The light pink color is the color of wild peach trees that often grow naturally along the steep slopes of Sapa, or line up in long rows along the national highways in Yen Bai. Tourists are amazed by the vitality of the flowers that signal spring in the highlands after harsh, cold winter days.
In the Northwest, Moc Chau peach blossoms (Son La) bloom earliest from late autumn to early winter and last for about two to three weeks. Being a French peach variety, the petals are usually fewer and lighter in color than wild peach blossoms that bloom in February.
In February, some people like to go to Sapa (Lao Cai) to see peach blossoms, but it must be the old peach blossoms, with green mossy trunks, thick branches growing naturally and growing deep in the rocky mountains and streams. The pleasure of seeing wild peach blossoms also attracts travelers to faraway places like La Pan Tan - Mu Cang Chai (Yen Bai). The pink peach blossom forests are also a specialty of Mu Cang Chai, next to the national scenic spot of terraced fields.
The Hmong people here consider peach blossom (or its Hmong name is Hoa To Day) as a flower that signals spring, the Gau Tao festival season with beautiful peach blossoms adorning the dresses of Hmong girls.
White is the color of plum blossoms, most famously plum blossoms in Moc Chau, with their pure color blooming after the long winter months, from late January to February. Plum blossoms blooming white like a brand new cloak covering the plateau. Those who love the land of flowers in Moc Chau can affirm that Moc Chau is beautiful in every season because Moc Chau is a flower paradise in every season.
And when spring comes, you just need to come to Moc Chau to enjoy all the flowers of the Northwest when the white pear and plum blossoms blend with the wild peach blossoms to create a stunning scene, like a fairy tale. In the vast white color of plum blossoms, the roofs of houses covered with po mu wood stand out like the highlights of the village!
Under the peach, plum and pear trees, the highlanders also dress up in bright brocade colors to welcome spring. Tourists encounter them on the roads from Ha Giang to Lao Cai, from Lai Chau to Son La, with baskets on their shoulders to go to the bustling early morning market. If tourists wander into small villages where the H'Mong people live, they can still see H'Mong women busy with their daily brocade embroidery work. And in the yard, H'Mong children are still playing innocently among the flower seasons.
People from the lowlands coming to the highlands are both amazed by the mountain and forest scenery that cannot be found anywhere else, and love the genuine innocence of the highland people. There are visitors who go up the mountains and forests every spring flower season, to see the faded wild peach branches, to get drunk on the bowl of spicy corn wine that is offered, to breathe deeply the clean air of the land and sky. So when seeing the old wild peach trees being transported back to the lowlands, the travelers also feel a bit sad and moved because, for nature, "please leave nothing behind but your footsteps and take nothing away but your photos". Wild peach trees ask to stay with the forest. And who knows, at that time, Vietnamese people will have a new hobby of welcoming spring in the highlands, sitting under the peach and plum blossoms, and getting drunk on the scent of corn wine in the mountains and forests. And so it is spring.
Heritage Magazine
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