Welcome the new year in the middle of the forest

(Baonghean.vn) - Going upstream to celebrate the Lunar New Year is not a bad idea. However, I have never had such an opportunity.

It was the last day of the year. My younger brother had a trip to visit his wife who teaches in Ky Son district, nearly 200 kilometers away from home. I was allowed to ride on a broken-down motorbike up the winding National Highway 7A. Trips to the great wilderness were all too familiar to me. But I had never experienced such a seemingly “unconventional” vacation.

Nowadays, on holidays, people tend to return to the city or some new tourist destination. That is why offices, agencies, and schools are usually the busiest centers, making the less boring villages also deserted.

The Mong Pha Bun village on the top of the mountain seemed quieter on the holiday.

On the quiet road through Pha Bun village located on the top of a mountain in the Huoi Tu plateau, the Mong houses are submerged in the mountain mist. At this time, the village returns to its usual tranquility. The children are engrossed in endless games in front of their closed houses, in the cold that cuts like knives. The children's parents do not have a day off. They are in the fields or in some corner of the forest. The men of Pha Bun village may be wandering in distant villages to buy lean cows to fatten. On holidays, only the children in the village can rest.

The mist gradually thinned out as we drove over Pha Bun Pass through Bac Ly. Arriving at My Ly commune, it felt like stepping into a different world. The mist and the bitter cold seemed to disappear. From the perspective of geographers, the difference in altitude was an interesting experience. In just a moment, the temperature had completely changed. The two climate zones, where the Mong community lives on the mountain top and the Thai village in the deep valley belong to two climate zones.

Adults are all busy making a living, only children have holidays.

During these holidays, the Mong people in the highlands or the Thai villages in the canyons share a quiet atmosphere. For the people in the highlands, New Year’s Day is also a normal day. The baskets still weigh heavily on the shoulders of Thai women along the rugged, steep dirt road to Xang Tren village.

In the story, I heard people whispering about a girl who weighed only 39kg but carried a basket on her back that weighed nearly 60kg. These days, the villagers go into the forest to carry a strange kind of wood to sell to traders. Big or small trees, fresh or rotten wood, are all bought for 5,000 VND/kg. The villagers often take boats up the Nam Non River, transport the wood to the riverbank, then transfer it back to the village by basket. Each day, a strong person can carry about a quintal. That's an income of half a million VND. Whoever takes the time to go to the forest, this Tet will surely have plenty of money to spend and shop.

The last day of the year in the border village passed peacefully and quietly like that.

The Mong children were engrossed in endless games in the bitter cold.

Xang Tren Village is the base of a kindergarten and a primary school. On normal days, this place is bustling with the sounds of children studying. On holidays, some little students race to practice riding bicycles. A rare sight in remote villages like Xang Tren. A dirt road paved by an excavator reaches the village.

For nearly a year now, all the roads and alleys have been concreted. People have started competing to buy motorbikes instead of motorboats. Whether they go to school near or far, children can now use bicycles. In the children's unsteady rides, I see the dream of "escaping the mountains" has been a lifelong effort of people in remote villages.

Mr. Luong Van Nam, a teacher at My Ly 2 Primary School, opened a coffee shop for his wife to sell next to the school. On holidays, he stays home to help his wife look after the children and cook. On holidays, teachers who live far away and do not return home for the holidays choose this place as a gathering place. On the morning when people opened the first page of the calendar for 2017, he also butchered a goose to invite his friends to celebrate Tet. The meal included soup and some local dishes.

The Thai people in the deep valley are also more quiet during the holidays.

During the meal, teacher Lau Ba Thong, who has been attached to My Ly for 23 years, talked about the changes in the village. Lau Ba Thong started teaching in 1993 and has been to 12 out of 13 villages in My Ly commune to teach children. Many of them are now his colleagues and go to the same school. He said, “From the time when I had to carry a backpack for 2 days to get to school, it has been a big change. Now there are only a few villages where motorbikes are not available.”

Thinking back to the bumpy and steep road I had been riding my motorbike over for the past two days, I suddenly understood that difficulties still abound in this land. But for the people here, this land is changing. In just a few years, a new hydroelectric project will be built.

The villagers are less eager for hydropower, but more eager for the road to the plant to pass through the village for easier travel. Some families have hired excavators to build foundations for their houses so they can move closer to the road. In the minds of many people, it may be said that the people of the highlands are too pragmatic. I see there the desire for a convenient traffic route that has persisted for many years.

The village seems more boring during these holidays. The only girl in the village, Luong Thi Thu Hoa, comes home for Tet to visit her sick mother. Hoa is the pride of the whole village. Her family is poor but she studies hard. Whether at the district school or her school, she is a typical face of the will to overcome difficulties. That is something to be happy about in a place where the drug whirlwind is sweeping through. In Xang Tren village alone, there are dozens of addicts. She said: I don't know what the future will be like, but I will choose a different future than many young people in this mountainous area.

For the first time in their lives, children in Xang Tren village learned to ride bicycles.

My vacation passed with little happy stories. On the last day of the holiday, the students in the Mong village called Nhọt Lột near the Vietnam-Laos border started to ride their bicycles, carrying rice back to school. So the rice bags were transferred from the hunched backs of those who had been bent for many years to bicycles. It was also a change. Teachers from far away had started to return to school. In just a few hours, the highland schools would return to the bustle of normal days.

The sky gate is still full of white clouds like in a dream world. The thousand-year-old clouds still wander aimlessly on the mountain top. Even though human life is changing day by day./.

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