We all know and are proud that Hanoi is the thousand-year civilized Thang Long land strip; Hanoi is a heroic capital in struggling to protect the country and in creating and labor; Hanoi is the city for peace, the center of politic, culture, science… Mentioning Hanoi, we cannot help emphasizing that this is the elegant Trang An land strip.
In the task of industrialization and modernization, we did many efforts to boost the economic development and improve the face of the capital every day.
However, the elegant lifestyle has recently been complained to downgrade. This is so alarming that some people required government to apply sanctions to people who race, furtively dispose of garbage, and shamelessly pass water on the streets. People also asked the government to set up a custom police unit to patrol and timely warn people who use bad language and strip to the waist on the streets, and disable the “concrete drilling and cutting” phone line, which smear the streets…
Some other people said that the elegance standards of Hanoi are abstract and simulative. In the “digitalized” time, elegance is required to have specific standards like 1, 2, 3, 4...and be quantified and qualified so that we can apply to town management reality.
A happy family. Picture: Nhan Dan Newspaper
It was not by chance that our ancestors had chosen elegance to be standard and typical for the style of Hanoi people.
It was not easy for elegance to be Hanoi’s style character after thousands of years.
In a simple way, “thanh” means purity and nobleness and refers to people’s beautiful morality, culture, and lifestyle.
“Lich” is sophistication and politeness, which mean being competent, wide association, being advanced, and being up-to-date.
Therefore, elegance contains culture and morals in it. Agitating people to effectuate elegant lifestyle is also a progress to cultivate morality, encourage studying, improve knowledge to live in a civilized way and integrate into community.
Elegance really indicates “something” relating to Hanoi manner, quality, and soul which are hard to explain like a researcher’ anxiety. It was the sparkle, flexibility, and smoothness, which are hard to catch, that stay in Hanoi people’s smile, statement, and walk, and make the elegant lifestyle Hanoi everlasting.
Moreover, since this is the lifestyle and the manners, we mainly agitate, convince, set an example and advice each other to improve it and bring it into play. Let us see how our ancestors taught their children so that after many wheels of life, the elegant Trang An lifestyle still remains and now becomes needs, a motivation for innovation.
From the old days, respectable families focused on teaching their children to follow family orders and respect family ethics and traditions. Adults were a model; children study their brothers and sisters to get used to family’s ways of living, thinking and behaving, which they were taught every day. The elegant character came to people naturally. There was a treasure of morality: respect the elders, love the children; look before you leap, courtesy costs nothing; cleanliness is next to godliness… brought to Hanoi by people from everywhere and brought to everywhere from Hanoi.
Reading memoirs of natives of Hanoi like Luong Van Can, Professor Nguyen Lan, and Professor Mai Phuong…, we all see that those were typical Hanoi families and in these families, growing and teaching children were especially concerned. Recently, through Dr. Dang Thuy Tram’s diary, we also see that together with heroism, people can feel her love, grace, ardency and thoughtfulness, which she was taught by her parents. Another typical example is the martyr professor Duong Quang Ham’s family.
Being born in a Confucianism family, but soon acquiring Western culture, teacher Duong Quang Ham paid attention to educate his children to be polite (saluting, respectfully talking, table manners…); be dutiful and honest (to obey adults, not to tell a lie, to confess when doing something wrong); be clean (keeping their teeth, mouth, arms and legs, and body clean)… These were also, what they were taught at school. Moreover, he taught them to understand and fulfill their duty to the family, the country and school (hard studying, teachers respecting, friends loving)…
The family meal. Picture: Nhan Dan Newspaper
The professor’s family has a habit to get together at dinner. It is the time when he teaches his children the good things after listening to their stories about what they had been through on that day. Studying time comes after dinner. In a room, there is a big desk arranged next to a small one in T-shape. The father works at the small desk while his children sit around the big one. It is quiet in the room. Blackboard, maps, bookcase, and bookshelf… are arranged around the room. Despite his low salary, teacher Duong Quang Ham spends an amount of money on subscribing Hoc sinh newspaper and Tuoi Hong book for his children.
Obviously, in a respectable family, adults must live modally and purely first. Mr. and Mrs. Duong Quang Ham have a habit of drinking tea together every morning. He opens the daily newspaper, which still remains the smell of ink to read, comment and explain his wife the local and international news. The scene in which the professor, cultural researcher, alias Uyen Toan sitting by his rustic wife, who only can read and write national language, is so beautiful. It is both a classical image “mutual respect like a guest of honor” and a new and advanced symbol of parity. His children, thanks to that origin have now been successful.
The reality shows that family plays a key role in building human beings’ personality. Recently, Ministry of Culture – Sport – Tourism of Hanoi city has opened the exhibition “Hanoi family cultural space”. It is an initiative in education. Exhibition viewers could deeply feel the family habit, family education and family ethics in every family.
Agitation and propaganda for elegant lifestyle building need to penetrate into each individual, each person…All who come to live in Hanoi, especially youngsters want to quickly be Hanoi people, having the brand name: Hanoian. That is a big advantage for the movement of elegant lifestyle agitation and education.
I hope that directors and organizers care more about the effect and decrease vague and overlapping slogans. Would the agitation to improve the culture of Hanoi people be identical with the elegant and civilized Hanoi people movement and the modern, civilized and elegant Hanoi people? Still, there is an agitation to build cultural family with many kinds of overlapping standards: civilized lifestyle, family planning, population declaration, fire prevention, anti-drug, anti-prostitution, tree and environment protection…, not to mention particular movements of each profession “Hanoi women: elegant, responsible, and faithful”, “Hanoi veterans: elegant, faithful, and brave”…
Each area has typical and interesting features. Besides the modern and civilized life like those of other cities in Vietnam, Hanoi is always sparkling of the character, quintessence and manners of people and land of the thousand-year civilized Thang long.
Respecting, preserving and improving that character are a process that requires cooperation of many generations of origin Hanoi people, “old” Hanoi people and “new” Hanoi people from yesterday to today and tomorrow.
Hopefully, in 2010, visitors to Hanoi can recognize the beauty of elegant streets and districts and elegant Hanoi people. This is a great effort, a brilliant achievement and a wonderful offering to present to the grand anniversary of thousand-year Thang Long – Dong Do – Hanoi.
0 comments:
Post a Comment