11

(Nguyen Duc Ham’s notes after he had been dismissed from his title Provincial party committee Secretary – the first paragraph)

Date …

I have never considered myself as Provincial party committee Secretary whose power is equivalent to Viceroy of Tonkin in the former system. That is the highest position in the province.

My father, Mr. Duc Nguyen was a district chief when he was twenty. That was a usual thing. He was accredited to a mandarin right after he had been the second best examinee or a doctor despite he was a student with white face the day before. Examinations were certainly followed by mandarin’s career. That was the law of feudal regime from time immemorial. The good thing in feudal system was that nobody could be mandarin except the person who was literate, well-knowledge and had a certain certificate. The “cock’s father and prostitute’s mother” could never been mandarins without any certificates no matter how much their precious quality was given by the heaven. There were some exceptions, of course. The most special exception was applied for a king who didn’t need any certificates. The king had never taken any examinations. He had been neither doctor nor first doctoral candidate. Nobody had the right to mark his papers or grant academic distinction for him although he had a teacher as well. The king had to study since he was young and he had to make thorough learning but he would never attend any exams. Some kings who set up his new dynasty were of humble origin. Liu Bang whose extraction was a dog meat seller of superficial learning in district town was a founder of everlasting Han dynasty with 500 years long. Chu Nguyen Chuong whose origin was a servant driving buffaloes had defeated Nguyen Mong reign before establishing Minh one which controlled the whole great China. He knew as many letters as 300 words. Much as that, the mandarins under the reign of Han, Minh and all other dynasties had to be laureates in former competition-examinations. The prime minister’s son would never be appointed mandarin unless he had doctoral academic distinction. The governmental class had to be intellectual circles. Such custom was applied to all scales of mandarins working for Vietnam feudal dynasty even in the period when Vietnam was a former French colony. My brother Duc Vinh could only be a district chief when he was a graduate in Law and had finished studying in Mandarin-to-be school. Frankly speaking, high degrees were sometimes a mass of knowledge in theory. One can’t be a good leader if he doesn’t have inborn abilities and practical trainings.

The workers and peasants revolution had overthrown all the mandarins and their king. The poor class became the governmental class. They had no time to be trained and many of them were made leaders based on something innate and wills formed in practice. Many stars have appeared. “They can understand lots of things by accident without learning”. How extremely talent they are! As a result, a new society was built in its framework. My previous secretary was such a typical person. He left his family and “joined a revolutionary troop” when he was 16 (the period was for the children of rebel age whose trend was against all existent orders or even something perfectly opposite) and he hadn’t finished his primary education. He was great courage. The little kid Guard (his new title named by his organization) played the role of contact man between senior revolutionary soldiers. Hiding the documents in his basket, he disguised himself as fisher-boy who wandered around the ponds in the posts, palaces and provinces for reconnaissance. He didn’t make any statement when he was arrested and was between life and death due to the torture. The inborn quality of unyielding revolution had been performed since that time. Such an event itself was counted as “a palace examination” he had passed and later on he was “nominated” as a mandarin working for Revolution. What a terrible exam with which no “good literature and fine handwriting” can compare. The August revolution happened when he was 18. The youth Guard marched in the van of a demonstration and seized power in the Provincial court, confiscated seals. The Viceroy of Tonkin, provincial treasurer and military commander in Thanh Do had to submit their weapons. In the war of resistance against the French colonialists, Guard went into the army and worked as political commissar in a Brigade. Nothing happened to him during agrarian reform period as his extraction was poor peasant. His revolutionary life was as clear as a mirror. He gave himself to governmental business with all his heart. He was on 24-hour duty. Sitting on “the command car which was square in shape at the back”, he traveled through province to control agricultural production. He could ready drop into any fields to see how the farmers did their business while he was running on the street. One time, he talked loudly when seeing female trans-planters who hadn’t applied the method of “cultivating rice seedlings in a straight line” – a new technique at that time:

-       How you can transplant like that …

The farmers shouted at him in return because they disliked the cadres who were merely “paying lip service” and “boss”:

-       Please do it if you are good at this field.

They replied him with sharp-tongued and talkative words as they didn’t know he was a Provincial party committee Secretary.

-       Such sort of guy is only good at slipping his hair in his wife’s vulva at night.

Their laughers were echoing on the fields at the same time.

Mr. Guard rolled up the trousers and straight and hurriedly paddled in shallow water. He took rice seeds and truly started transplanting. The straight lines of cultivated rice seeds appeared in front of farmers.

Well! He was such a man dealing with the main points. He was a leader who got in so close contact with people like that. He wore faded battledress and lived in a cottage located in Provincial party committee precinct. He presented in the collective dinning room for meals. He took a hoe to the garden in order to help with the increasing of area under trade union’s vegetable cultivation when the business hours were over. His credit was absolutely good. The Standing committee carried out all his instructions to a man as though he was a father in the family. The Provincial committee of the Party’s works seemed to be the works of Mr. Guard’s family and he seemed to have no private life. His wife and children lived far away from him and he visited them once some months. The whole members of Provincial committee of the Party were around an animal designation younger than him. They were wearing pans with holes at the back when he joined in revolution or he was accused guilty in prison. The arrangement each job and title for each of them promoted in the person of him, himself. He attended the meetings at Central level, received the resolutions and disseminated them to his staffs who all implemented at the same time. He looked like a dad in the family named Provincial committee of the Party. Well! Nobody can be a Secretary but such a man. How about me? I used to be a student, a journalist, an interpreter, a diplomat and a leader who has recently set up an agricultural co-operative for several years. I’m only a junior in comparison with revolutionists who had devoted their lives since 1945. How I can be in charge of that position.

Actually, I specialized in “foreign affairs” and I was only an amateur newspaperman. I used to work for Central Diplomacy Department, attended Dalat Convention in 1946 and Geneøve Conference in Switzerland in 1954 and I used to be high-ranking diplomatic officials’ personal assistant because I am good at French language, I can accurately write French text, I have diplomatist mentality and negotiation ability …

What a “thankless” life! I was thrown to “the fringes of society” when all the bargains had come to an end. They weren’t foresighted in training expects. “They” considered me as helpless person no matter how “excellent” my skill was as I was an object of “agrarian reform”. I “had nothing to do in spite of working for the government” day after day due to my curriculum vitae which belonged to the above mentioned element. It was lucky of me not to be sacked.

I was appointed to the rural areas in order to have a practical view of such places, to closely make an observation at grassroots level and to do nonsensical works including mobilizing and establishing “Mutual aid team”. I was “expelled” in deed. I had to work on manual labor. My intellectual faculties weren’t used and I didn’t expect “a blessing in disguise”.

