At the Ethnic Culture Festival of Thanh An Commune, Dien Bien Province (held from December 13-1), the booth "Practice and Instructions for ancient Thai characters" became an emotional stop.
Although she is Thai, Ms. Lo Thi Xuan (33 years old, Muong Thanh ward) still could not hide her surprise when she first directly held a pen to write the characters of her ethnic group.
After stopping for quite a while at the tour guide, Ms. Xuan took a long time to point each stroke of the ink on the page.
She said: "Although I am Thai, I have not had the opportunity to access ancient Chinese characters. When I directly put the pen, I found that Thai is very difficult, requiring patience and meticulousness".
That confusion comes with regret. Ms. Xuan believes that the treasure trove of national knowledge has been " sleeping" for her for a long time just because of language and writing barriers.
"I really hope that there will be Thai language classes in the future. If there is a class, I will register to participate so that I can write and read it myself" - Ms. Xuan expressed.
Not only acting as a direct guide at the booth, Mr. Tong Van Han - Thai Ethnic Culture Association of Dien Bien province, a person who has spent many years enthusiastically collecting and researching Thai culture - said that the reality of young people away from writing comes from the objective causes of modern life and economic pressure.
Mr. Han analyzed: "The difficulty at present is that students of school age are often too busy with the curriculum. When they graduate, they face many changes, either going to vocational school or working to make ends meet. The time and mind spent learning Thai are therefore limited".
This unintentionally creates a large "space" in cultural inheritance. To fill that void, Mr. Han and some members of the Thai Ethnic Culture Association of Dien Bien province still try to maintain classes in the summer or take advantage of the evening to teach children.
According to Mr. Han, the treasure trove of folk literature and ancient music works of the Thai ethnic group are being preserved quite a lot in the community.
However, the paradox is that even though the treasure is located right in the heart of the village, young people "cannot reach it" because they do not know their ethnic language.
"The state needs to have specific policies in preserving culture in general and the ancient Thai word in particular. Without continuation, valuable folk literary works will be known to very few readers" - Mr. Han wondered.
Previously, in April 2021, Van Nghe Newspaper announced and awarded the poem contest for the period 2019 - 2020.
In particular, the topic of debate focused on the poem "My mother curses the thief", one of the 3 poems: As a son-in-law, my mother curses the thief and the house under the house above" by author Tong Van Han (Dien Bien) won the highest prize of the contest.
The majority thought that this was not poetry, and some even said, This is the award for the most unfortunate poetry in Vietnam. Other opinions say that a big literary contest that is easy to profit from is... destroying Vietnamese poetry.
After the award was announced, the poem "My Mother Curses the Thief" became the focus of heated debates on social networks and since then, Mr. Tong Van Han has also been known by many people as a person with many years of research on Thai ethnic culture.
