Happiness smiles...

(Baonghean) - A house hidden in the middle of a vast cinnamon forest. A woman sits quietly with the deep pain of her life. An unfinished dream of being an artist with many aspirations for the stage lights. She has endured such hardships, steadfastly walked to the other side of life's slope, and now, finally, received the smile of fate...

Ms. Vi Thi Loan (Muong Noc commune, Que Phong district) is much younger than her age of over sixty. Having known her for a long time, many times I hurriedly passed by the commune on short business trips, and could not visit her, she still blamed me. Being so close, even though in terms of age, I should have called her "Mrs.", she still humorously "asked" to always be "Ms. Loan." Even her fear of old age, her very feminine nostalgia for youth, is extremely adorable! Ms. Loan is a truly adorable person. She is beautiful. A radiant, charming beauty that defies the harshness of time. A beauty that does not need makeup, still exuding a full womanly quality in every soft breath, every glance of her smiling eyes, of her fragile shoulders under her worn-out shirt. I have sat leaning on that shoulder countless times, a shoulder that is strangely peaceful in the mountainous sunsets, and wondered, where has she hidden all the storms of life? Her life story has many episodes like a tragic movie, and every time she remembers it, her eyes fill with tears...

Ms. Vi Thi Loan peels cinnamon bark.

She was born and raised in Chau Hanh commune (Quy Chau) - a land rich in cultural traditions of the Thai ethnic group. In that cradle of folk art, Loan naturally became the lark of the village. She sang well, often sang, and loved to sing. The pure and sacred music bathed her soul from childhood to adolescence. There was no moon festival without her singing, even in the festivals in the commune and district, she was fully present. That passion took flight in February 1968, at that time she was 15 years old, studying in grade 7 at Chau Hanh Secondary School. “One day, while I was sitting in class, the teacher waved her hand and said: There is a provincial music group recruiting good singers and dancers, would you like to go? At that time, I had no idea what the provincial music group was like, I just knew I liked to sing, so I went and sang for them. Who would have thought, I was just singing for fun and got the job!” - Ms. Vi Thi Loan recalled.

Although she sang for fun, the song “Spring Train Road” (by musician Pham Minh Tuan) was sung with a long, melodious voice, enough for the astute judges to recognize the innate talent of the full-year-old girl. So from the poor countryside of Chau Hanh, little Vi Thi Loan became the youngest singer of the Nghe An Mountain Song and Dance Troupe at that time. Together with her brothers and sisters in the troupe, Vi Thi Loan had the opportunity to tour across the front lines, singing for the people and soldiers to listen to the songs of her homeland. As a daughter of the Thai ethnic group, but after only a short time of studying, she was able to sing well the traditional songs of the Khmu, Mong, Tho ethnic groups... Along with singing, she danced and played folk instruments. Just like that, despite the bullets and bombs, despite the hardships in the activities of an art troupe during the difficult period of the nation, Vi Thi Loan still innocently sang her clear voice. She said, 5 years of living with her passion for music were the most memorable 5 years of her life. Just those 5 years were the spiritual support she clung to to overcome all the pain for the next several decades!

In 1973, Vi Thi Loan left the familiar field stage, choosing the peace of her small family home. She married a long-distance truck driver. He was her first love, and at times, she thought her love for him was her whole life. She gave up her career at its peak, refused the rare opportunity to study at the Hanoi Conservatory of Music, left her hometown, and followed him to Nghia Dan to start a career. The sparkling stage dresses were hidden in wooden chests, the makeup only lingered in her memory, and Vi Thi Loan - the artist suddenly transformed into a hard-working, simple wife and mother in the windy Phu Quy region. It was no big deal, when she had returned to her true calling in life! Even though her slender, white hands had never once known how to plow, even though her feet had danced gently for years, now she had to toil in the fields at noon, she still overcame it. Love balances everything, but love is always fragile, so she never expected that one day, the scale of her life would tilt to the other side of the slope!

Broken in marriage, she held her child, lonely and resentful among the faces of many strangers. Not daring to return to her hometown because of the obsession of being a burden to her parents, not daring to continue staying in the red land to live with the broken pieces of love, she ventured to find refuge in Muong Noc, Que Phong. She found the deepest, most remote, most desolate hill to "set up camp". A rickety grass hut was clumsily built in a frantic effort to survive, after days of mother and child hugging each other and leaning against the roots of a sleeping tree. Rows of cassava, sweet potato gradually sprouted, then rice fields, corn fields took shape after many tiring days of plowing. Behind her house is now a cinnamon hill of more than 3 hectares, all of which she single-handedly planted and nurtured to become green.

It is impossible to describe the hardships of such a fragile woman, with a belt tied to her forehead, struggling to drag each heavy cinnamon basket up the high hill, and the misery burst into real pain in the early morning mist, in the twilight of the day. She said, there were times when hardship drove her crazy, unable to remember who she was, how bustling the world she belonged to was. She wandered in the fragrant cinnamon forest, unconsciously singing fragmented, patchwork songs; and at other times, silently sitting against the cinnamon tree until the sun went down, hearing her daughter's call, she suddenly woke up and hurried back to the red-hot kitchen. The warm flickering fire in the cold winter of her two daughters that lit those days still shines brightly in her mind in today's story...

Like the light that lights the way, her two daughters, Vi Thi Diem Chi and Vi Thi Ut Sinh, are her reason for living. The two young women are exactly like their mother in appearance and personality, beautiful, intelligent and extremely sensitive. Still there in the unforgettable memory of a time, is Diem Chi's usual shame about her poor family background, about the endless cassava porridge meals of the three of them when classmates happened to come over and witness... Diem Chi's diary still has lines blurred with tears: "April 12, 1996: Mom, do you know, no one in our family likes to eat instant noodles, but I eat them every day here. Half a pack a day, Mom, I only dare to eat half a pack for lunch, and in the morning and afternoon I can go a little hungry. I still study well, Mom and sister don't worry!"

Those instant noodle packages, along with the sacred motherly love and the desire to overcome fate, led Vi Thi Loan and her three children to the shore of happiness. A smile of satisfaction appeared on her lips when Diem Chi and Ut Sinh both studied very well and, on their own, passed the entrance exams to prestigious colleges in the province. Diem Chi was an excellent student at Nghe An College of Education, and Ut Sinh was admitted directly to Nghe An College of Culture and Arts. Both have now become teachers at primary and secondary schools in Que Phong district. Ut Sinh's direct admission is still remembered by many people because he had a unique and attractive performance in the National Ethnic Singing Contest. The Silver Prize of the contest went to Ut Sinh, thanks to the song that his mother used to sing to her sisters.

Ms. Loan proudly told me, then softly sang to me the heartbreaking lullaby of a mother who loves her child so much: "Non xa no, chai oi cho non mung nha hay... Me po hay nang pay mi ma, me po na nang pay mi tau, me hao pa lan xooc a xay noc cam ma ha chai oi...". (Rough translation: Go to sleep, my child... Don't cry if you want to sleep. Mom hasn't come back yet, so I'll go into the forest to get some bird eggs to coax you. My child... Go to sleep, don't cry..." She sang and cried. Her voice spread far and wide in the fragrant cinnamon forest, mixed with sobs of real happiness. I looked out at the late afternoon sunlight lingering on the bright red ten o'clock flowers in front of the porch, a small warbler leisurely counting its steps on the mossy bricks. Why is everything so peaceful this afternoon? So peaceful that even the gentle shaking of that woman's fragile shoulders is strangely happy!

Phuong Chi