Mixtape Hanoi #2: Nostalgia Bat Dan

The English content below is automatically generated by Google translate. Please ignore any wrong wordings or you can read the Vietnamese version simply by changing the default language into Vietnamese.

We met Mr. Phan Trac Canh – the owner of the bookstore, on a Saturday morning when the weather in Hanoi was about to fall, amidst concerns and curiosity about finding an old book about Hanoi culture. That’s when we realized that the person in front of us, more than anyone else, was the “living library” of everything we were looking for.

“It’s okay to take photos of books, it’s comfortable, but it’s ok to take photos of people, I’ve taken a lot of them”, a gentle smile and a wave of the hand when welcoming us into the house seemed distant but felt strangely warm, especially when He was an old man in his 80s, sitting among young men and women in a 4-story house with lots of books.

Books along the aisle, books displayed on cabinets and tables. No glass windows, no fuss. The color of books yellows like people also fade with time, but still retains the value of information and knowledge.

Mr. Canh sat across from us, calmly introducing the bookshelf in front of him. Even though buyers were wowed by his treasure trove of “old books”, he only talked about that passion with simple nouns: “the need to read, to research was fulfilled”.

“In the past, I wanted to read, wanted to research culture and history, but I couldn’t find books. Asking anyone was enough, maybe it was just word of mouth, but how could it be lost? So I want to collect those books so I can have them whenever I need them, not only to help me, but also to help others.”

From a simple need – to read, to research, the teacher of Literature Department – old Hanoi University, along with his wife, little by little gathered and collected. Wherever he saw good books, precious books, whether they were junk goods or people moving out to liquidate books, he would find them and buy them whenever he could. A hobby that seems to be nothing “luxurious” has become his daily job since retiring. The 4-story house is quiet and closed in the middle of a busy street with “an inch of gold”, everyone takes advantage of it. trading to earn extra income, but only welcoming people who need to find books, or sometimes just coming back to ask questions and talk about books and life.

Uncle Bang, an unscheduled guest he met at Mr. Canh’s small house, shook his face with joy when he saw that we were interested in old books: “It’s right to come to him to buy used books. People like this are very precious. We must talk, we must research, we must exploit, young people.”

Listening to the familiar customer’s somewhat flattering introduction about himself, the old teacher only smiled lightly, his eyes distant, seemingly not very interested in the names people called him “old book king”, “old book store”. book treasure”. Only in every response when a customer asks for help finding precious books that are very old, published hundreds of years ago, or a cultural or historical period that has passed, does Mr. Canh show his concern. : “If no one collects or preserves them, books and documents just disappear, which is a pity. Everything has been censored, cut, edited, and is no longer intact. But it’s understandable that people will abandon anything that is not suitable for the times. But there are things that are still alive, still happening in history and culture, I have a desire to learn, explore, and preserve that origin, that originality.”

“But precious books must be original, with the author’s signature as possible. There are many magazines, half-published but the author passed away, so they stopped working. During the process of researching and collecting, many books were lost, lost or burned. I was afraid that everything would be lost, so I had to collect them.”

It is no longer new to talk about the story of old values ​​​​that are gradually disappearing, such as the story of an ancient communal house being thrown away and replaced with a new one, or reading the newspaper in the morning to hear that an ancient village is on the verge of being destroyed. relocated and demolished to plan investment projects, but when we heard Mr. Canh musing about “lost” old books, we couldn’t help but feel nostalgic. Perhaps this is not simply a longing for old books, but also a regretful contemplation of the deposits of information and knowledge that are gradually being forgotten.

“Nowadays, if you don’t read books and don’t research, there are many things about culture that you won’t know. Ask the people who live there and they don’t know, because no one can tell you.” Mr. Canh shared about the origin of the Cham culture collection that has been cherished for a long time, with a treasure of hundreds of old books, just waiting to be asked and told.

Although he collected diligently, Mr. Canh did not keep it for himself. Still with the original simple purpose of helping himself and others, he often prints the appendix in one copy for each set of books, so that it is convenient for customers to come and look up them. If necessary, he copies them from the original. As for the precious books that he has treasured and preserved, he plans to donate them to the research institute, or the Faculty of Literature and Social Sciences of the university. That is also the way for ancient teachers to let stories about books be told and spread to many people.