Oysters of Lang Co Bay

Before dawn, boats are already easing out onto the Lập An lagoon. The villagers pole them along, haul on taut ropes, and lift tires one by one out of the water, still dripping. In the oyster harvest season, the people of Lăng Cô go out at first light, when the surface is so smooth that no ripple has yet had time to touch it.

Those tires are the cradle of the oysters. Old car tires are cut in half and tied to ropes. The ropes hang from rows of posts driven deep into the lagoon floor, so the tires sink about 30 centimeters below the surface. Oyster larvae live naturally in the lagoon, and they simply attach themselves to the rubber and grow in the dark underwater. At one time, the lagoon held more than 140,000 posts. They carried more than 1 million tires. Seen from the shore, the whole lagoon looks like a field of posts rising out of a mirror.

This trade is younger than most people think. Before the year 2000, the villagers only gathered wild oysters. From around 2000, they began raising oysters on ropes, on frames and on posts. By 2003 the trade was growing fast, and the rows of posts grew longer every season. A batch of oysters needs about 9 to 11 months to grow. So the farmers overlap their batches. As one is harvested, the next is already waiting underwater, and there are oysters to sell all year round.

On shore, the real work begins. Oysters grow thick on the tires, and their sharp shells cut hands easily, so people wear gloves. Beside the road that runs along the lagoon, women sit shucking oysters with small knives. The rock oysters of the Lập An lagoon have thick shells and firm flesh, and they are good grilled or cooked into porridge. About 500 households in the commune of Chân Mây Lăng Cô, in the city of Hue, make their living farming the water. The lagoon covers more than 1,600 hectares.

To understand the water the oysters grow in, look to the mountains. Behind the lagoon rises the Bạch Mã range, where clouds blanket the forests above 900 meters all year. It rains so much that the summit counts among the rainiest places in the country. Fresh water runs down from there into the lagoon. In front, the land of Lăng Cô reaches across like an arm and stops the lagoon from opening fully to the sea. Fresh water meets salt water, so the lagoon is neither wholly fresh nor wholly salty. The oysters of the Lập An lagoon grow up in exactly that in-between water.

As the sun climbs, the light spills across the strip of land to the beach on the other side. The beach stretches for more than 10 kilometers. The sand is white and fine, and it slopes gently into the water. The bay curves inward like an embrace, so the waves reach the shore softly. In summer the water turns jade green. In 2009, an international club for beautiful bays admitted Lăng Cô Bay. The villagers, though, had been looking at it long before that.

Near noon, eyes follow the road toward the foot of the Hải Vân Pass. The pass is 21 kilometers long, and its highest point is 496 meters. A trip over it once took more than an hour. Since 2005, vehicles have gone through a tunnel 6,280 meters long, and the same trip takes about 15 minutes. The train, though, still climbs the old way. It follows the mountainside, with the sea on one side and forest on the other. Tourist trains stop at Lăng Cô station, at the foot of the pass, so passengers can look at the bay one more time.

In the afternoon, older people in the hamlets tell stories of the past. They go back to the years before the oysters, when the lagoon fed the village in other ways. An old man of 78 in Hói Cạn remembers the time before electricity. The whole hamlet fished from small boats, with nets, baskets and rods. At night every house burned its oil lamp sparingly and sat weaving nets and bamboo and rattan baskets to earn a little extra.

A woman in Hói Dừa says her ancestors came from the Hòa Vang area of Da Nang at the start of the 20th century. They lived by working the fields, burning charcoal and fishing the lagoon. In 1954, more people came to settle here from Quảng Trị. On ancestors' death anniversaries and at Tết, many families still set a bánh thửng cake on the family altar. Tết is the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam. On those days, a big family meal has mì Quảng, a rice-noodle dish of central Vietnam. It also has a bowl of mắm nêm, a sauce of fermented fish.

At festival time, the village also races round baskets on the water. Racers may not use paddles. They hold only the rim of the basket with both hands and rock it forward, so that it glides along without tipping over. One can imagine cheers rising from the white sand, the baskets spinning on the water, and far off, the Hải Vân Pass looking quietly down.

Then the sun leans. People say that long ago this place was called Làng Cò, or Egret Village, because every evening flocks of egrets flew in to sleep beside the lagoon. The story goes that the French arrived and said it their own way until it became Lăng Cô. This is only word of mouth, and no document confirms it. What anyone can see is that in the late afternoon, the color of the clouds settles onto the water, and the Bạch Mã range fades back into the mist.

The last boat reaches the landing. The tires, cleaned of shells, are laid out to dry, then lowered into the lagoon again for the next crop. The wind has dropped. The rows of posts stand still in the evening light, each carrying a string of tires below the water, and down there the little oysters quietly grow one more night.