VietNamNet Bridge – Tran Ngoc Minh, owner of a goldsmith store in Nam Phuoc Town in the central province of Quang Nam’s Duy Xuyen District, is known by everyone not only for his wealth, but for his hard work in calligraphy.

Tran Ngoc Minh stands next to his calligraphic work of 108 “heart” words.

He has also written 100 lines of six-eight meter starting with the word “patience” and 108 lines beginning with the word “heart”.

“The more miserable it is, the more interested I am,” said Minh. He sometimes goes to forests and streams to seek strange stones or walks from one village to another to buy unused things like fishing-baskets, rake nets used to catch fish, tubes containing pen brushes and kerosene lamps.

He began to show interest in calligraphy only in recent years and while many people practice the art, no one does it as diligently.

Being born into a miserable family, thanks to his inquiring mind and painstaking heart, he has made such a fortune. He considers patience to be the first virtue. He has written the two words “heart” and “patience” again and again since he understood and had a love for them.

“Ancients often said that a hundred patient words will make gold, so I choose to write 100 patient words. I like Thuy Hu, an ancient work of Chinese literature, and believe the number 108 symbolizes the 108 heroes in the work which are considered miracles of oriental thinking,” said Minh.

He became a sleepwalker during months when he woke up and used his hands to write words in the air and then write them onto a table. In the daytime, he would write words again and again, then wipe them out.

After finishing 208 letters of heart and patience, he drove to the forests to buy a kind of wood nearly extinct in the central province of Quang Nam. The plant’s wood-fiber was flexible enough to be sawed into small pieces without cracking. With letter models and wood available, he began to write. In July 2007, he wrote into wood, and then took the golden saw-blade which is as small as a strand of hair to saw words. With his blade, he made six strokes for the word “patience”. Both of his two major calligraphic works have about 5,000 strokes like that. Each stroke is so small that he has to use a magnifying glass.

After sawing the words, he took two big boards of wood, attached velvet material and stuck lines of poetry into them. He had carpenters in Kim Bong Village in Cam Kim Ward in Hoi An Ancient Town make wood frames for the works, then put all into a sofa with two big turtles for legs.

Each work alone is 3.4 meters in height, 2 meters in width and nearly 4 meters in height with the sofa. He hopes that the work will earn the Vietnam record in size. Through late August, after twelve months of being wrapped up in letters, his calligraphic art has cost him about VND50 million.

When asked what he gained from the art, he said that he only satisfied his indulgence and it would be better if the work was recognized as a Vietnam Record. Whether the work gets the record or not, it will remain in his house until the 1,000 year anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi and then be displayed in Hanoi to raise money to support poor children.

He spent his time and energy so the pair of calligraphic works could be registered for a Vietnam record with an aim to expand the works’ fame to get money to help poor children. That may be the heart of the word “heart”.

(Source: SGT)