The history of the lanterns

In the past, Vietnamese people often put oil lamps in decorative spherical and hexagonal lantern shades, which were hung in the eaves and both sides of the door in the Chinese style. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Faifo (the name of Hoi An’s ancient town at that time) was bustling with foreign merchants from the Netherlands, India, and Japan around the clock. Japanese merchants often hung tube and canary-shaped lanterns along the poles in front of their houses, which lit up the whole commercial quarters at night with a glowing, mysterious light. Locals began hanging lanterns out as well, with hopes for bringing good luck and coziness to the town.

The decision to bring out the lanterns again in the autumn of 1998, however, was an unexpected success. Authorities of Hoi An’s ancient town chose the fourteenth night of each lunar month for a night of lantern festivities. On that night, most lights in houses and shops in the ancient town are turned off for the night and replaced with lanterns to light up their narrow streets and alleyways.
This year included a Vietnam-Japan cultural festival in Hoi An’s ancient town, where Japanese visitors showed off their famous art of paper lanterns. Local residents also had a chance to show their own multi-colored lanterns of many sizes made by experienced artisans, including large, unique lanterns made of rare woods with sophisticated designs and embellished with valuable works of art on each side. Those large, old-fashioned lanterns are now family treasures used only on the night of lanterns. Although lanterns are often lit up with ordinary light bulbs today, their soft light gives a hint of what romantic nights were like long ago.

Establishing a trademark for Hoi An’s lanterns

For many years, traditional colored lanterns have enchanted visitors to Hoi An, particularly foreign visitors. Every year, tens of thousands of Hoi An lanterns are exported or bought by foreign visitors as souvenirs and gifts. As a cultural and tourist product, the lanterns have helped raise incomes of Hoi An’s residents.

Hoping to cash in on the lanterns, several other areas have recently started to turn out so-called Hoi An lanterns. The low quality of these imitations, however, has harmed the reputation of traditional Hoi An lanterns, which has led long-time lantern makers to encourage local authorities to develop a specific trademark for Hoi An lanterns to preserve the beauty of the town’s long-lasting lanterns.

Nguyen Su, chairman of the Hoi An Town People’s Council and deputy party secretary, says the People’s Council has presented a resolution on developing the Hoi An lantern trademark, while the Quang Nam Province People’s Committee was asked to register collective protection of a Hoi An lantern trademark.

In the immediate future, the Hoi An Town People’s Committee named the Planning and Investment Department as project coordinator and developer. All lantern makers in the area can register for collective Hoi An lantern trademark protection, provided their products meet the required quality standards. Products meeting these standards can carry the words Hoi An and the emblem of the Cau Pagoda. Only then will lanterns be sold to the customers or be exported to other countries, which will establish a better reputation for Hoi An lanterns abroad.

Hoi An ancient town now has many shops selling a variety of lanterns, which are often red, yellow, or green depending on the surrounding fabric. Prices range from several ten to hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese dong depending on the size, colors, and quality of the surrounding fabric. Tang Ngoc Thu, owner of the Ngoc Thu Lantern Workshop, says, “Our products are sold at a wide range of prices to fit the budget of all customers. Our goal is to increase the popularity of Hoi An lanterns among domestic and foreign visitors.”

Presently, Ngoc Thu is one of several enterprises producing lanterns with metal frames for both indoor and outdoor decoration, which have been exported to France, Germany, the US, and Australia. The products have also been showcased in fairs and exhibitions in Da Nang, Hue, and other domestic locations. Last year, a Hollywood studio placed an order with Ngoc Thu for 300 big lanterns to use in scenes in its films. The lanterns have also been written about in foreign journals.

Hoi An lanterns carry distinctive cultural values of the town that can help present one of Vietnam’s cultural heritage sites, Hoi An ancient town, to the outside world, while high-quality will ensure a better standard of living for residents.

