Flying with a folktale

Author's note: This is a short story on climate change I wrote for a competition, but it didn't win so I think it'd be nice to share with you :) 

Bracing myself for the violent take-off, I peek through the window to take one last look at the below. Saigon seems to be straight out from a slow-taped Polaroid documentary, the kind that makes the audience squirms in its seat because of the terrifyingly detailed landscapes. Below the smog, along the winding Saigon River, a concrete jungle sprawls like spores shooting after a tropic thunderstorm. Not only do I see amid the floating water hyacinths but also motley islands of trash and plastic – the product of more than 8 million Homo sapiens inhabiting every centimeter square of the city.

The plane flips sideways a little bit to avoid the thunderous clouds that are starting to gather outside. Ironically, with all the teeming electricity potential outside, the screen on my phone collapses into a black vortex. I slip out the magazine clenched tight into the seat pouch at the front. If the phone battery is dead, surely there must be another way to entertain during this 45-minute flight from Saigon to Qui Nhon, my hometown and my best getaway spot that ever exists.

Flipping through the damp pages, I almost grimace at the pungent smell of alcohol mixed with a wisp of odor left from past weary travelers. Something from the Culture section of the magazine catches my eye: an ornate watercolor piece depicts roaring waves engulfing a lofty peak, while two Herculean men are battling each other. Despite the fury depicted in the illustration, the title below puts a smile on my face: Son Tinh - Thuy Tinh, the ever-legendary folktale that every Vietnamese child must have heard. Without anything else to do other than reading a story that was told a million times back in childhood, I let my childhood memories flush back at the neatly printed lines.

“Son Tinh – Thuy Tinh

In the Hong Bang Dynasty (around 300 BCE), the 18^th King of Hung had a princess named My Nuong, who was widely renowned for her beauty. When My Nuong reached the age of marriage, suitors from all over the country, bringing precious jewels and offerings, flocked to the palace to ask for her hand. However, King Hung narrowed down the list to two gods: Son Tinh and Thuy Tinh. Son Tinh, the god of mountains, could grow millions of trees on dry hills within a click of a finger. Thuy Tinh, the god of water, was nowhere less extraordinary than his rival: he could command the vast East Sea to rise and fall to his will. The tentative king resorted to giving the two gods a challenge: by the next day, the first one to bring the required offerings – a nine-tusked elephant, a nine-spur cockerel, and a nine-mane horse – would be My Nuong’s husband.

Just when dawn broke, Son Tinh was ready with all the demanded wedding gifts, thus winning My Nuong. Thuy Tinh, who arrived later, was fuming. The powerful water god commanded all the strongest aquatic beasts to combat Son Tinh and win My Nuong back. Relentlessly, Thuy Tinh summoned gushes of waves, torrential downpours, and devastating typhoons to defeat Son Tinh. Nonetheless, as the fiery disasters struck, Son Tinh magically elevated hills and mountains and built dikes to protect the people and their belongings. The battle was of attrition, and a weary Thuy Tinh eventually had to retreat, avenging his loss. Therefore, every year, the Vietnamese people must suffer from natural disasters due to Thuy Tinh’s vindictiveness. Yet, as much as they must bear the water god’s onslaughts, the people never surrender, for they are always protected by Son Tinh.”

The plane tilts again by the window, revealing below a rugged terrain of undulating mountains with withered trees scattering around. The endless stretches of Mother Earth’s wrinkles signal the entrance into Central Vietnam. I can’t help but smile at the memory of 7-year-old me looking on the top of every mountain peak I saw, hoping to see the mighty shadow of Son Tinh. And yet, every monsoon season, I struggled to resist the urge to turn off the TV every time it broadcasted news from the Central when it shows heart-wrenching images. Coconut trees swaying amid the blasting blows. Families with knees submerged into the mud, clinging onto their most valuable belongings. Scrawny kids of my age sitting on their rooftop, desperately watching their belongings swallowed by the fiery currents. The torments from Thuy Tinh’s revenge were entrenched in a vicious cycle, only to be repeated, if not worsen, the following year.

Yet, safely ensconced into Saigon, a city in Southern Vietnam where street floodings are mostly because of terrible drainage systems rather than typhoons, I couldn’t care less about the risks of salvaging the remaining of my Diary of a Wimpy Kid books from the mud. I grew up with city dwellers who viewed sudden downpours and scorching heat as poetic and car ownership as the utmost representation of social status (400% import tariffs for Vietnamese cars, no joking). As a little kid nestled in the bubble of air-conditioners, blinding white lightbulbs, and the ever-glorious notion “All wastes go into a bin”, little did I worry about what is happening with this planet. In short, I was a product of my surroundings. A hard-core je-ne-sais-quoi third-world country citizen who takes pride in how many ACs my house has rather than how much CO₂ we emit. However, it wasn’t until April 2016 that I learned that Son Tinh’s descendants weren’t only suffering from the water god’s rage — but also from their deeds.

 One summer afternoon, I was looking for some ice cream in the freezer when the most curious (and slightly gory) scene appeared before my eyes. There were no snacks to be found but chock full of frozen stacks of every type of fish imaginable, with veinous eyes bulging out and toothless mouths gawking. To shocked to speak, I turned to my mother, who was carrying a huge plastic bag of shrimp to the sink for cleaning. She explained to me, with the exasperated voice of someone who had made four trips back and forth from the supermarket, that everyone was hoarding seafood due to the toxin spills on the Central Vietnam coasts. Then my mother reached for her shopping bag and handed me a crumpled page of the morning newspaper. There, under the boldened title “Thousands of Tons of Dead Fish Washed Ashore from Massive Toxin Spills,” showed bulks of fish carcasses stretching for miles along the coast. The news covered the Formosa Plastics plant in Ha Tinh province, which was investigated to be responsible for the destructive amount of toxin draining into the coast that killed nearly 150 tons of fish in less than 2 months. The image of endless stretches of fish on the once-pristine coasts haunted me for several days after.

Back to the present. The calm voice of a flight attendant announces the shortly upcoming landing. The clouds have parted, revealing below an endless stretch of undulating azure, the same shade of blue that I have always recalled. Even after the disastrous oil spills, the ocean still holds a mesmerizing beauty along with my memories of a getaway from the dusty city. For now, I can only hope that those golden sandbars will remain lined with sandcastles and whistling pine trees, not piles of fish carcasses and clamshells.

With a sigh, I close the last page of the in-flight magazine in my lap. What would the mighty water god Thuy Tinh think about the oil spill? An act of revenge from Son Tinh’s descendants who poisoned his aquatic army through modern steel companies?

Unless petty culture already existed in 300 BCE, I highly doubt it.

Thumbnail image: A view over Ghenh Rang point, Qui Nhon, 2021