Every morning, just as the lanterns above Nguyễn Thái Học Street swayed to life with the first breeze, Chú Lâm set up his streetside workshop near the Thu Bon River. Tourists called him “the quiet painter.” Locals just said “Lâm vẽ phố cổ”—Lâm who paints the old town. He didn’t chase customers. He didn’t shout or beckon. He simply painted—fast, fluid, practiced. Lanterns, tiled roofs, a woman balancing a đòn gánh—all captured in swift, precise strokes with a bamboo-handled brush.
Sometimes he painted from memory. Other times, he sketched live—an old man sipping cà phê sữa đá, a couple holding hands by the bridge. No two days were the same. Rain smeared his colors. Sun bleached his canvas. But Chú Lâm returned each morning with his folding stool and tin box of pigments—watercolors mixed with tea and a drop of fish sauce, for luck.
He didn’t paint to sell.
He painted to remember.
The Hội An before the tours,
before the crowds,
before his wife passed.
Each brushstroke was a small resistance—
a way to hold onto the soul of a town
that kept changing around him.
And when dusk came, he packed up gently,
nodded to the streetlight,
and walked home
with paint still wet on his fingers.
