Vietnam - From opprobrious to prosperous

Over a decade ago, despite bearing the name Storied House, the Nha Lau Hamlet in Ninh Thanh Loi A Commune, Hong Dan District in Bac Lieu Province, did not have a single multi-storied house.

Curious people visiting the hamlet kept questioning the rather strange name of the poor and isolated hamlet, which is located amid a “dog yawn” un-padded field.

The title that gave rise to the 15-year-old question was created long time ago, roughly in 1945. The hamlet is located amid non-padded fields. During the flood season, buffalo keepers who had heard about the community of floored houses near there, tried to reach the hamlet, but unfortunately they saw only bamboo houses and cottages.

Asking aging farmers there, they were told that in the past, the hamlet had a two story wooden house, owned by a man called Ca Tri, who had reclaimed the land.

During the August Revolution in 1945, the house was knocked down for its timber. The house’s pillars were installed in the Pho Sinh and Canh Den Canals to prevent French ships from entering the hamlet.

Dream of a floored house

The name of the hamlet would continue prompting thorny questions for villagers to answer, if not for a youngster in the hamlet who pledged to try his best to save money to build a multi-storied house there. Then other people would stop scorning the hamlet’s residents.

Later, not only was one floored house built, but several others were also erected in the hamlet. A hundred millionaires and billionaires were named in the fallow area once ironically called “dog yawn field”.

The then vanguard youth is now enjoying his 50s. Le Van Nguyen, 56 years old, sitting near his shrimp farm, recalls that 20 years ago, the area was a treeless plain. During the dry season, due to the salty water and high volume of alum, nobody could farm. In the 1980s, his youth was spent floating on a boat that sold groceries in the Mekong Delta.

“Once, when I was rowing my boat across Dai Ngai in Soc Trang Province, I saw the two story wooden house of a couple near the river bank. I wished to have the same house. I was ashamed of my hamlet’s incongruous name. I was determined to become wealthy and build such a house in my hamlet,” Nguyen said.

Since then, he learned from others who had taken initiative in doing business. He bought young eucalyptus trees and planted them near his house. Nguyen thought that he would cut them down to build a house like Ca Tri, who built the first house in his hamlet, if he failed to make his fortune.

By chance, he heard that residents of coastal areas got huge profits from farming shrimp. He talked to his younger brothers – Bay Tay and Tam Mien, and asked them to sell all of their things and invest the money into a shrimp farm in Cai Doi Vam District in Ca Mau Province.

His dream was finally realized ten years after he set the target. In September 1995, Nguyen built a two story house six meters in width and 20 meters in length. He spent 40 taels of gold to build the second multi-story house in the hamlet after the first one was knocked down for timber 50 years earlier. It’s the first multi-storied concrete house in the hamlet.

A year later, one of his younger brothers, Bay Tay, built another similar house. Later, tens of concrete storied houses were built there. Most of the houses were built with money from farming shrimp. Residents of the hamlet sigh with relief now their hamlet deserves its “title”.

Life

Nguyen’s story is not unique. Recently, there have been several stories of people making their fortunes and building houses proudly told in the hamlet. The story of Nguyen Thanh Lap, 40, an official of Ninh Thanh Loi A Commune is told often.

He began his business in 1997 on 5,000 square-meter piece of land he inherited from his parents-in-law. Working during the daytime was not enough, he also went fishing along the canals in his hamlet at night.

After more than ten years, Lap and his wife could afford to build a villa worth a billion dong (US$47,600) and bought 14 hectares of land. With the shrimp, crab and fish businesses combined, this year his family has earned a profit of more than VND700 million. Every morning he spends one hour walking around his farm. Most days, he meets with people in the hamlet to talk about farming techniques and encourages them to rotate their crops and animals as is appropriate for the condition of their land.

A recent survey conducted by officials from Ninh Thanh Loi A Commune’s People’s Committee released impressive figures. Among 2,000 households in the commune, 500 are wealthy families, 698 others well-off, more than 100 households have an annual income of over one billion.

TUOI TRE

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