Translated from an article by
Dr Vu in Vietnamese:
We’re traveling through the autumn, through lots of clean fresh small towns. The South Island streets of New Zealand are long and very welcoming… each place looks as beautiful as paintings. We keep going like that, every time we stop many kilometers apart. Stories keep filling our journey.
You know, when I was a little girl living in a small village in a small town, I never saw a rose tree. Back then there was only bamboo, hibiscus and lots of ten-hour flowers. When I was about 10 years old, I first saw a postcard of a rose. In my memory, it’s a beautiful thing that fascinated. I don’t know how long I looked at it. That postcard and the chocolate candy a friend of dad brought to me from Eastern Europe were a different world, like fairytales.
When I was 14 years old, I visited Quang An village for the first time , a very beautiful flower growing village in West Lake. Beautiful houses in the middle of the flower garden. The separation between houses and gardens are tree fences, not building walls like in my hometown. I had an afternoon wandering there, looking at it without getting bored of the colours… for me it was another world. After all this time time I still get emotional.
I had no toys and no entertainment on my birthday. I also didn’t like playing jump rope, didn’t like playing volleyball or knitting like the girls at my age. The only thing I liked was reading books. I remember that I used to think that one day I would visit Copenhagen to visit a mermaid, I would definitely visit the Notre Dame Church in Paris… and of course whenever I said so to young friends they just laughed out loud. Maybe they thought I was crazy.
Now I think about it, the world opens up in front of you thanks to books, dreams, aspirations that reach out to the world from there. If you tell this story, of what you imagine, your world will be really different from yours in the past.
Dreams will take people very far. Without those dreams, would I be here now, in the best country in the world; would I have a rose garden to thousands of flowers like now?
I’m still dreaming, a simple dream is to grow old with you, wandering on autumn paths like this and tingling at the colors.