The care that Nguyen Phan’s children take of his father’s art legacy is rare and admirable. For a long time, they have been preserving his father’s paintings and sculptures, searching for his missing ones, and making them a family’s legacy to pass to their younger generations, including documents and records of his monuments and public green spaces.

Many royal decrees, Han-Nom manuscripts, and cadastral records preserved in Hue have suffered gradual deterioration due to the impacts of time and climatic conditions. Restoration and conservation work has therefore become a means of safeguarding these valuable documents, allowing their historical values to continue to be passed down to future generations.

On the morning of July 6, Hue City Museum of History opened an exhibition themed “School Ao-dai” at its headquarters at 268 Dien Bien Phu Street, Thuan Hoa Ward, Hue City.

Quoc An, one of the oldest ancestral pagodas in Hue, is well known not only for its ancient architecture or long history, but also for its collection of statues, antiques, and precious documents, which are preserved almost intact.

Hue is a land that bears the imprint of the southward migration and territorial expansion undertaken more than 700 years ago by the people of ancient Thuan Hoa. Very few documents reveal the timing of these migration waves or the organization and formation of Vietnamese villages in the region. Yet during fieldwork, I gained access to several ancient Han-Nom documents recording the migration, land reclamation, and establishment of villages and communes. Most notably is a cadastral record dating to the 9th year of the Dai Hoa reign (1451) under King Le Nhan Tong, compiled exactly 575 years ago.

Historical documents and artifacts featured in the thematic exhibition “Hue - Historical Imprints and the Journey to Rise in a New Era” have contributed to promoting heritage education programs, while enriching students’ knowledge of history and culture.

On February 22, Hue City Police reported that they had promptly returned a lost handbag containing important documents and valuable property to a foreign tourist at Phu Bai International Airport.

In 2025, Ho Chi Minh Museum collected and received 35 artifacts, contributing to enriching the source of documents and artifacts serving exhibition activities, scientific research, and long-term preservation. In addition, the unit digitized more than 1.000 documents and artifacts.

Although hundreds of thousands of pages of Han - Nom documents have been saved, many others in the community are still deteriorating, damaged, or lost for various reasons. Faced with this challenge, Hue City Library is racing against time each day in the hope of collecting and restoring them for digitization, preservation, and value promotion. A piece of good news is that the long-term plan for this work, extending through 2030, has just been approved by Hue City People’s Committee.

In the period of 2026 - 2030, alongside the process of exploitation, the effectiveness of the collected Han - Nom (Sino-Vietnamese Demotic character) documents will be promoted. Furthermore, these also aim to serve the research needs of readers, scholars, and experts in the fields of history, culture, society, economy, and politics.