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| Green flower garden at the foundation site of Cuu Tu Dai. Photo: Thu Thuy |
“What a pity…”
That sentiment led me to the foundation traces of Cuu Tu Dai, which is now a neat garden with greenery meticulously cared for by Hue Monuments Conservation Centre. To compensate for my unsuccessful attempt to “touch” history at the foundation site of Cuu Tu Dai, Dr. Nguyen Phuoc Hai Trung, Deputy Director of Hue Monuments Conservation Centre, connected me with historical records about this site documented by Hue cultural researcher Phan Thuan An in “Hue Past and Present - Monuments & Landscapes.”
In this book published by Thong tin Publishing House, researcher Phan Thuan An clearly notes: Built during the reign of Emperor Khai Dinh (1916-1925), Cuu Tu Dai was one of three famous royal theaters in Hue Imperial City (the other two being Duyet Thi Duong in the Imperial Citadel and Minh Khiem Duong at Emperor Tu Duc’s tomb). Along with Khai Tuong Lau, Cuu Tu Dai was one of the two main architectural works of An Dinh Palace. The theater was built between 1922 and 1923.
Cuu Tu Dai theater was constructed with reinforced concrete, with a building area of 1,150m², capable of accommodating over 500 spectators. During the final years of Emperor Bao Dai’s reign (1926-1945), besides serving as a stage for performing traditional Hue royal art forms, Cuu Tu Dai was also a venue for outstanding Cai luong performances (a form of modern folk opera in Vietnam), as Empress Nam Phuong invited famous theater troupes from the South to perform. Top Cai luong artists of the time, such as Nam Phi and Phung Ha, all had the opportunity to showcase their talents at this theater. Unfortunately, after 1947, through many war-related upheavals, Cuu Tu Dai became ruins. Since then, Cuu Tu Dai has existed only in fragmented memories and with extremely limited archival information about the structure…
At a bustling corner of the Western quarter on Chu Van An Street, the story of Cuu Tu Dai is retold by a young man from the 1980s generation - Nguyen Tan Anh Phong - with overflowing emotions. Phong is one of the members of the Tan Do Thanh Hieu Co group (Neo “Bulletin of the Friends of Ancient Hue” group) - a group of six people, each with different jobs and locations but sharing a common passion for discovering, collecting, analyzing, and digitizing archival photos. I asked, “Why are you interested in Cuu Tu Dai?” Phong replied, slowly but surely: “Because it’s so mysterious! Somehow, there are very few photographic archives of Cuu Tu Dai. The only photographic document we had was a very distant aerial photo, taken from the An Cuu direction looking up, showing only a blurry An Dinh Palace. The less archival material a monument has, the more mysterious it is, the more it awakens the group’s curiosity. And so, we always strive to hunt through various photo archive sources.”
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| Archive dossier about An Dinh Palace, including Cuu Tu Dai |
In their efforts to find the most accurate information possible about a Cuu Tu Dai that once existed, Phong’s group tried every way to access archaeological drawings of this monument from Hue Monuments Conservation Centre’s existing sources. But all the arguments the group could present about this structure were wrong and pushed the group further away from what they thought they understood about Cuu Tu Dai and the architectural motifs of the Nguyen Dynasty.
An “encounter” halfway around the world
“It was truly surprising when one fine day, Pham Nhat Tien, a group member studying in the US, fortuitously “encountered” Cuu Tu Dai at the Library of Congress through a dossier about Vietnam from the past,” Phong recounted. He added that, actually, the dossier lead that Pham Nhat Tien found at the Library of Congress did not specifically mention Cuu Tu Dai but referred to An Dinh Palace of the Nguyen Dynasty. The reference codes in that dossier indicated that the entire dossier about An Định Palace is currently stored at the Saigon National Archives Center (now National Archives Center II, Ho Chi Minh City).
Based on this, Nguyen Chi Thanh, another member of the Tan Do Thanh Hieu Co group, went directly to the National Archives Center II to verify the information and was delighted to find the detailed Cuu Tu Dai dossier preserved there. From Hue, Phong contacted Mr. Hoang Viet Trung, Director of the Hue Monuments Conservation Centre, to coordinate a southern expedition to explore the archives at the National Archives Center II - Ho Chi Minh City. With support from Mr. Hoang Viet Trung, in 2024, Nguyen Tan Anh Phong, along with staff from the Hue Monuments Conservation Centre, was given access to the dossiers by the National Archives Center II.
“When turning the first page of the archives, overwhelming emotions surged seeing a part of Hue from 1947, 1950, then 1957… And when we got to the Cuu Tu Dai section, everyone was extremely moved - An almost entirely intact Cuu Tu Dai preserved in photographic archives,” said Phong.
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| End of the archival exploration journey at National Archives Center II - Ho Chi Minh City (Photo below). Photo: Bao Chau |
Fortunately, through the process of digitizing photographic archives, Phong’s group was able to clarify the interior structures. The maps drawn by the ancients showed an incredibly detailed construction of the various floors of Cuu Tu Dai. From this data, we analyzed and compared it with our previously failed hypotheses, and finally found the answer about a completely matching Cuu Tu Dai. This allowed us to confirm that Cuu Tu Dai, which had only existed in memory, has now been decoded convincingly, with a reliable scientific basis through photographic archives,” said Phong, in a voice breaking with emotion at times.
Along with the dossier about An Dinh Palace and Cuu Tu Dai, National Archives Center II also stores a massive treasure trove of archives about the Hue Ancient Capital monument system. There is already a cooperative relationship for mutual information support between National Archives Center II and Hue Monuments Conservation Centre. However, because the archive collection is so vast, the digitization process still faces many difficulties, so in effect, this archive collection remains a “sunken treasure” hiding in plain sight.
Phong said that all the digitized information about Cuu Tu Dai that the group decoded from photographic archive sources has been unconditionally transferred to Hue Monuments Conservation Centre. And he has a firm belief: Cuu Tu Dai will reappear in some project in the not-too-distant future.
As someone who highly values the scientific thinking of photographic archives for the restoration work of Hue Ancient Capital monuments, Mr. Hoang Viet Trung, Director of Hue Monuments Conservation Centre, said that the agency has no plans to reconstruct Cuu Tu Dai so far. However, once the necessary conditions are in place, the agency will develop restoration plans for this monument.