Memories of an Ancient Heritage
Vietnamese people have long been proud of their 4,000-year-old rice civilization. Yet today, the fields echo with the hum of Japanese Kubota engines—from plowing to transplanting and harvesting.
It was only when I came here that I could truly feel glimpses of the rice civilization our ancestors built.
That noon, we had lunch made from Ba Trăng rice and sour snakehead fish soup, right beside Mr. Lê Quốc Việt’s seasonal rice field. Each grain of rice had to be chewed slowly to savor the sweetness of the soil. Before eating, he softly sang a few lines from the song “Ra Giêng Anh Cưới Em” by Lư Nhất Vũ and Lê Giang:
“Out in the field, I transplant Ba Trăng rice, my dear.
I still wait for you, until after Tết we’ll ask mother.
Once harvest comes, our fields at rest,
Then in spring, I’ll marry you…”
Mr. Việt’s house stands along the main asphalt road in Minh Lương Town, Châu Thành District, Kiên Giang Province—where vehicles roar by day and night. Yet just a few dozen steps into the small path beside his house lies another world: a world of rural scents and breezes that awakened the child within me.
I took off my shoes, stepped barefoot into the soft, silk-like mud, feeling its cool embrace. I scooped up floating duckweed blossoms as if greeting old friends. Around me rose a living symphony of chirping birds, croaking frogs, splashing fish, and crackling grasshoppers.
Mr. Việt pointed to his field, where 800 traditional rice varieties were being replanted to rejuvenate after decades preserved in cold storage by the Mekong Delta Development Research Institute (Cần Thơ University). He gently lifted a clump of young seedlings and smiled—bright and fresh as the very shoots he nurtured. At that moment, he wasn’t living in the present but in the memories of his rural childhood—of catching fish in ditches and bringing lunch to his grandmother at the fields when he was just five or six.
His childhood was spent on the rice fields. At 13, after his father passed away, he had to take on all the farm work. By 17, he could thresh a thousand sheaves of rice—a full ton—each day. With eight siblings and financial hardship pressing on the family, everyone urged him to quit school, but he refused, working by day and studying by night.
He became so skilled that he could identify the rice variety and predict the yield just by glancing at a field. But at 18, after studying agronomy and joining a state job, he abandoned traditional rice farming altogether. His memories of seasonal rice faded away.
The Shift from Tradition to Modernization
In the late 1970s, Vietnam’s policy shifted from traditional seasonal rice to the short-term Thần Nông variety amid floods, brown planthopper infestations, and border wars. Even the fertile Mekong Delta suffered rice shortages, forcing the government to impose the new variety.
However, under pressure to meet quotas, local authorities used coercive measures. One district secretary in Kiên Giang reportedly rode a tractor to personally destroy villagers’ traditional rice crops.
The transition between old and new was far from smooth. When forced to grow short-term varieties, farmers secretly mixed in traditional long-term rice. Thus, Thần Nông ripened and was harvested first, followed later by seasonal rice. When questioned, farmers simply replied they had “sown the wrong seed.”
During that period, agricultural taxation was harsh. Those who couldn’t pay had militia with AK rifles escort them to commune offices until hunger and mosquito bites forced them to surrender their rice. The new Thần Nông variety was cynically nicknamed “AK Rice” because of these scenes.
The mixing of traditional and modern varieties was the farmers’ last attempt to hold onto their cultural roots, but it only lasted a few years. Once irrigation systems expanded, Thần Nông became dominant with two or three crops per year. By 1986, wherever irrigation reached, traditional rice disappeared.
A Return to the Roots
As a commune secretary and later an officer in the district’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr. Việt witnessed the unsustainable outcomes of yield-driven rice farming. Chemical sprays blanketed the fields, harvests were abundant but profits low due to falling prices.
By his fifties, each winter wind rekindled his longing for the simple beauty of his childhood fields. “What if we brought back traditional rice,” he wondered, “so our children could experience the same connection to the land?”
This idea grew until 2011, when he attended the first Mekong Delta Rice Festival in Sóc Trăng. Every booth displayed high-yield modern varieties—except one: the Mekong Delta Development Research Institute’s booth, showcasing old seasonal rice names.
Overwhelmed by nostalgia, he decided then and there to revive traditional rice. The memories were no longer vague—they were vivid and calling.
By 1995, in his home district of Châu Thành, Kiên Giang, nearly 100% of rice fields had converted to high-yield, short-term crops. Even in agricultural universities, traditional rice was no longer mentioned—only intensive, short-term, double-crop systems remained.