To the old country

      One man has recreated a typical rural farmer’s home in the heart of Hanoi to try and help preserve what we know about Vietnam’s agrarian culture.
A French photographer carefully arranges an ancient tea-set and a bamboo pipe on a bed and starts to shoot pictures. The photographer has spent a fortnight taking photos of more than 200 objects in a unique farmers’ museum in the heart of Hanoi.
“It’s for a photography book called The Red River Arts about this personal museum, which will be published next year,” she says. “It will be a very special gift for the museum’s owner and Hanoi to celebrate the city’s 1,000th anniversary.”
The museum in question is located in Hai Ba Trung’s district’s Van Ho quarter. It is also the home of Tran Phu Son, who is the collector and curator of more than 200 objects from a typical Vietnamese rural village. For a man who doesn’t make a penny from his museum, this book is a wonderful and touching gesture.
Son, a 67-year old retired cadre, has spent 22 years collecting farmers’ tools and other countryside objects from the Red River Delta. Back in 2005, he decided to establish the first ever Farmers’ His museum now attracts people from all walks of Museum in his very own home. life – pupils, students, teachers and foreigners – and has also been officially recognised by the Ministry of Culture and Information.
In 2007, the Hanoi Tourism Department proposed Son include his museum on the department’s list of recognised tourist sites, but he refused, saying that he had collected farmers’ tools and instruments as a hobby, not to make money. “Tourist companies sometimes organise tours to come to my museum, but I don’t collect any fees,” he says.
Step back in time
For Vietnamese people, stepping into the museum is like taking a step back through time. My own hometown was once a country village but is now part of the urban sprawl and filled with high-rise buildings, office blocks and heavy traffic. Son’s museum is a convincing replica of my childhood memories. Each item I see resonates with nostalgic images in my mind – betel nut holders and bamboo water pipes conjure up images of a crowded room filled with happy chatter on a festival day.
You will also find ploughs, rakes, pick axes, buckets and sickles as well as mortars, sieves, and pestles. These farming items are simple but thanks to Son’s devotion the museum is more than the sum of its parts – it helps remind you of a time when Vietnam depended on these basic farming tools. Lest we forget Vietnam is still by and large a nation of farmers.
There are typical domestic items –hammocks, old kerosene lamps, copper frying pans, bamboo dressers and wooden trays – as well as several objects which were used for ancestor worship such as cooper candle sticks, bells, wooden bells and grails. I also spot the smiling puppet known as Chu Teu (Little Teu), the pot-bellied MC at water puppet shows.
Son has invested his entire retirement pension and much of his savings – VND250million – to transform his home into a museum and is proud of his achievement. “Most of these objects cannot be seen in farmers’ houses now. With this museum, I just wanted to help visitors see how farmers in the past lived and worked and help teach young people who seem to have less and less interest in their ancestors’ past,” says Son.
Son, who used to be the director of a company that imported and exported books and newspapers and the chairman of a book distribution company, has no training in museum studies. “I am not a professional, but this is my passion,” he says.
In the beginning
One day in 1985, Son was visiting his home town in Bac Ninh province when he saw a couple of locals throwing a number of rice-hulling mills and mortars away. He asked if he could take them and when no one objected he hauled them back to Hanoi unaware that this was the beginning of a collection. His love for outdated objects slowly grew.
He started travelling to the countryside in search of more collectibles and gradually his house was filled with more and more farming tools. Visitors coming to Son’s museum will have the chance to understand the cultural and historical value of objects. “Industrialisation and modernisation have made these objects valueless. But, for example, using the rice-hulling mill will help you understand how hard farmers worked to produce rice and the value of rice,” says Son.
Oddities and rarities
His collection has some peculiar items too. There are two palm-leaf raincoats, one originally from Ha Tinh central province and one from the outskirts of Hanoi, which have drawn a lot of attention from visitors. The raincoat helped protect farmers from the rain and wind as well as the sun. Pointing at a set of old clothes hung on the wall, he says that they were worn by two generations.
“I bought them from a 81-year-old woman in Bac Ninh province. Initially the woman refused to sell them to me as they were a special gift from her mother,” Son says. The most precious objects in the museum are a $3,000 ancient bell dating back to the 18th century, a 17th century bronze tray used to offer fruit to the king and a set of bowls made under the Tran dynasty (1225-1400 AD).
But Son sometimes seems prouder of the less glamourous items in his collection. “I have a wooden pillow that cannot be found anywhere else!” he says. “Even film directors cannot imagine this type of pillow that was used in the past!”.