Ask where people are from...

DTO - From the city, to go back to my home in Cao Lanh, I had to go through a very long but also very familiar road, before the highway was built. The first places I passed by were gradually familiar. I learned the way home through those familiar places. Crossing Ben Luc bridge, I reached Tan An town, then Tan Huong, a little further, I would reach Chau Thanh, then My Tho, passing Cai Lay.

Lotus field in Thap Muoi (Photo: Thanh Truc)

When you get to Cai Be, you will see that it is close to your house, a little further turn to Cao Lanh. If your house is in Sa Dec, take the My Thuan ferry (of course, back when there was no My Thuan bridge).

My house is in Cao Lanh, near the border of Tien Giang. So, looking at the signboard indicating Dong Thap territory on the side of Highway 30, I suddenly felt a small cry in my heart: I'm home.

When I travel far and wide, when someone hears me say that my hometown is Dong Thap, there is always someone who will exclaim: Dong Thap? Ah, is that Dong Thap Muoi? Oh! Our Dong Thap Muoi includes Tien Giang, Dong Thap and Long An , my friend. My Dong Thap is in this area, with place names like this and that, isn't it so dear? A friend from far away still wants to play a trick, asking if it is Dong Thap, sing a "piece" of songs for fun. If it is a song, what a song, my hometown is full of the West. A Dong Thap girl raised her voice, imitating the aunts singing back and forth at the back of her house, when she was cutting Mr. Tu's large field: "The Nam Vang ship runs across the sand dunes, the shrimp fishing boat is docked close to the riverbank/ I see you have an old mother, you want to retire, but can you?" Do you know what a riverbank is? A type of "specialty" tree from my hometown. The Western girl was no pushover either, and added another challenge: and here, is there anyone who can sing back and forth with me this line: "Ho o..., Lift up your pants and wade across the waist..."

The “lung” in the nostalgia is the low-lying plains, the land of Thap Muoi, my hometown Dong Thap. The Western girl who has traveled to hundreds of places still remembers to “embed” her nostalgia in folk songs, still keeps some familiar local expressions, such as: make me some “light” tea, I will tell you about this “sinking boat” incident. I remember when I was sitting somewhere in My Tho, listening to my older sister telling stories about the old days when she taught at Kien Phong Cao Lanh Technical School. In her story, the flood season came as if it were just yesterday, the teacher and students together spread nets to catch fish, made a pot of fish sauce full of braised river fish and water lilies, or a pot of sour soup with the first season’s linh fish, the bones of which were still soft and crunchy… and was refreshing because of the strange crunchy taste of the flowers. Home in the house, home in the countryside, home in the nostalgia, in the memories, in every story I caught, of people from other places passing through my land, of people who came there, left and carried with them an endless nostalgia. Home in my life, I feel like I'm still lacking no matter how much I study.

Dong Thap Muoi in the tolerant sentiment only sees Dong Thap as Dong Thap Muoi of my friends, that is the feeling that continues like the present. Like now, at this moment, we: Ms. Hai My Tho, the friend on the edge of Go Cong, Mr. Ba in Cai Be and I, friends from Cao Lanh or Sa Dec, or from the end of Lap Vo, Hong Ngu, all the way to Tan Phu Dong, Tan Phuoc or Cho Gao... have the same name: Dong Thap. I know, I will not be as sad as many friends who have lost their hometown names, when the hometown begins to expand. But I also know, all of us, everyone will have to learn many more place names, to tie ourselves to our hometown.

The house remains unchanged, the hometown is still there, the memories are the same, still the same, like the voice, like the stories of the Southern people. The stories that we met from all over the world, brought each other laughter and the exchange of indigenous cultures. How can the generosity, the open tolerance and the warm hospitality, the most precious common culture of this vast Tien River region, fade away?

And like the sentence in the high school graduation literature exam just finished this year that many people are whispering in emotion: "any homeland's sky is the Fatherland's sky."

Ask where people are from

I said I'm home for a long time!*

Minh Phuc

* Poetry by Bui Giang

Source: https://baodongthap.vn/xa-hoi/hoi-rang-nguoi-o-que-dau--132516.aspx