Quoc Hoc School

On the south bank of the Perfume River, along Lê Lợi Street, a school with a red tile roof stands in the shade of trees. It has stood there for more than a hundred years. This is Quốc Học School in Hue, one of the oldest schools in central Vietnam. It also keeps a part of the country's history.

The school was founded in 1896, under French rule. Its first name described what it was, a combined French and Vietnamese school. From the first days it did more than teach letters. It taught Vietnamese students to read the world in two languages, and in those classrooms many great seeds began to grow.

Among the students who sat under that red tile roof was a boy named Nguyễn Tất Thành. He studied here, looking out at the Perfume River. Then one day he left, and a long road opened ahead of him. The whole nation would later call him Bác Hồ, or Uncle Hồ, the name by which Hồ Chí Minh is widely known. At the same school, two other students were Võ Nguyên Giáp and Trần Phú. In time they became great names in the history of the country.

Three people, three lives, three pages of history, and one schoolyard, one red tile roof, one bell calling them to class. Few schools in the world can tell a story like that.

Today the school is recognized as a special national monument. Its architecture still keeps the old look of the years under French rule: red tiles, arched gates, and rows of green trees shading the way in. It is a school still at work, and it also seems like an open page from the book of Hue, the old capital.

Quốc Học School is not loud, and it does not need to be. It simply stands on the bank of the Perfume River, under its red tile roof.