Tran Quang Dieu Street - A familiar street corner

(Baonghean) -The long, secluded street, crisscrossed by many small and large streets, and with rapid changes... makes many people "unable to remember a single street name". Strangely, even those who have lived on the street for a long time, suddenly rarely show off that they live on that street or that road; it seems to be to keep for themselves a personal feeling attached to the street. Tran Quang Dieu Street (Vinh City), people from other streets often find it hard to imagine the name when they hear it, but when they get there, they realize how many times they have passed by and sat on the street...

East of Tran Quang Dieu Street (Vinh City).

Several decades ago, the street was the facade of the level 4 offices of many provincial departments, agencies, and branches. At that time, the street was only paved with graded gravel, with a small path through vegetable fields and peanut fields to Truong Thi Street for people to go to and from work at the departments, agencies, etc. When the headquarters of the agencies were moved out to build spacious buildings on the West side to follow Truong Thi Street, Tran Quang Dieu Street was expanded thanks to the planning of residential areas on the East side of the street. But the street still has a quietness that makes people from other streets come and only remember the path but forget the street name. Perhaps, because the residents are mostly civil servants, children from kindergartens, parents who go to work in the morning and come back at night, the shopping services on the main street have not yet spread here, so there is little street interaction?...

Just a few years ago, the street still had a quiet look, the late autumn wind lingered with the scent of milk flowers, with few visitors coming to simple coffee shops with names like Moc, 4A, and especially Quynh Coffee with the owner who was crazy about electronics and had music systems costing up to tens of thousands of dollars, specializing in Trinh music, Pham Duy, Van Cao, Nguyen Van Thuong... with old vinyl records recording Khanh Ly, Kieu Hung, Tran Hieu from decades ago. In the small street corners, there were only a few shops selling roasted peanut beer, better off were the third-class beef tendon soup, but the restaurant owners all had a graceful and customer-friendly appearance, so they gathered all kinds of customers including civil servants, workers, and retired teachers.

Now, in addition to the agencies: the Provincial Police Immigration Department, the Health Protection Board for Cadres, the headquarters of Truong Thi Ward... which have maintained their appearance for decades; then, along the two sides of the street, there are rapid changes due to the continuous renovation of level 4 houses to three or four floors, land clearance to build modern apartment buildings and hotels, and especially the small coffee shops and restaurants springing up at a dizzying speed to attract customers, making the street much more bustling, but there is absolutely no hustle and bustle often seen in the streets...

Perhaps, someone said that each street has a duty for itself, which is true for Tran Quang Dieu street. People from all over Vinh come here to find relaxation in meetings and work. Next to the 67 coffee shop (a gathering place for Honda 67 enthusiasts) is the house of a famous retired musician. Every morning he leisurely rides his motorbike to attend the provincial professional association with a strange satisfaction because of the peace of the beloved crowded street. Opposite the musician's house is the villa of a widowed contractor. He is over 70 years old but has rosy skin, dresses young, drives a luxury car, has silver hair with "hair gel" but still has the elegance of an experienced person; he is familiar at every breakfast restaurant, every coffee shop on the street, absolutely no one has ever seen him lacking in moderation.

The street is elegant, even the shoe shiner is handsome like a movie star, whether it is a luxury shoe or a commoner's shoe, he polishes them meticulously down to every detail, but still charges the same price and only ten thousand dong like three or four years ago. The crowded street is also familiar with a disabled man in a wheelchair, no one knows where his house is, but every morning he still puts his withered legs on the wheelchair and rolls down the street, not asking anyone, but every time he comes to an intersection, he patiently stops, waiting for an acquaintance to ask him to push his wheelchair across the street, it turns out he is collecting human affection...

What's strange is that in this street, morning, noon, and evening it's bustling with people drinking coffee, bustling with people enjoying food, but it's still quiet in the same style, rarely noisy, rarely rude words, the host and guest are like soul mates. I've been back to the street for three years, and have seen the rapid changes of the street. But my soul is always in the enchanting scent of late autumn milk flowers wafting along the street; in the quiet of the late night street where even people walking for exercise seem to try to walk lightly; in the occasional moment beside the rough concrete blocks of the sidewalk, not necessarily covered with moss, not necessarily to be an intentional, stereoscopic witness on the flat sidewalk along the wall of Truong Thi Secondary School, the street says that these are what's left of the old Truong Thi railway factory so that anyone who loves the street can stop and sit on them, satisfied with the time when the street was born...

Tran Quang Dieu Street intersects more than a dozen large and small streets named after famous people (An Duong Vuong, Dinh Bat Tuy, Ngo Sy Lien, Tran Thu Do...); people going in and out of the street communities from Phong Dinh Cang Street up or from Truong Thi Street up and down the East-West axis, become familiar with the names of the streets running across it, which is also a reason why people easily forget the name of Tran Quang Dieu Street, although they cannot forget that, if they want to stay, meet, and relax a bit on that "horizontal journey", they cannot help but find a small space on this longitudinal street following familiar footsteps that have come and gone many times.

It's late winter. There's no misty morning mist around the lake, no bustling dusty streets in the morning... but on a rare sunny morning, in the cold waiting for spring at this time, whoever loves Vinh street, try coming to Tran Quang Dieu street, sipping a cup of coffee at the "coffee street", surely you will feel the rare humility of a new street in the Red city...

Sam Temple