About the proverb "A bowl of rice is worth a bamboo stick"

(Baothanhhoa.vn) - In the previous issue of the “Chatting about words” column, we had an article “Nuốc lát và không lạc lát”, which clearly pointed out the difference between “nut” and “nuốc”. Specifically, “nut” is the place where the two ends of the rope are tied together, and “nuốc” is the loop of rope that leads to “nut”, not the “Southern dialect” that calls “nut” “nuốc”.

In this "Chatting about words" column, we would like to discuss an idiom related to the word "nuoc", which is "A bowl of rice is worth a bowl of rice".

“A bowl of rice with a bamboo stick” (variant version: “A bowl of rice with a bamboo stick”) is interpreted by Dai Nam Quoc Am Tu Vi (Huynh Tinh Paulus Cua) as “Expensive labor” (expensive labor - HTC); and the Dictionary of Vietnamese Idioms and Proverbs (Vu Dung Group) as “It is costly to hire workers; the one who puts in the effort is paid, fairly, no one can claim credit for anyone else”.

Why is there such a thing as “expensive” or “costly” labor here?

In the past, houses were thatched with bamboo and thatch, so every few years they had to be re-roofed. When the farming was off, the homeowner would carry out the work. People from the village, hamlet, and hamlet would gather around to help. Women would clean, cook, and put up the roof; men would go up to the roof. The number of people who came to "contribute" was almost unlimited. At first, there were only a few, but later they sat in rows, covering the entire roof. The laughter and chatter were bustling, the calls "Ke dy,...! Me dy...!" were bustling. People were thatching in a hurry, making fences... Slow and clumsy people would not be able to keep up with skilled and agile people. Therefore, some people only had time to thread the bamboo through the rafters and then through the palm leaves to create a "nuoc" but had not yet tightened it to twist the "nuoc", but had to quickly leave it and place the next roof to keep up with the person next to them. When the roofing was finished, standing below and looking up, they would discover loose roofs, sometimes reaching down to pull them down and they would slip off.

All the people who participated in the roofing party were hired helpers, working for free. However, after the job was done, everyone would sit down to eat rice, even those who arrived late, sometimes only tying a few bamboo strips before the job was done. So, “One bamboo strip, one bowl of rice”! Later, this phrase was understood to mean that labor was expensive, “it was costly to hire workers”.

Man Nong (Contributor)

Reference: Variant “Nuoc lat bat com” is explained in the Dictionary of Vietnamese Idioms, Proverbs and Folk Songs (Viet Chuong): “Tying a single string is a very easy and quick task, anyone can do it. A single string cannot build a house, but that does not mean doing the job carelessly.

The figurative meaning of this sentence is that when doing anything, no matter how small or unimportant, we must do it thoroughly and carefully. Only then can the work be completed well and last long.

Source: https://baothanhhoa.vn/ve-cau-thanh-ngu-nbsp-mot-nuoc-lat-mot-bat-com-260920.htm