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| Journalist Bui Thuan visited Ha Giang during the mustard flower season. Photo: Contributor |
Reading these lines, I think that my colleague Luu Dinh Trieu is really perceptive. My "forte" when going to the field to write articles, especially the first time I go to a strange land, is always to apply the basic professional lessons of journalism, which is to find and exploit reliable and reputable witnesses in the issue I want to investigate. To do so, in addition to my own efforts, such as having to prepare in advance to research and collect relevant information; I really need the help and support of collaborators, especially local colleagues. During nearly 40 years of journalism, I have written quite a few satisfactory articles; most of those articles have the "participation" of colleagues or collaborators, close friends from different conditions, circumstances and levels.
Recently, on the occasion of the anniversary of the founding of the 52nd Tay Tien Regiment, I was fascinated by the heroic, tragic and romantic tone of Quang Dung in the poem Tay Tien, including the Son Tay people's eyes... so despite my "old age and weak health", I still decided to overcome the "winding and steep uphill", "thousands of meters up, thousands of meters down" to follow the "Ma River roaring its solo" to the West of Thanh Hoa to directly "witness" "Sai Khao fog covered the tired army/ Muong Lat flowers returned in the night air" to conclude the two key locations in the poem Tay Tien. Before that, I relied on the poem to follow the footsteps of the "hairless army", of the young men "going to Tay Tien that spring" to visit places such as: Moc Chau, Pha Luong, Mai Chau, and even Vientiane, Sam Neua in Laos.
Although Muong Lat is the farthest mountainous district, 300km from Thanh Hoa city, it is quite easy to get there. The western bus station of Thanh Hoa has buses running to Muong Lat every day. But getting to Sai Khao is not easy at all.
Although less than 30km from Muong Lat town, Sai Khao, located at an altitude of 1,500m, is a "3 no" village (no electricity, no road, no phone signal); the most "tense" of which is that there is no road for cars. There are many steep slopes to climb. More importantly, Muong Lat is also a border area that is "hot" in the fight against drug trafficking and trafficking. Therefore, there were journalists with full papers who brazenly came to work without going through the district and were asked to leave the area by the "interdisciplinary team". At that time, I suddenly remembered the vague statement of a colleague at Thanh Hoa newspaper: "Going to Muong Lat is not too difficult, but going to Sai Khao is... up to you!"
In that situation of almost "blocking the road" to Sai Khao peak, Linh Nga - a female reporter of Muong Lat District Radio Station whom I had just met for the first time through the introduction of her colleague Manh Cuong at Thanh Hoa Newspaper, although she was busy preparing for the Youth Union Congress of the agency, which she was directly in charge of, hurriedly ran to the guest house to meet the Secretary of the Muong Ly Commune Party Committee and some cadres who went to the district to do military service work to ask for me to "hitchhike" to Sai Khao. Linh Nga also carefully asked the commune team leader to send someone to guide me as well as find someone to take me back to Muong Lat.
In the following years, I returned to Lao Cai many times. And through my colleagues Ngoc Hoan, La Tuat, Cao Cuong... I was able to attend a wedding of the Red Dao people in Ta Phin, watch peach blossoms bloom on the O Quy Ho pass, bathe in Sa Pa ethnic medicinal herbs, see cardamom on the highlands of Y Ty, go to the Bac Ha market...
Walking on the road where no one could be seen; there was only a steep cliff on one side and a deep abyss on the other; I realized that without the dedicated help of my colleagues, I would not have been able to reach Sai Khao, fulfill my dream of Tay Tien, and would not have had a series of articles published in three installments in the newspaper.
More than 20 years ago, I also first set foot in Ha Giang - the northernmost province of the country. At that time, Ha Giang was still very poor, there was no place to eat, I carried my backpack to the Ha Giang Newspaper office at exactly 4pm on Sunday. The entire agency had only reporter Phuong Hoa, who was assigned by Editor-in-Chief Le Trong Lap to "run the market" to cook for colleagues from the South. The single journalist in charge of security and defense cooked very quickly and served mountain specialties that I had seen for the first time such as plums, wild mushrooms, bitter bamboo shoots... Then I went to Meo Vac, visited Lung Cu peak, Dong Van stone plateau, the Meo King's residence... (at that time, to enter these places, I had to have permission from the police and border guards); enjoyed corn wine, wormwood, apples, thang co, au tau porridge, men men, black chicken soup stewed with ginseng roots...
In recent years, during the buckwheat flower season, I have had the opportunity to return to Ha Giang to enjoy many special hot pot dishes, but the simple and accidental meal on an old mat spread on the floor of the tiny dormitory of journalist Phuong Hoa is still an unforgettable impression for me.
Not long before, I was also saved from a clear defeat by Manh Tan - a female reporter of Lao Cai Newspaper at the 89th minute. While attending a conference in Hanoi, I received a call from journalist Mai Song Be - Vice President of the Journalists Association of Dong Nai Province "ordering" me to rush to Lao Cai to mourn the late Editor-in-Chief Ho Xuan Doan who had just passed away. When I arrived, everything was done. That afternoon (December 23) was the day of worshiping the Kitchen God, some people in the newspaper's editorial office invited me to go out to eat dog meat, a "hot" specialty in the Northwestern border region, but they discovered that I had not booked a ticket for the Lao Cai - Hanoi train that would depart at 8:00 p.m. because I had assumed that this route would be empty, but unexpectedly this was a trip taking tourists to Sa Pa back to Hanoi that was already full. Acting Editor-in-Chief Pham Ngoc Trien and Editorial Secretary cum Secretary of the Lao Cai Newspaper's Journalists Association Le Minh Thao consulted and called Manh Tan - a female reporter in charge of the traffic - construction section. The famous journalist and poet in Lao Cai enthusiastically joined in to "rescue" me. With a special ticket for me to get to Hanoi in time to catch the flight to the South at 2pm the next day, which Manh Tan "arranged", my last night in Lao Cai was filled with the joy of meeting journalists from two strange lands...
Bui Thuan
Source: https://baodongnai.com.vn/dong-nai-cuoi-tuan/202506/nho-nhung-nguoi-dong-nghiep-c901067/
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