Surprised by singer Thu Phuong's past

My childhood was filled with deep feelings of poverty, hardship, sacrifice, suffering...

Childish Shame

My childhood was spent playing naughty at school, being the ringleader like a boy, coming home (in a 24m house) to cook and do housework like a professional. Since I was little, I had to practice all my roles. I loved the evening meals spread out on a mat in the yard - a small yard, a shared path for the whole neighborhood. People passing by, what the family ate and drank, the whole village knew. I remember the scent of the soil, the smell of the sun, the smell of the wind... the sound of selling goods in the middle of the scorching summer afternoons was always a wish, if only I could buy something.

My childhood was filled with deep feelings of poverty, hardship, sacrifice, and suffering... I was haunted by witnessing my grandmother's pain for many years, crying and struggling because of my uncle's sacrifice. I struggled to do things for my mother since I was a child, but I also felt proud and happy when I didn't have to fight in line to buy goods because my family had a martyr and had a priority card.

Singer Thu Phuong when she was young.

Hardship makes people crave even the most miserable and painful things. A neighbor friend told his mother: "I wish someone in our family sacrificed so that we could have a priority card like the skinny Phuong family". I remember deeply, every year on the occasion of July 27th, commemorating war invalids and martyrs, my grandmother cried for a whole week, and the whole neighborhood was exhausted. At that time, would people still wish for a priority card?...

I was afraid to see my mother riding her bike to work all day and night. Then one day in the dark, my mother walked home exhausted. Exhausted, she lost her bike... at that time, the bike was the most valuable asset to my family. It was terrible! My family lost our bike a few more times and also lost our thermos, lost our clothes... It was so miserable when my classmates gave me clothes to wear.

My childish fear of embarrassment peaked the day my mother decided to boil corn to sell at the market and I had to sit and sell it for her. The whole day I kept my hat down and looked down at the ground. I prayed that no classmate passing by would see me. How miserable!

No matter how hard our family worked, to make up for our parents' joy, my three brothers and I learned to play and sing. Whenever guests came to our house, we would "perform". During the summer months, my brothers and I would go to the Hai Phong Children's Cultural House and stand outside the door to watch our friends learn to sing and dance. My father loved the arts very much and tried to get connections to help my brothers and me participate in activities.

Memories are always what Thu Phuong remembers.

Childhood is beautiful but also full of tears

At the age of 14, I stood alone in the middle of the square of the Hai Phong Opera House, trembling with anxiety and nervousness as I walked inside with an application form for the audition for actors by the Youth Theatre from Hanoi to Hai Phong. I was very young then, singing and not paying attention to anything around me.

The song "Only One in the World" must have been very different from normal. Later I learned that at that time because I was not yet 15 years old and was skinny, the admissions board did not accept me for fear that I would not develop and how could I train. Singer Hong Ky was the one who convinced the board to accept me because he said I was special and talented.

My parents' decision to let me go to Hanoi when I received the admission letter to the Youth Theater, I knew for sure, was extremely difficult. And then there was the pitiful call of my name from my father every time the train left the station during my visits home, the wandering days, the sadness, the nostalgia... and that is me today.

Hanoi to me is full of sadness, hard work during the day, and tears streaming down my face at night. Well, it's not just me who is sad, most people, every family suffers. It was during the subsidy period. Maybe it's because I lived far away from home when I was so young and I was a girl.

I still remember when I was 14, I was skinny and dark, wandering around Hom market with stamps and coupons. When I was hungry, I hung around with the shoemaker, sitting and fanning the stove to heat the welding rod until a popcorn cone with iced tea was enough. Sometimes I stopped by the grilled apricot tofu stall, at the end of the day I also got a piece dipped in soy sauce.

When I was warm, I wandered around looking at the glass cabinet, dreaming of having a powder box for my baby girl, dreaming of having a meter of floral fabric that I could cut and sew myself into pants and shirts. Sewing, embroidery, and home economics also came from that, the time of working hard to make a profit, of necessity being the mother of invention. The time of buying and selling on credit, eating off others, borrowing... all required "technique".

The best friend escaped the train and came back to Thu Phuong at night.

I had a close friend in the same neighborhood who was one year younger than me. I lived on the 5th floor, he lived on the 3rd floor. Sometimes early in the morning, he walked with me to the Conservatory of Music in O Cho Dua, sat in the schoolyard waiting for me to finish school, then walked back to 23 Ngo Thi Nham. He walked with me to keep me from being so sad.

Sometimes when there was something delicious at home, he would steal it and bring it to me. When I ran out of rice and money, he would bring me rice and a bowl of fish sauce with a little fat, and that was the meal. He loved me.

I still remember one time he wanted to go with me to Hai Phong but my parents didn't let me. I went to the train station and went home alone. At 10:30 pm I got home and 30 minutes later I heard a knock on the door. I ran downstairs and saw him hugging me and panting, "I ran away from my parents to go."

He said he heard me say that his father had packed the cupboard for him to take to Hanoi and was afraid that I would have no one to help me so he went home. He only slept at home for one night and the next afternoon the two children respectfully carried the cupboard to Hanoi. When he got home, his father beat him up. His childhood was closely linked to my difficult days.

Hard times sometimes make adults cruel to children. I still remember four naive children taking their parents' savings from Hai Phong to Hanoi just hoping to go to Trang Tien General Store to buy Tien Phong plastic sandals but were cheated out of everything by a woman.

Hanoi to me sometimes has joy. It is when at the beginning of the month I receive a scholarship, receive rice, when I go to Trang Tien or meet kind people who change my life, when I get to step on stage and sing. When I feel moved by the milk flowers and autumn and when I start to feel the love for Hanoi./.

According to Vietnamnet