Love roads in Vinh city
(Baonghean.vn) - I suddenly remembered that song by Trinh, when walking on Quang Trung street, turning to Tran Phu, Le Duan in the drizzly rain season, covered in fog. The street is fragile, illusory, flickering, there but not there. But that song is to talk about the street in everyone's heart.
It could be a happy street, it could be a sad street. It could be a lonely street, but who knows, it could also be joyful and bustling? Thousands of people pass by each other on the street every day, but how many stop to look at each other, how many choose to walk together?
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| Lam River flowing through Ben Thuy Vinh ward |
Street of Lovers
If Hanoi has Thanh Nien Street, which has been considered the love street for many years, a place for couples to meet, and Saigon has Nguyen Van Cu Street, then in Vinh, which street is the love street? I once asked my friends in Vinh that question, and then they pondered and answered me with their own stories. For Van, it was Tran Phu Street, where the BZ Coffee Shop had just opened. Van's friend at that time was a student who worked part-time at this shop and after one time the girl accidentally spilled a cup of coffee on Van's striped table, their hands touched. Van's love story did not have a happy ending, but Van said, those were the most wonderful emotions he had ever had.
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| Lagerstroemia tree on street corner |
Tran Phu Street with its milk trees, rosewood trees, and occasional royal poinciana trees, with a slightly tilted round umbrella built on the green and red brick pavement, has become Van's most romantic street. As for Long, it is Dao Tan Street, where there is an ancient citadel gate that Long said looks mossy in the dark. The street where Long's girlfriend always nestles against him every time he takes her across. Long's friend from Cua Nam Ward is now the mother of two children in grades 7 and 3. She is no longer afraid when walking across the once windy night street, but now her shoulder has even become a support for her husband who sometimes gets drunk at the night market at the citadel gate and always likes to call his wife out to take him home...
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| Morning on the road along Lam River. Photo: PV |
Ah, so any road, any street can be a street of love, if you have ever been with the person you love, and have memories of it. It could be Le Ninh street leading to Vinh station. It could also be an empty train station, with only a yellow light and a hand waving for pick-ups and drop-offs. It could be Tran Quang Dieu street, with a newly opened coffee shop where a Hanoian musician followed his wife to Vinh, leaving behind a bustling youth to sit quietly in a corner of the shop playing the piano, indescribably well. It could be the sloping road with Dung Quyet when the city lights come on, so that his arms seem to tighten as he looks down at the messy and lovely city below. And the street, in the eyes of a lover, the footsteps of a lover are so joyful. It seems like the lights are lit for you, the flowers are blooming for you. Everything is surprisingly reasonable, surprisingly like a signal of love, from the bell of Cau Ram church, the bell of Su Nu pagoda, Diec pagoda. From the rice speck flashing on the rough, moldy tree trunk on Quang Trung street, the four-sided clock on 3-2 street that sometimes stops at 5 o'clock, sometimes stops at 9 o'clock. Or one morning, stopping by the old book stall on Nguyen Van Cu street to suddenly exclaim when encountering the immortal book of childhood. It lies there, as if waiting for the day you come by, the day you open it, brushing off a layer of dust on the spine. There is reason and loveliness even in the sudden rains that pass by the street. You smile at anyone, even the man who drives his motorbike in a hurry and cuts in front of your car, or you keep looking at the tiny hand of a baby on the Dong Bac bus waving through the window until the end of the street. Anything is worth singing about, worth trembling into poetry.
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| A corner of Goong Lake. Photo: PV |
But yes, if I had to choose a road, I would have chosen the love road of Vinh city. That is the road of the Lam river embankment running all the way to Cua Hoi. The road has both wind and waves, is wide and peaceful. Love stories under the street lights, by the railing, or in a corner of a small shop, heads huddled together, shoulders walking side by side on the bridge that leans out to the river that Vinh people call Cau Dau (where ships dock to transport oil to Ben Thuy oil depot). The sound of someone's guitar seems to shake the surface of the Lam river flowing quietly at night. Up there, the thin winter moon like someone's eyebrow flashes in the sky.
