1. His name is Huan, he has been away from home for more than forty years. He started his career in Vung Tau, probably only in the last ten years, when life became more stable, did he often return to his hometown. It seems that the premonition of someone approaching old age became the urge to return more often.
In the articles sent from the South to contribute to the hometown newspaper - articles signed by Nguyen Dai Buong, I read a vague, vague but lingering nostalgia. Dai Buong is the name that people aged 50 and over in the upper Thu Bon river use to call their village.
It seems that only they have enough experience to keep the memory of Dai Buong village on the left bank of Thu river - where there is a story of "twin peach garden" of 13 families who love each other and build Dai Binh village with green vegetables and fruits.
Dai Binh, with the Nom name Dai Buong - is the old village name that is the same time as the oldest villages of Quang Nam. Since 1602, after Lord Nguyen Hoang established the Quang Nam citadel and divided the system of villages, communes, and districts, there were also Dai Buong and Trung Phuoc villages.
Dai Buong or Dai Binh are actually the same, but people who have been away from home for a long time still carry with them the name of their hometown from their childhood.
On this side of the river, Trung Phuoc village, now named a town, has a market that is older than the village itself. For hundreds of years, the two villages of Dai Binh and Trung Phuoc, located on either side of the river, have witnessed turmoil and separation.
A ferry and a bridge away, but the villagers' manners are different. Trung Phuoc people are quick-witted and cunning because of the industrial lifestyle from the Nong Son coal mine, and the influence of urban lifestyle from the people who evacuated from the cities, and also because in the middle of the land is a market - a place to gather products from the Ty, Se, and Dui Chieng sources to transport downstream and receive fish sauce from the ferry upstream from Hoi An.
Dai Binh people are gentle and speak slowly. Dai Binh girls are famous for their beauty in Quang Nam. But Trung Phuoc women are resourceful and capable.
More than 15 years ago, when Nong Son district was established, even the people of Quang Nam were unfamiliar with this place name. But when told that the district had Dai Binh village, Trung Phuoc, and Nong Son coal mine, everyone seemed to know.
They listen because in the soulful melody of the song “Que Son, Motherland of Love”, musician Dinh Tham and poet Ngan Vinh mentioned the name “Trung Phuoc ferry”. Likewise, people from far away know Dai Binh village because they have heard about the “miniature Southern village” in the heart of Quang Nam.
Because from art and media, Trung Phuoc, Dai Binh is assigned a status higher than the geographical location of the land on the map.
2. A young person talked about the names of places and villages, saying, "How many names in Hanoi and Saigon are no longer on the map but are immortal in people's hearts?"
It is not lost, because names do not exist in the limited memory of humans, but further, they are sediments that encapsulate spiritual values. No longer in administrative documents, but they will be in the middle of pages of literature, poems, and songs.
No longer in everyday life, it will be there among the research streams, in the human memories passed down through generations by naming the things they love, such as the names of their children, the names of their works... Even the old village name is carried over to name the new areas. They double their homeland in the places of refuge...
It is expected that this July, Nong Son district will merge its administrative units - returning to the western part of Que Son district. The name Trung Phuoc town will certainly be kept, along with the blocks of Dai Binh, Trung Phuoc 1, Trung Phuoc 2... As for the name Nong Son, it will probably be "immortal" in people's hearts because of the name of Nong Son coal mine and Nong Son bridge.
Uncle Nguyen Dai Buong said that around 1963, he and my father were both students at Dong Giang High School, now Hoang Hoa Tham High School (Da Nang City).
In the following years, the war was fierce, both families followed the flow of people to evacuate to Hoang Van Thu Special Zone - spanning 4 communes of Que Loc, Que Trung, Que Lam and Que Ninh now.
The flow of people evacuated from urban areas such as Da Nang, Hoi An and neighboring plains all stayed around Trung Phuoc, Dai Binh. After liberation, many people returned to the city but most chose to stay in Trung Phuoc, including my grandparents' family.
Dai Binh village now has many families living abroad or in big cities. They quietly made a "migration" as the history of this land has welcomed the flow of refugees. But unlike the past, they brought with them the name of the land that sheltered their ancestors, creating the Tran and Nguyen clans of Dai Binh village in a strange land...
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