““City people” – sounds very modern, very new, but somewhere still needs very old, very ancient moments ..
Amidst the bustling pace of life in the city, sometimes just a fleeting moment – a buffalo grazing on the roadside, a cart carrying straw, or the pungent smell of stubble in the late afternoon – is enough to make city people pause. Not because of unfamiliarity, but because their hearts suddenly swell…
Those who “belong” to the city
Saigon, Hanoi or any other city, people who live there for a long time will gradually get used to the sound of car horns, the lights of shops, the traffic jams and the impatient waiting for red lights. City people can be born here, grow up in winding alleys or old apartment buildings, study in schools with cracked concrete yards, then go to work with ears accustomed to the sound of revving motorbikes, feet accustomed to walking quickly on the sidewalks.
There are also people who leave the countryside for the city in their teens, bringing with them a voice mixed with a country accent and a pair of eyes that are still clear. They stay in the city for a long time, their voices gradually lose their sharpness, their eyes become bolder. Then one day, they also “become city people” – at least in the way they live, the way they walk, the way they behave, and even in the things they thought they had forgotten.
Until…
A scene that makes the heart stop
Just driving on the highway, suddenly saw a herd of buffalo leisurely crossing the road. The driver honked loudly, but the person behind stopped – not because of the buffalo – but because of the feeling in his heart. The feeling was strange, bustling but hard to name. It was a part of childhood memories, something that was once very familiar, then gradually obscured by the dust of the city.
Or one day on a business trip, the car turns into a village road. The scent of new rice rises in the wind, the smoke from the kitchen drifts across, and the sound of pounding rice resounds in the late afternoon. The city dweller steps down, stands before that scene, and suddenly feels… calm. Light. As if he is living slowly, as if someone has just caressed a part of an old memory in his heart.
It could also be just a small stall by the roadside – selling green rice, sticky rice cakes, sticky rice cakes. A basket of sweet soup or a few bamboo tubes containing sticky rice, serving rice rolls in the style of the central region… Each dish evokes memories. And in the middle of the crowded crowd, there is a person standing there, fondling a cake, as if touching something very old – maybe a grandmother, a mother, a village market years ago.
The “hometown” that cannot be left behind
City people may not remember the day they stopped eating rice mixed with potatoes, or the last day they sat on the back of a buffalo. But their bodies remember. The smell of kitchen smoke, the sound of frogs croaking, the smell of boiled cassava, the smell of ripe rice – all are memories of the sense of smell, of touch. It does not disappear, it just sleeps.
And when we meet again, we suddenly feel smaller, softer, even more… real.
City people, whether born in the city or drifting to the city from somewhere else, all have a part of “hometown” in their hearts. “Hometown” is not necessarily the place where we were born and raised, but the simple, rustic quality, without makeup, without reasoning.
It is just the things that make us feel at peace.
Slices of Peace
In a world where everyone is running – running deadlines, running KPIs, running expectations – moments of encountering the rustic become a soothing medicine. It doesn’t have to last long. Just one time meeting a real buffalo in the field, one morning sitting in a small shop where someone pours tea from a teapot, one time touching a bamboo basket, or seeing a moss-covered tiled roof.
City people will go away again – back to work, back to meetings, back to spreadsheets and computer screens. But something has been planted in their hearts – like a seed. It doesn’t need to be watered, it doesn’t need to be tended. It will sprout on its own when people’s hearts need to find something real.
City people – “go to return!”
We don’t need to leave the city to return to the countryside, we don’t need to quit our jobs to live slowly. We just need to know how to stop when our hearts flutter because of a scent, a shape, an old call. We just need to keep a memory for ourselves – don’t let the wind take it away.
City people, after all, are not strangers to the countryside. They are just living temporarily in a noisy place, and carry within them a quiet countryside – always ready to appear, when they need a place to return to.
Uh, then being a city person …
