Nguyen Phong Sac Street - A Street Full of Emotions

(Baonghean) - It used to be a "rainy street" in the memories of many people in the city from the nostalgia for the gloomy appearance of the landscape and people; and despite many changes, that glamorous appearance still remains in the life of the street today... That is Nguyen Phong Sac Street - Vinh City, more than one kilometer long, starting from the Customs roundabout connecting Le Viet Thuat Street at the intersection with Nguyen Sy Sach Street.

Nguyen Phong Sac Street (Vinh City).

I tried to return to the street with the same mindset as the day I returned to my village road in the midlands. Because, how many people were like me, many days more than ten years ago, sitting in small shops on this street, silently listening to the sound of wind and rain sulking on old bamboo clumps and banana leaves in the corner of someone's garden; to remember the faraway homeland, to wash away the joys and sorrows of life in the crowded city! There are few streets in Vinh that give people such emotions as Nguyen Phong Sac street.

You will ask me: Vinh City has now expanded, so many suburban streets have been named, the bustle of tube houses and flat houses has not yet filled the empty ponds and gardens... why not go there and feel nostalgic? No! Because, not everywhere gives us a "place" experience in "arriving" and "returning". This road is the road that leads to the opening, research and discovery of traces of Dong Son culture in a part of Vinh City, from which researchers confirmed that a strip of the left bank of the Lam River estuary was the territory of Viet Thuong country thousands of years ago. Nguyen Phong Sac Street centuries ago was also the road of Hung Dung village - the famous revolutionary Red village with a large geographical boundary, connecting to a gateway of Vinh city down to Cua Hoi beach; it is the road that most clearly witnesses the movement over time of the street space that originated from Vinh village. When planning to gather villages into urban blocks in the 1960s, Nguyen Phong Sac Street was still a vital artery "carrying" several sides of rice fields and rural landscapes. And until the period of city reconstruction after the country's reunification in 1975, the street was the place chosen to build the Provincial General Hospital (Vietnam - Poland Friendship Hospital) - the largest people's health care center in the North Central region, the street soon became a familiar place for people in the city and in the countryside...

Just recently, when there was a plan for four lanes of traffic like now but it had not been implemented, Nguyen Phong Sac Street was also a famous dog meat street. That was probably not a coincidence, when this food that some people call "national soul" did not choose a place to create a brand of "street cuisine". At the beginning of the rainy season in August, the street was filled with the fragrant smell of plums, and customers flocked to restaurants that had opened with a rustic space to match the dish originating from the countryside. Just imagine this, a rainy day with bubbles filling the asphalt road, the weather was cool, friends gathered together to enjoy a favorite dish mixed with local vegetables: galangal, lemongrass, shrimp paste, green banana, star fruit and must have pennywort, perilla leaves... To add more "intensity", you can add spiciness with country wine corked with banana leaves as long as you don't overdo it! With the urbanization pace of the street being slower than other central streets, spacious home gardens still green with fruit trees, long sidewalks with bamboo hedges, dense foliage and the services that were initially opened were mostly simply to serve the working people, relatives of patients (of the Provincial General Hospital) and later students of the Medical College (now Vinh Medical University)... so the scenery seems to retain longer the sadness that evokes the old countryside in the rains, the rainy seasons of the street. Therefore, someone used to call the street "the wet road in the rain" (?!).

A corner of the landscape on Nguyen Phong Sac street.

When the road was cleared of sidewalks and upgraded as it is now, many dog ​​meat restaurants stopped operating, services gradually became more diverse, but there was still no sign of it becoming a specialized street. The first part of the road, starting from the Customs roundabout, was full of cheap ceramics, stone steles, and prefabricated mausoleums. At the end of the Provincial General Hospital, along with high-quality medical examination and treatment facilities and Cua Dong General Hospital, there were more and more private pharmacies opening. The rest were all kinds of services from office rentals to grocery kiosks selling Thai products; from beauty shops, cosmetics stores to breakfast stalls selling sticky rice and wet rice cakes; but especially traditional professional services such as aluminum and glass welding, scrap collection, bicycle and motorbike repair, bamboo mats, bird cages, etc.

Diverse, rustic business, but the street does not have the chaos of a "flea market". You can create for yourself a small joy, when every morning you stop by this street, go to the bird stall, let your soul gently feel the sound of a dove cooing or the clear chorus of the red-whiskered bulbul, nightingale... The owner of the bird cage shop will not blame you for disturbing the opening day, but will open up with you memories of your youth chasing cicadas and catching butterflies, for example! In the afternoon, after a day of work, there is a place to meet at the beer garden of the newly opened Dai Hue Restaurant, with a design style full of artistic inspiration with ceramic materials, rough brown tiles evoking the soul of the Vietnamese countryside. At night, you can walk on the sidewalk to catch the suburban breeze blowing in from the open space of Hung Dung Stadium right next to the East side of the street, to feel the ecological side of the street chosen for the elevation of modern urban construction with a strong cultural identity in the future. In the near future, when the new architecture of Vinh Medical University is completed and the Provincial General Hospital on the opposite side gives up its infrastructure to the school to move to a new location, the street will have a space for lecture halls and dormitories, creating a highlight of the street that is both vibrant and youthful, and yet profound with a large architecture bearing the color of time as a testament to a historical friendship.

There are high-rise buildings planned for construction on Nguyen Phong Sac Street, and many newly built houses gradually modernize the street. But I believe that, with the attraction of the familiar street life here, and the trend of developing traditional services, evoking cultural ideas with a strong hometown identity; the street will still retain its own charm. For example, I always want to return to that street, to forever nurture a path of pure, intimate memories.

Sam Temple