I had recognized in vague an image of a new production structure in our society. According to the common sense since time immemorial, people in every house did farming on their own fields and they would hire labor if they couldn’t afford enough manpower for the works which had to do for that time being. However, the theory used to supply concrete guidance in the new society said that: To hire labor meant to exploit the other people’s labor. The owners were the exploiters. Hired laborers were exploited persons. The absolute equality happened to everybody in the new society was the idea of extreme thought and imagination. That was an extraordinarily good thinking in macroscopic aspect. Nevertheless, it was inflexibly applied in microcosmic one. There was too much work to do that people had to leave it undone while others had nothing to do or wandered and then died of famine because nobody dared to hire anybody. People had painfully experienced how the “exploitation element” was going to be after the “agrarian reform” had happened. The “owners” were denounced by their tenant farmers and hired labors. They had living deaths, lost all assets and were put into prison or even received death sentences. As a result of that, the fields were sometimes so lush with ripening rice that all paddies pushed forth their germs when getting the rain and thus they were spoilt because they weren’t harvested on time whereas the owner couldn’t afford to alone harvest rice. On the other hand, some fields were uncultivated without farming while lots of people were hungering day after day without having any jobs to do and nobody dared to hire them. The farmers lived and seriously carried out the theory with 100% to be exact and it was not at all different … To lead an exact life in accordance with the “doctrine” despite of starving to death. What was “mutual aid term”? Somebody would harvest rice on his family’s field on that day. He had so much work to do that he couldn’t fulfill it by himself. Another person would help him. In the other day, another person would harvest rice on her family’s field and the above mentioned man would help her in return. The action called mutual aid team was taken place. Nobody was an owner or a hired laborer and everything was smoothly operated. Such an “innocent” and “infantile” mode of production was used to deal with the extreme doctrine “nobody had the right to hire and exploit anybody”. It was correct in theory and the work was rather effective. It was an escape from the life bound by the theory. They fixed the shoes by whittling at the feet. It was the greatest voluntarism in mankind history. Seeing the “great significance” of the mutual aid team, I flung myself into a task. I arrived in Dong Phong commune and performed “harmonization in three aspects”: eating, staying and working at the same environment with farmers. I made the list of every house. I learned about the owners’ characters, their relatives, number of people and labors in their families … so that I could establish the most suitable mutual aid teams. “Mutual aid” couldn’t be implemented if they weren’t close to each other or they had a cordial dislike for each other. The mutual aid teams in Dong Phong had been properly formed within several months and started operating with animation. Labors in one house gave mutual aids to the others. They were “as happy as the day was long”. Everything outwardly looked normal but it inwardly bore a content of an era in meaning. That was the basic tenor of class revolution and exploitation destroying.

I had the slogans written on all the walls, arched the gates of the commune, hung the posters and propagandized by using loudspeaker every night. The meetings which reported the experiences in effecting mutual aid teams were opened. The village festivals were replaced by the events whose topic was “mutual aid”. The mutual aid was propagandized through the activities such as danced, sang, recited poems, chanteys and lays, composed new words for the songs under traditional operetta and love duet rhythm, presented plays, asked funny riddles, told stories, performed all kinds of amusements … in the festivals. The whole Dong Phong was seething with the atmosphere of “revolutionary celebrations”. I roused the countryside which was sunk in humdrum by nature to be in an eager bustle. The whole district and province amazed with Dong Phong “revolutionary pride” and recognized my “organizational skill”. Provincial secretary remembered my name. As a leader, whenever seeing a “typical and advanced revolution” at grassroots level one had to disseminate, dignify, expand and multiply it into a movement. Nothing could be as bored as a leader who quiescently directed the whole province. That proved such a boss didn’t know how to supply concrete guidance. I didn’t surprise when the provincial secretary Guard “warmly welcomed” me. He loved me more than the boy loved the girl. He considered me as a “flag” or a “nucleus” and I was immediately counted as a member of provincial committee of the Party. The staff of provincial committee of the Party always included one or two cadres working at grassroots level such as secretary or chairman of commune or district. I meritoriously won that swanky “title”. Relying upon such a base, I took part in the mobilization scheme of setting up an agricultural co-operative organization in Dong Phong to change a “cyprinid into a dragon”.

Nobody knew what the meaning of phrase “agricultural co-operatives” was. In the old days, the mugic (poor farmers) had killed all the culac (landlords) in Russia or Soviet Union before they built the farms whose production materials such as fields, cattle and farming instruments were contributed to collective assets. The farm members went to the farms to scatter seed for growth and harvest the wheat and potatoes … like workers flocked to the manufacture for working. Finished products were loaded in the warehouse of the farm before distributing them to the farm members according to their labor productivities. To erase the regulations of agricultural private ownership in Soviet Union, millions of “class enemies” – the people who were against the great mobilization – had to go to the next world when the farms were established. In China, the countryside structures were broken and changed into “communes”. The main purpose was the fields were public assets. The farmers’ cooperative marks for work would be noted in a book whenever they performed their labor and they would receive rice based on the quantity of the cooperative marks for work they had. In Vietnam, the phrase “agricultural Co-operatives” was used in stead of farms or communes.

The superior had chosen me and in my turn, I had chosen Le thi Thu Hue – Hung’s wife – as “the biggest of a flock” to guide the whole herd of Dong Phong birds to the sky of co-operative revolution in rural areas. It wasn’t regretful at all when Hue was accredited to a chairwoman of commune and a tribunal president in the denouncement of landowners during the period of agrarian reform. It was true that Hue satisfied the conditions for being a “movement leader” or other people’s “controller”. With a well-proportioned big tall body and a fine decisive flexible nice-looking face, Hue performed her power and her charm in front of everybody. Although she hadn’t gone to school she was very intelligent. She could understand everything right after being informed. She would passionately act and win the results at any cost once she had comprehended the situation. She didn’t paid lip service with so many plans which couldn’t fulfill. She didn’t give idle talks. She didn’t scare of auxiliary consequence or the other side of the coin. She dared to engage in hazardous activities and accept to pay the penalty for successfulness. She always insisted on working in practice what she had believed and once she had had confidence she would never step back. She was a self-starter who was self-sacrificing for the sake of her work and fell upon a job without minding out or having disinterested thoughts. Getting such quality, she was sure to be successful if she had a “mature and perspicacious” superior.

I and Hue turned out to be a “the counterpart of another” which couldn’t be apart. To do a big work, I had to leave small thing out. I didn’t “have a grudge” against Hue due to her “taking” Hung whose ex-wife was Lan Vien in marriage. Hue didn’t “nurse a complex” about her connection with a love triangle with Lan Vien and Vu Hung as well. Business was business. Hue was then “the biggest of Dong Phong flock”. She was a “major cadre”. I was a new leader in Dong Phong. We co-operated each other for the sake of interests and mission without resenting our trifling family relationship.

On those days, I and Hue had successfully built a Dong Phong co-operative whose head was Hue. We knocked every door for mobilizing the farmers to spontaneously write an application. They had to be volunteers. We didn’t have the right to force them by “denouncing”, placing the nooses on their necks and pulling them to follow us. To establish farms, millions of “culac” had been killed in Soviet Union. In Vietnam, we didn’t massacre anyone but mobilize people to write petitions. We had already prepared application forms. I disseminated the policy and confirmed that it was indispensable to “collectivize”. Anyone who was against such a trend would be excluded from the community. I had written a speech in advance and we got it by hearts so that we could express ourselves in the meetings organized for the purpose of mobilizing the co-operative establishment. The details were as follow:

“ … Vietnamese farmers and their buffaloes had ploughed and transplanted on their fields since time immemorial but they weren’t able to afford enough food for themselves. Every house had to deep plough and hoe with great force on their fields. The sweat was changed for a bowl of rice. “Did plowing at noon./ Melodiously rained sweat soon on furrows./ Take a full bowl of rice! You know./  Extremely bitter pill was changed for delicious savor”.

