Vietnam: Title page from a 1917 edition of the Vietnamese classic 'Luu Binh dien...

Title page from a Han-Nom edition of 'Luu Binh dien ca', woodblock printed in Hanoi, 1917. The work is a classical drama telling the story of two close friends, Luu Binh and Duong Le. Chu Nom is an obsolete writing system of the Vietnamese language. It makes use of Chinese characters (known as Han Tu in Vietnamese), and characters coined following the Chinese model. The earliest known example of Chu Nom dates to the 13th century. It was used almost exclusively by the Vietnamese elite, mostly for recording Vietnamese literature (formal writings were, in most cases, not done in Vietnamese, but in classical Chinese). It has almost been completely replaced by Quoc Ngu, a script based on the Latin alphabet.