Streetscape
(Baonghean)Editor's Note:It's safe to say that the streets are what give a city its soul. Each street, with millions of footsteps and vehicles passing by, helps people turn strangers into acquaintances, makes them remember distant places, and helps them recognize names in anticipation…
And that name, when spoken with love, affection, and pride, encapsulates a memory, a story, a human life, a milestone in time… to remind us forever.
Over 200 streets in Vinh City, more than 200 names of famous people, heroic events, and historical landmarks will be introduced to readers from a new perspective, hoping to touch the soul of Vinh City, past and present, in the new column of Nghe An Saturday newspaper: Four Seasons Through the Streets.
The weather was nice, and the girls at the office kept pestering me to go out for a snack.
- So what should we eat now? For something random, we can go down Nguyen Van Cu Street. For steamed rice rolls, try Dinh Cong Trang Street. Or how about some banh xeo and nem lui on Kim Dong Street? Or banh beo ran on Hong Bang Street? Oh wait, let's go eat snails at the old Quang Trung communal restaurant; right next door they also have fried cakes and spring rolls, plenty to choose from!
Of course, I'm just one of those people who blindly follow along and have no say in the matter. However, listening to them describe every dish and every street corner in such detail is both charming and endearing. It's not unfair to say they love the city and know its streets well thanks to their frequent visits to its cafes and restaurants. But what does it matter? As long as they remember what they need to remember and love what they need to love, that's all that matters. Whether the reason is refined or crude, it's not really that important!
Right now, I'm sitting here meticulously picking out plump snails amidst a group of girls innocently pursing their lips while shelling them. From here, I see the unfinished white building on the site of the old 12-9 cinema, and a vague, inexplicable sadness suddenly arises within me. Back in school, I rarely had enough money for a ticket, so I'd drag my friend along to watch a movie. But to be fair, if you asked me what movie we'd watch now, I'd have no idea, partly because I'd been too stingy with money, and partly because I'd been too engrossed in admiring that pretentious girl to care about the film! An old man smoking a pipe at a nearby tea shop looked at me sympathetically: "You must be reminiscing about your first love, which was linked to the 12-9 cinema, right?" I jumped, turned to the old man with the graying hair and reddish skin, and smiled, revealing a few jagged teeth. From now on, I'll call him Old Man 12-9.
A view of Vinh City. Photo: Sy Minh
“There used to be a train depot behind the old 12-9 theater. That means it was where they supplied materials, repaired, and maintained locomotives and carriages. The Truong Thi train factory was built later. This Quang Trung street wasn't even called Quang Trung street before, but Maréchal Foch. What? You don't believe our city used to have streets with French names? Do you think during the French colonial period, they called them Quang Trung street, Le Hong Phong street, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai street, Lenin Avenue? Let me tell you, back then our city wasn't divided into 25 wards and communes like it is now, but into 10 neighborhoods named from First to Tenth. The street names were truly "colonial and semi-feudal," with Rue Maréchal Foch, Doudard de Lagrée, Route Pasquier, Route Vanvollenhoven... and even Khai Dinh Avenue, Minh Mang Avenue, Tu Duc Avenue...”
Right here on Quang Trung Street, there used to be a bustling commercial district. There was the printing workshop of Vuong Dinh Chau, the gold and silver shops of Bao Nguyen and Bao Thinh, the Vinh Khang barbershop... And the road that crossed Quang Trung Street in front of Vinh Market, running towards Cua Nam, was the "Guest Street" of Chinese merchants specializing in traditional medicine and silk. Near Cua Nam, there used to be Cao Xuan Duc Primary School, and even older was Vinh National School (Huynh Thuc Khang High School).
I still vividly remember the scene of the teacher, wearing his Western-style glasses, sitting in a rickshaw, cruising through the streets, muttering "Bonjour monsieur!" (Greetings, sir!) to the French soldiers. Now there are Mai Linh and Van Xuan taxis... but in the old days, only wealthy people could afford rickshaws. And the rickshaw pullers didn't own their own carts; they had to rent them from Mrs. Bong's rickshaw on Co Dau Street, Mrs. Dong Loi's at the Third Gate, or Mr. Cuu Thach's on the Fourth Street – Mrs. Dong Loi's cart was the nicest. A distant relative of the rickshaw pullers were the porters. This group lived concentrated around the Cua Tien bridge behind Vinh market, formerly a ferry terminal running from Ha Tinh, Hung Nguyen, Thanh Chuong, Nam Dan... In general, wherever there were goods, there were porters. It was the same in Ben Thuy. Further up towards Truong Thi, in the Quan Lau area, there was the "Northern Quarter," or what was called the "Truong Thi workers' quarters." The reason is that this area is home to workers for the Truong Thi railway factory, all from the North and trained at the Polytechnic School...".
I held my breath, following every word of the old man's story. So this land once resembled a modern city like Hoi An or Hue? The wind was still, yet I suddenly shivered, as if a gust of wind echoed from a time when Vinh was a renowned military stronghold. I closed my eyes, and suddenly heard the resounding voice of King Gia Long's envoy reading the decree moving the administrative center of Nghe An from Lam Thanh - Phu Thach (Hung Nguyen) to Vinh Yen - Yen Truong (the area of present-day Vinh city).
I heard the provincial governor Vu Trong Binh meekly surrendering, handing over the city to the French army. From then on, all I heard were the mournful cries of those who went to work as "Phu Tran Ninh" and "Phu Cua Rao" to build roads 7 and 8, connecting Vinh with the Kingdom of Laos to serve France's colonial exploitation. My legs trembled, hearing the painful memories of a time of national loss echoing, mingling with the rumbling of trains running through the city. Was it the smoke from the locomotives covering the sky, or the dim light from the oil lamps of the worker-peasant neighborhoods that could not dispel the pitch-black night? The rhythmic tapping of wrenches on railway sleepers, the creaking of a cart carrying a fat, pale officer, the loud, thumping music drowning out the lives of the humiliated prostitutes, the boisterous buying and selling, the boisterous laughter of Bach Thai Buoi and Trinh Van Ngan... all blended together in a frenzied vortex.
That dark vortex gradually turned red. Waves rose, crashing against the ramparts surrounding the French Consulate and the Presidential Palace. Waves of red flags with the hammer and sickle. Waves of brown trousers and worker's uniforms. Waves of anger and sorrow rising from the depths of society. Suddenly, I felt a salty drop of water on my lips. Was it blood, tears washing over me from a time of a tragic yet heroic "red city"? I opened my eyes, but saw no waves, only the old man from 12-9 looking at me silently, his pipe long extinguished, his cracked lips still moving incessantly. I wondered if the old man had seen those red waves, or... I looked doubtfully into his cloudy eyes. The old man slowly nodded.
Those familiar streets suddenly became strange. Someday, when I walk these streets again, I won't forget to search for the street corners with the names of those bygone eras, forgotten by everyone. What were the names of Quang Trung, Le Hong Phong, Nguyen Truong To, Tran Phu? What memories did the people of yesteryear, born, raised, and died there, bury beneath the layers of green grass? If I hadn't met the old man from September 12th this afternoon, I probably would never have felt such a pang of emotion thinking about these streets. I would never have questioned a street name.
It's not by chance that people name things, or people. A memory, a story, a point in time... all the most subtle things that would be too long and tedious to recount are encompassed and contained within a name. And then, unexpectedly, in this city or any city, hearing a name evokes feelings of nostalgia and longing. It's the city, the city of our childhood. It's the imprint of our streets and neighborhoods.
