Dien Van: A sedimentary area

(Baonghean) - The village is surrounded by rivers on several sides, green, fertile and poetic. The bridges connecting the two banks are gracefully curved, casting their summer sunlight on small islets that, a hundred years ago, might have been a ferry or a water wharf for someone to swim in the Bung River, watch the moon and express their love. The land of the estuary is nearly 2,000 years old, giving Dien Van a cultural and historical attraction with great potential for development...

The summer thunderstorms of the coastal region rushed past. The slanting afternoon sun glistened on the wet mangroves along the banks of the Vach Bac canal, like a green crown embracing the village. The cultural officer of Hoang Ngoc Son commune, still very young, enthusiastically led me across the small bridge to Xuan Bac hamlet, to visit the temple of King Sat Hai Dai Vuong Hoang Ta Thon. On the land by the river facing the sea, the ancients chose the land to build the temple of King Sat Hai Dai Vuong, his mother and two sons. Now there is a new temple that has been restored on the old foundation by the descendants of the family.

The deserted sacred temple, once bustling with festivals in the water region, still retains the melancholy atmosphere of the ancient spirit, evoking the legend of a naval general who contributed greatly to the victory against the Yuan-Mongol in the Bach Dang battle, capturing the O Ma Nhi River in the year of Mau Ty (1288) of the Dai Viet people and later driving out the Champa army in the East Sea. The Chairman of the Hoang Family Council in Dien Van - Mr. Hoang Nam, was carefully cleaning the shrine, when he saw the guests, he quickly came out to welcome them and boasted: "Recently, I also received several Central TV crews coming to make films! Everyone expressed regret that a relic rich in historical data and legends was restored so slowly!" Pulling me down to sit on the lower steps of the temple that had not yet been illuminated by the water of time, Mr. Nam talked passionately about the concerns and passion for restoring the ancient heritage of the descendants of Sat Hai Dai Vuong, whose descendants today are constantly striving to be recognized as the "Cultural Family".

The relic of Hoang Ta Thon temple (Dien Van - Dien Chau), has just been restored.

Waving his arms to point to the direction where the Vach Bac canal meets the Bung river, Mr. Nam firmly asserted that this was where Mrs. Truong Thi tied the water-carrying pole with the golden buffalo hair and then returned to become pregnant and gave birth to the family's ancestor (according to the legend of Hoang Ta Thon). This was considered by later generations to be the spiritual energy from the harmony between the country woman who sold water and the Water Palace. That is, although this land has been pushed back to the mainland, the source of spiritual life is still deeply connected to the ocean.

The Dien Van History also records that the trawling profession in Dien Van has existed for a long time. During the time of the late Ba, the village's headman named Pham Kieng, who was a soldier of the mandarin Nguyen Xuan On, this profession was at its peak. According to Mr. Nam, the late Ba had the Sat Hai Dai Vuong temple renovated and honored him as Thanh Hoang. During the Nguyen Dynasty, he was conferred the title of Thuong Thuong Dang Than, and in the beliefs of the people in the North of the country, he is a sacred sea god... Taking us to visit the family church inside Trung Phu hamlet, Mr. Hoang Nam added: "Our Hoang family's church is several hundred years old; it was worshiped by the ancestor Hoang Ta Thon, and it used to be a sacred place with a main hall and a harem. But in the early 1960s, American bombs destroyed it at the same time as the temple. In 2003, our descendants rebuilt it as it is today." The three-room church still has a sanctuary, although newly built, it still has many old architectural features of the coastal region. Every year, on the 15th day of the third lunar month, descendants of the family across the country eagerly return to commemorate their ancestors. The Hoang family of the Great King of the Sea in Dien Van now has only about 20 households. Thanks to promoting family traditions and pride in their ancestors, they are still considered a highly united family with a strong movement to build a cultural life in the locality...

Following the advice of the cultural officer of Hoang Ngoc Son commune, I met Mr. Tran Ngoc Canh - former Chairman of the People's Committee, former Secretary of the Party Committee of Dien Van commune; a person who is very passionate about village history. Luckily, Mr. Canh went to give gifts to the relatives of naval soldier Nguyen Van Loi at DK1 Truong Sa Platform, who was from Trung Hau village. He said that the job was the work of the village Front Committee, but when he heard the news, he hurriedly followed, contributing some gifts to Loi's mother, who was single and poor. It was touching that Loi had a few months left of his military service, but when the situation in the East Sea changed, he immediately volunteered to stay and serve... Having retired for a long time, Mr. Canh is still very agile; as soon as he heard me introduce myself, he immediately reminded me that he had met me nearly ten years ago at a ceremony to recognize a bamboo and rattan craft village somewhere. It turned out that he was also a quite close collaborator of Nghe An Newspaper. While making tea for the guests, he said: “Now, I still read Nghe An newspaper without missing any issue. Thank you for publishing many articles about Dien Van. Stay with me for one night, I will tell you many stories.”

