“Hello everyone, this year I was assigned by the Faculty Board to be the homeroom teacher of your Literature class K10, my name is Phan Dang.”

It was a morning at the end of October 1986, our Literature class K10 met the teacher. Nearly forty years have passed, when the 18-20 year old students at that time are now approaching 60 years old, almost completing the cycle of life, suddenly realized how lucky we were to have the teacher teach us during our university years, and more than that, to have the homeroom teacher after the first two years of study.

Mr. Phan Dang (fourth from right) once led students of the Faculty of Literature on a field trip.

In the following years, he was no longer the class leader, but in his new position as Head of the Literature Department, we were always attached to him until the last days of our student life. Even after graduation, in many jobs related to our career, we still had the chance to meet him, and fortunately he shared with us his profound knowledge about our homeland that few people besides him had. Back to the first class meeting of our student life.

After introducing his name, probably thinking that the students in the class who came from many regions could not hear his name clearly, the teacher picked up a piece of chalk, stood up and wrote Phan Dang on the board, then turned to us and said: “Actually, the name my father gave me is Dang, not Dang. When I started school, the teacher heard my name and said: Hey student, let me add an “ah” mark, your name Dang will be Dang, it sounds better, you all go home and ask your father if there is anything taboo about that name, if not then your name will be Dang. I went home and asked and my father agreed, so I have the name Dang as you see on the board.”

But I'm not sure if the teacher will correct my name. In my class, there was a guy named Le Cu, who was a very good student. You probably know that. In the past, not all parents were well-educated. Every son was called Cu and every daughter was called Bép. The teacher of that guy, Le Cu, said: "Your name is Cu, let me correct it. I'll add a whisker. The letter U with a whisker becomes the letter U. I'll change it to Le Cu." My friend, whose name was changed to Le Cu, later became very successful.

Why do I tell you these stories? It is to show you that a name is attached to a person's whole life, but when I was in school, the teacher could change, to make his students better, more beautiful, more beautiful. But that was the teacher of the past, as for the teacher now, especially at the university level, you will slowly know.

That first meeting between teacher and student, for some reason, nearly 40 years later, is still fresh in our memories as if it were yesterday. That day, when talking about the difficulties that students will encounter, not only in terms of food and living, but also in terms of school supplies and books, the teacher said: If you have a notebook to write on, you are lucky. When I was in school, each of us had our parents ask a carpenter to make a wooden tray. When learning to write, we poured sand into the tray, flattened it with our hands, and when the teacher taught us a letter, we used our fingers to write on the sand, wrote over and over again until we were proficient, then held the tray and shook it to flatten the sand, and practiced writing on it another letter...

Teacher Phan Dang and his work "Hoang Viet Nhat Thong Du Dia Chi" won the national good book award in 2022.

In the past few days, after hearing the news of our teacher Dang’s passing, dozens of generations of his students from many regions have come to Hue, to the small house by the An Cuu River (Hue) to burn incense and say goodbye. On the students’ Facebook pages, there are countless condolences for their beloved teacher.

Journalist Dinh Nhu Hoan, a student of Literature K7, former Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Nhan Dan newspaper, mentioned two teachers in the Literature department: "The students of Literature Department of Hue at that time still have not forgotten the saying: The word "Virtue" was learned from Mr. Thang, the word "Humanity" was learned from Mr. Dang". The word "Humanity" that Mr. Dang reserved for his students, each of them had their own special feelings.

My class (Literature K10) had a friend named Phan Quang Muoi, who was disabled due to the consequences of the war. When preparing to graduate, the teacher met Muoi privately and said: "Given your circumstances, it will probably not be easy to find a job. I have nothing to help you with. Let me discuss with the department and school to keep you and arrange something for you, such as academic affairs." Although Muoi did not stay in the department with a job that the teacher could create conditions for, that kindness, that "humanity" of the teacher will forever be with his friend. Now Muoi is the head of the administrative organization department of Quang Nam newspaper.

One of the biggest obsessions of our generation of students was probably... hunger. The student meal standards gave birth to the terms "national soup" and "ocean" fish sauce. Already hungry like that, when faced with long lectures, the hunger increased many times over. Luckily, the classes with Mr. Dang always made us eagerly wait and look forward to... the end of class! Not only because of the amount of knowledge he compressed into his lectures for us, but also because of the way he conveyed it, serious but very humorous, wise but very popular, silent but full of resonance.

Two years ago, when he was awarded the A prize for his work "Hoang Viet Nhat Thong Du Dia Chi" in the 5th National Book Award in 2022 (co-organized by the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Vietnam Publishing Association, and the Voice of Vietnam Radio on the evening of October 3, 2022 in Hanoi), his students everywhere happily shared the joy and called to inform the alumni of the faculty.

After the honoring ceremony, Le Thanh Ha (Class K13 Literature - now Director of Thanh Nien Publishing House in Hanoi) invited the teachers to have a late night snack, then Ha sent her friends a warm picture of the teachers and students at night on a corner of the old town. It was just to share the joy with the teacher, but I heard in it so much of the unique warm affection of the students who chose the path of literature from the teacher!

Observing the research and translation fields of the Master later, in addition to the field of Buddhist culture, for which he was always highly respected by experts in this field, the story of national sovereignty in ancient documents always interested him. When he retranslated the book "Hoang Viet Nhat Thong Du Dia Chi" by Le Quang Dinh, this was considered the first geography book of the Nguyen Dynasty, written right after King Gia Long ascended the throne.

The work has great significance for the country's construction and the Nguyen Dynasty's dynasty. The vast territory from the South to the North recorded in it is a manifestation of the power of Vietnam at that time. During the book launch in Hue, the teacher said that because this is a geographical work, there are many place names, names of people, names of local products, both in Chinese and Nom characters, so it is quite difficult to translate.

But for us, his students, we understand that with his knowledge and his ability to translate Han Nom, he was able to create an official document affirming the country's territory, while clearly showing the independence and culture of a self-reliant nation in the early 19th century, which was his silent contribution to the Fatherland.

Not only the book “Hoang Viet Nhat Thong Du Dia Chi”, but also many other books that he was working hard to translate were all related to national sovereignty, sovereignty over sea and island borders..., and then he did not have time to complete them, those wishes still lie dormant in the ancient books in the small attic of the small house. From that attic, looking across the river on the opposite side is the shadow of An Dinh Palace reflecting on the An Cuu River “muddy sun, clear rain”.

Master Phan Dang speaks at a seminar on Buddhist heritage in Quang Tri held at Sac Tu Pagoda, Trieu Phong district.

Over time, after so many storms and sunshine in life, through so many miles of ups and downs, we may not remember all the poems he taught, the works he worked so hard on, but certainly among us, his students, we still remember the image of a modern-day scholar and other happy and sad memories that cannot always be easily recounted.

Luck is something that not everyone has in life. And if there is one lucky thing that still affects many generations of us, the Faculty of Literature students, it is that we were lucky to STUDY with a teacher, a capitalized word "Study" because not only did he teach words, he was the most vivid manifestation, and as we often say today, it was: "Than giao".

And we borrow the words of a senior colleague mentioned at the beginning of the article when remembering the teacher: “Learning from the teacher, not only in terms of knowledge but also in terms of how to be a human being. How many generations of students followed the teacher to be upright, honest, righteous, and disdainful of money. And the teacher became a high mountain in each of us. Now, that mountain has disappeared forever!”

Le Duc Duc