Today’s A Journey through Aesthetic Realms will be presented in Aulacese (Vietnamese), Aulacese (Vietnamese), with subtitles in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Together we climb up the hillside inn to find the banyan tree Resting our feet, we prepare a few betel quids With our hands as a pillow, we’re star-gazing Whose racket-tailed treepie is it that comes here and sings? There are three young women with rosy lips and blushing dimpled cheeks.

Why is the banyan tree bereft of wind every nightfall? The banyan tree tilts its shade at the village entrance, connecting the red thread lest someone awaits too long.

If you pass by the hillside inn, remember to come for a spicy betel quid The banyan tree gazes at its reflection every day in yearning for someone The banyan tree longs for your melancholy eyes

Your eyes yearn for the doleful banyan tree.

Together we climb up the hillside inn to find the banyan tree Resting our feet, we prepare a few betel quids With our hands as a pillow, we’re star-gazing Whose racket-tailed treepie is it that comes here and sings? There are three young women with rosy lips and blushing dimpled cheeks.

Why is the banyan tree bereft of wind every nightfall? The banyan tree tilts its shade at the village entrance, connecting the red thread lest someone awaits too long.

If you pass by the hillside inn, remember to come for a spicy betel quid The banyan tree gazes at its reflection every day in yearning for someone The banyan tree longs for your melancholy eyes

Your eyes yearn for the doleful banyan tree.

Why is the banyan tree bereft of wind every nightfall? The banyan tree tilts its shade at the village entrance, connecting the red thread lest someone awaits too long.

If you pass by the hillside inn, remember to come for a spicy betel quid The banyan tree gazes at its reflection every day in yearning for someone The banyan tree longs for your melancholy eyes

Your eyes yearn for the doleful banyan tree.

You’ve just enjoyed a northern Aulacese folk song, “Banyan Tree and Tea Shop,” with vocals and dance performance by our Association members from northern Âu Lạc. The title reflects familiar images in northern Aulacese villages, with roadside tea shops and shade-giving banyan trees, an ideal resting place for travelers.

The peaceful northern city, where many age-old cultural values of Âu Lạc have been preserved, is also the home of more than 60 traditional handiwork villages. Among them, Đông Hồ Village in Bắc Ninh Province is the place of origin of a famous folk art of the nation – Đông Hồ painting. Every year, around the 7th or 8th month of the lunar calendar, Đông Hồ villagers are busy preparing for painting season. The entire village is brightened with colors as people make good use of every corner, from house yards to communal house yards and lanes to dry papers and paintings. The atmosphere in the village is bustling from dawn to dusk.

Đông Hồ Village has about 500 years of history and my generation is the 20th one. 20 successive generations have pursued this trade. Đông Hồ Village has 17 families, all of which created paintings in the past.

The preservation center of Đông Hồ paintings at the village entrance, operated by Mr. Nguyễn Đăng Chế’s family, is proof of the restoration of this folk painting genre. The center has both a showroom and production area. Mr. Chế stated, “There are 180 different Đông Hồ paintings on display here.

The center produces about a million paintings per year and attracts thousands of visitors from within the country and abroad.” On Lunar New Year, people often buy Đông Hồ paintings to paste on walls and to offer one another as tokens of good wishes. Đông Hồ paintings help enrich the cultural beauty of Aulacese New Year. Reminiscing about the villages of old during New Year, poet Bàng Bá Lân mentioned Đông Hồ paintings:

“On New Year, I miss square sticky rice cakes Firecrackers, Pig and Chicken paintings.” Papers used for Đông Hồ paintings are made of barks of the Indian paper tree, which has unique qualities of being light, damp-proof, and color-proof. These papers are enhanced by Đông Hồ artisans by grinding shells of scallops, a thin-shelled kind of shellfish which drifted ashore at the end of its life; mixing with rice paste; and then spreading it on papers. By now, the papers will have a natural sparkling white. Colors and brushstrokes are a painting’s soul. Observing a Đông Hồ painting, one can’t help praising its rich colors with simple yet lively brushstrokes. In the poem “The Other Side of Đuống River,” poet Hoàng Cầm described:

“In Đông Hồ paintings, chickens and pigs appear fresh and clear National colors brighten up in painting papers.”

What is special about a Đông Hồ painting? First, its paper comes from the Indian paper tree. As for its colors, they all come from nature.

Artisans created the black color from the coal of dry bamboo leaves, the yellow color from Chinese scholar-tree flowers, the green color from indigo leaves or verdigris, and the red color from the red gravel in Bắc Giang region. The process of creating colors is very meticulous and elaborate. Đông Hồ paintings are woodcuts made of the wood of the decandrous persimmon tree.

This wood is soft, smooth, tough, easily whittled, and fiberless. There are woodcuts for as many colors as a painting has, and it takes that many printings to produce a painting. For example, the “Beautiful Woman” has 4 colors: red, green, yellow and black, so there are 4 woodcuts for each color with different details. The themes of Đông Hồ paintings are very diversified, reflecting almost every aspect of daily life.

