The village is deserted!

Now, if you go back to the village, it's very, very difficult to meet young people! In the inner village as well as the outer villages, in the upper hamlets as well as the lower hamlets, you only see… old people and children! The young people have all gone away to work, and the village is sad because it lacks a vibrant young generation… And this story isn't just about sadness…

The countryside is becoming deserted, gradually "aging".

The old village is so sad...
From Hanoi, after a six-hour journey on a supposedly "high-quality" (but actually not-so-high-quality) bus, I arrived in Do Luong, Nghe An, my birthplace.
As dusk fell, I intended to take a walk around the village, hoping to meet some old friends (I'm young, after all). But strangely, the village was deserted even though the chickens had just gone to roost. My grandmother knew immediately and said slowly, "Who's left now? There are no young people left in the village anymore. They've all gone off to work..." I felt her words were very sad.
After wandering around for a while without seeing a single "young person," we returned to the village well where we young men and women used to gather and sing. But now the whole village had gone to sleep, and darkness enveloped everything…
Mr. Tran Van Thao, the village head, said: “Nowadays, all the ‘young people’ have left – out of hundreds of households in the village, maybe only one or two are left. But sooner or later, they will all leave anyway.” Mrs. Tung, Mr. Thao’s wife, added: “Just three years ago, not to mention Da Son, but anywhere – there were hundreds of young people in the village, in each commune, in each hamlet, making the village much livelier, especially during the harvest season. Now it’s different; when you go to the fields during harvest season, you only see elderly people… and a bunch of toddlers learning to work in the fields.” I remember that in the past, most of the village festivals and celebrations were organized by young people. Volleyball and football matches were regularly held; how could they be successful without the youth?
The Youth Union organization cannot function properly, simply because of a lack of members and young people. The membership list is full of names, but when the secretary and deputy secretary go to call and convene Union meetings, the place is deserted! It's better to wait for summer or Tet (Lunar New Year) when young people and members return home to visit, so that the meetings are more complete and enjoyable. Dung, the secretary of the Youth Union branch in Hamlet 5, told me: "Being a Youth Union secretary is tough. We call for meetings constantly, but we can't get any, and even if we did, who would show up?" That's not even mentioning some cases where elected Youth Union secretaries resign a few days later because they are too discouraged, or because they themselves have to go work far away…
"Young people from the village go out to work to escape the confines of their village... If you want to be rich and happy, you have to... go far away," said Hieu, a man about my age. I don't know if that's true or not.

Where are the young people?
According to Mr. Hieu, the reason young people go to work far from home is to avoid hardship later in life. They have little education, and have mostly worked hard in agriculture, facing countless difficulties and hardships that prevent them from ever achieving anything worthwhile. Now they have to find a place to go; just escaping the confines of their villages is good enough. Most of them flock to the South to work as tailors or shoemakers for export, while some go to the Central Highlands to grow coffee and rubber. Those who manage to borrow tens of millions of dong invest in overseas labor export, working as domestic helpers or transporting goods to countries like Malaysia and Taiwan…
In Hamlet 5, Da Son, many families have several children who have all gone south to earn a living. Mr. Doan, who has two sons, has one working in Binh Duong producing leather shoes for export and the other in Lam Dong growing coffee. Generally, their income is barely enough to live frugally. But even that is better than having young people who go south to work and only focus on partying, falling into vices and never returning home. That's a truly sad reality. Because of the need to make a living, young people have to leave their villages; first and foremost, they must support themselves before they can hope to support and help their families.
Mr. Hieu, who recently returned from an export shoe company in Binh Duong, said: “There are so many young people from our hometown back there, they hang out together all the time. They don't earn much money, life is expensive, and we young people can't save anything. None of us dare think about sending money back to our grandparents, and even if we did, it wouldn't be much. And working for others is so hard. If there's no work, it's fine, but when the goods arrive, the boss makes us work overtime day and night, sometimes two or three nights straight. The salary doesn't increase much… but if we don't work, we get fired.”
However, among those who leave their hometowns to work, some have the good fortune to succeed, earning money to send back and build decent, spacious houses... Mrs. Dan, whose daughter works far away, said: "It's thanks to Tam's hard work. She's been working in the South exporting leather shoes for almost 4 years now, and almost every month she sends money back to me. It's sometimes five or six hundred thousand dong, sometimes a million or more. Thanks to her business acumen, our house is much more comfortable than before."
Many families have both husband and wife moving south, leaving their children with their grandparents at home. They send money back every month to support their children. Mr. Hau, who is raising two grandchildren while his children work far away, said: "I've raised two children, one since she was three, and the other is still breastfeeding. Their parents are working elsewhere. Dong went to Malaysia, and Thanh works in the leather shoe industry in Binh Duong. They only come home once every two or three years."

Can traveling far make you a millionaire?
Returning to the countryside now, it's difficult to spot the slender village girl or the strong, muscular farmer working in the golden fields during harvest season. That romantic image has faded into the past! Now is the era of integration; our country is a member of the WTO! To become rich and successful, one must escape the life of a buffalo leading the plow; one must have the courage to leave! With this mindset, people are gradually giving up their land to migrate south, east, and west. They yearn for a more prosperous life. A life where they can provide their children with the same education as their peers, a life where they don't have to worry about making ends meet… Besides, what else can they do in the countryside during the off-season? "Idleness breeds vice," and with gambling and drug abuse rampant throughout the villages and hamlets of Da Son – Do Luong, young people staying at home could easily fall into the vortex of social vices, and that would be the end of them!

When will the village be young again?
Taking advantage of the two-day weekend to visit my hometown, listening to stories about family, village, and neighborhood, I realized my village has "aged" already! I heard my friends who returned from abroad tell stories about how wonderful the rural areas of Western and Chinese countries are, and how amazing their farmers are! The governments of those countries focus on investing in rural development in parallel and proportionally with the process of urbanization. Talented and skilled people from the cities volunteer or are attracted to work in the countryside…
Listening to your story, I secretly wished my village could be like that someday. Then, my village would be "young" again, unlike now – when something unexpected happens, like a house fire or a natural disaster like a storm or flood, the "local force" is just old men and women, and their rescue efforts are ineffective! Right now, I have to go to the bus station to catch my "low-quality" bus to Hanoi! I'm a "young person," a youth, and I have to go to the city to compete in life…

Tran Nu BC1B
Central College of Broadcasting and Television No. 1