 For the next decade, Diệm lived as a private citizen with his family in Huế, although he was kept under surveillance.He spent his time reading, meditating, attending church, gardening, hunting, and in amateur photography.Diệm also conducted extensive nationalist activities during those 21 years, engaging in meetings and correspondence with various leading Vietnamese revolutionaries, such as his friend, Phan Bội Châu, a Vietnamese anti-colonial activist, whom Diệm respected for his knowledge of Confucianism and argued that Confucianism's teachings could be applied to a modern Vietnam.