Vietnam Reportage 1930 - 1945 Through Tam Lang, Vu Trong Phung and Ngo Tat To

“man with five or seven wives” is common. Taking many wives “to satisfy their physical desires… to massage them when they are tired…, to interrogate them for money when they need it”, or conversely “being single” for many reasons: because of poverty, because of selfishness, only wanting to play around and debauch, because of not being able to handle the heavy marriage law, then rushing into “secret affairs. Then getting sick of all kinds of diseases” or “being single” and being trapped in a lonely, cold, “sad” state of suffering, “then gradually weakening. Then being sad. Then bored with everything. Then being dirty-minded. Then being spiteful. Then hating life”…”then becoming crazy” “then becoming depraved…turning into a number in the book of broken hearts”, “then getting pregnant out of wedlock” giving birth to illegitimate children - dangerous dangers to society. From being “single”, “being single” has indeed given birth to countless disasters. Adultery is also a serious disease. Because people always crave to find “new feelings, new images, new pleasures”, the situation of “affairs” and adultery is becoming more and more common, increasingly “dirty and vile”. There are well-calculated adulteries “with the consent and agreement of both husband and wife… They “commit adultery” to enjoy houses, money, cars, prestige…”. Therefore, “how many big shots quietly take their wives into the back gate of a noble house in the hope of quickly being promoted, getting a raise, or getting a rank or title… How many shameless men suppress their conscience, extinguish the fire of jealousy to lower themselves to being “a servant” carrying a “potty” to serve “someone” while “someone” plays and screams with their wives in bed… How many evil women take their friends home, letting them serve their materialistic desires just because their friends are rich, foolish, and stupid… There, adultery has become an “organization”, a trade. It is dirty, extremely dirty. It can be said that, through meticulous and careful investigation, Nguyen Dinh Lap's reportage has raised and explained the root causes of pressing problems of social reality, especially the basic "links" in the "chain" of social degeneration. Although there is no solution yet, although not as harsh as Vu Trong Phung's,

But Nguyen Dinh Lap's reportage was a valuable warning, clearly demonstrating the critical attitude and sense of responsibility of the sharp reporter.

When talking about the typical reportage writers of Vietnamese reportage from 1930-1945, we cannot help but mention Thach Lam with the pen names Viet Sinh, Thien Si... He was a talented short story writer who opened his own path and became famous with works full of realism: Early season wind , Hair thread ... and was also the author of outstanding reportage collections: Hanoi at night, Children get married, Before Tet, Tet and after Tet, Listening to Quan Ho singing one night in Lung Giang ...

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In Hanoi at night , Thach Lam's pen delves into prostitution, a widespread evil like an epidemic that destroys the nation's fine customs. There are many paths leading to prostitution. If from a social perspective, Trong Lang, Tam Lang, Vu Trong Phung, Vu Bang... explain the main reason leading to this "low-class" profession is poverty, unemployment... then from a cultural perspective, Thach Lam also emphasizes the degradation of morality and personality; the omnipotent power of money has stunted the good human values of people. In reality, there are still dreamy beauties who are "innocent, gentle, have proper jobs... not hungry" but are lazy and need a lot of money so they still sell sex "dirtying their bodies, dirtying the reputation of their parents"; there are also women with decent husbands and children who still go "looking for customers" to pay off gambling debts; The “modern” girls who are romantic, love too much, to the point of having to “stand on the street” and sell their dignity; the “Western women” - the type of people who “bridge the two civilizations” of Europe and Asia, consider Westernization as a profession to “change their lives”. Thach Lam also clearly pointed out the encroachment of prostitution on traditional cultural areas of the nation.

Along with prostitution, Thach Lam also reflects a sad social evil, but has become an old habit of feudal society - child marriage: Children marry

wife is a common tragicomedy in ancient Vietnam. However, from a cultural perspective, through a child's wedding, Thach Lam also shows the unique features in traditional customs and culture. With the reports: Before Tet, Tet and after Tet; Listening to Quan Ho singing one night in Lung Giang , Thach Lam has shown the strength of a delicate and sharp reportage writer when exploiting the issue of customs and unique cultural traditions of Vietnam.

- the fundamental thing that distinguishes the reportage pen of Thach Lam from other writers of the same period and affirms his valuable and irreplaceable contribution to the Vietnamese reportage community.

