Chua village in Son Cong commune, Ung Hoa district on the outskirts of
Hanoi is known as a poem village because local people have a great
passion for poems and reciting poems with many of them being poets and
writers.
According to VOVworld, the people
of Chua village live mainly by farming. For many generations, their
lives have been closely associated with rice fields but their souls are
full of passion for the arts. On the village gates, there are four
ancient words meaning looking at scripts when you go in and out of the
village.
80-year-old Nguyen Nho Te says poems and scripts have
long been indispensable in the villagers’ spiritual lives. He said
“Chua villagers are very proud of the four words on the village gates.
They reflect the village’s fine tradition”.
Villagers recite poems to teach their children about morality and good
things, which Te said, are to make them live and behave better. Visitors
to the village are welcomed with beautiful poems, which are displayed
along the village’s paths.
The poems say: “ Without eating, you
can’t walk, without learning, you can’t see your road ”, “Plants
need both earth and sky, humans need both cereal and dreams” and
“Our hands grow seeds, our mouths grow words”. Weather and time can
wash out the words, but their meaning echoes in the memories of Chua
villagers.
Nguyen Xuan Sung, a member of the Poetry Club, said:
” We hang the poems on the wall along the road to inspire both old
and young people, especially children and youths to live up to the fine
traditions of the village. We now have 25 beautiful sayings extracted
from our poems”.
In every corner of the village, it
is easy to see that poems have become an indispensable part of local
people’s lives. From the communal house to the field and in every house,
poems are visible. Everyone in the village loves poems and can recite
poems. They have recited thousands of poems and six collections have
been printed.
The Poetry Club of Chua village has nearly 100
members, including old and young, men and women. Secondary school
student Nguyen Thu Trang, the youngest member of the club, won the
village’s first prize for writing a poem about her mother.
“I have just joined in this poetry club. I want to continue the
tradition of my village. I love my mother very much and wrote a poem
dedicated to her”, said Trang.
For Chua
villagers, reciting poems is a way they express their emotions and
thoughts, so the words in their poems are as simple as their lives. Ngo
Manh Cuong, head of the Poetry Club, said: “Poems in Chua village are
not for sale, they are used to inspire people, especially younger
people. Every Thursday, we have a poem-reciting programme on our local
radio station. These poems have helped tighten the relationship between
villagers”.
Poems come naturally to Chua villagers
and through many generations, they have enriched the beauty of the
village and create a common voice for locals, bringing them closer to
one another.-VNA