A farmer from northern mountainous province of Hoa Binh has devoted seven years to growing and bending 1,000 bamboo trees into the shape of flying dragons to present them for Hanoi on its millennium anniversary scheduled for October this year.

Nguyen Van Nam, said he had driven to Soc Son district, where legend puts it that Saint Giong pulled off bamboo bushes to fight against Chinese aggressors, to buy “golden” bamboo saplings to grow them at home.

“This sort of bamboo is very flexible, not as hard as green bamboos, thus making it easy to create shapes at will,” he explained.
To have 1,000 flying dragons each with a height of 1.5 m, he had to grow 2,000 bamboo trees to have much room to select the best. He had to form the dragon every day at the growth of the tree.

After more than six years, the mountainous farmer has finished the work, turning his bamboos into flying dragons heading up to the sky with pride.
Manh also grew three additional clusters of bamboo in the shape of the country and a huge “ngau” tree (aglaia) in the shape of the earth with the words “Hoa Binh” (Peace), all as presents ahead for Hanoi.

“I would like to present things of my hard work to the capital city as a token of Vietnamese farmers’ warming feelings,” he confided.

Over the past decade, Nam has presented bonsai for big events in Hanoi such as SEA Games 22 and the ASEAN Summit.

In 1998, he bent a tree into a line of words “Bac Ho Vi Dai” (Great Uncle Ho) to present it to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.