Hai Duong Citydeep inside me

I live in Hanoi. Long ago, the first time I looked at a digital map on the Internet, I was surprised to realize that Hai Duong was between me and the sea. Like a feeling of existence, whether traveling across the Northern Delta, wandering around to interview or looking for materials to write a book, somehow, the first and last of every trip, I passed through Hai Duong.

Later, with more knowledge of feng shui, I realized that Hai Duong is located in the heart of the Northern Delta. Although the mountains are not high or dangerous, the terrain is gentle, tolerant and protective. Although there is no sea, the source is abundant, providing favorable winds for all plans to find a waterway to the great ocean.

I have been to Hai Duong many times. By car, by train, sitting on the back of my lover’s motorbike and cycling through Hai Duong on a New Year’s morning, even running dozens of kilometers around Hai Duong city center on a cold winter morning, in old shoes.

Every time I passed through the city in July, when I was in my twenties, crossing the small bridge from Bach Dang Street to Chuong Duong, passing the city's Martyrs' Memorial, burning incense to pay tribute to Hong Quang Martyrs and countless other heroic martyrs who left Hai Duong, I always asked myself many questions about the city. Perhaps, the spacious, windy space of Hai Duong center and the rows of trees along the streets made me feel that I was living a richer and more profound life.

Sometimes, while walking slowly to Hong Quang High School, meeting the principal, greeting teachers and students of Hai Duong, when attending the March 26th anniversary ceremony, I, at the age of thirty, would think longingly about the generations that grew up in this Red River Delta city.

The urban structure of Hai Duong in the early years of the 21st century, although cluttered with constructions and roads, has the stature of a metropolis with clearly planned spaces for cultural centers, preserving and developing traditional craft villages, planning industrial clusters for development, welcoming foreign investors with long-term vision and advantageous opportunities...

Hai Duong is a good land for birds to nest. I have a cousin who is a People's Artist. She said, she has traveled all over Vietnam but for some reason, every time she passes by Hai Duong, she wishes she could buy a small house here. Then become a very simple resident here. Live a very happy and minimalistic life here.

Why is it like what I secretly dreamed of? I asked: You have acted in films in every province and city, performed plays in every city. Why do you only want to become a Hai Duong person?

My cousin replied: I don't know. I don't know why I love Hai Duong! I just feel so happy here! I feel so safe here! In this city, there is something passionate, attached, that cannot be expressed!

Even though we are both poor, every time we come to Hai Duong, my sister and I remind each other: we have that dream, we will work here, live here. To be able to call Hai Duong our hometown. Surely in the future, we will come back here to live and work. We will come back here to write books, work for newspapers, come back here to open free drama classes for elementary school students, become librarians for a small library in the city, to read books for free to children every weekend...

Is a city's brand, after all, mapped out on a map by its boundaries, or is it recognized by the imprints in the hearts of its people and the enduring stories of its culture and history?

The heart of a city is modern high-rise buildings, bustling downtown areas, or is it the enduring cultural underground that stores traditional values ​​that are still abundant in the lives of its residents?

Answering these questions is how we redefine the word urban, redraw an image of what we expect. I do not live in Hai Duong, I am not originally from Hai Duong, but for some reason, every year I go to Hai Duong, I realize that I am richer, more profound and have a rich cultural experience.

It turns out that the answer to all these questions lies in the feeling of love for this city. We live in a world that is dependent on numbers: Hai Duong is a small city, only 111.7 km2. But for people like us who live by reading, teaching, and writing, Hai Duong is a great city with cultural resources.I believe that the Cheo melodies of the Northern Delta, the thatched houses leaning against ancient bamboo hedges, the sweet taste of green bean cakes, the cool lotus scent from the pond far from the city, the small pagoda roofs typical of the North... are the heritage from thousands of years of the ancient Vietnamese people, living along the banks of the Thai Binh River, taking agriculture as their achievement, considering the house as a family heirloom, and always considering village love and neighborliness, being kind to each other as the most important morality.

In a peaceful community, the feeling of safety, the feeling of being recognized for values, the feeling of being accepted for cultural diversity, personal development… are the elements that make people passing by Hai Duong like us feel that this is truly a livable city. The underground currents of culture and new values ​​of life are what urge visitors to believe that Hai Duong is the heart city of the Northern Delta.

The recent Covid-19 pandemic, the economic difficulties, environmental pollution and extreme weather are the shocking dangers of the whole world. That is what makes us redefine the value of urban areas in a modern world. Hai Duong has added new values ​​from an environmental perspective.

Walking along Hai Duong, I realized that a leading city is not one with the tallest building in the country, but a place where every smallest citizen finds opportunities to develop.

A friendly city is not one with many cinemas, shopping malls, tourist areas, and five-star restaurants, but a culturally diverse city that respects traditional values ​​and has enough spaces for people to experience culture: from creative art spaces to opportunities to immerse themselves in unique local life, with cultural activities that are not mixed or borrowed from foreign sources.

A community with fresh air, many conditions for playing sports, pursuing a warm and friendly lifestyle, and humane behavior becomes the top feng shui for a livable city.

And that's why, my cousin insisted, she would come back here and find a place to deposit her lifelong achievements.

In the place called good land, perhaps, it is only because there, people's hearts are very good.

In the Hai Duong planning for the period of 2021-2023 with a vision to 2050, I read that the city's new mission is not just to be a key urban area for the province to choose as a fulcrum, developing four industrial pillars in the direction of the upward arrow, but a link connecting in width, developing widely along the North-South, East-West spatial axes, connecting regional value chains with neighboring provinces and cities. Hai Duong's governance is no longer simply a matter of synthesizing, quantifying, and mechanically designing data like previous reports of localities on radio and television. I believe that Hai Duong is managing resources. In which, culture is an important resource to connect economic and social goals with the invisible goal of creating the foundation of a new society, a new urban lifestyle, a new human standard: Richer but loving the invisible values ​​of traditional culture; more opportunities for development but still understanding and preserving the identity of kindness and caring; higher competitiveness but more empathy and compassion...

In the book “You are the brand” that I was given in Taipei (China), there is a sentence that I really like: “The most beautiful scenery is people”. People are not just about appearance, but also about soul, about a beautiful way of life, about values ​​that are worth loving and learning, people who cherish life, people who want to progress, people who may not be rich yet but live together humanely…

So I believe that the wonderful things I felt in Hai Duong were the meetings, conversations, people I met, and the cheo plays I watched as a child from the Hai Duong cheo troupe.

Or maybe, it was from a cold, drizzly afternoon at the end of the year, my husband and I shivered as we drove into a small shop on Truong Chinh Street. The shop owner poured us a cup of hot tea to warm our hands, then cooked us a bowl of Hai Duong fish noodle soup with the aroma of dill and fresh onions, an unforgettable delicacy.

And from then on I believed that happiness was always waiting for me in Hai Duong City. No matter how far I went, that city still waited!