The mode of private production caused all unfairness, the gap between the rich and the poor people, the oppression, exploitation and unhappiness on earth. Our revolution had upturned the condition. We create public property mode of production, eliminate private ownership. All the fields are public property which nobody has the right to own. On industrial field, 100% of mines and factories have been brought under state control. In the city, all the stores selling from fabrics to miscellaneous goods are managed by state no matter how big or small business they are. The old owners become the wage-earners like other workers. All the houses on the streets, or rather, the valuable real estates are under the control of the city-Department of houses and lands. Everybody has a space enough for living. The rest spaces are divided among other people who are cadres and employees. One and all the hotels, restaurants, eating houses and trading enterprises … are under public ownership. The old circle of “rightful owner” is eliminated by re-educating and they have become wholesome laborers but haven’t remained exploiters anymore.

In the city, all the shops even a barber’s have to join in “co-operatives”. Medical practitioners have no right to do their business at home. Drugs aren’t allowed to sell in the private chemist’s but the State pharmacy. Any piece of gold must be registered to get the State license otherwise it can be accounted illegal and can be confiscated at any time. Nobody can obtain permission to buy and sell gold, silver, houses and lands because they are counted as the State property. Each citizen will get subsidized distribution such as 13 kgs of rice a month, 5 ms of fabrics a year and so on in ration. Everybody has the same portion and nobody has any bigger quantity of demand.

You see! We have done an absolute equality.

That’s why our rural village can’t go in for private ownership. No! We say no! Our way of doing business is public property. Lands and production materials are state assets or public property. All farmers are going to be workers who are “Stipendiary” and are going to work for our country. Let’s write in these application forms like nobody’s business so that we can join in co-operatives and catch up the new era. Don’t be behind the times and fall out of ranks or be outrun by our fellow-creatures and be knocked down by the wheel of history trend …”

Hue individually whispered in each person’s ear “It will be considered to be against the new era without joining the co-operative. There will be no chance for buying nitrogenous fertilizer, chemical fertilizer and insecticides. There will be no water pumped from “irrigational canals” into the fields. Private households are counted as “bad element”, “undesirables”, underdeveloped people and outsiders of a stream of life. Their children can’t attend university, be workers or cadres. The private households’ curriculum vitae is considered to be better than landlords’ one a bit. In brief, private households are counted as farmers’ enemies”.

Our saying made everybody so fearful that they leaped in the dark by signing or pressing their finger-prints on the application form so that they could share their fields and work together. To revolve the current affairs, people’s fields were confiscated whereas they were roped, denounced, flung into prison and sentenced to deaths during the period of agrarian reform, never mind “mobilized” only at that time. The new owners of the fields due to the reform event were the first people who signed petitions. The State divided the fields among them and then the State asked them to share such fields with “co-operative”. They followed the State’s policy as they lost nothing anyway but they could be the motive force and they were praised for their exemplarities.

95% of farmers in Dong Phong had joined in Co-operative in the first stage. 5% of the rest people who were too “backward” to take part in would be gradually advised later.

The new structure of the village in Dong Phong started establishing. The village was the Co-operative. The hamlets were production teams which I named them as: Go ahead, Exertion, Storm, Red flag, Day break, Sunrise, Develop …

The paths at edges of small rice-fields were broken to be unified into a big paddy field. What spiritual minutes of the morning on the date of breaking paths at edges of small rice-fields. Those were historical moment with its symbolic meaning. Destroying the complexion of private ownership and demonstrating the form of a big collectivity. The drums were sounded. The flags fluttered in the wind. The soil was being forcefully and deeply hoed with sounds while the verses were being melodiously and heartily chanted on the loudspeaker:

I am in the field in the morning

What a clear blue vast sky!

Birds and winds are dancing and singing

With the hoe blades

The old era is broken * (quoted from a Minh Hue’s poem”

The “orthodox scholarly” lines of poetry were followed by the verses of “popular artists” living in the village:

Do away with the paths. Do it!

For what the property is private

The place is only for big crabs and male frogs

That made their caves and holes polished

The feature of the fields in Dong Phong was completely changed within a week. The small rice-fields with the area of one or two perches disappeared in order to offer their places to immense paddy fields with firm edges. Mode of public property production was substituted for a long-standing means of private production whose vestiges were vanished in the air in the twinkling of an eye. The fields no longer belonged to individual but collectivity.

The drums and the gongs whose voices used in the village commune house and the temples were chosen as commands were sounded to signal the time for work every morning. Each troupe of people doing things such as plowing, hoeing, carrying fertilizer with a shoulder pole, pulling up young plants of rice and transplanting formed a very long line to go to the fields. The co-operative looked like a corporation. They were happy as though they were enjoying New Year’s Festival. It was just like each group of workers in the factory. The drums and the gongs were sounded again to signal the time for going home every afternoon. The team leader, the deputy of the team leader and their secretary firmly held “timekeeping record” as big as a bamboo tape fan on their hands in order to write everybody’s name and mark everybody’s workday. Rice would be divided among every member of a co-operative based on the sum of grades mentioned in such a book at the end of the season.

The village had been undergoing a vigorous change in deed since the date the co-operative was established. Red flags were planted in the field everyday. The new irrigation canals were dug in cross lines. Human physical strength was mobilized as much as it could. Everybody automatically went to work whenever hearing the sound of drums. The more workday they had the more rice they hoped to be shared. They were so “innocent” that they hadn’t cared the fact that the paddy could be harvested no more than it could and the higher the sum of co-operative marks for work was the lower the “workday value” was. I was too. I hadn’t imagined that thing in details yet. It was account good when farmers were mobilized to work in the fields. We even dug the useless ditches just like the pools for getting rain-water only but not pumping purpose.

The teams worked in the fields in the daytime and had meetings at night. There were so many topics of gatherings such as launching an emulation drive, selecting through discussion the motive force among model youths, voting responsibility women, showing the elderly farmers’ grateful hearts towards the fields and comparing between individual records and the Team’s timekeeping record. They were happy despite of tiredness. The roaring enthusiasm among the people was remarkably increasing once the farmers were high-spirited.

One more time, our Dong Phong was typical and advanced or a leading flag which should be counted as an exemplary model to strongly multiply it into a movement on a provincial and national scale …

My golden days were described as followed:

Field owners crowdedly joined in co-operative

Villagers were happy due to verdant rice

In fifth-month crop, red flags were planted by side of dyke

Drums signaled the time for ending and starting the work late at night and early in the morning. * (quoted from a To Huu’s poem)

Dong Phong was invested to become new typical countryside which represented socialism. A pump-station was built to take the water from Mang River so that irrigation could be actively carried out and irrigation problem was basically settled. The life was quite new! All the fields in Dong Phong had only waited for the rain whenever plowing, raking, transplanting and picking since time immemorial. When the drought happened the water had to be bailed out through three or four arroyos before getting a little water in the field. By the same token, everybody had to:

Pray for the rain

Drink water I can

And then plough the field

My bowl of rice will be full

People prayed to God but there was no result. The crop failed because of waterlessness. The water then splashed like a dragon spat out gold and silver due to the presence of pump-station and irrigation canals. What an ecstasy of happiness! It was a big different in comparison with the old condition which a spousal couple “used four-stringed bucket to lap against the face of the waters and bail out water” at mid night or at cock-crow.