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Films about Vietnam’s beauty hit the world’s screens in 2007

In January 2007, a group of cameramen together with four famous Japanese actors from Japanese Chukyo TV channel flew to HCM City to make a film on Vietnam’s cuisine. The film is about the trip of Japanese travellers who came to Vietnam to seek delicious dishes. The travelers had the chance to taste a lot of Vietnamese traditional cuisine, including thit nuong (roast meat), bun bo (beef noodle soup), pho (noodle soup), and ruou can (wine drunk out of a jar through pipes).

The 85 minute film was broadcast throughout Japan at 10 am on January 22, 2008.

In March 2007, Wini Brugger, the famous cook, owner of ‘Indonechine 21’, an Austrian restaurant, together with many famous cooks, prepared Vietnamese original cuisine at a 5-star hotel in HCM City. And his images, a part of the documentary film, advertising for his book about Vietnam’s cuisine, was later broadcast on TV channels in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

Mr Brugger began having the passion for Vietnam’s cuisine after he traveled to Vietnam. He once stayed at Sofitel Metropople in Hanoi and tasted Vietnamese dishes. The talks with the hotel’s French Chef Didier Corlou urged him to learn more about Vietnam’s cuisine.

The documentary film watchers might see Mr Brugger going to Vietnam’s traditional market to buy food for making cha ca (fried fish), and going to ancient streets of Hanoi which he cannot see elsewhere in the world.

In July 2007, Robert Tate and Tom Vitale, the producers for PBS’ “Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie”, also arrived in Vietnam to shoot the pictures of Vietnamese cuisine, which will be broadcast on PBS and National Geographic this autumn. The reporters said that they were very interested in eco-tourism in Vietnam, especially the visits to Ben Tre orchards in the south. The process of making keo dua (coconut candy) drew much attention from the film crew.

Vietnam also welcomed a lot of foreign film crews, who came to shoot film about Ha Long Bay, which has been nominated for selection as one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

On October 10, 2007, the 30-second television commercial introducing Vietnam as an attractive destination for travelers began being broacast regularly on CNN Asia. The broadcasting will last three months, until January 13, 2008 on the channel at peak viewing time.

The 30-second advertisement was made by a professional team of CNN’s with modern technology. In the film, lively and colorful images of Vietnam with beautiful landscapes, friendly people, arts and cuisine appear. Vietnamese ao dai (long dress), Hanoi’s and Hoi An’s ancient streets, the world’s heritage Ha Long Bay, and dynamic HCM City appear in the advertisement piece.

2008 with ‘ship of dreams’

On January 10, 2008, a group of German ZDF TV channel’s staff returned to Vietnam, because they decided to make the film about Vietnam’s tourism after a lot of fact-finding trips.

The film is a part of the TV channel’s series, which tells about a German trip to many places in the world, and Vietnam will be its destination in 2008.

In fact, Vietnam is the second destination in Asia of the German ship. In 2007, the filming crew arrived in Shanghai and shot pictures there. In the film, a couple travels to Vietnam on the ‘ship of dreams’ in their honey moon and they make a lot of interesting discoveries about the country with hidden charms.

The group went to Ha Long Bay, Hoi An ancient town and Cuu Long River Delta to look for the landscapes for filming. A lot of beautiful landscapes of Hoi An, which once appeared on “A quiet American’ film, will also be seen in the German TV film.

The screenplay authors related that they started to write the screenplay for the film right after they left Vietnam for Macau and Hong Kong, because they were so impressed with Vietnam’s landscapes, and they didn’t want to start later, when they returned home. Sung Sot (Surprise) cave and Titov island at Ha Long Bay, Hoi An and the floating market in the Cuu Long River Delta will be the background for the film.

According to film director Khanh Toan, who escorted the filming crew, Director Franz Buchs was very impressed with what he could see in Ha Long Bay: “Ha Long is surprisingly wonderful”.

Gerd Zimmemal, the German Director said that German people still think that Vietnam is the country of wars, though wars have gone away. Very few people know that Vietnam has enormous cultural heritage. Vietnam has a lot of beautiful landscapes that European people do not know about. “We want to let European people know about the hidden charms of Vietnam”.

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