Nguyen Duy, Tran Tien, Nguyen Cuong on the border

“There was a look like gravel thrown behind me”

From left to right: Photographer Tran Dinh, musician Nguyen Cuong, critic Pham Xuan Nguyen participate in the program 40 border wars with poet Nguyen Duy Photo: AT

The opportunity for this trip began with Nguyen Duy, when he met teacher Hoang Thi Tu - one of the four teachers who stayed at Dong Kinh Pho school (Lang Son) on February 17, 1979 when the whole city began to evacuate. Ms. Tu currently lives in Russia, and when she returned to Vietnam, she and poet Nguyen Duy called on friends to go back to Lang Son to visit the old battlefield.

Poet Nguyen Duy said: “The purpose of my trip to the North this time is to meet again the teachers in Lang Son who were on duty with us and participated in the war on February 17, 1979. Those who survived that time include Mr. Truong Hung Anh (former Vice Chairman of Lang Son Province), Mr. Bach Tien Hanh and teacher Hoang Thi Tu. There was also Ms. Binh, but she passed away due to a serious illness.”

In early 1979, poet Nguyen Duy went to Lang Son as a reporter for the Literature and Arts Weekly. Accompanying him were poet Pham Tien Duat, writer Do Chu, writer Hong Phi... The group was stationed in Lang Son town with the on-duty teachers of Dong Kinh Pho school until the day they were ordered to retreat.

During an exchange with students of Chu Van An High School in Lang Son, 72-year-old Nguyen Duy surprised all his friends with his "prolific" ability to recite poetry, even though he normally needs someone to help him up and down the stairs.

At the beginning, he also warned that he was "afraid that I would not be able to read the poems about the 1979 war in their entirety because I was too emotional." Indeed, at the later part, he had to ask military doctor Hai Dang to prompt him and even go on stage to read them for him. This was also a special character, who loved Nguyen Duy's poetry and knew it better than the author.

The entire audience fell silent when Nguyen Duy read “On the First Day of the Battle”. Those who had fought in the war quietly wiped away their tears as they recalled the image of “children with round, bewildered eyes/ children’s short legs running as if playing”.

The concluding line of this poem was written by Nguyen Duy as follows: “The army goes, the army goes up to the border/ There are looks like pebbles thrown behind me”. He said that after the article was published in the Literature and Arts Newspaper, the Editorial Board suggested to change a detail, changing it to “looks like bullets sent after me”. Musician Tran Tien liked this idea, and used it as the inspiration to compose the song “The eyes carry the shape of bullets”.

Nguyen Duy also said that this was not the first time he had returned to Lang Son. In 1989, he had also returned here on February 17. “At that time, on the ruins of Ky Lua market, small Vietnamese traders began transporting agricultural products across the border, and Chinese porters transported Van Luc beer to Vietnam. At noon, the Vietnamese porter and the Chinese porter sat drinking Van Luc beer together, getting drunk at Ky Lua market. I suddenly thought, if only the war had not happened ten years ago, and everyone sat drinking beer together, getting drunk like this, life would have been so much more beautiful.”

On that occasion, he wrote: "The wind goes away, leaving behind heavy rain/ People go, leaving cold footprints on the road/ Dong Dang, Ai Khau, Bang Tuong/ The market is full of sales/ I am full of worries/ If only I could sell like I sell goods".

“Bullet Eyes” was “hidden” for four years

Musician Tran Tien, as usual, quickly became the focus of the crowd when he hugged his guitar and sang.

“The Eyes Are Bullet-Shaped” was written by him in early 1979. The musician said: “I really like Nguyen Duy’s poems. I always thought that “The Eyes Are Bullet-Shaped” was based on his poems, but Nguyen Duy said: he did not base my poems on them, I wrote pebbles, which were later changed to bullets.”

Regarding the wandering fate of this song, Tran Tien said: “At that time, I was closest to Nguyen Cuong. The war broke out, Hanoi was boiling. I went to Cuong's house and told him: stop writing songs about girls, let's write about the border!”

“Bullet-Shaped Eyes” was completed and Tran Tien brought it to Voice of Vietnam Radio to introduce, but it was rejected because the lyrics did not contain words directly condemning the enemy…

Later, during a trip to the South, while drinking with musicians Trinh Cong Son and Pham Trong Cau, he was encouraged: "Tien, if you have a new song, sing it." Tran Tien performed "Those eyes carry the shape of bullets."

The musician recalled: “After I finished singing, everyone fell silent and clapped their hands excitedly. The two men said: Tien has such a good song, why doesn’t anyone sing it? I said, in the North they refused. Mr. Cau asked Tien to copy it for him. Who would have thought that less than a month later, the whole of Saigon was singing this song, every band tried it, like it was a fad.”

But it was not until 4 years later that “Bullet-Shaped Eyes” was officially performed in Hanoi. It was also a “passport” for Tran Tien to decide to go South and stay in the South until now.

Nguyen Cuong tells the story “Border Forest…”

Musician Nguyen Cuong said: "I received an invitation from Tran Tien to go to Lang Son to remember our compositions from 40 years ago, so I went."

As a “newbie” in the composing team, Nguyen Cuong was luckier than Tran Tien. His song about the border “The Border Forest Echoes the New Then Melody” passed through the doors of the Voice of Vietnam Radio (a great force at that time – as Nguyen Cuong said) and was performed immediately.

Nguyen Cuong himself played and sang "The Border Forest Echoes with the New Then Melody".