At Milestone 0

(Baonghean) -Milestone 0 of the historic Ho Chi Minh Trail is located right in Lat Town, Tan Ky District, Nghe An, built by the 559th Army Corps as a towering monument. A towering, strong, majestic beauty of the country's history evokes many emotions in the hearts of visitors.

Tan Ky means new and strange. It is an adjective referring to things that appear to surprise and delight people. Tan Ky in this article is the name of a mountainous district in Nghe An province that was separated from Nghia Dan district on April 19, 1963. In 2013, Tan Ky district turns 50 years old. On the occasion of the historic month of April, the whole district is excitedly preparing to celebrate its birthday...

At the age of 24, I was taking the graduation exam at Hanoi University of Commerce, when I was recognized as a special graduate to go across Truong Son to the South to fight the enemy. At that time, I joined the army under the general mobilization order, aiming for the final war. After 100 days of marching over passes and climbing the deep Truong Son mountains, I finally arrived at Loc Ninh, 100 kilometers west of Saigon. After nearly 4 years of fighting, participating in the Ho Chi Minh Campaign to liberate Saigon, then by fate, I returned to the starting point of the historic Truong Son road: Kilometer 0 - Lat - Tan Ky. In 1977, in Hue, I married a woman from Se village, Nghia Dong commune, on the Con River, next to this milestone.

So I went around the legendary Ho Chi Minh - Truong Son trail, to follow my wife back to the source of the Con River. That was the first time my wife took me home to meet her relatives. Arriving at the Sen ferry, I was shocked to see a group of more than ten workers covered in grease, bare-backed pulling the cable to bring the heavy ferry across the river. I have been on many ferries across the country such as Bai Chay, Ben Thuy, Gianh River, Quan Hau... but I have never seen a ferry pulled by human power like here. Each person has a rope, one end tied to an iron hook, hooked to a steel cable as thick as a wrist stretched from one bank to the other on the river. The other end is tied across the person's waist. Both hands hold the rope and pull. "Ho do ta... hey, Ho do ta... hey". The ferry moves inch by inch, heavy and tired.

I was so moved that I sat there for hours on the riverbank watching the cable pullers, even though the sun had gone down. I asked my wife: “How long has this cable ferry been around, do you know?”. My wife said: “It’s been around for a long time, since I was in elementary school!”. That means for decades now, the cable pullers of the Sen Ferry have been holding that rope tightly day and night to ferry the ferry across the river… The ferry carries cars to take soldiers to the front line, carries oranges from the Song Con Farm downstream, carries people from Tan Ky across the river to buy and sell, visit each other… All of them go back and forth on the two hands of the cable pullers holding that burning thread of fire, despite bullets, bombs, storms and floods…

That night, I stayed up all night to write the poem “The Cable Puller of the Sen Ferry” for my wife’s hometown. The Con River has haunted me ever since!

When I followed my wife back to my hometown, there was not a single bridge across the Con River. Tan Ky District was like a Robison oasis, with no way out. But the soil of the Con River was good soil, very suitable for industrial crops such as coffee, sugarcane, rubber, oranges, grapefruits, etc. That soil had a valuable resource, the "primitive" clay mine in Nghia Hoan commune, to produce good bricks and tiles that were unmatched anywhere else. During the French period, many French landowners came to the Con River to open coffee plantations and raise beef cattle. For example, the Cu-Duc plantation occupied land from Vuc Lo to Nghia Dong, Nghia Binh; the Koong-Be plantation occupied land from Vuc Lo to Trai Lat; the Balazon plantation opened on land south of the Con River...

When the North was liberated, many farms were established in Tan Ky. The famous Song Con Farm was "gathered" by Southern cadres, mostly from Thua Thien Hue and Quang Tri. They planted vast "orange forests" and coffee. At that time, the orange acreage of Song Con Farm was up to nearly a thousand hectares. My wife told me that when she was young, she often sneaked into the orange forest to play hide and seek and stole oranges to eat to herd herds. At that time, Song Con oranges were a famous brand, used to sell and supply ration stamps throughout the North. All were transported by car to Pha Sen, passing "kilometer 0" on Highway 7 to the North or up to Nghia Dan on Highway 8...



Milestone 0 in Lat town (Tan Ky) - the starting point of the legendary Ho Chi Minh trail

In the integration period, Tan Ky district's economy still relies on the Con River as its main axis. When oranges are no longer popular, they switch to growing sugarcane, coffee, rubber, etc. New farms such as An Ngai and Vuc Rong were established, then converted into two companies, Song Con Agricultural Company and An Ngai Agricultural Company, which have been profitable for the past few years. The district has determined that, in addition to rice, peanuts, beans, etc., the two leading industrial crops of the district are sugarcane and rubber.

