Writing Feedback / An "image" to introduce Vietnam to a foreign friend - UWCs Vietnam 2013 [3]

Please help me. I don't think this is a good essay, and it's too long :(

Please write an essay of not more than 200 words describing an "image" which you would choose to introduce Vietnam to a foreign friend. This may be a figure, a picture, an object, an art form or a cultural tradition.

All the Vietnamese people know about Trinh Cong Son, one of the greatest music composers of Vietnam.Trinh was born on 28th of February 1939 in Daklak but he spent his childhood in Hue. Self-taught at music, he composed on his own. He always said: "Writing a good song only needs the love to the music". But actually, he also needed an innate talent and long, enduring efforts to write songs filled with all his feelings and loves. He sometimes said: "My work is writing music, my hobby is also writing music".

He wrote 600 songs in all his life, a great contribution to Vietnamese music. Most of his songs are love songs. Others are anti-war songs, written during and about the Vietnam War. He sang of the homeland, and the nation with the heart of child who has known happiness to the extremes of happiness and has known pain to the extremes of pain of his kind Mother's Fatherland. All of his songs have meaningful lyrics and the melodies are quite strange but really nice. Sometimes I wonder how he could write such excellent lyrics while he had not studied at any Vietnamese schools. Trinh is not like other normal composers who just expressed their songs by just making good melodies. He was using many descriptive languages to express his feelings; apart from it, Trinh even used words that some people cannot understand the meaning. He studied in a French school before he finished the secondary school but his Vietnamese vocabulary was not limited. Tran had the talent to make music, compose words, and also to know how to feel the pulse of the times, to truly live as part of his generation, in the heart of his nation, and in the world's musical scene. His music is simple - a shortcoming that has lead to its success.

When I was fourteen, I had my first trip to China. I met a girl performed a Vietnamese song on the street. This was the first time I heard Tráť<nh's music. It's strange but for me at that time his music was like a breath of wind from some far off place, a fervent love for one's fellow man, one's race, friends, peace, and truth. How many times have the arts and letters played such a role? I can't remember what the girl talked to me that day, but have one thing that I can't forget until now. "Trinh's music is the way to connect Vietnamese people. Everywhere. Every time. One day if I miss Vietnam, I just need to perform Trinh's songs with a guitar on stranger streets and feel like I'm at home. I don't sing to have money, I sing to find love and peace in my soul." It was so impressed me that the next day, I came back the street to hear her voice with Trinh's music. But I never met her again...

So if you could choose one "image" to introduce Vietnam to a foreign friend, what would you choose? I chose Trinh Cong Son.

Word Count: 511