The way to the land of red cotton flowers!

I returned to my hometown on a March day with golden sunlight. From the national highway, I passed a road through the fields to my house. As I passed the fields, what caught my eye were the cotton trees blooming with bright red flowers like a myriad of shimmering flames. Years have passed, but on my way back in March, the silhouette of the cotton trees remains the same as ever.

When I stood there looking at the cotton flowers, I suddenly felt like I was a child again, like when I was eight or ten years old. The time when every time I went to herd buffaloes or cut grass, I often wandered around the cotton tree, looking up at the red flowers and… longingly. The longing of us, the innocent and pure children of the past. We longed to cherish the cotton flowers, hold them in our arms and caress them. That was a time of carefree life, when the internet, telephones or televisions were not as popular as they are now. The games with cotton flowers at that time became fascinating to the village children. Cotton flowers were used as goods when playing house. Cotton flowers were woven into crowns, necklaces in the game “bride and groom”, laughter echoed throughout the fields…

Children back then all thought that the kapok tree was one of the strangest trees. It was strange from its name to its growth and development. Usually in spring, the young buds would be densely packed on the branches, but with the kapok tree, it seemed that they were only for the flowers. Around the beginning of March, when the cold was still lingering and a little yellow sunlight was shining in the sky, the kapok tree was no longer lonely but instead wore a passionate red coat. The kapok flowers had their own beauty. Not too proud, noble, nor fragile. The kapok flowers made people ecstatic because of their simple, rustic, and gentle beauty, as if connecting heaven and earth. Standing from afar, the kapok tree looked like it was lit up by thousands of blazing fires.

No one can remember exactly when the kapok trees appeared in my hometown’s fields. The old people said that when they grew up, they saw several tall kapok trees in the fields. No one had any intention of cutting them down because the kapok trees were considered confidants of the hard-working farmers who often took a break under the tree on hot days. Remembering the tiring days of plowing, the people of my hometown would lean against the kapok tree to rest, tell stories, and share their daily stories. The kapok tree became a place for farmers to confide in each other.

The silk cotton flower is also known as the cotton tree, and in the Central Highlands it is called the po lang. My grandmother still tells the story of the cotton cotton flower as a reminder of the young man in the legend of the past with his unfinished but faithful love. Heaven and earth separated the couple, causing the young man in the sky to cry until he had no more tears, turning into rain falling down to earth. The girl, wanting her lover in the sky to see her faithful wait, asked the heavens to turn the silk ribbon of love in her hand into red five-petaled flowers. Her wish fulfilled, the girl threw herself into death and became the po lang flower, also known as the cotton cotton flower.

The March of my childhood, of yours, of the children born in the village, is deeply engraved in my memory as the familiar red color of the cotton flowers. And then when I go far away, I am tormented by the nostalgia in the poem I once read: “Here, there is no cotton flower season/ The sky burns red in March/ For the heart of someone to ache when parting/ I am tormented as I walk, but my soul is half gone…”.

Essay by CAO THOM