As a press leader, full of emotions, loving his homeland, people and country - journalist Truong Duc Minh Tu, Editor-in-Chief of Quang Tri Newspaper, recorded many memories and expressed his feelings about the lands he has passed through and each person he admires in the memoir "Life is like a novel" published in early October 2024.
At noon on October 24, 2024, Dong Da Post Office sent me a memoir "Life is like a novel" by journalist and writer Truong Duc Minh Tu, sent from Quang Tri, with an elegant cover and nearly 300 pages printed with easy-to-read fonts. In the 7 parts of the book, in addition to the Preface and the Author's Brief Introduction, the work has 5 main parts of content in which the author wants to convey messages about humanity, colleague love; about true stories with legendary colors; about the lands the author has been to in the country and abroad, creating a valuable "powder" for the soulful writings and the power to attract readers.
As Truong Duc Minh Tu confided, the memoir “Life is like a novel” can be considered as a document for readers to understand and know more about the talented children of their homeland who, for various reasons, left to go to the ends of the earth, unable to return to their homeland, where each field, village, river, and wharf has watered the source of alluvium so that they can dedicate to life splendid musical and literary spaces, of which I myself am one of the people who admire and are grateful”. I shared that thought with him when reading the first page article “The reunion of musician Hoang Thi Tho and his son”.
I was moved when reading a passage in the letter of musician Hoang Thi Tho to his daughter Chau La Viet: “For thirty-five years, I have always been proud of one thing: my life, including you and your mother, is like a novel. And which novel doesn’t have many twists and turns, right, my child? Well, we, father + mother + child, even though we encounter twists and turns, ups and downs, sadness, we still consider that to be the fate of people whose lives are like novels...” (page 21) and “any delay, understanding each other late is painful, but any delay is beautiful. That is the delay in the novel, the delay in our novelistic life” (page 22).
Continue reading the other articles, although each character has a different life process as well as a different place to live in different hidden corners, each person’s fate shines with the color of a novel. Perhaps that is why the author named his brainchild “Life like a novel”?
Through the writings, the life and love story of the female artist Tan Nhan with her first husband, musician Hoang Thi Tho, is full of twists and turns, full of suspense because of the unexpected turns of the musician beyond prediction, but still deeply remember each other. If the peak in the artistic style of singing of singer Tan Nhan is the song "Xa khoi" by Nguyen Tai Tue in the 1960s, there is a line that represents Tan Nhan's mood when each person, each path, has not met again for many years "Missing the distance, oh the sea this afternoon". And "Far away, a flock of birds spread their wings against the clouds in the sky - Oh birds, please stop so I can send them to the far away place"... (A folk song on the banks of Hien Luong, music by Hoang Hiep, poetry by Dang Giao).
This is also the "lifetime" voice of singer Tan Nhan that brought tears to many people during the years when the country was divided by the US - Diem, and the Hien Luong River of Quang Tri - Tan Nhan's hometown became the temporary border.
Chau La Viet grew up in love with her first father, Hoang Thi Tho; later, her second father was the talented journalist and writer Le Khanh Can, who was the Department Head of Nhan Dan newspaper. Both Tan Nhan and Le Khanh Can lived together very happily, being the "support" for the success in the singing career of Meritorious Artist Tan Nhan as well as the journalism and literary career of Le Khanh Can.
I was fortunate to live with Chau La Viet’s family in the cramped Nam Dong collective housing area, with all kinds of hardships, located at 178 Tay Son Street, Dong Da District for many years. This is where veteran journalist and writer Phan Quang also lived and was a close friend of Tan Nhan and Le Khanh Can during the years of fighting against the French colonialists. I admired their harmonious lifestyle and their high intelligence.
Now reading Minh Tu's memoir, I have just discovered the thrilling love story of Tan Nhan with musician Hoang Thi Tho. Due to the difficult circumstances of the time, he was forced to settle abroad. It was not until 1993 that he had the opportunity to return to the country to meet his blood relative with Tan Nhan, Chau La Viet, who was born in a forest during the resistance war in Ha Tinh, by the La River in 1952.
Later, he took the name Chau La Viet to remember his birthplace and the hometown of Hoang Thi Tho and Tan Nhan, which has the Cua Viet River. It turns out that the origin of a name of journalist and writer Chau La Viet is similar to a novel. However, what is worth mentioning and appreciating is that he followed his father Le Khanh Can's will to cross the Truong Son forest to fulfill his duty as a soldier, then graduated from Hanoi Pedagogical University in peacetime, becoming a journalist and writer with remarkable writing skills in the fields of journalism, poetry, and novels.
I mentioned Hoang Thi Tho, Tan Nhan, Le Khanh Can, Chau La Viet at length because through Minh Tu's memoirs, he touched the hearts of readers about the fates of people who, despite the ups and downs of life, still nurtured love and hope to overcome all hardships and difficulties to live up to the noble principles of life - and 35 years later, Chau La Viet met Hoang Thi Tho again with only one wish: "Father, please always use your musical talent to serve the people". And musician Hoang Thi Tho did exactly what his son wished for. Among his more than 500 songs, the theme of love for the homeland, country, people, and love for peace is still the main theme.
