With an ambition to promote and preserve national traditions, a young artist in Hanoi is redesigning and giving traditional Hang Trong folk paintings a new life in her own style.

Hang Trong painting, a genre of Vietnamese woodcut paintings originating in the Old Quarter in Hanoi serves as “food for the mind”. The art form had been nearly lost, but one man is trying to preserve the traditional folk painting.

For centuries, Dong Ho paintings were used as precious decorations to celebrate the Tet festival. 

Dong Ho folk painting style has been applied for propaganda pictures to deliver the government's 5K message in the fight against Covid-19 outbreak.

Vietnamese lacquer painting, or son mai, has become a precious and unique artistic craft over the course of thousands of years.

For centuries, Dong Ho paintings were used as precious decorations to celebrate the Tet festival. People bought the paintings to hang on their walls for a year, which are then replaced with new ones for the next New Year.

Bac Ninh province has completed a dossier seeking UNESCO’s inclusion of the making of Dong Ho folk paintings on the list of intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent protection.

Vietnam will compile a dossier on the Vietnamese folk art of Dong Ho painting to submit to UNESCO for recognition.

The National Cultural Heritage Council will appraise dossiers on the Vietnamese folk art of Dong Ho painting later this year, then complete them before submitting to the Prime Minister.

 VietNamNet Bridge – Authorities in northern Bac Ninh Province are planning to compile a dossier on the Vietnamese folk art of Dong Ho painting in a bid to secure UNESCO recognition.

 Surrounded by a crowd in a corner of the Centre of the Old Quarter's Culture Exchange, artisan Nguyen Dang Giap spreads colours carefully on different woodblocks to create a Dong Ho folk painting.

 The poetic verses by poet Hoang Cam, which I learned in high school literature classes, recently took me to the Duong River bank to admire its beauty.

 VietNamNet Bridge – It is time for the National Assembly to enact a law or ordinance to regulate and support craft villages, proposed participants at a forum on the role of craft villages in Viet Nam's international integration.

In addition to traditional items such as conical hats and Vietnamese ao dai, foreign tourists who come to Vietnam during the lunar New Year can choose other items like lucky-money envelopes, lanterns or Dong Ho folk painting.

 VietNamNet Bridge – The making of Dong Ho folk woodcut painting in the northern province of Bac Ninh has been recognised as part of the national intangible cultural heritage.