Goodbye "old boy"!

VHO - If you see Mr. Lan Cuong riding his motorbike to work or to an archaeological excavation; if you see him giving a presentation about his expertise or in a tailcoat conducting an orchestra, and especially when he squints and smiles, it is difficult to guess his age. And only when reading the "obituary" do you know that this year he is 85 years old.

My last impression was not only the visit to the excavation site of Vuon Chuoi (Kim Chung commune, Hoai Duc district, Hanoi ), but also not long after he fell ill and had to be hospitalized.

Being small in stature, he was still able to climb up and down the excavation pits quickly and in the sun, he still had his head bare and meticulously introduced the skeletons that he considered extremely unique.

He said that, in his 60 years of practice, he had never excavated such a unique and important site. In just over 6,000 ^{square meters} (half of the licensed space), two hundred skeletons were discovered, spread across cultural layers from Phung Nguyen, Dong Dau to Dong Son... and up to modern times, with tons of ceramic pieces and countless artifacts.

As a leading expert in researching “ancient people”, for Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Lan Cuong, it is a gold mine of heritage. He confidently compares “Banana Garden” with “Thang Long Imperial Citadel” as a “perfect couple”, one side is the palace and infrastructure of a capital city and the other side is the long-time owner of this land...

In the professional world, people often say that Mr. Lan Cuong is extremely passionate about his work. He is so passionate that he lies down in the scorching sun to carefully pick each grain of soil to look for relics with the tip of a toothpick.

Not just once, but throughout his career, he has always had that mindset. There are hundreds of photos and footage recording this scene. And when giving a speech or speaking about a certain issue in his field of expertise, he is truly "possessed" with a passion that is hard to match.

I still remember the day of the "field" workshop at the Vuon Chuoi site, the chairman suggested that he only speak for five minutes, but with him, they let him speak with both enthusiasm and indignation...

Yet not long after that meeting, we heard that he had to be hospitalized. Later, we learned that the disease was already incubating in his body at the time of the presentation at the Banana Garden!

Indeed, when he and some friends came to visit him in the hospital, he looked very tired but when he saw us, he suppressed his pain and got to the point, reminding me again how to promote the value of Vuon Chuoi and that it was necessary to keep the unexcavated part as an "archaeological park". He turned to my friend to continue discussing the editing of his books that were planned to be published or republished...

When saying goodbye to his relatives, we learned more bad news because his illness was so serious, we left with heavy hearts... However, just a week before his death, while I was working far away, I received a phone call from him, his voice still not weak, he reminded me to attend a conference at Dau Pagoda, where he had spent many years researching and made great contributions to heritage conservation.

Yet today, I have to send him off to a place where there is no land to excavate! The day the Vuon Chuoi Archaeological Park is built, people will definitely mention him again, “the old man”!

Source: https://baovanhoa.vn/van-hoa/tam-biet-chang-trai-cao-tuoi-131659.html