1.
The sound of wooden pestles hitting Mr. Luong's stone mortar was the most accurate wake-up clock of Dinh Man village for half a century. Exactly at four o'clock in the morning, that murky... murky sound again penetrates through the thick fog, creeping into each slit of lotus leaves still imbued with the sound of night. But this morning, that familiar rhythm was obscured by a strange sound: the clear "tưng" sound coming from the smartphone placed on the smoky window.
Mr. Luong stopped the pestle, frowning at the flickering green light just shone on his old face full of wrinkles. On the screen, comments run continuously like waterfalls. Dong Hoang is struggling to adjust the camera leg, the brilliant LED light clearly illuminates each jade green rice grain still hot on the bamboo tray.
Sir, keep that pose! The audience is watching a lot, they want to see how you lift the pestle...
Dong Hoang whispered, his voice full of excitement but still tried to keep the volume low so as not to shatter the quiet atmosphere of the kitchen.
Mr. Luong hummed softly in his throat, the pure fragrance of young sticky rice mixed with the soothing smell of burning resin from electronic devices. Out there, the invisible wifi wave is silently crossing the old bamboo hedge, carrying the sound of his pestle flying away from the village gate, crossing the fields waiting for planning, to reach the cold phone screens in remote cities.
For the first time in his life, Mr. Luong felt that his family-inherited profession was no longer nestled in this calloused hand, but was floating somewhere amidst invisible virtual waves...
Mr. Luong dropped the pestle, the "drama", the dry sound rang out as a protest. He pulled out the old newspaper, slowly wiped the sweat on his forehead, his serious eyes stared at the camera leg that he still called the "three-legged spider".
Hoang, can you take that headlight somewhere else?
His voice was deep and sharp. "Making cốm is the job of the hands, the nose and the ears. You shine so brightly, I can no longer hear the sound of sticky rice "exploding" in the cốm.
Dong Hoang still kept his eyes on the phone screen, quickly flipping the comments:
Sir, nowadays who can hear with their ears anymore! People see with their eyes, buy with faith through this screen. Look, more than five hundred people are watching live. They praise your hand is beautiful, praise your pestle beat is like playing a battle drum. That's the customer!
Customers? Mr. Luong smiled faintly, picked up a handful of young rice flakes, and dropped them gently onto the tray.
Your customers are people who know how to wait for the season, know how to walk all the way to this alley because of the unmistakable fragrance. As for the "customer" on your phone... they find it beautiful and press their finger, tomorrow they see something else more beautiful and they forget it immediately. That kind of affection is very cheap.
Dong Hoang then raised his head, his eyes full of determination. He whispered softly in his grandfather's ear:
I stayed up all night three nights to build this "virtual booth" for you, not to play. The field behind our village is being planted with stakes and concreted. Next year there will be no more sticky rice to smell! If you don't put the name Com Ong Luong online now, don't find customers from Saigon, from abroad, then in a few years this village will only have the sound of excavators, where will you find the sound of your pestle?
Mr. Luong was stunned. The words "excavator" and "concrete" seemed to touch the wound in his heart that he had deliberately ignored for so long. He looked out the window, where the darkness of urban projects was majesticly surrounding the village.
“So... ” - Dong Hoang lowered his voice, approached him - “I am saving our family's profession in this era. You just keep your heart, and how far that heart goes, let me and wifi take care of! ”
Mr. Luong looked at his grandson, then looked down at his hands, hands that only knew how to hold the pestle but never knew how to touch the "wave". He remained silent for a long time, then suddenly asked a question, causing Dong Hoang to stop:
So the... large group watching on that machine... can they smell the fragrant sticky rice, or can they only see the green color that you just adjusted to make it brighter?
Dong Hoang's livestream that night became a network phenomenon. A Viet Kieu in France, because he missed the taste of his homeland after watching the touching footage of Mr. Luong's hands, placed a "huge" order: 500 packs of vacuum-packed rice flakes to catch the flight as a gift for the weekend.
At the same time, Dong Hoang's phone rang continuously. Orders from everywhere came like a summer shower.
But there's also a message lost between the order messages:
The 4.0 world is the world of speed. Anything that is too slow will be crushed. Mr. Luong's rice flakes in Dinh Man village are delicious, but your land is diamond!
2.
