In Bao Vinh Old Town, Ms. Tran Thi Minh Phung still carefully holds her brush each day to paint on glass, just as her family has done for generations. As most of the artisans from the old days have nearly disappeared, the hands of this woman in her fifties have become a place where a craft once closely associated with the royal art of Hue is being preserved.

When I was still very young, candies weren’t as diverse as they are now. We only had traditional local sweets, like areca-nut candy, ginger candy, glass candy, peanut candy, bird’s egg candy, and pulled sugar candy… Back then, my grandmother would often come back from the market with a small packet of areca-nut candy, which had a simple label with a picture of Hue landscape.

In the process of digitalizing ancient documents about Can Chanh Palace, Nguyen Tan Anh Phong and his collaborators discovered one of the two glass paintings currently hung at the Department of History, College of Sciences, Hue University is the precious painting which used to belong to Can Chanh Palace in the Imperial City.