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, 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 clumsily 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 feelings he had ever had.
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| Lagerstroemia tree on the 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 sidewalk paved with red and green bricks, has become the most poetic street in Van's eyes. 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 cuddled up to him every time he took 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 every time she walks 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 when looking 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 that the lights are also lit for you, the flowers are also 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 grains flashing on the rough, moldy tree trunk on Quang Trung street, the four-sided clock on 3-2 street, some stopping at 5 o'clock, some stopping at 9 o'clock. Or one morning, turning by the old book stall on Nguyen Van Cu street, you suddenly exclaim when you see the immortal book of your childhood. It lies there, as if waiting for the day you come by, the day you open it, brush off a layer of dust on the spine. The sudden rains that pass by the street are reasonable and lovely. You smile at anyone, even the man who drives his motorbike in a hurry and cuts across 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 a song about, worth trembling into poetry.
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| A corner of Goong Lake. Photo: PV |
But that’s right, 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 roadside 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 carry 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 a 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. Very close, the bare mangrove trees stood with their feet in the soil and water. Very close, the herd of buffalo leisurely grazed. And the vast green 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 street of nothingness”, the street is there, the people are there, and then one day they leave. Watching the slow flow of people passing 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 afternoon. 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 no, 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 molt. Let’s stop, and listen to the sap still circulating in each grain of wood. Just yesterday, the day before, the banyan trees on Quang Trung Street, Le Hong Phong Street or along 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 shop 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 fates 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 these days is too difficult". The street is the warm corner for a blind couple who sing on the streets through many springs, summers, autumns and winters to make a living... The street is a shelter, the street is a place of exile, but the street is also a place to fully entrust hopes, love and trust. 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 too 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 - to and fro 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 realized that I was walking on Vinh street with the proud footsteps of a lover, a loved one. I walked 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 sank into the night, to welcome the pure morning, where the flower bushes on the balcony offered the morning fragrance so gentle. Indeed, sometimes, immersed in the cold silence, there are things that quietly blossom, quietly sprout.
Look, near December, someone on Dang Thai Than street was selling incense sticks in Quy Chau. The man cupped his hands to block the wind, and lit a stick of incense. 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 something, 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 a lover!
