Muong Long Dream

In the flickering fog, the sunken-roofed houses nestle against the mountain beside the white plum blossom path. The mustard greens, the peach blossoms blooming, the yellow and pink colors shine against the dark background of the misty gray picture of Muong Long. I walked in the humid and misty atmosphere and suddenly forgot that my whole life had belonged to the city. Muong Long was strange, but Muong Long was also familiar. I couldn’t describe why it seemed so familiar even though this was my first time there.

Waking up in a far away place…

I suddenly remembered this “new idiom” that young people often use when going online, even though they don’t like internet trends. But suddenly, it came, in the early morning, when I woke up to a strange, pleasant clanging sound, different from the daily car horns that I had in my life for many years. I realized that in this small room of about ten square meters of kindergarten teachers in Muong Long that my companions and I borrowed to temporarily rest, I was about 300 kilometers from Vinh - the city where I live. Just yesterday, I had traveled that distance with 7 hours on the car, not as difficult as I imagined, although the road to this gate of heaven was also steep, following the steep mountain slopes with purple reed flowers. Yes, I welcomed the morning in the valley of mist and flowers, a valley on a mountain peak of 1480 meters high and the sound that woke me up was the sound of bells hanging on the necks of the pair of white horses of Mr. Va Nhia Tu's family in Muong Long 1 village. They were playing with each other on the grass at the top of the slope. The sound of the bells was both near and far, both entwined and seemingly scattered. That sound can only be heard in the middle of a vast and open land, on high mountains covered in clouds, forgetting the usual rainy and sunny seasons of life. That sound beckons us like the call of the great forest, mysterious and far away. Sometimes it is the sigh of the wind brushing against the myriad of trees and leaves, sometimes it is the echo of a howl echoing against the cliffs. The murmuring of the morning streams. The sound of birds falling in the ancient sunset. Above is a sky full of sparkling stars.

And I, unable to resist that call, rushed out with the Muong Long morning mist. How close the clouds and mist here are, wrapped around people's feet. The sturdy footsteps are used to climbing rocky slopes, used to going to the fields, used to finding firewood in the faraway forest, used to carrying heavy loads of firewood, corn, vegetables... to the market. The red and green skirts fluttered in the small paths, hidden under the plum blossoms in pure color. And also hidden under those plum blossoms, were the dark brown mossy roofs of the Mong people. The wooden houses leaned against the mountains to wait for the sun to warm them. The roofs were sunken by the wind and rain. Only the fire in those houses seemed to never go out. From the fire to warm, to chase away wild animals, to cook..., the Mong people considered it a "sacred fire", keeping the spirit of each house, each soul living in it warm. Nowadays, many Mong Muong Long households use gas stoves, but firewood is still burning in the kitchen.

That is why, when you come here, you will see a lot of firewood built in the house, and next to it, or in the garden, the Mong people always have a "firewood attic" - in fact, these are small huts, with a very careful roof. Firewood is split evenly, neatly arranged in the attic. The story last night with Mr. Lau Ba Cho - Secretary of Muong Long commune came back to my mind. He said that the Mong people here do not have a single piece of flat land, they have lived on the cliffs, cultivated on the cliffs for generations. Muong Long is all rocky, there are no forest trees, so if they want firewood, people have to go to the remote forests. How big the firewood attic is, how warm the kitchen is, how big the garden is, how many black chickens there are..., is the measure of the diligence and industriousness of the Mong people at the gate of heaven.

On the way to the village, the Mong people calmly lived their daily lives, calmly looking at the visitors from afar, only the children were a little curious and then ran quickly in front of the camera lens. A woman walked up from the small slope, she knew a little Kinh and said she had gotten up a long time ago to light the fire that had been kept warm with ashes last night, to take care of the family's chickens and cows. In most of the Mong people's grass and plum gardens, there were black chickens and geese chirping. A man bathed his 2-year-old daughter right in front of the porch, when he saw us surprised "Aren't you afraid the baby will be cold?", he shook his head and smiled as if to say, she's used to it. And indeed, the little girl stood still in the basin of water in the cold Muong Long frost with eyes full of delight. The children were dressed lightly, holding umbrellas, bustling, calling each other to go to school on the trails under the white plum blossoms. Some older children slowly carried baskets of firewood and vegetables, patiently climbing the slopes. Some Mong men with knives strapped to their hips, sat cutting peach roots on flat land, or rode their Win motorbikes on the road with branches of spring peach trees to sell in town. At a water tank by the roadside, a group of women were busily washing clothes…

