Hanoi nature
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I was glad to find a gecko on the wall of our apartment when I came in yesterday evening. It was less pleased to see me and dashed away to sit chuckling behind the wardrobe. When I arrived it was winter and there were no geckos; they are still much rarer than in any truly tropical city. I thought that birds were also terribly rare in Hanoi; because people used to shoot them, I was told. |
It’s true that there are fewer pigeons than in any other city I know of but, now that they have started singing, I notice more birds. The khaya trees around the sports field are so dense that it’s hard to see them in there but there are magpie robins and red-whiskered bulbuls, both bold singers, as well as two kinds of cuckoo. Tiny tailorbirds and prinias flit through the little trees and occasionally you even see a great tit.My friend Hụe told me that the big mauve blossom-trees are called student’s blossom because they flower at exam time. It’s quite true this year and I wonder how long the trees have been called that. Are current exams at the same time as the old Confucian ones which were the basis of the state, or is it a newer name?
Another tree, which isn’t in flower yet, is called the milk flower. It is ivory-white and flowers in the Autumn. There is a poem about it in our Vietnamese textbook:
This season, in Hanoi, is the milkflower’s season
Meet me at the corner of Nguyen Du street
The milkflower’s fragrance is the scent of expectation
The first month of winter is the last month of fall.
Sorry for the American usage but ‘fall’ scans. Understanding what trees and flowers mean in Vietnam is important to me. In England the names of oak and hawthorn, bluebell and dogrose all resonate. Here I think the associations are still more intense and widely known, perhaps just because they form traditional motifs in poetry. Some of these motifs are imported directly from temperate China. But I feel it’s a first key to knowing how the Vietnamese see nature.
I can’t help but wonder what autumn means here.
Still, much as I love this city, I'm beginning to long for the forest again, or for the sea.