The sugarcane area of ​​the whole district in 2009 reached 4,500 hectares, now more than 11,000 hectares. Song Con sugar produced by Song Con Sugar Factory is a strong brand, dominating the market throughout the Central region. The factory produced 24,000 tons of white sugar and 12,000 tons of organic phosphate fertilizer per year. That means the company has created a closed loop, exploiting all the benefits from sugarcane to serve production and life, turning sugarcane into the main poverty reduction crop of Tan Ky farmers. After sugarcane is rubber. The district sent people to Quang Tri and Hue to learn how to grow smallholder rubber. Up to now, Tan Ky has nearly 2,000 hectares of rubber, some households have grown from 5 to 10 hectares of smallholder rubber. Open your eyes and earn millions!

In addition to the white sugar brand, Song Con land also contributes to the national market a special product: Cua bricks and tiles. Cua tiles have straight yin-yang grooves, can be stepped on without breaking, and can be dropped without breaking. Cua tiles have been granted a trademark by the Intellectual Property Office with a globe-shaped logo with the words "Cua Tiles". Looking at the logo, I immediately think of the ambition of Tan Ky people: Wanting their products to reach the world! Cua tiles are competing equally with Quang Ninh tiles, Dong Tam Long An, Hanoi, Dong Nai tiles... Present in all provinces of the Central region, in the South and the North, and are reaching the markets of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Cua tiles can be used to cover houses for a long time without being dehumidified thanks to the original clay of Dong Nay and Song Con.

Now Cua area has become the district's Small Industry Zone and Cua village has become "Cua-Nghia Hoan Tile Craft Village". This craft village is currently in the top 3 richest craft villages, leading in Nghe An province. The remote village of Cua 30 years ago is now a bustling town, every house is made of two or three-story concrete, every house has a luxury car, high-class means of living not inferior to Hanoi or Vinh. That small village by the road with a few hundred households has up to 30 trucks transporting goods, 6 North-South passenger transport vehicles, including "high-class sleeper" vehicles, 10 excavators, specialized bulldozers, more than twenty luxury cars... The owners of those trucks and cars are workers in the craft village. That is a number that perhaps few villages in Vietnam have!

In the period of renovation in Tan Ky, the economy developed, so the appearance of the Con River also changed. Vehicles carrying sugar cane, sugar, Cua tiles, consumer goods up and down the main road from Vinh - Do Luong - Lat - Cua - Sen - Nghia Dan... were bustling day and night. Since then, the cable-pulled Sen ferry and many ferries across the Con River no longer existed. Instead, there were permanent concrete bridges and solid cable-stayed bridges. The first was the Roi Bridge across the Con River from Lim Forest - Lat to the beginning of Len Roi, which has been in use for more than 10 years. With a bridge across the river, everyone was happy. My wife and I went from Hue to visit our grandparents and no longer had to wait for the "Sen Ferry cable puller", no longer had to wait to buy tickets for each leg of Hue - Vinh, Vinh - Lat, Lat - Cua like before, but the car sped straight from Hue to the Sen market next to our house.

From Se village, my wife's hometown, across the Con River to Milestone 0, there are now two bridges. Sen Bridge - permanent concrete - built on the old ferry route has been in use since 2010. The cable-stayed suspension bridge from Ro mountain across the Con River to Nghia Dong has relieved the old, dilapidated Ro ferry trips, which carried people and motorbikes across day and night, extremely dangerously. I remember when I took the ferry, people would put a thin plank from the ferry to the water's edge, so people carrying bulky shoulder poles, people riding motorbikes, and people on foot jostled, pushed, and revved their engines to get on the ferry like they were doing a circus act. On Ro mountain, there is a very sacred Don temple. People burn incense and pray day and night for the peace of the river.

Now there are Ro Bridge and Sen Bridge across, surely God and Buddha are satisfied. Previously, after the fatal ferry accident in An Ngai, the district invested in building a sturdy An Ngai cable-stayed bridge for people to cross. Another concrete bridge has also been built across the Con River at the end of the district, where it borders Anh Son District. That is Tan Lam - Phu Son Bridge. So in less than 10 years, 5 modern and very poetic bridges have been built on the Con River.

Standing next to Milestone 0, I thought wistfully about the circle of history that allowed me to return to eat Tan Ky rice, drink Con River water, and live more deeply with the Fatherland. From Milestone 0 - Lat, I can go North - South without having to go back to QL1A. Tan Ky no longer has the situation of "no way out", but has begun the time of integration with the countryside of the country!

Ngo Minh (Hue City)