Dong Hoang stands on the high dike, deeply inhaling the pure atmosphere of the great forest blending with the characteristic scent of young rice, a gentle, sweet, elegant fragrance, carrying both the taste of early morning mist and golden sunshine. Under the clear autumn sky, the golden flower sticky rice field of Dinh Man village stretches like a green velvet carpet, floating with each gust of wind. The round rice grains, draped over a layer of faint white powder, are whispering the story about the soul of a thousand-year-old village.
But in the heart of the Information Technology engineer who had just left school, that feeling of relaxation did not last long. A bitter sorrow arose in his throat. Dong Hoang looked at the bright red markers scattered along the edge of the field, the sign of a modern urban area about to spring up. In just a short time, the sound of excavators will replace the sound of birds chirping and reinforced concrete will permanently bury the cradle of this elegant gift. Where will Dinh Man's rice flake making profession go when the only raw material area is wiped out?
Professor Phuc Hung once said in the lecture hall:
The formation of new urban areas is a manifestation of economic development, bringing modern infrastructure, housing and job opportunities for millions of people. However, the price to pay is often the disappearance of green buffer zones and traditional craft villages. Let's see this prospect not simply as "good" or "bad", but as a challenging trade-off.
The warm voice of his grandfather echoed in his mind. "Hoang, young rice flakes are not just rice grains, they are the quintessence of the earth, the breath of the sky.
Dong Hoang recalled the evening when he had the holiday to visit his family. The two grandfathers and grandchildren sat on the porch, surrounded by the strong fragrant smell of sticky rice from the batch of young rice flakes just pound. He once excitedly said to his grandfather:
Noi, the 4.0 era is here, I have to put young rice flakes on the e-commerce platform, use sensors to measure humidity, use a cooling dryer to keep the color. Technology will help my profession go further".
Mr. Luong smiled, his rough hands gently stroked the green young rice grains.
Your technology is really good, but does it retain the heart of the maker? The cốm must be made from genuine Dinh Man yellow flower sticky rice, harvested right when the rice is still milking. Losing land, losing seeds, then your machinery is only for making soulless things.
His words were like a painful reminder. Dong Hoang looked down at his hands, hands that were familiar with keyboards and dry code lines. He suddenly realized that technology should not be a substitute for tradition, but must be a "shield" to protect it.
His eyes turned to the distant horizon, where there is a valley hidden behind the green mountains, a few dozen kilometers from Dinh Man. He has quietly surveyed the soil and climate there for the past few months. It is a wild but fertile land, where he plans to rebuild a "second Dinh Man". He will use his knowledge to plan a clean raw material area, applying traceability technology to let the world know about his cốm.
There, a girl told him that she dreamed of having a green rice field and a peach garden in May valley, just like her ancient village in the lowlands...
The wind blew stronger, rice waves rose high as if wanting to hold back the young man's footsteps. Dong Hoang gently grabbed his backpack. The old field may be lost under the buildings, but the young rice crop in him will never fade away.
He decided to take the soul of the village further, starting from the green valley waiting ahead.
3.
Cloud valley welcomes Dong Hoang with the vast forest winds and the skepticism of the local people. Here, he does not use a laptop to program software, but uses it to analyze the pH index of the soil, air humidity and rainfall charts over the years. He understands that to preserve the flavor of yellow flower sticky rice, he must find a piece of land with a "intersection" with the old village. The journey from abstract code lines to conquering the warm land is not as easy as Dong Hoang imagined. He started the days of "hiding" in the Cloud valley, where he chose as a new base for Dinh Man cốm.
One weekend afternoon, Hoang returned to Dinh Man village with muddy shoes and a bag of soil samples taken from the valley. He sat down next to his grandfather under the old persimmon tree behind the house, softly opening his mouth:
Noi, you have found a place. May valley has clear stream water, soil mixed with sand, very similar to our riverside strip. I want to bring my sticky rice variety up there to plant.
Mr. Luong was sipping a cup of green tea, his trembling hand stopped halfway. He looked out at the field ahead, where the excavators had begun to roar in the distance, then sighed:
Hoang, this sticky rice plant has roots, the roots are deeply attached to the ancestral soil. If you take it away, it will become strange rice, no longer Dinh Man rice. The land there is people's land, we are strangers, how can we harmonize? Moreover, your parents still have work far away. You just slowly keep the craft in the village.
Hoang opened the computer, showed him the heat maps and 3D simulations of the valley.
