Culture - Sports

US supports Vietnam in preserving Nguyen Dynasty woodblocks

The State Archives and Records Administration on May 25 held a ceremony to announce the completion of a project on preserving Nguyen Dynasty woodblocks (moc ban), a UNESCO-recognised documentary heritage item, at the National Archives Centre IV in the Central Highland province of Lam Dong.
US supports Vietnam in preserving Nguyen Dynasty woodblocks ảnh 1US Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper attends the event. (Photo:VNA)

Lam Dong (VNA) – The State Archives and RecordsAdministration on May 25 held a ceremony to announce the completion of aproject on preserving Nguyen Dynasty woodblocks (moc ban), a UNESCO-recognised documentary heritage item, at theNational Archives Centre IV in the Central Highland province of LamDong.

The project, funded by the United States Ambassadors Fund forCultural Preservation (AFCP), started in July 2020 with a funding of over 88,000USD, preserving 500 degraded plates of woodblock at the National Archives Centre IV.

After the AFCP grant was approved in July 2020, a technical team studied and assessed the damage level of the degraded woodblocks. From January to the end of August 2021, the teamcarried out conservation treatment of the decayed woodblocks using techniquesused in developed countries like Japan, the Republic of Korea and France.

A total of 34,555 plates of woodblocks engraved with Chinesecharacters are kept at the National Archives Centre IV. The content of the Nguyen Dynasty woodblocks is rich and diverse, reflecting all aspects of Vietnamese society in theNguyen Dynasty. They were used to print books in Vietnamduring the 19th and early 20th centuries.

At the ceremony, US Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper said cultural heritage conservation is only one among many fields of cooperation between the two countries. According to him, the US has funded 16 projects in this field in Vietnam since 2001 with a total value of over 1.2 million USD./.

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