Losing rural culture is losing Vietnamese identity.

Economic losses recover quickly, but cultural losses take a long time to recover! Yet many people are indifferent to this issue. Now, many rural areas are neither urban nor rural.

The chaotic architectural scene in the countryside today (Illustration photo)...

Going to the countryside now, I am very happy because the people's lives have clearly improved. From the National Target Program on New Rural Development, electricity, roads, schools, stations, cultural houses, clean water have been invested heavily... Rural roads alone have increased 1.83 times in just a few years compared to 10 years ago. However, recently, our new rural planning has only focused on the whole, but there is no orientation within each family's premises. The toilet of the front family faces the back family. The livestock area and the wastewater drainage system are not in order. The structure of rural houses is also not orderly.

Many places have large land but they build townhouses or they build tube houses along the road even though they don't do any business. The countryside is greener, cleaner, and more beautiful than the city, but now many places lack green. They break down tree fences to build brick fences. Although we know that we need to renovate mixed gardens, landscape trees still need to be preserved to create landscape and shade. The recent heat wave has made many places realize the importance of trees, and they have thought about building new rural areas by planting more trees.

Housing from the mountains to the plains, each ethnic group and each region has its own identity. I once went to Japan and saw that their countryside did not have any high-rise buildings. Houses had to have a yard and a roof. Taiwan also developed housing massively in the countryside before, even building apartments in the countryside, but now they are correcting their mistakes and studying a new rural law that directs people to traditional houses. Korea used to be like us, but now they are oriented to follow tradition, so most rural areas retain their identity.

In our country, it's a mess. The countryside wants to follow the city's culture, but in my opinion, we should only learn from the interior to improve our lives, not just build high-rise buildings. Currently, a lot of rural residents are pouring into the city, not only to work but also to live, so the pressure on housing in the countryside is no longer like in previous years. In many areas, houses are left empty, people only come back during Tet and then leave again, so why do we need to build high-rise buildings? Destroying the structure of houses in the countryside is basically for the rich. Building a few floors, how can the poor have money? Not only does the government not have any direction, but many places even divide the land on the street for people to build tube houses.

Meanwhile, the rich people in the city want to live on farms. The villas of the city people themselves are a return to the old model of houses with landscapes and gardens. But on the contrary, the rural people want closed gates, high walls, and high-rise buildings like in the city. The awareness of local leaders is very important. We must propagate to the people what the old countryside was like, what needed to be kept, what needed to be removed. Like in the 60s of the last century, every house's cowshed and buffalo shed were near the kitchen, the kitchen was very dirty, but thanks to propaganda, that scene no longer exists. Now we have to propagate that houses built too high are not suitable for the village landscape so that people do not compete to build them. The old construction models need to be preserved, such as rich houses built with five rooms and two wings, while poor houses built with three rooms and two wings, roofed with tiles, and wooden rafters. Now wood is rare and can be replaced with other materials, but that model should still be preserved. Houses in the Northern Delta are encouraged to have tile roofs, while houses in the Mekong Delta are encouraged to have coconut leaf roofs instead of corrugated iron roofs. Winter is very cold, and summer is very hot.

The elders said, “A child without a father is like a house without a roof.” Now, in Vietnam, there are too many houses without roofs. Maybe because of the devastation of war, when rebuilding, people did not think about the traditional house style. Maybe because of the population relocation in the whole country, we built a series of resettlement houses instead of houses for our compatriots. We need to be careful, otherwise we will pay a high price by losing our rural cultural identity. People originally lived in the countryside and then moved to the city, and that is the case in every country. Therefore, losing rural culture means losing Vietnamese identity. Economic loss recovers quickly, but cultural loss takes a long time to recover! Yet many people are indifferent to this issue. So now, many rural areas are not like cities, not like villages. From the landscape, architecture, it affects people. Love for the countryside gradually fades, foreign culture gradually enters, and at some point, the village and neighborly love also fades. In this regard, we cannot blame the people because of their access conditions, because of their desire to rise up. Unfortunately, that rise up has not been properly oriented....

According to NNVN