Eyes at the Window

On the way to Muong Long 1 village, we stopped in front of a small wooden house because of a glimpse of a black eye looking out from the window - the only source of light for the house which was still immersed in fog at that time. Those eyes belonged to Vu Y Pa. Y Pa was sitting on a rattan chair embroidering, her two feet on tiptoes, one shoulder leaning lightly on the door sill. She only glanced up briefly when we noisily passed by the door and her deep black eyes held us back. Y Pa was very young, but her eyes and her hands seemed to want to tell another story, not the innocent and fresh story of youth. Y Pa answered us hesitantly. It was unclear whether she was hesitant, or whether the crying of the child on the bed and the soothing words of the child's grandmother distracted her. That 11-month-old child was Y Pa's child. This year, Y Pa turned 18 years old. She got married while she was in the 10th grade of the district's boarding school. Her husband, after serving in the army, studied and graduated from Nghe An Pedagogical College, but could not find a job, and now stays home to work on the fields. Y Pa is from Huoi Tu, and came to Muong Long to marry Mr. Va Nhia Tu. She said that this morning, she had just gone to let the horses out. The pair of white horses, whose bells around their necks had woken us up, were ridden out of the stable by Y Pa and led to the grassy area at the top of the slope. Then she returned, fed her children, and began her embroidery. She was embroidering a belt, the red and blue patterns standing out on the white linen background. Under her hands, darkened and cracked by the cold but full of patience, the eight-pointed stars bloomed...

I asked her what she was thinking when she embroidered those stars. Y Pa smiled softly, her black eyes swaying slightly. I asked her, are you embroidering a dream of yours? She shook her head slightly, her black eyes lowered, patiently following each needle stitch. And I, still patiently asked her one more question, that she dropped out of school so early, did she regret it, did she want to go to school again? In response, I only nodded very slightly. The nod would not say anything about why she dropped out of school, why she got married so early, and whether she had any regrets about the life she had chosen and lived. The nod was so slight that I seemed to forget my question and only had time to realize that she was very beautiful, a beauty that was both simple and mysterious.

I remember the somewhat sad story of Secretary Lau Ba Cho, that in Muong Long, if there are about 50 couples coming to the commune to register their marriage each year, there are also about the same number of couples who get married without registering because they are not old enough. Child marriage is one of the biggest concerns of this Mong cadre when he came to work in Muong Long in 2016.

Also by a house by the roadside, I met Mrs. Vu Y My, sitting by the window. She looked out at the road in front of the house, up the slope in the distance, with her eyes seemingly frozen. I did not know what emotions were expressed in the eyes of this woman who was just 60 years old, had 9 children with 2 husbands, did not know the Kinh language and had almost never left the Muong Long valley in her entire life. I only knew that she sat there, silent as a statue, as if it were a habit to see something lively after the days and hours she spent in the fields, taking care of her growing children, then taking care of her young grandchildren, fanning the fire in the kitchen, sitting and splitting and grinding corn, making men men cakes from the old days, and now her hair was still covered with corn dust even though men men had long since disappeared from the "menu" of the Mong people of Muong Long. Now she only grinds corn for chickens and pigs... And in the warm kitchen where she and her husband live with her second husband's first son, she is surrounded by a mother cat and her newborn kittens, two skinny dogs, and a mischievous grandson who helps her put corn into the mortar every time she puts down the hoe to do the daily chores for nearly 60 years.

I asked her what she dreamed of when she was young. Her second Mong daughter-in-law, who lives next door, Denh Y Xi, “translated” for me, but she also said in advance: There will be no answer. My mother has never expressed any wishes to anyone. And yes, I saw her shake her head. So what does she dream of now, some wish for example? I asked. Denh Y Xi translated for her again, and I still received a shake of the head. Are you satisfied with your life? This time she smiled at me and said to her daughter-in-law: “Yes.”

