I often imagine such a meeting scene between Nguyen Tuan and Thach Lam. My mother never (and probably because I didn’t ask), when she was alive, never talked about the time when Nguyen Tuan came to the house to give Thach Lam a set of tea sets.
It was just dawn; the thick fog from the night before was like the soul of a work lover who saw the first light of the day hastily dispersed on the surface of West Lake, like industrious workers in a hurry to the workplace. Inside Yen Phu flower village, flower growers who had begun to carry the products of labour days hastily walked towards Yen Phu dyke and then dispersed to the market areas to distribute fragrance and colours to the young women dreamy. On Yen Phu dike at that time, the driver had just stopped running and put two forks on the road. A medium-sized man wearing a white western suit and a white felt hat slowly got out of the car. He carefully held in his hand a mahogany brown cloth, instructed when the driver would return to pick him up and then slowly walked down the dike, turning into a small village road in the opposite direction with colourful flower baskets. Passing the pavilion with a picture of a yellow tiger with black stripes, in front of the communal house is a long and small pond with some dead lotus leaves left; he gently pushed the wooden gate of the first house on the road. It was a thatched cottage next to West Lake, a bamboo bush swayed slightly in front of the house, and he saw the side of the house overlooking the lake, the willow branches glistening with leaves still wet with dew. He stood in front of the bamboo house, softly calling: Ms Lan, Ms Lan. The door was ajar, and a petite woman with bare hair poked her head out: Mr Tuan, you came to play early. My family is in the writing room, invite you to play. The man entered the house, leaving the cloth cover on the wooden table; just then, the owner of the small room came out. The owner is thin and tall, with delicate features, deep eyes and thick eyebrows. The two shook hands: he was sitting and playing; he hadn’t seen him for a long time and thought he was going somewhere far away. The two sat on two rattan chairs at either end of the table; the guest unwrapped the cloth and laid out a tea set and a small tea box on the table: please give me a pot of boiling water. The host curiously looked at the tea set: a red cinnabar teapot, a white glazed porcelain saucer on the bottom of the dish painted with unicorns with long entwined tails, like an old map. One bowl and one cup have the same pattern as the table plate, and the other cup depicts four people sitting in a boat enjoying the scenery by the water with large rocks and a small tree reaching out. On this citadel are seven Chinese characters, which must be a verse. The owner smiled and asked: I don’t know if this is the tea set in “earth pots” and “tea cups in the morning dew”. I have no doubts about what you write. Guests knew that the owner was only joking, but he still thanked a literary friend of the same love when noting touching criticisms of his newly printed short story. I also had to go far away, so I came with him to have a few cups of tea to say goodbye. Also, I would like to give you the family tea set. When I drink tea, I will remember this Nguyen. A furnace fire was brought up with a copper kettle, the coals in the furnace fire were red, and the foam was bursting. The customer opened a new box of Tie Guan Yin tea that he found yesterday and skillfully and slowly made tea. The two quietly enjoyed tea and gently talked about literary and literal stories. They have a lot to talk about because they are two writers of the same age, at the same time, famous for their insightful and sophisticated writings on the culinary arts and elegant pleasures of the past and present. Both of them could get rid of the vanity; one had just printed the Lac Oil Lamp, and the other had the manuscript of Ten Years of Flames in hand. Are they Ba Nha Tu Ky of Van Chuong?
