In the September 22 episode of "Vietnam in Full Colour", viewers met Kevin Vuong, a researcher who has helped revive the traditional Vietnamese lion head design. "The lion head is a very special toy because it combines visual and auditory elements. As soon as people hear the lion drum, they know the Mid-Autumn Festival is approaching," he explained.
"Many of the beautiful Mid-Autumn Festival toys of the past are rarely seen today. I simply had a very childish wish: to be able to play with those beautiful traditional Vietnamese toys again."
"The carp-shaped eyebrows, the butterfly resting on the forehead and the teardrop-shaped head are among the distinctive features of the traditional northern Vietnamese lion head that we recreated during our research. Through this process, we have been able to restore elements of traditional cultural practices that had been disrupted and gradually faded over time", Kevin Vuong said.
"I was determined to revive traditional folk knowledge, and I chose the traditional northern lion head design as the first toy to reconstruct".
Kevin said he began gathering reference materials in the early 2020s before conducting a more detailed analysis. For him, an important part of the process was examining original artifacts in person.
After some time, he came across a traditional lion head that had been taken to France by the École française d’Extrême-Orient in the late 1920s or early 1930s.
"When you see it in person, it is far more beautiful than it appears in photographs," he said.
To hear more from Kevin Vuong, viewers can watch the full video on VTVgo.