The old land is about to be lost. If I don't go, this precious rice variety will be extinct. I use technology to find a place with the most similar conditions. I don't just bring rice, I want to bring the manual process of the country combined with the accuracy of machinery so that the cốm I make always maintains the best quality. And then I will mobilize several families to explore new lands, making cốm with him".
Mr. Luong remained silent for a long time, his cloudy eyes looking at the computer screen full of dancing numbers that he did not fully understand.
“I said... does that machine know when the rice is just ripe enough to harvest? ”.
Yes, I will install sensors. When the rice grains reach the ideal milking level, the system will notify the phone. I will never miss the "golden time" to make cốm again, grandma.
Dong Hoang's persistence finally saddened Mr. Luong when he took him to the site to visit. Standing in the valley surrounded by mist, Mr. Luong bent down, picked up a handful of soil, brought it to his nose to smell, and then tasted the taste of the stream water.
Fresh water... but lacks the warmth of a human hand, Hoang".
Dong Hoang took his rough hand:
Then I and my grandmother and everyone will warm it up together. I have applied for land lease for 50 years, I will establish a high-tech cooperative, invite even workers in my village to come here. Dinh Man's cốm will not be lost, it is just "migrating" to continue living.
That night, in a temporary shack in the middle of the valley, Dong Hoang stayed up all night beside the automatic irrigation system planning diagram. He knew that ahead were still long days with scorching sun and frost, failures that could strike at any time when the rice plants refused to take root. But looking at his grandfather meticulously wrapping the last yellow sticky rice seeds of the old crop into a cloth bag, Dong Hoang knew he was programming the most important "software" of his life: Software to revive a craft village.
4.
The first autumn in May valley came a little later than the old village, but the chill was intense and vastly clear. After many sleepless nights monitoring each humidity index on the phone and days of wading through the mud with grandfather to check each leaf, finally, the "opening day" of the new cốm kiln has arrived.
The temporarily built kitchen by the stream is filled with smoke. The sound of bamboo sticks pounding young rice flakes rhythmically echoes between the mountain cliffs, sounding much more majestic than the sound of bamboo sticks in the small alley of Dinh Man village in the past. Dong Hoang stood next to him, his forehead covered in sweat, holding a infrared thermometer in his hand, but his eyes did not leave the hands stirring rice on his grandfather's cast iron pan.
The yellow-flowered sticky rice just harvested from the valley, the grains are round, green like jade. When put in a frying pan, a miraculous scent begins to spread. It is not just the smell of pure sticky rice, but it seems to have a bit of freshness of the great forest wind, a bit of sweetness of the source spring water.
A moment of stagnation. When the last batch of young rice flakes is taken out of the mortar, through the careful threshing layers, Mr. Luong slowly picks up a small handful. The young flakes are thin, loose, and green like young banana leaves just after a shower.
Dong Hoang held his breath. All the technical parameters, all the charts he analyzed over the past year are now waiting for approval from the most accurate "machine": Olfaction and taste of an artisan with more than sixty years of experience.
Mr. Luong raised a handful of cốm to his nose, took a deep breath, and then slowly put a few grains into his mouth. He chewed slowly, his eyes closed as if listening to the sound of soil and water melting on his tongue.
Noi... how do you feel?". Hoang asked, his voice a little shaky.
Mr. Luong opened his eyes, a sparkling ray of light appeared behind the thin mist. He did not answer immediately but placed a handful of cốm on a stack of forest lotus leaves still with mist.
Hoang... this cốm has the "pure" taste of the highlands, but still retains the "bitter" taste of the yellow flower sticky rice variety of our village. It's not strange at all. It's Dinh Man cốm, but it's a new cốm season.
“We take the cốm away so that it can live longer. Grandpa, tomorrow I will go to Dinh Man to find some peach seedlings along the Red River to plant on this land. When the rice buds are full of milk, we will see the peach branches like in the countryside. The cốm will be green and full of milk like Dinh Man cốm...”.
That night the moon was bright and cold. The sparkle of the new moon carried the scent of sticky rice. There was singing following the wind of the girls in May valley. Dong Hoang knew that there was a girl named Dien who always stood hiding behind a rock watching his actions when visiting the rice field...
A gust of wind blows through Engulfing all traces Only the moon is bright like a mirror Quietly silver-plated all over the human world. Gentle breeze whistles A region of blooming peach blossoms...
- Hoan Kiem, 10.1 2026
