Fishing in Bung Binh Thien
On a June afternoon, the sun had not yet set but the wind was blowing steadily on the water. Bung Binh Thien was not as noisy as I had imagined, nor was it too quiet. On a small boat, Mr. Vo Van So (a resident of Dong Ky hamlet, Quoc Thai commune) talked to me in a thick Western accent. “This season, there is a lot of wind, the water is a bit muddy. When the wind stops, the water becomes clear again.”
I asked about the flood season, Ms. Nguyen Thi Tuyet Lan (near C3 bridge) said: “This pond is clean, not polluted. Linh fish, Thieu fish, and perch also live well.”
Besides the gentle color change of the water, the most impressive thing in the journey of observing Bung Binh Thien is the way people attach themselves to the lake every day to live. As nature changes, the life here also changes in its own way.
I met Mr. Duong Van Y (a fisherman living in Bung Binh Thien hamlet), who has been doing the job of removing traps for nearly 20 years. He said that this job was passed down from his grandfather, through 3 generations. “We set up the traps, put out bait, add food to attract fish, wait until there are many fish to remove them. Sometimes we catch linh fish, and we can divide it up and get a few hundred. Sometimes we lose money, each person gets very little,” he said.
Mr. Y's story is not unique. Here, everyone has a season and a profession, but no stable job. After finishing unloading the rafts, some people go to transport passengers, others work for hire, construction workers, porters, whatever they are hired to do. Life around the village is not abundant, but enough to get by if you work hard.
Bung Binh Thien, with its layer of alluvium quietly dyeing the lake's surface, is not always brilliantly beautiful. The beauty here does not lie in the color-corrected photos or promotional words. It appears in the simple words of the fishermen, in the meal of braised linh fish on the raft, in the steady rhythm of rowing in the windy afternoon...
A lake area, hundreds of ways to make a living. Whoever lives with it, rich or poor, leaves a part of their life in the water that silently changes color to the rhythm of nature. And there, perhaps, is the most beautiful thing about a land that does not need to be ostentatious but is still enough to touch the memories of those who have gone far away.
Source: https://baoangiang.com.vn/bung-binh-thien-mua-nuoc-chuyen-mau-a423324.html
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