Her daughter-in-law, Denh Y Xy, is a beautiful girl from Huoi Kha village, Huoi Tu commune. She met Y My's son when they were in high school together and later studied at Vinh Medical University. Y Xy got married a few years ago, she is now the mother of two children: one is 3 years old and the other is 3 months old. Both husband and wife studied at the intermediate medical school and after graduating, they could not find a job. They returned, got married and started to make a living like many other Mong people in Muong Long, by farming, by gardening, by walking to the market... I also asked Denh Y Xy about her wishes. She said that now, she does not wish for anything. She finds her life quite peaceful, with a husband who loves her and she has become so used to this life that she does not think she needs anything more. If anything, sometimes when she misses her parents, her husband tells her to go home to visit. She said, like her mother, many Mong women in this land have lived without ever expressing their dreams. Her mother has lived for 60 years, without having to leave the gate of heaven, but she has never complained about anything in life.

After a brief conversation with us, Y Xì picked up her baby, put it in a warm, colorful sling, and strapped it to her back. She said she was going to the market, and asked her mother-in-law to keep an eye on the older child who was playing with her cousin in the attic, where a Mong chicken was perched on the attic beam.

Along the road to the village that day, I also saw many eyes of Mong women at the windows like that. They sat embroidering, they sat holding their children or simply just looking out at the plum gardens, looking out at the roads… And I suddenly felt silly for wanting to know what those eyes were saying. Perhaps, I had always imposed my own thoughts – a stranger from the city – on the feelings of those women while their lives were much simpler and more carefree.

The Muong Long women. They have been women since they were very young. They are wives and mothers who live all year round in small, low houses, on the fields, on the terraced fields on the mountainside, many of them have never known the city in their entire lives. They do not talk much, perhaps their language is devoted to sewing, embroidery and taking care of the family. Quiet but not ascetic. It is a separate world, a world that seems to be untouched by any chaos or turmoil. There is only peace. The kind of peace that is extremely close to happiness.

Memories of the day home

And I returned, carrying with me the eyes of the Muong Long women through the windows. The women, I don’t know if they were sad or happy. The women who considered the work they did every day as the whole world, the whole world. Carrying the eight-pointed stars that suddenly bloomed on the white linen, under the hands that were darkened and cracked in the frost. I kept imagining that little girl – the 18-year-old woman who had become a mother, every morning riding her horse up the grassy slope to the resounding sound of bells. Did she remember what she had dreamed of, or maybe that was when she was letting go of her dreams into the sound of wind chimes? Maybe the dreams she had, the desires that had been kindled, but when immersed in that world, they no longer thought about them, or they turned into a breeze that scattered everywhere in their lives. Those desires became so light that they no longer stirred up any anxiety. They live in their own world, peaceful and calm as if if they lived for a thousand years they would stay that way forever.

But unconsciously, the world surrounded by such gentle serenity becomes unexpectedly independent and beautiful. I don’t see them complaining, and their silence is not resignation. It is natural, like the silence of the morning mist on the mountain top, like the diligence of the stream that has been babbling for thousands of years. It is like the rhythm in one of their own songs: “When I grew up, I followed my father to plow the fields/ I followed him to hunt in the forest/ When I grew up, I followed my mother to learn embroidery/ I followed my sister to dye indigo and print flowers on new dresses.”

I returned, carrying my own dream, or maybe just a fleeting dream of a peaceful life that suddenly appeared under the plum trees whose flowers and dew flew endlessly in the early morning. Carrying the nostalgia of the houses whose roofs seemed to sink down to encapsulate so many lives, so many fates, so many dreams, so many eternal joys and sorrows of people who chose the highest place to live and conquer, then blend with nature to live an innocent life. Carrying the warm air of the kitchen, the red fire and the strong smell of corn dust. There, the fire never goes out.

I suddenly understood why I felt Muong Long so close. Isn’t it true that deep down every human being has a desire for such a peaceful thing? Isn’t Muong Long so far away and so close like in a dream of mine, during my youth I loved it, and when I reached middle age I began to contemplate?

Why not? Why don’t you go to Muong Long – Muong Quen once. The place where the three-flower plum tree has replaced the opium flower color for many years, and the charm now does not come from that white smoke but from the captivating scenery, from the slow pace of life flowing on the mountain slopes? Surely, if you have been there once, like me, you will long to return one day, forever.