Quang Trung in me is like my first love

(Baonghean.vn) - Near midnight, I received a phone call from my friend, the Editor-in-Chief of Nghe An Newspaper, informing me: "The place filled with our memories is about to be demolished. Write down something and keep it..."

I know that nothing lasts forever, but hearing that the city started to demolish the Quang Trung apartment building and rebuild a new one made it impossible for me to sleep that night. Simply, the years I spent there were an unforgettable part of my life.

I was a young generation F1 of the Quang Trung apartment complex, from April 1976. At that time, they had just built houses from A1 to A4, were completing houses A5, A6 and were building 4 floors of building B1. Apart from the 4 houses, the entire Quang Trung area at that time was just sand and sand, no trees, no electricity or roads, dotted with a few open-air garbage pits and a few public water taps. Houses A1 and A4 were assigned to the customs housing area and guest house. House A2 was for officers, workers and employees of Vinh Garment and Mechanical Company, house A3 was for construction workers and teachers... In house A3 where I lived, the 5th floor was for the engineering platoon specializing in bomb and mine clearance, and the 1st floor was the city library.

Buildings in Quang Trung area are arranged in a Chi shape. Photo: Author's personal documents.

My house has many teachers from Vinh Pedagogical University and high schools. They are Associate Professor Dr. Hoang Ky, Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Quy Dy (Faculty of Mathematics), Associate Professor Le Ba Han, Associate Professor Nguyen Van Tru, Associate Professor Dau Van Ngo, Associate Professor Le Van Khiem (Faculty of Literature), teacher Canh, Vice Principal of Vinh 2 school, teacher Nhan, head of Chemistry group of Vinh 1 high school...

There is also the late poet Ba Dung - Deputy Secretary of Vinh City Party Committee (he was once Vice Chairman of the City People's Committee); poet Duong Huy - Chairman of Nghe An Literature and Arts Association, Editor-in-Chief of Song Lam Magazine; late painter Nguyen Nang Dac (Nghe An Newspaper)...

The house consists of 2 units, the unit I live in is even numbered from 2 to 40, with mostly young families. The generation before us has now grown up such as Associate Professor Dr. Le Quang Hung, Head of the Department of Vietnamese Studies (Hanoi National University of Education), Hoang Khoi, former Assistant to the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Song Hong Construction Corporation, Dr. of Mathematics Hoai Chau, Dr. of Mathematics Hoai An...

My family of 6 people "sneaked" into 28m², including 2 bedrooms with kitchen and toilet. The largest house is only 40 square meters, located at the end of the house... In that area, every house must be divided into areas, where to store jars and tanks to store domestic water; where to store rice husks, sawdust, coal, firewood for cooking fuel, to store rice, corn, peanuts... so that on August 3, when the government does not have time to sell rice, there will still be something to eat.

Math class K11 Phan Boi Chau specialized school visited a friend in a multi-story house. Photo: Author's personal documents.

The special feature is that my house has a lot of books, almost every house is like a mini library and when designing, people also have bookshelves to separate the rooms, how great! We A3 children were born in the library so we study quite well. My family must have several hundred math books in Russian stacked around the house. At that time, Vice Chairman of the City Nguyen Ba Dung proudly said: "If we take the number of students passing the university entrance exam and divide it by the area, our house is number one in the country."

At that time, many families in A3 had completed university, even doctorates. Generally speaking, “high-rise residents” were also considered to be well-educated because most of them were children of civil servants and employees, who did not have to work too hard to earn a living and had the opportunity to study. The City Gifted School and Phan Boi Chau Specialized School had quite a few “Quang Trung” students.

Later, when we grew up, we realized that we had gone through the harsh years of life, and we understood the hardships that our fathers and mothers had to endure to keep their families from going hungry. Professors and teachers took advantage of the opportunity to teach extra classes, roll cigarettes, shell peanuts, and knit for hire so that the family meals would have more rice and less corn and wheat.

My parents were famous university lecturers. In addition to translating books and writing textbooks for the faculty, they also received experimental fields from the school to grow rice, and also fenced off toilets to raise pigs. I still remember the image of my mother leaning her chopsticks on the tray watching her four children, both young and old, fight over food; at the end of the day, she would pour some thin soup and quickly swallow the last grains of rice in the pot to make it to class on time.

Children of area A (photo taken at the Slide flower garden). Photo: Author's personal data.

But in Quang Trung, what remains in me is not hunger and suffering but full of humanity. At night, under the light of oil lamps, families spread mats in the hallways, chatting about the neighborhood and their children's studies. It's the bowl of spinach soup that my neighbor, Mrs. Ky, makes for me every summer afternoon. It's the tube of butter and rice that families share at the end of the month, it's the bundle of spinach that is shared with the people on the same floor. It's where my 11-year-old friend died tragically because of the leftover American cluster bombs. It's my younger brother named Khanh who stayed at the water tank (at the end of A1 building) and didn't come back during the afternoon when he went swimming with his friends...

Quang Trung in me is closely associated with the memories of studying at the time. We shared each good reference book, each Thieu nien Tien phong weekend newspaper. I majored in mathematics but often listened to poets Hong Nhu, Thach Quy, Duy Phuong, Ba Dung comment on poetry, and listened to critic Le Ba Han lecture on Kieu and Chinh phu ngam. The literary commentary sessions of the Nghe scholars led me into the world of literature without realizing it...

I still love Quang Trung, even if tomorrow he is no longer here. It was like the first love of every person at that time.

An Thanh