The event that two cumbersome tall bright red plough-machines Made in CCCP – the symbol of agricultural mechanization in spite of their less effectiveness – arrived in village had been followed by the appearance of pump-station. Two strongest male youths whose resumes were clear were appointed to attend plough-machines driving class. Tractors, pesticides, nitrogenous fertilizer and everything were Dong Phong’s priorities. An electric generator station was set up. A system of loudspeakers on which songs were melodiously sung and the Team leader’s production orders about appointing somebody to a post were read was equipped. A breeding farm whose cattle-cares positions were prioritized strong and beautiful girls was built. A series of nursery schools whose responsibility was to look after the children from newborn baby to three-year-old kids and to teach four or five-year-old lads were established. Co-operative’s brick-kiln discharged smoke in great quantity and batches of bricks were regularly come out of oven before distributing some hundreds of them to every house for rebuilding their “two-compartment latrines” at the same time. A mass of wells were dug to get the clean water. How effervescent the period of change was! The journalists wrote for the press and told the news. I was the author of a slogan in Dong Phong “spathe of rice, egg-plants and revolutionary hearts” which showed the people’s will.

News of Dong Phong was broadcasted on radio and mentioned on Central newspaper everyday. I invented the symbol named “Easterly Wind” so that journalists, people of letters, poets, songwriters and painters could have a topic to express their sources of inspiration. The profession of arts in Central Department was basically changed. People hadn’t to be “art for art’s sake” but “art for life’s sake”. People couldn’t “create art in retreat” but in the pocket of practical life, production and struggle. They flocked to mines, factories, fields and Dong Phong where “revolutionary leading flag” located of course. The first person was Thuan Phong – the “relative” knight of brush. I gave him the idea “Easterly Wind” and he made a large oil-painting under “the new reality” style. That meant the picture wouldn’t be realistic like the classical ones which looked like shots and wouldn’t be painted with rough colors vaguely showing people and scenes as though it was a childlike product with careless sketch as well. The King of day was dawning in the East above the green field. The direction of easterly wind would be expressed through an image of a country girl with her hair blowing in the wind. Her confident face was looking ahead to the future, the new prospects of collectivization. Sitter was chosen in the person of Hue. People could recognize “the biggest of a flock” which was leading the whole herd flying in Dong Phong when looking at the picture. The Central Art Association immediately snapped that picture, did offset printing and sold it all over the North Vietnam to show that “Vietnamese art was efficiently supporting political activities”.

A song written by an elder musician Trung Vu was composed at the same time with the appearance of above mentioned picture. His name had been known since the time of “New music” before 1945 with sweet songs which stated the dream of the original point and followed the style of soft music circulating in Sai Gon under American and puppet government. His songs had the relationship with “dreamy stream”, “Autumnal tears”, “The shade by the veranda” which were frequently sung by middle-class ladies. He then composed marching songs which performed healthiness and the impetus boiled with struggle. His product was quite bad as it was against his strong point. He took the job as a “guest-informer in collective dinning-room” and a stationary typist whose title was higher than a Friday clerk in musician Association because he drawn the line at making “an arduous fact-finding trip” at grassroots level. He was born in middle class family and was indulged when he was a child so that he was weak and knew nothing to do. He kept staying in Hanoi and was looked down by the whole Association as he couldn’t stand the rural living conditions. I invited him to Dong Phong and fixed him up with a room in the guest house and advised him to apply folk rhythm such as Love Duet which was a specific characteristic in the North Vietnam plain and upgrade it to a song which praised Dong Phong.

The guest house was located in the camp of livestock farm. It stood isolated with beautiful landscapes, delicious food and nice girls who always courted fondling from Trung Vu and cried for being taught how to sing … With such conditions, Trung Vu’s sacred inspiration and talent resource in born were broken out. He had successfully composed a wonderful work which made the whole country passionate. His song was broadcasted on radio and sung in the conferences and thus Dong Phong was well-known.

What a miraculous Easterly wind!

A member of a co-operative goes ahead to a happy heaven

We go to the field together. Our corporation is at the plough-tail.

We attend field or festival

Our sweat is dried and

Our singing is echoing at the same time

***

Dong Phong

From now on, we are no longer a night heron or pelican

That alone works on the field

We open horizontal ranks and enter the new era

Dark corner of private ownership in olden time disappeared

***

Dong Phong

Like Phu Dong stretched himself

All things are public property henceforth

Are ours like courting couples who have hand in hand.

***

Easterly wind in new era

Legendary years

From this time, only happiness

But neither oppression nor unfairness

We walk under the pink sun …

Trung Vu certainly created the music with melodious “lyrical” rhythm and I myself was the person who composed the words which were clauses of declaration propagandizing the policy of agricultural collectivization.

The strength of the song had more effective than a thousand of cadres’ propaganda and popularization in order to mobilize farmers joining in a co-operative.

I really comprehended the effectiveness of letters and arts in propaganda work. We shouldn’t make light of them. Capitalism and feudal regime didn’t recognize the importance of them so that they didn’t invest in letters and arts and used them to support their power. They let letters and arts freely operate as a liberal force. The staffs of letters and arts that lived in the mechanism of poor market with “unstable lives” felt so indignant that they laid bare capitalism’s dark side. Capitalism hadn’t paid any attention to them and considered not to be implicated in capitalism who assumed that it was the life by nature and no connection was counted. Capitalism laughed lightly whereas letters and arts analyzed society at their pleasure. Meanwhile, the practical mission of letters and arts was to reflect the essence of society, injustice, unhappiness and the darkness. A sort of imperial letters and arts “literary coterie of twenty eight high-school graduates” whose subjects versified, composed and recited a poem extempore to praise the King was not accounted good up to then …

Under our regime, our government controlled all aspects of life. We would turn out to find fault our leaders if we let letters and arts described the darkness and unhappiness of life. Such a life happened like that because of our leaders. Therefore, letters and arts had to be oriented: The propaganda had to support a guideline, a policy and confirm that the life is full of good things. Not tragedies but heroic poetries were acceptable. All the tragedies were eliminated in the new society.

