Two farmers in central Vietnam have run two separate free libraries for villagers out of their love for books and the wish to promote a reading culture in the community.

For the past two years, the small house of farmer Truong Van Hao in the rural district of Quang Dien in Thua Thien-Hue Province has been an address popular with local students.

Every afternoon, the house would be crowded with schoolchildren who come to immerse themselves in the countless books that fill Hao’s wooden shelves.

The 71-year-old farmer said most of the books had been donated by people whom he had asked to contribute to the library.

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of when you ask people for knowledge,” Hao said. “It delights me to see the people of my hometown having access to knowledge, and the kids having a place to both learn and entertain themselves after school.”

Hao cherishes all the books in his collection, be it a novel, short story or children’s comic book, and he works his best to pass on that love for books to the young generation in his village.

“As my family is poor, books are a luxury for us,” said Truong Tu, an eighth grader who had just finished reading an eight-volume history collection on the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam. “Since the opening of Hao’s library, I have been able to read all the books I like for free. He also teaches us that books are friends that would be by our side for as long as we still cherish them.”

In the neighboring commune in Quang Dien District, 63-year-old farmer Van Dinh Tien has been known among his villagers as the ‘king of books.’

Tien has collected thousands of books over the past ten years.

He said that he had been ‘addicted’ to books since childhood, and the love for reading had just grown ever larger over the time.

In 2007, while he was the vice chairman of a local cooperative, Tien set up a desk in the middle of the town hall, where his books are displayed for locals to read for free.

“Many called me nuts, as at the time people were struggling just to put food on the table, let alone having time to spare for reading,” Tien recalled. “But then they began to realize the practical benefits of reading books, especially those on agriculture, and the reading movement just grew from then on.”

Every few months, Tien would ride his bicycle for tens of kilometers to the city on the hunt for used books to add to his collection.

“The thought of my people being empowered by my books and overcoming their poverty with the knowledge they provide motivates me to keep the library running,’ Tien said. “Over the past ten years, I am proud to say that the reading culture in my village has been greatly improved.”

Tien has also willingly shared hundreds of his books with a neighboring commune to open their own library, seeing the action not as a loss for his collection but as a win for knowledge.