Next to Milestone No. 0
(Baonghean)The historic Milestone No. 0 on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, located in Lat Town, Tan Ky District, Nghe An Province, was built by the 559th Army Corps as a majestic monument. Its towering, robust, and heroic beauty, a testament to the nation's history, evokes a wealth of emotions in visitors.
Tan Ky means new and strange. It's an adjective describing things that appear and surprise or delight people. In this essay, Tan Ky is the name of a mountainous district in Nghe An province, separated from Nghia Dan district on April 19, 1963. This year, 2013, Tan Ky district celebrates its 50th anniversary. During this historic month of April, the entire district is excitedly preparing to commemorate its birthday...
At the age of 24, while taking my graduation exams at Hanoi University of Commerce, I was granted special graduation status and was sent south to fight the enemy. I enlisted under a general mobilization order, aiming for the final battle. After 100 days of marching on foot across the mountain passes and climbing the vast Truong Son Mountains, I finally reached Loc Ninh, 100 kilometers west of Saigon. I fought for nearly four years, participating in the Ho Chi Minh Campaign to liberate Saigon. Later, by fate, I returned to the very starting point of the historic Truong Son Trail: Kilometer 0 – Lat – Tan Ky. In 1977, in Hue, I married a woman from Se village, Nghia Dong commune, on the Con River, near this landmark.
And so I completed a circuit of the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail - Truong Son, to return with my wife to the source of the Con River. It was the first time my wife had introduced me to her relatives. Arriving at the Sen ferry terminal, I was astonished to see a group of more than a dozen workers, covered in oil and grease, shirtless, pulling the heavy ferry across the river using a cable. I had crossed many ferries throughout the country, such as Bai Chay, Ben Thuy, Gianh River, Quan Hau… but I had never seen a ferry pulled by human strength like this. Each person had a rope, one end tied to an iron hook, which attached to a thick steel cable, as thick as a wrist, stretched from one bank to the other. The other end was tied around their waist. They gripped the rope with both hands and pulled. “Hooray… this! Hooray… this!” The ferry moved inch by inch, laboriously and wearily.
I sat there for hours, deeply moved, watching the cable pullers, even as the sun was setting. I asked my wife, "How long has this cable ferry been here? Do you know?" My wife replied, "It's been here since I was in elementary school!" That means for decades, the cable pullers at the Sen Ferry have been gripping that rope day and night, ferrying the ferry across the river… The ferry carried cars transporting soldiers to the front lines, transported oranges from the Song Con Plantation downstream, and carried people from Tan Ky across the river for trade and visits… All of this was carried on the two hands of the cable pullers, holding that burning rope, regardless of bombs, storms, or floods…
That night, I stayed up late and wrote the poem "The Cable Puller of Sen Ferry" as a gift to my wife's hometown. The Con River has haunted me ever since!
When I followed my wife back to her hometown, there wasn't a single bridge across the Con River. Tan Ky District was like a Robison Island, with no roads leading out. But the land along the Con River was fertile, very suitable for industrial crops such as coffee, sugarcane, rubber, oranges, and pomelos… This land had a valuable resource: the "original" clay mine in Nghia Hoan commune, which produced high-quality bricks and tiles unmatched anywhere else. During the French colonial period, many French landowners came to the Con River to establish coffee plantations and raise beef cattle. For example, the Cu-duc plantation occupied land from Vuc Lo up to Nghia Dong and Nghia Binh; the Koong-be plantation occupied land from Vuc Lo to Trai Lat; and the Balazon plantation was established on land south of the Con River…
By the time North Vietnam was liberated, many farms were established in Tan Ky. The Song Con farm was famous because it was developed by cadres from the South, mostly from Thua Thien Hue and Quang Tri provinces. They planted vast orchards of oranges and coffee. At that time, the area of oranges at the Song Con farm reached nearly a thousand hectares. My wife recounted that, as a child, while herding buffalo, she would often sneak into the orange groves to play hide-and-seek and steal oranges to eat to her heart's content. Back then, Song Con oranges were a famous brand, used to supply ration coupons throughout North Vietnam. Everything was transported by truck to Pha Sen ferry, passing "kilometer zero" on Highway 7 to the North, or to Nghia Dan on Highway 8…
Milestone number 0 in Lat town (Tan Ky) - the starting point of the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail.
During the integration period, the economy of Tan Ky district still relied on the Con River as its main economic axis. When oranges lost their popularity, the district shifted to growing sugarcane, coffee, and rubber… New farms like An Ngai and Vuc Rong were established, later transformed into two companies, Song Con Agricultural Company and An Ngai Agricultural Company, which have been profitable for several years. The district has identified sugarcane and rubber as its two leading industrial crops, in addition to rice, peanuts, and beans.
