'Flower path' on the street

(Baonghean) - As a man, I rarely go to the market. And I almost exclusively dedicate my time to that activity during the Tet peach blossom market. In fact, it's not really "going" to the market in the conventional sense, but rather "enjoying" the market.

Every year, from the 26th to the 30th of the Lunar New Year, the peach blossom market area is bustling and noisy. Most shoppers are men. They look around, criticize, praise, and haggle wildly, creating a lively and interesting atmosphere. This year, I also joined the crowd to find a taste of traditional Tet (Lunar New Year) through a branch of peach blossoms amidst the narrow streets. And strangely enough, although Vinh has nearly a dozen peach blossom and flower markets, every year I only ride my motorbike along Le Nin Boulevard to Xo Viet Nghe Tinh Street to "hunt" for peach blossoms. It's as if this road has a special allure that makes it hard for people to leave during Tet. I call this route the "flower road," even though on ordinary days it's just like any other road in the inner city of Vinh.

Lenin Avenue (Vinh City). Photo: Sy Minh

For three consecutive Lunar New Year celebrations, I've met that family selling peach blossoms, and for three consecutive years, I've bought peach blossoms from them. The husband, Nguyen Van Thanh, said that their family lives in Nghi Duc commune, a suburban area, and for many years now, the whole family has gathered on Le Nin Street to sell peach blossoms. Thanh, along with his neighbors and friends, travels to northern provinces like Moc Chau, Dien Bien, and Son La, or even to western districts within the province such as Ky Son, Que Phong, and Tuong Duong, to buy peach blossoms to resell for profit.

Mr. Thanh honestly shared: "Selling peach blossoms might not yield huge profits, but it's very rare to lose money. I buy one and sell five, or even ten. That helps cover transportation and travel costs. Actually, selling the most beautiful branches at a higher price helps compensate for the losses on those less popular branches." Every year, Mr. Thanh's family, from sons to daughters, young and old, are present at the "flower street" on Le Nin Street to earn extra income during Tet.

My family moved to live near Lenin Street 31 years ago. Back then, this area was a farmland for farmers in Hung Dung commune (now a ward). Moving from the center of Vinh city to the outskirts was a huge event for a 10-year-old like me. Who could have imagined that one day, the entire area of ​​rice paddies, peanut fields, and swampy ponds would become the urban area it is today?

It's been over 30 years! Even so, back then, after the initial awkwardness of moving here, this place became incredibly appealing to teenage boys like me. I had to transfer from school in Le Mao ward to Hung Dung. Children easily adapt to new environments, so I didn't have much difficulty fitting in with my classmates. The only problem was that most of my new friends were from Lang Do village, so their accents were quite heavy, and their intonation and pronunciation weren't much different from people from Nghi Loc.

Spring outing during Tet (Lunar New Year). Photo: Nguyen Sach

Since moving to our new home and new school, every day after school I would go to the fields to play. In fact, the fields used to stretch from Hecman Street all the way to what is now Hung Dung Market. There we had many opportunities to experience the life of farmers in the outskirts of the city. Actually, many residential areas in Hung Dung before were never considered purely agricultural. The people of the Red Village area worked in handicrafts. They wove mats, worked as masons, builders, and did mechanical repair and carpentry. And the aforementioned fields were just an "addition" to their lives.

I remember that before Lenin Boulevard and the new urban areas were built, the Hung Dung fields were filled with terrifying cemeteries and graveyards. Occasionally, our new residential area would be disturbed by funeral processions going to the fields. However, what we enjoyed most was that we children, like myself, could freely go to the ponds and ditches in the middle of the fields to fish and drain the canals. Since moving to our new place, I've learned many ways to catch fish. There were methods like using fine nets, night fishing, longline fishing, seine fishing, and even catching fish with just a rope. In the summer, we fished for snakehead fish; in the winter, we set eel traps and used flashlights to catch small fish. We used nets when it was sunny and cast traps and nets when it rained…

Among the children who loved catching fish, I was considered the most avid fisherman. Funnily enough, no one in my family ate freshwater fish. So, we'd fill two concrete tanks and even buckets with the fish we caught. Since we didn't eat them, my sisters and I would take them to the market to sell. We didn't really make much, mostly giving them away to neighbors. But despite the fact that hardly anyone in my family liked eating fish, I was still eager to go to the fields. On stormy nights, the graveyard in the middle of the field would burst into terrifying green will-o'-the-wisps. I overcame my childish fear to step over the low, old, neglected graves. My mother said the will-o'-the-wisps were harmless spirits, nothing to be afraid of, and that whenever I passed the graveyard, I should say a few simple words to ask permission from the souls buried deep in the earth. I listened to my mother and steadfastly walked through my childhood in the desolate, windswept fields.

Taking a stroll on Lenin Street during Tet (Vietnamese New Year). Photo: Nguyen Sach.

By the 1990s, significant changes began to take place in the fields. Few farmers sowed rice, sesame, or beans on the elevated fields anymore. People used bulldozers to gradually fill in the canals, ditches, and ponds. My sisters were heartbroken, regretting the purple water lilies that had been crushed by the excavators and bulldozers. The cemetery, which used to be a training and shooting range for new recruits of unit H83 and was located right next to the fields, also had to be relocated. Then, the chicken farm of a state-owned enterprise, standing in the middle of the desolate field, was also dismantled. A wide new road, cutting across the fields and connecting Nguyen Phong Sac Street to Nguyen Sy Sach Street, erased all traces of the past. That is the present-day Lenin Boulevard...

Since the new road was built, new urban areas, residential clusters, agencies, units, and schools have converged. No trace remains of the former agricultural area; the new street has become the most important transportation route in Vinh, connecting the city center with the airport and leading to the coastal town of Cua Lo. Along the road are numerous salons and showrooms displaying and selling cars from famous brands. However, for me, the most impressive thing is that the road has become a peach blossom market every Tet (Lunar New Year). In the days leading up to Tet, many farmers from the suburban communes of Nghi An, Nghi Kim, Nghi Duc, and Nghi Lien suddenly become "merchants." They gather peach blossoms from all over the northern provinces and western Nghe An to sell to people in the city. Whether they make a profit or not, whether the buying and selling is profitable or not, it's very lively and bustling. I keep thinking, if there were no road, who knows how much sadder the spring season would be in the city.

On the afternoon of the 30th of Tet (Lunar New Year's Eve), I rode my motorbike along Le Nin Street for the last time, all the way to Nghi Phu commune. I had already bought peach blossoms; I was just looking for a little more excitement on the last day of the old year. Suddenly, I saw Thanh – the man who had sold me the peach blossoms. He said he was also looking to buy some. “I sold all my branches. Now I have to go buy some to decorate for Tet. I must have a branch of peach blossoms for Spring. I absolutely must have one,” Thanh said with a cheerful smile, much to my surprise. Surely his family had already had a very warm and joyful Tet celebration.

Van Nhi