I often imagine such a meeting scene between Nguyen Tuan and Thach Lam. My mother never (and probably because I didn’t ask), when she was alive, never talked about the time when Nguyen Tuan came to the house to give Thach Lam a set of tea sets. I only once saw my mother put a teapot and a plate with three white enamel tea cups painted in blue and blue on the altar on the day of Thach Lam’s death anniversary; she told us: this teapot and teacups were made by the writer. Nguyen Tuan gave him; he was very precious when he was alive. I remember those days when we were in the South, and I was just a toddler on the threshold of high school, just starting to get lost in the world of pre-war literature, knowing something about Thach Lam and Tu Luc Van Doan. I still have never wondered and found out where this tea set has been, since the day Thach Lam died, June 27, 1942, three days after I was born. After my father’s death, my mother only stayed in the willow tree house next to West Lake for a couple of months; my grandmother, because she saw the scene of the three grandchildren, sent us to Cam Giang camp and handed it over to my mother as a butler for the centre. Here the three of us lived peacefully until the nationwide resistance movement broke out. At that time, my grandmother was ordained while at the temple when visiting the camp. When the resistance movement was launched, my family followed the evacuees to the north, and gradually settled in a small and impoverished village in Nha Nam, Yen The. During the early days of the evacuation, my family was temporarily housed in a small room near the granary of a kind country family. According to my sister, one day, my mother returned to Cam Giang to review the situation; when we returned, the room we temporarily stayed in had burned down, and the family’s memorial relics, such as pictures, books and Thach Lam’s manuscript pages were all melted into ashes. Our family has lived for more than three years in the charming village of Dia; I remember the whole family huddled in a small tent where the previous owner used to store farm tools. The thatched-roof shack has loose walls; the door is open; on rainy days, the roof leaks and I often sit and watch the bubbles from the water on the roof drip into the ditch outside the porch. I don’t think my mother was carrying a fragile tea set at the time; although she still had a brown handle, I never opened it to peek. If my mother had that precious tea set, would she be willing to sell it to a rich man in the village to overcome our poverty, hunger and meals, and rice with potatoes and cassava? Until my grandmother inquired and found my family; when I followed the guide back to Hai Phong, day and night, I still remember the nights when I was hiding in the graveyard and saw bullets of fire like ghosts flying vertically on the head. In Hai Phong and then moving back to Hanoi until moving to the South, my family changed places at least four or five times, each time just living in a tiny room; I never once saw a house with tea utensils.
Where were the teapots and teacups, for some time more than a year old? Those who can shed light on the dark side of life are now gone, and questions and inquiries about memories and events related to a person are always remembered late membrane. Is it possible that when our mother and daughter left Cam Giang camp with peaceful days, my grandmother, who had spent so much effort to create a place for her children and grandchildren to have days to gather and rest, had returned? To see her beloved house one last time, she hastily collected the family’s memorabilia; she saw the tea set of the child she loved the most but destined to be young, and she left those relics in the box—the brown hand of a monastic. Since then, the tea suit of a bygone era has crept to follow my grandmother, hiding under the roofs of Dao Xuyen and Boi Khe pagodas in Hung Yen to hide from Viet Minh soldiers who are looking for traces of Nguyen Tuong Tam’s family. , then returned to the Citadel safely in the temple of Hai Ba Trung, Dong Nhan ward, Hanoi, where I had been eating bananas and worshipping the Buddha for more than two months; because of my high life, I had to rely on the Buddha’s door for my loved ones to be saved. , then followed the grand caravan of migrants to the South. My grandmother temporarily stayed at Van Thanh Thi Nghe pagoda, a very short bridge from my family’s home. Maybe that’s when the tea set was handed over to my mother so that Thach’s soul Lam every Tet anniversary, relives the past in West Lake.
I inherited the teapot and tea set from the day my mother died. Every year, my brother still celebrates Thach Lam’s death anniversary, and we have not forgotten to leave the tea set on the altar for many years. We still consider the anniversary of the death anniversary as a day of family gatherings and close relatives, and the meeting now is a day we remind more of our mother than Thach Lam. We often remind her of the food she prepares thoughtfully and thoughtfully, like a daily meal for Thach Lam. She never forgets to buy a bouquet of carnations to remember the older adults. . We also did not forget to fill two tea cups to place on the altar, and the teapot was present as a part of Thach Lam’s life. Why should I keep the tea set? Maybe when my mother died, my brother was still single, and my wife gave birth to her three grandchildren. I have brought the teapot out to look at it a couple of times, especially after reading the book Vang Ball A Time by Nguyen Tuan many times. When reading the passage: “The old man’s kettle is very precious. It’s hot. The Duc colour chicken liver. First The Duc chicken liver, second Luu Boi, third Manh Than. Grandpa’s The Duc is very tall. My strong but moist Manh Than at home, just used it, so it’s not very tall” I also curiously looked into the heart of the earthen pot to see how many layers it has and once put the teapot on the cover of a book to see the mouth. The faucet with handle and the edge of the mouth of the kettle bite close to the surface of the book cover, and sometimes more sophisticated, drop the teapot into the water bowl to see if it floats evenly, balances each other like Nguyen Tuan described in the story. Earth Kettles. Around 1974, I asked a friend who knew Chinese to read me the two Chinese seals on the top of the pot and was as happy as if I had caught gold when I found out it was indeed a Duc teapot. An antique collector who came to see the teapot, the saucer, and three teacups paid for it with my two months’ salary as a hospital doctor, but a family memento, is an artefact that has been included in the literature, I can’t bear to leave.
