The Budapest of the 70s was a great opportunity for thousands of Vietnamese students
After the overexposed ’80s, we can also glimpse student life in Budapest in the ’70s with a soon-to-be-released Hungarian film: The flower of the apple tree the story of a Vietnamese-Hungarian love spanning several time planes. In this regard, we bring to life the key locations of student life in the capital of the era with archival and contemporary photos.
Information about visiting the Buda Youth Park: entry only for boys over 18 and girls over 16, tie, light shirt, jacket. Entry in canvas trousers is prohibited. The following offenses are more likely to be banned: tasteless dancing, twisting that is not related to a twist number, twisting a l boy, twisting between boys and other behavior that causes attention
– this is how the entry regulations for the Youth Park established in the Várkert Bazar area in the ’70s begin. This was already the relaxed rule, even a decade earlier, that instead of beat and rock bands tolerated and supported according to the regulations of Aczélgyörgy, elegant lounge music would have been played, the twist never came up – but the young people of the city tried to get away with even this more relaxed rule.
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Zoltán Szalay / Fortepan
Bergendy concert in the Youth Park, 1963.
Except for the Vietnamese students, the protagonists of our article. They could come to Hungary as a great opportunity of their lives, as part of the cooperation and catch-up program of the CSTO countries, under strict conditions, so that when they return home with the knowledge they acquired here, they will enrich their own country, which is recovering from a long war – so, if anyone, they really tried to follow the rules. By the way, the system was not far from the one they were brought up in, in fact: in Vietnam, the Hungarian one was much stricter, and these students were brought up by rule-following and respectful young people, for whom the more relaxed and softer dictatorship experienced in Hungary was like a breath of fresh air – not to mention the culture shock they experienced when they arrived on the other side of the world. Let’s not imagine that the Vietnamese students were greeted by some kind of hippie atmosphere: they couldn’t choose a major in the first place, not even a university, the party decided who would go where and what they would study.
The main targets were the Faculty of Electrical and Chemical Engineering of the University of Applied Sciences, SOTE, and the University of Agricultural Sciences, the latter will be The flower of the apple tree is also one of the key locations of the film – in which the University of Agricultural Sciences is “shaped” by the BME, where many scenes of the film were filmed. In February, I was interested in the first Hungarian-Vietnamese co-production – at least in one of its time planes – about the story of the secret-forbidden love of a university student couple in the 70s, and although the film tells the story of on teaser we didn’t see a single cube outside, the hit hinting at a mood with politics and its intertwining between lovers.
The Vietnamese students who came to Hungary were allowed to make friends and get to know each other – of course, in addition to taking their studies seriously – but they were not really allowed to start a relationship, or if they did, secretly. They could have been sent home for breaking the rules, which would have caused the great opportunity to be missed. In order to guarantee the integrity of the system loyalty and morals of the students who arrived in the country, interns of the same age as the students were also sent, whose task it was to observe the young people. Of course, they knew exactly who the secret observers were, and it soon became clear to the teachers in Hungary as well, because while the students who came to study were from among the younger ones, the observers were not exactly in the drawer of the sharpest knives. We already learned this during the city walk organized in connection with the film, not even as part of the guide, but as background information from a participating walker. Throughout the walk, we stayed on the Buda side, close to the Danube, in the section between Műyegetem wharf and Bem wharf, because somehow it turned out that all the places that were important places in the life of young people at that time were concentrated in this area.
Such was the case, for example, of the Te + Én house at 30 Bem rakpart, the top floor of which lived at the time no less a personality than Irene Psota with her husband Tamás Ungvár with a writer, but he was among the famous residents of the house József LauxOmega’s drummer and Anna Adamis also a songwriter. But from the point of view of our topic, the apartments on the first floor are not important, but the business premises on the ground floor. Today, a furniture store operates behind the storefront, and in the 70s, it was one of the most popular date spots, the Te + Én espresso of Délbuda Vendéglátóipari Vállalat (on our cover photo). With its boxy design, which was considered ultra-modern at the time and especially suitable for romanticizing, the espresso attracted young people who wanted a private sphere, who could immediately buy a gift in the flower shop next door.
Just like this city walk, the film will also highlight the contrasts caused by the forty or so years that have passed between the two time planes: the story takes place not only in the 70s, but also in the present day, when a young Vietnamese girl, Song Ha, arrives in Budapest. , to investigate a family secret.
However, since the creators promise two love stories, in addition to his grandmother, who was a university student in Budapest in the ’70s, he will probably also fall in love at some point in the story. In addition to the Hungarian capital, filming also took place in Vietnam, but while at home they looked for locations that could evoke the ’70s in an urban environment, the filming in Vietnam was more about the beauty of nature.
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Bálint Szajki / 24.hu
Dzhuliya Lam, András Sütő and Nari Nguyen during the thematic walk of the film “The Flower of the Apple Tree” to be released in early 2023 on November 30, 2022.
The importance of the co-production is also given by the fact that it is actually surprising that it only took place now – because it strengthened Vietnamese-Hungarian relations during the one and a half to two decades when Hungary welcomed Vietnamese students to its universities. In fact, the eight to ten Vietnamese students per year – in addition to successfully passing the KGST and becoming respected and outstanding engineers, doctors, chemists, or even politicians of their country – also preserved the memory of their experiences here. The members of this community, numbering a total of four thousand people, guard their surprisingly good Hungarian language skills, many of them even remember the Hungarians, cook our food, and sing the folk and art songs they learned during their time here. Many people, when they could, returned to Hungary, got married here, or even if they could not live here, their children and grandchildren started a new life in Hungary – the visible presence of Vietnamese gastronomy in Budapest is no accident.
It was about this community Gábor Tóth and George Lea His documentary, made in 2015, a Danube and Mekong have one voiceGyörgy Lea The flower of the apple tree also became one of the producers of the film (the other Anna whistles). But there is a more intimate connection between the film and reality, between the life of Vietnamese students in Budapest in the 70s and the present: the children of students who studied here in the 70s include the two female protagonists of the film, Nari Nguyenwhom the Comrade Drakuliccan already be seen by moviegoers and Julia Lam, who is known as an interior designer and model. Their male partners in the film Balázs Koltai-Nagyactor of the Katona József Theater and Storm cornerknown from András Sütő will be The flower of the apple tree Dora Szűcs in his direction, it will arrive in theaters on February 16, timed for Valentine’s Day.