Nguyen Tuan was a multi-talented writer, he used his pen and succeeded in many genres, but was especially famous in the essay genre, including the outstanding reports: The Peanut Oil Lamp (1939), The Peanut Oil Lamp's Ashes (1941). With his life experience and his own experience in nearly ten years of "indulging his body", "self-immolating" himself in opium smoke, Nguyen Tuan truthfully and vividly exposed the opium epidemic that had become a pain in the heart of contemporary society. This can be considered a comprehensive documentary investigation into the expansion of opium in urban areas, its penetration into social classes and its terrible destruction and devastation to both the human body and personality, corrupting the good traditional ethics of the nation. Nguyen Tuan vividly exposed a whole world of addiction with all the situations and moods of addicts. They come from all walks of life, all genders, all ages, both local and Western, Chinese. That “very crowded, very cozy” world of addiction is “darkening” an entire society. Opium, opium, marijuana, peanut oil lamp soot and their magic spread, covering and “darkening” the entire society. That dark social environment is like a dangerous virus, invading not only retired officials but also fiercely attacking the young generation. Most young people know the “modest building” - the opium den on Hang Buom Street - where

“how many starting points of the history of addiction”. Not only Western-educated intellectuals, but also Confucian intellectuals could not escape the temptation of opium. Not only rampant in the bustling urban areas, but addiction also attacked Zen and Buddhist temples. “In the whole Yen Tu area, every pagoda had a lamp table. If visitors had an addiction, they would just confess to the monk”. A series of monks hid under the Bodhi tree, not to study Buddhist scriptures, hoping to reach Nirvana or save people like true monks, but to seek a sense of liberation every day in the world of opium. Nguyen Tuan pointed out: opium “is like a cruel lover”, “the opium is inherently poisonous. It is a hell on a nameless island in the middle of the ocean where we are prisoners of serious crimes who are forever exiled”. It not only destroys the body but is also like a “fox spirit that sucks all the life force”, destroying the personality of those who are friends with it. Nguyen Tuan vividly portrayed all kinds of portraits, from the physical to the mental, of addicts. All of them had “pale skin, dark lips and the whites of tired eyes” just like “corpses waiting to be buried”. They were always tormented by addiction: tired, sad in the legs and arms, wanting to destroy things, more seriously, they felt like there were worms in their bone marrow, their stomachs felt full but their mouths were hungry, they always just wanted to lie down, “…both shoulders were always tired. The joints felt like they were falling apart. The eyelids were very heavy. The mouth was rotten. Seeing water was as scary as being bitten by a mad dog”. For addicts, the whole world was reduced to the table lamp. They became insensitive to time. “When it comes to killing time, no one is more durable and long-lasting than the chess players”. They are ready to trample on all the sacred morals and feelings of people: “love of wife, love of friendship, love of a young citizen towards the country in important hours”. They were willing to degenerate in character: to have money to smoke opium, monk Tam Hoan became an opium dealer, then embezzled the restoration money.

The monk went to the temple to smoke and gamble, “cruelly exploiting the Buddha”, causing “incense and candles to turn into cigarette smoke and peanut oil”. The monk even tore up Buddhist scriptures to clean the opium lamp and was more worldly than ordinary people: becoming a monk but still eating meat, lying, gambling for money, swearing… It can be said that with the two reports The peanut oil lamp and The peanut oil lamp , Nguyen Tuan most accurately portrayed the physical and mental tragedies of addicts. And that is also the realistic value, the humanistic value and the unique contribution of Nguyen Tuan’s reportage to the general achievements of the Vietnamese reportage genre 1930 - 1945.

According to Le Trang Kieu, Vu Bang is one of three writers with the surname Vu - the pioneers of the reportage genre in Vietnam: Tam Lang - Vu Dinh Chi, Tieu Lieu - Vu Bang and Thien Hu - Vu Trong Phung. Vu Bang wrote in many genres: novels, short stories, literary criticism... Particularly with the reportage genre, in addition to short reports, when talking about Vu Bang, we cannot help but mention the long reportage Cai , published in installments in the Trung Bac Sunday newspaper (1940) and published as a book by Tan Dan Publishing House in 1944. In this reportage, the author recorded the process of becoming an addict from the first cigarette that caused nausea and misery to the feeling of pleasure in the following puffs, then "addicted" to smoking, using the excuse of having to write for the newspaper, hanging around smoking shops, sometimes smoking for a whole week, then smoking several times a day, getting deeper and deeper into addiction, until at the age of twenty-three, the author became a real addict; turned into a different person, lying all day long next to the lamp table, only groping his way home at midnight. Only when his health was increasingly exhausted, his face was covered in smoke, his lips were dark, he coughed all night, did the author realize: "opium makes people unable to live, and unable to die. All the noble things that elevate humans above animals have been absorbed into the bushel and the brown smoke." Fearful, desperate but unable to let go of the brown fairy, too stuck,

The author had to think about death and the future was far away, although his heart was still filled with pain for literature. The author fell into a crisis day by day. Living in a filthy environment full of gambling dens, prostitutes and low-class people, the author's life became increasingly "dirty, shabby and extremely depraved". "Every night I lay down and thought about my fate" and felt "everything was like covering my face and crying". Tet came, I was alone with loneliness, torment and sadness. The future was really dark. The author determined to quit his addiction... and thanks to that, he found the light of life.