I am now over seventy years old, an old age, and I think everything in life, from life and death, fate, wealth, and poverty to the love of husband and wife, father and son, and friends, can all be tied to each other word karma, word grace. If it had a soul, the tea set to me would be indebted to each other. The riot of losing my home ended in 1975; my family was fortunately evacuated in the last days of the war, but leaving with empty hands was a grace of heaven and earth. During my first years in a foreign country, having to start over with limp steps in life, I never cared about the tea set. In just a split second, the material possessions and precious books had to be left behind, let alone fragile things like a tea set. The books and newspapers I printed, the manuscripts of many short stories that have not yet been published, and the literary dream I had always cherished now dissolve like bubbles. The burden of family in front of me kept my feet on the ground, chained to the reality of human life. Unexpectedly, a cousin who had lived in France for a long time with her boyfriend said she would visit me after visiting Washington. At that time, my family was living in a small province in southwestern New York state with the help of Protestants, and also, on the way, my sister wanted to visit Niagara Falls. A surprise I could never have imagined was that among the gifts she brought me, there were tea sets, teapots and tea sets that I had forgotten as if I had forgotten other dear things. Through correspondence, it was still challenging at that time; with my brother and with my maternal family, I had yet to hear anyone mention the tea set I had left in the house. Could it be that in the panicky days of a city with no future, my mother-in-law brought back my belongings and books and, in the meantime, burned or sold professional or art books at the flea market? , medical tools; she, for some reason, kept my family’s relic tea set to give to my brother.
In the days of change, deprived of all the labours of cultivation, freedom and dignity of a human being, the sister-in-law had to work hard to gradually sell her properties in the flea market to take care of her children. And her husband in the study camp, the tea set still clings to our family, like a regular part of Thach Lam. Maybe in the context of a bleak future, with no hope of a reunion, my sister-in-law packed up a family tea set and moved across an ocean of obstacles, a boundary between grip and freedom, as the last word. The tea set that had to leave that homeland must have been painful at times while wandering halfway around the world from Saigon through Paris to Washington and then stopping in a small province with only a few people. Compatriot, the plate on the table containing the tea cups, like a mother who wants to protect her children, has broken in a corner. I looked at the broken pieces of porcelain on the plate; it hurt like someone had cut my hand. My wife and I went to buy five or seven kinds of porcelain glue, struggled for half a day to fix the broken pieces and thought about how many elements in life nothing could mend.
The earthen pot and tea set have followed me for over half my life. More than half of my life has been spent in a residence that is not my home country, and the difference between days and years can easily fall to this land. In a time long in numbers but very short in the soul, I have had to move at least more than the fingers on one hand; the tea set was once wrapped in cloth torn, in a diary or a glass cabinet in the living dining room. If I remember correctly, there was never a time when I dared to bring it out to serve friends or make a pot of tea to drink alone. There is something sacred somewhere, like the ghosts of so many older adults, that made me turn a household item into an object of worship. Besides, while struggling for a living in a foreign country, old and new friends, few people can sit idle sipping tea aroma, discussing politeness in a place where people can turn their time Into the present. There was also a reasonably long time after having balanced my life; I also fell into the trifles of tea drinking. I also go looking for teapots with different shapes, dragon carvings and phoenixes that change colour when boiling water penetrates the skin of the kettle; I also hang out at tea houses when travelling. I was in China trying to find flavours in my mind, and when I went to Hangzhou, the tea capital, I dared to spend and buy several quantities of Yu Tea, which, by weight, should be approximately the same as the price of gold at the time. But there’s nothing like having a so-called confidant to sit and enjoy a small teapot on a snowy day, so oh my gosh, maybe I’m my confidant. I am still determining where the teapot and tea set has been lurking in the house in recent years. A glass case for displaying precious plaster figurines, crystal ornaments, and teapots I collected, my wife gave to her newly purchased daughter. Like every capable woman, my wife has the gift of storing valuables in places where they can’t be found. It’s been a long time since, every five or seven months, I hear the news that an old friend or someone my age has quietly passed away, at an age where waking up every morning was a blessing life gave me. , I once gathered four children to discuss the distribution of the remaining artefacts in the house, a few old clocks with nicknames, and a few barrels of wine from famous production regions, in the tenth year. paintings by some Vietnamese painters living or dead, porcelain or plaster statues… Particularly for the collection of sketches by Nguyen Gia Tri and the tea set by Nguyen Tuan for Thach Lam, I always want to keep to contribute a small part of the relics for a museum or memorial house of Tu Luc Van Doan when these facilities are established and managed by people who love culture and art with goodwill.