The total sugarcane area in the district reached 4,500 hectares in 2009, and currently exceeds 11,000 hectares. The Song Con Sugar Factory, producing sugar from the Song Con River, is a strong brand, dominating the market throughout Central Vietnam. The factory produces 24,000 tons of refined white sugar and 12,000 tons of organic phosphate fertilizer in some years. This means the company has created a closed loop, exploiting all the benefits from sugarcane to serve production and life, transforming sugarcane into the main crop for poverty reduction for farmers in Tan Ky. Following sugarcane is rubber. The district sent people to Quang Tri and Hue to learn how to cultivate small-scale rubber plantations. To date, Tan Ky has nearly 2,000 hectares of rubber, with some households having planted 5 to 10 hectares of small-scale rubber plantations. They earn millions of dong every morning!
Besides its renowned white sugar, the land of the Con River also contributes a special product to the national market: Cua tiles. Cua tiles have perfectly straight grooves, are unbreakable even when stepped on or dropped. The Intellectual Property Office has granted Cua tiles a trademark with a logo featuring a sphere and the words "Cua Tiles." Looking at the logo, I immediately think of the ambition of the people of Tan Ky: to have their product reach the global market! Cua tiles are competing head-to-head with tiles from Quang Ninh, Dong Tam Long An, Hanoi, Dong Nai, etc. They are found throughout the central, southern, and northern provinces of Vietnam and are expanding into the markets of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Cua tiles, thanks to the original clay from Dong Nay and the Con River, do not deteriorate over time.
Now, the Cừa area has become the district's small-scale industrial zone, and Cừa village has become the "Cừa-Nghĩa Hoàn Tile-Making Village." This craft village is currently among the top three wealthiest craft villages in Nghệ An province. Thirty years ago, the remote village of Cừa is now a bustling town, with houses built of two or three stories, and every household owning luxury cars and high-end amenities comparable to Hanoi or Vinh. This small village by the roadside, with only a few hundred households, boasts 30 cargo trucks, 6 passenger buses (including high-end sleeper buses), 10 specialized excavators and bulldozers, and over twenty luxury cars... The owners of these trucks and cars are the village's workers. That's a number that few Vietnamese villages can boast!
During the period of economic reform in Tan Ky, the Con River also transformed its appearance. Trucks carrying sugarcane, granulated sugar, Cua tiles and bricks, and consumer goods traveled back and forth along the main road from Vinh - Do Luong - Lat - Cua - Sen - Nghia Dan… bustling day and night. Consequently, the Sen ferry, pulled by cable, and many other small boats crossing the Con River disappeared. Instead, there are permanent concrete bridges and sturdy cable-stayed bridges. The first is the Roi Bridge, spanning the Con River from Rung Lim - Lat to the beginning of Len Roi, which has been in use for over 10 years. Everyone was happy to have a bridge across the river. My wife and I, visiting my grandparents from Hue, no longer had to wait for the "Sen ferry cable pullers," nor did we have to wait to buy tickets for each leg of the journey from Hue to Vinh, Vinh to Lat, or Lat to Cua as before. Now, cars sped straight from Hue to the Sen market near our house.
From Se village, my wife's hometown, across the Con River to Milestone No. 0, there are now two bridges. The Sen Bridge – a permanent concrete bridge – spans the old ferry route and has been in use since 2010. The cable-stayed suspension bridge from Ro Mountain across the Con River to Nghia Dong has relieved the need for the old, dilapidated Ro ferry, which used to carry people and motorbikes across the river day and night, posing a significant danger. I remember back then, people would place flimsy planks from the ferry to the water's edge, and then people carrying heavy loads, riding motorbikes, and walking would jostle and push, revving their engines like circus performers. On Ro Mountain, there's a very sacred Don Temple. People light incense and pray day and night for the safety of the river.
Now that the Ro Bridge and the Sen Bridge have been built, surely the gods and Buddhas are pleased. Before that, after the fatal ferry accident in An Ngai, the district invested in building a sturdy cable-stayed bridge in An Ngai for the people to cross. Another concrete bridge has also been built across the Con River at the end of the district, bordering Anh Son district. That is the Tan Lam - Phu Son bridge. So, in less than 10 years, five modern and picturesque bridges have sprung up across the Con River.
Standing beside Milestone Zero, I pondered the historical cycle that allowed me to return to Tan Ky to eat rice, drink water from the Con River, and experience a deeper connection with the homeland. From Milestone Zero - Lat, one can travel north or south without needing to return to National Highway 1A. Tan Ky is no longer "without a road outage," but has begun its integration with other regions of the country!
Ngo Minh (Hue City)
