The Tale of Kieu (Truyện Kiều) in Sino-Vietnamese by Nguyễn Du, with annotations of Paul Pelliot, a French Sinologist (1898-1945), on some pages. Illustrations: incidents from the story depicted on each folio
Bắc Sứ Thủy Lục Địa Đô = The northwards embassy by land and water from Hanoi to Beijing
Scope & Content:
The manuscript is a complete visual record of the route from Bắc Thành (present-day Hanoi) through China to Beijing taken by envoys of the Vietnamese Emperor Tu Duc (r.1847-1883) on their tribute-bearing mission in 1880. This work was probably created as an archival record of the journey. Road...
Letter from the Trinh Lord to the English East India Company
Scope & Content:
Content: Letter from Trịnh Tac, the ruler of Tonkin (r. 1657-1682) in the form of an illuminated scroll written in the Vietnamese language in Chinese (Han Nom) characters, probably despatched in 1673). In 1672 the first English East India Company ship arrived in Tonkin in North Vietnam, and in ...