The adventures of the Red Carp and the fluid nature of water.

VHO - In recent years, Vietnamese children's literature has seen an increasing number of works with an ecological spirit, but not every book manages to transcend the limitations of a didactic story disguised as a fairy tale.

"The Adventures of the Red Carp" by Pham Hong Diep tells the story of an adventurous journey of a fish species.

Pham Hong Diep's *The Adventures of the Red Carp* (Tri Thuc Publishing House, 2026) is a noteworthy case because it not only recounts the adventures of a fish but also attempts to construct an entire aquatic worldview, where water is not simply a setting but becomes a form of thinking, a discourse about existence, symbiosis, and adaptation.

In the introduction, critic Bui Viet Thang calls the book "a discourse on water." In my opinion, this is almost the most useful key to understanding the artistic whole of this work.

In * The Adventures of the Pink Carp *, water becomes the dynamic structure of the life web. Every living thing must learn to flow, change course, and escape like water.

From the Crocodile Pond to the floating canal, from the rice paddies to the brackish water areas, from the mangrove forest to the swirling dragon transformation at the end of the work, the entire journey of the Red Carp is essentially a journey of learning the fluid essence of existence.

While classical agricultural civilizations often used "land" as a symbol of stability (settlement), this book takes "water" as a model of existence—a model where living is synonymous with movement, adaptation, self-positioning, and constant self-restructuring.

Perhaps that's why reality in the work has no immutable boundaries. Living individuals always set themselves to "move" mode. Even maturity here doesn't take the form of a ladder climbing higher, but rather like a gradually expanding stream. Red Carp grows up by swimming through the different layers of life's waters.

In other words, while the Red Carp travels through aquatic space, it also learns to understand the laws of survival through the changes in water. This writing style by Pham Hong Diep is quite modern.

It is no coincidence that Bui Viet Thang connects the work to the concept of "hydro-humanities," a research approach that views water not only as a physical entity but also as a discourse that shapes identity.

In *The Adventures of the Red Carp* , water carries memories of shared living, cultural memories, and also the unease of the increasingly conflicting relationship between humans and nature.

Therefore, while the book is certainly written for children, it is also written for adults, especially those living in an era of climate change, saltwater intrusion, pollution, and the growing disconnect between humanity and its own biosphere.

One of the issues frequently raised today is that children's literature often imposes an adult perspective; that is, children are merely recipients of truth, not truly experiencing life through their own innocent and honest eyes.

The adventures of the Red Carp consciously break away from that writing style. Reality in the story is largely viewed from the "inside point of view" of the aquatic species. Fears, intuition, premonitions, survival experiences, changes in the aquatic environment... are all perceived from within that very community.

In other words, the value of the work lies not in anthropomorphizing the fish, but in forcing humans to abandon their arrogant, central position. That is, instead of forcing aquatic creatures to "humanize," the book attempts to place humans in a position where they must "humanize" their perspective.

This represents a crucial re-evaluation of contemporary ecological literature: humans are no longer the supreme subject observing nature from a distance, but merely one organism within the vast interconnected network of life.

From the very beginning, Chép Hồng was placed in a setting that was anything but… fairytale-like. Although the Chéo Pond was vast, it was still a place where fish fought for food, where the big fish devoured the small ones.

The author not only presents the protagonist with a straight, flower-strewn path, a purely dreamlike kingdom, but also places him in challenging situations, in the spirit of "fire tests gold, hardship tests strength."

This is what gives the work its contemporary feel. The book doesn't lull children into a world of absolute safety and goodness. On the contrary, the aquatic life here operates on a mechanism quite close to the soft spirit of Darwinism: to survive, one must know how to regulate oneself; to thrive, one must learn to read environmental signals, and must know how to move, ally, and change.

Survival is not just instinct, but also a skill. A passionate heart is needed, but a cool head is essential to remain alert and cautious in every choice, every step. Living is an art, or rather, the art of coexisting.

These are valuable lessons that Chép Hồng gradually learned after many travels. These lessons touch upon a philosophy of survival of the era. However, the work does not turn such a philosophy into rigid dogmas.

The knowledge in The Adventures of the Red Carp is largely acquired through experience. Each body of water the Red Carp travels through corresponds to a different life lesson.

The Crocodile Pond is a space of primal survival competition; the floating channels teach the fish how to adapt to fluctuating currents; the brackish water opens up experiences of living in the intermingling of saltwater and freshwater; and the mangrove forest is a school of collective shelter. It is within this adventurous structure that the Red Carp is not "taught" in an imposed way, but learns through its interactions with life.

However, it is clear from this that the work has not completely eradicated the "adult point of view." The adult subject is still present as a subtle organizing consciousness behind the adventures of Chép Hồng.

Many passages still have a rather concluding tone; many lessons are stated somewhat formally; and at times, the senior characters like Uncle Catfish and Uncle Barracuda still resemble sociological "mentors" more than natural creatures.

But perhaps this isn't necessarily a drawback of the work. Because, as mentioned, *The Adventures of the Pink Carp* doesn't aim to be purely children's literature. It also aspires to be a form of "philosophical fable," where the adventure story is used to convey reflections, questions, and dialogues about community, ecology, and future development.

Characters like Uncle Catfish and Uncle Barracuda not only act as guides, but also serve as repositories of riverine memories, where survival experiences are passed down through generations.

Therefore, the aquatic world in the work does not exist as a whimsical stage for children, but operates as a community with its own foundation, history, memory, and rules of existence.

The entire aquatic world in the work is essentially a microcosm of society: there is competition, alliances, migration, the transmission of experience, life-or-death battles, and mass escapes from the threat of purges and annihilation. When humans appear, this entire natural order is immediately shaken.