Đông Hồ paintings have very rich contents. The Aulacese people’s lives, as well as their cultural and spiritual aspects are encompassed in the paintings.

Đông Hồ paintings have five themes: spirit, historical events, popular stories, wishing, and daily activities. Spirit paintings are used on the altar such as Blessing-Contentment Hall or Goodness Accumulation Hall.

Historical paintings describe past events or figures such as Lady Triệu, Âu Lạc’s first queen of ancient times. Story paintings relate popular tales in Âu Lạc such as Thạch Sanh and Kiều. Of these five genres, wishing and activity paintings are the most popular. Wishing paintings are natural, simple, yet profound in meaning. For example, in the painting pair “Kind-and-Righteous” and “Courteous-and-Wise,” the “Kind-and-Righteous” painting draws a child holding a toad.

The Aulacese believe that toads symbolize courage, wisdom, benevolence, and righteousness. In the fairy tale “The Toad is God’s Uncle,” a toad, though small, was able to assemble all beings and went to ask God for rain, bringing a happy life to all. This painting of a boy embracing a toad expresses the wish for a child to possess courage, kindness, and righteousness when he grows up. The “Courteous-and-Wise” painting portrays a girl holding a turtle.

It also means well-mannered and knowledgeable. Turtles are long-living animals, symbolizing noble and enduring qualities. The child embracing a turtle conveys the wish to conserve these values. This painting pair is also called “Talented Man Holding a Red Toad” and “Beautiful Girl Holding a Green Turtle,” often offered to the family which just gives birth to a baby, with good wishes implied in the paintings. Or the pair

“Honor-Prosperity” and “Wealth” portray a boy holding a rooster and a girl holding a duck. Rooster in Chinese means “great chicken,” pronounced similar to “immense good fortune,” an auspicious wish for the New Year. Duck represents tender and loving qualities, abundance of children, and ease of raising children - a wish for prosperity and good luck in all aspects. Activity paintings are also interesting. Most paintings of this genre describe the farmer’s life closely associated with wet rice cultivation.

For example, “Farmers” depicts farming work from sowing and transplanting rice seedlings, to husking rice. The 4-month period of the rice crop is concisely portrayed in a lively painting. The “Ride-a-Buffalo- and-Play-Flute” depicts a boy who sits on a buffalo and plays a flute, using a lotus leaf as a parasol. The buffalo doesn’t eat grass, but turns upward to listen to the sound of the flute descending from the vast sky. This painting represents a peaceful life in which humans and animals co-exist happily.

The “Coconut Catching” symbolizes a happy family: the husband gathers coconuts, his wife is catching coconuts, with their children playing around. The heart-shaped coconuts and joyful faces in the painting create a harmonious atmosphere. In activity paintings, “Teach Toad” is also a very popular painting, conveying the moral values of education. Students should obey, respect, and esteem their teacher. This is depicted by a student carrying a water pot, ready to fill his teacher’s teacup. At the corner of the painting is a pine tree denoting moral integrity or a sage.

The toad here implies having human qualities. The artist chose the image of a toad to express the meaning: both teacher and students must possess noble qualities to be able to assimilate words of the saints. Đông Hồ paintings are deeply imbued in the philosophy of Yin and Yang, and the five basic elements.

The five colors, being white, green, black, red, and yellow, correspond with the five basic elements in Eastern culture: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. Yin and Yang are expressed clearly in the paintings: the pair “Kind-and-Righteous” and “Courteous-and-Wise” or the pair “Honor-Prosperity” and “Wealth” portray a boy and a girl, a harmony of Yin and Yang. “Swinging,” “Hide and Seek,” and “Catching Coconuts,” all have even pairs of women and men.

Đông Hồ paintings are meaningful as they are crystallized from the spirit, lifestyle, and behavior of Đông Hồ people. Đông Hồ villagers speak gracefully; rarely would there be harsh or loud words among the villagers. Whenever a family holds a wedding or funeral, people in the village would come to offer loving assistance. This beautiful spirit is still upheld by the Đông Hồ people until today.

Đông Hồ paintings are creations of folk wisdom and aesthetics in Âu Lạc. With bright colors and lively figures, Đông Hồ paintings are not just decorative items, as they carry meanings which promote noble qualities, support lifestyles that are in harmony with nature, and convey good wishes to people. They are pages of a book of art containing thoughts, moral principles, culture, and life experiences of one generation passed down to later generations.

Thank you for watching our program introducing Đông Hồ paintings, a famous folk painting genre in Âu Lạc (Vietnam). Please tune in to Supreme Master Television for more on Aulacese specialties in future broadcasts. Coming up next is Vegetarianism: The Noble Way of Living, after Noteworthy News. Farewell for now.