With pages full of living materials, the author has vividly portrayed the veteran journalist and writer Phan Quang, a giant of the Vietnamese press, intelligent, elegant, over 90 years old, still "spinning silk" regularly, to today have a huge number of books, few journalists can match; about the journalist, poet Nguyen Hong Vinh went to Truong Son twice to do the job of a war correspondent during the years of the resistance war against the US; three times went to Truong Sa in the 80s of the 20th century full of hardship, to today have 5 political essays called "Giử lưu" (Keeping the Fire) with more than 3,000 pages and 12 poetry collections; about the journalist, writer Pham Quoc Toan, who came from a soldier background, passionate about journalism, writing, writing quickly, writing well, writing in all genres, especially the novel "Tu ben song nhung" (From the riverside of Nhung) depicting the prototype of journalist and writer Phan Quang from his childhood to when he passed the age of 90...
It can be said that Phan Quang's life is like a novel, from a young man born on the rocky land of Quang Tri, "the hills of sim did not have enough fruit to feed people", in his youth he cherished a literary dream, but when he followed the revolution, the organization assigned him to join the army to write the newspaper Cuu Quoc Zone IV with Che Lan Vien.
With his intelligence and self-taught and self-accumulated knowledge, writer Phan Quang demonstrated his journalistic and literary talent right from the year he joined the profession. Typically, in just one night, due to Che Lan Vien's urgent need for an article for the Tet edition of the literary magazine, Phan Quang finished writing the short story "Pink Fire", which even a fastidious person like Che Lan Vien, when reviewing the article, exclaimed: "This story is very good!".
His journalism career spanned Zone IV, Zone III, up to the Viet Bac resistance base, and then after the liberation of the capital (October 10, 1954), he was assigned by the organization to work at Nhan Dan newspaper, the largest newspaper of the Communist Party of Vietnam. He was mainly involved in the topic of agriculture and rural areas for 17 years, creating lifetime reports, investigative reports, memoirs, and essays.
Perhaps he was one of the few journalists who accompanied Uncle Ho and other high-ranking leaders, such as Le Duan, Truong Chinh, To Huu, Nguyen Chi Thanh... on many working trips to the grassroots. Those were very good opportunities to create articles that were both orienting and attractive to readers, and were praised by Uncle Ho and other leaders.
If counting from his first work when he was 20 years old (1948), then after the age of 90, he is still energetic, continuing to "spin silk" until today, at the age of 96. Over 70 years of writing, he has published 7 short story collections, 9 memoir collections, 1 anthology (3 volumes), 6 novels, 6 translated works of foreign literature, which many readers love and always remember: "A Thousand and One Nights" with 30 reprints; "A Thousand and One Days" with more than 10 reprints at 5 famous publishing houses (page 127).
In this collection of memoirs, we cherish the vivid stories accumulated through Truong Duc Minh Tu's journalistic career, such as "Another love story by the O Lau River" written about security officer Ngo Hoa; "The story of the disabled teacher Ho Roang", a Van Kieu ethnic person passionate about the career of "growing people"; "The woman with a 30-year journey to find justice" expressing the civic responsibility and social obligation of the writer in the face of the long-standing injustice of Ms. Tran Thi Hien in Pleiku town... (from page 163 to page 204).
The last part of the book is a memoir of visits and work in China, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and South Korea, filled with documents about the beauty of the country and people in each country, and about the friendship and peace between Vietnam and other nations (from page 225 to page 281).
It would be a big mistake not to mention the talent of “breathing life” into words, the art of recording, exploiting details and valuable data - the basis for the appeal of this book. I enjoyed reading and re-reading “The Story of Wishing for Peace” (page 223), recorded the confession of Mr. Lee Won Hee, Director of Foreign Affairs of the Korean Journalists Association, with the author, who is the Chairman of the Quang Tri Journalists Association, born and raised at the 17th parallel - where the Ben Hai River is located, which was the temporary border dividing the North and South for 21 years.
Mr. Lee shared the hardships of the Vietnamese people during that long war and expressed his admiration for the heroic achievements of our country in fighting and building, with the aspiration for peace, cooperation and development with Korea. Mr. Lee said that when translating the work “Dang Thuy Tram’s Diary” into Korean, translator Kyung Hwan changed the title to “Last Night I Dreamed of Peace” (page 222).
Yes, with the desire for peace, in recent years, the author's hometown of Quang Tri has regularly organized "Festivals for Peace", because nowhere like Quang Tri province, the land is not large, the population is not large, but there are 72 martyrs' cemeteries, including two national martyrs' cemeteries, Truong Son and Duong Chin.
Truong Duc Minh Tu used this article as the epilogue of the book, because the lives of the characters in this book create a memoir with deep humanity, always nurturing the desire for peace and belief in a bright future for the country, which has been and is firmly entering a new era - the era of national growth.
Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Hong Vinh
Source: https://baoquangtri.vn/nghia-tinh-va-le-song-189294.htm
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