Mr. Canh suddenly asked me: "Do you know the story of Uncle Ho following Mr. Pho Bang Sac to Dien Van when he was young? Only I and a few other people know this story clearly!". I said I had also heard it from my journalist colleagues, although I was not very clear. Mr. Canh quickly went in and gave me a yellowed notebook with handwritten photocopies and continued: "This is a photocopy of the unprinted handwritten memoir of Mr. Vo Mai, a former cadre of the Central Region Party Committee, a neighbor of mine from Trung Hau village, which records Uncle Ho's visit to his house around 1904. The original copy is now kept by his nephew in Hanoi." I followed the memoirs of Mr. Vo Mai, according to which, around 1904 (Mr. Vo Mai wrote 1901, but perhaps he wrote it wrong because Mr. Canh had verified many historical data about Uncle Ho to make sure it was 1904), Mr. Pho Bang Sac took his uncle Cung to visit Mr. Vo Mai's father, Mr. Vo Khoi, who was a Confucian scholar and had a close relationship with Mr. Sac. When Mr. Sac and Mr. Khoi went to visit Mr. Vo Tat Dac (Mr. Khoi's father, the District Chief of Quang Xuong - Thanh Hoa, who was probably visiting his hometown of Dien Van at that time), Cung stood playing on the porch, saying to Mr. Mai (who was 5 years old at that time): "Go inside and see if your father has any books, borrow them for me to read"...

Later, after embarking on the revolutionary path, Vo Mai met Nguyen Ai Quoc again in China, then followed his advice and returned to establish the Revolutionary Youth Association in Dien Van. Mr. Mai passed away in 1985. The old garden is still there, Mr. Mai's children and grandchildren have all left to live far away, only the small house of his maternal nephew is still living there and the grave of Mr. Huyen Dac, a vestige that has become a source of pride for Trung Hau village, Dien Van. According to Mr. Canh, since the 1940s of the last century, there have been more than 40 offshore fishing boats here, each boat always had 12 experienced fishermen at sea. Until the 1960s, the fleet of boats participated in transporting supplies to the southern battlefield during the anti-American war and was gradually damaged. Some boats were captured by the Republic of Vietnam soldiers and taken to the island for interrogation, but the fishermen refused to reveal anything. They were later released and all confirmed that it was an island in Hoang Sa, which was still under the control of South Vietnam at that time. Of that generation of brave fishermen, Uncle Ho Giap is still alive, living in Nghia Loc, Nghia Dan...

The story reaches this point, Mr. Canh excitedly said: “I am very proud! Although the fishing profession no longer exists, the people still have a rich tradition of attachment to the sea. Many Dien Van households still do brackish water aquaculture, process fish sauce, and grill fish with a good income”. Perhaps half a century ago, when American bombs erased almost all the valuable relics on the shore, and the mighty sailing fleet of Dien Van commune, far from fishing to transport fire to the southern front, was damaged and abandoned..., the life of this coastal land had a premonition of great changes; but there is still the persistent vitality of an ancient land that our ancestors discovered with many aspirations for the sea.

Following the gentle village road filled with the scent of fish sauce and fresh grilled sea fish, we arrived at the fish grilling facility of Mr. Nguyen Van Luong and his wife in Trung Phu hamlet. The spacious house and large yard are used as a fish grilling workshop, creating regular jobs for 10 workers, paying salaries of 3 - 5 million VND/month/person. Mr. Luong said that every day he grills 60-700 kg of fish, light trucks transport the fish to Thai Hoa market, 30 days a month like that, good years, bad years, the hospital gradually improves. The wife pointed to the young man carrying fish in the rain and said: "At this time, buying raw fish is expensive, we only make a profit of a few million VND/month but we still have to do it, otherwise the workers will be unemployed. Like this boy, he has severe epilepsy, pitying his poor family, he still uses them and just increased his salary to 3 million VND/month"...

Currently, the whole Dien Van commune has about 30 households doing fish grilling like that, creating jobs for nearly 200 local children, with the same sentiment. Dien Van also has ten households processing fish sauce, and the fish sauce profession here is the "origin" of the famous Van Phan fish sauce brand. Because, Dien Van is the center of the former Van Phan commune, and the Temple Festival on the Upper Temple (the temple worshiping the Great King of the Sea) is the community cultural activity of the whole commune...

I had to miss the appointment to stay overnight with Dien Van, to be with Mr. Canh and the cultural officer of Hoang Ngoc Son commune to welcome a dawn from the direction of Lach Van gate bustling with fish. I returned to the center of Phu Dien, walked beside the salted ponds shimmering with the sunset, passed the "aquaculture village" flickering with electric lights like shooting stars in the middle of the immense fields of Trung Hau, Trung Phu in the season when people came to the crab and fish breeding farms; said goodbye to Dien Van with a moment of stopping by the remains of a several-hundred-year-old banyan tree whose roots and branches embraced the remains of the three-door pillar of Ca Vu temple (Down Temple, where the palanquin was carried in the old festival to the Upper Temple, worshiping the Great King of the Sea). I was filled with emotions about the coastal area of ​​Dien Van, planning to return one day...

Sam Temple