Me Village in Hoa Bac

The sound of a stream running through the gaps between rocks reaches the ear first at Mê Village, before anything comes into view. The village sits at the foot of the western mountains in Hòa Bắc, in Da Nang. Green slopes rise behind it, and low cloud rests on them.

The village is described as a community place, and the people who have been there put it more simply. Life along the stream here still keeps its own breath. It has not been carried away by the growth of the city.

The houses are not tall. Gardens and fields run right up to the edge of the water. Each morning the first light slips through the canopy and lands on the stream before it touches a tile roof. Life in Mê Village begins that way. Slow. Real. Unhurried.

Hòa Bắc is land between the mountains and the city in a very real sense. Here a person can sit on the bank and listen to the water with nothing else planned. That is rare in a place that lies so close to a city.

Something in the air makes people slow down without trying. The road is not hard. The eye simply wants one more look. A clump of bamboo leans out over the water. A child stands on a rocky bank and watches the current. A man cutting grass along the edge does not lift his eyes.

Beside the western mountains and a cool stream, Mê Village keeps a way of living that many people are looking for again, without knowing what to call it.

When evening comes, the surface of the water changes color with the shadow of the mountain. The stream is no louder, but it is clearer, because everything around it is going quiet.