A proposal for UNESCO to join Vietnam’s marking ofthe blind poet’s 200th birth anniversary was approved in April, saidBen, who drafted the document. Similar proposals have been made by the Republic of Korea, Japan, Thailandand India.
An official celebrating ceremony will take place inVietnam on July 1, 2022, he said, adding that another event will be organisedto honour Nguyen Dinh Chieu as a physician on Vietnamese Doctors’ Day onFebruary 27 next year.
So far, UNESCO has commemorated birth anniversariesof five Vietnamese celebrities, namely President Ho Chi Minh, educator Chu VanAn, and poets Nguyen Du, Nguyen Trai and Nguyen Dinh Chieu.
Nguyen Dinh Chieu, also known as teacher Chieu, Trong Phuand Hoi Trai, (1822 – 1888) was born in Binh Duong district, Gia Dinh province(now District 1, Ho Chi Minh City).
He was a patriotic teacher, physician and poet of thesouth of Vietnam in the second half of the 19th century.
He is best known for his most prominent epic “Luc VanTien” (The Tale of Luc Van Tien), written in “nom” (the old Chinese-basedVietnamese script) in 1850s. The work has been translated into multiplelanguages, including French, English and Japanese./.