Thoroughly understanding that line, I found out Mr. Le Dan – an old man of letters who really had talent. He signed his name as Le Van before revolution had happened. He specialized in dreamy novels under lower middle-class style which described rich ladies and mandarin’s elegant gentlemanlike son and sad love stories full of unhappy emotions. Such sort of books was thrown away for “the dog’s bite”. They were even accounted poisonous. The lackadaisicalness and maudlin circumstances would make the youth’s struggle will in the new era discouraged. Mr. Le Van was so inferior to the literary world that he changed his name to Le Dan (Dan meant the poor person) and insisted on writing about miserable class. His viewpoint became more wrong. The new society didn’t have a patronizing look or pity attitude towards its people. That made him embarrassed and puzzled. I invited him to Dong Phong and “guided him how to write”. He had made a go of his memoir named The wind in Dong Phong. He had overexerted himself in describing a typical Dong Phong with so many kinds of traditional culture among the common people in the North Vietnam flat country by synthesizing the image from hundreds of countryside. The image of hundreds of country girls were used to create a Thu Hue – the biggest bird of a movement. I gave him all the documents in details about Co-operative establishment process including difficulties, advantages, the psychology of the elderly farmers’ grateful hearts towards the fields, the psychology of the youth, the conflicts happened during the period of a spiritual change from private property to public ownership, how the farmers changed their looks from contributing to Co-operative their lands which were their own flesh and blood and which they love so much …

The book was lively with a clear coherent style and circumstances which were lyric, mischievous and humorous alternately … That gave readers deep impressions.

He had an excellent skill in writing the book. Dong Phong was accounted typical in our time. The book was instructed to make millions of copies by Central Department of Propaganda and training and given free to the whole country so that everybody could read and study it as a model of a public property revolution in field co-operation which was the most important matter on earth. Anyone who didn’t care about it wasn’t a human being but the “deceased” who didn’t know the events happened in the world. I and Thu Hue attended the “national Convention” for typical report. Then, “we” attended hundreds of big and small conferences. The whole country knew our names. They knew a person called Nguyen Duc Ham. He had successfully supplied concrete guidance in setting up agricultural Co-operative. I was asked to meet high-ranking leaders. Seeing my courteousness, unpretentiousness, politeness, high academic standard and good manner …, they appreciated me so much. They knew that I had dared to write for the press in order to raise objections against French since I was a student and thus I was expelled from school after talking for a while. I was considered to have revolutionary spirit at my early youth. Besides, I took part in resistance war in the first inter-region in 1946. I had attended Dalat Conference, Geøneveø Convention … Moreover, my family had revolutionary tradition. I had very clear curriculum vitae. The two points that my family was landlord and my elder brother was vice provincial chief of puppet government in Sai Gon made me “stuck”. However, the superiors had left such shortcomings out. To the normal people, they were assumed as “big problems” but to “senior officials”, it turned out to be “no matter at all”. Lots of high-ranking cadres had the same “condition” to mine. The story that two brothers stood on two front lines was counted as everyday occurrence. And the firm ideal is the question.

Mr. Guard – the secretary on active service – was withdrawn to Central level and received a higher title. The stage of the movement was requesting a new “actor” in practice. I was a person chosen. According to superior’s instruction, I was quickly made Provincial Secretary in Provincial Congress so that I could supply concrete guidance in multiplying the co-operative movement in the whole province and set the whole country a model.

I started taking part in an orbit of a high-ranking “revolutionary official” and adapting myself to all the practice of new surroundings. My image was counted as “a caliber politician” in leadership ranks when the national co-operative movement had been completely set up. My reputation in the province wasn’t less than Mr. Guard’s in his time. I knew to put hand into fixing all my “gang-mates” up with the ranks of the most important militants. I also knew to use “demagogy” by socializing with members of co-operatives at the plough-tail at grassroots level. I knew to create the anecdotes like a Provincial Secretary identified himself with all grassroots levels as well. And to be honest, I had tackled the work with all effort, devoted all my strength and all my actions were for the work. I had “sacrificed my life” in order to … make my credit better and better. I had succeeded. I was sure to be long-term Provincial Secretary or I would be moved to Central level as a Minister of some Industries and I would be continued my post till I would be 70 years old before I would be retired from my leadership if I went on acting the same.

However, I didn’t keep following such the “orbit” … My natural endowment conscience told me the universal truth for which my individual destiny had to painfully pay a heavy price. After all, anybody who discovered and protected the universal truth had to sacrifice his life for it rather than to receive a reward. I was too …

(Nguyen Duc Ham’s notes in his handbook – the second paragraph)

Date …

I took to discovering the “inadequacy” of agricultural co-operative during the time of “getting in too close touch with” grassroots levels and because of that, my problem was developing. I would “be honored and enrich my family” if I kept going on my bureaucracy. I would be the “person of my time” forever if I continued myself in a high sky position of Provincial party committee Secretary and supplied concrete guidance the bureaucratic framework. On the contrary, I “held the light and run before a car”. I dared to “be ahead of my time” and consequently, I was knocked down by its carriage without any commiseration.

Based on the doctrine, “production relations” would be changed, “production ability” would “remarkably develop” and thus the effectiveness of one day could be compared to that of twenty years after co-operation. The productivity would be increased by many times. The face of the countryside would be basically changed with a progressive life. But the fact was that the farmers remained poor and hungry after 10 years of co-operation although the truth is self-evident that farmers had been absolutely liberated and had never been exploited. So, they were better in spiritual aspect. Nevertheless, such the spirit couldn’t be taken for an integral life once its foundation and material facilities were rice which was always in insufficient status. It was determined to confirm that the person who was a wage-earner and “was exploited” but had enough food for living was better than the person who was an “owner” but ate at one time and went hungry at another.

A very strange thing of the greatest voluntarism revolution in mankind history was that it had ability to reverse much basic value. To attach much importance to material had been human’s nature in born since Adam and Eva’s time. For all that, such the revolution made our people disregarded the material. We created a low standard of living in which there was a little difference in property. Our accommodation and portion of food and wearing were on average. Everybody hadn’t got any concept of comfortableness … People concentrated so much on spiritual value which was unrealizable and utopian.

Richness was accounted dubious and Poorness was accounted precious. Most of farmers had no idea of feathering their nest but lived on what they were divided only.

The will of creating a great deal of material and profits was annihilated. People were happy-go-lucky, easy in their minds and content with their minimum demand. In the long run, the sum of wealth and material in society was on the decrease. People concerned to how the very little wealth was shared based on their working time but not how to produce very much property. Hence, it afforded enough spilt food for the whole poor peasants.

The mode of collective business at a start with the machines in the countryside and the extreme public property doctrine in practice had killed the motive power of production. Almost members of co-operatives were very good at paying lip service by repeating the words written in the policies and following the crowd that were voluntarism, gave prominence to serve everybody but personal sake, worked for everybody but personal sake, forgot personal interests and left the right of individual ownership. The truth was exactly the reverse. They worked carelessly and lazily.

Vietnamese farmers had summarized a universal truth: “Nobody mourned over a common father” since the time of the Utmost antiquity. That was a grandiloquent sentence. They didn’t grieve no matter the dead person was their own father, much less the common work of the whole collectivity whose responsibility was very little. People would never work responsibly, competently and inventively unless the jobs and the benefits were theirs. Let me give you a typical sample. A group of ten girls opened ranks with the rakes whose blades were sharp on their hands and made the weeds clean on the field. They were fast marching forward while they were smiling and chattering as if they were attending the Tet holidays. They had finished their work on a large paddy field in the twinkling of an eye. Their productivity of making the weeds on the whole field clean was counted as a morning. What a commendable thing. That was the “advantage” of “collective business” which was quite different from individual work whose owner was lonesome like an egret. Ten girls with 10 handles of rakes on their shoulders were singing and going back in the afternoon. They sang as they had a quite unoccupied work as though they had done nothing and they didn’t feel strenuous at all. I caught one girl with a rake without its blade. She herself didn’t even know when it was lost. That meant she with the handle of the rake (the bamboo cane) only, together with her colleagues had horizontally lined out and raked grass all the morning. That was synonym with the matter that she didn’t make any clump of grass clean though her 10 marks (work of raking grass) was clearly mentioned on the daily work control record book under her name: Nguyen Thi Ty on that day as well.

