, a mischievous student played a trick. He drafted a document with the following content: “The Faculty of Literature is currently in dire need of money to pay for staff. Now we consider it necessary to sell the faculty to get money to share Tet with the amount of 30,000 VND. I decided to sign this document and take full responsibility before the School and the superior agency.”

After finishing writing, he waited for the right moment when Professor Tu was running to the bus station and picked him up on the street. In a cheerful voice, he said:

- Sir, I'm in a hurry so I'm sorry to bother you at this hour.

Seeing the bus approaching from afar, Professor Tu did not have time to check his documents, took out his pen and asked immediately:

- Sign where?

The polite student:

- Sir, please sign here.

Professor Tu signed and handed the document back to his student. He took it back to his room. Everyone had a good laugh.

Hearing this story, later in a department meeting, I told it to Professor Tu. He smiled innocently and commented:

- First is devil, second is spirit, third is student.

Although he was the deputy head of the department for many years, busy with a myriad of tasks, he was still an enthusiastic scientist. When he retired, he left behind many valuable works whose names are still in the National Library and libraries nationwide.

Associate Professor, Meritorious Artist Nguyen Van Tu with friends and colleagues (far right, photo)

In terms of teaching, Professor Tu has trained many generations, including those who have become great experts in Vocabulary - Semantics such as Professor Do Huu Chau. As for his works, since he was still working, apart from his articles, he has also had some solid books such as:Modern Vietnamese vocabulary,Vietnamese words and vocabulary,Thesaurus; not to mention general writings such as:Vietnamese on the way of development(co-written with Nguyen Kim Than and Nguyen Trong Bau)...

It can be said that the simplicity and easy-going nature of his personality seems to be a good quality of a farmer in an intellectual. It makes him close to everyone and loved by everyone. I remember during the evacuation, the faculty moved everywhere, in every locality the local people were very helpful to the teachers and students of the Faculty of Literature because when meeting him, people saw that he was a truly "revolutionary" person - a revolutionary who went into the masses, sympathized and shared the worries of each person.

However, Professor Tu's simplicity sometimes makes it easy for others to take advantage of him. The most typical example is the case of an elderly student who took advantage of his signature to do something illegal.

At that time, under the subsidy regime, the issue of ideology was a matter of great importance. Therefore, in academic research and the enjoyment of “spiritual food”, there was a very clear division of boundaries. In Hanoi University of Science, students of the Faculty of Literature received a special preferential ticket: every month, they could watch movies or see plays that were not widely circulated in society but were only used for “internal” research. This type of film often attracted attention from the outside, so the staff at the cinema occasionally sold some tickets outside at a rather high price difference. Among the students, there were also some students with difficult family circumstances, who took advantage of such times to “secretly sell” the tickets they were given to earn some spending money. Knowing that Professor Tu had a very simple signature, an elderly student in a time of need came up with a plan to forge his signature to write an official letter to Dong Da cinema asking to buy a whole screening of a newly imported “problematic” foreign film. He then “sold” all the tickets for the screening to the market. When the screening began, the “cultural protection” police immediately discovered that the audience was full of street vendors. The screening was immediately stopped and Professor Tu was called to the police for a hearing. Only then did Professor Tu realize that his signature had been misused. The student was sentenced to expulsion. Professor Tu shook his head in dismay and said to me:

- I have to change my signature. Our students are terrible these days.

When he changed his signature, it was just a little crooked and still very simple. But after that, no student did that again because the expulsion sentence reminded them to set an example.

During his many years as Vice-President, Professor Nguyen Van Tu, as well as the Board of Directors at that time, did not care about any benefits. He lived a clean life in all its meanings. Only the handkerchief in his pocket was sometimes “not very clean”. It also became a very lovely funny story about him.

As mentioned above, in the department he is an expert in Lexicology. In addition, he also directly taught the subjects: Semantics, Ho Chi Minh Language for many courses. In his lectures, there was a section explaining foreign words imported from English and French. Students remember the way he taught words most. He excitedly said: What is a lo mu xoa? It is this. In Vietnamese, we call it a handkerchief...

As he spoke, he took out a crumpled, stained handkerchief from his pocket. He did this in every class, so his chalk-covered handkerchief had discolored the white handkerchief. Sometimes it still had a layer of chalk dust from another class during the previous lesson. Sometimes the students laughed. He laughed too. His gray hair was slightly raised.

In general, Professor Tu's teaching style is very easy to understand. He does not pretend to bring up some new concepts that foreign scholars have just introduced. Although he knows French, Chinese and Russian, while speaking, he always tries to find the simplest way to explain to help students quickly grasp the basic knowledge of the subject.

Despite his busy schedule, every year he actively participated in guiding students' graduation theses (at that time, they were not called graduation theses as they are now). He was the type of person who guided a lot. And everyone knew that guiding theses at that time was a complete dedication, without any compensation.

In science, Professor Nguyen Van Tu is a very hard-working person. In addition to being as busy as a baby, he still has regular articles and books published. In particular, there are projects that require a lot of effort and real concern such asVietnamese thesaurus, but he still completed it with all his heart. Those were truly serious scientific works, which had been introduced in France.

Until the last days of his life, Professor Nguyen Van Tu still read books and taught his grandchildren. In his eighties, he still wrote articles such asHe teaches his grandchildrento help people with teaching. He was a truly useful person until his death.

In his generation, he was perhaps the most innocent and carefree person. That carefreeness made him live long and live lightly, and his departure into eternity was as light as the departure of a fairy. When his students came to see him off, they saw him lying with a peaceful face as if he had no more debts in this world. The State awarded him the title of Excellent Teacher. But all the titles and positions now flew away with the wind to Heaven. Only his figure seemed to still be there, every day quickly going from the bus stop to the faculty office like that time.