Hey, let's go down the Lam River, shall we? The wheels slowly rolled to stop when they reached the mangrove forest. The road was long and familiar, but I always wanted to go there, it always felt fresh and evoked many emotions. So close, the bare mangrove trees stood with their feet immersed in the soil and water. So close, the herd of buffalo leisurely grazed. And the immense green of the sedge fields. The green of the steppe, of nomads. Do you feel, in your chest, the smell of nature, the smell of the outskirts of Vinh city?And the streets of many people
How many couples walk together, how many promises. Every promise is forever, and then “a pink street, a void street”, the street is there, the people are there, and then one day they leave. Watching slowly each stream of people pass by on the street, like rushing rivers. Quang Trung, Quan Lau, and Cua Dong markets are bustling with the sounds of people bustling in the evening. No arms reach out to us, no footsteps stop by our side anymore. We walk as if lost on a familiar street. We feel lost among the faces of many people, as if lost from ourselves. But isn’t that right, we want to blend into the faces of many people on the street. We don’t want anyone to notice the tears of sorrow that are about to flow down our eyelids, heavy with pain. But come on, let’s stop by the roadside, the row of trees where we once saw a cicada shed its skin. Let’s stop, and listen to the sap that is still circulating in each grain of wood. Just yesterday, the day before yesterday, the banyan trees on Quang Trung Street, Le Hong Phong Street or the Goong Lake stood dry as if dead on the sidewalk, suddenly hearing the sound of spring rain, they turned into fresh colors. Green like the first time knowing the street, green like the first time knowing love. Stopping to walk along Nguyen Phong Sac Street, there was still a trace of a green bamboo bush, the shabby afternoon drinking place located below was also called Quan Bui Tre. That street, that countryside. The street has no shortage of people from the countryside. Living in the city, but still clinging to the countryside with a green vegetable garden, with the sound of roosters crowing every morning. Bend down, very slowly, look at the lives of people on the street. The street is not just about faces.
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| Petrol bridge in Hung Dung ward at dawn |
The street is bustling in the mind of a woman from the suburbs going to the market early. The street is the leisure of an old man cutting hair at the corner of C4 Quang Trung. The street is the sigh of a paste maker packing his tools to prepare to move back to his hometown: "Business is so difficult these days". The street is the warm corner of a blind couple who sing on the streets through many springs, summers, autumns and winters... The street is a shelter, the street is a place of exile, but the street is also a place to entrust all our hopes and love. The street has everything we need, when we are sad or happy. The street has enough faces with endless continuity. We realize that the street teaches us so many lessons. About gratitude for the rows of trees on Ngu Hai Street, Duong Van Nga Street that shade the blazing sun and the hot Lao wind. About something very simple, happiness on a pushcart that a husband takes his wife back and forth on Ho Tung Mau Street every day for many years. About the journey that each of us goes - comes and goes as well as chooses for ourselves like when the train leaves Vinh Station. The trains keep coming and going, at the same time, on the same tracks, but today's trip is no longer yesterday's trip, because every journey is unique...
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| Afternoon street corner |
I realize that I am walking on Vinh street with the proud footsteps of a lover, a loved one. I walk with the footsteps of gratitude to the porter at the Tam Giac Flower Garden. With the bustling footsteps of a new student leaving his hometown to start his first year of school with so much surprise and freshness... I sink into the night, to welcome the pure morning, where the flower bushes in the balcony offer the fragrance of the morning so gentle. Indeed, sometimes when immersed in the cold silence, there are things that quietly bloom, quietly sprout.
Look, near December, someone on Dang Thai Than street has been selling incense in Quy Chau. The man cupped his hands to block the wind, and tried lighting an incense stick. The scent of incense filled the small street. It made the old man in the tailor shop stop his needlework, his eyes looking far away… There is one thing, I will tell you privately, that my Vinh street has alleys that at first glance seem to be dead ends, but suddenly open up to a big road. Vinh street is like that, you don’t have to worry about getting lost. Sometimes it seems strange, but suddenly it becomes familiar. And anyway, I still want you to look at Vinh street with the eyes of someone in love!