The co-operative’s rice productivity was less and less no matter the fertilizer was sufficiently invested because people worked carelessly. They didn’t plough deep enough and raked for form’s sake. “Ploughed like scraped, raked like scratched”. Fertilizer wasn’t even scattered. Meanwhile, it should be “time was followed by carefulness in priority order”. Carefulness meant the soil should be work carefully. Time meant the crop should be planted on the right weather. The farmer’s proverb was that “to plough deep and to hoe with great force”. Joining the co-operative, there was no need for members of co-operatives to strictly follow the cultivation techniques when working on the common field. That was “Nobody mourned over a common father”! At that time, the co-operative’s policy had mentioned that 5% of the whole fields would be shared among households as their individual field. They would plough, rake, transplant, pick and look after it themselves and they had the right to enjoy the rice of their labor on such a 5% of land. Nobody knew the reason why there was such a policy. Perhaps it was the inducement of God. What a blessedness of farmers! The policy composer still had affection for farmers in the bottom of his heart despite of the social trend. The public ownership was implemented so absolutely that the shavers and the knights of the needle even had to work in the co-operative’s “hair-cut team” and “sewing team”. However, there was still 5% of private property.

The fields set from such above mentioned 5% were always twice as high productivity as collective fields because of private assets and better care. My new idea was suggested in the person that comparison itself.

The countryside remained poor and hungry after 10 years no matter how progressive the cultivation techniques were. The output rice couldn’t afford enough food for people who became lazy and wandered. Starvation had happened. People really hungered. Nearly all households could only live on food in half a year and they had to look for edible things in somewhere to protect and help themselves in the rest half a year. Some people did petty trade in the market. The others dug yams and picked chestnuts … in the forest.

Some times, I had seen that the rice was likely to be decomposed due to the status of its ripeness and the flood caused by the unceasingly rain on the paddy field. Meanwhile, the management board hadn’t established “the plan and the project how to divide the crop” yet so that they hadn’t assigned their staffs to do harvest. And even if being appointed nobody wanted to work under the conditions of the flood leveling as high as their neck with so many bloodsuckers in the fields and the event that they could only receive a tiny numeral written in daily work control record book whereas the quantity of rice they groped in water had to submit to the collectivity. Therefore, they didn’t bother about how the paddy was as it was not their property …

The “recession” reached the top. Steering committee had completely lost all their ability for supplying concrete guidance in production. In such a situation, there was no reason why people didn’t hunger … The home villages were tormented by hunger. They had no force to advance forward under “the three pink flags”. Our province was taken for a typical agriculture in the whole country which was reported by Radio and mentioned in the newspaper all the time … On the other hand, we were also famous with the name the province of “Gruel manufacture!” industry which was called by the common people. How painful we were! Gruel manufacture became a household name publicly and inconsiderately. The comrade Secretary in neighboring province loomed large in the national congress and clapped me on the shoulder:

-       Well! How has your “Gruel manufacture” industry been nowadays?

In conclusion, it was because our way of doing business couldn’t afford enough food for our provincial inhabitants. Even so, we had to contribute to the State for supporting an administrative apparatus of huge indirect production. A farmer had to cover 2 or 3 personnel’s food ration no matter he couldn’t afford enough rice for himself as well. Therefore, how he could have much engrossingly working spirit. The ways of spiritual mobilization by opening the conferences such as “crop emulation”, “Fifth-month crop emulation” and “model members of a co-operative” had gradually lost its effectiveness. I was really alarmed and anxious. Outwardly, I stood on the platform of the conventions in all the districts and communes in order to appeal for the spirit of building co-operatives and the determination in increasing labor efficiency. Inwardly, I knew that nobody wanted to listen to me. Production driving force was no longer existent. The production mode of public property of agricultural industry was driven to a nonplus. The effect of “voluntarism” couldn’t be utilized to compensate for all the things anymore as it used to excellently perform in the beginning period of movement.

It was a cause of misfortune for a country of which 80% was backward agriculture with “a hungry output” like that.

I was so worry that I had a hoary head in deed. I was reduced to a skeleton and was emaciated. Everybody amazed at my changing and wondered why I turned out to be like that while I was in my “golden age”, “abundance” and “pinnacle of power”.

Our province always fulfilled the assigned quantitative norm of food in every crop submitted to the warehouse of the State by mobilizing from all the co-operatives. I often had a throbbing pain whenever I supervised, speeded up and ordered because I had to be a race to finish my duty on time and because of the hungry status of my inhabitants who paid me resentful glints. The situation would only be accounted stable if the productivity was high enough for people to live on the rice output of the co-operative all year round after submitting enough rice-paddy to the warehouse of the State. “Nobody could be a saint with a hungry stomach”. “The King’s heaven was people whose heaven were bread and butter”. That was a long-standing sentence. “A well-fed person was a Buddha but not a ghost who was always in hunger”. What I should do then. All the responsibilities for provincial operation were dropped in my lap. One time, I and my secretary decided to “travel incognito” by disguising ourselves as breeding pig traders so that we could go behind the breeding issue in the households. Both of us in brown clothes and cages on our hands visited Mr. Bang’s house – a farmer was keeping an old sow whose offspring was on sale.

-       I, as a producer, was keeping an old sow. The Co-operative had taken me for “underdeveloped” person who needed to be “educated” and my pig was confiscated by militia. I wondered what sort of guilt I had made … - Mr. Bang tetchily bared his soul to me while I was listening.

-       Let me tell you the eccentric stories. I had to earn my daily bread by building a hog-cote, buying cassava and manioc, growing water-fern, keeping pig otherwise I would die of famine. I was informed that: I couldn’t do business individually but collectively. The co-operative had already had a livestock farm (which caused the loss of capital for them). I had given prominence to the thought of private property when I individually do business like that. I didn’t wholeheartedly co-operate with Co-operative anymore. And consequently, I was assumed to be wrong and illegal.

I killed my pig and sold its meat in the market. The militia seized all my goods without leaving any pieces after accused me of “seeking profit by supplying products in the black market”. That violated the policy and cornered the market. They forced me to sell my goods to “the state food store” of the district at the fixed price 1 dong per kg, nothing more, nothing less while the price in the black market was 10 dongs per kg and the capital I had to spend for keeping the pig since it was a baby till it was big enough for killing including the labor I used to look after it a year on end was 7 dongs per kg. In general, I lost 6 dongs per kg. Nothing would happen if I didn’t do business. But, I not only had a strenuous work but lost my capital as well. They didn’t care as they didn’t ask me to do business. They could only offer me the price fixed by the State, or rather, the state-run trade. That was all. “Black market” which the State didn’t acknowledge was illegal. The goods wasn’t encouraged to consume in the black market no matter how scarce the goods was because it had been “distributed” in collective system whose co-operative had already sold every “mouth to feed” a half kg every year on Tet occasion.

