Opposite flight paths
The image of a traditional calligrapher from Quang Nam province in "Tet in Saigon," a photo book by photographer Tam Thai published in 2011, is quite surprising.
The author begins by saying that Saigon is a city of exiles, a "unified province" homeland, that Tet here is the Tet of all three regions, and everyone has a homeland to remember...
And as if by deliberate arrangement, the author posted a photo of two elderly people wearing traditional headscarves and long robes, along with a few lines of lục bát poetry to reveal information about the characters. Here are two lines:
The old man from Quang Nam province came here.
He sold a hundred Chinese characters, then flew back outside…
(Ibid., Tre Publishing House, page 45).
"Flying back home again," meaning in a few days, the scholar from Quang Nam will return to his hometown after a "joint provincial" Tet holiday. And who knows, he might meet other compatriots traveling south in the opposite direction…
Now, as the Lunar New Year draws to a close, the departures from hometowns after the holiday for work or to return to university have largely subsided. But you can easily see that while the return journey (before the holiday) was filled with excitement, the departure (after the holiday) is equally heavy with emotion. Who doesn't feel a pang of sadness at having to leave their old home?
After the Lunar New Year of the Year of the Snake 2025, one morning while sitting at a cafe, I saw my neighbor scroll through her phone for a while, then turn to her husband and whisper, "Our son Win has 'flown' to Nha Trang!"
The couple struggled with infertility, and now their child is studying far away in Ho Chi Minh City. The child's departure from home after Tet (Lunar New Year) left the mother feeling anxious all morning. With the Flightradar24 app, every detail of the flight taking off from Da Nang airport was clearly displayed on the mother's phone screen…
The burden weighs heavily not only on those who leave, but also on those who remain.
"Soft-hearted" towards the central region of Vietnam.
The ancient city of Hue has welcomed generations of students from provinces and cities in Central Vietnam who come to study diligently. For a long time now, the journey back to school for students from the northern provinces has seemed "easier," as they only need to cross the Ngang Pass. Many choose the train, the Vinh - Quy Nhon route. With just a small bag and a few local gifts, they can leisurely board the train. The peaceful Hue train station awaits…
But for students from Quang Nam province, a few decades ago, before the tunnel was built through the mountain, things were much more difficult because the Hai Van Pass stood tall and was a haunting sight.
After the Lunar New Year holiday, many students linger in their hometowns longer. Just thinking about having to anxiously stand by the roadside waving to flag down buses, or the possibility of buses breaking down along the way... is enough to make them feel discouraged.
Back then, the winding mountain pass was always a source of fear for both drivers and passengers. Whenever the bus slowly climbed the pass, the bus conductor would stand right by the door, ready with a piece of wood in hand, just in case the brakes failed, so they could quickly jump out and place it under the wheel. Sometimes, passengers would see a bus in an accident precariously balanced on the side of the pass, and upon seeing the license plate, they would be shocked to recognize it as the bus they had missed boarding just hours earlier.
The children kept their worries to themselves, but the mother always had a premonition. As soon as her children left the house, she quietly lit incense before the ancestral altar.
It wasn't until her child reported that the trip was safe that she finally stopped being distraught. Back then, there were no smartphones for quick interaction, no video calls to see the other person's face clearly, and certainly no flight tracking tools like Flightradar24...
All communication had to go through a public telephone booth, dialing a neighbor's number and asking them to "tell my mother that I've arrived."
The child who used to go to the telephone booth to call home back then was me.
Constant of Love
Time gradually passed, and those children who left home for the holidays became fathers and mothers themselves. They once again experienced farewells as their children left home after the Lunar New Year to study far away.
Time has also brought about amazing changes. Roads are wider, there's more traffic, and children leaving home don't need to carry so much luggage... The worries of those left behind are therefore somewhat lessened.
I suddenly remembered artist Quyen Linh once recounting, with a choked voice, the story of leaving his hometown to study acting in Ho Chi Minh City. The night before her son left home, his mother stayed up all night mending a mosquito net riddled with hundreds of holes, and she also packed a few liters of rice and a thoroughly cleaned pot in a basket.
The child sneaked to the back of the house, opened the rice jar, and seeing only a few grains of rice left, asked, "What will Mom and the kids eat at home?" The mother reassured her, "Don't worry, there are still some cassava roots in the garden..."
Artist Quyen Linh once dreamed that when he had enough money, he would sew a beautiful ao dai (traditional Vietnamese dress) for his mother, so that she would feel like a queen in his heart.
"But by then my mother couldn't wear them anymore because her back was hunched," he recounted tearfully on season 3 of the television program "Happy Memories."
The journeys of those leaving their hometowns to seek work or pursue education are becoming increasingly varied. But the flight paths of the birds leaving their nests always leave indelible marks in memory. And the love of those who remain, of fathers and mothers, never changes; it remains constant.
Source: https://baoquangnam.vn/chim-roi-to-3150114.html
Comment (0)