“Beneath the surface of the lake, the fish and all aquatic life are shaken by the ‘earthquake’ called humanity.” Modern humans are becoming the culprits, inflicting severe trauma on the rich and harmonious natural ecosystem. Beneath the adventures of the Red Carp lies a subtle but distinct sense of ecological unease.

The aquatic space in the work is both inclusive and perilous; every shelter can become unstable due to the deformation of the earth and the illusion of humanity's power to conquer/transform.

But if it only focused on the theme of survival, the book could easily become dry and cold. What keeps *The Adventures of the Red Carp* with the gentle feel of a fairy tale is the spirit of symbiosis that runs throughout the work.

The Red Carp matures not through solitary individual strength, but through a sense of resonance and teamwork (like a bird's nest with "dry straws tightly bound together, seemingly fragile at first glance but incredibly strong"), of mutual support, especially in uplifting weaker individuals, so that they go far together, and no one is left behind.

On a broader level, this is also a philosophy of communal living, a very East Asian concept of "harmony with nature": the self does not separate itself from the collective; it does not seize power, but harmonizes with its surroundings.

Interestingly, while contemporary studies such as "hydrophysiology" are beginning to view water as a construct of identity and thought, Vietnam's rice-farming civilization had already lived by that model from a very early stage.

In a sense, the adventures of Chép Hồng are a meeting point between modern ecological thinking and the "collective unconscious" of the "archetype" of water. The work subtly hints at a "water epic" about Vietnam's rice-farming civilization.

The entire setting of the artwork—the Cá Chéo lake, the rice paddies, the canals, the brackish water areas, the mangrove forests—strongly evokes the structure of alluvial civilization and riverine civilization.

The Red Carp doesn't just swim in water ("from gentle rice paddies to great rivers and then to the vast ocean"); it swims in Vietnamese cultural memory - a culture that researcher Tran Dinh Huou equates as "water culture": flexible, adaptable, and responsive.

In that sense, the journey of the Red Carp is an aquatic adventure, and at the same time a rather typical metaphor for the survival intelligence of the Vietnamese people: not confronting all changes directly, but learning to flow through them like water. Adaptation in the work does not have a connotation of compromise, but is a cultural capacity forged by the long history of river life.

The book, therefore, is no longer the journey of a single individual, but becomes the narrative of an entire community of living beings "traveling across different realms," adapting and absorbing, ready to coexist and engage in dialogue with a "completely different world never before known."

If "crossing the dragon gate" is a classic symbol of the aspiration to transform into a dragon, of the legend of personal ascension, then the "dream of crossing the dike" in *The Adventures of the Red Carp* carries a metaphor with a spirit of liberation and timeliness. "Crossing the dike" here does not stop at overcoming a geographical boundary.

It also represents a modern-day "leap forward" for a rice-farming civilization: breaking free from safe havens, escaping the familiar confines of the village, transcending old frames of reference and beliefs… to be ready to face the vast ocean and turbulent waves, to understand oneself and others, and to discover new possibilities and horizons.

This is a highly symbolic image. It transforms the Red Carp from a naive, playful fish in a fairy tale into a symbol of a nation learning to venture out into the world in a new era, while still carrying the memories of its riverine civilization and the principles of communal living.

Notably, the dream of "crossing the dike" does not suddenly appear at the end of the work as a hasty, subjective, and idealistic slogan. From the beginning, the adventurous structure of Chép Hồng is organized according to a trend of gradually expanding the living space: from a small lake to an open canal, from familiar waters to other bodies of water.

Therefore, "breaking through the dike" is essentially the inevitable result of a long history of accumulated survival experience and a secretly prepared desire to forge a new path, allowing internal strength to become the driving force for breakthroughs.

Life is fragile, yet boundless. Pham Hong Diep was not overly zealous in advocating for excessive "crossing the line." This means not sacrificing the opportunity to enjoy what is familiar and close to us in the present moment for the sake of novelty and extravagance. We must live generously, but we also need to live deeply and thoughtfully.

After his travels across the seas, Chép Hồng reflected: "It turns out that the lake where I live still holds so many interesting things yet to be discovered ." This simple statement carries a profound belief: travel is not opposed to staying; expansion does not negate deepening; liberation does not mean severing one's identity; encountering the ocean does not mean feeling inferior.

Behind Chép Hồng, a rather unique type of author emerges: not a writer who romanticizes nature, but rather a subject with a constructive and managerial mindset.

Therefore, even when writing fables, Pham Hong Diep still views life as a dynamic, coexisting space: where all living beings must learn to balance competition and cooperation, development and preservation, the desire to go far and the need to maintain their roots.

It feels as though Pham Hong Diep doesn't write about water as a descriptive object, but rather writes with the very mindset of water: soft yet resilient, dispersed yet interconnected.

Therefore, the fable here is both gentle and structurally sound. The adventures of the Red Carp reflect the mechanisms of economic, social, market, and even post-industrial life today.

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the Red Carp's journey lies not in its dream of transforming into a dragon, but in learning the wisdom of water: knowing how to adapt without losing its essence; knowing how to change course while remaining true to itself.

In an age when we are increasingly alienated from nature, what literature needs to do is not tell beautiful stories, but help people relearn the ability to listen to the silent sounds, uncover the "secrets of water," cherish the "blessings of the earth," and of all living beings who are equally present with us on this "cosmic stage."

Perhaps the deepest value of *The Adventures of the Pink Carp* lies in this: it doesn't teach children how to conquer the world, but teaches people how to live in harmony with the world.

Source: https://baovanhoa.vn/xuat-ban/cuoc-phieu-du-cua-chep-hong-va-ban-the-luu-dong-cua-nuoc-231737.html