According to the “apportioned schedule figures”, my family has to sell to the “State shop” 50 kgs of pig meat every year. I had fulfilled my duty and I had already lost my capital 300 dongs. Therefore, I have to keep some more pigs in order to sell in the black market. I had to stealthily do it as if I was trading forbidden goods. I had to wake up at mid night and silently slaughter it. The pig would squeal when it was stuck. Correspondingly, I had to think how to manage it so that the sound couldn’t appear. Then, we had to destroy the evidence as quickly as possible by cutting the corpse into many pieces which were fastened to the stomachs of eight members of my family before we wore the palm-leaf raincoats at 2 o’clock in the morning and set out. We followed eight different directions and secretly implemented the sale so as to survive if any of us was captured. All the roads are controlled by militia. They have the right to arrest and confiscate goods which is considered as an opium whenever seeing the pork carriers. How vexing! It’s reasonable to seize the drugs as it’s harmful. However, it’s nutritious to eat pork and which shortcomings the pork producers have. The people are hungry. They haven’t seen a piece of meat all year round. Their eyes turn bright when seeing it. They will be of sound mind if they can eat a cooked piece of it. Human is “carnivorous animal” but not “herbivorous one” like cattle. How pity they are if they haven’t received any meat for a year! My god! I have never seen any inconsiderately nonsensical things like that.

I believe that they haven’t correctly applied the original policy from the top leader. It’s only because the subordinates have thought deviations, wrong actions beyond measure and extremenesses in “performing their achievement” which is the absolute elimination of individual production thought …

Seeing my attention, Mr. Bang became more enthusiastic:

-       Taking a pair of these pigs home, you must sell one pig at a loss to “State-run shop” and stealthily kill another one to get its meat and sell to the black market after they are going to grow up – He shared his “experience” – Nevertheless, everything must be done secretly. You know! You will get a serious offense if you slaughter a pig. It’s high in the scale of risk. All parts of your pig may be confiscated without leaving anything even a tail. How ridiculous it was! There was a little boy in some houses. He had asked his father for a tail to boil and eat it on the spot after the pig had been stuck. He was hungry for it. Unfortunately, militia arrived and seized. They went on interrogating “where is the tail?” when recognizing the absence of it. At last, the owners turned out to give their son a tail only and have a dead loss after keeping pig for a whole year. Is there anything as unhappy as such a case? The superiors are too distant to understand the fact at grassroots level …

A man with his “backward middle peasant” idea decided to stealthily kill a not fully grown pig in order to stand a treat in his son’s wedding. His son who was a serviceman whose title was platoon chief joined in Vietnamese Communist Party and was on vacation was white with fear when knowing his intention. He begged his father:

-       Dad! I will lose my position if you do like that.

He didn’t dare to prepare a feast anymore in spite of invited guests. He resigned himself to entertain them to green tea and tobacco and spontaneously “squandered” the State food Shop a killed pig so as to “save” the bridegroom’s title “platoon chief” …

My heart was writhed. Actually, I couldn’t imagine such stories had happened at grassroots level.

-       There is another extraordinary event called “forbid to cross the river and open up market” – Mr. Bang continued – The Country markets had been formed in agricultural economy for a long time. They were indispensably requirement appeared in an economy which had developed at a higher level in comparison with a “self-supplying and self-supporting” economy. There, goods were used as exchanges – Mr. Bang winked his eye – I know such “argument” thank to reading books and listening to the radio. However, such a “development” was driven back and was forced to stop at “self-supplying and self-supporting” period. The exchange of goods by means of currency wasn’t carried out. Six market-days a month had been opened in Cham village since the time of the Utmost antiquity. Previously, the people of the whole area animatedly flocked there where you could find out everything you wanted. For example rice, meat, fabrics, forestry products, flowers, fruit, sundries (such as needles, thread, cakes of soap … handled by small wares vendors), accessories for people of hell like votive paper, paper clothes and so on …

The markets are gradually “erased” due to the power of co-operatives. Firstly, they forbad to trade food. The rice seller will have a complete loss if they are caught in the act. Then, meat selling was forbidden as it violated “breeding policy”. Grocery selling was forbidden as it created “shopkeepers” whose thoughts were quite bad. The groceries can only be sold in the “stores” of district. The markets which have had one foot in the grave can only live on selling vegetables, shrimps, fish, eggs of all kinds, bunches of bananas and areca nuts after “basic products” had been eliminated. The co-operative accused marketers of not doing farm work with all their hearts, laziness, evading, earning their living by sales gimmicks … The markets have to be shut down so that marketers can be saved from accusation. Any products can be counted as contraband goods and the owners will be assumed to break the policy. Any grams of tea or coffee will be confiscated if it is on sale. Tea and coffee are “strategically agricultural products” which are controlled by State-run shops. Anyone who has a kilogram of groundnuts, tobacco or bean … is questionable. Where are such “precious things” from? It must be “stratagem” commerce. The letter “stratagem” is a word used to allude to the scorn towards traders, undesirable class and illegal earners. Nobody but the person who receives salary and the food ration tickets from the State is accounted true. The farmers who work in the co-operative, “take labor marks” and receive “food” portions from co-operative are consider as advanced “new people”. The co-operative had choked to death the “basic vitality” of the markets. Even so, they haven’t felt enough. They have applied the more concrete “administrative” method: Forbid to open up a market. Market-day is allowed once a month. A bunch of bananas or a guava must become ripe at the beginning of the month when the market-day is opened otherwise it can’t be sold if its owner wishes to. The crops of mustard greens and water morning glory must be harvested at the beginning of the month otherwise they must be thrown away due to their oldness and death because how they can be sold once the market hasn’t opened yet …

The people have no ways to follow but go to the field and work for co-operative when the market is closed. Try to invent the things to work. For example, to dig the ditches which are trampled all year round no matter they are the dry ones as they are the property of the co-operative so that nobody cares … You see! The situation in the country now reaches such a level …

I believed that the stories told by Mr. Bang were completely real. It wasn’t strange at all with such kind of my villagers’ characteristic. Everything could happen as well. It was called wrong action beyond measure, extreme thoughts, mechanical appliances and shortcomings. I took the highest responsibility in the province. There was no reason why I “stopped my ears, closed my eyes and ignored” …

I returned Dong Phong and met Thu Hue who was still the head of a co-operative there. She not only was district committee member but also gained hero of labor title. All the glories stayed with her. Her husband was a soldier in Southern theatre of war. Hue was something like a “person of era” symbol. However, her family remained penniless although she didn’t acknowledge her poor status because the whole village was in the same case. She was undernourished in one or two months a year. The basket of paddy in her houses wasn’t full. She ate rice with soya sauce pickled egg-plants all year round. Vegetables were grown in her garden. She could only afford a lounge suit a year. The district shop “distributed” to her a pair of plastic sandals so that she could put on shoes whenever attending the district or provincial meeting, a woolen head covering used whenever the season of north-easterly winds arrived, a shirt with flower pattern and a bag to show cadre manner. All those objects proved that she was better than everybody. How a normal member of a co-operative had such things. Hue attended the conference in the province, districts and communes … all day. She took the decisions whose unanimity was reached in the meeting and disseminated them at grassroots level. Hue’s reputation and prestigious fame were absolute in Dong Phong. But … she still lived in poverty. A leader was even like that, let alone the riff-raff …

