Bac Ba Phi Memorial Area

In the U Minh Hạ region lived a man whose name still makes people in Cà Mau smile before they say another word. The smile does not come from sadness. It comes from the fact that his stories always brought laughter.

His name was Nguyễn Long Phi. Most people knew him as Bác Ba Phi.

He was born in 1884 in Rạch Mũi, in the Cái Rắn area of what was once Cái Nước. He was the second child in a family of eight brothers and sisters. As he grew up, he became a strong farmhand, skilled in martial arts, who loved đờn ca tài tử and played the đờn cò well. Đờn ca tài tử is an art of music and song of southern Vietnam that evokes life on the Mekong Delta's land and rivers.

Later he settled in the Kênh Ngang area and worked for hire. There he married Trần Thị Lữ, the third daughter of Hương Quản Tế. The name Ba Phi came from that marriage.

His life was tied to the land of U Minh Hạ. He cleared fields and dug a canal to carry local produce out toward the sea in the west. Along both banks of the canal he planted tràm trees. From those rows of tràm, the place called Lung Tràm took its name. So the name of this ground came from the work of one ordinary man.

In 1942, Bác Ba Phi gave hundreds of mẫu of his fields to the Party and the state, to be shared among poor people who had no land to farm. A mẫu is a traditional Vietnamese measure of farmland. He kept only a few mẫu for his family to live on. Not everyone could have made that choice.

Yet what keeps Bác Ba Phi alive in memory is not farmland or martial skill. It is the way he told stories.

His stories often use exaggeration, bold leaps of comparison, and giving everyday things the ways of people. Heard once, they sound too far-fetched to believe. But that was his gift. Listeners still felt that each tale had both heart and reason, and they laughed without ever feeling annoyed. It is the laughter of southern Vietnam, the laughter of the farmers of U Minh, hopeful and good humored even when life is not easy.

Some of the tales are known by short names. Tàu rùa is the turtle ship. Câu ếch is fishing for frogs. Rắn tát cá is a snake bailing out fish. Nếp dẻo is sticky rice. Cọp xay lúa is a tiger milling rice. These names have become part of the spirit of U Minh. These are tales passed along by word of mouth. Their worth lies in laughter, imagination, and a southern flavor found nowhere else.

In 2003, the Vietnam Folk Arts Association awarded him, after his death, the title of Folk Artisan. And on September 10, 2015, the People's Committee of Cà Mau Province recognized the Nguyễn Long Phi Folk Artisan Memorial Area as a historical and cultural monument at the provincial level.

At the memorial area, in Lung Tràm hamlet in Khánh Hưng commune, there is a place of worship and remembrance, and a burial ground. The grave of Bác Ba Phi lies between the graves of his two wives, Trần Thị Lữ and Lữ Thị Cham. It is quiet there, beneath the rows of tràm that he planted with his own hands long ago.

A spear he once used to hunt wild boar is still kept by his grandchild, Nguyễn Mỹ Lệ. A dugout canoe that once carried him into the forest is looked after by the family of Nguyễn Văn Đun. Ordinary objects, passing through the hands of an extraordinary man, became keepsakes for a whole land.

Bác Ba Phi died on December 6, 1964. But whenever someone tells of the tiger milling rice or the snake bailing out fish, in the humorous voice of the people of U Minh, he is still there, in the laughter of the listener.