Cai is a true confession of a drug addict's life. Written in a style that describes feelings and analyzes inner thoughts in a subtle and sharp way, the work is a success, recognizing the unique contribution of writer Vu Bang in the field of writing about drug addiction in particular and the serious social evils of Vietnamese society at the beginning of the century in general.

We can talk about Hoang Dao with Before the Horseshoe (1938). Although he wrote the novel Con duong sang and the short story collection Tieng zither , Hoang Dao was successful in reporting about things he heard and saw in court. Hoang Dao spent some time as a clerk in the Hanoi criminal court, so the things he recorded were very real and vivid. With a flexible writing style and humorous dialogue, the author made the reader "both laugh and feel sorry" for the poor, gentle and ignorant people. On the other hand, through this report, Hoang Dao also brought to light the reality of Vietnamese society before the August Revolution of 1945: Poverty and ignorance pushed people into prison and the judges acted emotionally and arbitrarily. Most of the "criminals" who had to go to court, "standing before the horseshoe" were miserable victims, poor, sick, illiterate, and ignorant of the law. Some fall into social evils: stealing, superstition, drugs... Lan Khai is a writer who focuses on novels. He

wrote many types of novels: historical novels, psychological novels and more famously, the forest novels: The Call of the Deep Forest, The Story of the Forest, Suoi Dan . “Reading Lan Khai, one can see that the novelist takes people deep into the deep forest, leads them intimately into the Tho Man families, and lets them see strange temperaments” [139; 898]. It is the strangeness that stimulates the curiosity and imagination of the reader. And this is also very strong in Lan Khai's reports: Barbarians , A Night Hunt . Hidden behind the wild, poetic beauty of the mountains and forests, the author describes the scenes and activities of a deserted Meo hamlet in Nam Ti, still full of mysteries. Lan Khai's reports are like short stories, about a poor family “What a strange family: three fathers and sons, like three strangers, accidentally meeting each other in a roadside inn. All day long, they did not say a word to each other, except for the sentence that could not be avoided. In an unexpected accident, the father died because of his job as a horse groom, leaving Tum Diang and his younger sister Tsi Na. The author exploited the instinctive physiological relationships between these two siblings and called it "barbaric"? But in fact, Lan Khai's pen made their gestures and actions new and attractive. Ngoc Uoc , a female writer, also wrote a reportage about the customs and habits of a Tho community in the Northern Uplands : their way of living, their clothing, love affairs, ghost stories, ghost stories, attending a drinking party at a mandarin's house [27; 1177-1186]. In the weekly Nam Ky , Thai Huu Thanh had research reports about the Moi people: The Moi race in Dong Nai Thuong (1943), 15 days with Moi with tails (1944), Moi "Xa Nien" (1944), Ngai Moi in Dong Nai Thuong (1944) which brought to light the image and people of the desolate mountains with customs and magical charms with many strange functions.

We highly appreciate the contribution of Le Van Hien , author of the reportage Kon Tum Prison (1938). He was a communist soldier, participating in revolutionary activities since 1925, and experienced many colonial prisons such as Daklay,

Dakto, Kontum… That is why the reportage is convincing to readers because of its specific and realistic details and figures. Kontum Prison is a strong indictment condemning the French colonial regime, exposing their bloody crimes against patriots and revolutionaries in Indochina, and exposing the policies and tricks of the contemporary government to suppress, terrorize, and kill soldiers in prison. The work records the resentful stories of 295 prisoners exiled to Kontum to build Highway 14. “Kill as many as possible… that was the secret order of the colonialists towards political prisoners”. With the brutal prison regime, within just 6 months, over 170 people died, the rest were just skin and bones. In that hell on earth, the communists tightened their ranks to fight fiercely against the enemy. Truong Quang Trong, Nguyen Lung and many other soldiers were ready to face death, maintain their indomitable spirit, and make heroic sacrifices. The shining examples of Vietnamese communists were vividly recorded, with strong educational significance. Kon Tum Prison is one of the successful works of the proletarian revolutionary literature movement in the period 1930 - 1945. It was valuable as a weapon of struggle at that time and a valuable document on the history of the revolutionary movement against colonial rule of our nation.

Overall, the team of reportage writers is very rich and diverse: some are professional writers and journalists who are highly regarded in the literary world, some are poets, some are researchers and literary critics, many whose names are still unfamiliar to us... All of them contributed to the uniqueness of the Vietnamese reportage genre in the period 1930 - 1945. Besides Tam Lang, Vu Trong Phung, Ngo Tat To and some other writers mentioned above such as Trong Lang, Nguyen Dinh Lap, Nguyen Tuan, Thach Lam, Vu Bang, Le Van Hien, Lan Khai, Hoang Dao... there are also writers: To

Vietnam Reportage 1930 - 1945 Through Tam Lang, Vu Trong Phung and Ngo Tat To - 8

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