I discussed with Hue the policy how to improve productivity and responsibility on members of a co-operative. One more time, we took Dong Phong as a pilot case. Why the productivity of the field 5% was higher than the co-operative’s one. Everybody even a kid knew the answer but nobody dared to utter the truth. They feared of carrying the crime named errors in the thought despite everybody hadn’t determined what was right and what was wrong yet. Poverty was right or wealthy and prosperousness was right. There was no reason why the richness was wrong and the poorness was correct. There was no reason why the increase of productivity by many times in the whole co-operative was wrong …

Hue’s countenance showed her inhibition:

-       Everybody knows what you have just said but nobody dare to make it practically. If the fields are divided among households people will carefully look after them and productivity will rapidly increase at once. The output is not only enough to fulfill their duty to the State but also has extra quantity to fill in their baskets.

-       If it is like this why don’t we do?

Hue laughed heartily and wholly. Hue then comprehended the “worldly things”. She was no longer innocent as she used to. Her “degree of understanding” was “improved”.

-       Let’s try to apply such an idea in the coming crop to save our stomachs.

-       Who dares to share the co-operative’s fields? To do like that means to count ourselves as troublemakers in the co-operative. I and you had mobilized from door to door to contribute their fields to Co-operative. Thanked to their agreement, you received the Secretary position and I received Hero of labor title. Are Secretary and Chairwoman of the co-operative ourselves going to divide the fields and destroy the Co-operative? We are going to be left to rot in prison for sure.

-       We won’t name it “to share the fields” but “to pay a flat rate”. That’s all. The fields remain to be Co-operative’s property. We let every household carefully look after several perches. Co-operative has the right to take all the output before redistributing to each member of co-operative the extra quantity appeared on such the extra productivity …

-       But “to pay a flat rate and individually do farming” like that will bring up the individual thought and private ownership and work against the line of public property … - Hue unintentionally “debated” with me even by the principles I had taught her so thoughtful that she had known them by heart for years.

-       But I ask you: Which member of a co-operative do you like? Is a person full or undernourished?

-       Everybody would like to be full but the fullness must be in correct policy.

-       Listen to me. Let’s make a pilot drive in Dong Phong. You secretly “pay a flat rate” and consider it as a spontaneous action. After 6 months, I will organize an evaluating conference and invite everybody to “witness with their own eyes” when the output rice amazingly increases in the harvest. As a result, everybody will follow your method. You no longer scare of making mistake … Everybody will see the reality by their own eyes … Our whole province will have food and warmth …

-       I feel terribly fear. Why don’t you order me as a Provincial party committee Secretary? I carry out your instruction only.

-       We must pretend that the unprompted activity is done based on “objective reality”. The higher authorities will propose a course of policy after experiencing “the reality at grassroots level”. You shouldn’t be afraid. I will bear all the responsibility. I will officially mobilize the whole province to follow after the first case in Dong Phong comes off with flying colors.

-       OK, I will perfectly obey you …

My forecast was right. That year, Dong Phong had a main crop more abundant than usual. The Co-operative’s warehouse and members of co-operatives’ baskets were full. I “opened a meeting” and invited hundreds of the most important militants of the province, districts and communes to attend. Everybody saw the result in front of them and recognized the simplest universal truth. My whole province automatically “divided fields and pay a flat rate” in the next crop. Members of co-operatives in the whole province ardently flung themselves into their fields which were paid a flat rate. The farmers carefully looked after them no matter the time was mid night or cock-crow. The whole provincial people who were crushing hungers with very pale faces and yellow teeth became prosperous and bubbled over with satisfaction after a successful crop only. How strange it was! It seemed to have a magical power, a new gust of wind which brought the vital force for the whole province.

The whole province had perfectly “paid a flat rate” in the following crops. Animal husbandry accordingly developed at once when the rice was superabundant. Every house kept some pigs whose meat was freely sold after “fulfilling their duty” to the State. The pig meat was displayed on sale in abundance in the market. That looked like a scene in the land of the paradise at that time. The accusations started pouring on me just at the moment when everybody was so full and warm that they forgot to fear to make a mistake named “errors of thought”. The meetings concluded by saying that I had destroyed “Co-operative revolution” proudly and publicly. I had set “the Thames on fire”. I had made “the sky collapse”. The line was made a volte-face. They traced an influence: My extraction belonged to the class of “exploitive feudal mandarins” and I had a relationship with puppet regime in Saigon. Some ideas assumed me to be a reactionary “spy” who “crept deep or highly climbed the social ladder” in order to thwart from inside to outside.

I was dismissed from my duty right away. I traveled from the office of Provincial committee of the party to Hanoi on my lonesome and took the job called “help my wife in driving the chicken”. The head of Dong Phong Thu Hue was removed from her post as well. She was transferred and worked for Provincial Woman Association as a cadre. Hue left her house in Dong Phong and officially stayed in Hung’s house in the suburbs of Thanh Do town in order to be content with her lot by waiting for her husband and bringing up her children.

Everybody in the province shook their heads, stuck their tongue out and was so fearful that their faces turned pale. The Co-operatives hurriedly collapsed the system of “pay a flat rate”. The fields were handed over to the co-operatives again. Each group of people started working whenever the clash of two firm iron objects was sounded and noted their several co-operative marks for work in daily work control record book everyday. The productivity of rice was immediately reduced from 500% to 1000%. It was equivalent to one fifth or one tenth. One more time, the pig meat was disappeared in the markets as if the last easy circumstances were just like a dream which wasn’t existent. Every household was repeatedly malnourished and people had to eat manioc and cassava.

Let it be …

It showed that the Voluntarism tornado in the mankind’s thought history was strongly blowing but wasn’t over. It took twenty years for it to non-stop blew in rural areas. The historical wind hadn’t changed its direction till the year 1986. The extreme Voluntarism was collapsed and people recognized with a start that they had wrongly done the principle “material decided the thought”.

My phrases such as “pay at flat rate”, “products paid at flat rate” had been reused since the beginning of 80s. They shared the fields among households so that farmers could individually work at the plough-tail. Actually, they step by step dispersed the agricultural Co-operatives. Vietnamese agriculture was rising as rapid as Phu Dong at once. Vietnam who was precariously hungry and had to ask for wheat aid from overseas appeared to be a “powerful country of rice” whose export output superciliously reached the second position in the world due to the effect of the concept of “owning property” and “non-owning property” …

What a pity! I was too old at that time. I had already “led an idle life” for more than 10 years. I had to “pay through the nose” by my destiny for the event “brought the light and run in front of the car” of mine …

Was I regretful? That was life. The “merit” wasn’t always rewarded … Life was full of absurdity.

In brief, the fates of most members of our family’s line were unhappy ends. The Great Oldest Uncle was beheaded. Duc Nguyen was deportee. Duc Ham was dismissed from his duties …

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