Easy to remember a street name

(Baonghean) -How many people remember a street name if they are not a native of that street or work or study there every day? But there are people who, even though they rarely return, still remember the street name by heart just because they once loved and were attached to a house, a tree shade or a small path in the distant wilderness when the street was not yet a... street! Le Duan Street (Vinh City) now often evokes memories like that...

Looking no further, back in the days of Vinh Town in the early 60s of the last century, Le Duan Street was now just a section of National Highway 1A running through it. There were no sidewalks or curbs, just uneven asphalt roads running through the sand dunes covered with wild grass, fields and scattered houses made of bamboo and thatch. Years of bombs and bullets, soldiers marched waiting for the time to cross Ben Thuy ferry, wishing but not sure if there was even a green tree canopy to shade their stop...

Miraculously, in that desolate scene, there was a Vinh People's Theater. There, "singing over the sound of bombs" often resounded during performances by artists and art troupes; this was also a movie theater serving the people on Saturday nights by mobile movie teams. The theater resembled the architecture of Vinh's current football field, built in the late 1950s and later had to be demolished to make way for new construction projects, and is now the location of the Intimex supermarket numbered 343, starting point on the south side of Le Duan Street...

The tea vendor with silver hair sitting alone on the North side of the street, right at the junction of the fence of the Phuong Dong Hotel "eating" the frontage of Truong Thi Street, a resident of Vinh Street for decades, suddenly felt young again when recalling the 70s and 80s when she went to the Theater every night to watch the plays of the Central Opera Troupe, the Chuong Vang and Kim Phung Opera Troupes. During the day, the streets from Ben Thuy to Cau Ram were all clear, but at night, young men and women, the elderly and children from all over the streets poured into the People's Theater to listen to artists like Ai Lien, Le Tho, Tieu Lang... recite vọng cổ verses in famous plays like "Hai dong sua me", "Thoi con gai da xa"...

Panoramic view of Le Duan street.

According to author Duong Van Ky in “Vinh – The City of My Childhood” (VHNA – 2012), in the 1960s, “almost opposite the People’s Theater was a vast, wild land with wild grass and bushes. It is said that this place used to be the examination school of Nghe An and neighboring provinces such as Thanh Hoa and Quang Binh since the Tran Dynasty. During the Nguyen Dynasty, this examination school had recruited excellent bachelors such as Nguyen Cong Tru and Phan Boi Chau, famous people known throughout the country. When the examination system ended, the French built on this land one of the largest railway factories in Indochina with thousands of workers. Along with it were a wood factory, a match factory… all of which created the first industrial foundation for Vinh. Now, if you go deeper inside, you will only see here and there heavy train wheels, even a few rusty steam boilers lying around in the weeds…”.

The hometown city, which had just stopped bombs after the Paris Agreement in 1973, was immediately bustling with people returning to revive life. The old Truong Thi area began to sprout up with the four-storey buildings of Vinh Pedagogical University, the first university in Nghe An, established in 1959, the frontline university of the socialist North and the second largest university in the country (after the National University system). Former students of Vinh University back then, were proud of this school and this street from the memories of studying and training in hardship but full of dreams and ambitions. Those were the nights without electricity, diligently reading until the oil lamp ran out, the afternoons with friends walking along the street where the new buildings of the Military Region 4 Command, the Military Region Museum, the collective housing areas began to appear, gradually obscuring and disappearing the handmade lime kilns, the trading stalls, the horse-drawn carriage and tricycle transport cooperatives... The scattered thatched-roof shops selling banh chung, green tea, and peanut candy back then were the places where now there are many "wind shops" on the sidewalk serving students at the end of the North side of Le Duan Street, Vinh University intersection.

A corner of Vinh University intersection on Le Duan street.

Le Duan Street of Vinh City is perhaps a unique street today, because both sides of the street are not numbered from 1; and it does not follow the rule of numbering starting from the city center (usually starting from 0 at Vinh Market), but from Ben Thuy. That is because Le Duan Street was divided from Nguyen Du Street in 1997, the street name was changed but the order of house numbers remained the same. Starting from odd-numbered house number 187, even-numbered house number 182 at Vinh University intersection up to the roundabout in front of Phuong Dong Hotel (connecting with Tran Phu Street and Truong Thi Street intersection) with the last number 343 belonging to Trung Do Ward and number 187 on the North side belonging to Truong Thi Ward.

The street is now a bustling two-way street, bustling with trade and commerce. Stretching almost the entire North side is the fence of Vinh University's buildings, always bustling, in contrast to the other side, the Military Region 4 Command, which always maintains its quiet appearance. The South side of the street has many offices and training facilities, including schools of all levels in Trung Do ward and vocational schools. If the Military Region 4 Museum and the Military Region Cultural House are historical and cultural highlights on the South side of the street, the Vinh University Information Center - Library named after Professor Nguyen Thuc Hao, a descendant of the famous Nguyen Thuc Confucian family in Nam Dan, the first principal of Vinh University (from 1959 -1973), is a noteworthy cultural highlight on the North side. I don't know if it's a feng shui coincidence, but the Vinh University Information Center - Library is said to be built right on the main area of ​​the old Examination School.

Le Duan Street now, beside the new spacious streets, there are faintly visible somewhere in the small alleys on the south side, the mossy walls of the old red bricks of the apartment buildings built during the subsidy period; or Bach Lieu Street turning to the north also evokes a melancholy look. Le Duan Street today is bustling and busy all year round, so if you want to feel the soul of the street, come here late at night, there will only be a few small shops with red lights, as if only to embellish the nostalgia of those who left when the street was not a street yet, and now have the opportunity to visit again.

Comrade Le Duan was born on April 7, 1907 in Bich La Dong village, Bich Ha commune, Trieu Phong district, Quang Tri province (now Bich La Dong village, Trieu Dong commune, Trieu Phong district, Quang Tri province). He was one of the revolutionary soldiers of the first generation of Party members, an excellent student of President Ho Chi Minh. At the age of 79, 56 years in the Party, nearly 60 years of continuous revolutionary activities, Comrade Le Duan was entrusted with many important responsibilities: Secretary of the Central Party Committee (1937); Member of the Central Party Standing Committee (1939); Secretary of the Southern Party Committee; Secretary of the Central Office for the South (1946-1954), Member of the Politburo (1951); First Secretary, General Secretary of the Central Party Executive Committee (1960-1986). Comrade Le Duan passed away on July 10, 1986; His name is given to many avenues and streets of major cities across the country.

Article and photos: Dinh Sam