About this design
The artist Do Thanh Hai lives and works in Hanoi. He is a graduate of the Hanoi Institute of Industrial Arts. He signs his paintings both with his daughter's name, Lam, which means "the forest", and with his own name, Hai, which means "the sea".
This design depicts the Full Moon Festival which is held every year in Asian countries on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. This festival celebrates the last days of summer. Parents buy their children traditional toys including star shaped lanterns, new clothes for school and festival cakes and fruits. When the moon rises high and round in the sky, groups of small boys and girls gather, holding their lanterns and singing.
Do Thanh Hai was a four year old boy in 1954 when Vietnamese troops led by Ho Chi Minh and Vo Hguyen Giap surrounded and defeated French forces in the battle of Dien Bien Phu, bringing the war of independence against the French and the colony, French Indochina, to an end. The French colony had been formed in 1887 and had encompassed the area now comprising Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
In his 60 years Do Thanh Hai has witnessed the following events which form the background to his life and art:
From 1950 to 1954, the final years of the war of independence against the French.
In 1954, the establishment of the Soviet and Chinese backed Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) - North Vietnam - under Ho Chi Minh.
In 1955-56 the communist land reform program in the DRV during which peasants and townspeople were categorised by class background and land was expropriated and redistributed, to be collectivised later on the Soviet model.
In 1956 the repudiation of the terms of the Geneva Agreement providing for elections to unify northern and southern Vietnam by the American backed regime in southern Vietnam headed by Ngo Dinh Diem, and the establishment of the separate state of South Vietnam under Diem.
The 15 year war to unify North and South Vietnam which began in earnest in 1960 when the DRV's Vietnam Workers' Party committed itself to the unification of North and South Vietnam and began construction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the infiltration of units of the Northern Peoples' Army from the north to the south.www.GROUPON.co.uk/Restaurants
The failure of successive corrupt American backed regimes in South Vietnam, beginning with the assassination of Diem in 1963.
The escalation of American intervention in the war including extensive bombing in the north and the south and the introduction of American troops, which increased to over half a million from 1965 to 1968.
The withdrawal of the United States from the war in 1973 and the military conquest of South Vietnam by the DRV in 1975 leading to unification and the establishment of the present day Vietnam, governed by the Communist Party of Vietnam.
The establishment of communist regimes in Laos and Cambodia and the invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam in 1978, bringing the widespread genocide of the communist Pol Pot regime to an end.
The invasion of Vietnam by China in 1979.
The dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the introduction of market reforms in Vietnam, with a growing mid-level private sector, to the present day.