Van Mieu stone steles nominated as world documentation heritage

      UNESCO has accepted the draft nomination of the 82 stone steles at Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam (Temple of Literature), the first university of Vietnam, as a world documentation heritage. The official file must be completed in 2009. Dr. Dang Kim Ngoc, Director of Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam management board, talked about this.
Why choose the steles at Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam to ask for UNESCO’s recognition as world documentation heritage?
Vietnam’s doctoral steles are very unique. No country, even China, has steles like these. Chinese doctoral steles are in various shapes (square, round) while Vietnam has only flattened steles. However, the patterns on our steles are more abundant.
Each stele at Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam, Hanoi, can be seen as an artwork. Steles in the central capital city of Hue can’t compare with Van Mieu’s steles in this aspect.
In addition, the contents of these steles are standard verses and lines, which are valuable in terms of art and ideology. Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea also have doctoral steles but these of Vietnam are more concentrated and professional.
UNESCO accepted our nomination but it is not certain that it will recognise our steles.
The current world is flat. UNESCO experts are in a position to decide which heritage is unique or not. They work very transparently and fairly. To persuade them that our heritage is unique, we need outstanding scholars.
When we sent our file to UNESCO, they asked us to change the name of the file into “82 doctoral steles of the Le and Mac dynasty” to be more precise. We were astonished and admired them! It is true that doctoral steles at Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam were made in the Le and Mac dynasty.
Is there a hurry to complete the detailed file about the 82 doctoral steles in Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam in the next several months?
The deadline is September 2009 but we have researched the steles very carefully for tens of years. UNESCO wants to choose unique heritages. Each country can nominate only one heritage a year. Before the doctoral steles in Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam, UNESCO only accepted the Nguyen Dynasty’s wood-blocks as a world documentation heritage.
Several years ago, Vietnam planed to nominate the campus of the Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam and Tu Tran as a world heritage. Is it true?
While we were about to compile the files of Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam and Tu Tran (four holy temples in the East, the West, the South and the North of Thang Long royal citadel, Hanoi, including Bach Ma (White Horse) Temple in Hang Buom street, Voi Phuc Temple inside Thu Le Zoo, Kim Lien Temple in Dong Da district, and Quan Thanh Temple) to nominate to UNESCO for recognition as a world heritage, we discovered the Thang Long royal citadel.
The historical meaning of Tu tran is important but the remaining architectures belong to the Le and Nguyen Dynasty, so they are not sufficient to represent the 1,000-year-old Thang Long capital. In addition, some relics have been encroached on by local residents.