I will not have the opportunity to work hard to write the words about the earthen pot and tea cup set by Nguyen Tuan for Thach Lam to have the chance to look back and learn about the remembrance that has had a charm with me for over half a century, if about a month ago Nguyen Tuong Thiet, my cousin, had not called me to inquire about this tea set. Thiet told me: the earthen pot Nguyen Tuan gave Thach Lam is an exciting story; why don’t you write a few lines about it? Thiet let me know that he visited me more than half a year ago, mainly to see with his own eyes the earthenware that Nguyen Tuan meticulously described in his short story, but because of things he forgot to ask about. For me, the earthenware pot and the tea set are often no longer present, but only memories related to my father, my mother, the cottage in West Lake and the talented writer Nguyen Tuan once came to me. Visit a time far away, as if only in a dream. After all, day of rummaging, my wife finally found the teapot and the set of dishes in a plastic bag hidden deep in the bookshelf. These days not many people have time to read a printed book. . When I saw the tea set, I was dumbfounded, as if I had met a friend who tried to remember but didn’t want to meet. I have long since forgotten the pleasures of drinking tea, listening to music, and reading books. The literary dream of a lifetime that I dreamed of, now I honestly want to forget it. I want to stay healthy to live the rest of my life as an old, sick person who no longer wants to bother myself. But the table plate containing the teacups after moving or because the healing lines were too long exposed scattered debris. While my wife struggled to patch up the broken pieces, I curiously looked at the drawings on the inside of the plate and the sides of the bowl; the Chinese characters on the scale and the cup seemed similar, and the seven Chinese characters printed on one. The out-of-tone cup must have been a verse, and I suddenly wondered where these tiny, beautiful, and ancient things came from. Since I have a young friend who is fluent in Chinese characters, who once showed me his poems written in Chinese, I hurriedly packed an earthen pot and a set of tea cups to ask him to read for me. He told me something about the special clay mixed with sand in the Yixing district of Jiangsu, where the teapots of The Duc, Luu Boi, and Manh Than were produced. The two words “Noi Phu” in the plate and cup are the products of Hue blue-glazed porcelain (Bleus de Hué) typical of the Le/Trinh Sam dynasties through the Tay Son Dynasty and lasted until the first few dynasties of the Nguyen Gia Long Dynasty. . I think these artefacts are also around two centuries old, have been gently cherished by the skilful fingers of the Nguyen Tuan family. One day far away, Tu Hai Van Nguyen An Lan sat drinking tea; Kha Kha told stories of a time to the talented eldest son, the son who carried in him the Gypsy blood as a testimony of the family, Nguyen Tuan.
I still need to understand what circumstances brought together two talented writers of two different writing styles, Nguyen Tuan, a fussy and disdainful person, and Thach Lam, a quiet and meticulous person. In mid-June 1940, Thach Lam wrote a review of Nguyen Tuan’s Vang Ball Mot Thoi in the Daily newspaper. Poet Dinh Hung, a young friend who is often present at Thach Lam’s house, only met Nguyen Tuan there once; indeed, the friendship between the two is not only counted in encounters. Fifteen years after Thach Lam’s death, in July 1957, amid the vibrant Northern art scene about the Nhan Van Giai Pham case, the time when literary works of the Tu Luc Van Doan group such as Khai Hung, Nhat Linh, Hoang Dao, Thach Lam were considered taboo and reactionary (a friend I met in Hanoi in 1994, the principal of a famous girls’ high school, told me about it when I was in the Tien Youth Union. Just because of the handwritten story Under the Shadow of Hoang Lan by Thach Lam which was heavily examined), Nguyen Tuan wrote an essay praising Thach Lam’s literature for some reason. Thirty-one years later, in 1973, Nguyen Tuan presented Thach Lam with his paper Gio Lua and a month later wrote about Com; maybe after so many ups and downs in life, he suddenly remembered his old friend. Of Hanoi Thirty-Six Streets.
The earthen pot and tea cup set by Nguyen Tuan given to Thach Lam, in the end, like two confidants silently enjoying the taste of a good teapot, are the silent proof of a quiet and deep friendship. Far away, forever kept in the heart.
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10:50 pm on October 6, 2013
Nguyen Tuong Giang
The article is from the second son in Thach Lam’s family, born a few days before his death. The article was written at the end of 2013 and was first printed on Giai Pham Xuan Nguoi Viet, Giap Ngo 2014.
