Street impression

(Baonghean) -LTS:It can be said that it is the roads that make up the soul of the city. Each road, associated with millions of footsteps, millions of vehicles passing by, helps people to know the strange to become familiar, to go far to remember, to call out names in anticipation...

And that name, when called out, full of love, affection, pride, encapsulates a memory, a story, a human life, a time frame… to remind us forever.

More than 200 streets of Vinh City, more than 200 names of famous people, of heroic events, of historical imprints will be introduced to readers from a new perspective with the hope of touching the soul of a Vinh street, past and present, in the new column of Nghe An newspaper on Saturday: Four seasons through the street.

It's cool, the girls in the office begged me to go out for a snack:

- So what to eat now? For random food, go to Nguyen Van Cu street. For rice cakes, go to Dinh Cong Trang. Or eat banh xeo nem lui on Kim Dong street? Fried rice cakes on Hong Bang? Oh well, let's go eat snails at the old Quang Trung collective, right next door there are fried rice cakes and spring rolls, plenty of choices!

Of course, I belong to the group of people who follow and talk without having any say. But listening to the girls talk about every dish and every street is always interesting and lovely. It is not unfair to say that they love the city and know their way around thanks to hanging out at restaurants. But it doesn't matter, as long as people remember what they should remember and love what they should love, the reason, whether noble or vulgar, is not important!

Now I am sitting diligently picking out the plump copper snails among a group of girls innocently pursing their lips and sucking on the snails. From here, I can see the half-built white building on the old 12-9 cinema site, and suddenly I feel a vague sadness for no reason. It was a rare school day when I had money to buy tickets, so I invited my friend to go to the movies. But unfortunately, now I refuse to watch any movie, partly because I am too busy saving money, partly because I am absorbed in watching the capricious girl, I don’t want to watch a movie! An old man sitting at a nearby tea shop smoking tobacco looked at me sympathetically: “You must be thinking about your first love that was associated with the 12-9 cinema, right?”. I was startled, turned to the old man with curly hair and red skin, and smiled, revealing a few sharp teeth. From now on, I will call him old man 12-9.

A corner of Vinh City. Photo: Sy Minh

“In front of the old 12-9 theater, there was a train depot. That means it was a place to supply materials, repair, and maintain locomotives and wagons. The Truong Thi train factory was built later. Quang Trung Street was not called Quang Trung Street before, but Maréchal Foch. What, don't you believe that our city used to have streets with French names? Do you think that during the French colonial period, they called it Quang Trung Street, Le Hong Phong Street, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street, Lenin Avenue? Let me tell you, in the past, our city was not divided into 25 wards and communes like now, but divided into 10 neighborhoods named from First to Tenth. The street names were truly "semi-feudal colonial", including Rue Maréchal Foch, Doudard de Lagrée, Route Pasquier, Route Vanvollenhoven... and also Khai Dinh Avenue, Minh Mang Avenue, Tu Duc Avenue...

Right on Quang Trung Street, there used to be a bustling commercial area. There was the printing factory of Vuong Dinh Chau, the gold and silver shops of Bao Nguyen, Bao Thinh, the hair salon of Vinh Khang... And the road that intersects Quang Trung Street in front of Vinh market, running towards Cua Nam, is the "Guest Street" of Chinese merchants who specialized in selling traditional Chinese medicine and silk. On Cua Nam Street, there used to be Cao Xuan Duc Primary School, the oldest of which was Vinh National School (Huynh Thuc Khang High School).

I still remember the scene of the teacher wearing western glasses, sitting on a rickshaw, wandering around the streets, whispering “Bong dua me xu!” (Bonjour monsieur - Greetings sir) to the westerners. Now there are Mai Linh and Van Xuan taxis... but in the past, only rich people used rickshaws. And the rickshaw pullers didn’t have their own rickshaws, they had to rent them on Co Dau street of Mr. Bong, De Tam gate of Mrs. Dong Loi or De Tu street of Mr. Cuu Thach, the most beautiful one was Mrs. Dong Loi’s rickshaw. “Distant relatives” of the rickshaw pullers were the porters. This group lived concentratedly at Cua Tien bridge behind Vinh market, which used to be a ferry station along Ha Tinh, Hung Nguyen, Thanh Chuong, Nam Dan... In general, wherever there were goods, there were porters. It was the same in Ben Thuy. Upstream from Truong Thi in the Quan Lau area, there was a “Bac Ky hamlet”, also known as “Truong Thi worker hamlet”. The reason is because this place gathers workers for the Truong Thi train factory, all from the North trained at the Polytechnic School...”.

I held my breath, following each word of the old man 12-9. So this land once had the appearance of a modern city like Hoi An, Hue? The wind was still, but I suddenly felt a shiver, as if there was a gust of wind blowing from the time when Vinh was known as a military town. I closed my eyes, and suddenly heard the loud voice of King Gia Long's messenger reading the edict to move the Nghe An capital from Lam Thanh - Phu Thach (Hung Nguyen) to Vinh Yen - Yen Truong (the area of ​​Vinh city today).

I even heard the sound of the provincial governor Vu Trong Binh bowing and surrendering, offering the city to the French. From then on, I only heard the mournful cries of the people who went to "Phu Tran Ninh", "Phu Cua Rao" to build Highway 7 and Highway 8, connecting Vinh with the Kingdom of Laos to serve the French colonial exploitation. My legs went weak, hearing the pain of a time of suffering and loss of the country echoing back, mixed with the sound of the rumbling trains running through the city. Was it the coal smoke from the locomotive covering several layers of the sky, or was it the dim light from the oil lamps of the worker-peasant neighborhoods that could not dispel the pitch-black night? The steady sound of wrenches tapping on the sleepers, the creaking sound of a rickshaw carrying a fat white officer, the loud music drowning out the lives of the shameful prostitutes, the noisy trading, the happy laughter of Bach Thai Buoi, Trinh Van Ngan... all mixed together in a crazy vortex.

The dark vortex gradually turned red. Waves rose, crashing into the citadel surrounding the French Consulate and the Court. Waves of red hammer and sickle flags. Waves of linen pants, brown shirts and worker uniforms. Waves of anger and sorrow rising from the bottom of society. Suddenly, I felt a drop of water falling on my lips, salty. Was it blood, tears pouring back from a tragic and heroic time in the "red city"? I opened my eyes, but I saw no waves at all, only the old man 12-9 looking at me silently, his pipe tobacco had long since gone out but his chapped old lips were still constantly moving. I wondered if the old man had seen the red waves just now, or... I looked doubtfully into his cloudy eyes. The old man slowly nodded.

The familiar streets suddenly became strange. In the future, when walking on these streets, I will surely not forget to look for the street corners with the names of places that have become stories of the past that no one remembers anymore. What were the names of Quang Trung, Le Hong Phong, Nguyen Truong To, Tran Phu of the past? Those people who were born, grew up and died there thousands of years ago, what memories did they bury under the layers of green grass? If I had not met the old man on 12-9 this afternoon, I probably would never have felt so uneasy when thinking about the streets. I would never have put a question mark after a street name.

It is not natural that people name an object, a person. A memory, a story, a time point,... all the most subtle things that if told would be long and drawn out are all contained and wrapped up in the name. So that when suddenly in this city or any city, hearing a name makes you remember and yearn. It is the city, our childhood. It is the mark of the streets.